The Ty Brady Way

  On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Jim Effner to talk about ambition, leadership, adversity, and what it takes to build a successful life and business. Jim shares how growing up as the youngest of five in a middle-class family shaped his work ethic. At just 12 years old, he began working as a caddy at an exclusive private club, where he was exposed to successful people, affluent lifestyles, and possibilities he had never seen before.   That early experience gave Jim a strong desire to create a bigger life for himself. After earning a degree in corporate finance, he began looking for a career where the size of his paycheck would be in his own control. A practice interview led him into the insurance industry, where he joined Northwestern Mutual and quickly found success. Jim became rookie of the year, reached Million Dollar Round Table consistently, made Top of the Table in his late 20s, and was earning seven figures by his early 30s.   Jim explains that his career was never mapped out from the beginning. He first believed he would remain an individual representative for the rest of his life. As he gained experience, his interests shifted toward leadership. He eventually became a managing partner at 33 years old and led a firm with 150 agents and advisors. After more than 14 years in that role, he sold the firm and started his current company.   Ty and Jim also discuss the greatest challenge Jim faced during his career. At 33, Jim was bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus. It developed into viral meningitis and caused him to completely lose his hearing. He remained deaf for six months while waiting to see whether treatment would restore it. When his hearing did not return, he received a cochlear implant.   Jim describes the implant as a gift from God. His hearing is not the same as it was before, but it has allowed him to continue living, working, and leading. He explains that the experience changed his perspective and made him a better husband, father, and businessman. Rather than allowing the loss to define him, he decided to use it as fuel.   The conversation moves into leadership and what effective leaders look like today. Jim says there is no single personality type that makes someone a great leader. Leaders can come from different backgrounds and have very different personalities. What they often share is a commitment to helping others succeed. Jim believes that when leaders help the people around them get what they want, they are more likely to achieve their own goals as well.   Jim describes leadership as a responsibility, not a position of authority. Strong leaders create environments where people can grow, perform, and win together. They do not lead through entitlement or dictatorship. They serve, set the example, and make decisions based on values, even when those decisions may not benefit them financially in the short term.   Jim also shares two pieces of advice that shaped his career. The first was to never follow his pocketbook. His mentor told him to follow his passion and trust that the money would follow. That advice helped Jim make difficult career decisions, including walking away from a successful sales career to pursue leadership.   The second lesson focused on building trust with clients. Jim was taught that every first meeting should leave the client believing three things: that you understand them, that you genuinely care about them, and that you are knowledgeable in your craft. When people feel understood, cared for, and confident in your ability, the rest of the relationship becomes much easier.   You’ll also hear Jim explain how trust grows through curiosity, listening, presence, and consistency. Leaders must model the behaviors they expect from others, especially during difficult situations. People are always watching how a leader responds under pressure.   Jim closes with a reminder that life is short and everyone only gets one chance to live it. He encourages listeners to stop focusing on the reasons they cannot pursue their dreams and start focusing on why those dreams matter. His message is to think bigger, stay disciplined, let go of negative influences, and refuse to make failure the final outcome.   If you want to learn how to turn adversity into fuel, lead with purpose, and build a life that reflects your biggest goals, this episode is for you.   As always, we would like to hear from you! 🔗 jimeffner.com and LinkedIn: in/jimeffner 🎙️ @thetybradyway   Email us at [email protected]   Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Paul Salter to talk about performance psychology, hypnotherapy, limiting beliefs, and what keeps high performers stuck even when they know exactly what to do.   Paul shares how his interest in performance began as a small high school athlete looking for every possible advantage. He became fascinated by elite competitors like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer. They trained hard like everyone else, but their mindset helped separate them from the competition.   That curiosity led Paul into competitive bodybuilding and a career as a sports dietitian. He worked with collegiate, professional, and Olympic athletes before helping men and women who repeatedly lost and regained the same weight. Over time, he noticed a common pattern. Most people already knew what to eat, how to train, or what action to take. The real problem was that something kept stopping them from following through.   Paul eventually discovered hypnotherapy while pursuing professional poker. Even though he was studying and working harder than many of his competitors, he continued struggling. After hiring a mindset coach and hypnotherapist, his confidence, decision-making, and results changed dramatically. That experience led him to leave poker, become a certified hypnotherapist, and focus fully on mindset and performance coaching.   Ty and Paul discuss what hypnosis actually is and what it is not. Paul explains that it is not mind control, brainwashing, or making people do embarrassing things. It is a natural state of focused awareness, similar to becoming absorbed in a book, television show, work project, or athletic performance.   Hypnosis allows Paul to quiet the harsh inner critic and work with the subconscious mind, where habits, beliefs, memories, and emotions are stored. He says challenges such as perfectionism, procrastination, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and performance anxiety are learned patterns. Because they were learned, they can also be unlearned.   Paul shares the story of a nonprofit founder who struggled to speak confidently around wealthy and powerful men. As a child in foster care, she had learned that staying quiet and unseen helped keep her safe from abusive male figures. Even though her adult circumstances were different, the old belief continued showing up in business meetings. By addressing the original pattern, she gained the confidence to communicate clearly and secure millions of dollars in funding.   The conversation also explores why changing your life can sometimes create tension with the people closest to you. Paul explains that humans are biologically wired to belong. When someone begins exercising, eating differently, building a business, or changing old habits, friends and family may respond with jealousy, criticism, or resistance. The fear of losing those relationships can quietly pull a person back toward old behaviors.   Paul also shares two difficult seasons from his own entrepreneurial journey. At one point, more than 90 percent of his income came from one coaching company. He realized he was trapped trading time for money, so he walked away, invested heavily in coaching, raised his prices, and rebuilt the business around the work he truly wanted to do.   Later, becoming a father challenged his identity and priorities. Paul had always treated his business as his first love, but caring for his son forced him to rethink his schedule, values, and definition of success. Today, he works fewer hours and spends more time with his son, even though the path there looked very different from what he expected.   You’ll also hear Paul explain why authenticity matters more in a world filled with AI content. Early in his podcasting career, listeners told him his information was valuable but he sounded like a robot. That feedback taught him that people connect with honesty, imperfection, and personality more than a flawless script.   Paul closes by sharing two ways to move forward when you feel stuck. First, create a daily practice of silence, stillness, and solitude. Even five minutes without a phone or distraction can help you reconnect with your intuition and priorities. Second, ask for help. A coach, mentor, or therapist can help you identify blind spots and reach your goals faster.   If you want to break limiting beliefs, improve your performance, and stop letting old patterns control your future, this episode is for you.   As always, we would like to hear from you!   🔗https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstuck-high-performer-podcast-hypnotherapy/id1742610817 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @thepaulsalter   Email us at [email protected]   Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Norman Wolfe to talk about why so many businesses lose their purpose as they grow and what leaders can do to build organizations that are more human, adaptable, and sustainable. Norman introduces the idea of The Living Organization, a different way of viewing a company, not as a machine made up of individual parts, but as a collective person with its own mindset, behaviors, relationships, and purpose.   Norman explains that the traditional business model is built around efficiency. A company takes inputs, produces outputs, and relies on leaders to make sure the process runs as smoothly as possible. In that model, employees are treated like parts of the machine. Norman says that approach may have worked when business was more predictable, but it struggles in a world shaped by constant change, uncertainty, and complexity. His belief is that organizations work better when leaders focus less on controlling people and more on helping them think, contribute, and grow.   Ty and Norman discuss why companies often begin with a strong mission but slowly lose it as they scale. A founder may start with a clear vision and a group of people who believe in what they are building. But as the company grows, more structure is added. Departments are created, systems are put in place, and efficiency becomes the main focus. Over time, people can begin to feel more like employees completing tasks than individuals contributing to a shared purpose. Norman explains that machines do not care about relationships, meaning, or customer experience. People do, and leaders cannot afford to forget that.   Norman also shares a different way to think about departments. Instead of seeing sales, operations, or marketing as groups managed by individual leaders, he encourages business owners to view each department as a collective person. Each group has a purpose, a way of behaving, and a responsibility to contribute to the success of the whole organization. This helps leaders look beyond individual performance and pay closer attention to how departments communicate, cooperate, and solve problems together.   The conversation also turns to profit and purpose. Norman explains that a company exists to create value for the customer. Revenue is the value the customer gives back in exchange for what the business provides. Expenses are the resources used to create that value. Profit is what remains when the company creates more value than it consumes. From that perspective, profit and purpose do not have to compete. Purpose gives people a reason to care, and that energy helps the organization create better value. Problems begin when leaders focus only on cutting costs, improving systems, and increasing efficiency while losing sight of the customer and the mission.   You’ll also hear Norman explain the warning signs of an unhealthy organization. Projects begin to stall, departments operate in silos, and leaders are constantly pulled back into daily decisions. Employees may have the skill and authority to act, but they still wait for approval. Norman says this often happens because people have been trained to comply instead of commit. They follow instructions, but they do not feel responsible for the outcome.   This becomes a major barrier to growth. Many leaders believe they need more people, more money, or better systems to scale. Norman says the deeper issue is ownership. A business cannot grow if every important decision still depends on the owner. Systems should support people, not control them. When employees are told exactly how to behave, they often become cautious, dependent, and afraid to make mistakes.   Norman explains how contribution agreements can help change that. Instead of handing people a list of goals, leaders explain where the company is going and ask each department how it will contribute. Employees are encouraged to think like CEOs of their own area of the business. The leader’s role is not to jump in with answers every time someone struggles. It is to coach people through the process so they become more capable and confident over time.   Ty and Norman also discuss artificial intelligence and the growing importance of human connection. Norman believes AI should be used to remove repetitive work so people can spend more time building relationships, solving problems, and creating value. Technology should improve the human experience, not simply replace people.   