How Daniel Bussius Rebuilt After $90K in Debt and What He’d Never Do Again

This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.

Susan Sly 00:00
Raw. Well, hey there, raw and real entrepreneurs, wherever you are in the world, I hope you're having an amazing day. And today, I'm having a literal conversation with a friend, and we could be having a cocktail or a coffee. We've known each other for many years. We met in the digital marketing space and have stayed in touch. And, you know, we were talking so much about everything from faith and technology and AI and the biggest mistakes we made, and I'm going, we need to do a show, brother. And I just—Daniel, first and foremost, it's so great to connect with you in front of our global audience.

Daniel Bussius 00:43
It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Susan. I can hardly wait. So, yeah, this is gonna be fun.

Susan Sly 00:47
Well, Daniel, the question I always ask—because I'm doing like, you know, if you're new to the show, you won't know this, but the listeners who've been with me for a long time, it's, you know, we're over 400 interviews now—and I always ask this question because I'm just polling. There's this, you know, some people think entrepreneurs are born, and some people think they're made. And you just, like, you know, do you come out of the womb and you start, like, selling something? Or is it something that can be learned? So what was your first childhood business?

Daniel Bussius 01:18
Wow, that's a great question. The first one that I can remember was the day after Halloween. I think I was around 12 years old, and I was selling all of the old Halloween decorations. Because Halloween is done, but all of the kids in the neighborhood were still running around with their Halloween costumes and everything. And so I'll never forget, my mom came out in the garage. I had the garage door open, all these kids were in there, and I'm selling old Halloween masks and decorations. She's like, "What are you doing, Daniel?" And I'm like, "I'm selling this stuff." And she's like, "What? Why are you doing that?" And I was making money, and I had really no idea why I was doing it. But yeah, it was the first thing that then led on to shoveling snow for business, doing a lemonade stand. So there was always something I was doing throughout my younger years.

Susan Sly 02:15
So this whole concept of hustle—I need to ask you this because we had this, you know, very deep conversation around money. So when did you first realize that money was a tool that you really wanted to wield?

Daniel Bussius 02:35
I would say probably first or second grade—like, really, really young. So eight years old, nine years old. My mom and dad divorced when I was one. His side of the family wrote off me and my family, so I'd never met them. He didn't financially support us. He was not present. And my mom had gotten disabled in a car accident. So we, for the most part, we lived check to check. And when I say check, it's like a government check. So I watched and witnessed her struggle. And as a young kid, I witnessed, you know, grandparents coming over to bring over groceries. We weren't going to the grocery store to buy groceries, like shopping—like Grandma and Granddad, from my mom's side, would come over with groceries every Sunday. And that was a tool for me that made me recognize—and that's probably the catalyst of why I started businesses so young and started to try to hustle and make money—is the pain and the struggle that I also experienced. But not at the level of witnessing my mom struggle with, you know, sitting there on the couch, clipping all the coupons and doing all the things. Now looking back, just saying, like, wow, that was something I recognized. And I had a negative connotation for a long time about money—that money was a source of pain. And so it was an interesting dynamic.

Susan Sly 04:10
Thinking about that—and I get that. You know, my parents divorced when I was three, and my mom kidnapped me. And then, fortunately, she was abusive, and I got to eventually go live with my dad. But I remember early on, we were living in a project, Daniel. And, you know, when the check would come in, we would have food, and then we’d have none. And I look back now—52 years—and I go, how did that really shape me? Even my relationship to food? I remember having, like, hot dogs—like beans and wieners was like a luxury. There’s a lot of, like, Kraft Dinner, but the generic kind. And my question for you, my brother, is, like, you know, looking at you now as someone who’s built multiple businesses, serial entrepreneur, built successful businesses, had ones that we call learning businesses, made millions and millions of dollars—how did that shape your relationship that early? Your dad leaving, not having money—how did that shape your relationship to money as an adult, as an entrepreneur?

