Our guest today is a former professional basketball player turned elite wealth strategist who is completely redefining what it means to be truly wealthy. After experiencing childhood financial hardship, he mastered the world of finance, earned a Doctorate in Business Administration, and went on to build a premier wealth advisory firm. But he’s not just about numbers—he famously walked away from an $8.1 million corporate offer early in his career just to protect his ethics and personal values.

He is an Amazon bestselling author, the founder of Michels Family Financial, and the architect behind the global 'Rich by Choice' movement. Please welcome the 2026 Fort Worth 'Man of Impact' award winner, author of Rich by Choice, Dr. Nicholas E. Michels

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What does it take to completely reinvent your career after nearly 40 years? In this episode, we sit down with W. Kenneth Tyler, Jr., a semi-retired CPA who spent decades writing "persuasive prose" to the IRS before pivoting to his true passion: storytelling.

Kenny joins us to pull back the curtain on his journey from corporate accounting to becoming an award-shortlisted indie author. We dive deep into his debut historical fiction espionage caper, Hunting the Red Fox—a thrilling tale that weaves together World War II military spying, old Hollywood glamour, and the professional golf circuit.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Spark: How a chance conversation with a former Major League Baseball player set off a decade-long writing journey.
• The Reinvention: Turning 38 years of business ownership and a marketing MBA into a toolkit for launching a book.
• The Process: What it’s really like to transition from rigid tax compliance to creative fiction.

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Amy Meislin Pollack is an American children's author and retired educator best known for creating the Jelly Bean middle-grade fiction series. Her debut series, published by Austin Macauley Publishers, includes The Adventures of Jelly Bean, The Further Adventures of Jelly Bean, and The Still Further Adventures of Jelly Bean. [

Literary Career

The inspiration for Pollack’s coming-of-age series dates back to her fourth-grade classroom in the 1960s, where her teacher frequently called her to the front of the room to share impromptu stories about a character named "Jelly Bean". Though she began drafting the stories later in life, she formally completed and published the series during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Geared toward readers aged 7 to 13, her books follow the nostalgic, real-world complexities of adolescence in the 1960s. Her writing has earned critical recognition from outlets such as Kirkus Reviews and The US Review of Books for tackling sensitive, relatable youth themes, including bullying, mixed-race identity, poverty, and family dynamics. [1,

Professional Background

Before launching her publishing career, Pollack spent more than 40 years in education. She taught a diverse range of subjects and grade levels, working as a high school English teacher, reading specialist, and special education teacher. Additionally, she served for six years as a writing professor and tutor center advisor at Montclair State University. In the early 1970s, prior to entering education, she worked briefly in the New York City advertising industry

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Dr. Sieglinde Othmer is an author, style and wellness advocate, and octogenarian powerhouse on a mission to redefine how we view the aging process. Born in Germany, Dr. Othmer survived a daring childhood escape from behind the Iron Curtain before immigrating to the United States, where she established herself as a social scientist, researcher, and academic.

Following the loss of her husband, she channeled her personal resilience into creating Joyous Longevity, an educational movement and field guide exploring mindfulness, socialization, and cognitive activity. Her empowering message that "joy is a conscious decision" has made her a highly sought-after guest on programs like Kansas Public Radio and various wellness podcasts. When she isn't writing or speaking, Dr. Othmer is an avid gardener, global traveler who has visited over 40 countries, and the proud mother of three children.

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Brian Beck helps mid-sized organizations move beyond the hype around AI and cybersecurity and turn emerging technology into practical business results.

While much of the conversation around AI focuses on what the technology can do, Brian focuses on a more important question: Why are so many companies struggling to actually implement it?

His work centers on helping leadership teams identify where AI can create meaningful impact within their existing operations, align teams around execution, and implement solutions that improve efficiency, reduce risk, and support better decision-making.

Brian brings a practical perspective shaped by real-world experience—including seeing initiatives stall, budgets get wasted, and expectations fall short of reality. Rather than focusing on the latest tools or buzzwords, he breaks down what actually works, where organizations commonly go wrong, and what leaders should consider before making their next technology investment.

On the podcast, Brian offers a straightforward, no-hype perspective on AI, cybersecurity, leadership, and implementation—giving business leaders actionable insights they can take back to their organizations and put to work immediately.

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What if Type 2 Diabetes isn’t really a blood sugar problem—but a cellular and metabolic problem hiding underneath it?

Dr. Jason Shumard is a Functional Medicine practitioner with more than 20 years of experience helping people understand and overcome Type 2 Diabetes, insulin resistance, and metabolic dysfunction. He goes beyond simply managing numbers and symptoms, using detailed lab-based assessments to uncover what’s actually driving the problem.

But this mission is personal. After watching his own mother struggle with diabetes, Dr. Shumard became passionate about helping others understand the condition from a completely different perspective.

