Overcoming Limits and Building Empires with Ty Cohen

Do you want to know the secret to Success? Welcome to rulesforsuccess.com a platform that unites the accomplished and the ambitious. This is where successful entrepreneurs reveal their winning strategies, their profound wisdom and their practical guidance. Whether you are a pioneering entrepreneur, a determined business leader, or simply someone who craves success, RulesForSuccess.com is the podcast designed for you. We're here to arm you with the invaluable knowledge of individuals who have paved their own path to success. And now let's get into the show with dynamic host, Joseph Varghese. All right, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. Welcome to Rules for Success, our podcast for success where we interview engaged successful entrepreneurs and leaders. My name is Joseph Varghese. You can access this podcast and recording and the mind map summary of it all@rulesforsuccess.com or in Spotify or we're on Apple. We're on all the channels. Today I get to interview a good friend of mine who I go back with 20 years. His name is Mr. Ty Cohen. Ty is a digital publishing pioneer. He's a pioneer in this space. He is a high impact entrepreneur and one of the most in demand voices in online business. He's the founder of Kindle Cash Flow and the creator of multiple game changing programs including seven day business book series Secrets, the Fast Pass coaching program and micro offers, all designed to help authors, creatives and everyday individuals turn their knowledge into digital income. Ty's story didn't start with privilege. He started with pain and purpose. Born with sickle cell anemia, Ty was told he wouldn't live past 17. That diagnosis became his drive. Today he's built multiple seven figure businesses, coached over 100,000 students around the world and proving that your limitations don't define your destiny, your decisions do. His journey began with a borrowed laptop and a bold idea. It's continued. He's continuing to level up. He's happily married to the woman of his dreams. He's got four children. And we go back. So we're going to go on this conduct of conversation, we're going to talk about his journey, potentially how we've connected. He is a true pioneer in, in the space of online marketing, building digital empires. And I know there's a lot of noise out there, but this man is the real deal. I've known him for 20 years and I've seen his commitment toward growth, making progress happen, also seeing his family win. For me, it's inspiring when I see entrepreneurs step up and show up and Take care of their families, their kids, and leave long lasting legacies to Ty. How are you today, brother?

Man, I'm doing great. I'm doing fantastic. Even better now that I'm here with you. Right. So I'm excited to hear what we're going to talk about. And hopefully, you know, what we'll do, Joseph, is we'll help some people, we'll inspire some people, motivate some people, and we'll let them know that regardless of where they're at, where they came from, it is possible. It is beyond possible for them.

Incredible. Anything is possible. Just showing up and being, having a mentor, having inspiration, knowing someone who's had challenges, make it through and get to the other side and win and have people around and win is extraordinary. Ty, let's talk about the story I mentioned before that you found out at a young age that you were sick. Sickle cell anemia. It's a big thing. Talk about your roots. I know you grew up in Connecticut, you're now in North Carolina. But talk about those roots and how you found that diagnosis and how that potentially how that inspired you, how that caused you to level up to who you are now.

Yeah. So. So sickle cell anemia is something that you're actually born with. And so. So at an early age, 6, 7, 8 years old, I'm used to going to the hospital, which sounds kind of weird, right? I'm used to being in a hospital for weeks at a time, days at a time, being in pain. The thing that I was not used to was being different. Different than other kids. Couldn't go swimming, couldn't play baseball, couldn't play basketball. Right. Because the overexertion could cause you to actually go into what's known as the sickle cell anemia crisis, where you get this extreme pain all over your body. So much so where sometimes the only way to get rid of a pain temporarily is through high levels of morphine or Dilaudid or Demerol and sometimes a mixture of those things here. So that was normal for me up until about 12 years old. I was in Yale, New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. And I had been in a crisis. And I had been in this crisis for about two and a half weeks. And outside my hospital room door, I hear my mom and my hematologist having a conversation. And the hematologist, he says something to my mom. He says, Mrs. Alpresta is calling. He says, you shouldn't expect your son Ty to live past the age of 17.