Daniel Bussius 05:27
That's a great question. It was a toxic relationship in the beginning. The first business that I actually really started making money was in The Mix Promotions. It was an experiential marketing agency. I was a sophomore in college at San Diego State when I started it. And I think the first year, I made like $90,000, which, back then, for a sophomore, was a lot of money. And it grew from there. I remember, instead of being intelligent with my money, I blew it. I remember I went to Saks Fifth Avenue, and I didn’t even know what these brands were, but I was buying like $500 shirts—just ridiculous things. And it was because of this insecurity of, well, I have to show that I’m successful. I have to show—because for my whole life, and especially when I moved out to California, did I realize how on the other side of the spectrum of wealth I really was. And so it was a toxic relationship. I’ve used it—and of course, money, I’ve heard before that money is like a person. You either treat it with respect and it’ll stay with you, or if you don’t treat it with respect, it’s going to leave you. And that’s exactly what—

Susan Sly 06:47
—happened to me. So what is the dumbest big purchase you ever made? Like, you know, we can’t change the past. It’s learning. But for all of the entrepreneurs listening—and imposter syndrome is real—Daniel and I were talking about it pre-show. I was telling Daniel about shopping trips I would take to Italy and all the stuff I would buy that later on, like I either wore it once, or I’d look in the closet and go, like, what the heck? And if I had invested that in Nvidia or Bitcoin—like, I have friends who bought Bitcoin at 50 a coin—like $50, not even $50,000, right? But what’s the stupidest big purchase you ever made? I’ll confess mine so you can—

Daniel Bussius 07:27
Oh man, there’s—there’s a lot. There’s a lot. I would say, not in a single purpose of a monetary value, but over years. What I decided to do is, instead of just buying the Prada and the Versace and the Dolce & Gabbana clothing, I then found myself a tailor—custom tailor—in La Jolla, California. And I would fly for the day to San Francisco, and right in Union Square, there was a, like, a four-story fabric store called ITEX. And I’d go there and buy all of this expensive fabric, and fly back to San Diego and then have this tailor make all of this custom clothing that, looking back on it, was absolutely embarrassing and ridiculous. Like, some of this stuff—the prints of what it was—would be like on an ’80s sitcom. It was just absurd, obnoxious. And of course, there’s not one piece of clothing that I still have, nor would I be even proud to own to this day. And I mean tens of thousands of dollars just blown on just silly, ridiculous things. So I would probably say that’s arguably my biggest regret.

Susan Sly 08:44
Yeah, like, I totally get that. I was in Hong Kong and had, like, a custom dress made. And, like, I—you know, I get the, I get that expense. For me, the stupidest thing was a timeshare. Like, that was dumb. Like, what? You know? And it’s like—I know better, the sales cycle. But it’s like, of course, they’re, you know, like, in Maui, and you know, that was dumb. And I think this concept of money—and you and I are not just very spiritual people, we’re faith-based people—and that is our ethos. So what was the process for you of getting not just comfortable with money, Daniel, but actually knowing that wealth is a birthright? And I love what you said about treating it like a relationship—you know, respecting it and it’ll stay, and abusing it, and of course, it goes. But when did that flip for you, from a very deep spiritual place?

Daniel Bussius 09:48
Yeah, that’s a good question. I would say it was probably around 2006, maybe. And I was still running The Mix Promotions. It wasn’t doing well. It was still reeling from, you know, September 11th. And I was right around the age of 30 years old, and I had built a second business. It was called—originally—Emerging Artists Music Conference, which then we rebranded as Vegas Music Conference. It was this big music festival in Las Vegas. And the short of it is, there were private investors. We raised private money. We did it—like, there were 20,000 attendees that showed up, blah blah blah. So it was a success. But like major music conferences and festivals, the first year, the second year, you’re not going to make money—you’re going to lose money. Usually, on average, the third year you break even. The fourth year, it’s like wild, wild revenue.
Well, there was a whole falling out. And that whole falling out was—they were trying to kick me out of the company I founded. I didn’t have the money to fight them legally. So this was this whole dramatic thing. And then I was just looking at my life, and I was like—here I have this event business. I built this experiential marketing business, and it’s like puttering along. It’s not really paying the bills. I have to work, like, other jobs in line with this. My next big thing that I was hoping was going to be this huge success was this music conference, and it wasn’t. And I just felt like an absolute loser. And I had no money. And I remember—I couldn’t even pay the phone bill, right? So all of the music festival number—like, information number—went to my cell phone number. I remember I was getting, at the time, $1,000-a-month cell phone bills, which is insane, right?
And so I just had this wake-up call of, like, I hate who I am. I hate where I’m at. I’ve had this failed thing. It’s super embarrassing. I’ve lost, like, best friends from it. And this other business I started that I thought was great is really not going well. And I made the decision—I’ll never forget. I was sitting at the pool in San Diego, and I had listened to—I was listening to Tony Robbins. Sorry, Tony. I downloaded it from Limewire at the time, right? Because I couldn’t afford it. You know, Limewire—it wasn’t me, right?
And he was talking about, like, mindset and transforming and personal power. And so that was the day I set forth in motion that I was going to change my own story, and that I was going to build wealth, not spend money. And I was going to build something that made a difference. And that was the catalyst. Like, that was the moment it changed. And of course, the money didn’t come then. It came later. But that’s what enabled me to start—like, as I made money—put money away for investment, and start paying off all of the credit card debts, and all the student loans, and all of the things I had accumulated over the years that I was in a consumer-spend mode, rather than being intelligent and investing wisely and only spending on things that make sense. So including—