Known for breaking down complex metabolic science into conversations anyone can understand, he challenges conventional thinking and asks an important question: Why do so many people keep hitting the same walls with diabetes—and what can we do differently?

On the podcast, Dr. Shumard brings science, personal experience, and a fresh perspective to a topic affecting millions of people. Expect an eye-opening conversation about diabetes, insulin resistance, metabolism, and the hidden factors that may be keeping people stuck.

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Our next guest is a serial entrepreneur, growth specialist, and a true powerhouse in the world of customer experience. Over his incredible career, he has built, scaled, and successfully sold six different companies by following a simple mantra: the customer is at the center of the universe.

He is widely known for leading the massive U.S. market expansion of the Australian software giant Panviva, and today, he advises Fortune 500 companies on how to transform their corporate culture and turn casual buyers into lifelong brand ambassadors. He is also a sought-after speaker, an author, and the host of his own hit show, The Science of CX.

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Buckle up, because today’s guest is about to completely change the way you think about relationships, business, and success! We are joined by the one and only Jeffrey Meshel—a real estate powerhouse, serial entrepreneur, and quite literally a master networker who is always just One Phone Call Away from solving any business challenge!

As the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Candor Capital Partners and the visionary mind behind The Strategic Forum, Jeff has spent over 40 years building elite, high-value alliances. He is a phenomenal author of four game-changing books, including his absolute must-read latest release, Know Who You Know. If you want to transform your network into your ultimate net worth, you are in for an absolute treat!

High-Octane Talking Points

• Become an Opportunity Magnet: Learn the exact, actionable mindset shifts you need to make so that high-value business deals and partnerships start chasing you!
• The "One Phone Call" Rolodex: Jeff breaks down how to build an inner circle so powerful that you can solve any major business crisis with a single, strategic phone call.
• The High-Stakes Truth About Trust: Why trust is a double-edged sword, how to guard it fiercely, and how to use it as your ultimate competitive advantage.
• Battle-Tested Resilience: Epic stories and lessons learned from the front lines of real estate, tech startups like DivorceForce, and serving on major banking boards.

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Sarah Saffari is an entrepreneur, business strategist, and influencer-marketing expert who has built her career at the intersection of creators, brands, and digital growth. As the founder and CEO of InfluencerNexus, Sarah helps brands connect with the right influencers and build campaigns designed to drive real awareness, engagement, and conversions.

Sarah's journey gives her a unique perspective on the rapidly evolving creator economy. After years of helping influencers build their audiences and businesses, she recognized the gaps between brands and creators and built InfluencerNexus to help bridge them. Her insights into influencer strategy, Gen Z marketing, personal branding, and the business behind social media make her a fascinating guest for entrepreneurs, creators, and anyone trying to understand where digital marketing is headed.

She’s not just talking about the influencer economy—she’s helping build what comes next.

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Matt Friedman is a serial entrepreneur, business leader, and the co-founder of Wing Zone, a restaurant brand he launched with Adam Scott while they were students at the University of Florida. What began in 1991 as a late-night wing experiment in their fraternity kitchen grew into an international franchise business with locations across the U.S. and abroad.

Matt’s entrepreneurial journey is a story of spotting an opportunity, taking a risk, building a brand from the ground up, and learning what it takes to scale a business. After decades of growing Wing Zone, he has continued his entrepreneurial journey and is now CEO of Epic Wings.

He brings a wealth of experience in entrepreneurship, franchising, leadership, branding, and business growth—and an incredible story of how a simple idea between college friends became a global franchise.

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Lisa Baker is an accomplished executive coach, leadership strategist, speaker, and founder of Ascentim, bringing more than two decades of Fortune 500 leadership experience to the conversation. She is passionate about helping ambitious professionals unlock their potential, build confidence, lead authentically, and create careers with greater purpose and impact.

Through Ascentim, Lisa combines real-world leadership experience with practical coaching strategies to help individuals navigate career growth, leadership challenges, and personal development. Her unique perspective makes her an engaging and inspiring podcast guest for anyone looking to become a stronger leader, find greater clarity, and take their professional growth to the next level.

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Jason Roberts is a prominent real estate investor, entrepreneur, and the founder and managing broker of Better Blueprint Realty. Successfully transitioning from a corporate engineering background into full-time entrepreneurship, Roberts scaled a minimal initial investment into a multi-million dollar real estate and educational ecosystem.

Early Life & Career Transition

• Real Estate Roots: Raised in New York as the son of a real estate agent and a home builder, Roberts grew up around construction sites and residential developments.
• Corporate Background: He initially pursued a stable career track, working a conventional 9-to-5 job in the engineering sector.
• The Pivot: Seeking a high-yield vehicle to grow his personal savings, he chose to leave his engineering role to pursue active real estate investing full-time.

