Lessons From the CPA Who Took the Mic (and the Risk) | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode of Stories With Traction, Matt Zaun sits down with Daniel McMahon, Founder and Managing Partner of Integrated Growth Advisors, to discuss how leaders can transition into purpose-driven, sustainable roles beyond their primary career without losing their identity or impact.

With over 30 years of experience as a CPA, strategist, and business advisor, Dan shares hard-earned wisdom on critical thinking, leadership, and what truly prepares founders for the next chapter of their lives after building a successful company.

He also shares how doing stand-up comedy has made him a stronger communicator and why that matters now more than ever in an AI-driven world.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

✅ Comedy as a Communication Tool: Why Dan performs stand-up to sharpen business skills and model risk-taking

✅ Improv for Executives: How improv and humor unlock better listening, confidence, and connection

✅ Leading by Example: Why integrity means doing what you ask others to do—even if it terrifies you

✅ The Real Retirement Crisis: What happens when identity is tied too tightly to career success

…and much more!

GUEST BIO:

Daniel McMahon is the Founder and Managing Partner of Integrated Growth Advisors. With 30+ years of experience as a CPA and trusted business advisor, Dan helps founders and executives get unstuck, scale sustainably, and prepare for meaningful transitions (both in business and in life). He’s also an improv-trained stand-up comedian who believes leadership gets better when you’re willing to laugh at yourself.

Matt Zaun is an award-winning speaker and strategic storytelling expert who shows leaders how to inspire action and drive results through the power of story. He’s the author of The StoryBank, a book that teaches people how to utilize strategic storytelling to create a vibrant company culture, boost sales, enhance marketing, and become dynamic public speakers.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

Dan, welcome to the Stories of Attraction podcast. Glad to be here, Matt.

 

Daniel McMahon 

I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun 

And I really appreciate your time. I know you're incredibly busy. So I really appreciate you sharing time with us today.

And you are the founder and managing partner of Integrated Growth Advisors. You have over 25 plus years experience as a CPA and business advisor.

So I want you to talk a little bit about that. that. Paint the picture for people on what you would do on a day-to-day basis, what you do for clients, what you help them with.

 

Daniel McMahon 

Well, I'd answer the question about my career as a whole. So I've actually got about 32 years practicing as an accountant, a CPA, and currently as a business advisor.

A lot of my roots as a business advisor go back to my years as a CPA. Going into accounting, actually, I never thought I would be a CPA, quite honestly.

Once I became a CPA and I started practicing as a CPA, that's where I started to really develop some exceptional, in my opinion, exceptional critical thinking skills.

So that was the foundation for me founding Integrated Growth Advisors 14 years ago. And on a day-to-day basis, I don't know what I'm going to deal with.

I work with my clients who are generally stuck in a certain... And simply through asking a lot of questions, trying to get inside of their head, and jumping in the trenches with them, I spend my time trying to help them become unstuck.

That's probably the simplest way for me to answer that question.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. So you mentioned the critical thinking skills. want to throw this at you, get your perspective on this. So I have three little kids, 11, 10, and 7.

And my 11-year-old, he's in advanced classes. He's doing a lot of writing, doing a lot of math. And he pushes back on me often when I am trying to get him to learn something.

And he says, oh, AI will take care of all of that. I don't need to do that, which is interesting.

And we're going to hear that more and more from younger generations. So when it comes to critical thinking skills, especially in your field, your line of work, where do you see AI changing your line of work?

And where will people still need to, as a human? Be mindful, think about different things, but maybe utilize and adopt AI in a different way.

 

Daniel McMahon 

Very, very good question. Very interesting and timely question, of course. I actually just saw an infographic that after this call, I'm going to go back and look at that infographic.

But I just saw it come up on LinkedIn yesterday that said the end of the management consulting $500 an hour consultant.

And it was trying to make the case that AI is going to replace a lot of these things. And absolutely, AI can really help you start the conversation.