Susan Sly 13:11
—student loans, credit cards, but not a mortgage. How much debt were you in?

Daniel Bussius 13:18
At the height, I was around $90,000. And then, out of the student loans, I think I was like—I think I was $50,000 in on student loans, and $20,000 in credit cards. Like, it was spread out over a myriad of different things. And yeah, it took me a number of years to pay it off, but I got to the point where once you start making that motion, and you start to see—and then you start calling the credit card companies that they've closed your accounts, and they're like, "You owe $1,500," and you're like, "I'll give you $1,200—just get it off my credit," you know? And I went through that whole process. It was about six years total, and I went from a credit score that—I could not even get my own cell phone because my cell phone previously had been shut down. And so my mom had to get a cell phone for me in her name, which was super embarrassing when you're in your 30s. And to a point that I had 800 credit and I had absolutely no debt. I paid off absolutely every single thing. That was life-changing.

Susan Sly 14:24
Yeah, and that—and liberating. And when we think about business and risk, right? Because I want to get into the businesses you started after that mindset shift. And we know for founders—and especially, you know, any kind of startup founder—the failure rate the first year is 50%. You know, then it goes—or, sorry, the first year, I think, is 20%, then by year two, it's 50%, then it goes up to 90%. And it is always around cash flow. And then I look at the founder and what is their relationship with money? And are they—you know, are they savers? Are they spenders? What are they doing? And I get that so clearly, because that shift has to come internally. And you’ve done a tremendous amount of self-development. And Daniel, what strikes me about you as a person is every time I encounter you, it’s the next version of you, right? And so what are you like—what do you do now to consistently develop yourself mentally and spiritually?

Daniel Bussius 15:43
Wow, that's a really smart question. I think your foundation—really for anybody, and this is just, you know, this is what’s worked for me—is you have to have a relationship with God. And you have to ask yourself a really tough question—at least it was a tough question for me. Out of all of the possible possibilities, the rarity of me existing in this world is billions to one. And so if you believe in a God and you believe in a higher power, then you believe that there’s a purpose that you’re here. And I don’t think that purpose is to accumulate as much wealth for yourself—to selfishly have just great experiences without improving anyone else’s life.
That was the big, big eye-opening moment for me. As you run in social circles, and it’s like, "Get to this revenue number, do this thing, crush this thing." And then when you start to build a family, and you start to age, and you’re no longer running around at the bars or doing whatever you’re doing as a single person, and you start to actually develop a relationship with family, you start to recognize—you can’t be that selfish person. And I think that’s probably the moment that most people kind of wake up, and they make that decision whether they’re going to improve their self or not. And that was—for me, that was the thing. It’s—why am I here? And what am I doing?
There’s going to come a day that I’m going to have to answer to a higher power. And this higher power is going to have this conversation of, like, "I gifted you life. I gifted you talents. What did you do with it?" Right? And that was the thing that was like—I have to continually pivot and change. I have to be a better person. I’m either going to grow closer to God or I’m going to move further away from it. And that’s the same thing in everything—you know, with your personal health, with your relationships, with the people that you love, and with your business. And so I call it an impossible balance. But it’s the—if you want to, if you want to continually grow, you’re going to have to navigate that impossible balance.