Wow.

Now, I had never heard that before. I Had never heard that there was a limitation with this thing, right? So I'm 12 years old, Joseph, and they didn't, I don't think they realized that they heard me. My mom passed about five years ago, and it never dawned on me to ask her if she ever, you know, thought had I heard that conversation. But I did what every 12 year old could do at that time. I pulled the covers over my head and I started to cry, I started to bawl. I mean, remember, I don't know if you ever had a beating back as a kid, but you know, just the idea of getting a whooping or a beating, you. You start sniffling. So I'm doing that as a 12 year old because I'm thinking, like, I got five years to live. Yeah, five years to live. And then I ended up getting out of house, out of a hospital, and my mom and dad had six children. It was just me and my sister Gwen that were born with six, right? The full disease I get out of the hospital. And my sister Gwen, who was older than me, she was in her 20s, she had been in Gaylord Hospital. And at this time, sickle cell had really ravaged her body. I mean, her kidneys, she was on dialysis and just everything. She was in a wheelchair. She could barely move on her own. And I get out of the hospital, she's still in the hospital. And a couple of months later, she ended up dying. So she's about 27 years old and she ended up dying from sickle cell. So now this idea that I'm not gonna live past 17 became even more real for me now, right? Even more real for me. And I'm like, what the heck? Now, we grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. We grew up in housing projects called Father Panic Village. So if you think Connecticut, you're thinking cows and pastures. And, you know, village was anything but. It was crack cocaine, heroin, murder, and everything else. So I'm like questioning, God, what did I do to be born with sickle cell anemia and to be put in this environment? So thinking that at 12 years old, I got five more years to live, I just started to really go in and just live a very destructive life, to be honest with you, a very destructive life in the streets and not thinking that there's much purpose, not much hope for me. And that was my beginning right there. That was the beginning. And oftentimes we have these moments where we think that where we're at now is all there is. But if we pay attention to the signs, the signs are usually all around us. But we have to start listening and seeing with a different set of ears and eyes. And for me, one of the paradigm shifts was my dad and my mom were separated, but my dad would always come and pick us up and take us to church. We lived in church. Sundays we would go to church, and then we'd go to Bible study and everything else. So one day my dad is driving me and my brother Mike, my younger brother Mike, back from church, and we lived about 10 minutes away from church. And in his back pocket he had this old Volkswagen Beetle and he had this book in his back pocket. And it was a Les Brown book.

Wow.

Okay, dude. It was a Les Brown book. Now I'm 17 at this time.

Yes.

And I'm like, I'm going through it. My first experience, my first time I'm ever put on like certain personal development, self improvement. And I'm flipping through it on this 10 minute ride and I hear Les Brown. I see him, he's saying, if you can look up, you can get up.

Yeah.

I'm hearing him and I'm reading words like, never let someone else's opinion of you become your reality. Right. I needed to hear that at 17.

Yes.

Because in the back of my mind I'm still thinking, look, this is the year I'm gone. Yes, this is the year.

Yeah.

Never let someone else's opinion of you become your reality was the paradigm shift that I needed to have.

Incredible.

And it happened in a matter of minutes. So we pull up to the house, my dad's here. He's like, hey guys, I love you guys. I see you. Right. Be back in a couple of days. My dad was the hardest working guy ever at any one time. He held three jobs. Blue collar guy. Yes, he was. His main job was construction working. He also worked as a, as a security guard. Right. And he also worked as a taxi driver, which ended up being his demise. Someone tried to rob him and ended up shooting him in the back. And he ended up dying from complications of that. So I say that to say that this book should not have been in my father's car. He wasn't an entrepreneur. I didn't know of him to be someone that was into personal development. He was the guy that worked 18 hours a day. Get up. Yes, repeat that. So this book was there for a reason. So I did what any 17 year old would do after he gets home and he gets to the house and he's got this book that's opening his eyes. Instead of asking my dad, hey dad, can I take this book? Like, what the hell is this? Can I take this thing? And I just put it under my shirt and I stole it. And I went. I don't know why, because he would have said, take it. But I took it. And I read that book two or three times. I stayed up to, like, three, four o' clock in the morning, Joseph, just reading that book that day, and I had never looked at life again from that moment. That was the first paradigm shift right there.

