Business Succession Planning: Tyson Ray on Freedom | Ep. 205

Tyson Ray: 00:00:00

The most successful businesses I've seen are ones that the business owner builds personal wealth outside their business as if they were an employee.

Freddy D: 00:00:09

But I am the world's biggest super fan.

Tyson Ray: 00:00:12

You're like a super fan.

Freddy D: 00:00:14

Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce.

We discuss the invaluable insights of business business owners who have successfully implemented the strategies in the book to build their own team of devoted super fans. Gain insightful knowledge from the experts who create applications that help you create passionate super fans.

This is the Business Super Fans podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy Freddie Foreign.

Freddy D: 00:01:02

Hey super fans. Freddy D. Here in this episode 205, we're joined by Tyson Ray and he tackles a challenge many service based business owners know well.

Making confident financial decisions while building wealth, protecting what they've earned and planning for the future without second guessing every move.

From investing his first $100 at age 16 to returning to Wisconsin after college and building a 25 plus year and financial services, Tyson brings heart and high level experience to the conversation.

As a CIMA and CFP professional, nationally recognized advisor and founder of Children's World Impact, he shows how thoughtful financial strategy can create greater freedom, stability and impact.

Freddy D: 00:01:51

Welcome, Tyson to Business Superfans Advantage. All the way from Wisconsin. I used to spend a lot of time in Illinois.

So I've gone back and forth between Wisconsin, Illinois and I know we have the rivalry between the Green Bay packers and the Chicago Bears.

Tyson Ray: 00:02:08

It was alive and well this last year.

Freddy D: 00:02:10

as fortunate. Met some of the: 1985

And then I met with Trace Armstrong, Evan Butler and can't remember the other guy, Dan Hampton. That was it of the Bears. Those guys were coming out to a place they used to hang out. So anyway, welcome to the show.

Tyson Ray: 00:02:36

I remember like a kid putting the vhaf tape that I thought I was a king to have one of the super bowl shuffle. So.

Freddy D: 00:02:42

Oh yeah, yeah, that was.

They changed the whole game, you know, from that perspective because nobody expected that and they just had attitude and that attitude, you know, just carried them through the whole season, you know.

Tyson Ray: 00:02:54

Yeah. Make fridge a linebacker perfect or not a linebacker running back.

Freddy D: 00:02:58

Yep, yep. So fun. So let's go back to the beginning.

I know that you started off in basically in school learning a little bit about finance and Made some investments, and that parlayed into more investments and getting, you know, into the completely financial advisory aspect. So what's the backstory, Tyson?

Tyson Ray: 00:03:18

Yeah, the backstory is, you know, making lemonade out of lemons. So I had the, you know, dad left mom with four kids in an eviction notice.

And so I went and figured out how to get my first job bussing tables at a little restaurant down the road, which I loved, because you had all you could eat fish fry on Friday night, and all you could eat peeled shrimp. I did. I was thrilled. I could just eat, much less get paid. I saved the money and what was called the Chubby Chubby Chipmunk bank account at the time.

And I just watched these pennies get added to my balance because interest rates in the early 80s were quite high. And it's like, wow, this is interesting. Got dropped off up here in the Lake Geneva area. There's all these lakes to ski on.

And I was smart enough to realize if I stood around the pier, at the end of the day, someone would need a spotter so I could jump in a competition ski boat and ski well. One day I got dropped off by somebody I was spotting for and skiing behind, and he had a Ferrari. And I lied at what house I lived in.

I was so embarrassed. You could, like, make a movie out of this. And as we pulled into this house that wasn't mine, I was getting out of this Ferrari.

I asked him, how'd you make your money? And he, you know, he said, well, I made. I'm, you know, the chicken that laid the golden eggs was the business. The golden eggs were my investments.

And about a year later, the. The high school had the stock market game, where they basically teach these kids all the wrong fundamentals.

But you get fake money to go make fake investments. And then over a period of three months, whoever makes the most money wins.

Keeping in mind this is back where you picked stocks out of the Wall Street Journal newspaper in the library. We did. This was the. There wasn't the tech it is today. There was no iPhone.

And I tried to get my mom to let me take my Chubby Chubby Chipmunk bank account and buy. At the time was Intel. I didn't know what intel was. I just knew it had gone from 12 to seven. And it was enough.

It was low enough that I could put some money in it. And she said no because she want the risk.

Thank God she said no, because as a kid, if she said yes, I probably would just dismissed it and moved on to something else. But because she said no.

Freddy D: 00:05:04

Right.

Tyson Ray: 00:05:04

That's what I want. And so I convinced the stockbroker to convince my mom to let me put $100 a month into two different mutual funds.