Susan Sly 17:56
The impossible balance. I love that. So speaking of the impossible, right, as believers. So, for those who are not watching on YouTube, what I’m holding up is—it’s laminated just because I love a laminator. Like, I can feel—like, I have, like, these little proclivities. So I laminated these different scriptures about faith, prosperity, and favor. And when I’m traveling, I always stay at—shout out to Marriott—I always stay at Marriott. There’s always a Bible there. But, you know, I have these. And scripturally, we’re told we can be wealthy. We are told, you know, "Ask and it shall be given. Seek and you shall find." Mark 11—you know, "You can have whatever you want, but you have to forgive." So you have now—I mean, we talked about—we’ll get to this in a moment—but, you know, you’ve found your faith, you’ve found a peace, and you now are in a position where you can say, "I haven’t built just one successful business—it’s multiple successful businesses." And would you consider yourself a manifester? And if so, what is the process you go through to create abundance?

Daniel Bussius 19:21
Wow, that’s an incredible question. I think—okay, so now that you’re asking that question, I never looked at myself as a manifester. But now that you’re saying it—yes. Every time I’ve created a company, every time I’ve gone down a different direction and pivoted my business, I have foreshadowed what I thought either the market was going to do or that I needed to do, and then I just made it happen. And I would say it’s a bit of blind luck and blind faith to do that.
I think if anyone’s going to have success at any level, you’re going to have to have that strong belief in yourself and a strong belief in the purpose. I’ve read before—and I thought it was a really interesting take—is you have to argue for why you have a right to exist, as well as your business. And it has to start with what you truly believe in your heart and mind—that this thing is going to work and this thing is going to change the world. And then be ready to commit to it, because it’s not going to be an easy ride any time of the way.

Susan Sly 20:37
Where does prayer come in for you in that process? Prayer—

Daniel Bussius 20:41
…is something that I have—I continually evolve. Obviously, I go to church on Sundays. I pray every single night when I go to bed. It's one of those things now I've kind of embraced that. I pray multiple times throughout the day, multiple times in just little special moments. Like, you see an amazing sunset and it’s, “Thank you, Jesus. I love you, Jesus.” You know, just little things like that. Like, continuing—you know, you wake up in the morning and you feel great, you're like, “Thank you.” You know you had the power. You had the choice. I did not control the destiny—whether I woke up and how I woke up. And so really, from someone who has faith, it’s understanding that yes, you have a certain amount of control, but there’s a higher power that has more control. And being thankful and appreciative of that, and acknowledging that, which also helps to keep you grounded. Because if you just keep thinking what's happening to you in this world is just you, and it’s just your power, and it’s just your, your, your intelligence, then I think you’re missing the bigger picture. And I think you're going to start to grow further away from faith. And for most of us, that leads to probably not a great direction.

Susan Sly 22:01
And I know we're going to get to what you're working on next, which surrounds this. I want to ask you, just in friend mode—because I'm very curious about this. I know for myself—

Daniel Bussius 22:12
With all the listeners, right?

Susan Sly 22:17
Yeah, within 144 countries. It’s just, yeah—us and friends. When I’m out of alignment with God and I’m trying to manifest something, it never goes well. And I’m at the stage of my life and this journey where if I’m trying to do something and it’s not in alignment with my purpose, it never goes well. And I can think time after time after time where I’m going, “This feels really hard. This feels—” and it’s always me looking in the mirror and going, “Susan, where—where are you out of alignment with your purpose?” Because when I’m in alignment, you know, the right people show up, the right circumstances, conversations—and, you know, it’s all of that.
So let’s talk about building software. Because we—you and I, brother—we had this conversation before we came on the show. It is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. So you could look at Daniel’s success—and I hope all of you know, as you’re listening to this—I love, and I want to give a shout-out to Lewis Howes’ show. Lewis and I have a mutual acquaintance in Chris Lee, his coach. And Kerry Washington was on, and she was talking about literally being on her knees, Daniel, and praying. When she has a big prayer, it's like, “I'm on my knees, I'm praying.” And I love that we’re having the conversation about prayer and faith and manifestation and alignment.
You were not in alignment, brother, with making this decision. Let’s talk about this decision to build software and what’s been happening. And are you having any revelations around that right now?