But AI is not the person with the judgment and the person reading the room, the person that has the experience and the skills to be able to ultimately solve the problem.

AI is going to set that foundation to be able to make people become... And that's what I'm excited about.

And that's what I'm focused on as an advisor to business owners. So another thing that I think about when I look at the output that comes from AI, whether it be chat GPT or perplexity or Claude, those are the ones that I've used in terms of trying to dig into an issue.

And I use it too, just like anybody else might, just like my clients will use it. What I've got to be careful about is not to place too much reliance on what the AI source comes up with as an output.

And I have to challenge it myself. I have to look and understand whether or not what it's saying is not a hallucination.

And it still has the propensity to hallucinate about certain things. And we might talk a little bit later. Later about my background and some of the things that I like to do, one thing I like to do as a hobby is stand-up comedy, and I tried to write some stand-up comedy jokes using AI, and it did not work, but AI thought it did.

AI thought it was hilarious, so that's just the point that you have to look at the output and challenge it, be skeptical, and try to utilize the outputs to support the direction you're going, and I don't think it's going to replace people who are in high-performing positions.

It might replace some of the baseline research roles, but not the higher level or the business owner risk-taking roles.

Yeah, that's a really good point, and it's important to talk about those prompts.

 

Matt Zaun 

Earlier this year, I was dealing with, it was like a mysterious health issue, and I was doing everything I possibly could to try to figure out what was going on, and I was utilizing AI, and was feeding it all kinds of different things.

Here are my symptoms, here's what's going on, here's this, here's that, here's this, there's that. And the interesting thing was, it wasn't until I actually sat down with a doctor that had all of the experience to give me the prompts to feed it, to get to the bottom of what was going on.

So though it was helpful, like what you're saying, starting that conversation, trying to build some type of a foundation, it actually helped prepare me for the conversation with my doctor, but it wasn't until the doctor said, well, here's what's actually going on.

You know, if you're going to use AI, you got to put these prompts in. It didn't know the prompts to kick back to me.

So I think it's really, really important what you said, that those life experiences, that's going to give us the thinking skills to feed in the prompts that we need to get that output back.

So I do want to talk about, you mentioned stand-up comedy. It's very rare you hear someone talk about being a CPA and pursuing stand-up comedy.

Very rare. So you're a very special person, Dan. So let's talk about that. So that experience to most people would be absolutely horrifying.

Why on earth did you want to do it? Tell us a little bit about your experience in stand-up comedy.

Well, that's a great question.

 

Daniel McMahon 

I really appreciate the chance to talk about it because it's something that I'm really excited about. I will preface it by saying this is very much a hobby.

All right. I'm not quitting my day job anytime soon. Maybe I have a chance to build it into something, but it's not my intent.

The reason that I do the stand-up comedy is because I'm constantly pushing my clients outside of their comfort zone.

And a lot of times my clients will push back on me and say, well. Did you ever do this?

You know, did you ever take the sales of a company, of a manufacturing company, and increase the sales volume from $100 million to $130 million in one year?

Well, the answer is no to that. However, I do things to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and if I'm going to be asking my clients or advising my clients to step outside of their comfort zone, I have to be able to have some platform, I don't know if the word's integrity, but some platform of authenticity in terms of myself being comfortable going outside my comfort zone.

So that's really the basis as to why I've done it. And another thing I'll add to this is, as I started to study, it's an art form, so you study it.

It's an art form with a science. People who perform. For stand-up comedy, they actually do a lot of writing, they do a lot of analysis of whether or not their jokes are going to hit, they do a lot of trial and error.

It's very much like, in a way, it's like strategic planning. And when I got started in this, one of the things that they said to me in my class, I took a class to learn how to do this, they said, comedy is struggle.

Comedy is struggle. Oftentimes, comedy comes from struggle. And I make no excuses about the fact that I've had a career that's involved struggle.

And I think the struggle that I've gone through in my career is part of how I become a very effective advisor because I help my clients work through struggle.

And that's the impetus for me, actually, going forward and having a sense of humor about it. you.