Powerful. Yes, yes. And you did it by choice. You know, it wasn't, you know, of course, reading the Bible. I had those experiences as a child, too. But by choice, taking a book, reading it intentionally, going through it as a blueprint, that's extraordinary. Have you. Of course. Les is alive. He's one of my mentors. I've worked with him. Have you had a chance to tell Les about this over the years?

I have. We've worked, actually. Les has wrote the forward to my book here, Kindle Publishing Secrets. So do you see how things come back around 360?

Yes. Yeah.

Which is insane. So he wrote the forward to that book, and so by choice. Yes. But also, I was fascinated. So sometimes we have to find things that we're just fascinated by, because that's our guiding light. Right. I think our guiding light comes in two forms. It's the things that we're fascinated by and also the things that we're terrified of.

Yes.

Yeah, right. The things that we're terrified to do, but we think about them. Steven Pressfield talks about this.

Yes, yes.

The thing that we are terrified to do. Podcast. Dude, you don't know. I've done a gazillion podcasts, but every single time, we're good friends. I've known you forever, everybody. Every single time, I got to sit down, I got to say a prayer. I got to talk to Allah. I got to talk to, you know, Buddha.

I got everyone just, yeah, I feel the same way before. Every time I get on stage, for me, it's letting go of the ego, praying. It's often tithing, giving to something just to get myself out of that. It's about me, so I make it to make it about the people I'm out to serve or the people I'm engaging, highlighting. Because I know you have an extraordinary background. People listening to this right now, I'm sure they're. They're. They're. They probably have had a fraction of the struggles you've had over the years. Right. Like being bullied, going through sickle cell, being told you're gonna get A die, any of that. All those things have happened to you over the years. What, so, so Les Brown's book, that was a step. Your dad working three jobs. What happened when you're 17, you found that you were still alive, right? That was a thing. What had you break out of that paradigm to realize that you're gonna potentially live a longer life. Right. Potentially get married, have family, be an entrepreneur. What had you been? Entrepreneur?

That's a great question. So first off, I didn't want to have kids. I was really selfish. I now have four kids that I love. And I'm grateful for. Super, super grateful for. But I'm like, but, but the thing that made me want to live longer was desire. So I think first you have to have a desire. Napoleon Hill talks about it, right? Having this burning desire. Like it wasn't okay for me to live longer. Like I had to live longer. I'm 53 now. I had to live long. There was no if, ands or buts about it. So that was the first thing. So I had to. And the reason why I had to was because I needed to move. My mother, who had been there for me so much, she spent day after day with me in a hospital, Lord knows, hundreds of times, yes, she had taken care of the other kids. I never still, to this day, I don't know how she was able to do it right. So I needed to be able to pay her back. Sometimes you just have to have something that seems so small that just drives you. So even in the nights when, you know, I was in a hospital and I'm in pain, I would have my laptop and I'm walking through the pain. Even during the days where I just felt hopeless and I didn't feel like, look, who's going to believe you, dude? Like, no one's ever going to buy anything from you. You're not college educated, you don't have the right connections right now. You damn sure don't have the money. Who's going to believe you? So even through those, I had to be delusional and push myself through it because of the goals, which were, number one, to live and then number two, to get my mom out of this environment, which was not the best environment for her to be in. Yeah, right. So. So that was the starting point. And I knew that. So I worked at Watkins Pharmacy. I started working at Walgreens pharmacy at 14 years old as part of a summer program, was a pink summer program where you could work early. And that was one of the only full time jobs that I had ever had. So I worked there from 14 to 23, almost 10 years. And I had worked there and I had worked myself up from a stock boy to a cashier to an assistant manager to a manager. But I knew I wasn't going to be able to move my mom out of that environment working for Walgreens. So entrepreneurship was the way.

