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What happens when a chemist and lifelong martial artist decides to treat his money problems like a science experiment? Today I'm talking with profit coach and fractional CFO, Dan Bamper. This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we are here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves, so you can create a life, first career and become your own version of authentic success. Dan Bamper didn't start in finance. He started as a kid in Northeastern Pennsylvania who loved martial arts, music, and science. That curiosity led him to a PhD in chemistry, years of teaching high school and college, and co-owning a martial arts studio That became a real business with real financial problems. When the dojo started bleeding money, Dan used the only framework he trusted the scientific method. He taught himself financial systems, engineered a turnaround that added roughly$150,000 in a year, and then took that same process to build his next chapter. Today, Dan is a profit coach and fractional CFO and the founder of Black Belt Ledgers, where he helps seven figure contractors and trades owners stop living paycheck to paycheck, understand their numbers, and start paying themselves like real CEOs. In this conversation, Dan and I walk through a full career arc that will feel very familiar to you. If you've ever wondered, is this really it? In this episode, you'll hear how martial arts helped him through burnout in grad school, and later became the foundation for a 270 student Dojo and a different kind of leadership. The long messy path from teaching and research to a high impact role at a nuclear waste repository, and then into a fractional CFO business. How he uses data, simple systems, and the scientific method to help business owners keep more of the money they make and why sales feels different when you see it as problem solving and service, and how that shift opens the door to both profit and peace of mind. If you have ever felt like you are good at your craft and still unsure where the money is going, or if you're wondering how your skills could transfer into a very different chapter, this episode will give you language frameworks and encouragement.

Caroline: 3:12

Welcome, Dan to Your Next Success. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time. I'm so excited that the day is finally here.

Dan Bamper: 3:21

Me too. I know we've had this on the calendar for a little while now, so I'm glad we finally got to make this happen.

Caroline: 3:26

Yeah. Well, we're gonna get into all the awesomeness, the huge success that you are now in many different ways but can we dial it back a little bit? Tell me a little bit about childhood, like where did you grow up, what kind of things were fun to you?

Dan Bamper: 3:40

I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, kind of Pocono mountains area.

Caroline: 3:45

Oh, nice.

Dan Bamper: 3:46

I don't know if you're familiar with it at all.

Caroline: 3:48

I am, I'm from Ohio originally, so it seemed to be like some people would go take vacations there or like, somehow when I was getting married there were all these ads of like the Poconos and heart shaped hot tubs with roses in them. We didn't go, but it was just like, that's kind of interesting.

Dan Bamper: 4:05

Yeah. I know exactly the place you're talking about too.

Caroline: 4:10

Yeah, it's mountains. It's beautiful. Apparently there's heart shaped hot tubs.

Dan Bamper: 4:15

Yeah, so I grew up Northeastern Pennsylvania and probably when I was eight or so is when I got into martial arts.

Caroline: 4:22

Okay.

Dan Bamper: 4:22

And originally I got in, my mom obviously put it in different reasons than I wanted to get into it for but I wanted to be a power ranger. So, yeah.

Caroline: 4:33

Was there a particular color that you wanted to be?

Dan Bamper: 4:35

Oh, blue, 110%.

Caroline: 4:40

Nice. So did you have any siblings?

Dan Bamper: 4:42

I did. I had an older sister. She and I were pretty tight growing up, so she was about four years older than I was, so she was already outta high school by the time I got there um, but like she and I were really close. Um, especially, especially during my high school years, um, she kind of ended up being mom for a little bit while my mom went back to school.

Caroline: 5:03

Oh, okay. What did your mom go back to school to do?

Dan Bamper: 5:06

She went back to school for nursing.

Caroline: 5:08

My mom went too for nursing when I was like two or something, or maybe even under two and would bring me to classes. So I don't know if it was like I'm partially formed to like higher education or what the case was. That's awesome. Okay. So your sister, even though she was four years ahead, she stayed in the area?

Dan Bamper: 5:24

She did. Yeah. Actually she ended up starting her bachelor's degree in chemistry, um, at the local university. Um, kinda a little bit before mom started doing her degree in nursing.

Caroline: 5:37

Interesting. Interesting. Okay. And so as you are kind of going through school, so martial arts is a fun thing outside of school. How about during school? What kind of things did you enjoy more than others?

Dan Bamper: 5:52

I loved math and science classes. I also loved music classes. Particularly when I got to kind of late elementary school, early middle school, I switched over from clarinet to bassoon and really found, found a passion there that I was just like, this is amazing.

Caroline: 6:10

I mean, bassoons are really cool. I started with clarinet because I was in a small town Ohio farming community and clarinet was cheaper than a lot of the other instruments, right? And it was, if you learn clarinet, then I could teach you how to play saxophone in a half an hour once you are getting ready for marching band or something of the sort. We moved by then. But, yeah, bassoon though, like such a cool sound.

Dan Bamper: 6:32

Kind of cool because I remember going down into like, the middle school band director's office. He's like, does anybody wanna try the oboe? And I was like, well, yeah, let's do it'cause clarinet, that's not really my jam. And he busted out this giant honking monstrosity that kind of looked like a bazooka you had to sit on and I was like, well, what's this? He goes, well, this is a bassoon. I was like, oh, my mom's got one of those. Yeah, My mom was a bassoon player too. So it was one of,

Caroline: 6:58

Interesting. And so then did you like use the instrument that she had and like get new pads and all that for it or what happened there?

Dan Bamper: 7:06

It did, we updated it and overhauled it a little bit. It worked until probably about early high school for me, just because she had a long life, let's put it that way. But once that hit, then I ended up going to like districts, regions, all states. I even did a national festival my senior year, and did it all the way even when I was in college. I ended up picking the university I was at because it was a great balance of science and music schools.

Caroline: 7:28

Oh, so cool. Okay. All right. And so the, the university that you chose, was it close to home?

Dan Bamper: 7:34

It was about two and a half hours south so it was Westchester University right outside of Philadelphia. Go Rams. The absolutely dynamite music program. One of the best chemistry programs in the state. They even had like a forensic and toxicological chemistry program.

Caroline: 7:50

Oh, cool.

Dan Bamper: 7:51

Yeah. And just topnotch across the board.