Daniel Bussius 24:03
So many revelations. Yeah. So this was—it all started about three and a half years ago. I was writing my book, Marketing Built by Love, that’s now published. And I had the decision that—as I was writing the book—now, hey, we also own Built by Love digital marketing agency. And so I was thinking not all people that read this book—because I really felt in my soul that this book, even though I’m an unknown person—that it was going to get picked up nationally and be in bookstores, which it is. And I really felt confident about that, and there was no guarantee to that at all.
And I felt that a lot of people were going to read it, they were going to try to come to my agency, and they weren’t going to be able to afford to work with us, right? We’re not the most expensive, but cheapest—kind of like Mercedes-level expenditures. It’s not Lamborghini pricing, but it’s certainly not Honda pricing either, okay?
So, I had this bright idea in the middle of writing the book: “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to build software. So if people can’t afford to work with us, they’ll go use this software, and I’m going to help all of these people.” And I’ve got zero experience writing software. I’ve got developers in the agency for WordPress websites and doing simple integrations—the CRM and other, you know, fancy things like that—digital marketing stuff, but not like software, like software and apps.
And so I went down this path. Needless to say, fast forward—it was immediately, like, after the first iteration came out, I looked at it and I was like, “This is horrible.” Like, this is actually really ugly. I hate this. I won’t even use the software. And so we immediately had to go back to the drawing board. I hired another development firm to redo it. And of course, anyone who’s done a renovation on a house—they know that every contractor is going to say whatever was done before was horrible, right? So of course they’re like, “This is all done wrong. The technology stack is all bad. It’s outdated. We’ve got to do it all on this thing.”
And so there’s tens of thousands of dollars—that’s all done. Gets done. It’s not exactly what I want. It’s better, but it’s still not great. And needless to say, now we’re on the third iteration. Software development costs alone—I didn’t raise any money. This is all out of my own pocket. I just checked the other day—I’m at $70,000 in just the software cost. That doesn’t include, like, UI—so graphic design, any other expenditures from my agency and my team. So I’m easily, easily $120,000 into it.
I know for someone listening, they’re like, “That’s nothing,” or like you, Susan—like, that’s nothing in regards to the cost for software. But I will say this: I should have stayed in my mind. It wasn’t in my zone of genius. And it’s great sometimes to chase shiny objects if you really feel in your gut that that’s the direction to go. But looking back on it, it was maybe a moment of hubris—of like, I’m writing this book, and now I’m going to build this thing at the same time, while I’m running the agency and writing a book. I’m going to take on this third front, and this third whole battle to take on and try to win successfully.
And we all know in history—any time you fight a battle that’s more than one front, you’re going to lose that battle. And I, for sure, lost that one.

Susan Sly 27:30
And for the listeners too, like—I always say, like, minimum, it’s like—if we add the cost from your talent, from the agency, because you have established talent, and we add it all up, it’s probably closer around 250, right? Because that’s generally speaking, just to get something out there that you can interface with. And when you start adding in AI components, you start adding in, like, a whole host of things—the cost to build software, especially when you’re using external developers and it’s not your wheelhouse—the costs do creep up. And we get—you know, there’s a lot of friends I have, same thing as you. Like, they decided, “Oh, I want to build an app,” or “I want to do this,” or “I want to do that,” and then they’re setting themselves up for disappointment.
So let me ask you, friend—you mentioned, like, you’re doing the book, you’re running the agency. If you had had a different alignment around the software, what would you have done differently, even if you were still going to have the outcome of having the software?

Daniel Bussius 28:45
The first thing is, I would have done what my initial gut was. I spent $10,000 to film a course instead of the software. That was the first thing. And then I was like, “Oh, well, then this is going to be a complement to it.” I should have stuck with the course. And then, if anything was going to iterate into any kind of piece of software, I should have—again, because I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not a software developer, that’s not what our agency does—I should have just built onto some existing technology or platform, and given an MVP, so a minimum viable product, that would have been like, you know, “The value is the course and the videos, and you get this extra thing that’s going to help you with one specific thing.”
And then, if I realized monetization from that, then I could have gone in a phase two, a phase three, and really built that thing out. But I didn’t do it. I was filled with probably ego and hubris, and said, “You know what, we’re scrapping the whole course.” Even though it was ten grand of videos, all done and shot and animation, efficient things—I scrapped all that, we’re going in this direction.
And yeah, I should have just done what I think people would have actually liked. The readers of the book would have got way more value from that rather than—no offense to my team that worked on my software—but it’s not, it’s not my proudest moment. It’s out there for now, but it’s not the level of caliber quality that I expect.