Norman closes by sharing that his first performance review as a manager was unacceptable in every category. That failure forced him to examine how he was leading and what he needed to change. Years later, he was leading a successful organizational turnaround. His message is that struggle often teaches us more than success ever could.   If you want to build a business where people take ownership, leaders are not trapped in every decision, and purpose remains just as important as profit, this episode is for you.   As always, we would like to hear from you!   🔗www.linkedin.com/in/wolfe 🎙️ @thetybradyway   Email us at [email protected]   Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Gal Borenstein, founder of the Borenstein Group, to talk about branding, trust, entrepreneurship, and the risks of using AI without a clear strategy.   Gal shares how he originally planned to become a journalist before a communications textbook changed the direction of his career. One sentence stood out to him: the purpose of communication is to make money. That idea led him to explore advertising, where he could help shape the message instead of only reporting on it.   After graduate school, Gal took a marketing assistant position earning $28,000 a year. He and his wife were living in a small studio apartment while she completed a PhD program, and money was extremely tight. After a year, Gal decided to start his own advertising, public relations, and marketing agency.   He launched the business with $600, a high-interest credit card loan, a professional brochure, and a leased black Mercedes. Gal explains that the car was not about showing off. It was part of creating trust and looking established when meeting business owners. He called the company the Borenstein Group, even though he was initially the only employee, because he wanted the brand to feel larger than one person.   The strategy worked. The company earned $150,000 in its first year, doubled the next year, and eventually grew into one of the top B2B agencies in the country.   Ty and Gal discuss the difference between pretending to be successful and building a professional image backed by real skill. Gal had not worked at an advertising agency before starting his own, but he believed in his ability to solve problems, learn quickly, and help clients grow.   Gal also shares the three principles behind his company. Treat small businesses with the same respect as large companies. Make sure the CEO is involved in important conversations. And turn creativity into a repeatable process that produces measurable results.   The conversation then moves to how marketing has changed. Gal explains that advertising, public relations, branding, social media, and content are no longer separate areas. One strong idea can now become a video, article, case study, social post, email campaign, or sales tool.   That ability to create more content has also introduced new risks. Gal wrote his book, Don’t Believe the Hype, after seeing companies adopt AI without understanding what they wanted it to accomplish. Some businesses use AI because they are afraid of falling behind. Others automate weak messages and spread the same mistake at a much larger scale.   Gal says AI can make communication faster, but faster does not mean better. A company still needs to understand its purpose, customers, culture, and message before automating anything.   One of Gal’s biggest concerns is that many business owners never speak directly with their customers. Instead, they send automated surveys and rely on data without having real conversations. He believes CEOs need to hear what customers, employees, and suppliers are saying in order to understand what is working and what needs to change.   Gal shares how his agency worked with a technology company created through several mergers. The organization had 33,000 employees, but its leaders were not speaking the same language or communicating one clear message. His team interviewed people throughout the company, identified the gaps, and helped create a shared set of values and points of differentiation.   The goal was not simply to design a new logo or slogan. It was to align the people inside the business so they could deliver the same message to the market.   Gal also explains why interviewing employees and customers is non-negotiable in his process. When a company refuses to allow outside feedback, it often means the leadership is hiding from a problem or already knows the answers may be uncomfortable.   Ty and Gal agree that negative feedback can be valuable. A business cannot fix what it refuses to see. Strong leaders are willing to listen, question their assumptions, and learn what they do not know.   The episode closes with Gal’s reminder that a brand is not what a company says about itself. It is what people say when the company is not in the room. Building a trusted brand requires alignment between the message, the customer experience, and the culture inside the organization.   If you want to use AI wisely, strengthen your company’s reputation, and build a brand people actually trust, this episode is for you.   As always, we would like to hear from you!   🔗www.BorensteinGroup.com 🎙️ @thetybradyway   Email us at [email protected]   Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, to talk about public relations, storytelling, and how small businesses can earn real media coverage.   Mickie shares how he discovered the power of PR while working at a telecom research startup in Washington, D.C. After spending more than a day faxing a press release that produced no response, he realized the problem was not the data. It was the lack of a story.   For the next release, Mickie focused on an unusual spike in Caribbean telephone traffic tied to 1-900 numbers. That story earned coverage in The Economist, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and several trade publications.   The lesson was simple. Journalists do not want a list of features. They want a story their audience will care about.   Ty and Mickie discuss how businesses can make their news more compelling by sharing a founder story, a customer success story, original data, or a clear reason why the announcement matters. The goal is not to promote the company directly. It is to give the journalist a useful story.   Mickie also explains the difference between earned media and low-cost press release syndication. Some services place releases on websites, but that does not mean journalists or potential customers will see them. The real value comes when a journalist writes an original article about the business.   He shares the story of a company that builds waste and recycling facilities. One trade article led to conversations with cities in Australia and eventually helped generate projects worth tens of millions of dollars. He also describes a flooring company that used media coverage during sales appointments and increased its conversion rate by about 17 percent.   Mickie says media coverage can do more than bring in leads. It can build trust, improve sales, reduce customer churn, and give a business credibility that advertising cannot.   You’ll also hear why many entrepreneurs assume PR is too expensive or only for large companies. Mickie says small businesses do not need to hire a costly firm to get results. They need a strong angle, a newsworthy idea, and a willingness to test different stories.   One strategy he recommends is conducting an industry survey. Businesses can partner with a smaller trade association, ask timely questions, and turn the results into original news. Journalists are often interested because the survey gives them fresh data and a reason to cover the company.   The conversation also turns to artificial intelligence. Mickie warns that AI can write a polished press release, but it cannot replace the strategy behind it. He recommends using AI to improve headlines, opening paragraphs, and quotes rather than asking it to create the entire release without direction.   Mickie says about 97 percent of press releases fail to earn media coverage. The releases that succeed usually offer something different. They include original research, a strong story, a useful opinion, or a clear reason for the audience to care.   He also encourages businesses to treat PR as an ongoing campaign instead of judging it by one release. Some ideas will fail. Others may create results far beyond what the company expected.   The episode closes with Mickie reminding small business owners that being small can be an advantage. Journalists often receive more attention for discovering an unknown company doing something new than for covering another announcement from a major brand.   If you want to build credibility, earn media attention, and create stories journalists actually want to share, this episode is for you.   🔗 eReleases.com and Linkedin: in/publicity 🎙️ @thetybradyway   As always, we would like to hear from you!   Email us at [email protected]   Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Robyn Maher, IFBB Pro, national level judge, competition promoter, and personal trainer with over 25 years in the health and fitness industry. Robyn’s story is one of those that catches you off guard because nothing about where she ended up was part of the plan. She started college at BYU thinking she wanted to do interior design, gained the freshman 15, and decided she needed to make a change. That decision to get healthy set off a chain of events that would eventually lead her to the Olympia stage, judging pro shows across the country, and running one of the most respected bodybuilding competitions in Utah. Robyn grew up watching her parents prioritize health and fitness, and to this day her mom and dad are in their mid-70s and not on any prescription medications. That foundation mattered, but she is quick to point out that she is not naturally thin and that she genuinely struggled with her weight in college. Working at Good Earth Cafe in Provo introduced her to nutrition in a real way, and she channeled that into a transformation that most people who meet her today find hard to believe. She went on to graduate with a degree in exercise physiology and nutrition and has been working in health and fitness ever since. Her path into competing started around 2009 when someone asked her to coach them for a competition. Rather than take on a client for something she had never done herself, she decided to do it first. What was supposed to be a one and done bucket list experience turned into a multi-year journey that took her to the national stage multiple times. She placed third at her first national level competition, which lit a fire she did not see coming. Through a divorce, raising three kids on her own, and the grind of competing across the country, she earned her IFBB Pro card in July of 2015 in the Bikini division. The process took discipline, patience, and the ability to come back after setbacks, including a show where her physique was better than ever but she still placed eighth, a reminder that in bodybuilding you are always judged against who is standing next to you that day. After earning her pro card, Robyn noticed there was no IFBB Pro League competition in Utah at all. That gap planted a seed. Having competed in over two dozen shows across multiple states and observed what made some events exceptional and others forgettable, she decided to create the experience she always wanted as an athlete. In 2016 she produced the first ever IFBB Pro League competition in the state of Utah, held alongside Fit Con. That event grew into the Salt City Showdown, which ran through 2019. When 2020 hit and expos shut down, Robyn refused to cancel on her athletes. She rebranded the event as the Wasatch Warrior, complete with a 12-pound custom sledgehammer trophy that has become legendary among competitors. Athletes from 13 different countries competed at the last event, with the show livestreamed worldwide. People fly in from across the country just for the experience she creates. Robyn also walks through what it takes to become a national level judge, a process far more rigorous than most people realize. She has been judging since around 2015 and earned her national certification by passing a sequestered evaluation at the NPC USA in Phoenix, where she had to correctly identify the top call outs in each division before the head judge made a single call from the stage. She has since judged the Pittsburgh Pro and head judged major events including a national level show in Minnesota. As she explains, you have to earn your stripes. The conversation also covers her role at the Olympia, where she has served as a commentator and analyst for the live worldwide broadcast, interviewing athletes as they step off stage including being there for Chris Bumstead’s retirement moment. Most recently she was invited to host a podcast inside the Olympia Expo, interviewing athletes and industry figures like Flex Lewis and Quest Nutrition founder Ron Pena across two full days, all while bouncing over to watch pre-judging so she could speak to what she was seeing in real time. Now her son-in-law and her youngest daughter Ashley are competing, bringing everything full circle in the best way. Robyn’s parting message is simple: whatever you end up doing, just be the best at it. For her, that philosophy is what turned a one-and-done competition into a career, a community, and a legacy.   Connect with Robyn Maher: Website: robynmaher.com Instagram: @slcrobynmaher   Connect with The Ty Brady Way: Email: [email protected] Instagram: @thetybradyway   As always, share, like, and subscribe. We’ll catch you on the next one.

