Independence by Design™

This conversation with Tom Shipley goes far beyond “growth” or “M&A tactics.” It’s about understanding the real game of ownership — how value is actually created, how capital really works, and why most owners unknowingly trap themselves by optimizing the wrong things.  Watch on YouTube We start by reframing business as a finite game of time, energy, and capital. Tom shares how his background i...

Matt is the founder of MarketBeat, a financial media company he’s built quietly over 19 years into a ~$50M/year business with around 20 employees — and what makes this episode special isn’t just the scale, it’s how he’s designed the business and his life around it. We talked about focus, attention, hiring, valuation discipline, resisting hype cycles, and why keeping the business can often be the m...

Most owner-operators have a complicated relationship with their bank — part dependence, part frustration, and very little transparency. I’ve lived that reality myself, and I know how powerless it can feel when decisions are made “behind the curtain.”  Watch on YouTube In this episode, I sat down with my longtime friend and commercial banker, Luke Maupin, to pull that curtain back. We walk through...

Most owners don’t wake up wanting to sell their business. They wake up tired, overloaded, and unsure how much longer they can keep doing everything themselves. In this conversation, John Bartlett and I start by unpacking that reality — the moment when success on paper doesn’t feel like freedom, and selling starts to feel like the only option.  Watch on YouTube From there, we zoom out and talk abou...

Most owners make decisions in the dark. Sales over here, payroll over there, cash flow somewhere in the background — and no clear way to see how it all fits together. Watch on YouTube In this episode, I break down the 5-year, three-statement model I use with clients to finally show how revenue, margins, OpEx, working capital, cash flow, and valuation all connect. It's the system that turns guessin...

You hear the hype about AI every day, but when you try to use it, it feels like a toy rather than a tool that can actually help you reclaim your time. Watch on YouTube In this episode, I’m cutting through that noise with Tyler LaFleur, a former nurse and functional medicine practitioner turned Fractional COO. I brought Tyler on because he doesn’t look at business through the lens of "growth at all...

In this episode, I sit down with Greg Meredith, founder of Simply Strategic, to distinguish the crucial difference between having a strategic plan and actually possessing a strategy. We dive deep into Greg’s "9 Keystones" Simply Strategic framework, exploring how companies can identify their unique "Winning Position" on the battlefield of business. Greg explains why true strategy requires painful...

Marketing is confusing for most owners — not because the tactics don’t work, but because the data underneath is broken.   Watch on YouTube   In this episode, I sit down with Alison Bechdol, founder of Digital-ade, to break down why so many owners feel like they’re throwing money at marketing with nothing to show for it. And the truth is simple: you cannot build a predictable revenue engine without...

Leadership gets thrown around so much that it’s lost meaning. We use it to describe control, management, or charisma—but the more I’ve lived through it, the more I believe real leadership is about thinking. It’s about clarity, purpose, and helping other people become who they’re capable of being. This conversation with Jeff West redefined a lot for me.  Watch on YouTube   We talked about the drago...

Coming off my conversation with Lawrence Lepard, where we unpacked the broken foundation of fiat money, I wanted to push the question further: If the rules of the game are shifting, how do we navigate from here?   Watch on YouTube   In this episode, I sit down with Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics and Kim Clark to keep searching for what’s real — to make sense of where we actually are in the cycle a...

Most business owners I know can feel it... the harder you work, the less it seems to matter. You’re producing real value, taking real risk, and yet the system keeps changing the rules. The system isn’t broken… It’s working exactly as designed. But it’s designed to steal your time.     Watch on YouTube In this episode, I sit down with Lawrence Lepard, author of The Big Print and sound money advocat...

Most owners talk about “creating value,” but few stop to ask a more fundamental question:   Value for what?   Watch on YouTube   In this episode, I sat down with my friend Nick Bradley —entrepreneur, investor, and host of The Scale Up Podcast—to explore how your ownership goals determine everything about your value-creation strategy. Nick comes from the private equity world, where the goal is clea...

Every owner wants a leadership team that can run the company without them. Few actually build one that can.   Watch on YouTube   In this episode, I sat down with Cyndi Gave to talk about what it really takes to develop a team that thinks, decides, and acts like owners. We break down the tension every entrepreneur feels: how to let go without losing control, how to build trust without blind faith,...