Susan Sly 30:26
And because you keep shifting and evolving, right? And the thing is, with software, with any technology building—and just because I previously had co-founded a company where we built all our AI in-house, and that company now has five patents. And so, you know, mad respect for, you know, my co-founders, everyone with that company—it was expensive to build that. You know, and I learned a lot. And I’m so grateful to God for the things I learned there, because I wouldn’t—where we’re at with The Pause—I wouldn’t have been able to build this software.
But goodness knows I made mistakes, and goodness knows it wasn’t until I brought in a dedicated in-house team, that that’s all they were focused on—was software development—that’s when things really began to change for us. Because I knew that that was like, “I’m committed. I’m going in this direction. I’m all in. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
I want to ask you—so there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are like, “Do I need an agency? Can I do the marketing by myself? Can I use AI tools?” Like, if you were starting a business from scratch today, bootstrapping it, what would be the first steps you would take—recommend someone take—for marketing to start to generate that early organic traffic?

Daniel Bussius 31:56
Love that question. If I could go back in time and do it all over again using, obviously, today’s technology—the first thing I would do is I’d get crystal clear on who my ideal customer is, right?
So many business owners, you start to ask those tough questions like, “Well, who are you serving?” And they’ll give you a generic answer. And then, “Okay, why you? Why you versus the competition?” And then what they’ll give you is features and benefits. And the problem is, most people don’t realize—they get caught in the forest. They can’t see the forest for the trees. They get caught in this mode of like, “Well, no, my thing, whatever it is—whether it’s a product or it’s a service—we do this, and we do it differently.” No one cares. All they care about is the outcome. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about how you founded it. They don’t care about the features and benefits. They just care about the outcome. “How quickly can you do it?” That’s really what they care about. The price comes later. The other factors come later. But it’s really—can you solve my problem?
So that’s the first thing. Before you hire anything, before you do anything, you’ve got to be crystal clear about that. Because that’s going to shape everything—from your brand colors to how your website’s going to lay out, to how you’re going to write your marketing communications, if you’re going to send emails or text messages, if you’re going to do a podcast or you’re going to be on YouTube or whatever. Like, it’s going to shape everything.
So that’s the first thing—is get crystal clear. And anybody can do that right now. Sit down and get real with yourself and get super, super clear. And you can’t serve every parent if that’s your thing—like, “Oh, well, we serve every parent or every kid.” No, you don’t. No, you don’t, right? So get really clear.
Once you have that clarity, the next thing I would do is I would go get a paid version of an AI tool. All of them are pretty great. And I would plug all of that stuff in there—this is my audience, this is my demographic, this is how we’re going to talk to our people, this is the spectrum of formality. And for those that don’t understand what a spectrum of formality is—a spectrum of formality, to give you the most basic and extreme example, is if I handed a script to President Barack Obama and said, “Read this script,” and then I handed that same script to President Donald Trump and said, “Read this,” the way that they delivered those would be wildly different. And probably people’s emotions, listening to this podcast right now, are already feeling heated—whether one way or the other. It’s indifferent to me.
But that’s a spectrum of formality of how you deliver the tone. Are you informal or formal? Are you funny or are you serious? So all of those things—I would put all of that information into your GPT. I’d save it. And then every time you used it and you didn’t get the right output, you write back and say, “Save this in your memory. I want you, going forward, to do this.”
So that’s the first step I would do. And then after that, I would figure out what your job is. And as the founder and CEO of your company, if you’re a man or woman of one, your job is to generate sales. That’s your job. Your job is the vision of how the company’s going to grow, how you’re going to deliver that—and that is sales, right?
And again, I’m saying for a founder of one—I would be controlling all of your sales. And everything else, I would outsource. I would outsource to, likely, an agency. I believe a single-source solutions provider—so like, one agency that has everything in-house—so you’re dealing with one contact person at that agency. That agency is going to be paid well because you’re going to be relying on them for marketing, for web design, for copywriting, for other things. AI will do a lot of your copywriting for you anyways, but they’re going to have a vested interest to deliver the best class and experiences for you.
Rather than what I call a Frankenstein effect—where you have this hodgepodge of agencies—they always say they work well together. They don’t. They don’t trust each other. They’re not going to communicate. They’re not going to share knowledge. You’re going to blow a bunch of different money on a bunch of different people that are not communicating. And you’ve got multiple captains of the ship that are not communicating where the icebergs are, so you’re going to have failure.
And so once you start generating real revenue, then what I would do is I would specialize, and I’d start to bring people in-house. Because in-house is—depending on where you’re based in the world, especially in the United States, and especially if you’re in a place that’s expensive, like maybe California or elsewhere—you’re going to deal with labor laws. You’re going to deal with workers’ comp. You’re going to deal with all the different hurdles and obstacles. And if you try to hire out of state, then you’re applying for all of those state funds and all of those things.
It’s just—it’s a myriad of complexity that you’re not going to need. And that’s why—to kind of wrap up and summarize—I think starting with an agency first is the best line of defense. And then grow your team internally. And there’s going to be a place where you’re going to need specialization—likely for an agency—because you’re not going to have the firepower. Your team’s going to be bogged down with internal things that you’re working on, whether you’re relaunching a new website or doing whatever. And so having that outsource support is going to be to your advantage.