Caroline: 7:54

Awesome. And were you still doing martial arts during all this time?

Dan Bamper: 7:57

No, not, not by the time I went to college. I couldn't find a school that I liked. And the other half of that is, I also had to balance working a full-time job while I was in school to kind of support myself and make ends meet and pay for everything. So, it was one of those things where you kind of gotta pick, is it the thing you're gonna pay to do, that's a martial arts thing, or is it gonna be the thing that maybe brings you a lot of joy and helps and helps you do cool stuff? Which was the music side of things.

Caroline: 8:25

Yeah. And so what kind of job did you have then?

Dan Bamper: 8:27

So I started off as a photo tech at the local Walgreens, and ended up working my way over into the pharmacy'cause I thought I maybe wanted to go to pharmacy school for a little bit, working in a retail pharmacy rid me of that illusion very quickly.

Caroline: 8:44

Tell me more about that, like what?

Dan Bamper: 8:46

Yeah. I loved the compounding side of things. I loved like the patient service side of things. Um, There was a lot of, you know, great problem solving uh, that went into the job. Especially when, you know, I found a lot of the parallel skills. I ended up settling on chemistry for my major in college um, and so there were a lot of parallel skills in compounding and, and everything else. So, like on the technical side, I was like, pharmacy seems like a great application of this, in a way that's gonna be meaningful. Um. But man, let me tell you, being used and abused in a retail pharmacy setting, like y'all be nice to your pharmacy techs'cause they, they work their butts off, they hustle for little to no thanks and in a system that's really broken on its own. Because the most important thing they say is patient care, but sometimes it feels like it's their bottom line in their payroll dollar.

Caroline: 9:37

Gotcha, gotcha. So you're working at this uh, retail pharmacy and then going to school in your off hours and having this beautiful passion of doing chemistry related coursework and did you end up getting like a minor or anything in music, or did you stay with it throughout college?

Dan Bamper: 9:56

I did, I even did it through grad school for a couple years too and ended up kinda hitting the burnout range. I was getting calls about every other week of, Hey, can you come in and sub or can you come in? We, we need a second or contra, or we need a principal for our concert. We have coming up in two days. And, and it's like, there's too many.

Caroline: 10:16

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Dan Bamper: 10:18

And you really learn the value of saying no to protect your time.

Caroline: 10:21

Absolutely. Absolutely. So how did you choose where to go for grad school?

Dan Bamper: 10:26

Well, uh, that's a good question. Um, Originally I thought I wanted to go down to OU to work with a natural products chemist, um,'cause it was pharmacy adjacent. It was drug design natural products discovery um, and I quickly found out that that lab is a lot more about structural identification and separations and I was thinking maybe I wanted something a little more synthetic so that way instead of isolating one molecule from the whole batch or the whole plant, I thought I wanted to make it instead.

Caroline: 10:56

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Dan Bamper: 10:58

So I ended up, um, I still ended up at OU, uh, the University of Oklahoma um, in 2010. I moved, you know, from southeastern Pennsylvania down this way but I ended up working in a materials lab, and ended up being split between them and a Catalysis lab.

Caroline: 11:16

Ah, interesting. Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 11:18

Um, And I really enjoyed the work in both of those, because I got to do electrochemistry As kind of the main bridge and synthetic methodology for what, for, you know, kind of what my research group was doing.

Caroline: 11:33

And what was your specific research on then?

Dan Bamper: 11:35

So I had, uh, the ultimate long-term goal to marry two ideas together is to create like a sugar powered, um, electrochemical, enzymatic fuel cell that could also trigger um, a deoxy dehydration reaction of kind of visceral diols in a molecule kind of take it from, you know, like an ethylene glycol down to ethylene is kind of the simplest model that I can give you um, but it was through something called the deoxy dehydration mechanism. So the goal was to eventually turn that into an electro catalytic process instead of a chemical process.

Caroline: 12:12

Interesting.

Dan Bamper: 12:13

Mm-hmm.

Caroline: 12:15

And now were you working you had an assistantship, I imagine, for grad school.

Dan Bamper: 12:20

Yeah, I.

Caroline: 12:20

Your grad school? Yeah. Okay. So you got a teaching assistantship. Your stuff is paid, you're teaching labs as a, as a payback. Are you having to work any other jobs at the same time?

Dan Bamper: 12:31

um, Actually, yeah, I can say this now that I'm not under their contract. Yes, I was moonlighting on the side. I kind of continued my pharmacy tech piece just to make ends meet.

Caroline: 12:40

Gotcha.

Dan Bamper: 12:41

Because you know, you, you get the great promise of grad school and things have very much changed since then. But, uh, when it comes down to like, yes, we'll pay you for a teaching assistantship, this is what the annual salary looks like, what's not included in that letter is you're still responsible for your out of state fees.

Caroline: 12:59

Oh.

Dan Bamper: 12:59

And so that ended up being a really sizable chunk of the income that was coming in. I was like, oof.

Caroline: 13:04

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 13:06

So that, that's been reformed since, you know, my day. But, uh. That was a, that was a little hard to balance, so we had to fall back on some old skills to make it happen.

Caroline: 13:17

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And now, were you doing anything music related or martial arts related during this stretch?

Dan Bamper: 13:24

Yeah, so I was playing um, for the bassoon studio um, down at OU uh, and ended up doing, you know, kinda as needed piecemeal stuff, and over time it just kept piling up and piling up and piling up. And I was like, I can't do this anymore.

Caroline: 13:40

Hmm

Dan Bamper: 13:40

Um, It got got to the point where they, you know, my boss got, kind of gave me the talking to of, you're giving me two days notice that you can't make a group meeting because they literally just asked you. I was like, here's the email. I promise I'm not making this stuff up. Have you considered telling them no?

Caroline: 13:56

Ooh.

Dan Bamper: 13:57

I was like, Um. And so as part of the way to kind of combat burnout, I was like, I need to go do something for me again. You know, I was still working that job on the side, still working my teaching assistantship, having to meet my own coursework and research requirements.

Caroline: 14:13

And what was burnout looking or feeling like?