Got it. How did you shift entrepreneurship? Was online with a laptop initially, or were you doing. Working? Did you figure something else out as a way of making. Because a lot of entrepreneurs, they start early. They have references like Richard Branson have early references. For me, I started a lot of this pretty late in the game, although I had some experiences like selling cigarettes when I was in high college and stupid things that I referred to. What were some of your early entrepreneur experiences? And of course, you got into the online space early on. I mean, 20 years ago was really early. We met at yannick silvers underground 20 years ago and then onto cruises and more. Tony Robbins, that's this early, very early, before a lot of his blueprints and systems were out. That kind of broke things down step by step. What was your journey as an entrepreneur? Getting involved then also as an Internet entrepreneur where you basically build an empire and you're still building an empire.

Yeah, great question, man. And it goes back to sometimes we'll be. We'll be showing signs, right? And we just have to be open to them. Sometimes we don't. We don't. So the sign I was. My mom was very smart, right? So she grew up in South Carolina, wasn't educated, didn't go to college, right. Graduated high school, but didn't go to college. But she was very. She just had a lot of common sense. So when myself, my sister, we would go in and we would be hospitalized, we would go into this crisis. She would have us read books just to get our mind off of a pain. So, I mean, I would read everything from, you know, National Greek, Geographic to the New York Times, to Home and Garden to just everything. And I fell in love at an early age of reading comic books, right? So I would read these comic books and I'm like, oh, my God, well, what would Spider man do if he was laid up in hospital right now? What would Superman do? And I would picture myself as individuals, like regaining my strength. So the mental power in that. And I would set a date. I'm like, you know what? I'm sick of being in a hospital. I'm sick of being tired. I'm sick of being sick. Give me four more Days and I'm out of here. And I would tell my doctors this, and they would look at me like, you know, but I would set that deadline, and four more days, I'm out of it. And I would. I would feel my body start to get better because I decided to make it get better. Incredible, right? I decided to make it good. So I developed this love for collecting anything that had to do with superheroes. So comic books, action figures, the old Mego dolls, GI Joes, all of that stuff. And I ended up starting to collect so much of his stuff. I would take all of the checks that I got from Walgreens and buy comic books or buy action figures. Oh, go ahead.

You have no idea, brother. That's my whole childhood, too. I have 10,000 comics still with me, have action theories, have a GI Joe doll in front of me right now. And if you saw my toy setting over here, you would freak out. I'm sure we'd have things. I bet you had a Voltron or something of that sort as a kid, maybe, man.

I actually went back and I bought the entire Voltron collection again because I wanted all five lines that you can actually. I got Transformers downstairs in my video.

Room, Die Cast metal, which was like the original, the way how they made them originally before plastic. And that's extraordinary. And that's amazing that you tapped into that world, right? It's a fictional world, but it at least gives hope, right? And it's. It's engaging to a child, to a kid, you know, who's in his teens. It's a world of possibility, especially when your sister's in the hospital and dying and like. And being told that there's no possibility at 17 is. That's it. That's extraordinary. And so you got into the publishing world, that space of creation. How, How. So how did you go from comic books to now the world of publishing?

Yeah, so great question. So I think imagination is really important, even as adults. I want to kind of come back to that, if you don't mind.

But.