Susan Sly 37:34
Daniel, so for your agency, who is your—who is your target customer?

Daniel Bussius 37:40
Yeah, you got to be service-based. You've got to be based in the United States. You've got to be between three and five million as our sweet spot. We do have some clients that are $40 million plus in revenue, but really where we shine—and who we're going to go after—is you're between three and five million. So you've already figured out that you have a product niche, a service niche, you don't have enough firepower that you have an entire team. Usually, teams like this will have one full-time marketer or one plus like a part-time social media person.
Those people—no offense to them—are not senior-level marketers. Senior-level marketers are demanding six figures plus. So these are people that are usually, like, you know, even though they might have the title of director, they're not really director level. And so they're relying on us to really drive the strategic direction, to really provide the resources to do the execution—for the marketing automation, for building out the website. They might have an idea of what they want, and then we actually execute. We'll do the design, we'll do the coding, like—we’ll launch, we’ll do all that stuff.
And it's service-based businesses with a twist. It's not just any service-based business. You have to be a service-based business that, A: you want to be a category leader—like you're not okay with just being another service-based business. B: you actually care about the product or service that you're going to deliver. And C: you actually build love—like the people that work for you love working for you. Your customers love working with you, love buying from you, they’re loyal to you. So really, like, those three things—outside of just being in that revenue space and a service-based business and within the United States—you’ve got to have all those things.
And then the final thing is, you can't come to us thinking we're going to build your business for you. If I had the secret sauce to build all the businesses and I was going to have no problems, I would not be an agency. I'd be out there building all my own businesses because I knew the secret magic that was going to solve the problem.
So it's got to be looked at as—this is a partner in growth rather than a vendor. And so that weeds out really about 80% of the people that walk to—about 80% of them—because they check all the boxes and then consider this is a relationship. And if it's not, we're not going to work well together, because you're not going to throw things last minute on a Friday afternoon like, “You guys need to get it done by Monday,” and then send it over to me and all of a sudden we’re stuck. Like, no—that's not how you need to succeed. End of story.

Susan Sly 40:17
I love how granular that is, and the—

Daniel Bussius 40:20
28 years of running a business. That's why.

Susan Sly 40:23
Yeah, and a lifetime—a lifetime of growth. And thinking about the thing is, you know, you've got to love what you do and be a category leader. And that clarity is so huge. And for every entrepreneur listening—thinking about what Daniel has said—and I highly recommend getting his book, because that is a starting point.
Daniel, you and I—and even listeners to the show, I love you—you work at it. You tell me—we meet up at tech conferences—you work at Nvidia, you work at Intel, you're like, “I want the courage,” or you're graduating from university, or whatever you're doing. You've got to know how to sell what it is you're doing. And you've got to—you know, part of selling is pitching. And part of that is this. It's raising the capital, it’s doing all that stuff.
Daniel, my final question to you, my friend—you are working on a passion project. And this is something that we've been talking about—the Rise Tribe. Talk about that. I’m excited for this. Like, this is like the moment of the show, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, let's talk about this.”