And then I was 18 and she couldn't tell me no anymore. I bought 50 shares IBM and 50 shares Hewlett Packard. In hindsight I should just kept. But you buy them and trade them.

And by the time I graduated college I realized all I had been doing was trying to tell my mom why this made so much sense. And I had made a lot of mistakes on my own.

Yeah, I just felt led to go into the financial services business and apprentice Ernie somebody that I took over his 40 year practice.

Five years later I've acquired several other practices and we've grown it into 27 years later place where people can come as they transition out of their businesses and we kind of protect them from themselves and help them live the best life they can afford.

Freddy D: 00:05:48

What a, what a backstory.

And you're right because you know my, I'm an immigrant and my parents had the old school mentality which is you don't invest in the stock market, you stay away from that because that's, you know, you're going to lose money. Nobody ever makes any money in the stock market, blah blah, blah, blah. And we grew up with that stuff.

So you know, your mom did the same thing is, you know, stay away from that. And had, you know, you kind of said eh, I'm going to still do it my way.

And I kind of conformed because that was the environment in the house household. And until I became 18 I still wasn't into it because of the fact that my brain had been programmed that that's not something that you want to do.

You want to stay away from it. And unfortunately I think a lot of people are brought up that way. Yep.

Tyson Ray: 00:06:35

Well, there's plenty of horror stories out there. But they don't realize that the horror stories have principles that you can avoid. So you don't have the whole, the horror stories yourself.

And most people, that's my job security. Most people that we work with just don't want to worry about it. They don't want to be responsible for it.

And they want so we get to take on that responsibility. So their responsibility becomes what do you want to do with what you have and how do we help fund that with what you have?

Because if you want to do this yourself, there's all kinds of ways to do it.

Usually people do it that can be done successfully or eventually they have enough money or they blow themselves up somewhere along the way that they scare themselves or their spouse is scared that we then pick them up. But yeah, the lie is as business owners that you have to make all of your money in the business.

And the truth of the matter is you don't realize you're actually in our world making investments in other businesses, albeit a diversified setting. Yes, they're called stocks really their equities, really their ownership.

And some of the best companies on the globe and if they, and if you own enough of them, if one fails, another one buys out their intellectual capital, property acquires the accounts and the world just keeps marching on.

Freddy D: 00:07:39

Yeah, you bring up a good point. Because you know, a lot of times the only thing I remember being talked about is investing in a 401k.

You know, when I was an employee in the computer industry, as we talked before we started recording, I got in it in the very beginning, I rode that wave.

And that was the only thing that really anybody talked about was you just gotta invest in a 401k, the company will match it and by the time you're a bazillion years old, if you make it that much, you'll get some money out of it. But there's really no approach to really help your team really put themselves in a financial well being in any business today.

I mean that I'm aware of.

Perhaps there is, you know, like my wife works for a hearing company but she's got, because she's been there eight years almost and she's been one of the top performers. She's got some stock in the game of the company, but that's it. Otherwise you know, they just. She's got their 401k and that's it.

Tyson Ray: 00:08:39

Yep.

And people don't realize that even those 401ks are powerful tools that end up owning the very businesses that you know of use their products and services. We do a very poor job of educating people on the opportunity that is the capital markets in the United States.

Freddy D: 00:08:53

So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, okay, let's say I'm a business owner, I'm a service provider and I'm. Let's go a trade business.

I'm a remodeler and I do kitchen remodel, bathroom remodels and odd jobs like that. How what would you advise that person? So I came to you. I'm that guy that has that business making you know, 500,000 a year.

And I'm, you know, but I don't really have any investments because I'm too busy working in the business, not on the business.

Tyson Ray: 00:09:26

Yeah. I think, I think part of it is the most successful businesses that I see are ones that the business I they didn't know they were doing this.

This is my observation that now I'm teaching back to other people to think about is the most successful businesses I've seen are ones that the business owner builds personal wealth outside their business as if they were an employee.

Freddy D: 00:09:48

Right.

Tyson Ray: 00:09:48

Your employee doesn't own the business. They got to save, set money aside if they're going to have anything to retire off of.

And one of the risks that businesses make is they pour all profits, all capital back into that business, which is just one entity that can have, that can build risk and make it and creates a lot of stress if, if and when you're ready to transition that business different from clients that have built personal wealth with some of their salaries or cash flow, the ks, tax deferral, those types of things that they have some more freedom on how they want to transition out of their business because that gave them a backdrop to go.