 

Matt Zaun

Thank you. There's so much that we could unpack with what you said. So let me dive in a couple of things to share.

So on Sunday, last Sunday, I'm watching football with my son. Absolutely love football. I've been a huge football fan for quite some time, for decades.

Enjoy watching with my kids. And my son's watching with me and my oldest son, and we see an incredible play.

And he was so struck with the enthusiasm and, according to him, how cool it was. And it was a learning opportunity where I'm sharing with him, in order for that play to happen, there were so many reps.

There was behind the scenes. It was grueling work. It was mundane. It was boring. It was not wanting to go to the gym.

It wasn't studying different plays in order to do that. So when you were saying about this struggle, it's amazing because we see these stand-up comedians.

One of my favorite stand-up comedians is Jerry Seinfeld. I've had the opportunity to see him in person with my wife.

A very intimate setting, so like a smaller setting, not too many people in the room, and he is phenomenal at what he does, and it's amazing because I hate to say this, but I do think there's a lot of truth to it.

I think that, it's probably horrible to say, but I think people will understand what I'm saying, is that I think a lot of stand-up comedians almost have like these psychopathic tendencies where they share a joke a thousand times, and then they need to paint the perception of the room that they still think it's funny, right?

So like this bit that we saw Jerry Seinfeld do, he was touring the country. He had done this hundreds and hundreds of times, probably thousands of times in practice, editing, going over, going into local clubs and trying different things out, and then going into larger and larger audiences.

It's amazing the psychology of being that stand-up comedian and getting up and almost saying a joke like you're saying it for the first time.

Very, very difficult to do. Also, I don't want people to miss this, especially because… Business leaders that are listening to this episode, because there's some practical things that you can do.

So I'll share my experience, and then how it will relate to anyone listening, then Dan, can jump in them, is one of my greatest weaknesses as a communicator is my lack of humor.

And I knew that for many, many years. So I have been a speaker for quite some time, a professional speaker for seven-plus years.

And when I first started, I was not bringing any kind of laugh lines to my sessions, whether it was a keynote or whether it was a workshop.

And I said, I need there to be some type of humor. Not that I'm going to be the funniest person in the world, and I'm still not the funniest person, but I need something.

So I pursued improv comedy. actually did improv comedy for four years. And I started this game with myself. think in business, gamification of business is incredibly important.

And I gamified embarrassment. Okay, so back on what you said about stepping out of your comfort zone, that struggle, I literally said...

I a goal that I was going to put myself in an embarrassing situation at least once a week and create that muscle, right?

Continue to pull on that embarrassment piece. And with four years of doing improv comedy, being in front of people, bright lights, a bunch of people in the room, and getting a suggestion and not knowing how to properly answer it and looking like a deer in the headlights and that embarrassment.

When I went into a business setting and I was talking to, let's say, C-suite executives, it was literally like a cakewalk, that kind of communication, because I was just embarrassed like crazy the night before.

So I recommend if you don't want to pursue the path that Dan did and go into the stand-up comedy world, there are improv comedy groups all over the country that actually have corporate arms, meaning they will come into businesses, they'll come into organizations, and they'll put on classes for people to dip their toe in the water regarding improv.

I've also done a little bit of stand-up as well, stand-up improv. It's a way to get on a stage.

And learn that dynamics. Stage dynamics are so important, right? So whether it's Freddie Mercury or Beyonce or Taylor Swift, all these musicians had or have incredible stage dynamics.

They know how to connect with their audience. They know how to tilt their head the right way. They know how to look a certain way.

And we need to do that as leaders in order to have that enthusiasm and create that inspiration and motivation back to our team.

So I don't know if you want to chime in regarding that piece on why it's so important for people to struggle through something like that so they can also connect with others on a much more meaningful level.

 

Daniel McMahon 

Yes. And I do want to respond because what led me to stand-up comedy is improv. And we talked a little bit before the show about your background and your experience.