Investment & Business Growth

• Rapid Scaling: Roberts initiated his investing journey with just $5,000 in capital, generating $400,000 in cash and equity within his first 18 months.
• Volume and Portfolio: During his first three years in the industry, he participated in more than $100 million in sales and acquired a portfolio of over 60 investment properties.
• Strategy Focus: Specializing in high-margin asset types, his operations span high-end fix-and-flips, short-term vacation rentals (Airbnb), multifamily properties, luxury developments, and BRRRR projects.

Mentorship & Media

• Better Blueprint Academy: Moving past the capacity limits of 1-on-1 coaching, Roberts institutionalized his systems into an online educational platform and national mentorship program designed to train six-figure house flippers.
• Philosophy: He strongly advocates for a "quality over quantity" approach, frequently highlighting the structural advantage of managing a single, high-margin $200,000 flip over multiple resource-draining deals.
• Media Appearances: He hosts the Abstract podcast, speaks regularly at live real estate dealmaker masterclasses, and was featured in the television series Legacy Makers.

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Cintara is an enterprise AI governance and cybersecurity infrastructure provider that builds execution control systems for autonomous AI agents. The company introduces an in-path Governance Control Plane that intercepts agent intents—such as moving funds, altering data, or changing system configurations—and evaluates them against centralized security policies before execution. Founded as a United States Delaware C-Corporation, Cintara sits directly between AI agents and production stacks to ensure all automated operations are controlled, attributable, and auditable.

The platform is designed to transition enterprise security from legacy, reactive post-incident alerts to real-time, pre-execution gatekeeping. Every action taken or blocked by an agent is permanently written to an immutable, cryptographically verifiable audit trail. Built to satisfy both commercial enterprise and public sector compliance, Cintara operates with established federal procurement identifiers, including a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) of EAT5ZH6K4PX3 and CAGE Code 18ZU9.

Featured Podcast Guests

• Subodh Shetty (Chief Technology Officer): A veteran of distributed computing and blockchain architecture with over 25 years of experience. Subodh previously led large-scale AI infrastructure projects at Amazon and is responsible for designing the core technical architecture powering Cintara’s agentic trust layers.
• Greg Adams (Chief Commercial Officer): A global go-to-market and platform monetization strategist with 25 years of expertise leading commercial expansion across technology companies. At Cintara, Greg drives enterprise adoption, strategic partnerships, and revenue growth by aligning product capabilities with evolving client compliance needs.

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Joshua Altman is a storyteller, strategist and creative force with more than two decades of experience shaping how people see, hear and connect with big ideas. He leads Beltway Media, a bold D.C.-based communications firm that helps brands and organizations cut through the noise.

A former multimedia journalist at The Hill, he now works with everyone from scrappy startups to federal agencies, helping them refine their message, elevate their brand and connect with their audience. Joshua is a storyteller, strategist and creative force with more than two decades of experience shaping how people see, hear and connect with big ideas. Today, he leads beltway.media, a bold D.C.-based communications firm that helps brands and organizations cut through the noise. Before founding the firm, Joshua was a multimedia journalist at The Hill, diving deep into federal policy including energy and the environment, tax and finance, healthcare, immigration, defense and criminal justice, and covering high-stakes election cycles from the front lines.

For more than two decades, Joshua served as a member of The Telly Awards Judging Council, a select group of past winners who judge each year's annual competition. Now he works with everyone from scrappy startups to federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Commerce, helping them refine their message, elevate their brand and 1 of 8 connect with their audience, whether that's customers, investors or the public at large. From reimagining agency websites to crafting magnetic stories, Joshua's work has one goal: to make communications clear, compelling and impossible to ignore. Joshua holds an M.A. in Communication, Culture and Technology from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from The George Washington University.

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LaWanna Bradford is an internationally recognized business strategist, serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and dynamic media personality. With over 30 years of corporate, federal, and military-adjacent consulting experience, she serves as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of The Bradford Group—a commercial and investment mortgage brokerage—and the Principal of The Bradford Group Consulting.

Throughout her distinguished career, Ms. Bradford has engineered structural transformation for major federal agencies and global events. Her portfolio includes leading critical strategic development initiatives for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and serving on the planning committee for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. She is the creator of the proprietary R3 System™ (Refocus. Reframe. Reconnect.), a highly sought-after performance methodology used by executive boards to guide corporate restructuring, leadership alignment, and operational scaling.

An accomplished literary voice, Ms. Bradford is a six-time international bestselling author. Her acclaimed book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Journey Through the Words That Shaped a Nation, earned the 2026 International Impact Book Award in both the Education and Academic categories. Honoring her late father's legacy, she directs 100% of the proceeds from this publication to the Southwest Association of Buffalo Soldiers (SWABS) to support youth education and historical preservation.