Dan Bamper: 14:15

Feeling like I just, I just didn't want to anymore. It was like, let's just burn it to the ground and walk away. And I was like, that's, that's not, that's not okay. It kind of came down to, no, that's, that's not an option this is your future you're building. This is an investment you have to make. There are things you can do to find joy in other activities. And ended up finding a, a martial arts school kind of going back to my roots again of like, this is something I really enjoyed once upon a time, and it reminded me of the power that I always had.

Caroline: 14:51

Ah. You still want to be the Blue Power Ranger?

Dan Bamper: 14:55

Oh yeah, I'm 37 and I still want to be the Blue Power Ranger. Like, come on.

Caroline: 15:01

That's awesome. Okay. All right. So you're realizing you're kind of burned out by the monotony and the day to day of life and grad school. Let's just go ahead and be honest for anyone listening who's still in grad school, it is hard and it is an obstacle course, and while you're in the course, the obstacles move.

Dan Bamper: 15:19

Yes.

Caroline: 15:20

That's basically the analogy. It's not like, yeah,

Dan Bamper: 15:24

Not just the obstacles, the finish line.

Caroline: 15:27

The finish line completely moves too. Yes, yes

Dan Bamper: 15:30

Even the starting point moves. So you might have already left the starting gate and they're like, oh, by the way, here's the starting gate again. What? It's been two years.

Caroline: 15:36

Yes. Yes, that's the thing. And then you're in there and you're kind of stuck, and then you're like, well, I guess I need, because if, you know, there's that thought of, well, if I leave now I just have a bachelor's degree. So then what was all this for? You know? And then there's some people that do choose for a variety of reasons to perhaps modify their educational plan and get a, a master's degree for many, many reasons. And then even beyond that kind of possible stopping point, it's like, well, if I leave now, and I didn't do that, I just have a bachelor's degree, so.

Dan Bamper: 16:13

And the other side of that, like, there's a big psychological side because then it turns into like, you know, there's a big part of me that, that said, don't give up on yourself. And I think that's the big push because there were even more obstacles that came up kind of throughout the journey then, because martial arts. Martial arts kinda ended up replacing music on the passion side again.

Caroline: 16:36

Okay.

Dan Bamper: 16:37

I ended up training at a school for a little while, really found a good community and a space there um, and ended up, that's what replaced my pharmacy tech job was teaching martial arts.

Caroline: 16:47

Ah, and did that bring you more joy than the pharmacy tech job?

Dan Bamper: 16:52

Yeah, because like, I got to be in there, like I've always said, like even when I was in high school, it's like, man, I would love to teach and I did. Um, when I got to grad school, I loved my teaching assistantship I got to actually run the large lecture classes, like instructor of record um, and then when I got to go teach martial arts, I was like, this is a mission, this is impactful. I still say a lot of the things my instructor did as a kid for me, like my sensei, he was, he was so instrumental in shaping me into who I am today because the challenge is the support, the accountability and just kinda like this, this constant belief that you could, you just had to choose to.

Caroline: 17:39

Yes. I, I remember our kids we got them involved in TaeKwonDo. I'm thinking we're invited to a birthday party then it, they were switching ownership. So I'm like, okay, we're invited to a birthday party. They're switching ownerships. They are offering 30 days plus uniforms. So this was September, my thought my kids were five and eight, and I'm like, what a rock awesome way to get matching family Halloween costumes. Sounds great. Sign me up. Okay. My 5-year-old decides at a ripe old age of five, I'm going to become a black belt at five. My husband already had a black belt from prior to meeting me, so he's all in and signing in and then we're like, we'll just do it as a family. I'm sure the 8-year-old also, but I was like, man, you have a five year-old committing, which is awesome, you have a five year-old committing, but five year olds commit to lots of things and they don't understand. The complexity of how that actually works and it was really cool, especially with, with young boys because they were making a big point of mind focus, body focus, eye focus. And you're like, aha, here we go. These are skills that I did not read in the multitude of parenting books. These are things of move your body, get it done for some purpose potentially. Yeah. Maybe be able to have some skills, should anything ever go down and don't hurt your friends. Right. So like that was,

Dan Bamper: 19:18

But it like, just kind of that general perseverance, dedication, like push through, you can, I 100% contribute that mindset to martial arts.

Caroline: 19:29

Absolutely, absolutely. And so was karate your favorite form or what's been your favorite form?

Dan Bamper: 19:34

it's always changed over the years. I've done a lot of styles since then.

Caroline: 19:37

Okay. Okay.

Dan Bamper: 19:38

You know, uh, my start's always in karate and it is kind of the foundation I've built everything else on. When I started training in Oklahoma, it was with a TaeKwonDo school, so it was kinda like karate adjacent, a lot of striking, maybe a little more kick emphasis. And then started training in some Brazilian juujitsu. I was like, ah, this is all right. Like, I see the value in it, it's just not my favorite. But then I found some kickboxing in Muay Thai and that is arguably like my favorite. There's just something about the, the fight methodology, the philosophy behind it and I think it's really helped me kind of maximize and embed everything on the martial arts side in it. It's very powerful. And then, and I still say martial arts reminds me of all the things I can do.

Caroline: 20:24

Yes, and then sometimes you just kind of like, your mind just gets to this space and you just do whatever the form is or do whatever the things'cause you've practiced it so, so often you just do, right. That that shut off. That's amazing. Okay, so you're going through grad school, you're realizing you need an outlet. You find that outlet. Then how, tell me about kind of finishing grad school and then what happened?

Dan Bamper: 20:50

Oh, okay. So the obstacle course changed again, um, because, uh, we ended up, I ended up working at the martial arts school for about maybe a year, year and a half and then we ended up with an opportunity to go open our own and so in my fifth year of grad school, as I'm starting to write my dissertation, I open a martial arts school.

Caroline: 21:12

How'd that come about? How did that possibility become a dream, become a reality? Because you're a grad student, right?

Dan Bamper: 21:20

Yeah.

Caroline: 21:20

With still outta state fees. Yeah. Or maybe not by that time. Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 21:24

Still outta state fees. Um, and so it turned into like, you know, I had a very small emergency fund that I had worked up and built up, and we bootstrapped hard. We found a small space to kind of work in and rent.

Caroline: 21:41

And who is we?