And I had a similar background. I'd gone through about four solid years. I went through four years of improv classes, and I came out of the accounting profession.

As you said, it's not typical where you see somebody come out of the accounting profession and end up going into stand-up comedy.

Again, very much a hobby of mine. However, I went into improv because I wanted to become more comfortable as a speaker.

In my line of work, I have to speak publicly on a routine basis. I have to know what to say.

I have to be comfortable with any kind of a thing coming at me and stand on my feet, think on my feet, and speak.

So I went to improv school for that. And the interesting thing is, while being comfortable speaking was a byproduct,

of the work that I did in the school, the primary result was I became a better listener, and I also learned to not take myself so seriously, and I came from a profession where a lot of people, myself included, we took ourselves way too seriously, and at the end of the day, being an accountant or being a CPA, it's just accounting.

Nobody died, all right, unless you're filling out an estate tax return or something like that, but nobody died. It's just accounting.

Don't take yourself so seriously. Clearly, make sure you do what you have to do to perform your job well, but the greatest exercise that I undertook when I went to the improv school was this exercise of, they pile a lot of information on you about a certain person in your class, and then you have to try and repeat it back, but you can't.

So much Information is piled on you. You just can't. And the objective of the exercise is to be able to admit I made a mistake.

And whenever you make a mistake, everybody cheers. All right. So what that did for me is it helped me lighten the pressure I had on myself in certain situations and just be more myself and let my background and my credibility and all the work that I've done, let that sort of support me and speak for itself and, you know, communicate more clearly as a better listener and not taking myself so seriously.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah. Incredible skills to improve on for sure. I appreciate you mentioning that. You know, one of the things that I want to continue to talk about, because I think it is incredibly important, and I don't hear people talking about this.

Earlier, we were talking about AI. And one of the dangers that I see with AI, especially as it pertains

So whether it's C-suite or VPs, people in decision-maker seats that have people that report to them, I'm seeing a fraying of trust.

And what I mean by that is AI has given us the ability to send out emails and memos, and the perception on the receiving end is, wow, this person's a great communicator.

And then you meet that person in real life, or have a conversation with that person, and they're not able to connect.

And there's an immediate fraying of trust. So if we continue to rely on software that's painting the perception that we know how to connect with people, and then when we actually get in a situation where we are talking with that person, there is that erosion of trust on what kind of fake persona is this person giving off.

So regardless of how many tools come out down the line, I think it's incredibly important that we continue to iron out that skill set of communication, connection.

And that is one of the avenues that you could take is that comedy piece. I really appreciate you mentioning that.

I do want to backtrack a little bit. want to go, I want to talk about Dan as a teenager, right?

I really like to start with the teen years, really important years. And I want to know when you were a teen, did you ever think that you would get into the line of work that you are?

Were you drawn to numbers and business? What did you want to do when you were a teen?

 

Daniel McMahon 

I appreciate the question. And it takes me back to growing up in Chicago, grew up in Chicago area, went to public high school.

And when I was a teen, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do. And I'll even fast forward to 14 years ago, when I founded Integrated Growth Advisors, I still didn't know what I wanted to do.

And I was a CPA in a public accounting firm where I was able to serve a wide range of sizes of companies, different types of people.

Everything I did was new every single day. So I didn't really grasp onto any one thing that I wanted to do.

So it's kind of like, what do I want to be when I grow up? That answer didn't come to me until 14 years ago.

But going back to high school, my father worked as a broker in the steel industry. And at times, he would struggle.

And the times when he would struggle were when there was a recession. When there's a recession, nobody's buying steel because nobody's manufacturing anything.

And I always thought to myself, I don't want to do, I equated it to sales. But really, as I got older, I started to realize it was sales of a type of goods that was not recession-proof.

So I wanted to go into something that I felt... It was going to be a more secure line of work, and at the time, my father also said to me, he said, Dan, when you're figuring out what you're going to do, this is when I was figuring out where I was going to go to college, what I was going to do.