So I end up collecting so many comics and action figures that my mom comes to my room one day and she's like, either you're going to get rid of this stuff or I'm gonna throw it out. You're gonna do something with this stuff or I'm gonna throw it out. She didn't see the value in it. I'm like, are you like, I got Spider man number, you know, 102. You can't throw this out. So I was kind of forced into Entrepreneurship, to be honest with you. I said, look, I can't throw this stuff out. I got duplicates, I got triplicates of some of these comic books, some of these action figures. I'm going to go in and I'm going to see if I could sell some of them so that I can now go in and buy more. This was the craziness of my thinking. I'm going to sell some so I can now go in and buy more. So at that time, there were magazines and publications like Action Figure Digest, which was coincidentally published right up the street for me in Monroe, Connecticut. There was Toy Shop magazine, which was a print newspaper. So I went in and I took out like a. They had these credit card sized ads that you can put in the back of a magazine, in the back of a newspaper for a toy shop. And I went and I spent, I think it was 40 bucks at that time, which was a lot. I put my 40 bucks into that thing and I said, toys for sale.

You're making $4 an hour. So 40 bucks is a lot.

It's a lot, right? I gotta wait two days in total, Right. So I put that ad in. And at that time it wasn't like the Internet. You don't go run Facebook ads or YouTube ads and then you start to see results, right? It was. That paper doesn't get published until like six weeks from now. Right? Right. So think about that $40. And now I'm like, okay, six weeks later, hopefully this works, bro. When that first edition hit the newsstands, I started to get freaking phone calls.

Okay.

I started to get phone calls. And collectors are just like, especially like toy collectors and action figure collectors. And collectors. We're in Century, right? So we just want to talk to other people about the thing. I saw where your eyes lit up. So I just get these guys and they're calling and there's doctors and there's lawyers and there's these professional folks. And I started to just sell some of my excess comic books and action figures. And then the next edition, it went from a business card size ad to a eighth of a page.

Okay?

Right. And then from an eighth of a page to a quarter of a page, and then from a quarter of a page to a half of a page, and then from a half of a page to a full page and then double pages. So at this time, I'm starting to study marketing. I'm studying like the Gary Halberts, the Gary Benzemanga, the John Shugarts and all these guys. And I'm Writing copy that is blowing the socks off of everyone else that's publishing ads in these magazines.

So you're getting better and better each time. The size gets better. And are people going to your house to buy these things or are you shipping them in the mail?

I'm shipping them in the mail. Right. Some of my biggest clients were over in Japan. So at that time, the Japanese dollar was worth so much more than the US Dollar. So I would have a fax machine where I would get orders that would come in overnight. I would wake up to orders. Now, this wasn't overnight. Right. In full transparency, but months down the line, I would wake up to orders that came in by fast for $6,000 and $7,000. And I'm like, in heaven at this time because I'm now about 18, 19 years old, making like $30,000 a month.

Yes, yes. And this is like the early. Am I. Am I right? This is like the late 80s. This is happening.

No, this is the early 90s. Early 90s, probably late 80s. Early, early 90s. Yeah. Yes. So it wasn't even so where I was on the Internet yet.

Yes.

Because it was all, you know, through magazines and publications.

How did you learn about copying content? How do you. Because there were. There was no blueprint for these things. You have to find, like in a sugar tin, like the sunglasses, blue blockers, like, all of that site to, like, look deep. You have to figure out how to. Maybe you were library. With the library to find books.

I would go down. I would take the bus down to the library in Bridgeport, Connecticut, downtown, or after work, depending on. Because the library was literally a couple of blocks away from me. Or I would take the bus and I would just go in there and I would just read and read and read. Because, again, I'm just avid reader, right? I mean, reading everything. So I would just go in and read these books on marketing. And I remember Gary Halbert said something that forever changed my life. This is another paradigm shift. So sometimes the signs are everywhere. He says, if you learn how to write copy, you'll never be broke a day in your life. I said, what? You mean if I learn how to just use my words, I'll never be broke a day in my life? And now he was using his words to convince the audience. Right. And he did a good job. So I started to study copying and copywriting. And it just became this really fun mixture of being able to talk to people that were passionate about collecting and also being able to sell and then being able to buy because I Couldn't talk to anyone else. Remember, I lived in the hood.