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Tom Richter, regional developer for Jan Pro of Utah, a commercial cleaning franchise that has grown under his leadership from a second mortgage and a two-person operation into a 125-franchisee network with a multi-million dollar economic footprint across the state. Tom’s story is one that will resonate with anyone who has ever looked at a corporate career and wondered if there was something more, and then actually did something about it. Tom grew up in Nebraska as a farmer, which he describes as the original entrepreneurial proving ground. Risk, reward, and no guaranteed outcome were baked into his upbringing. He carried that mindset into a 21-year corporate career, but after surviving three mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers, the writing was on the wall. Rather than find another company to work for, Tom started looking at what it would mean to finally bet on himself. A former boss had bought into Jan Pro down in Tampa, Tom flew out to meet the founders, and something clicked. Their core values lined up. By the time the flight home landed, his mind was made up. Seven of his eight siblings were entrepreneurs, and he realized he was not supposed to be working for anyone else either. Tom and his wife Carol took a second mortgage out on their home and purchased the rights to develop Jan Pro across the state of Utah, becoming only the 12th city to come on board with the brand and one of the first two locations in the entire Western United States. The first three to five years were exactly what you would expect from any startup. Tom was making sales calls, training new franchise owners, handling operations, and doing whatever needed doing while Carol managed the office while still working remotely for Intermountain Healthcare. Just the two of them for the first six months before bringing on their first hire. Today that team has grown to 12 support staff serving 125 franchise owners across Utah. The Jan Pro model is something Tom explains with a lot of clarity and obvious pride. Rather than sending franchise owners out to fend for themselves, Jan Pro handles the sales, the client contracts, the audits and inspections, the invoicing, and the collections. Franchise owners come to Tom knowing how much business they want to build, they get trained, and then the regional development team goes out and gets their clients for them. Tom compares it to being the general contractor while the franchise owner supplies the labor. It removes most of the barriers that cause small cleaning operations to fail, and it is why the people who follow the model consistently succeed. The success stories are hard to ignore. One franchise owner came in from Logan with just $950, the entry level at the time, starting with $500 a month in cleaning revenue. Twenty years later he is generating $40,000 a month and employs around 20 people, all while keeping his full-time job. Another owner arrived from Venezuela on refugee asylum status after losing three auto mechanic shops in Caracas to the political environment there. He is now Jan Pro Utah’s largest franchise owner, on track to hit a million dollars in revenue in just his fifth year with around 35 employees. These are not outliers. They are what the model produces when people commit to it. Tom is candid about what gets people into trouble. The biggest issue is not the cleaning itself, it is management. A husband and wife team or a two-person operation can generally get to $75,000 or $100,000 in revenue on their own, but something shifts when they bring on employees. The expectation that an employee will care about the work the same way they do is where things start to fall apart. Without proper training, supervision, and ongoing engagement, it can unravel fast. His advice is direct: if you do not have strong business acumen, go get it before you need it, whether through SCORE or another resource that can fill in the gaps. Tom also touches on what it takes mentally to make the leap into franchising or any kind of business ownership. He believes roughly 90% of people want to start something of their own, but half of them talk themselves out of it when they honestly assess their risk tolerance and their ability to push through the hard early years. That self-awareness is not weakness, it is honesty, and Tom respects it. But for those who do have that fortitude, the Jan Pro model is structured to give them as much runway as possible to succeed. Looking ahead, Tom expects 20 to 30 percent year-over-year growth for the next five or more years and is on track to earn Gold Circle recognition among Jan Pro’s top 20 offices worldwide. His son has been part of the business for 12 years and is moving into ownership, setting up a transition that will carry the business well beyond Tom and Carol’s chapter. After 27 years of building, refining, and proving the model, the legacy looks like it is in good hands.   Connect with Tom Richter: Website: janpro.com/utah LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tomrichterutah   Connect with The Ty Brady Way: Email: [email protected] Instagram: @thetybradyway   As always, share, like, and subscribe. We’ll catch you on the next one.

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Dr. Nathan Eliason, a board-certified physician in both family medicine and pathology with a passion for regenerative medicine and addiction treatment. Dr. Eliason shares his journey into medicine, growing up with a doctor for a dad, watching his older brother follow the same path, and spending 11 years between college, medical school, and residency before finding his calling at the intersection of healing and innovation. What starts as a conversation about sore knees and stem cells turns into one of the most eye-opening discussions about addiction recovery you’ll ever hear. Dr. Eliason breaks down regenerative medicine in plain language, covering everything from simple dextrose injections that help tighten loose ligaments and kick off the body’s natural healing response, to platelet-rich plasma therapy using the patient’s own blood, to exosomes derived from stem cells that signal the body to heal the way it did when it was young. The message is straightforward: you don’t have to wait until your knee is bone-on-bone to do something about it. There are real, effective options that can help people avoid surgery and get back to living without pain. The heart of this episode though is NAD, Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, a molecule found in every cell in your body that plays a critical role in energy production. Dr. Eliason explains how NAD levels decline as we age and how replenishing them through IV infusion has produced remarkable results in patients struggling with addiction. He traces the history of NAD therapy all the way back to a bold 1961 paper by Dr. O’Hara, through an addiction clinic in apartheid-era South Africa that treated 20,000 to 30,000 patients, to a secret “amino acid blend” at a Tijuana clinic that turned out to be NAD all along. It is a story that sounds like it belongs in a documentary, and it is completely real. Dr. Eliason shares firsthand accounts of patients who came to him as functioning alcoholics, people who had to wake up at 3 AM for a shot of liquor just to avoid a seizure, and walked away from a 10-day IV treatment completely free of cravings. He explains how NAD does not just address physical withdrawal, it helps the brain heal and restore its energy, which is why so many people who quit alcohol through willpower alone still feel anxious and depressed long after they stop drinking. He even references Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who found that high-dose niacin, NAD’s precursor, finally lifted the anxiety and depression that had stuck around for years after he got sober. Ty and Dr. Eliason also cover the broader uses of NAD therapy including Parkinson’s disease, early Alzheimer’s, seizure disorders, and general energy and mental clarity, making this conversation relevant well beyond addiction. Dr. Eliason is open about the process, the safety, the cost, and what he is ultimately working toward: getting enough clinical data to bring NAD therapy into the mainstream so more people fighting addiction can actually access it. If you or someone you love has been touched by addiction, this one is worth your time.   Connect with Dr. Nathan Eliason: American Wellness Clinic Consultations can be billed to insurance or worked into the treatment process. Dr. Eliason does not want cost to keep anyone from at least looking into their options.   Connect with The Ty Brady Way: Email: [email protected] Instagram: @thetybradyway   As always, share, like, and subscribe. We’ll catch you on the next one.

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Tim Harrison, founder of the Coaching Innovation Lab and a man who works at the intersection of human development and technology. Tim is six foot eight, a former Division I basketball player at Rice University, a certified executive coach, and someone who has spent his career figuring out how to help people realize their potential, first through coaching, then through a nonprofit, and now through AI-powered systems that make that work scale in ways that weren't possible even a few years ago. The story starts with a season-ending injury two years into his college basketball career. Tim was an Under Armour All-American, an Adidas All-American, and had every reason to believe the game would take him somewhere. When that door closed, he got access to an executive coach through a university program, and that single experience changed the direction of his life. He started studying psychology, reading personal development books, and saw a clear thread connecting all of it. He knew that kind of transformation was going to matter more to him than anything else he was learning in school. What happened next is one of the more unusual origin stories you'll hear. At 21, Tim got certified as an executive coach through a program run in partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center, the number one cancer research center in the world. The program was designed for hospital department heads. Tim was in the cohort with them. He was bold enough to ask several of them if he could coach them after the program ended. Most said yes. At 22, he was coaching senior leaders at a major medical institution, building a practice through referrals while simultaneously launching a nonprofit to bring that same kind of coaching to young people in underserved communities. He landed his dream job at a big four consulting firm coming out of college, signed the contract, and then walked away from it. The pandemic, the social justice crisis after George Floyd, and a deep personal conviction that he was meant to contribute more than a corporate ladder could offer pushed him to take a leap with no clear financial path forward. He started the nonprofit anyway. He says the cost of not doing it felt heavier than the risk of doing it, and that calculation has guided most of his major decisions since. Ty and Tim get into AI in a way that actually makes sense for people who are skeptical or intimidated. Tim's framing is simple: AI is not a new subject to study. It's a new tool to reach for while doing the things you're already doing. He breaks down the four zones everyone operates in, from incompetence to genius, and makes the case that AI should be filling the gaps in the lower zones so you can spend more time in the zone where only you can do the work. His line is worth writing down: do what you do best, let AI do the rest. The story that really lands in this conversation happened in 2025 when a political shift in federal funding wiped out the vast majority of revenue from Tim's biggest contract, a multimillion dollar coaching study for biomedical PhD students. He couldn't control what happened. What he could control was how he responded. He used AI to build a custom chatbot trained on all the program's research and operational data, which handled over 500 coach support requests that his team would have otherwise had to address manually. He built an automation that analyzed every coaching session report in real time and populated a live dashboard, eliminating a month-long data analysis process and saving thousands of dollars. He took those savings and launched a new program training entrepreneurs on AI. That program recouped its investment within months. Then a judge blocked the funding cuts and the original program was reinstated. He ended up with two growing revenue streams instead of one, and a leaner, more efficient operation than he started with. He's clear that AI wasn't the hero of that story. The person who knew how to use it was. His advice for anyone who feels stuck is practical and specific. Define where you want to go. Get honest about where you actually are right now, not the catastrophized version, the specific version. Then find the smallest tangible step you would actually take and do it immediately. Don't wait until tomorrow. The momentum that comes from taking even a small action is real, and it compounds. His closing message is the one that ties everything together: who you are is how you prompt. AI multiplies everything, the good and the bad. The only thing you can control is who you are when you're multiplied. So invest in yourself first, then pick up the tools.   