Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Tyson Ray Co-founder and CEO of FORM Wealth Advisors

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

For over 25 years, Tyson Ray has sat in the same seat many entrepreneurs find themselves in today: running a successful business, serving clients at the highest level, and facing the question of what comes next.As co-founder and CEO of FORM Wealth Advisors, Tyson has led through market cycles, built a multigenerational team, acquired firms, and guided clients through every kind of transition. He spent years focused on everyone else’s future until he realized his own succession plan wasn’t where it needed to be.That moment became the foundation for the SPACE Framework™ (See, Prepare, Act, Commit, Exit), which Tyson shares in his latest book Total Succession. Built for advisors who care deeply about their clients, their teams, and the legacy they leave behind, it offers a clear path to exit with confidence and full compensation.Tyson holds advanced credentials from the Yale School of Management and the Business Enterprise Institute, along with his CFP®, CIMA®, and CExP® designations. His work has earned national recognition, including:• Barron’s Top 1,200 Advisors (2021–2024)• Forbes Best-in-State Wealth Advisor (2018–2024)• AdvisorHub Top 150 Advisors to Watch Under $1B (2024)• Chairman’s Council Advisor (2005–2024)Beyond the business, Tyson is co-founder of Children’s World Impact, a nonprofit providing global humanitarian aid. His leadership there has been recognized with the Invest in Others Global Community Impact Award and REP. Magazine’s Advisor with a Heart.Learn more: http://totalsuccession.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-tyson-ray-co-founder-and-ceo-of-form-wealth-advisors

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Tyson Ray, who's the co-founder and CEO of Form Wealth Advisors. Tyson, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me on, Mike.

Hey, you know, I always love starting off with, oh, that's a neat sounding website or company, and I love acronym. So I want to dive into what you do and how you do it. But get us started with your story and background and how did you get into the wealth advisory industry? And then what does form mean? Yeah. So the short version of the long story is I, you know, grew up the eviction notice on the refrigerator when I was about 12. I got my first job shortly thereafter that.

It was got a ride home. about the time I was 16 and I live in the Lake Geneva area founded by some of the wealth out of Chicago. And I was getting a ride home in a Ferrari. And I lied at what house I lived in because I was too embarrassed. And we pulled in the driveway. Thankfully, nobody was in the home where we pulled in. But I happened to ask him when I was getting out of the car, you know, how did you make your money? And he said two things.

one my business. And then the other one was he's like I was a successful investor. And so I bid on that and proceeded to take my money out of my chubby chubby chimp bank account. And I couldn't buy stocks. My mom said no. But I was able to convince my mom with the help of a stockbroker at the time to let me put $100 a month into two mutual funds.

And I started investing when I was 16. And when I graduated college, I realized I had spent so many years trying to convince my mom, why investing made sense that I decided to go. into financial services and help people understand why investing makes sense. And form, the name of the firm, is an acronym that stands for your family, your occupation, your recreation, and your mission, which is basically money flows through family members, up and down that family tree, if you will. Obviously, your occupation helps accumulate some of your wealth, especially as a business owner.

and then what you do in that 30 years of not working called retirement is is is of itself another occupation to be working towards and on the recreations are things you do every five to 10 years. They change based on health and interest. And then the mission in life is kind of the giving while you're living and the legacy you want to leave and the impact you want to have on the world. And the whole point of the acronym is if we can understand the form your life is taking, then we can manage your wealth around that. Nate, you know, I've always heard that acronym as it relates to a conversation starter, you know, like, hey, how to have a vibrant conversation start with family occupation. But I love how you weave it around how those topics relate to retirement. And every step along the way from, you know, our family, oh, you had a new child, that could affect retirement.

