Dan Nicholson of Nth Degree CPAs: Five Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Launched My Business or Startup
An Interview With Doug Noll
Closer over more. I wish I realized earlier that more is not always better, and that sometimes less actually is more. I’d have embraced the idea of “closer over more” earlier to help me focus on what matters most and eliminate what doesn’t.
Taking the risk to start a company is a feat few are fully equipped for. Any business owner knows that the first few years in business are anything but glamorous. Building a successful business takes time, lessons learned, and most importantly, enormous growth as a business owner. What works and what doesn’t when one starts a new business? What are the valuable lessons learned from the “University of Adversity”? As part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dan Nicholson, CEO and Founder of Nth Degree CPAs.
Dan Nicholson is the author of Rigging the Game: How to Achieve Financial Certainty, Navigate Risk and Make Money on Your Own Terms, deemed a best-seller by USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, among others.
In addition to founding the award-winning accounting firm Nth Degree CPAs, Dan has created and run multiple small businesses, including Certified Certainty Advisor, a professional certification he runs through CertaintyU. CertaintyU is a program that teaches business owners methods for increasing financial certainty, minimizing risk, and engineering cash flow.
Dan also developed the Certainty App, a financial tool built for entrepreneurs based on the ideologies he teaches.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I guess I’ve always been a bit of a go-getter. I was a kid who hustled to make and sell products. I had a knack for sales and understanding how commerce worked. I was always cooking up different business ideas and seeing if they would work, and I’ve also always been curious about numbers.
I kept those interests as I grew up. I got my degrees in Accounting and E-Commerce Information Systems, and then I landed a fellowship at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. I learned a lot there. After that, I worked at Deloitte and with some big-name companies.
Honestly, I got bored of the corporate grind. I hated sitting in meetings that felt like they had no point and no end. I decided to follow my dream of being an entrepreneur and started my own firm, Nth Degree CPAs. I wanted to help other people like me who had a purpose and a vision to achieve financial certainty.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
Absolutely. To build on what I was saying earlier around how I got started, I got those two degrees in Accounting and Information Systems because I thought they would help me start a business. I aced tests and worked with famous financial institutions. I even helped write a national accounting standard as part of all of that experience.
I fooled myself into thinking that these things — the titles, trophies, and praise — were worth chasing for some reward or another. My self-worth depended on doing and achieving, but inside I kind of felt lost and confused about where I was actually going.
Another thought on my mind was that I was the first in my family to go to college. Anyone who knows this feeling knows that there is a lot of pressure that comes with it. To be clear, my parents never pushed me; they only supported me. But I knew how much they sacrificed to give me the opportunities I had and how lucky I was to have such a profitable career path ahead of me.
Despite all the progress I seemed to make, my career was stuck in a loop. I changed direction often, shrugging off every dead end and turn as a lesson from failure, when the truth was I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.
Like many people in their twenties, I had a sort of quarter-life crisis. I bounced back and forth between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should do. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, not an employee. I still felt a strong pull toward entrepreneurship.
I started Nth Degree and other ventures too. Along the way, no matter how much time I spent failing, learning from failures, and finding success here and there, I still had questions:
How could I hit it big one day and then flop the next? How could I do all the research and then have the idea go nowhere? How could I be so close to getting everything I wanted only to start over days later?
The answers to those questions led me to write my book, Rigging the Game, and create some of my other companies like the Certified Certainty Advisor program — I wanted to help others who were on a similar journey play their own games too.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
I was on my fourth job after that accounting fellowship. And while it was still in the “finance” space, it was more or less my fourth career change. I started to realize that it wasn’t the employers who were the problem — it was me.
So I began seeking out resources for support — books, online programs and anything internet marketing threw at me. Every program I purchased started with “mindset” work. The prevailing sentiment was “fix your mindset.”
Which, to me, started to read like nothing more than a convenient excuse for lack of performance. For those who’ve delved into the world of “master classes,” you eventually see that there’s a very convenient way coaches tell you you’re not getting the results you want: You have mindset issues. While that may be true in some cases, really, there’s no way to customize a program to each person’s mindset. It’s just: There’s one way to do this, and if you don’t, you lose.