I'm okay, like the best solution for your business is to have the option of selling it, the option of transitioning out of it, the option of freeing yourself from it. Then you have to and when you have to, what is it going to be worth at that time? And so a lot of that is counseling around debt leverage.

Those are risks inside of a business.

It's understanding a lot of business owners are great at running their business, but not are great at building their business and sales and clients and putting out fires, but aren't necessarily great at the accounting and the. And the cash flows and understanding the situation that they're in.

And part of our job as a financial advisor, part of our job is walking alongside clients is just to help them see risks before they happen to make decisions to really try and avoid or mitigate risk as much as possible while you're still profitable, while you're still growing wealth.

Freddy D: 00:11:12

Yeah, you bring up a great point.

Because I worked with a company a couple years ago that I had been in business for several decades and it was a husband and wife team and they built it up.

Unfortunately, the husband passed away and I ended up taking over the company for a while and we had to bring in a forensic CFO to clean up the books because they had personal car loans tied into the business and all this stuff that they were thought that they were being clever on. And at the end of the day, you're right. The risk was ridiculous. It wasn't positioned for any acquisition because that wasn't even the mindset.

They weren't even thinking from that perspective. So we had to spend six months paying a, you know, forensic cfo, which is not cheap, to clean everything up.

And they had to go back several years and they had stock investments, part of the company, in the financials of the company, which made no sense.

Tyson Ray: 00:12:06

Yep. It just left. Left unchecked.

A lot of business owners run things through their business that put the value of the business at risk, create confusion about what real profit is. And, and, you know, they, they.

I have this happen a lot where they're going into a sale, trying to sell the business, not realizing that what they've been doing inside the business is diluting or reducing the value of it, because that's to the advantage of the acquirer if your books are a mess. I've had clients sell their business, show up at our doorstep with the money, and realize that they.

What they were running through their business, they now can't afford with what they sold their business for because it lowered the profit margin that then lowered the valuation that if they would have cleaned their books up, there were. They left money on the table.

Freddy D: 00:12:50

That's what we did. We spent six months cleaning up the books.

And then we, you know, I scaled it by a million dollars in the year and positioned it for acquisition and it got, you know, successfully acquired. And that positioned the widow to be taken care of for the rest of her life.

But we had, you know, there was a lot of rolling up the sleeves and getting things cleaned up and making tweaks and multitude of different things to get it positioned for proper acquisition. Because as you said, didn't even plan. Most people don't plan for that. They're just running, hey, I got a business. It's going great. I'm making money.

And so they're not looking 5 years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. They're looking at tomorrow.

Tyson Ray: 00:13:30

Yep. And a very simple step. If you're listening to this and you're running stuff through a business is it.

It adds a layer of complexity, but it also purifies your business as you create a holding company that owns your.

So right now you own your company, you own the shares of the company, you create a holding company that owns the shares of the company, and you own the shares of the holding company. So the profits of the company flow to the holding company.

That's where you put your company car and the dinners and the flights and the travel and the Legitimate business expenses that you want to take advantage of the tax code with, but it leaves the actual core business with pure profits, which helps you see better what you're actually spending on what how the business is really performing versus what your lifestyle wants from the business.

Freddy D: 00:14:10

That's an important tip that you just shared there, Tyson, because a lot of people don't think of that. And the tax laws are written for businesses. And if you take advantage of the tax laws, you're in a really good spot.

But most people don't take, they don't either take the time personally to know it because they don't have the time.

And they don't go out to somebody like you that is an expert in that area and can say, hey, if we do this and this and this, we're actually putting money back into your pocket and you didn't spend any money because it cancels itself out.

Tyson Ray: 00:14:42

Yeah.

And the hard part is the accounting industry has a horrible, horrible lobby in Washington because basically all the financial statements are technically due March 31st. So then everybody, the entire accounting world has a month to do the taxes. So then that's, hence extensions, all this other stuff.

But they, because of that bottleneck, they're not really good at planning ahead and they're reacting to what you did and tax, to avoid taxes, you need to plan before you file that return or before the year ends. And there's just a lot of things that, that what you needed to start your business.

As your business grows in success, you need to continually relook at how your business is structured and what you're doing from a tax standpoint and what you're spending on what to maximize the value of your business, protect yourself and try and minimize the tax consequence.

Freddy D: 00:15:30

So share a story with us of how you worked with a particular business owner and kind of helped them get themselves out of their own way and position them to where.

Although one of your biggest advocates today, or as I call them, a super fan, it's in turn told the other people that they know and referred them to the services that you guys provide.

Tyson Ray: 00:15:50

Yeah, I'll start with a, with a, with a kind of what drew me into paying attention to this stuff. I had a business owner, client, husband and wife. They had a little service business. They came to me and are making your $500,000 a year.