🔗 Connect with Tim: CoachinginnovationLab.com 🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/CoachTimHarrison 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Beau Turner, a former real estate investor who sold everything to go all in on Bitcoin mining. Five years later, he's built Abundant Mines into an eight-figure business and is widely considered one of the leading Bitcoin mining co-location hosts in the world, serving hundreds of clients across multiple facilities in Oregon. Beau's path here was anything but smooth. He and his wife lost half a million dollars in their very first mining venture after getting burned by a bad partnership. Most people would have walked away. Beau did the opposite. He looked around, saw thousands of other people who had been scammed or were too scared to try, and decided that was exactly the problem worth solving. That loss didn't just fuel the business. It became the mission. Ty and Beau break down what Bitcoin mining actually is, in plain language, and why so many people get it wrong. Beau explains it simply: miners are the security force and the transaction system for the Bitcoin network, all at once. Think of it as the military and Visa combined, running on energy instead of bureaucracy. He also makes a clear distinction between Bitcoin and crypto, and why he believes conflating the two is one of the most common and costly mistakes people make when they start learning about this space. They get into the business model too. Clients purchase their own servers, those machines live in Abundant Mines' data centers, and for a flat $225 a month per unit, Beau's team handles everything: power, internet, maintenance, and consulting. All the Bitcoin the machine produces goes straight to the client. It's a straightforward setup, and Beau walks through what kind of returns are realistic depending on where Bitcoin's price sits at any given time. One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is Beau's take on energy. He used to study sustainability engineering and believed the goal was to use less. He's completely flipped on that. His view now is that generating more energy is what actually drives prosperity, and that Bitcoin miners are one of the best tools grids have for staying flexible and reliable. He explains how miners in Texas can literally turn off during a heat wave and give power back to the grid, which is something a traditional data center can never do. Beau also talks about the habit that's kept him grounded through all of it: a daily meditation practice he and his wife started together early in their relationship, built around Dr. Joe Dispenza's work. He credits it as the one thing that made everything else possible. His advice for anyone thinking about following a similar path is direct: pick one thing and go all the way in. Shiny object syndrome is real, and splitting your focus is one of the fastest ways to guarantee a mediocre outcome in everything you're chasing. If you've ever been curious about Bitcoin, wondered whether mining is actually worth it, or just want to hear from someone who bet everything on a contrarian idea and built something real out of it, this one is worth your time.   🔗 Connect with Beau: AbundantMines.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with @AbundantMines   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Boaz Gilad, a Jerusalem-born, New York-raised entrepreneur who spent 20 years building one of the most significant real estate portfolios in New York City, took his company public, lost it in a hostile takeover, and came out the other side as one of the sharpest performance coaches in the business. He's the founder of Zenith Clubhouse and the author of the Zenith Code, and he works with CEOs, founders, Olympic athletes, and anyone serious about closing the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Boaz doesn't sugarcoat anything. He talks openly about the 2008 financial crisis wiping out a huge chunk of what he'd built, and then years later watching the company he'd poured everything into get taken from him through a hostile takeover. He's clear that he owns his part in what happened, and he's equally clear that sometimes the wave is just bigger than the surfer. One of his investors told him exactly that during the hardest stretch, and it stuck. The point isn't to avoid failure. The point is how fast you get back on the horse. One of the most honest moments in this conversation is when Boaz pushes back on the entire inspiration industry. He's watched thousands of people walk into his workshops fired up, ready to change their lives, and then disappear by March. His take is direct: inspiration is sugar. It spikes and then it drops, and your actions drop right along with it. What actually moves the needle is discipline, planning the details, and knowing what your next small step is even when you don't feel like taking it. He asks a question worth sitting with: are you committed, or are you just interested? Ty and Boaz also get into what real leadership looks like under pressure. When Boaz's company was going under, a recovery officer told him he was going to fire all 60 employees at once. Boaz said no. He spent his last days in the office having one-on-one conversations with every single person on his team, making sure almost all of them had job interviews lined up before they walked out the door. That's the kind of story that tells you everything about who someone actually is. They cover how to spot a real expert versus someone who just looks the part on social media, why Boaz fires toxic clients even when it costs him money, and what he genuinely believes about AI and where the coaching industry is headed. His view is that AI will keep getting better at giving advice, but it will never replace the human being who can look you in the eye and tell you something you don't want to hear. His legacy isn't about a number or a title. He wants to be fully used before he's gone. That's it. Every conversation, every client, every opportunity to give something real to someone who needs it.   🔗 Connect with Boaz: BoazGilad.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with @unmaskpodcastclips   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with David Homan, a classical composer turned super connector who grew up as a professor's kid in Northern Florida, made his way to New York, and built one of the most intentional relationship networks on the planet. His community now spans 2,600 people across 35 countries and 189 cities, and he didn't build it by working the room. He built it by genuinely asking people what they needed and then actually delivering. David is honest about where he started. He was the shy kid who struggled with his weight and couldn't figure out where he fit in. He wasn't the guy getting invited to things. He was the one wondering if the call would ever come. That experience of not belonging to any one group turned out to be the foundation of everything he's built, because he eventually realized there were thousands of people just like him, people who floated between worlds and never quite had one tribe. That's exactly who his community was built for. The story that really anchors this conversation is what happened when the global arts charity David was running at 26 lost everything to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The funds had been invested since the early nineties, which meant by the time David took over as the youngest CEO in the organization's history, the money was already gone. Most people would have gone into survival mode and chased the most obvious prospects. David did the opposite. Every time someone told him no, he asked what they actually cared about and how he could help them. Nine out of ten people lit up. He started matching them with each other based on what they shared. That simple habit, done a few hundred times over a couple of years, generated 85% more philanthropic leads and eventually landed a front-page New York Times business section article and a multimillion-dollar gift that saved the organization. Ty and David get into what separates people who talk about success from people who actually create it. David's take is direct: the people talking about it are usually trying to convince themselves. The people doing it are too busy to announce it. He's not interested in showboating, and he makes the case that the moment you start performing success, you're already signaling that you don't quite believe it yourself. One of the most practical parts of this conversation is David's take on gratitude as a strategy. He tracks the chain of introductions that led to every major thing in his life and regularly goes back to thank the people who made those moments possible, without asking for anything in return. He walks through a real example where a simple thank-you to an investor led to a top-tier Silicon Valley VC shifting his schedule to take a call with David. Not because David asked. Because he gave first and asked nothing. His filter for who gets into his world is one of the most memorable lines in the episode: he only brings people into his orbit that he would leave his kids with. That's it. If someone doesn't clear that bar, the conversation ends quickly and cleanly. He met over a thousand people last year to vet 500 into his network. That's the level of intentionality behind what looks effortless from the outside. David also opens up about losing his father last year, going from healthy at 87 to hospice to gone, and how grief has a way of making self-doubt louder. What keeps him going isn't a motivational framework. It's the same thing that drove him at 16 when he watched a bully force a girl off a piano bench at a youth leadership event. He stepped in, outplayed the guy, and handed the space back to her. He's been doing a version of that ever since, fighting for people who don't have someone in their corner. That's what gets him out of bed when everything else feels heavy. His legacy is simple. Be a great father. Be someone who meant well and followed through. Everything else is secondary.   🔗 Connect with David: www.davidhoman.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with the_connection_orchestrator   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Chris Hamilton, a former corporate finance professional turned health insurance consultant who walked away from a comfortable six-figure career to fight for something he actually believed in. Chris is the founder of a consulting practice that helps companies manage the rising cost of health insurance, protect their employees, and build better plans outside the traditional system. He's been doing it for ten years, and what started as one client has grown into one of the fastest-moving segments of the health insurance marketplace. Chris grew up as a multi-sport athlete in a small town outside of Southwest Houston, and he'll tell you that background shaped everything. Competition, adversity, getting knocked down and getting back up. Those aren't just sports lessons. They're the same things that carried him through a decade of building something that most people in his industry didn't think was worth the extra work. The story that really sets the tone for this conversation happened early in his career. He was thirty days into the job, had just renewed his first client, and his friends were congratulating him on already getting a raise because the premium went up and his commission went with it. Then a single mom of three walked up to him with tears in her eyes. One of her kids needed a procedure and she couldn't afford the deductible. Chris walked straight into the owner's office after that meeting and told him how he was getting paid. Then he changed it. That moment is where everything started. Ty and Chris get into the real mechanics of why health insurance is broken, why it functions more like an oligopoly than a competitive market, and why the people who created the problem are not the ones who are going to fix it. Chris uses a car insurance analogy that makes the whole thing click: imagine if your auto policy covered oil changes and tire rotations for a $25 copay. That's essentially what's happened with health insurance, and it's a big reason costs keep climbing. They also talk about what it actually takes to build a team worth having. Chris is clear that the best hire he's ever made didn't have the most impressive resume. What he looks for is someone who's a little fired up about how broken the system is. Someone who sees the smoke and wants to be part of putting out the fire. You can teach the technical stuff. You can't teach the want-to. Chris opens up about the sacrifice most people never see: taking an 80% pay cut, giving up the club membership and the perks, and betting on himself in a space where almost nobody was doing what he was trying to do. He's honest that it wasn't glamorous and that people who see him now assume it just happened. It didn't. Two people shaped who he became. His dad, an engineer and a man of his word, gave him his foundation. A C-level mentor he met in finance gave him the real business education that no MBA program ever did. He credits both of them with building the floor he's been standing on ever since. His advice for anyone trying to level up is straightforward: stay a student, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, and find a peer group. Not just people inside your industry, but people outside it too. Sometimes the best answer to a problem comes from someone who has zero context and no assumptions about how things are supposed to work. The only legacy Chris cares about is what his kids think of him. That's it. Everything else is noise.   