No thank you.
One of the things my dad instilled in me early on is that there isn’t one way, one story or one outcome — that no situation or outcome has to be permanent.
I kept that wisdom from him at center as I started questioning all of the traditional mindset stuff I’d been fed over the years along with the stereotypical definitions of success.
As I did, I realized I actually got to define, build, and play my own game, both professionally and personally. I got to decide what success looks like to and for me. Once I embraced that realization, everything started to unlock for me mentally, creatively, and opportunistically.
So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
I’m happy with where things are today. Nth Degree is doing well and growing. It’s been almost a year since I published my book, and it’s both fun and rewarding to see it continue to not just sell, but to see people review and rate it so well on platforms like Amazon. People are getting value out of it — that’s all I wanted really.
I’m also experimenting with some new business models and ventures that I’m not quite ready to talk about but that are energizing and full of potential.
But most importantly, I’m staying true to my own values professionally and personally. I’m big on values. I talk about values a lot; I’m a big proponent of identifying and living by them. Those who work with and for me know they’re a core piece of my philosophy. To me, the most successful people are those who make moves that bring them closer to their priorities, and those people somewhere along the way established their own core set of values. They behave in a way that moves them closer to what they want. I’m happy I’ve gotten to a place where I figured that out for myself and that I’m staying authentic to me and my game in the process.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Oh yes. Nearly every business principle I have has been built on some kind of mistake or lesson I’ve learned along the way.
I was recently telling a colleague of yours at Authority Magazine about a lesson I learned in humility and not taking myself too seriously when I was earlier in my career.
As I mentioned earlier, I worked at one of the big accounting firms before I started my own firm and Nth Degree CPAs. One day, someone left a thumb drive with some confidential client data on it lying around. Obviously, that was a big no-no.
So naturally we had to go through a whole review of how to handle tech, security, and privacy. Everyone from the firm was there for it — all the different departments like tax, audit, etc. The partners were there too, and because there were so many people and different departments together in one spot, we had to meet at a building outside of our normal offices that could hold us.
The training ends and we all file out and head back to our desks. I was halfway down the street and back to mine when I realized that I had forgotten my laptop, laptop bag and everything at the training. It was almost comical — I had just made the same mistake we just got schooled on. I rushed back to get it, but one of my teammates saw me leave it and decided to have some fun by giving it to one of the managing partners. So, I had to get it back from him, the partner.
Oh, did they have fun with that. I was embarrassed but eventually got to a place where I could laugh at myself about it. And I think that’s important, getting to a place where you don’t take yourself too seriously so you can learn from mistakes and move on — in business and life.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I’ll use Nth Degree because I truly think it is a good example of how we work in a way that’s different from our competitors and play our own game. We act as architects, not archeologists.
What I mean is that, by nature, an archaeologist is a sleuth of the past. Archeologists are specialists on history who learn from experience with historical documents and artifacts.
You can compare them to the usual CPA. CPAs are specialists who examine a year’s worth of financial history, documents, and even artifacts (receipts, income statements, W-2s, all the classics). Both archeologists and CPAs look back at historical data to try to understand patterns, trends, or problems. Archeologists use artifacts to rebuild past societies and cultures while CPAs use financial records to evaluate past performance and compliance.
And sure, we do that, but architects are playing a different game. Architects are visionaries, inventors, and innovators. They’re shaping futures and transforming ideas and theoretical concepts — dreams, really — into reality. Inspiring, right?