Dan Bamper: 21:42

so I have two other business partners that I'm still with today, Kevin and Bridget. And so the three of us kind of took what little bit we, you know, little bits that we had and we opened it up

Caroline: 21:55

And how did you meet them to become trusting enough to become business partners?

Dan Bamper: 22:00

We were all teaching together at school. And so when we ended up parting ways, that's a whole different story for another podcast. Um, We ended up finding out that instead of buying the business from kind of the current owner, we were like, let's just go open our own. It can't be that hard, right? Famous last words. Um, but no, we bootstrapped it, and we made it work. So we, we did a lot of pre-enrollment sales. We did a lot of kind of grassroots gorilla work to just get out there and meet people and host events and spread the network and, and everything else. When we had a very supportive group of folks when we first opened. Absolutely amazing. And we were able to open our doors with 33 students.

Caroline: 22:50

Wow. That's pretty impressive. That's really impressive. And so, and, And just to fast forward to now, are you still with those same, you're still with the same business partners?

Dan Bamper: 23:03

Yep.

Caroline: 23:04

Still the same location?

Dan Bamper: 23:06

No, we've grown, we moved into a much bigger spot, but we're at 270 right now.

Caroline: 23:11

Wow. And how many years has that been?

Dan Bamper: 23:14

We're coming up on 11 years in March.

Caroline: 23:16

Wow, that's amazing. How many students do you think you've impacted?

Dan Bamper: 23:27

Thousands.

Caroline: 23:28

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 23:29

It's different because the other part is, you know, when you do the competition circuit and you meet the other students there, and they're the ones that come up and say, Hey, watch this. Look at me. You know, what do you think? I've been working on this. We talked about this last time and so it's not just you know, kind of your own students, it's the network you get to meet too.

Caroline: 23:45

That's so cool.

Dan Bamper: 23:46

Yeah, and I've been fortunate enough where other instructors trust me with their kids to come in and run a seminar or two for them even.

Caroline: 23:52

That's so cool.

Dan Bamper: 23:54

Yeah, it's been a genuinely humbling and empowering experience to do that.

Caroline: 24:03

So this side interest, passion thing started at eight years old still today is going strong, and you turned that in a period of time from just an interest to then a business interest and passion

Dan Bamper: 24:20

Yes.

Caroline: 24:21

what happened to chemistry along the way?

Dan Bamper: 24:24

Oh, along the way it's always been there. When we opened up, I was like, Hmm, I need to make more money. This ain't gonna work'cause I don't have a, I also didn't have like a paycheck anymore coming from the martial arts school.

Caroline: 24:38

Yep. Oh, yep.

Dan Bamper: 24:39

All the tuition.

Caroline: 24:40

Everything is your stuff. Yes. Yes.

Dan Bamper: 24:42

And everything else. So, I ended up going to teach high school chemistry for a couple of years with the local school district. Got my alternative teaching certification.

Caroline: 24:52

Yep.

Dan Bamper: 24:53

I just filled out the piece of paper to get my master's degree along the way, use my master's degree to say, look, I have, I have experience doing this. I'm a subject matter expert. Let me teach. So I taught for a couple years with the local school district.

Caroline: 25:06

Oh, that's cool. Did you recruit students from there?

Dan Bamper: 25:10

Indirectly, yes.

Caroline: 25:12

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 25:12

Along the lines of the relationships you make there people learn more about what you do and they're like, Hey, can you, yeah, come on in, come try a class, tell me what you think. You don't, you don't just pressure to sign up or nothing.

Caroline: 25:23

Nice.

Dan Bamper: 25:24

And there were some kids that came in for one class, some kids that came in for five years.

Caroline: 25:29

Wow.

Dan Bamper: 25:29

Yeah.

Caroline: 25:30

Wow. That's cool. That's super cool.

Dan Bamper: 25:32

And a couple years after that, there was an opening at the local community college, for a tenure track chemistry professor position and I went up, interviewed for it and got it and was like,

Caroline: 25:44

Hmm.

Dan Bamper: 25:45

This is another level up. This is great. And ended up teaching there for about four or five years.

Caroline: 25:50

Wow. That's so cool.

Dan Bamper: 25:52

I also got to build in like, here's everything I've learned about general organic and biochemistry and the main reason they hired me on was to build a, like a GOB nursing course.

Caroline: 26:04

Oh, cool.

Dan Bamper: 26:05

And so you went through all the principles of general organic and biochem in 15 weeks. Talk about, uh, that's a Hurculean lift.

Caroline: 26:13

Exactly. And if there's nurses that have had to do that, I want them to take care of me, you know, like.

Dan Bamper: 26:20

That's it. Because that was the first class they took as their science requirement.

Caroline: 26:25

Wow, what a nice awakening.

Dan Bamper: 26:27

a lot of these folks walked in, 10, 15 years after not being in school and it's like, here's one of the most intense classes you'll ever have to take. Day one.

Caroline: 26:36

Wow. Wow, wow,

Dan Bamper: 26:38

Yeah.

Caroline: 26:40

But interesting that you're still supporting that nursing. Sometimes there's, in families you can kind of look and if you look back far enough, you can see some sort of common interests and common threads in families. So seeing from your family, some music interests, the nursing thing, the chemistry thing, all coming together. Now, did your, anybody else in your family ever do martial arts related interesting things?

Dan Bamper: 27:04

No.

Caroline: 27:05

You're the first Okay.

Dan Bamper: 27:06

I was the first, was the, kinda the first one. Yeah. My sister was a gymnast, so she had her own, her own interest.

Caroline: 27:13

Very cool. Okay. Very cool. All right. So, and then what happened?

Dan Bamper: 27:20

Let's see, and then COVID hit and everything, like the world changed, right? So I was lucky enough to finish my dissertation by 2019, so about eight and a half years after I started, but I still finished it and it's actually the one hanging right up there on the top behind me and that was huge, that was a moment of like, this is it. And so balancing all of that while teaching full-time teaching at the Dojo full-time and running that it was a lift to do it all. And so when COVID hit, you know, it was great. Now everything has to go online. Universities had no idea what to do. They didn't know what support they even needed to bring their faculty members and so I was like, well, here's a podcasting mic, I guess figure out how to do virtual and so I ended up creating an entire virtual laboratory course that was like, here's the experiments carried out. Here's what they look like, here's how the procedure works, and here's some sample data collected from the video.