He said, when you're figuring out what you're going to do, pick a discipline or pick something that you can eventually do on your own, and that stuck with me through my entire career, because becoming a CPA opened up a tremendous number of opportunities.

I could go any direction with having a CPA as my background because I understood the language of business, and I understood how to get behind the numbers and figure things out and think critically.

So back in high school, I was really good at algebra. I did not like school, but I was really good at algebra, and somehow it was like a magnetic thing.

I showed up for algebra class. I sat at the front of the room. I don't even know what it was.

I just went to the front of the room. When I went to English lit class or anything like that, I sat in the back of the room.

So I fell in love with algebra, which led me to accounting. And I always wanted to find something that was going to be recession-proof and a stable career path.

 

Matt Zaun 

So when it comes to math, there's a lot of people that when they're fascinated with math, they're into puzzles, they're into strategy.

In high school, were you into clubs regarding any kind of strategic allure?

 

Daniel McMahon 

Into clubs?

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, like whether it was chess club or whether it was debate club or whether like anything that required any kind of heavy strategy?

I was not.

 

Daniel McMahon 

I think I come from a family that's a long line of athletic people. And It was all about sports or go get yourself a job.

So I played football for a couple of years. I was on the track team, and I eventually got a job in my junior year of high school and been part of the working public ever since.

 

Matt Zaun 

There's a lot of strategy in football as well, so I can see that, like even from a math perspective, right, the strategy, the plays, behind the scenes, you know, what to do, what not to do.

And you mentioned your father in the steel industry. My father was also in the steel industry, so incredibly hardworking individual.

So my father just, he didn't just tell me, Matt, you need a good work ethic. He showed that time and time again.

 

Daniel McMahon 

Would you say that that also helped you from a work ethic perspective when you launched your company? Yeah, definitely.

I saw my dad. My dad eventually, he worked for large corporate in steel, and then he worked. You know, partnership in steel with.

Other people that sold, bought and sold steel. And then he also would get me jobs. He got me some summer jobs that really taught me how to work hard.

For example, one summer I worked on a can line, and it was one of his customers that bought steel from him.

And we manufactured all of those Courier and Ives cookie cans that, you know, were doing it in July, and they were going to sell them in November and December.

So I learned, you know, that's a line of, that's a path I can take for a line of work.

But do I want to find something that's more indoors and not in a hot, sweaty manufacturing facility? So, so he also gave me some opportunities to, to see the world as it could be if I did not go to college.

And it helped motivate me to go to college. It helped motivate.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I mentioned my kids earlier, particularly my oldest son, because he's starting to be interested in business and just around him, right?

I'm constantly talking about my business and what I do. And so he's starting to think more and more in business terms.

And I think it's unfortunate in the world, whether it's Hollywood or whether it's kids going on YouTube, seeing entrepreneurs, the glitz and glamour of leadership, so to speak.

So if you were to speak to my son and tell him the other side of business, not the under the lights type deal, not getting the praise, but if you were to share with him some of the stressors, what would you say?

What are some of the things that surprised you when it came to the stress of running an organization?

 

Daniel McMahon

That is such a good question. The first thing I would ask your son, though, is what is he looking to

Accomplished with his career path and what he wants to do with his life. that could really lead to how I answer this question a little bit differently.

But if I were to pick out the biggest stressors that I've had, I was a partner in an accounting firm, and I also had a leadership position.

And in that leadership position, I was in charge of the sales and marketing function for a regional accounting firm in the Northeast before I started Integrated Growth Advisors.

Honestly, I could speak humbly now. I don't think I was so humble back then. I thought I had it all figured out.

I was a partner. I was, quote unquote, an owner. I had a leadership role. I was successful. I wouldn't have started this business if I didn't have a successful career behind me.

So I've been in business now for 14 years. And, and like each four to five year period is a different chapter in the book of, you

Integrated growth advisors. The biggest stressors that I've had to deal with are taking care of my own IT, making sure that I found the right service provider to support our IT needs.

