“Dan, if we structure the Holdco this way, we eliminate the tax drag entirely. But it means you have to step completely out of the daily operations.”
Ivan, my partner at our venture capital firm DragonX, slid the iPad across the table to me.
I didn’t even blink. “Do it.”
I poured myself a coffee, looking out the window of my office here in Vancouver, British Columbia. At 44 years old, the metrics that drive me have fundamentally shifted. It is no longer just about chasing top-line revenue or grinding until my eyes bleed.
It is about the ultimate non-renewable asset: time.
Time to actually enjoy the fruits of my labor. Time to sit with my wife Jennie, my mom, and my two little fur babies Cookie and Mochi, and be completely, unapologetically present, deeply aware of how fragile and fleeting life really is.
Me, Jennie, and Cookie – building a fortress so we can optimize for freedom, not just revenue.
I looked back at the screens. The markets were bleeding red again. Oil surging. The Middle East on fire. Inflation eating away at the middle class.
I smiled. Not because the world is in chaos, but because I have spent the last decade building a fortress that is insulated from it.
And it made me think about you.
Which is why I am writing this.
For more than a decade, you’ve known me for one thing: High Ticket. I taught the world how to make high-ticket offers, how to close them, and how to sell them on webinars. The market crowned me the King of High Ticket Closing. Some say I essentially created the high-ticket and remote closer industry. I don’t know if I did, but I am definitely known for the words.
But I am killing the High Ticket Insider newsletter.
Starting today, you are reading the Certainty Insider.
To understand why, I need to give you a hard lesson in personal branding and the evolution of an entrepreneur. Because the truth is, the “High Ticket” identity is just one of many skins I’ve shed over the years.
Let’s rewind.
Before the global brand, before I was wiring million-dollar annual premiums for my corporate-owned life insurance, I was a broke kid who failed at 13 businesses in a row. It wasn’t until my first mentor, Alan, took me under his wing and taught me copywriting that I actually made a dime.
Identity #1: The Copywriting Whiz Kid. (I know. Don’t laugh. I was in my early twenties and dangerously naive.)
But copywriting clients started asking me for business advice. I didn’t even know “consulting” was a real job. I just asked them, “Will you pay me for this?” They said yes.
(My first personal branding website)
Then the internet hit.
And I don’t mean today’s internet. I mean the Wild West.
Remember 2004? Before Facebook ads? Before iPhones? I was buying clicks on Overture for pennies. I was hacking together raw HTML pages on Yahoo SiteBuilder. We didn’t have Stripe or sleek Shopify checkouts. If you wanted to sell an ebook, you didn’t send a PDF. We sold digital books compressed into sketchy-looking .exe files. You had to convince a customer to download a custom software shell to their hard drive just to read the damn thing.
If you knew how to write a 10,000-word sales letter and slap it on a webpage with a bright yellow highlighter font, you were a god.
Identity #3: The Website Conversion Expert. By 2014, I started messing around on YouTube. By 2016, I got serious. I evolved into an Influencer. From Influencer, I evolved into a Mentor to millions. High Ticket Closer birthed over 10,000 sales professionals across 151 countries.
But as the fame rose, I discovered a very dangerous, invisible trap.
I call it the Dancing Bear Syndrome.
Look at Tony Robbins. Look at Brian Tracy. Look at Les Brown, or any of the massive speakers out there. They are legends. But look closely at their business models.
Their empires are incredibly fragile because the business is a prison built out of their own faces.
If Tony loses his voice, what happens to the enterprise? If they stop jumping on stages 300 days a year, if they stop pumping out content, if the bear stops dancing… the crowd goes home, and the revenue halts. The business only has value if the personality is sweating under the spotlight.
I love to teach. It is my absolute passion. But the second I have to teach just to keep the lights on? I am a slave to my own audience.
The energy on stage is electric, but I refuse to be the dancing bear.
Screw that.
I don’t want to be the dancing bear. I want to own the circus.
So, I shifted again. I started partnering with business owners. I invested heavily in tech. I learned how to lead a global team and run an enterprise with a portfolio of companies across different verticals. I started acquiring businesses with zero debt, focusing on cash flow and real leverage.
In 2022, Ivan and I launched DragonX Capital. I built a massive stock portfolio.
Identity #4: The CEO & The Investor.
This is where I am having the most fun. It is mentally stimulating, I get to touch a dozen different industries, and most importantly? I am building extreme wealth without using my personal brand.
Which brings us to today.
I survived the 1997 Hong Kong handover. I traded through the 2008 financial crisis. I saw the AI revolution coming a mile away in 2024. But even I didn’t expect the sheer level of global uncertainty we are sitting in right now.
I needed a brand that makes sense for who I am today, and who I will be for the next 20 years.
I am not just a consultant. Not an influencer. Definitely not a “guru” (god, I despise that word).
I am building certainty in an uncertain world.
Everything I do now shares this exact thread. CertaintyEngine, our AI-powered business management platform. OAD.ai, helping SMBs hire and lead without guessing. DanLok.ai, preserving and scaling my frameworks. And now, this newsletter.
I am at a point financially where I simply don’t care what people think. I don’t have kids. I don’t plan on having kids. So instead of just writing another book, I am treating Certainty Insider as a letter to my younger self.
I will share personal stories. I will break down the exact mechanics of how I scale companies. I might talk about martial arts. I might talk about my toy collection. I will write about whatever interests me, even if it doesn’t interest anyone else.
This is my space to reflect, think, and document my actual life and business lessons in depth.
No fluff. No theory. Just what works.
Welcome to the Certainty Insider.