Caroline: 28:21

Hmm.

Dan Bamper: 28:22

Um, it and tell me what, tell me what insights you got from it. You know, it was, you do the best you can with what you have.

Caroline: 28:29

Yep. Yep.

Dan Bamper: 28:30

We also ended up having to do a virtual pivot for the martial arts school too. So we did martial arts on Zoom.

Caroline: 28:36

Yeah. Tell me about how that works with children?

Dan Bamper: 28:39

That was an experience a lot of kind of figuring out as we go, but we had it set up, it kind of looked like a, an old school Denise Austin workout video where you had like the main instructor up front plus like two or three people in the back doing the same motions with them, we also had like a really big screen TV up on the wall and the computer hooked into the TV so you could, so we had an instructor up there watching, you know, the 25 plus windows on zoom for a class, and they would have a whiteboard and they would hold up a cue card for like the lead instructor to say. Hey, Johnny, you're doing a great job, I love how high that kick is or, they would even keep like, hey, some of those, mind focus, body focus and eye focus skills that you talked about earlier, it would be like, oh, hey, little Bobby eyes up here. Focus on us.

Caroline: 29:32

Wow. Yep, yep. Well, who knows what's happening in little Bobby's arena.

Dan Bamper: 29:39

Exactly. So that was an experience. We also even made it, we're like, Hey, these kids are doing great, they're still showing up. They're still putting in the work and so we would say like, great, send us a video of you doing these things so we can tell if you're ready for your next rank requirements. And then we did a drive through belt ceremony where we give out belts through the car windows to the kids.

Caroline: 30:05

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, because I, yeah, our kids were still at that time, they had started earlier. It took them a while, but we also, in, in it was good, when our kids started, it was not a Mc Dojo um, and so which was, which was good. You won. You want, it's not about the time, it's about are you ready? Did you put the work in? And if so, let's go. Right. but yeah, they had a lot of, some of the one-on-one kind of testing with masks or outside or something.

Dan Bamper: 30:37

And we pulled all that too, as, as restrictions led up a little bit.

Caroline: 31:22

Yeah. Now, how long did the online, um, virtual classes thing happen for you?'Cause we're in North Carolina our regular schools were shut down for over a year.

Dan Bamper: 31:34

Virtual classes for us at the martial arts school lasted about six months, but we had like a capped, capped reservation system, a new schedule that we rolled out to try to get everyone in for at least one to two in person classes a week. When it came to the, the teaching side, you know, that almost kind of became the new standard and it took almost a year before we were back for in-person labs.

Caroline: 31:57

Wow. Interesting. Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 32:00

Even then it turned into a virtual lecture component and an in-person lab component, Which I was very thankful for because virtual labs, I will defend this statement until the day I day, virtual labs ain't gonna do it.

Caroline: 32:17

Yeah. It's not a spectator sport. It's not some of the stuff you just have to learn by actually doing. Yeah. And, and,

Dan Bamper: 32:23

Like,

Caroline: 32:23

And you are the one that put it together. Absolutely. Right. How do you know Yeah. Where, where to turn that? Um, yeah.

Dan Bamper: 32:32

And through all that and having to navigate it, support the rest of the department doing it, because I was the youngest one there by like 30 years and there was a generation of faculty still very resistant to tech, their online course was read the textbook, answer these questions, and that's your learning. And so like there was a lot there and I was like, man, I, I hit the burnout again with teaching because there was continuously no support. Like, I even remember the university president. All right, so like Oklahoma timeline here, like the OKC Thunder game being shut down. It was like the Friday before a spring break in 2020 was kinda like the moment Oklahoma remembers for, for COVID being real, or COVID like impacting the entirety of existence um, and literally the Thursday before the university president was standing in front of the faculty senate was like, so do you guys think this is gonna be a problem? Or what do we do? And it was like, we have plans A, B, and C at the martial arts school ready to go because this is our business.

Caroline: 33:37

Yep.

Dan Bamper: 33:38

You know,

Caroline: 33:39

They're figuring out on the fly.

Dan Bamper: 33:41

He's,

Caroline: 33:41

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 33:42

So my martial arts school kind of guided the university's on like ball C strategy.

Caroline: 33:49

Huge. Even bigger impact that you're making though.

Dan Bamper: 33:52

That and there is something to be said for process improvement and continuously looking for that next thing, data-driven faculty teaching guidelines um, but when it's the same class every, every semester for years, it ends up feeling monotonous and like there's nothing, it kind of sucks the fun out of it, you know?

Caroline: 34:14

Yeah, yeah.

Dan Bamper: 34:16

And so at that point it was like 21, I started looking for other opportunities.

Caroline: 34:21

What interested you at that time then, what did you choose to do?

Dan Bamper: 34:25

Anything that got me out of teaching is the embarrassing answer there.

Caroline: 34:30

Anything that got you out of teaching chemistry, right? Like not the martial arts side, or were you also burned out on the Martial Arts side?

Dan Bamper: 34:36

I mean, we all had felt a little bit of burnout at that point because it, it really like teaching to a screen is not nearly as much fun as teaching to people and that's just the rule across the board. It doesn't matter if it's science, martial arts, physical ed, anything along those lines. But I ended up putting in an application to the general physical scientist pool with USA jobs and ended up getting a phone call from Carlsbad, New Mexico. and the manager on the line was like, Hey, I got your application. I work for a deep geologic nuclear waste repository in southeastern New Mexico and between your experience in business teaching and your PhD in chemistry, I think you'd be a great candidate for our waste characterization manager. And I was like, well, I don't know what that means, but okay. Who'd you say you were with again?