And every now and then they grumble about what, how the business was doing and client lost or what have you.

And over a period of about seven years, about every two or three years they would call me and Say they needed a couple hundred grand to put back into the business. And probably by about the third time. And this is, you know, you don't know what you don't know until you know it.

So all of a sudden I'm like, wait a second. Like, can, Can I see your financials? Like, what's this going?

Well, when we went back and looked at it, they were basically putting capital back in the business to pay themselves a taxable wage. That created a loss on the business books.

They didn't generate enough revenue to pay them the salaries that we were planning for the rest of their years of owning the business. That it wasn't buying cap. They needed to put capital in to have working capital.

Not realizing that they were draining that working capital with salaries. We had to go back and amend tax returns. It was just, it was. And like, it just goes back to. No one caught it until it was too late.

Like, it should have been caught on the front end the first year. The taxes weren't, you know, cash flows, those types of things.

I think it's wise for a business every maybe three to five years to get a second opinion. Pay an attorney to look a different attorney. Look at your documents.

I've had, I say to clients every now and then, you want to know how your succession looks? You want to know how your. Your catastrophic planning looks.

Send your wife to a different accountant and a different attorney, and she gets to say, you're dead. You can't speak into the room. They'll identify the gaps. And for a couple thousand dollars, you can get clarity on is your plan right?

Because if you're not here, you can't fix it or it's a mess to fix. We had as a practice, we asked for two years of tax returns and all legal documents.

I can't tell you the number of businesses that sent me their estate planning documents that they didn't have a copy. They couldn't find a copy. They can't find the business articles of incorporation because it's been so long, or it's.

They couldn't find the file or power of attorneys weren't signed or beneficiary designations didn't line up with their estate plan. A lot of them, they build. They did trust planning, but then they didn't fund the trust, which means you actually change the title of assets.

The trust can control it. So basically, you paid an attorney thousands of dollars to create a trust to avoid probate.

But because they didn't put assets in the trust when you're dead, the attorney then gets to take it through probate.

On the higher level, it's helping clients speak into as the company grows, the pattern is to reinvest in that company for future growth and that can be fine. But to help them identify both with tax planning, both with trying to deleverage.

The risk of having all your eggs in one basket of the business is some of the ways that we help A big one coming out of the financial crisis that I learned to start asking clients about is paying attention to the covenants and the rolling terms of your debt. The financial crisis catastrophe caught businesses that had debt mature and banks didn't want to lend again and you were stuck. And it was nationwide.

And so knowing your interest rate risk when those notes come due, what your covenants are so you basically aren't caught blindsided one day. And a lot of it is it's having lines of credit and having certain financing mechanisms in place when you don't need them.

Because if you do need them, you can't get them right.

Freddy D: 00:19:03

It's too late.

Tyson Ray: 00:19:04

Yep.

Freddy D: 00:19:04

Bus left.

Tyson Ray: 00:19:05

Yep. I think the other thing is stepping outside the business. And the book we just wrote called Total Succession Addresses, this is.

I don't care if you're 30 or 80, your brain thinks into the future and you see what you want to do when you're no longer running the business or you see yourself dying at your desk. But you can see things that you do in the business that suck. The energy and the joy and the love. Yeah.

That you just don't have anything left in the tank at the end of the day because you're doing too many things that suck instead of the things that just give you energy. Because life is one or the other. Helping business owners see what who they want to be on the other side of the business.

And then that creates the plan of working towards that. Because if you never define that, if you're.

If your succession is to sell the business because some dollar amount came across your desk or you hit a certain age but you didn't define who you are on the other side of it.

If selling, if your whole life is your business and you sell your business and your life is nothing and trying to define what do you enjoy, then it's not hobbies, it's not vacation, it's not travel, it's not all the lies, it's what are you going to do with your skills and your talents and your unique abilities and your gifts that got you to where you're at and how are you going to apply those in your life?

And in the lives of other people on the other side of being a business owner and defining that for people helps them make that transition, when they make that transition.

Freddy D: 00:20:15

You bring up a really important point there in the fact that you're right. Most people don't think about what are they going to do when they're either they retire, you know, and whatever that may mean.

It may mean that you've been an employee at a company for 30 some years plus and now you retire, what are you going to do?

Or if you've owned the business, as we've been talking about that now, okay, you're 60 some years old and you say, you know what, I'm done, I'm ready to go do. And what does that go do you need to have that idea?

Because otherwise you're sitting there and within three months you're going to be going nuts because you're sitting there going, okay, I'm bored stiff, I got to find something to do. And now you're completely reactionary again.