Yes.

So you can't live in a hood and talk about toys. Right, Right. You can't say, hey, I've got the latest Batman. What do you got? That's not gonna.

Right. You might get mugged in the process about having all that.

Yeah, right. So that was. That was my beginning of entrepreneurship, man. And it was just a fun journey from then. I did what, you know, again, most young people who have money at that time, because I started to make a lot of money, and I had some friends that were very talented and was rapping and singing and music. And I said, you know what, man? I'm great at business. First business. I'm great at business. I'm an expert. I'm the next Donald Trump. Let's start a record label. Masterpiece is doing it. Suge Knight's doing it, you know.

Right.

We'll be the next ones that flop. It flopped, Right?

Yeah.

But what came out of that was what I'm doing now because. And this is for you guys are watching right now. There's things that people ask you about, how do you do this? And it's so natural to you that their answers might seem silly. Like, their questions might seem silly. So people would ask me, like, hey, Ty, how do you get your artists on the radio? How do you go in and produce a record? How do you get studio time? How do you manage artists? And I would get those questions so often that eventually I said, you know what? I should publish a book. Now, I don't know where I got that idea. Right. I should publish a book. And I ended up publishing a series of books and then courses. Those books turned into courses and software programs and everything else. And that's what initially got me into publishing. Then people started asking questions about that. How do you write a book? How do you get sales for a book? And at this time, I had been selling a lot of physical books, like a ton of physical books on Amazon, had a platform called Amazon Advantage, and I was literally shipping books out to Amazon, because the way that their program worked at that time was you could ship your physical books out to them, and they would store them, and they would handle the sales, the customer support, the returns, and everything else. So then when Kendall came around the KDP platform, I was one of the first to get invited, because I've been doing so well with physical books. So it's always looking at. Sometimes it doesn't have to be this huge esoteric thing. I think it could be just the simplicities of people keep asking me the same question of how do you decorate your house or how do you dress so well? Dude, every time I see you, you dress well. How do you get your hair to look good? Right. How do you so that right there. There's other people that want to know those questions. They just don't have the nerve to come in and ask you sometimes. So if you get two or three people that ask you, there's thousands that want to know.

Exactly. Yeah. So hence the publishing, the Kindle world, Kindle cash flow, that whole brand which you ran an empire on and you're still running an empire on into what's next. It's fantastic. I met you students all around you. You had a following, you still do launches. So what shifted for you once you started impacting thousands of people and building wealth, starting a family? What shifted for you when all these things happened? When it was clear that you were, you were here for purpose, right. As Les Brown says, Right. You were hungry. Right. And what started shifting for you in your world?

So that. That's exactly it. I think that oftentimes we think our why is going to be permanent. So initially, if you remember my why was I. I wanted to make money initially.

Yeah. And take care of your mom. Take care of your mom.

To take care of my mother. Right. I mean, it was self serving as well. Right. Of course you want to, you know, dress a little better, eat better, you know, but it was to take care of my mother as well. And then as I started to get married, right. It's to take care of my children and my family and my wife. Right. And then it's to take care of outside people, right. Other family members, you know, people that are in need, my brothers and siblings and things like that. And then you start to see how you impact people's lives because they can go through your. And if they go through your course and they follow, then they start to get results as well. And then you see how I have one of my coaches, her name is Caroline Trainor. She is a mom of 56. Right now she's in the UK. She first got introduced to my course through Robert Kiyosaki, author of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So him and I had collaborated on some things and so she found out about it through a Facebook ad that Robert Kiyosaki was running advertising my course. And she was really at a point where she needed something different in her life. She had just gotten divorced, three kids. Now she goes to the course and she Pays attention. And she's just rocking and rolling right now, you know, and that was four years ago. Now we're working together. She's teaching some of my other students. But when you see that type of shift in other people, then it becomes. It becomes about other people and less about you. Right. So I mentioned we do a podcast every Monday, and that's at 8 o' clock in the morning. Right. And there's some mornings where I'm like, ah, man, am I really gonna go in and do this podcast again after four years? Where am I gonna just. But then you think about the people that are there.