🔗 Connect with Chris: fixhealthinsurance.com 🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chamilton 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with JB Glossinger, the man behind Morning Coach, one of the longest-running daily coaching podcasts on the planet. JB has published five books with Hay House, spoken to crowds of 5,000 people, beaten Oprah and Ellen in the podcast charts, and has shown up every single day for 21 years to deliver 15 minutes of coaching to help people start their mornings right. He's done over 6,000 episodes. And he started in a world where nobody even knew what a podcast was. But the origin story is what makes this one worth your time. JB grew up in Indiana with a blue-collar mom who raised him alone until he was ten, while his father, a famous pro football player, didn't pay child support. In third grade, he got held back, labeled special needs, and pulled out of class to work on his speech while the other kids stayed behind and learned. He never talked about that publicly until recently. Now it's the first word in his new book, Get It Done Now. He wanted people to know that none of what he's built came from a golden spoon or a Harvard degree. He had to find a different way. That different way started with a letter so bad that the CEO of an aerospace company called his sales manager over just to read it out loud and ask if JB had even gone to college. They hired him anyway. He spent the next decade in aerospace, moved through sales into running companies, and eventually burned out so badly working 67-hour weeks that he ended up in the emergency room. That's when he walked away and built something on his own terms. Ty and JB get into the concept of Zone Two, which JB borrowed from endurance running and applied to business and life. The idea is simple: most people are sprinting all the time, running at a four or five, burning out and crashing. The people who actually build something lasting are the ones doing the boring, consistent work every single day at a sustainable pace. JB qualified for the Boston Marathon not by training harder, but by running 40 miles a week at a controlled heart rate. He built a business not by going viral, but by showing up 6,000 times. They talk about what separates coaches who make it from the 90% who don't. JB's answer is direct: most people skip the one-on-one work and go straight to trying to build an internet business. That's backwards. You have to understand what problems people actually have before you can build anything worth selling. He also makes the case that the people who pay you the least are almost always the hardest to work with, and that having a barrier to entry isn't about being exclusive. It's about attracting people who actually value what you do. One of the most memorable parts of this conversation is JB's story about the Israeli special forces trainer he found in an old warehouse in 2005 when things weren't going well. The guy tested him with a question JB still won't repeat on air, then told him to show up at five in the morning. JB trained with him for 16 years. Three-day workouts, no sleep, no food, swimming through black water in the middle of the night. He says it changed everything about how he thinks about being pushed. The key, he says, is finding someone who will take you to the edge but won't break you. That's what a real coach does. JB's legacy has nothing to do with personal development rankings or podcast charts. He wants a statue next to St. Francis at an animal shelter. He and his wife are giving everything they can to saving animals, and that's the real reason he's still building. He's also building a place in Palomino, Colombia, in the middle of the jungle, because when it's time to go, he wants to go out having actually lived. His closing message is the simplest one: don't give up. Find one person who believes in your crazy ideas. Borrow their belief when yours runs out. And then go build something.   🔗 Connect with JB: MorningCoach.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with @MorningCoach   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Natalia Zacharin, founder of Zacharin Consulting, a multimillion dollar accounting firm she built from scratch starting at age 50 with no accounting degree, no clients, and no real plan. What she had was a need, a willingness to figure it out, and enough stubbornness to keep going when most people would have quit. Natalia's story doesn't start with a passion or a calling. It starts with a divorce in 2012, a stretch of poverty, years of grinding through jobs that were slowly disappearing, and a conversation in a cafe in Annapolis, Maryland where someone she was dating said, almost offhandedly, why don't you just start your own business? She thought he was joking. He wasn't. She took a short course on starting a business, followed the steps, got her first client, and then went to work figuring out how to actually do bookkeeping. That's the whole origin story. No dramatic leap of faith, just a fork in the road and a decision to go left. What followed was anything but easy. She worked full time while learning a brand new skill set from YouTube videos and books. Her first year in business she made $38,000 in gross sales. She spent the first three years fighting imposter syndrome almost weekly, asking herself why she was doing something she never wanted to do in the first place. The answer was always the same: it was working, clients were coming, and she had nothing to fall back on. So she kept going. Ty and Natalia get into the three beliefs she had to break to get where she is today. The first was the negative self-talk that told her she was too old to start over. Every time that voice showed up, she learned to stop it in its tracks and ask whether it was actually being helpful. The second was the envy she felt scrolling through social media watching other people live the life she wanted. She flipped that story and started telling herself she already had that life, even when she didn't. Before long, she started actually having it. The third was the deepest one: growing up as a first-generation American with the belief that a woman's security came from a husband. She had no safety net, no partner to lean on, and no fallback. In hindsight, she says that was exactly what she needed, because it left her no option but to keep moving forward. One of the most honest moments in this conversation is when Natalia talks about the 11 months she spent reaching out to people every single day and hearing no over and over again. She describes it as feeling like she was sinking further into an abyss with no sign of when things would turn around. She kept going anyway. That's the whole answer. She kept going. They also get into how she built the business beyond bookkeeping. She did all the sales calls herself for years, and she kept hearing the same thing from business owners: I don't understand what these numbers mean. That pattern became fractional CFO services, which is now the core of what Zacharin Consulting does. She helps business owners stop looking at where they are and start seeing where they're headed, projecting six to twelve months out so they can make decisions before problems become crises. The tax and payroll services came later, both born out of frustration with industry gaps she kept watching hurt her clients. Natalia's non-negotiables are worth noting: exercise with a personal trainer because she knows she won't show up for herself alone, sleep after years of running on fumes, hobbies and time with her kid on weekends, and getting her hair done, which is blocked on her calendar and visible to her entire team. She's not apologetic about any of it. You can't lead sixteen people if you're running on empty. Her definition of success has shifted completely. It started as survival. Then it became about the quality of service she was delivering. Now it's about her team having real careers and real opportunities, her clients getting everything they deserve, and giving back to causes she cares about. The business is no longer just about her, and she's clear that's exactly how it should be. Her closing message is simple: it's harder than you think it's going to be, and it's worth it. Find a room where you're the smallest business in it. And leave your ego at the door, because the goal is to keep hiring people who are better than you.   🔗 Connect with Natalia: ZacharinConsulting.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with @GrowYourBottomLine   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Jeff Shafritz, a franchise consultant who has spent his entire career in franchising and has been helping people find the right business opportunity for over 20 years. Jeff started out selling season tickets for the Georgetown Hoyas, stumbled into franchise development at Athlete's Foot in Atlanta, worked his way up to Director of Franchise Development of the Americas, and then had the rug pulled out from under him on September 11th, 2001, thirteen days after his first son was born. He was in a new city with nothing lined up. That's when franchise consulting started, and he hasn't looked back since. What makes Jeff different from most people in his space is that he doesn't think of himself as a salesperson. He thinks of himself as a matchmaker, closer to a buyer's real estate agent than a traditional sales rep. His job is to figure out whether franchising is even the right path for someone, and if it is, to find the specific opportunity that fits their goals, their skillset, their investment range, and the kind of life they actually want to live. He gets paid by the franchisor, not the candidate, and because franchising is regulated by the FTC, the fee is the same no matter how someone finds their franchise. Working with Jeff costs nothing extra and gets you someone in your corner who has no incentive to push you toward the wrong fit. Ty and Jeff get into what actually separates elite performers from average ones in this business. Jeff's answer is simple: consistency and not chasing the deal. The people who burn out or wash out are the ones focused on closing something, anything, just to get paid. Jeff's whole model is built on doing right by the person in front of him, even when that means telling someone they shouldn't buy a business at all. He had that exact conversation recently with someone who had the money but not the motivation. He told them to walk away. That kind of honesty is what's built his referral base over two decades. One of the most honest moments in this conversation is when Jeff admits that even he was terrified when he finally bought his own fitness franchise. He had spent his entire career helping other people through that anxiety, and then when it was his turn to sign, he froze. His wife had to sit him down and remind him that this was literally his area of expertise. It's a good reminder that fear doesn't care how much you know. It shows up anyway, and the goal isn't to eliminate it. It's to do the work, make the informed decision, and move forward anyway. They also get into a conversation that a lot of parents need to hear: the real cost comparison between sending a kid to college who doesn't know what they want versus putting that same money into a low-overhead franchise. Jeff has worked with families spending $120,000 to $250,000 on a four-year degree for a kid who isn't sure what they want to study. For that same investment, someone could open a business, build real equity, and walk away four years later with something worth selling. He's not anti-college. He's pro-options, and he makes the case clearly. The story that sticks from this conversation is a client Jeff worked with during the 2008 recession. The guy had lost a significant amount of money in real estate, had very little left, and refused to go work for someone else. Jeff helped him find an in-home senior care franchise. Within a few years, that business was generating serious cash flow and eventually sold for multiple millions of dollars. Jeff calls it a resurrection story, and it's the kind of outcome that keeps him doing what he does. His message to anyone sitting on the fence about business ownership is straightforward: you don't have to figure this out alone, and you don't have to pay for the help. The conversation is free. The only question is whether you're ready to have it.   🔗 Connect with Jeff: FranchiseGuideGroup.com 🔗 Listener-specific page: podcast.franchiseguidance.com/ty 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with @JeffShafritz_FranGuidance   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Scott Jones, a 30-plus year veteran of the franchise world who has sat on every side of the table. He's been a multi-unit franchisee across multiple brands, a franchisor, and a co-founder of a support services company that now serves about 80,000 franchised locations worldwide. If there's a three-sided fence in franchising, Scott's been on all three sides of it, and that perspective is exactly what makes this conversation worth your time. Scott's entrepreneurial roots go back to his childhood dinner table. His dad was a corporate executive with an oil company who hit an inflection point when the company got acquired and relocation to Chicago was the only way to keep his job. He said no, walked away, and started building businesses. Scott watched all of it up close. He never had a job until he graduated college, was always creating something on his own, and didn't stay in the corporate world long before following the same path his dad had blazed. That early front-row seat to what entrepreneurship actually looks like, the good days and the hard ones, shaped everything that came after. One of the most honest moments in this conversation is when Scott shares his real take on the franchise industry. Out of more than 4,000 unique franchise brands, he believes about half are absolute train wrecks based on unit economics alone. They don't have the support systems, the processes, or a game plan that gives someone a real shot at success. Another 40% are okay to good. That leaves roughly 10% that are truly exceptional. He knows that's not a popular thing to say in his industry. He says it anyway because it's the truth, and because his whole job is built on helping people find that 10%. Ty and Scott get into the biggest mistake people make when looking at franchises: falling in love with the widget. I like this sandwich, so this must be a great business. Scott reframes the whole conversation by asking a different question: how are you going to measure any opportunity? The moment he asks that, nobody talks about sandwiches anymore. They start talking about quality of life, financial goals, what they want their life to look like in one year, three years, ten years. A business is a vehicle. The question is whether it's the right vehicle for where you're actually trying to go, and whether you're the right person to drive it. The early mistake Scott owns is one a lot of founders share: he had to control everything and couldn't let go. It took a good mentor and some hard experience to recognize that his job wasn't to do all the tasks himself. It was to build people, develop systems, and create a culture where exceptional is expected and rewarded. He makes a point worth sitting with: average employees can hide in a large corporate environment. In a small business, they hurt you. The goal is to build a culture where people who think and work at a high level actually thrive, and where people who haven't operated that way before get the chance to discover they can. The story that closes this episode is one Scott spoke about the day before recording. Two engineers, both in corporate jobs, came to him five years ago with a dream of eventually working their way out. The plan was to start a franchise, keep both jobs, and maybe in two years he'd be able to leave. They found a boutique fitness franchise in Alabama. He left his job in five or six months. Eight or nine months later they added a second business. A year ago they added a third. Their net worth has increased about tenfold over five years. She still works her corporate job by choice. They're now looking at buying the buildings their businesses operate in rather than leasing them. That's the outcome Scott is working toward every time he picks up the phone. His closing message is simple and direct: don't settle. Too many people are stuck in a life they don't love because it's the thing they know. There are better ways. The only thing standing between where you are and where you want to be is the willingness to step outside what's familiar and find out what's actually possible.   