A prominent voice in digital broadcasting, Ms. Bradford hosts three distinct streaming talk shows on the e360TV network: Choose to Challenge, Power of the Pen, and Business & Financial Raw Talk. Beyond the screen, she is the co-founder of Celebrate You Embracing HER Wellness, a global network dedicated to empowering women leaders through holistic development, equity advocacy, and community mentorship. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Arizona and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Golden Gate University.

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Elias Curtis is an accomplished entrepreneur, brand strategist, and web development expert with over 25 years of experience driving digital growth for businesses. He is the founder and co-owner of Transformed Design Inc., a premier branding and web agency based in Oceanside, California. Alongside his co-owner and wife, Danielle, Elias has spent nearly two decades helping service-based companies transition from unpredictable word-of-mouth referrals to high-converting, automated online sales engines.

A graduate of Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Graphic and Web Design, Elias combines creative design principles with data-driven business strategy. His agency specializes in building cohesive brand identities, intuitive UI/UX design, and search engine optimization (SEO) frameworks that transform corporate websites into 24/7 lead-generation tools.

As a sought-after digital strategist, Elias frequently shares his expertise on entrepreneurial podcasts. He is highly regarded for his practical approach to modern technology, particularly in guiding businesses on how to integrate artificial intelligence to optimize workflows and increase operational efficiency. Whether speaking to audiences or working one-on-one with clients, Elias is dedicated to building predictable, scalable systems that foster long-term business growth.

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Raphael Groten is an acclaimed Vermont-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and sound healing artist dedicated to the philosophy of "music as medicine." His genre-defying career spans over three decades, encompassing meditative ambient soundscapes, lively children’s music, and soulful collaborative projects.

His professional recording journey took a pivotal turn when his solo acoustic guitar debut, Journey Home, was produced by Grammy-winning Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman. Since then, Raphael has released a diverse catalog of music, including the #1 radio-charting native flute album Great Blue, the "world medicine groove" project Potential, and a deep-funk collaboration with his son under the moniker Leo & the Goat.

As a veteran music educator and sound therapist, Raphael creates from his off-the-grid tiny home on wheels in Vermont. He utilizes global instruments—from acoustic guitars and native flutes to handpans and gongs—to craft intentional audio journeys that reduce stress, inspire self-discovery, and cultivate deep inner peace.

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Hiten Sonpal is an accomplished robotics executive and technology leader with over two decades of experience scaling commercial automation. He currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RISE Robotics, a clean-technology firm replacing heavy machinery hydraulics with fluid-free, ultra-efficient mechanical alternatives. Throughout his career, Sonpal has specialized in bringing advanced engineering research to massive commercial deployment.

Career Highlights

• RISE Robotics (CEO): Spearheads the commercial rollout of patented Beltdraulic™ technology. He has led the company through key defense contracts with the U.S. Army and Air Force, oil and gas sector sales, and multi-million dollar revenue milestones.
• Autonomous Ventures: Previously served as President of Electric Sheep Robotics and CEO of Mowbot, driving operational scale and hardware deployment across the automated landscaping industry.
• iRobot (16-Year Tenure): Held foundational leadership roles across both defense and consumer sectors. He managed the deployment of tactical robots to active military zones, and later led consumer product lines that shipped over 9 million units globally and generated upward of $2 billion in revenue.
• Education & Advisory: Holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Evansville, is pursuing an M.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, and advises deep-tech ventures like Graze Robotics.

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Gold Star AI is a premier B2B artificial intelligence automation agency specializing in the architecture and deployment of custom autonomous agent systems. Positioned at the forefront of the operational AI landscape, the agency helps mid-market and enterprise businesses shift away from repetitive, manual labor by engineering digital workers that integrate natively into existing enterprise software. The company was co-founded by Michael Krebs and Thomas Baker, industry educators who also teach AI Agent frameworks at Harvard Business School. Under their leadership, the agency advocates for human-centric AI development, designing automated frameworks that amplify human potential rather than replacing it.

To date, the agency has deployed over 2,545 custom AI agents across diverse commercial ecosystems. Through its signature "Discover, Design, Deploy" operational pipeline, Gold Star Workflows builds highly specialized solutions targeting business-critical bottlenecks, including automated inbox triage, AI-driven business intelligence, automated lead scoring, and multi-channel content engines. By systematically mapping workflows and auditing digital infrastructure, Gold Star Workflows remains a trusted partner for organizations seeking measurable ROI, scalable growth, and intelligent digital transformation.

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Joining us today is an incredibly versatile storyteller who has mastered everything from gritty historical Westerns to high-seas swashbuckling adventures. Raised in the rugged mountains of Wyoming, his passion for the written word was sparked by his father, a passionate English scholar. Today, he is an acclaimed, multi-genre author whose meticulously researched books—like Magi Apprentice and Railroad Man—explore heavy themes of honor, faith, and legacy. Author Dan E. Hendrickson

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