Tyson Ray: 00:20:56

Well, and no one wants to lose half their company or half their wealth because they end up divorced.

And they end up divorced because they made promises to the person they fell in love with of what they're going to do in the future that they were willing to make the sacrifice over the years to allow the business to do what it did or to get to where you're at. But what were those commitments you made?

Because if you don't remember what they were, they come back to haunt you and you end up either not doing them or you retire, sell your business, you walk in the door and you drive your spouse nuts because you haven't been there for three decade and now you're there every day going stir crazy because you didn't define what you're going to do with your energies and your gifts and your talents. Effectively, a successful succession is one to try and reduce the divorce rate, which is substantially higher over the age of 65.

Now, for some of those reasons, bring.

Freddy D: 00:21:40

Up a great point because you're, you're right. Most people, you know, they've gone through, they've raised their kids and so that was the focus they're focused on.

If they own a business, they're working on their business, or if they, they're an employee and they're focused on their career, the kids are gone. And the next thing you know is like, now what?

And I remember, you know, I'll share this to validate what you're saying is years ago, I was previously married, I was in charge of global sales. So I was traveling around the world. My ex wife was a flight attendant, so she would meet me. So we did Valentine's Day in Paris, Champs Elysees.

You know, we had a jet set lifestyle because she could go anywhere, she worked internationally. I was flying internationally because I was in charge of global sales.

And then she took, you know, she got pregnant with our daughter and our daughter popped up and she decided to say, I'm going to take two years off. And I'd brain dead started a business at the same time.

And I call it brain dead because that was all of a sudden now we started having a conflict because she wanted to spend time with the daughter. I'm up at 4 o' clock in the morning because I'm dealing with people from different countries importing software and everything else.

And we lost the husband and wife aspect of it and it completely destroyed our marriage.

Tyson Ray: 00:23:03

Yeah. And some of that's just what expectations did you agree to? And are you meeting those expectations?

And if you can't, you got to communicate that on the front end and redo the list of expectations. Because you can go through seasons, but you can't go through seasons where one was expecting one thing and you were expecting the other.

And part of the downside of being a business owner is the thrill of being a business owner. It's the thrill of the sale, it's the thrill of the growth, it's the feeling of control.

And yet the greatest things in life are these relationships where you don't have the control. You get to be part of that relationship. And there's give and take.

And I think for a lot of folks, as we're going through this, the reason we wrote total succession is because in our financial services industry, true of all industries, you have this business transitions with these baby boomers either because of death or because of life, you know, dollar amounts or ages or so on and so forth. And what I find myself saying a lot to people is that you planned for later like you want. You made these expectations with your loved ones for later.

You'd made these expectations of the transition of your business for later. And you didn't realize later's now later shown up, but you're still acting and living in the I'm going to do this later space.

Freddy D: 00:24:08

Yep. And you're running out of.

Tyson Ray: 00:24:09

Well, yeah, an interesting exercise to take somebody through is we believe that you plan backwards. Right. Take the future and plan backwards and you execute forwards. Well, you want to, you want to, you really want to take that to another level.

Go sit down, take a piece of paper, take 20 minutes, write your eulogy. Who in your life do you want to say? What about your life when you're dead and when you're done?

Freddy D: 00:24:30

Interesting approach. No, I've never heard anybody talk.

Tyson Ray: 00:24:33

I. I don't know where I got this from, but for the last 15 years, I'm writing my eulogy. It's not a morbid thing, but it.

I have written down what I want my wife to say, and I've written down what I want each one of my sons to say, and I've written down what the impact I want to make in financial services or the impact I want to make in some of these nonprofits. And what. Why I pulled. That's part of my business plan, and I reread it every year, tweak it a little bit.

For the most part, it's the same, but it's like a north compass. Like, this is the. This is. Hey, dumbass, this is what you want. And it's not. There's no money. There's no stuff. There's no houses or cars or hobbies.

Golf. Like, there's none of that. It's all values and impact and making a difference.

And I think for some retiring businesses or businesses that are in transition, you know, going back to seeing what you want, write that it'll help you see what you're.

What you said you wanted to spend your time doing, because otherwise your eulogy is going to be a default that people are going to tell you who you were and what you did, which may not be who you are and what you want.

Freddy D: 00:25:29

Important point there, because, yeah, we don't think about that. You know, I really never thought of it from that perspective. I'll be transparent.

But that's making me think right now as a little bit of, huh, you're right. Because at the end of the day, you don't take any of that stuff with you.