🔗 Connect with Scott: FranchiseGuideGroup.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Matt Stevens, known simply as The Franchise Guy. Matt has spent 25 years as a franchise consultant flying the flag with FranChoice, an international group of franchise professionals who help people find the right business opportunity without the guesswork. Before that, he spent years inside the franchise world itself, starting as a young guy running a painting business in New Hampshire in 1988, working his way up to franchise development roles, and flying around the country for years before realizing he was missing his daughter's childhood in the process. That wake-up call led him to where he is now, and he hasn't looked back. The story that sets the tone for this whole conversation starts in the cold. Matt was running his painting franchise in southwestern New Hampshire, and leads were thin. No direct mail, no digital marketing, just door knocking and yard signs. So he made a decision: every weekend, he would cold call houses until he had 10 estimates scheduled. He did that for months straight, in February, March, and April, walking streets in a short sleeve shirt in mid-fifty-degree weather because he was moving fast enough to stay warm. He never left a Sunday night without those 10 appointments. That year he won rookie of the year for the Northern New England division. He credits two things: fear and pride. He had given up a baseball summer to run a business, and he was not going home empty-handed. Ty and Matt get into what actually separates the top performers in franchising from everyone else. Matt calls it exercising your ABs: Attitude, Ambition, Behavior, and Skill. But the fifth element, the one most people miss, is Engagement. He learned that the hard way in 1988 when he spent hundreds of hours solving problems on his own that a single phone call to a neighboring franchisee could have answered in ten minutes. The whole point of a franchise system is that you are not doing it alone. You paid for the knowledge of everyone who came before you. Not using it is like buying a map and refusing to open it. One of the most practical parts of this conversation is Matt's take on the single biggest mistake people make when looking at franchises: turning assumptions into conclusions. Someone sees a franchise advertised for $70,000 and assumes that's the total investment. Someone else assumes they need millions to get started. Matt placed a candidate who got into a franchise for $15,000 cash, borrowed another $50,000, built it for seven years, and retired. The numbers are almost never what people assume, and a few honest conversations can change everything. Matt also walks through how he structures his days when things are clicking: one consultation, one introduction, and consistent marketing activity every single day. He sets aside time rather than chasing a number, because he knows that some days one hour of marketing produces five appointments and some days it produces zero. The activity is what matters. He calls it butt in seat, and it's the same principle whether you're trying to lose weight, renovate a room, or build a business. The story that closes this episode is one Matt has carried with him for fifteen years. A friend got downsized from a $200,000 executive role and came to Matt looking for a business. He found the right opportunity, but hesitated too long and someone else grabbed it. He started over with a second option. Then the person who bought the first opportunity had a serious health issue and had to sell, and Matt called his friend and said, this is yours if you want it, pennies on the dollar. His friend bought both businesses. He has been franchisee of the year in both national systems and is still going strong fifteen years later. That's the kind of outcome that keeps Matt doing what he does. His legacy is simple: do the right thing, and trust that one person can do what another person has already done. You just have to know what that person actually did to get there.   🔗 Connect with Matt: HeIsTheFranchiseGuy.com 🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/IAmTheFranchiseGuy 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Ndzaba Mngomezulu, an art instructor and author from Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) who now lives in Brazil and is on a mission to help busy, discouraged adults fall back in love with drawing. Ndzaba shares how growing up in an education system that pushed math and science over creativity slowly trained him away from art. The message wasn't always said out loud, but it was clear: certain subjects carried more weight, and art was treated as optional. For someone who genuinely loved creating, that kind of environment quietly chips away at what you believe is possible for yourself. So he spent years chasing music instead, buying gear, making beats, and thinking that was his path. It wasn't until a church service at the end of 2024 that he felt a clear pull back to drawing. He listened, went back to basics in January 2025, and watched his skills take off faster than he ever expected. Ty and Ndzaba get into the real stuff: what it means to carry a gift you've been ignoring, why humility is the most underrated skill in business and in art, and how getting fired from a job he didn't even love turned into the exact push he needed to break into the gaming industry. You'll hear how seven months of uncertainty, a pregnant wife, and a Discord server led to an opportunity he never would have found if things had gone according to plan. They also talk about the role AI plays in his business and why he sees it as a tool for filtering and efficiency rather than a replacement for real human connection. Ndzaba is clear that people are craving authenticity right now, and that the artists and creators who lean into that will have more opportunity than ever before. Ndzaba also talks about what he's building with Art Creators Academy, a platform designed to take struggling artists from work they're ashamed to show anyone to drawing with real confidence. He's not just teaching technique. He's helping people give themselves permission to start again, and to stop waiting until they feel ready. His message is straightforward and worth hearing: you are the most important investment you will ever make in your life. Not the investment someone told you to make. The one you already know you want to make. If you've been sitting on a creative passion and telling yourself it's too late or too impractical, this conversation is going to hit close to home.   🔗 Connect with Ndzaba: https://www.artcreatorsacademy.com 🎙️ Follow along: @thetybradyway with Ndzaba.Mngomezulu   As always, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with George Blackwell Smith, the founder of Lucky Cajun Seasoning. George grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, moved to Baton Rouge for high school, and fell in love with the food. Not just the taste of it, but the way it made him feel. That curiosity led him to culinary school, years in restaurant kitchens, and eventually to building a seasoning brand from scratch out of his home during COVID. George is the kind of builder who figures things out the hard way and is honest about it. He talks about the early days of navigating Tennessee cottage food laws just to get his first blend to market, spending a year trying to find a licensed kitchen he could actually afford, and learning quickly that chasing shelf space in big box stores was a lot of footwork for very little return. He made the call early to go direct to consumer and build the relationship with the customer himself. That decision has shaped everything since. You will hear him get real about the failure that changed him most. He had to close a restaurant and file for bankruptcy. He says when it finally ended, something unexpected happened. His head got clear. All the things he should have done differently came rushing in at once, and for the first time in a long time he could actually think straight. He took that clarity with him and has been building differently ever since. George also talks about what it means to create your own luck. He is not talking about wishful thinking. He is talking about the RAS, the part of your brain that only finds what it is already looking for. If you are not actively looking for opportunity, you will not see it even when it is right in front of you. He used that exact principle the day of this recording to find a new sales channel he had been overlooking for months. And if you are trying to change your luck this week, he gives you three things to start with. Read self-improvement books. Build a simple morning routine. And make a short list of what actually needs to get done today, then go do it. This one is grounded, practical, and worth your time. 🔗 https://theluckycajun.com/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway with lucky_cajun_seasoning As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Justin Ricklefs, founder of Guild Collective and author of Give a Damn: The Catalyst for Caring Companies. Justin spent eight years in the front office of the Kansas City Chiefs before walking away from corporate life to build something on his own terms. What followed was nine years of hard lessons, slow growth, and a lot of clarity about what actually matters in business and in life. Justin opens up about the leader who shaped him most. A man named Clyde who ran Learfield Sports and somehow knew the name of every employee's spouse and newborn kid, even the ones making $27,000 a year. That kind of care left a mark on Justin early, and he has been building toward that standard ever since. You will hear why Justin completely flipped on the idea of doing more. He used to chase every new service, every new opportunity, every next hill. Now he is ruthless about cutting, simplifying, and getting clear on who he actually serves. He talks about what Zig Ziglar called the "wandering generalist" versus the "meaningful specific" and why shrinking your focus is one of the hardest and most freeing things you can do in business. Justin also gets honest about what success really looks like. His three core values, presence, peace, and purpose, are not just words on a wall. They are the filter he runs every decision through. He talks about what it means to feel wealthy without a big bank account and why the scoreboard can lie to you if you are not careful about what you are actually chasing. And if you are building something from scratch, he gives you the first three things he would focus on. None of them are what most people reach for first. This one is worth your full attention. 