Daniel Bussius 41:36
Yeah, so Rise Tribe—RISE is an acronym for Relationships, Impact, Success, and Elevation. And so Rise Tribe is all about entrepreneurs that want to thrive in personal health and wellness. So they’re going to take care of their bodies. They believe that relationships with loved ones is a very important part. So they're going to value that. They’re going to want to continue to grow those areas—whether it’s your spouse or family or just your friends, right?
Third pillar to that is business. You want to have a thriving business that’s going to make a positive impact. And the fourth one—the fourth pillar—is that you have to have a foundational belief in God. You don’t have to believe in my God. You just have to believe that there’s a higher power and that you’re put on this Earth to make a positive impact. It’s not just about self-enrichment. It’s about enriching the world—leaving the world a little bit of a better place than how you came into it.
And the fifth and final is building generational or legacy wealth. So many entrepreneurs over the last 28 years that I’ve worked with—and I’ve worked with celebrities in New York, multiple New York Times best-selling authors, Fortune 500 brands, all the way down to small businesses from literally every continent excluding Antarctica—and so many of them have wealth, but they have nothing in the bank. Or they actually have no assets, or they’ve made millions and they actually haven’t invested it wisely. They’re really going to leave nothing to their family or their loved ones when they pass on. And so I was in the same situation.
So that’s what Rise Tribe is about. It’s a community of people that want to grow and thrive in all aspects of their life. And they are going to navigate imperfectly, but they’re going to navigate that impossible balance of, “Hey, I’m going to focus on my business, but I’m probably going to skip working out,” or “Maybe I’m not so present for my spouse or my loved one.” And so I’m going to make sure that I balance that back, rather than go all in on this one thing.
And so with that community effort, hopefully we will all elevate one another. We’ll learn from one another—not one another. And I’m launching it in the summer of 2025, soft launch, by invite only. And then in 2026, it’ll be out there in the world for people to apply. But it’s not necessarily for me to make money. As a matter of fact, I’m just going to spend money. I’m not going to make a dime off of this for a very long time.
It’s really because I was out there looking for something like this. And I’ve been part of a number of other organizations, and they’ve all been wonderful in their own right—
Yeah, but I was thinking and feeling that it was missing that aspect. And so I searched for it, I couldn’t find it. And I’m like, these are the people I want to be around. I want to be around more people like Susan Sly, where they’re going to inspire me. And we can have a real relationship about relationships. We can have a real conversation about, you know, business or health and all of these different things in Christ. And that’s going to be invigorating.
And once you’re, you know, busy running a business and having a family and doing these things—your time is very valuable. So hopefully this will be a community where we all can create meaningful relationships and elevate one another.

Susan Sly 45:08
Daniel, I love it. Count me in if I get an invitation. I mean—

Daniel Bussius 45:14
Of course.

Susan Sly 45:16
I’ll help co-lead some of these sessions. I mean, we really—you know, one of the things we didn’t get to talk about—but we’ll talk about it in person or, you know—is this concept of being faith-based technologists. And this to me—like, one of the things I’m standing for at this time in humanity, with AI, with the horizon of quantum compute and everything else—is to stand in faith.
And that is something where, my brother, I love what you’re doing. And I love that everything you’re doing in this journey of being so out of alignment with God and with love—and that journey, ultimately, you know, the software thing didn’t end up making you homeless, right? It was like a learning lesson, and just that tap on the shoulder. Like, “Hey, dude, you’re kind of out of alignment with this mission that you’re supposed to be on.” And we all get those taps.
So, Daniel, thank you for being on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship.

Daniel Bussius 46:16
It’s been an absolute honor. Thank you so much, Susan.

Susan Sly 46:20
Well everyone, hopefully today’s episode has been inspiring and giving you that entrepreneurial nudge that you need. And if this episode has blessed you, as always, we love a five-star review and share the episode. Tag us on social. We will share all of Daniel’s contacts—his book—in the show notes. And with that, God bless, go rock your day, and I will see you in the next episode.

This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.