What you leave behind is the impact you had on people's lives and the experiences that you created. And that's it. Yeah.

Tyson Ray: 00:25:52

And I've been into a lot of funerals, and I don't. I never heard anybody say, I'm so glad he continued or she continued to do the business. The sale, the travel, the drive, the impact.

And, you know, we. Our. The lie is we let our lives be controlled by all these people that don't really matter in our lives. They're important for business.

There's relationships there, right? And, and, and those can be deep at some level, but you only get so Many fears, spheres of influence out before it dramatically falls off.

But the urgent crowds out the important, which means we're sucked into all those relationships and not necessarily our daughter or our wife or our best friend or our aging parents. And the trick to a successful succession is not the sale of the business.

The trick to the successful succession is how do you continually choose very powerful.

Choose to cap your lifestyle from a spending standpoint and take the extra revenues from the business to hire other people to take things off your plate, to give you more time to focus on what you do.

Enjoy to be able to have time for these important people that are going to be speaking at your funeral and realize that in doing so, you're still can grow the value of the company.

Freddy D: 00:26:57

And you.

I'm going to just reiterate that in a different way, and that's something that I learned actually not too long ago is wealthy people buy time, poor people buy stuff.

Tyson Ray: 00:27:08

That's right. It's exactly right.

Freddy D: 00:27:09

Yep.

Tyson Ray: 00:27:10

And people aren't happier with their stuff, especially if it's leveraged so they couldn't afford it in the first place. Or guess what? You know, you like your first house. Okay. You like your second house, the third or fourth one. It just becomes annoyance. But the.

I found that that that usual. That eulogy is a very interesting perspective. It's like an emotional mirror.

Freddy D: 00:27:29

It's profound. It's really make. It makes you think a little bit about what you're doing and where you're going and what's the end result gonna look like. Yep.

Tyson Ray: 00:27:39

Yep. The Bible talks about the fact it's better to go. My. My paraphrase version, it's better to go to a funeral than a party because it puts perspective.

And one of the greatest things, the mentor I, when I got hired in the business and worked underneath, he took me to a funeral of a client that died. And I didn't know the client. It's kind of really awkward. He's like, come on.

And he said to me, I'm going to show you what success in this business is. I was like, okay, I'm going to a funeral.

And I went, you know, Bob Smith's funeral, sat in the back of the church, didn't know anybody, listened to a few things. And then as we walked out of there, he said, did you learn what's most important in our business?

And I said no, because he was a stock trader at the time. Like, this is the early 90s, right. I'm like, I'm trying to. Like, I'm just lost and he said, you know, the kids were thankful for their educations.

They, they enjoyed that lake house. They, they enjoyed spending time together.

He's like, did they talk about the multimillion dollar portfolio and the probate and the estate tax we're about to have? No. They talked about he had a successful business that he transitioned over to.

You know, the new CEO who got up and spoke about how he was for a mentor and a leader and how he was patient and kind and how he left the business better off so the business could succeed without him.

Like the best succession plan is, you're going to bump into your best friends, clients you've had for decades, five or 10 years after you transition, and you want them to say thank you. We're actually better off than we were with you because there's evolution and things have evolved. That's what you want. Your ego doesn't want that.

Your ego says, no, they need me, I got to stay here.

Freddy D: 00:29:08

Sure.

Tyson Ray: 00:29:10

But I left realizing that our job is to give permission to you to go spend the money to live the best life you can afford and give you permission when we can identify you have enough, doesn't mean you can't steward wealth and make more. But can we get you to the point of realizing you can have enough?

I've had clients that own businesses that just stressed out and then when we sat down, it's like, you got enough. They stayed on because all of a sudden they didn't like the stress fell off, like, I have enough.

And then they start taking different risks again, forgetting that they could take risks as risks create returns. Right. But when we don't feel we have enough, we, we may not make the right decisions for the right reasons.

We may stretch in ways we shouldn't, we may leverage ourselves away or shouldn't, or we stop taking risk because we're afraid we're going to lose. And that's not how you got here. So it's just a fascinating business because it's all about relationships.

It's all about understanding the life of the person and where they want. It's having the significant other and the spouse involved.

It's being able to speak into the kids lives as wealth transitions and we're help helping fund couches and weddings and second, you know, homes for the kids and grandkids. Is a whole nother cat. But we call it trying to find, trying to help the person define what does funded contentment mean to you.

Because Hollywood, with an unlimited budget that came up with that movie, the bucket list with an unlimited budget it was a one page piece of paper that had like, what, 15 things on it that most people don't care to do. Right. If you really took time to say, what do I really want? It's not a long list.