I used to spend a lot of time with IT. Whenever I brought somebody on to integratedgrowthadvisors, I had to get them a laptop.

I would be up all night getting that laptop set up. And, you know, I didn't even know that there was a possible IT solution provider out there to serve me.

But I had such struggle with IT. I also struggle with people. And the irony of that is when I was a partner, I was a young partner in the accounting firm.

And a lot of the other partners were older. So I sort of had an open door policy. The younger staff members of the firm would.

Come into my office and confide in me about things. I would never share whatever they told me in confidence.

And I was a very good mentor. Well, being a very good mentor is also motivating in a corporate structure.

It's motivating to have people that feel mentored to want to work for you. So I did really well in that environment.

But once I was in charge of integrated growth advisors, and I had to bring people on board, a whole different ballgame.

So I've advanced my capabilities in 14 years. But the stresses that I've had that were probably the greatest were people and dealing with IT.

Where do you think that struggle with delegation came from?

 

Matt Zaun 

Is it just not wanting to relinquish control? Is there something in your background that it became more and more difficult to delegate other responsibilities?

 

Daniel McMahon 

Well, I think in the context of my firm, Integrated Growth Advisors, I bring in accomplished senior leaders who maybe they've built and sold a few businesses in their career, and they're in their 60s.

They could easily retire, but they still want to be a valued member of the workforce, and they've got a lot to offer.

So I think, in part, it was me being younger. I started my business when I was 42, and me being younger and trying to serve in a leadership capacity with people that could run circles around me.

And it took some time before I started to really practice what I preach, and that's, you know, what am I trying to accomplish?

Can I set some strategic objectives? Can I align some tactics with those? And can I then align certain people based upon their highest and best use skill sets to perform those tasks that then fulfill the tactics that need to be done that accomplish the objectives?

I figured that all out. I was already advising on it, but I figured that all out for myself, and eventually I was able to overcome the greatest of stressors in that regard.

I'm not saying I'm perfect in any shape of the imagination, and I'm not saying it's easy, but it's a lot easier now.

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that.

 

Matt Zaun 

I do want to talk about this piece, though, because you mentioned working with high achievers. You had mentioned that 60 and up category.

These are individuals that have done it all. They've seen it all. They have the T-shirt to prove it, right?

They could retire if they wanted to, but for whatever reason, they're concerned about leaving the workforce. And what I hear is not only the concern about leaving the workforce, but also the concern...

That it would take away from their identity, right? So there's a lot of people that when they retire, so that individual that you're mentioning where they have the company, they could sell the company, there's many, many, many, many things that they could do to get the money they need to support themselves for the rest of their lives in retirement.

However, I'm hearing from a lot more people that do that. They are concerned about where will their identity be, right?

If they've built a company, especially individuals, they spend decades cultivating that business, building that business to what it is, and then now they want to leave to spend more time with their grandkids.

They want to maybe invest in nonprofits that are near and dear to their heart. What would you recommend someone do now in order to save themselves from maybe, I don't know if pain's the right word, but the loneliness, the gut punch when it comes to their identity, that they're no

They're no longer the leader of that organization. They're at home. They're maybe hanging out with family a little bit more.

What would you prep someone now, if they have a plan to stop working in the next couple years, what should they do now to make sure that they're making sure that they will not have any kind of depression?

 

Daniel McMahon 

That's a real issue that business owners are confronted with or business leaders are confronted with when they retire. And I do a lot of work in preparing business owners to transition their businesses, whether it's transition internally to the next level of management or sell the company outright.

And oftentimes, at least the generations that have come before me. So those are the baby boomers. I'm generation X.

So the generation that's come before me, the baby. A lot of them were very focused on their career and the identity, as you say, that came along with their career.

And a surprising number of clients that I've worked with and prospective clients I've spoken with do not have hobbies.

They have not taken time out for themselves. So I strongly encourage the people that I work with to make sure, you know, let's not just get your business ready for transition.