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinricklefs/  🎙️ @thetybradyway As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with not one but two guests, Russ Gaiser and Mike Flick, co-founders of Retirement Income Headquarters of America, for a conversation that could genuinely change the way you think about retirement and the Social Security decisions most people get dangerously wrong. Russ and Mike come from different backgrounds, Russ from nine years of active duty Air Force and healthcare administration, Mike from systems analysis and human resources, but both arrived at the same conclusion independently: Social Security is most people’s biggest pension, and almost nobody is treating it that way. They partnered to fill that gap, building a five-step proprietary planning process that meets people right at the doorstep of retirement and helps them use Social Security as the cornerstone of a plan built to last. The heart of the episode is a myth-busting deep dive into what most people get wrong. The first myth is that you can evaluate Social Security in a vacuum by running a simple break-even analysis for one person. In reality, for married couples especially, every decision ripples outward to affect spousal benefits, survivor benefits, and tax exposure in widowhood. Russ points out that 80% of men die married while 80% of women die single, with the average widow spending 15 years alone, often on a dramatically reduced income that gets taxed worse as a single filer. The second myth is that Social Security is going away entirely. Russ walks through why even in a worst-case scenario where Congress does nothing, roughly 80% of benefits would still be payable through payroll taxes, and why claiming early out of fear of missing out often means locking in a permanently smaller benefit. The third myth, and perhaps the most costly, is the assumption that you automatically receive half of your spouse’s benefit. The reality involves a web of rules around full retirement age, early claiming reductions, and timing that most people never untangle on their own. Russ and Mike each share a client story that illustrates exactly what’s at stake. Russ helped a divorced woman discover she qualified for a widower’s benefit on her ex-husband’s record, something Social Security never told her and wouldn’t have, netting her roughly $60,000 she passed on to her children as a legacy. Mike helped a woman who had been flatly told by a Social Security office that she couldn’t receive a divorced spouse benefit because she was still working. That was incomplete information. She ended up receiving over $13,000 in benefits she was told she couldn’t have. Both stories share the same moral: the rules are complex, the SSA is not legally permitted to give advice, and the cost of not knowing is enormous. On the business side, Russ and Mike are equally sharp. Mike does a calendar audit, color-coding his week green for energy-giving activities like seeing clients, red for draining admin tasks that get delegated, and yellow for necessary obligations. Russ draws the distinction between being interested in excellence and being committed to it, arguing that when you feel the temptation to take shortcuts or deliver generic answers, that’s precisely the moment you have to hold the line. Their closing message is direct: 77% of households surveyed by the National Institute on Retirement Security believed they would outlive their money. Russ and Mike’s response to that stat is typically not a savings problem. It’s a planning strategy problem. And the consultation to find out which one you’re facing costs nothing.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] 🔗https://beyondbreakevenbook.com/ 🔗 https://incomeplanhq.com/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Chris Papin, the rare professional who is both a licensed attorney and a CPA, for a straight-talking conversation on what it actually takes to build a business that lasts without stepping on your own feet along the way. Chris’s path to occupying that unusual crossover between law and accounting started with a simple question in an accounting class: why are we skipping these sections? When his professor explained that CPAs stop at a certain point and everything beyond crosses into legal territory, Chris immediately thought it was inefficient to make small business owners hire two separate professionals to solve what is fundamentally one problem. That question became his career. The throughline of this conversation is ownership. Chris is candid that the most common mistake he sees isn’t a tax error or a legal misstep, it’s a trust problem. Business owners who have never had a true fiduciary relationship come in guarded, assuming they’re being sold something. He also draws a sharp distinction between urgent and important, arguing that most people aren’t wasting time on purpose, they’re just defaulting to what’s comfortable rather than what the business actually needs. His rule of thumb mirrors Ty’s: if someone else can do it better and faster, hand it off and stay in your zone of genius. The most memorable moment comes when Ty asks what advice Chris would give someone chasing success, and Chris answers without hesitation: stop chasing success. The most successful people he knows aren’t motivated by the trophy. They’re motivated by the people they can help and the legacy they can leave. The success, he says, is always the byproduct, never the destination. Chris closes with a simple challenge to every listener: take one thing from today and go do something with it. One step in the right direction is how everything worth building actually begins.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] 🔗https://www.papincpa.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispapin/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Andy Neary, former professional baseball pitcher turned insurance industry consultant and founder of Complete Game Consulting, for a conversation packed with hard-earned wisdom on branding, leadership, mindset, and what it really takes to go from stuck to scaling. Andy’s path into insurance started the way many do: by accident. After playing Division One baseball at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and spending two years in the Milwaukee Brewers minor league system, he found a pink slip in his locker and a family friend pointing him toward New England Financial. But the limiting beliefs that derailed his baseball career, fear of judgment, fear of comparison, fear of failure, followed him straight into his sales career and kept him mediocre for the better part of a decade. The real turning point came in 2014 when he and his fiancé Amy packed up and moved to Colorado, giving Andy a blank slate and the push he needed to bet on himself for the first time. He built a personal brand on LinkedIn when most people in the industry were still laughing at the idea, generated inbound leads by showing up every day with valuable content, and eventually had peers asking him to teach them what he’d done. By 2021, he walked away from his book of business entirely and went all in on Complete Game Consulting, which today helps insurance professionals craft a sales message that gets the right prospects to say, tell me more. The heart of this conversation is the mindset gap between six-figure and seven-figure producers, and Andy breaks it down into three shifts. The first is investing in yourself without waiting for someone else to foot the bill, a non-negotiable he says separates top producers from everyone else. The second is putting in the work when no one is watching. The third is owning the result, good or bad, and treating every loss as data rather than defeat. From there, Andy walks through the three questions every stuck agent needs to answer: what makes you different, what is your zone of genius, and who is your ideal buyer? Get those three things clear, he argues, and you have the foundation to become a genuine thought leader in your niche, regardless of whether you’ve been in the business two months or twenty years. Andy and Ty also dig into the future of the industry, and Andy makes a compelling case that AI won’t replace the relationship-driven insurance professional, but it will absolutely replace the transactional broker. His take is that the producer role is shifting from consultative advisor to industry expert, and agents who embrace that shift and use AI to automate the mundane so they can spend more time on relationships will thrive. Those still evaluating their stance on AI, in his words, are already getting left behind. The episode closes with two pieces of advice that Andy, a self-described natural introvert, says changed the way he sells. First, if you believe in what you sell and believe it helps people, you have an obligation to tell as many people as possible. Second, your job in a sales conversation isn’t to win the business, it’s to help the prospect make a clear and confident decision, even if that decision is no. Andy leaves everything with one final word: consistency. It’s the only secret sauce, and the best producers in the industry have simply mastered the art of showing up every single day. As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] 🔗https://andyneary.com 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @accelerateyourinsurancesales

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Skip Wilson, digital marketing veteran, agency founder, and self-described framework guy, for a candid and practical conversation about building a business from the ground up, leading with intention, and defining success on your own terms. Skip’s origin story is one of the most disarming you’ll hear: he got into marketing at 16 by telling a girl he was a writer to impress her, and then actually had to become one. That early pattern of committing first and figuring it out later carried him all the way to a VP of Digital Media role at iHeart Media, where he spent over a decade building and leading teams at scale. When he finally left the corporate world to go out on his own, the imposter syndrome he’d somehow dodged in his fearless teenage years hit him full force, a reminder that confidence isn’t linear and that even the most experienced leaders have to keep earning it. Skip opens up about watching his father, a lifelong entrepreneur, lose his business, including the planes and everything that came with it, and how witnessing that from a front-row seat taught him that there is no such thing as arriving. You never get to stop building. He also shares one of the most relatable struggles of his career: learning to code while dyslexic at a time when WordPress required actual programming knowledge. Something that took him five times longer than anyone else, and something he quietly pushed through without ever letting a client know. The conversation takes a sharp turn into team building and leadership, where Skip is refreshingly specific. He offers a mathematical framework for employee performance built around four levers: desire, ability, expectation, and tools. His argument is that most underperformance isn’t a talent problem but an expectation problem, and that giving people a clear scorecard for their role changes everything. He also makes a strong case for hiring people who will push back, disagree, and tell you when something is dumb, especially in the early days, while acknowledging that his own tendency toward bluntness required him to eventually hire a COO to bring the warmth and relational culture his team also needed. On the subject of success, Skip draws a clear line between who he was twenty years ago, chasing a name and personal recognition, and who he is today, someone who actively shies away from the spotlight because he’s more interested in impact than in being known for impact. His definition of legacy is sitting on his desk in the form of a fortune cookie he kept not out of superstition but because he genuinely hopes it comes true: you’ll become known for your generosity. He points to Milton Hershey and Walt Disney as his north stars, two builders who created not just great companies but entire communities and whose generosity still sends students to college and fills theme parks decades after they’re gone. Skip closes by inviting listeners to reach out at [email protected], where his team offers free marketing audits and business strategy conversations, because as both Skip and Ty agree, entrepreneurs take care of each other.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] 🔗https://legendarypodcasts.com/skip-wilson/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @draftadvertising

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Rome Madison, a two-decade veteran of the precision medicine and life science industry turned keynote speaker, author, and confidence coach, for a conversation that is equal parts biography, business wisdom, and raw inspiration. Rome unpacks a journey that began not in a lab or a lecture hall, but on a football field in small-town Dennison, Texas, where he graduated college with a 2.0 GPA in general studies before teaching himself the language of genetics and genomics from medical school libraries. He spent his early career at the ground floor of the precision medicine revolution, building networks of key opinion leaders at top medical schools before eventually rising to VP of Sales. When a leadership regime change left him tutoring his own peers and spoon-feeding the industry to the very people he reported to, he made the leap in 2016 to launch his own consulting firm, Genomic Selling Solutions, helping early and mid-stage life science companies stop burning through capital and start competing with sound strategy. His first client? A multi-billionaire doctor who was making headlines for claiming he would cure cancer, whom Rome approached cold at a major oncology conference by walking straight past his entourage and sticking out his hand. The heart of this conversation is confidence, and Rome’s framework for building it. He breaks down the three anchors he teaches in his Confidence Clinic: acceptance of who you are in the moment, self-competence rooted in your genuine areas of strength, and strategy, even an imperfect one. Together, these three things allow anyone to show up powerfully, not because they have it all figured out, but because they’ve stopped letting what they lack drown out what they know. He speaks candidly about imposter syndrome, noting that a persistent 2.0 GPA graduate with no PhD had to override every instinct telling him he didn’t belong before he could build something remarkable. Rome also offers one of the most refreshing definitions of success you’ll hear, pushing back on the idea that hitting a revenue number or acquiring a status symbol constitutes a life well built. To Rome, success is a place you live, not a moment you reach, and it has to be defined by meaning and fulfillment first, with the metrics following behind. He traces that philosophy back to a season of unemployment early in his career, when a college friend mailed him a copy of The Purpose Driven Life and its opening words, “It’s not about you,” rewired how he saw everything. That single habit of reading, of biographies, of books that challenged and stretched him, is what gave him the discipline to self-educate into one of the most specialized industries in healthcare. He closes with a tribute to the two people who shaped him most: his mother, the first college graduate in their family who put herself through the University of Texas as a single working mom and told Rome he had absolutely no excuse, and his grandfather Richard Jackson, born in 1920 in Chickasaw Indian territory, an eighth-grade education, 33 years at Southwestern Bell, a pig farm, real estate, and AT&T and Walt Disney stock that kept sending dividend checks long after he passed, ultimately funding Rome’s daughters’ college accounts. As Rome puts it, as a Black man in America, he knows he is his ancestors’ wildest dreams, and he wants every listener to stretch their vision of themselves just as wide.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram 🎙️ @thetybradyway 🔗 YouTube | romemadison.com