Oh, your child had a child. That could affect retirement. Oh, your child's going to college. All of those things. So I think those are so powerful to be able to recognize because if you, you. don't, you wake up one day and it's been 10 years and you didn't think about or plan for retirement the way you should have. So I really like that approach. Yeah, it's all about avoiding future regret by making better decisions in the present. Yep. So you work with business owners

primarily. Is that right? Helping them make some of their planning decisions? Yeah, I've been doing this for 27 years. So one, running my own business. I've acquired seven businesses along the way in the financial services industry. And then in that 27 years, had many business owners that we've interacted with so much so. In 2018, I got a certification in business exit planning to help the business owner create their succession and what is that, what is success in that to them so they can exit their business either at death or on their terms, hopefully, where they don't regret the decision. You know, I love how you. You know, I love how you, you've used the word regret twice here, and it's so powerful.

And I think that the life coaches of the world would go, yes, we need to address that because it's kind of like if you don't deal with regret on the front end, the weight of regret on the back end, once you have passed those times of making decisions is heavy. So what are some of the things that a business owner needs to keep in mind so that they don't regret not making that decision as it relates to planning for that exit? Yeah, well, there's a business owner readiness survey that's done every year that identifies or the statistic out of that survey is up to 75% or three out of four. Business owners that exit their business end up regretting it within the first year. And I think what is taught in exit planning and what I have definitely learned in the 27 years of advising clients is not defining what you're going to do or who, you are when you're no longer the CEO, founder, owner, president, whatever the title was,

what are you doing when you're no longer doing your business? And how do you use those skills and talents and gifts that you have into retirement? Because the mistake, and this is true of clients that don't have businesses, the mistake people make for their working years is they say, when I'm going, the math they have in their head is retirement is no longer working. Well, okay, When you're no longer working, retirement then is nothing. And when you retire into nothing, their fines, regret, depression, the entrepreneur tends to go and get creative with trying to do other things with their wealth to kind of replace the business. And that can be very painful, especially if you're being an entrepreneur in ways you weren't meant to be. Yeah.

But we found to try and spend enough time before the exit to work within a space framework, which we have in the book that we're writing, to help the client, to help the owner see, that's the essence space, see who are you after you're no longer working? And do you want to stop working? And then see what does the person next to you that's been with you your whole life want for you? What are your family and friends, the people that love you want for you. Because regret can be not just your regret, but the burden you feel for the regret of the partner or spouse that's been waiting for you to be done and you never end. And that's a different type of regret. And it's just a joyful opportunity to basically try and help clients see their blind spots, help understand when they were a little kid. They envisioned retirement being what as you got older.

you know, what do you like to do? And the whole idea is you only have so much time to do it. And are you burning that time up feeling like you got to keep holding out of this business only to find out it was, it wasn't, it wasn't the fulfillment you wanted in your 60s, 70s or 80s. Yeah. Huge. You know, it makes me think about, you know, again, probably a lot of what you do is life coaching in the realm of planning for retirement. what does that look like to you? Oh, a business owner, what does retirement or life after the business look like? And I know that statistically, people that retire and punch the last clock, so to speak, and six, eight, 12 months later, they're like, what's my life purpose? And then their health starts declining and their lifespan starts going down. So you doing what you're doing is benefiting a couple ways. Number one, the business to make sure the business is going to exit properly. and then the business owner to make sure that they are stepping out the way they want to step out because we can get into a nine hour conversation on what are the best ways to exit full on sale or partial or all those kinds of things.

So what are some of the places you start working with a business owner to say, okay, you've said that you probably want to exit around this age or this many years from now. How far ahead do you start working with the business owner? And then what are the first things that you're bringing to their attention? Yeah, so that conversation starts around. I find it's one of two things. It is either an age. I want to be done when I am the soul. Yeah, yeah.