Caroline: 35:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Help me understand

Dan Bamper: 35:36

He sent'em with the Waste Isolation Pilot plant so it's a repository in southeastern New Mexico that's run by the Department of Energy. So the idea is from like the Manhattan project and some of the nuclear product project development back in the day, a lot of what ended up happening is they said, oh, okay, great. Well now we, we've, isolated all this radioisotope and, and rich plutonium and uranium but also like some of this waste that we got out of it, we got all the good stuff out, but the rest of it's still kinda sort of radioactive and what do we do with it? And so back in the day they were like, we'll just bury it. It'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Sites like Los Alamos, Idaho National Labs, Oak Ridge, you know, they ended up putting a lot of these waste just in trenches and kind of saying, there you go and then in the nineties, eighties and nineties, that's when the EPA was like, uh, so that's it. Turns out that's not great. Let's, let's get, let's get rid of that. So that sparked this entire like, huge mission from the Department of Energy to figure out what do we do with all of this legacy waste that's across the country um, and so they came up with the idea for the waste isolation pilot, plant whipped um, oh. and they said there was a lot of modeling and a lot of policy um, but it turns out the kind of unique like geology thing about southeastern New Mexico is that there's a lot of salt mines there. And salt as a mineral is really fluid, which means if you harvest salt out, it will shut itself back in and encapsulate itself again um, and they were like, well, this is perfect. Here's how this could work. They did a lot, they did a whole lot of modeling. There was a lot of policy investigations, a lot of science behind it. Done by teams of people that are way brighter than I'll ever be um, and so they came up with the waste isolation pilot plan and they created a set of waste acceptance criteria and analysis plans and everything else to take all that legacy waste from the national labs safely in place it in a salt mine.

Caroline: 37:50

Interesting.

Dan Bamper: 37:51

Yes.

Caroline: 37:53

Interesting. How far was that from where you were? Did you have to go there?

Dan Bamper: 37:59

It's about 450 miles away, so, yes I ended up talking to my business partners and was like, have this insane opportunity that is going to change my life forever because I went from being a tenured community college professor who was, you know, may, in the fifties in terms of salary and, and I was offered a GS 14 level position with the US Department of Energy.

Caroline: 38:27

And what does that mean as far as like for regular people that don't know what that salary band looks like?

Dan Bamper: 38:32

More than double, like that's a life changing and that's a life changing opportunity. And so I talked to him and we worked it out and, and it was like, okay, if you're gonna, you know, if this is something that can go, go here's and we restructured and pivoted and adapted a little bit.

Caroline: 38:51

And so you moved or you traveled?

Dan Bamper: 38:54

I moved.

Caroline: 38:55

Wow.

Dan Bamper: 38:57

Yeah.

Caroline: 38:57

And then what happened to the martial arts business while you were not there? Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 39:02

While I wasn't there, I was like, I still want to contribute. I still want to take care of my business, make sure my baby's taken care of so that's when I started learning how to be a CFO because I understood data and I was like, oh, there's money is a data set. Well, I don't know how much about this is built yet. Well, let's go learn so I learned about financial accounting.

Caroline: 39:27

Interesting. This is so cool. It's like you, you're seizing opportunities that are allowing you to build new skill. Like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Okay, so you're, Yeah, okay, so you're driven by this life, life-changing career opportunity to both do good and make a, an amazing amount of money to help you in your future.

Dan Bamper: 39:50

Yes.

Caroline: 39:51

Now you have the need because you're still committed to this business. So what can I do to help the business while I'm not physically there? I guess I'll learn CFO skills, accounting skills. And so then, then what happened?

Dan Bamper: 40:05

So while we were away, um, or while I was away, like I learned a lot about not just the, the chemistry side of things from like a a, you know, resource conservation and recovery act perspective um, and then just for context there, um, that's called RCRA, mm-hmm. Is kind of the acronym for it that you'll hear the waste field talk about a lot. And that's the main legislation that is enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. So it was a lot of environmental and regulatory compliance and building programs that meet those requirements so that way they can identify, hey, this waste is safe to in place according to the acceptance criteria, safe to transport according to DOT regulations. And I saw all of a sudden like my understanding of, oh yeah, I get how systems work, I get how systems work now because they just work within a small organization. It talked about how, you know, have this facility WIP owned by the Department of Energy, the environmental management office, but you know, with Los Alamos, it's owned by the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration and so it was like, oh, well they're both part of DOE in some capacity. They're just different branches of it. So you've got different branches of DOE and they're both employing contractors to run the facilities and implement the programs for them. And so you had to learn how to talk to your contractor, when to talk to theirs, and then when to talk to their field office to ask them, Hey, can you have your contractors do this for us? And it was about here's how we can build programs that other sites can implement to meet our requirements, to meet any state and local environmental transportation, any other requirements by other stakeholders. Of course, use my chemistry background again as the technical person in the office to go, yes, that that method of testing or um, experimental nature does meet the requirements and here's why or this experiment does answer the questions we have about the waste.

Caroline: 42:16

Interesting. Yes. Interesting. Super interesting.

Dan Bamper: 42:21

A really cool job and I traveled a lot because of it. So, you know, I got to go out to like Oak Ridge National Lab, Los Alamos, Idaho, you know, places where they had these huge, like, impactful parts of our history and still have some of the most cutting edge science to these, to this day hmm. Um, and, and there's an entire team of incredible technical experts that are out there that you know, continue to amaze me with their dedication to like what they're doing, uh, as terms of a mission for our country, but also like how they're impacting their local communities because, they're getting to the point where, what was a super fun site, which is where the EPA is like, Hey, this is super dangerous. we can't have this here anymore. They did the work and they deescalated that and made it no longer a Superfund site and so they're cleaning up the country. They're, creating new science, but they're also having to do it all on a budget that is like minuscule because nobody cares about trash.

Caroline: 43:25

Right, right. Until 20, 30, 40 years later then there's clusters and then they wonder.

Dan Bamper: 43:31

Even then, it's like, well, we don't wanna spend$30 million on this cleanup project. Can we do it for three? Oh, let's get creative and again, they've been able to do some absolutely amazing things and there's been a lot of cool science that's come out of the necessity for waste.

Caroline: 43:47

Interesting. Okay. And so then you at some point left that phenomenal opportunity. What, what led to that? What led to you saying, you know, I think I've had enough fun. Thanks all. And now?

Dan Bamper: 44:02

You know, the old joke about corporation work where it's like the reward, the reward you have for great work is more work.

Caroline: 44:09

Yes.

Dan Bamper: 44:11

I ended up covering about people's worth of work and there wasn't a, and it, there wasn't an end in sight to it.

Caroline: 44:21

Got you.