One related story is we had this client who’d acquired a new business, but the client wasn’t getting the right financial data to assess the performance of that business. We mapped the acquired business’s accounting and finance processes but then also went above and beyond to develop a roadmap that resulted in substantial cost savings and the information necessary to assess the company’s health for long-term growth.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Forget about “more”. More is overrated. Too many people think financial success means working your butt off. Hustle. Do more to earn more and get more. “Burn the boats,” all of that. That’s not my style. I believe that instead of chasing more, we need to figure out what we really want. Then, every action should move us closer to that goal. I’ve discovered that having a “Closer Over More” mindset cuts down on anxiety, shame, guilt and yes, burnout.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are countless people. I’ve talked before about my family — I’m incredibly grateful to my parents for showing me some lessons early on, and to my wife for her ongoing support. I’m also really thankful for my coach and mentor, Randy Massengale.
Awhile back, I was in a sort of rut. Nth Degree was thriving, but I didn’t feel like I was. My friends pointed me to Randy, who is somewhat of a legend with all of this experience spanning technology, education, corporate life, philanthropy and more. He has a lot of great experience, and I was lucky to find him.
Randy essentially taught me how to play my own game. He taught me like a true coach, and he showed me how to think about business and my professional happiness as a game. You see, a good coach makes a game plan for their star athletes. In your business and personal life, you are the coach and the star. So you need a game plan that suits your strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, you are playing yourself.
That tip really shifted the way I think about everything, and once I started living by it, things really started to take off for me and my businesses.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
One of the things that’s been important to me is sharing what I’ve learned along the way to empower others. That’s why I’ve invested so much time and energy into my CertaintyU program that aims to increase financial certainty and minimize risk for other entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Outside of that, I’m a big believer in giving back. My wife and I are supporters of multiple causes spanning education, infertility, disaster relief and more.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first launched my business,” and why?
1 . Closer over more. I wish I realized earlier that more is not always better, and that sometimes less actually is more. I’d have embraced the idea of “closer over more” earlier to help me focus on what matters most and eliminate what doesn’t.
2 . Live by your values. To my earlier point, this one is key for me. When you live by your values, you create certainty for you. You don’t need to follow anyone else’s rules or expectations. You don’t need to compare yourself to anyone else or compete with anyone else. You just need to be yourself and play your game.
3 . Identify your biases. By biases, I mean mindsets to which we’re more or less hardwired. I believe in identifying, recognizing, and evolving beyond our biases. I wish someone would have taught me earlier how biases can affect my decisions and how to overcome them. I’d have learned earlier how to challenge assumptions, consider alternatives, reframe problems, and review decisions.
4 . The benefit of asymmetry (to the upside). Some opportunities have more upside than downside. Asymmetry is the key to achieving exponential growth and wealth without compromising my time or happiness. I wish I’d come across this way of thinking earlier.
5 . There’s not one way. I wish I knew that the conventional wisdom and advice about finance and business don’t always apply to me as an entrepreneur. I wish I knew that I have to create and follow my own rules, based on my own values, goals, and strengths. I wish I knew that I have to rig the game in my favor, instead of playing someone else’s game.
Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?
I’ve hit on some of this above, so I’ll frame it as considerations and takeaways here.
First, identify your values, and do some honest to goodness self-reflection on whether or not you’re living and operating by those values.
Then, invest the time and energy into identifying your “closer” instead of defaulting to more. I truly think those two steps are two of the most powerful things entrepreneurs can do to stay authentic to who they are, play their own unique games and avoid all of the negatives or lows that can take us off course.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’ve shared elsewhere that I’d love to start some kind of movement around an idea I call the Solvable Problem™. It’s all about figuring out what wealth means to you personally. We turn what we want in life into dollar values with dates attached. That way, we can figure out if we actually need to make more, or if our unique and individual game requires something else.
You see, without a Solvable Problem™, we don’t really know if we need to make more, so we just default to “more” as the solution to everything. This helps us focus on what is truly important and attainable, rather than constantly striving for more without a clear understanding of what we actually need.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
The best place to get a sense for my work more broadly is www.riggingthegame.com. I’m also pretty active across channels. I’m on Instagram and Threads as @dannicholsoncpa, Twitter/X as @Dan_P_Nicholson, LinkedIn and Facebook too. I also host a podcast called Rigging the Game that’s available via Apple podcasts, Spotify and Google.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.