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty hosts a high-energy training call with his longtime friend and agency-building veteran Scott Heusser, who breaks down the four types of Medicare agents and shares the habits and strategies that helped him grow from a corporate career at United Healthcare to running an agency that wrote 7,000 applications in a single year. Scott opens up about his journey, from managing United Healthcare’s broker division and scaling from 25 to 1,200 agents overnight, to nearly quitting 80 times during his first year running his own agency on the East Coast, before the mentorship of Ty Brady and others helped him push through. Before diving into the four agent types, Scott challenges every listener to write down their top three daily priorities, backed by the sobering stat that only 11% of Americans actually accomplish their top three priorities each day. He also makes the case for 50 contacts per week for full-time agents, showing that 2,500 annual contacts at just a 10% conversion rate equals 250 applications, simply from opening your mouth and telling people what you do. Scott then walks through all four types. The lead driven agent relies on sources like Our Marketing, Target Leads, Lead Heroes, RGI, Facebook, and the Integrity Lead Marketplace, with the real differentiator being how hard you work the lead, not what you paid for it. The Medicare seminar agent hosts dinner events to deliver Medicare 101 presentations, with one of Scott’s North Carolina agents building a 300-client book doing nothing but seminars for two years. The Medicare kiosk agent works high-traffic locations like Walmart during AEP, county fairs, and even rural Dollar Generals, where Scott’s team once wrote 25 brand new to Medicare applications in a single county fair weekend. Ty adds a key distinction every kiosk agent needs to know: the rules restrict approaching people, but engaging someone or asking a question is a different matter entirely. Scott’s message is simple: success comes down to habits, hustle, and being willing to tell your story wherever you are.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @heusserscott

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Mike Saunders, a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, and the creator of the federally trademarked Authority Positioning Portfolio. The two have history, Ty was a guest on Mike’s show years ago, and now the tables have turned for a conversation that is equal parts business strategy, personal philosophy, and hard-won wisdom from someone who built something real the slow and honest way. Mike’s journey did not start in marketing. He spent a decade in the mortgage industry at JP Morgan Chase before the 2007 crash effectively wiped out the world he had built. Rather than wait it out, he got his MBA in marketing, launched his own firm, and promptly made every mistake a new entrepreneur can make, chasing every client, offering every service, and spreading himself so thin that nothing stuck. For four to five years he describes it plainly as a desolate and dark time, with a wife, four kids in private school, and the pressure of it all bearing down. But buried inside that stretch of struggle was the moment that changed everything, the day he handed out his first book at a conference and watched the room respond differently than they ever had to a PDF or a blog post. That one moment became the foundation of everything he does today. What Mike built from that moment is a concept he calls the Authority Positioning Portfolio, a done-for-you system that positions independent financial advisors as celebrity experts through podcast interviews, TV placements, press releases, and books, all indexed by Google and working around the clock to pre-frame trust and credibility before a prospect ever picks up the phone. He draws on a principle from 1960s philosopher Marshall McLuhan to explain why this works: the medium carrying your message gives it as much value, if not more, than the message itself. The same insight that might get ignored on a LinkedIn post becomes instantly compelling when it is delivered in a televised interview. It is not about the content changing. It is about where it is seen. One of the sharpest moments in the episode comes when Mike flips the script on the ghosting problem that plagues so many advisors. When leads no-show or disappear without explanation, most people assume it is a follow-up problem or a pricing problem. Mike argues it is a credibility problem, and the terrifying part is that no one ever tells you. They just quietly decide you are not worth their time based on what they found, or did not find, when they Googled you. The solution is not more ads. It is permanent, indexed, trust-building assets that are working even when you are not. Ty and Mike also dig into what separates people who succeed from those who stay stuck, and Mike’s answer is simple but unsparing. If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward, because everyone behind you is still moving forward. He shares the story of an advisor who chose the higher-priced package not because it was comfortable but because he had learned that every time he stepped into discomfort and trusted the process, it worked out. That, Mike says, is exactly the mindset of someone ready to grow. He also introduces his daily VIP Three habit, three outreach touches per day to referral sources or strategic alliances, and his end-of-day practice of recording one good thing, a simple discipline that keeps gratitude and momentum running in the same direction. The episode closes with Mike finishing one of Ty’s sentences in a way that lands hard. You either win or you lose? Wrong. You win or you learn. It is a phrase that captures the entire arc of Mike’s story, from mortgage crash to marketing mastery, and it is the principle he would leave anyone with who is just getting started. Mike can be reached at MikeSaunders360.com, where his full authority hub, interviews, and contact information are all in one place.   🔗 https://mikesaunders360.com/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty sits down with Peter Justen, a serial entrepreneur, efficiency expert, and the man on a mission to fix one of the most broken application processes in America. Peter’s background reads like a masterclass in reinvention, from driving a bulldozer as a kid in a town where your options were the steel plant or the auto factory, to building nationwide mortgage banking companies, testifying on Capitol Hill, and constructing entrepreneurship ecosystems for cities, state governments, and even the nation of South Africa. What ties all of it together is a single question he has asked his entire life: why not? Peter’s pivot into the world of Medicaid was not a calculated business move. It was personal. When he moved his mother to Virginia in her mid-eighties and tried to get her enrolled in a program she was perfectly qualified for, what should have been a straightforward process turned into a four-month ordeal of back-and-forth letters, confusing questions, and daily phone calls filled with fear and anxiety from a woman who just needed to know if she could afford her medication. One of the application questions asked his 85-year-old mother if she was pregnant. That was the moment Peter decided someone had to fix it, and if not him, then who? What he built is remarkable in its simplicity. By hiring a data science firm to identify only the questions that truly matter, Peter’s team reduced Virginia’s 200-plus question application down to roughly 20. The entire process now takes about 12 minutes from start to finish, pulling third-party verified data to auto-populate the application rather than burdening already-stressed applicants with information they may not have on hand. For the states, the result is an application that arrives complete and pre-verified, cutting processing time and costs by roughly 75%. One cost-benefit analysis for a mid-sized southern state projected savings of approximately $2 billion per year after paying for Peter’s platform. The conversation takes a powerful turn when Peter connects this work to the rural hospital crisis gripping America. Roughly 70% of rural hospitals are currently operating in the red, driven largely by $42 billion a year in uncompensated care for patients without insurance. Peter explains that an estimated 35% of those patients are eligible for Medicaid but never apply due to the intimidating complexity of the process. His solution is to embed the 12-minute application directly into hospital workflows, at the appointment desk, in the emergency room, anywhere a patient first makes contact, so that the Medicaid clock starts ticking immediately. Since Medicaid reimburses from the date of application rather than the date of approval, even a same-day submission can make an enormous financial difference for both the patient and the hospital. Ty and Peter also dig into the fraud problem that is costing the Medicaid system an estimated $75 billion a year, with Minnesota’s scandal making headlines as just one example of a nationwide issue. Peter is clear that the answer is a surgical scalpel, not a machine gun. Cutting fraud without cutting off the people who genuinely need care is the only acceptable outcome, and his platform is built to detect fraud before it enters the system rather than chase it afterward. He shares the story of a 43-year-old man undergoing chemotherapy who lost his Medicaid coverage simply because he was too sick to complete the renewal application, a consequence that is both heartbreaking and entirely preventable. Peter closes with a message he wants everyone to hear: Medicaid is not just for poor people. It is for people who need help, and the social stigma surrounding it is keeping eligible Americans from accessing care they have every right to receive. He has also written a book on the history of Medicaid and is giving away free copies to anyone who reaches out directly. His contact information will be in the show notes. 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjusten 🎙️ @thetybradyway   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty welcomes filmmaker and firefighter Tyler Volson, who shares his remarkable journey from firefighting shifts to building a thriving videography business. What began with documenting homes and weddings quickly expanded into filming outdoor expeditions across the globe before Tyler found his true niche in youth sports. Tyler talks about how sports videography has transformed his career by helping athletes showcase their talents to recruiters while giving parents the chance to simply enjoy the game. He opens up about the early days of offering free shoots to build his portfolio, the lessons learned from pricing creative work, and the challenge of balancing passion with profitability. Ty and Tyler also discuss what it takes to scale a creative business, from trusting others behind the camera to building a production team that can grow with demand. With highlights that have reached millions of viewers online, Tyler’s story demonstrates how persistence, networking, and a willingness to take risks can turn creativity into lasting opportunity.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at HYPERLINK [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway https://www.instagram.com/thetybradyway/

On this episode of The Ty Brady Way, Ty is joined by Ryan Dalley as he shares his journey from playing baseball and taking up bull riding on a dare, to eventually transitioning into the electrical trade. Ryan explains how, after a serious rodeo injury, he shifted focus, starting his own electrical company specializing in federal jobs. Despite challenges in growing the business, Ryan’s persistence paid off, and now he’s considering an exit strategy to pursue new passions like Medicare. Both Ryan and Ty Brady reflect on the importance of coaching youth sports, highlighting the rewarding experience of watching kids develop both skills and character. They discuss the patience required to teach different types of learners and how coaching goes beyond the game, shaping future leaders. Ty and Ryan reflect on how the bond between coaches and players often feels like family due to the significant time and effort invested. Throughout the conversation, Ryan emphasizes the value of community, whether it’s the tight-knit rodeo world or the supportive environment of team sports. He also shares the realities of entrepreneurship, balancing freedom and responsibility while planning for the next chapter in life. The episode beautifully blends stories of grit, growth, and the impact of mentorship.   As always, we would like to hear from you! Email us at [email protected] Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway https://www.instagram.com/thetybradyway/