And what we tend to find is some people already have it, have had it for a while. So what are you stressing about?

Freddy D: 00:30:42

Right, Very good points.

And with the work that you guys are doing, you're creating super fans of either the business owners or the family members of the business owner because they may have passed away and moved on, but they're still grateful for the positioning that you helped them. And so now they're your biggest advocates that are out there helping grow your business. And you can't buy that kind of pr. Marketing doesn't, doesn't.

Tyson Ray: 00:31:07

So let's talk about that. We wrote a book called Total Relationship. And in that book, and the business I own and run is called Form Wealth Advisors. Form is an acronym.

And you want to deepen relationships with people in your life, friends and family in your life, much less business colleagues and opportunities, is use this form framework. And it stands. The F stands for family. Right.

The best question to ask a colleague these days of anybody that is in their 50s and 60s is how are your parents doing? Right?

You walk into a room and if I'm talking to you the first time, Fred, and it's like, hey, we're going to talk about this business and do this podcast, but your mom just got diagnosed with stage four cancer, or you're struggling with putting dad in the care facility and all this other stuff, like that's hard on you, asking how your folks are. And then guess what? You might say, my folks passed away. And then you could say, well, how old was dad and how old was mom?

Because you'll find out, wait, if dad was 55 and now you're 65, it's like, hey, does that affect how long you think you're going to be here? Or no, dad was a chain smoker or what the reasons were or no, and this is more common. Dad was 95, mom was 80, you know, 98.

And you feel old and you're 62. It's like timeout. You got like decades of life left. How you know, and then family down. How are the kids? What's going on? Struggling with this kid.

This kid's getting divorced, this kid's getting married, this kid's having kids, family. And we naturally do that. We talk to people about it and we pick it up. And then what that also does is you then get to share back your family.

That's a natural back and forth of my kid. Your kid. Right. That's part of relationship. All I'm driving home. The point is it naturally happens.

Start with that, that's a like, start with a focus occupation. The job, the business, the career, the work. How are you enjoying it? Do you like what you're doing? What's your next opportunity? The R is recreations.

It's golf, it's, it's, it's travel, it's, it's art, it's. What do you do for fun? That's a great question because you might stumble across some of your friends that actually say I don't have any fun.

I had clients be. I had a client once say, I don't, I don't have any hobbies. It's like, okay, pick one.

I've had other clients be like, you know, we wanted to golf in all 40, all 50 states and they had like three states left and I just sent them golf courses of those three states until they picked one and knocked out and we sent them a little celebration.

It's like you can connect, you can connect with life and death events, you can connect with business opportunities or risks or I want to try and do this in my business. And you get there and you great, that's a great job. And then the M is mission and mission is what's the impact you want to make on this planet?

What do you, what do you want? What does giving while you're living look like? You know, what's your, what do you want your legacy to be was that kind of ties into that eulogy.

So it, you, we in relationships naturally do this. What we don't do is document it.

Back in, back before technology was back before there was no such thing as a CRM or contact manager system, it was just maybe outlook. I would take their contact field and I'd type the kids names, parents live or dead.

I'd type what their next occupation, hobby goal was or hobbies were right. And no, they give to this charity or it's very important.

You know, their mom died of cancer and they, they're very tied into the cancer fund or the cancer walk or whatever. It's just knowing that relationship and I was doing that because I didn't want to forget. What that's become. Now is information that now my team has.

Because if I wasn't able to take this call today and they could pull up Fred's contact, they can see Fred's information. Here's what's happening in the family? Did the granddaughter get born? How's mom doing? Right. Did you, did you break 80 yet?

Freddy D: 00:34:23

Right.

Tyson Ray: 00:34:24

Did you, did you do that remodel on the house? Did you buy that new car? These are all things that you're happening in your life. That is relational data.

And what I found is just like a doctor can pick up another medical chart and see the care, the diagnosis, the treatment, the care. I wanted my team. The best relationships are ones that the team can leverage not to replace me, but to be an addition to me.

Freddy D: 00:34:46

Yeah, that makes complete, complete sense. And you know, I remember doing, using pre Outlook, using daytimers to document.

I mean if you really want to go back to the old school pre Internet days, you, you could use Stephen Covey. Yeah, I didn't. I had one from Denmark which was a, which was a cool one that I liked because it was, it had some cool capabilities.

But I had all my customers information if they were married and blah blah, blah and that.

And so I used that as a sales tool when I would go visit my existing customers or if I was prospecting customers, I would show my list of my existing customers and usually that collapsed the sales cycle because they would turn around. Says Tyson's using your technology, Mike's using your technology, Steve's using this stuff. I know all these guys. Okay, I'm sold.