Yeah.

And it becomes about more than just you. You can do it when you're tired. You can do it if you've just had three hours of sleep or four hours of sleep or something. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I don't feel well. You can do it when you. Because that's your driver. And then you get there and the energy is there and you're seeing people's eyes and you're seeing hope. And then you're like, what was I ever thinking in terms of not doing this this morning?

Yeah. Yeah.

So it has to become, you know, And I think it's okay to be about you. If you want a better house, you want to eat better, you want a better car. Right. You want to travel, that's okay. You can't let someone make you feel bad about that stuff. And I love those things. But also, at some point, it also becomes about, how do I now go in and impact the lives of other individuals? Because what happens is the person who you may have been able to uplift because they heard one thing or maybe they saw your story. Now it gives them hope. And you have no idea as to how many other people they can go in and inspire.

Exactly. It's generational. It's geometric in some cases. We had a Bob Berg in our podcast some time back, and he talks about his Go Giver, he's co writer, the Go Giver. And we don't realize the impact we make with the things we do with the words we have and how we show up. Whether it's doing a podcast, getting on stage, writing a book, and all those things go a long way. And the more we impact, oftentimes things come back with us, especially if we're willing to come from a place of service. So I hear you doing a lot of My brother. It's really. It's really quite extraordinary.

Thank you.

What, what habits, what rituals do you embrace each day? To keep you going. You mentioned Mondays you've got this podcast. Like what has you get up each day? Other than I know your kids are grown up now, so it's going to be your empty nest, right? Four kids out of the house. What has you keep staying gauge towards showing up each day? Day playing the game. I'm curious. I have an idea what it is from our previous conversations, from how I know you, but let's have the audience know the rituals, the habits that keep you engaged in life. Morning, evening, whatever that is.

Brother, great question. And it is you and what I mean by you, meaning Joseph, right? Joseph V. So it's gratitude, man. Like you asked me to be on this podcast. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for being here. And I know that this sounds like, you know, people say I'm grateful for waking up and I'm grateful for being here, but no, there are people every day that don't wake up. I'm great when I wake up in the morning and I look over and my. And I see that my wife is breathing because I wake up much more earlier than she does.

Yeah, likewise.

But, man, I'm just like, thank you.

Yeah.

My kids, I send them a text first thing in the morning, Right. We send each other to kids that are not in the house, three that are not in house. So I send them a text, hey, great morning, I love you. And I'll send them a motivational message, a quote or something. When I get that reply back, thank you. Because that means that they are still alive.

Yes.

Right. So it's little things like that, which may not be so little life. And then it's also just to be able to be in a position to impact the lives of other people. Yes. So I'm grateful for those things. So I'll wake up in the morning and I'll take this little silent prayer of gratitude. Then the next thing is I put a smile on my face. I'm smiling while I'm still in bed. Because I think if you change your physiology first, then it forces everything else to happen. So you might not be in a mindset to go in and be happy or even be at a point where you want to be grateful for something, but there's something about putting a smile on your face. Yeah, let's try it. Let's try it right now.

Right?

You see that? Putting a smile on your face and then you get those endorphins, you get the hormones and everything else, and then boom, endorphin run into the races. So that's it.

I think our bodies are being a chemical factory. So we have dopamine from gratitude, moving our body get endorphins. So it's like free drugs. All the time we've access to and I tell my clients and successor was that all the time we have access to that and is figuring out how to do it. Before this call, I did a cold plunge I stepped into and it just wakes that up. And simplicity is brilliant. Gratitude, putting a smile on your face, looking at your wife, sending text messages to your kids here in the back, just starting your day that way, knowing also that much of your life has been dancing with death in some ways, like just early on and losing a sister. And it's quite a story, brother. It really is. So I know we're limited in time. What's next for you? I know you mentioned publish like a pro. You're building a community on that platform. What's next for you on this journey of life in terms of service of your clients? What is it?

