The Ty Brady Way

Hosted by thetybradyway

Business CareersInterviews guestsExplicit

Website RSS feed

Episodes

328

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

About the show

Learn Ty Brady’s tried and true formula for success in sales and in life each week on his new podcast.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

June 12, 2026Episode 33033 min

The Man Who's Been a Franchisee, a Franchisor, and a Supplier: Scott Jones on What He's Learned From Every Side of the Table

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

June 10, 2026Episode 32935 min

He Lost the Deal, Got a Second Chance, and Became Franchisee of the Year Twice: The Story Matt Stevens Will Never Forget

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

June 5, 2026Episode 32827 min

He Left Everything to Move to Brazil and Rediscovered the One Gift He Almost Gave Up Forever With Ndzaba Mngomezulu

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

June 3, 2026Episode 32729 min

How to Create Your Own Luck in Business with George Blackwell Smith of Lucky Cajun Seasoning

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

May 29, 2026Episode 32627 min

Why Doing Less Is the Hardest Thing You Will Ever Do in Business with Justin Ricklefs

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram @thetybradyway

May 27, 2026Episode 32532 min

What Social Security Won’t Tell You: The Advice the Government Is Legally Forbidden From Giving with Russ Gaiser & Mike Hoeflich

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com 🔗https://beyondbreakevenbook.com/ 🔗 https://incomeplanhq.com/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway

May 22, 2026Episode 32435 min

Why Your Business Needs One Person, Not Two: Chris Papin on Closing the Gap Between Legal and Financial Strategy

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com 🔗https://www.papincpa.com/ 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispapin/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway

May 20, 2026Episode 32334 min

The Three Questions Every Stuck Insurance Agent Needs to Answer Right Now with Andy Neary

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com 🔗https://andyneary.com 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @accelerateyourinsurancesales

May 15, 2026Episode 32227 min

Stop Hiring Yes Men: Skip Wilson's Unfiltered Playbook for Building a Business That Lasts

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 info@draftmediapartners.com, 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 thetybradyway@gmail.com 🔗https://legendarypodcasts.com/skip-wilson/ 🎙️ @thetybradyway with @draftadvertising

May 13, 2026Episode 32130 min

Imposter Syndrome is a Liar: How Rome Madison Walked Past a Billionaire’s Entourage and Changed His Life

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 thetybradyway@gmail.com Or DM us on Instagram 🎙️ @thetybradyway 🔗 YouTube | romemadison.com