Most revenue budgets start with a top-down number: add 10%, push sales harder, and hope the math works out. That’s why so many plans collapse by spring.   Watch on YouTube   In Part 3 of our Budget Season 2026 Series, I sat down with Kim Clark to break down how to build revenue the right way: from the bottom up. Kim shares her 12-step revenue forecasting process and shows how to build by product,...

Most budgets don’t survive past Q1. They collapse because they aren’t built on cash flow, they don’t roll into the balance sheet, and they aren’t tied to owner goals. In other words, they’re not budgets — they’re wish lists.  Watch on YouTube   That’s why Part 2 of our Budget Season 2026 Series is all about the model itself. I sat down with Pat Hobby, who’s spent decades building financial models,...

Budgeting season is here. But most owners build budgets in a vacuum — starting with last year’s numbers and layering on guesses. The result? Fantasy budgets that collapse by Q2.   Watch on YouTube That’s why I’m kicking off a three-part Budget Season Series. Each episode will build on the last to give you a step-by-step process to create a budget you can actually run your company with.     We star...

Every owner’s journey is made up of inflection points, the moments where you have to make big, irreversible decisions.     Watch on YouTube In this episode, my friend Tom Nagler shares his full story arc as an owner. From growing up in a family business, to buying it from his dad, to juggling cash and growth pains, to considering a sale but choosing to acquire instead, to bringing on a partner, an...

Margins are under pressure, and scaling isn’t about throwing more people at the problem. Owners have to leverage technology to increase throughput per employee — but that only works if your data is clean and your processes are digitized. Watch on YouTube This isn’t an AI-hype conversation. It’s about putting best practices in place so you can actually use automation and AI as accelerants. If your...

The business advice system is completely broken. Tax, estate, and wealth must be one plan — and you can’t trust the system to build it for you.   Watch on YouTube   Advisors sell products, optimize for their own fees, and stay in their silos. Taxes here. Estate there. Wealth over in another corner. Nobody owns the whole. And owners are the ones who pay the price. If you don’t take ownership of the...

If you’re a business owner trying to make sense of Bitcoin, this conversation is your entry point.   Watch on YouTube Over two episodes combined into one, I sat down with Kim Clark and her father Alan Beaulieu —a partner at the world-renowned forecasting firm ITR Economics , known for its 94.7% accuracy over the last 80 years. Alan has spent his career helping owners understand what’s coming in th...

Most advice treats all owners the same. The reality? There are two different games . Watch on YouTube For the 98% (smaller, tightly owner‑dependent companies), the job and the asset are commingled. Generic “exit planning” advice often creates noise: the math, buyers, and timelines rarely line up. For the 2% (true middle‑market owners with durable EBITDA and a management team), the game shifts to t...

If your goal is to run your company from the boardroom, the real work isn’t just stepping out of day-to-day operations. It’s making sure the business—and your wealth—are protected no matter what happens. In this conversation with attorney and deal advisor Jim Carlisle. Jim has guided hundreds of owners through sales, ESOPs, continuity crises, and legacy planning—and he’s seen what works, what dest...

If you want to design a business that works for your life — not the other way around — you need to understand the actual game you’re playing.   Watch on YouTube In this episode, I sit down with Candice Bradley , a business owner, investor, former banker, and strategic advisor who’s lived through nearly every ownership structure in the capitalist playbook: banking, investment banking, private equit...

If you’re trying to grow your business without creating a mess of misaligned incentives, resentment, or comp plans that backfire—this episode is for you. I brought Jennifer Davis back on because she built one of the most intentional compensation systems I’ve ever seen. We walk through how she tied her company’s mission and KPIs directly to each person’s comp—and connected it all the way down to th...

What if the success you're chasing isn't the final destination, but the beginning of something more?   Watch on YouTube Most business owners I talk to know AI matters—but many are still stuck thinking it’s just for writing emails or something their IT team should handle. That’s not the game we’re playing.     In this episode, I sat down with Geoff Woods to talk about what it really means to become...