So great question. So it is published like a pro. So publishlikeapro.com that's our community. So we've got thousands of people there. I believe that every single person has a book in it, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, we all have something that can help inspire, motivate, entertain someone. And it's also teaching people how to build out courses. It's teaching people how to speak from the stage. It's teaching people how to do things like this, start their podcasts. It's teaching people how to do challenges and workshops. So it's anything that is related to digital content that you may feel you want to move in the direction of because they're all connected. So I'll see students that come in and they write a book and then before you know it, they're. They're publishing their course and then they have a coaching program, then they're doing live events. So if you're interested in any of those things or just one of them, then we're the place to come to. So that's it.

It's published like a pro. Like published like a pro.com publishlikeapro.com we'll put that into our show notes here. What about AI? I know this is an obvious question people are going to have listening to this podcast because the world's shift in the past two years where AI is more accessible with ChatGPT and Claude and all these tools. Has it made serving your clients easier now having these tools in play where they can publish a Book or create content very easily with a blink of an eye. How has AI played a role in your business now?

Great question. It's made it easier to a point where you can be everywhere at once. So you can create social media content. Even if you don't think that you're someone who can create social media content. You can create content for your podcast, you can create content for your YouTube channel, you can create content for your fiction book. Your nonfiction book was that you could create content for anything. And it becomes a lot easier. And so here's the danger of it. So the danger in it is, number one, you never want to stop being a critical thinker.

Yes.

Right. So be careful, because you can get so much in terms of ideas from AI that you stop using your creativity.

You start thinking. Exactly. 100% agree. We talk about that quite a bit.

Yeah. You start to atrophy. Right. It's like muscle. You don't use your muscles anymore. Anymore. What's gonna happen? And then the other thing is, it is so easy. We were talking about this before, Michelle. That you can over complicate, you can overthink things, you can over plan, you can overanalyze. And then you. You're just paralyzed and you don't do anything. Right. So just go in and jump in the. I'll tell people that there's so many different platforms. Someone was telling me about a new platform yesterday, genspark, which is supposed to be much better than Manus, right?

Yes.

Find one or two platforms for each thing. So find a platform that you're gonna use for text and images and stick to that one. Right. For me, images and things like that would be Leonardo or videonow. Find a platform for if you're creating your doppelganger. Right. So go in, find something like hey, Gen. Or for me, it would be also captions, which is a great platform. Find one, master that one, and don't get like so tuned into everything else. Don't have the shiny object syndrome because you don't want to become a master of everything and then not really good at any one thing. Right?

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And the paradox of choice. Having too many options leads to no choice leads to overwhelm versus the simply mastering just one. Great advice. And I love how you're also integrating AI into your work. Your coaching, the training, automation, all the things we talked about. Fantastic. It's another way of creating even more impact. Ty, this was absolutely incredible. This interview for our audience. Tap into this. The recording, the mind map, the summary, how to access ty@rulesforsuccess.com his community is@publishlikeapro.com you can tap into his community that he has there access his brilliance. He's got a podcast Monday which at some point I'll be on perhaps. But for our audience, RulesForSuccess.com this has been a privilege hearing your journey, the challenges, the opportunity, true rags to riches story your journey and you know you've gone forward to impact not just 10,000 people, but people who've impacted thousands of people themselves. So we're talking about geometric impact on many levels and the world is thankful for having you here. Ty Cohen, I'm grateful my friend. Until next time, audience. RulesForSuccess.com that's what we got. That's it for today's episode of rulesforsuccess.com podcast. But the journey to success is far from over. Join us next week for another inspiring conversation with a successful entrepreneur. Until then, remember to be bold, be courageous and go after your dreams.