Dan Bamper: 44:22

And so I was like, I'm stretched too thin and, and honestly, I miss home. I miss my school. I miss my team, my community there. And so I ended up, you know, working it out with my field office where I was like, Hey, I don't really wanna live here anymore. I don't like this area. I don't, there's nothing here. I have to travel all the time. And I ended up uh, leaving the field office and shifting over to the technical support contract. So I'm still kind of indirectly involved with that project um, but more on the technical support side, which lets me work remotely.

Caroline: 44:59

Gotcha.

Dan Bamper: 45:00

And as I was working through there, uh, and, you know, building my financial accounting skills, CFO data analysis, you know, kind of becoming, you know, having to build my own financial systems and, work things for the martial arts school, I realized that other business owners had the same problems that I did.

Caroline: 45:17

Yes. Articulate.

Dan Bamper: 45:18

They were like, I,

Caroline: 45:19

What were the problems?

Dan Bamper: 45:20

Like, why is it, you know, how come, well, I made a credit card payment, why doesn't that show up on my profit and loss statement? Why is it like I'm making loan payments, credit card payments, I bought a$10,000 that's not showing up on my profit and loss either. Like, what's the problem here? it turns, and I was like, well, that's just the way the financial accounting system works. You know, you're paying a liability or you're buying an asset and these things don't show up on your profit and loss report. They're gonna show up on your cashflow summary and your balance sheet. And so it turned into a bookkeeping offer where I then sat down and said, here's, here's how you read these. Here's how you get these numbers apart and they started asking me questions like, well, okay, well how can I do mine better? Oh well, here's what's worked for me. Oh, this works for you too. Great. Um, and, And that slowly grew itself into, you know, what I do now as a fractional CFO, so I help small business owners keep more of the money they make and I do that by installing great accounting systems in their business, um, but also help them with other systems like collections, invoicing, uh, bill pay, vendor management. Um, I'll also help them with, kind of predicting and writing their business's future too. I pulled the data from the entirety of the business, not just the financials. We'll be able to get data on their marketing and sales pipelines, how efficient their operations are being, you know, their staffing ratios. We're gonna take a look at, Just installing accounting systems, but you know, billing and collection systems too. So that way money was consistently coming into the business. We would take a look at their operations and make sure they were spending money efficiently, and then we would talk about the way they managed their money with like debt management as well as like credit cards, loans, financing, and which options were best for them. That turned, turned into like telling the business's future saying, well, yeah, you're gonna make$500,000 next year and here's how you're going to do it. You're gonna have this many clients, which means you need to talk to this many people based on your close rates, and this is what you need to put in for your marketing budget. And then they'll go, well, great. And it just kind of led itself to like these new questions that just kept coming up. Well, here's what I do. Does it work for you? No. Let's go back to the drawing board and then all of a sudden it turned into this scientific reiteration process of hypothesis, test, collect data, feedback, regenerate hypothesis, and go through the process again. So now it's almost like a business science instead of chemistry.

Caroline: 48:11

Oh, that's so cool. Okay, so you have these skills that you're developing based on your necessity to want to be located in a different section of your business. Then you start helping other businesses learn what you, but how did you find those other businesses? Was it just word of mouth, people being like asking you, or how did, how did that?

Dan Bamper: 48:31

I ended up kinda launching a bookkeeping side hustle right as I was starting to transition outta the federal government'cause I was like, my technical support contract is part-time and I still have income needs. So it's like, well, let's start a side hustle. So I started just kind of local networking events, things along those lines, and picked up a couple bookkeeping clients over a couple years and they would just continue to ask me questions and I'd bring them answers and over a span of about a year, I was like, Hey, so, not only did you make more money this year, so you know, you added 2, 2 50,$300,000 to your revenue, you also added$600,000 to your profits because of these systems. And they're like, yeah man, you've really changed how I operate and the way I do business. And it's like, oh, oh, there was the moment of I'm getting an insane return item one, increase our prices a little bit. Two, let's just change the nature of the offer. So it's still a done for you bookkeeping component for your business to keep your finances organized. then we leverage that data, we take that data set, we create and use it to drive that, that feedback cycle inside the business.

Caroline: 49:52

That's so cool. That is so cool. Yeah. Okay, so how do, at what point, what's the right point for a business to come to you for this? Because you have to have, you know, garbage in is garbage out or garbage hidden, or mitigated, but still, how, how do you, where, how much data does someone need in order to have enough for you to help them?

Dan Bamper: 50:20

Honestly, they need to have a bank account. That's it. And that's because, you know, at the thing I'm realizing is at different levels of growth inside of a business, they have different needs. So if you're still kind of in your launch phase, you're under about 10,000 a month, your focus is sales and you need support for sales, and you need to track your sales pipeline.

Caroline: 50:42

Yep.

Dan Bamper: 50:43

And so when you hit that first a hundred thousand mark, it's like, well, now there's a lot of money moving through my business. Maybe, maybe I have to get a credit card to help with my cash flow of needs. Well, an Excel sheet becomes a little more complicated when you've got more than one type of account.

Caroline: 51:00

Yes. Yes.

Dan Bamper: 51:01

And so that's when you start moving into more sophisticated accounting software. And if you start looking at something like QuickBooks, that's a bit of a steep blurring curve. And when you're already an established business with work to do, it's hard to find that time to do it. So I always advocate, usually when you hit around 75, a hundred thousand is when you should start outsourcing your bookkeeping for a little bit. And whenever someone outsources their bookkeeping, you know, I can do their books for them or we can add on what I call like my small business accelerator, that means that, hey, you get your bookkeeping done for you, and we're gonna get a growth plan as it done with you. And so it's almost kinda like of like a bookkeeping and a business coaching offer all in one that makes the data really crystal clear so they understand the story.

Caroline: 51:48

And how much, and so what if, if someone is outsourcing their bookkeeping stuff, what do they send you for you to then make sense of it? How much stuff do you have to keep track of actually?

Dan Bamper: 52:00

That's a great question. so the way I work it with my clients is I kind of have like a standard questionnaire. I consolidate everything into a very simple dashboard that says, here's the way your business makes, spends, and manages money. And so if they send me their bank and credit card statements at the end of the month, I can generate everything I need for the spending and managing money part, like profit and loss, things along those lines and all I do is send them a simple Google form and they're gonna create, and I help them create like a weekly financial ritual where they're tracking any important information about their sales pipeline. And so, a simple way for anyone to get started is just keep track of the number of leads, the number of conversion, or the number of like prospects or sales calls you get.