What do we got to do to get this in and because that credibility in itself changed the game. Yep.

Tyson Ray: 00:35:45

And then it.

We're told, we're trying to hold it in our head because we care and there's, there's only so much we can hold in our head that this, this form acronym can kind of become a talking point in any relationship with any person that then can bridge that relationship.

So the next time you pick it back up, especially if you stored it somewhere and it's not being fake, it's just being, it's caring enough to capture it so you can pick it back up the next time you run into.

Freddy D: 00:36:10

Yeah, yeah.

So as we kind of wrap up here, Tyson, why don't you go back and reiterate the acronym for the forum and some takeaways that people should, especially if you're a service type business that should, that should take time to really put that under their to do list, including the eulogy, because that's something I'm going to do. Yeah.

Tyson Ray: 00:36:35

So form is. It stands for talking. It's how you breach or begin a conversation. It's how's the family.

That can just be open ended and then if they start Answering it, it's capturing that. So then you can ask again, how's mom or dad or your daughter or grandchild? Because going back to the eulogy, that is the most important thing.

In the end, that's where love sits. Those where feelings are switch over to occupation and work. In our profession and our desire to learn, enhance and grow and do new things.

The recreation is the hobby and the fun and, and, and the stress relief and friendships fall in there, right? Another space for love and joy. And then the mission is calling and impact and giving. And what are you doing with what you have?

Is what we found a way to begin a con. It takes five minutes, but it deep like the connection is unbelievable. That then lets you proceed and then dig deeper into that relationship.

Whatever, whatever. The purpose of the relationship was a bridge to the eulogy. I don't know where I got this from either. Every year I take out. And it was.

This is how scientific it was. I took out a Word document and I just went out 10 years into the future.

in: 2026

And when I did that 10 years ago, I started picking up on, oh boy, he's gonna get his driver's license. We'd probably be thinking about what the car lineup should be. And then this one's getting driver's license.

Oh, wait, this one's graduating high school. College is starting. Then I kind of projected out college to be done. Somewhere in this window we're going to deal with marriages.

Somewhere in this window is grandkids. And it's all sudden, like just. I just go out 10 years.

The other thing I did is vacations on that time frame because it's like, here's the, here's the ages. And underneath it it's like Christmas. What are we doing Spring breaks? What are we doing? Summer? What are we doing? And hunting trips, fishing trips.

Like, what do I want to try and plan that I'm doing one on one with my kids, right. I want this eulogy to say I did something the way you do that is not write on a piece of paper for the rest when you're dead.

It was a way of kind of catching ages, milestones. I turned 50. Wedding anniversaries fall in there, right? The reality is, is that the next 10 years of your Life based on age.

And just a little bit of thought you can plan out. And if we don't plan it out, the urgent crowd's out.

The important, the vacation doesn't happen, the one on ones don't happen, the time doesn' get, the space doesn't get created to have those relationships. And then the eulogy one is just again, who do you want to say what about you when you're not here? What.

And that really will drive what really matters because no net worth statements read off at a funeral, no tax return, no legal document, no no income level. They don't rattle off how much stuff you have. They rattled off what you meant. So what do you want to mean?

Freddy D: 00:39:13

Very well said. What's the name of the two books that you've got that you've put out?

Tyson Ray: 00:39:17

Yeah, so it's Total Relationship. It's niched for the financial advisor industry, but I think it could be a sales tool. I think there's just harmony in business.

So Total Relationship, which is totalrelationship.com is the website. The book is on Amazon. There's podcasts for that.

And then the most recent one is Total Succession because a lot of people are trying to figure out what their succession plan is. And that's kind of a guide of all the pros and cons of external successions, internal succession, family succession.

There's a lot of different ways you can do it. And all of there is no perfect. They all have things to watch out for or things to be thinking about.

And so that's TotalSuccession.com is the website books on Amazon. There's podcasts for that as well. And then the financial services business is form wealth.

Freddy D: 00:39:56

Okay, well, we'll make sure all that's in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. Great conversation. Definitely would love to have you on the show down the road.

Tyson Ray: 00:40:03

Thanks for having me on.

Freddy D: 00:40:04

Fred Tyson. Ray reminded us that real financial confidence is not just about growing your business.

It's about building wealth outside of it so you have freedom, options and a life that still works when the business changes. That matters for entrepreneurs because too many people pour everything into one vehicle and wait too long to think about what comes next.

And that's exactly what I believe too. I don't want you to build a business that owns you. I want you building one that supports your life, your legacy, and the people who matter most.

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Freddy D: 00:41:34

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