Or it's a number, which is either an income number or a net worth number. And what I find is that regret falls more around the number because the game of more is never enough. different from helping people reach what we call a funded level of contentment. Yeah. And it really starts there. And we bring, if the business owner is married or in a relationship, we seek to bring the both partners in and ask them the question. Because sometimes the business owner, it's a number, but the significant other, it's an age. and the more you can start identifying that ahead of time,

the more you can start planning for the stress that becomes that if the spouse said or thought, I was coming along for a 30-year ride, and so at 60 or 65, you're supposed to be done, and now we're 70. You know, there's the fruit of where regret or resentment or things that rob us of what wealth is for, which is relationships, can find itself and it's just trying to help people plan around that. Yeah. I think the other mistake people make,

I think the other, real quick, the other mistake people are making, and it's fun to try and help them see this blind spot, you know, it's called business exiting. And they view exit as a finish or an end. And what I try and help them realize is an exit can be into

something. And it's just like you had your year planned as a business owner of conferences or meetings or events or seasons. It's okay, what is that? Let's plan that next year, two or three into retirement. So there are things we're doing that we wanted to do. We've always wanted to do. Maybe our significant other wants to do to have a schedule somewhat filled out or planned out. So again, we're retiring into something. You know, that's a huge. point, which is it predicates it on what does it look like? What is that why? What is your retirement from business look like? And if it is, I just want to go play golf all day, every day. Okay, then there's that. But I would venture to say that you discover sometimes people go, you know,

I kind of am type A and I don't really want to sit around and do nothing all the time, you know, take a couple months break, of course, but I really kind of want to still be active and busy in a type of business and I really love my business. I just really hate this part, this part, this part. So potentially maybe one of the avenues you then start advising them might be, you know what? Why don't you just keep ownership of the company of X percent, bring in a CEO, hire people to do all the things you don't like to do,

but you just mention these three aspects of the business you absolutely love. Why don't you stay on board and do those things? And then you're loving the environment. and then you're having people come in to do things you don't. Have you seen people that want to do that type of exit? Yeah. Yeah. If they can let it go, a part of exit planning is in part of the, I believe part of the process of exit planning is working yourself out of those things you don't like.

And part of that comes from a financial planning standpoint is if we can identify your level of funded contentment, if we can identify how many assets are in, what's the, the assets and or income you need to enjoy the best life you can afford and let go of the game of more because more stuff doesn't necessarily mean more happiness. But if we can identify you have quote unquote enough that then you can stop feeling like you've got to grow the business to grow the bottom line to grow money going into your coffers versus you can start using the growth or the profits of the company to fund your freedom by hiring who's that have better house skills to take things off your plate you don't want to do if you can allow yourself to let go of some of those things. And that's part of the process. It's also finding the right people.

That also takes longer. But it can be done. And it's part of that process. And again, the cash flow of these businesses often, it's better to keep the business than to sell the business, pay different types of taxes, have it all being done to work yourself out. of of of and there's a lot of people that have done it and you know board of directors are just being a silent owner as a possibility um it just becomes what's the concentrated asset risk of your net worth and those types of things but um the thing about the thing about succession is is it it and the reason we wrote the book is it kind of wrote the book to not have a dog in the fight it's it is um it the space framework as i go back to it as a thinking process of do you see what

you would be doing. And does that mean you're still doing it working? Yeah. What is it? Yeah, yeah. And then, and do you see yourself, what are the things, to your point, I believe we have limited resources in time and energy. And specifically with regards to energy, kind of like the Energizer Bunny or the battery, right? It's positive or negative. Either things give you energy or things suck the energy out of you. And there are things in my own business that I could be in the office at three o'clock in the morning and not want to leave because I'm so into what I'm doing. It's giving me energy. And there's been other projects that I've been here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And I just want to poke myself on the eye and it's just sucking a life out of me. And the next day or three of the afternoon.