Caroline: 52:44

Yep.

Dan Bamper: 52:45

You give, depending on your industry the number of closed jobs. Interesting. And so by combining, you know, a little bit of operational data and their financial data, we're able to help them tell a story then write the story the way they want it written,'Cause you know, if you're trying to grow your business, you can either make more per client and increase your average job or client value, or you can serve more clients, that's really what it comes down to and so there's different strategies that inform you and different numbers that inform you which one to take.

Caroline: 53:19

Very cool. Very cool. Okay, so how do people find you now?

Dan Bamper: 53:26

Now you can find me a couple different ways. honestly, the easiest way to find me is my website, blackbeltledgers.com. Obviously you can see the martial arts theme there.

Caroline: 53:37

Absolutely.

Dan Bamper: 53:38

Yeah.

Caroline: 53:39

Absolutely. It's a great thing.

Dan Bamper: 53:41

We're also on Facebook and Instagram with those, just by typing that in you, I should come up pretty easily just like that.

Caroline: 53:47

That's cool. Now, how has your definition of success changed over time? Like as a child, what did you think it was and then evolving into now and what does it mean for you?

Dan Bamper: 54:00

When I was a kid, it was always like, oh man, you gotta make that six figure job, you gotta have enough money to buy what want and then, as I started teaching, you don't go into teaching for the money by any means. you know, it turned into a little bit more about like, this is the mission and the impact you have. How are you accomplishing that mission? And the martial arts school really helped to drive that home. and now the mission is really just like, can I, can I support myself and, and, my partner the way I want to and give us the life we've worked hard to build, like the mission comes down to the impact you have.

Caroline: 54:37

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 54:37

And if I can help business owners change their lives because they've changed their own financial situations a little bit. They have the breathing room, they have the capacity, I help them get good processes for even like hiring and onboarding, and here's how you make your operations more efficient. And by helping them buy back some of that time, that freedom, even that financial, you know, that financial coverage, that's a mission accomplished in my book. I believe you can take care of yourself by taking care of others.

Caroline: 55:07

Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been so exciting. I love your how this, how the data, because that's the thing. Sometimes people, when they're considering pivoting from chemical related careers, heavy science related careers into something else, they're like, well, if I don't, then, then I won't be a scientist anymore. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like the way that I frame everything is within the scientific method. And that can go as a foundational element to launch so many different ways. So I love the way that you've taken your scientific training and continued to add skills along the way, seizing opportunities, taking risks, and also having this weaving theme of teaching others, helping them so that you, and in teaching others, you're getting stronger in the concepts yourself. So then be able to level up and continue to offer the next, the next thing. And in iterations, I am fascinated.

Dan Bamper: 56:03

It kinda goes back to the one thing my boss always talked about in grad school was like, what's the fundamental question you're answering? Or what problem are you solving? And if everything is done under that lens, as you know, not just in science but in business too, a lot of problems and obstacles go away.

Caroline: 56:21

Yes.

Dan Bamper: 56:22

Because, when I talk to my clients, they're like, man, I hate doing sale. Why? Well, I feel like a slimy used car salesman, but you're not selling, you're solving problems, And you just see the moment of like the entirety of the world shifts a little bit.

Caroline: 56:36

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 56:37

And they go, oh, and then all of a sudden they're not afraid to do a sales call. They're not afraid to talk about the problem they solve or how they solve it with their marketing or even how to talk to their team about focusing on the mission they're accomplishing and everything else follows through.

Caroline: 56:52

Yes, yes. Sales is service.

Dan Bamper: 56:55

Yeah. Sales is problem solving, is the way I say.

Caroline: 56:58

Absolutely. Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 56:59

Some people, you can solve their problem, some people you can't.

Caroline: 57:03

Correct. You can lead a horse to water. You can't make it drink. Just, yeah. Yeah. And if there's ever somebody that does have that desire, wanting to understand how can I support the life I have while trying to build the life I want, how can I take a business idea, turn it into reality, take a business and scale it on the financial operations side, Dan is your man for sure. Excellent proven systems and many different arenas. So, What is next for you? What, what's your dream for future, Dan?

Dan Bamper: 57:37

That's a great question,'cause I'm a little bit of a crossroads again. You know, the, the black belt ledger side is doing well and again, those systems and frameworks are in place and, and I'm able to make a pretty good impact locally.

Caroline: 57:51

Yeah.

Dan Bamper: 57:52

I actually had a colleague of mine that I used to teach with, she made an introduction to an executive director of one of the state agencies here in Oklahoma, and they have a need for a chief science officer that helps build policy drives laboratory compliance regulations, oversees a public health aspect, and starts to weave all of those things back together. And I'm like, Ooh, this sounds like an opportunity.

Caroline: 58:21

Absolutely. Yeah. Like a fascinating opportunity. Yeah. Gather as much data as you can, make a data-driven decision and see. What's up? Well, I'll look forward to kind of following up with you and seeing like, and then what happened.

Dan Bamper: 58:35

I've actually gone through two interviews for the position already, and now we're waiting in the, the limbo of what's it look like to move forward.

Caroline: 58:42

Interesting. Interesting. Well, I wish you definitely all the best with that and thank you so much for your time sharing with Your Next Success. Again, anyone please contact Dan. Dan. He's a wealth of information, beautiful help, wants to just make a big impact and apply all these things to help you and your business grow as well.

Dan Bamper: 59:04

You got it. Thanks so much for having me today. This was a great time.

Caroline: 59:07

Thank you, Dan.

59:09

Dan. Thank you for sharing such a grounded look at what it really takes to move from I am burned out and overextended to I am building systems that actually serve my life. I appreciate how clearly you showed that scientific training, martial arts, discipline, and teaching experience can all become fuel for a completely new lane. And how you broke money down into something we can work with, not something to fear. If you wanna learn more from Dan and get support with the financial side of your business, head to his free school community, you'll find links in the show notes. And as always, if this episode encouraged you, please share it with a friend who needs a reminder. That their skills are more transferable than they think. Make sure you're following the Your Next Success podcast. So you never miss an episode.