Let's make sure that you're ready. Because when you step away from this business, you're going to be sitting at home on day one after you sell the business.

And your spouse is going to wonder what you're doing there because you guys weren't accustomed to spending time in such a voluminous manner as you will in your retirement.

So you need to be into fishing, golf, any number of hobbies, volunteer activities.

 

Matt Zaun 

Whether it's a grandchild, whether it's a friend, whether it's a neighbor, having some type of identity outside of that career is so incredibly important.

Would you recommend scaling back time-wise if someone has the option? So let's say they're working 50, 60 hours a week.

Would you advise them to create a plan where instead of working 50 hours a week, maybe they do 25, 30 a week to try to give time to start dipping their toe in the water regarding those hobbies and relationships?

 

Daniel McMahon 

Absolutely. In fact, to fully answer that question, we have to differentiate between somebody who has a high-powered career working as an executive in a larger corporation.

They may not have the ability to do that as easily, but if they control a budget and their budget includes people, they can find ways to delegate more things to more people and make the case to their boss.

And to their executive management that it would make sense to bring in another person, and then that will just free up the leader to be able to do a little bit more for himself or herself.

In the business owner capacity, what we do with our clients is we help them build a sustainable and transferable business.

And to say, let's scale back your hours from 55 hours a week to 25 or 30 and find some ways to do some things for yourself, 100%, that's what we do.

Because a lot of times, business owners, it's their baby, and they built it to what it is. And they don't know how to step away, and they don't see the business without themselves.

And the irony, and what's counterintuitive about this, is the more they're able to step away, the more valuable their business becomes.

So there becomes a little something. And we work with them quite a bit to try and get them to leverage, lean on an operating budget that's aligned with a financial forecast, and what's the return on investment of hiring more people?

Are you going to be able to turn that into more revenues or more profitability? If all of that happens, and you can strip away some of your responsibilities on a day-to-day basis, you can start to manage your time in a way that you can recharge and start to spend more time with your family or do whatever it is that's most important to you as a human.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, really appreciate that response. And I also really appreciate our conversation today, Dan. Thank you for spending the time sharing those insights with us.

I took a lot away. I will take a lot away from our conversation, but there's three things in particular that I'm going to remember after our conversation concludes.

And the first thing is we're talking about the AI piece. said AI... AI starts the conversation and foundation. However, we still need critical thinking skills, and those critical thinking skills comes from life experiences, and those life experiences give us the opportunity to put in the right prompts if we're using that AI.

think that's really important. Second point, I really appreciate you talking about the integrity of you need to do something if you're going to ask someone else to do it.

I do think that that really does speak to the integrity that you have as a leader. You mentioned living out what you preach, right?

If you're going to tell your client they need to step out of their comfort zone, what are you doing yourself to step out of your comfort zone?

And that's why you were doing improv. That's why you're doing stand-up comedy. I think that that really speaks to the core value I saw on your website.

One of your core values is integrity. You're living out that core value, so I appreciate you mentioning that. The third and final piece I'm going to take away is that identity piece.

I really appreciate that part of the conversation that we had because I don't think enough people are talking about that.

Society, that even high achievers, they build something of magnitude and then they step away, there could be that fraying of identity, right?

They don't have hobbies. They weren't volunteering. They don't have those relationships. So I think it's really important if someone built their entire identity up in their career, what are they doing now to not only make sure their business is ready to sell or transition, but make sure that they themselves are ready for the transition.

I think that there's solid advice in that. So thanks again for the conversation. Dan, if anyone wants to get more info on what you do, they want to reach out to you for your services, where's the best place they could go to get that information?

 

Daniel McMahon 

You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also at www.integratedgrowthadvisors.com. That's our website. You'll be able to reach me there.

I'd be happy to speak with anybody that wants to continue this discussion further.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I'll include... That in the show notes, those two links, people could just click and go from there. Thank you again, Dan.

Really appreciate your time today.

 

Daniel McMahon 

Thank you, Matt. This was rewarding for me, and I appreciate it.