Right, right. Yeah. And so part of, part of exiting is beginning with taking away the things that rob you of your energy to see, uh, what do you really want to be completely done? And the problem with some, some people that don't do this correctly is they burn. them self regret comes i believe from burning themselves out with all these things that rob them of the energy and the stresses of things that they just effectively give up or feel like they have to cut it off and then regret doing so because they realized later on there were some things they liked doing and they gave them up yeah yeah you know i i i just find that there are probably a just myriad ways that you would sit down and say here's how to exit and the beautiful part is

there's never one template it did cookie cutter do this next do this next you've got to figure it out and one of the best things that i loved hearing you say is it doesn't matter whether you want to exit when you own the business this many years or have this much money in the bank but you got to figure it out and i would would wonder have you ever sat down with a business owner and gone oh um you want to exit when you have x number dollars in the bank for retirement personally and you know what you can do that in the next 18 months. And they're sitting there going, I thought it was going to be four, five, six years. And you gave them that clear path forward.

It kind of gives them a boost in their spirit, right? They're like, wow, we're doing better. We thought. And if we kind of keep polishing things up, we can hit that and achieve that. Yeah. And I've also seen it where more, not always, but more times than not, I've met with folks that it's like, yep, you actually have enough. And I can show them that.

And then an interesting thing happens. And this is true for people that don't own a business, they're just working. When you feel like you have to save for more, keep working for later, those types of things, that comes with its own stress. And when all of a sudden you have the, I could be done whenever I want, I've had people own their business longer or stay working longer because all of a sudden the stress of the have to fell off. So any day they're like, I could just quit if I wanted to. And all of a sudden, whatever was annoying them doesn't bother them as it. did like it's no longer this prison all of a sudden it's a choice and he's like yeah i don't care that okay fine bad day whatever uh and part the whole job of an advisor in my opinion is to free

clients into the reality of what they have and realize that can set you free where they can set you free from the business and you sell it and you walk away to go do something completely different or it can set you free from i can do this differently and the to finish off the space framework because i said it a couple times the seeing right what do you want to do what is that picture look like. Can we get real specific in your life, in the business, in your family, in your health? What is what do you see yourself? What do you want for yourself and visualize it? From that, what do we need to prepare for to make that a reality? That's the P in space. What's that list? It's a task list. And then from there, what do we actually then need to

prioritize to act on and who needs to act on these things to prepare ourselves to make that vision in that what we saw reality. And this is the hard one. Then can we commit, that's the C, can we commit to actually doing it? Can we commit to letting go? Can we commit to taking some of that revenue and hiring someone and may not be the right persons?

We have to do it two or three times, but can we commit? Or if we're going to sell the business to somebody else or to the family member or to the management team, can we commit to letting them kind of succeed and fail on their own to grow into those executive roles? That's the only way you get there.

To then the E is ultimately exit and it may not be exiting the business, may be exit responsibilities or it may be exiting the business to go do things you feel called to do as as life happens. Yeah, that's huge. And it all begins with that clarity, that C, the S, the C. And when you can begin with the end of mind, as Stephen Covey used to teach in his books, you know where you want to go. You know why you want to get there, Simon Seneca. So we're kind of attributing some of these teachers out there.

and now you can properly prepare, take action, commit, and offload. And that's a hard thing for business owners or hard driven people that make the decisions to go, you know what, maybe I ought to bring in that VP of or that CEO to do this, but that's my baby. I'm the one that always used to do that. But once you get to that point and kind of keep coming back to the end, you know, the sea, then you can exit with confidence, like you said. I just, I think that framework just really, really speaks highly of

putting together a plan that people can follow. And they kind of take that deep breath and go, I can do that, just one step at a time. So you got your book. And this has just been really super enlightening to hear some of the ways you're working with business owners to bring that clarity. So how can people learn more about Total Succession book and working with you guys and seeing what that might mean in their business?

Yeah. So we wrote Total Succession. It's specific for the financial advisory industry, although the concept of exit planning is really kind of standardized across the businesses. It's a how-to guide. So the website is total succession.com. There's the Total Succession podcast that we've been putting out there. And the book is available on Amazon.

It's being launched in January. Neat. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's just been a real pleasure chatting with you today, Tyson. Thanks for having me on the show, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes,

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