In this episode of the Business Blast Podcast, host Tyler Wagner interviews Renee Warren, the former founder of the startup PR firm Onboardly and current founder of The Family Academy. Renee shares a formative story from age 17 when she launched a restaurant, working 80‑hour weeks and graduating college debt‑free, illustrating the power of focus and perseverance. She explains her mission to help entrepreneur families gain freedom by treating family life like a business—creating operations manuals, daily stand‑ups, and shared financial oversight to avoid the "hit‑by‑the‑bus" risk. Her financial philosophy stresses the balance between avoiding debt and maintaining a healthy credit profile. Renee emphasizes persistence in sales, noting that the sale often closes on the sixth call, and warns against giving up too early. She describes happiness as an integrated life where work and family blend, using "mini life margins" to create daily joy. The most impactful book for her recently was Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way, which resonated after her son’s broken arm, teaching resilience. She shares a favorite quote from Stevie Nicks—"If you are gracious, you have won the game"—as a guiding principle. Listeners are directed to find her at familyacademy.co and on social media @Renee_Warren.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have a very special guest. Her name is Renee Warren. She's a determined realist, is the former founder of a popular startup PR firm Onboardly, which worked with funded technology startups to help them get more media exposure through PR and content marketing. She's written hundreds of articles and ebooks on startup marketing, some published on entrepreneur.com and has helped some notable clients get on TV shows, magazines, and popular blogs. She is currently on a mission to help over 1 million entrepreneur families gain more freedom in their lives through her programs at the Family Academy. So, welcome to the show, Renee.
Thank you so much for having me.
Of course. So, we'll dive right in. The first question I have for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Oh geez. Well, when I was 17 years old, my mom told me to go out and get a social insurance number because she told me I needed to get a job. I did that, but then very quickly went and started my own restaurant because my preconceived notions of entrepreneurship was you don't work a lot and you make a lot of money. And I learned very quickly at 17 that is not the case at all. So while I was watching, literally in the summertime, this cute little restaurant was right on the water. I was working like 80-hour weeks watching my friends on boats, water skiing, wakeboarding, and having the time of their lives while I was inside working. In hindsight, it was, well, I could have been creating those like teenage memories by being out on the water. I actually graduated from college with no debt. Because of my focus on growing my business. So that's like the biggest, that was one of the biggest lessons is that it just, you can do it, it is possible. I didn't know anything else at 17 years old. I never really had a job before that. So to me, it's always just been like push, push, push. And the biggest lesson really is you can do it. You just gotta really focus and stick, focus on the goal and stick to it, stick to the grind.
Definitely. And it was probably very nice to graduate with no debt. Most people cannot say that. So congrats. The next question is, what's, what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I'm currently working on a company called The Family Academy, which teaches entrepreneur families how to gain more freedom in their lives by having a better connection with their partner and their kids. And one of the things that I teach these entrepreneur families is to treat their family life like a a business. Entrepreneurs are more open to that idea. And what I mean by that is all of the business philosophies that you would use to create a company, grow a company, scale a company, become profitable, you can use in your family life. So that includes having a family operations manual, that includes having daily standups with your partner or even with your kids. For me, one of the biggest and most important things that I failed to recognize earlier on in my marriage is the need for both people to be on the same page when it comes to finances. So if you look at most partnerships in terms of a husband and wife or whatever the layout is of your family, usually one person is in charge of the finances. And with the trust factor being so high, the other person doesn't think that they need to understand where money is coming in and where money is going. But that's probably the worst thing. And how I describe it is the hit-by-the-bus syndrome. And I hate saying that, but it is the truth. If something happens to one partner and it happens to be the partner who is in charge of the finances, think about even in business, the other partner is kind of stuck with learning what things are, where things are, and the importance of the stuff that they have. So for me, it's, treating your family life like a business allows you to gain more incremental steps of freedom in your life by allowing you to have deeper understanding of, you know, your family, but also your finances and kind of the operations.
Yeah, I think this is huge and not talked about very much at all. So yeah, I think that's, that's awesome. It's a great comparison to like a business. So what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
It still comes down to finances. And I say this is because it was one thing that I neglected. So sure, I graduated college with no debt, but I just, my immediate notion of money is to just never have debt, which is great. But it also can go against you when it comes to your credit rating. So for me, I always push, push, push to never have to owe a single penny But at the same time, I always just became comfortable. And when I was not in debt, then I was comfortable. So I wasn't necessarily trying to gain more financial freedom. So that was, that was the biggest thing for me.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
That the sale is always made on the 6th call. We never give ourselves enough time, enough credit for the work that we've done. It's like the compound effect. They say the sale is not made on the the 5th call, but the 6th call, it could take your 10th funnel for you to actually, you know, gain that financial freedom. If it comes to finding the love of your life, it could take the 10th date, or the 18th boyfriend to figure it out. It's just, you know, we're always inches away from the finish line. And we often give up way too soon. Hmm.
And in your opinion, just to go a little bit of a different direction, in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Integration. So having an integrated life nowadays, there's more people working from home or, you know, being freelancers or entrepreneurs. There's a little bit more fluidity and flexibility in their schedule. And so creating an integrated life where you are happy and open to welcome, you know, your family into your work or your work into your family, because the reality is, is work is going to take up half of your life. So why not make it just as important as your family and vice versa? A quick little story. So we've, I mean, for numerous occasions, my husband Dan, who's also an entrepreneur, we've actually worked together but not on same businesses. And a good story that I love to share in terms of happiness, especially when it comes to high-performing entrepreneurs or business people, is that integration. So there was one time when I was running my PR agency and I was about, I don't think, like 8 months, 7 months pregnant with my second child. And my first child Max was that old. So like they're 11 months apart. So he was, I don't even know how old, like a couple of months shy of a year. I had my PR agency, Dan had his startup called Clarity, and we decided to do a joint retreat where we had about 10 of us. We rented this really cool, huge lodge on this lake in the country in New Brunswick, Canada. And we put our, joined our teams together. And we had a babysitter lined up for Max, but last minute she canceled on us. And I was like, well, I can't not go to this retreat because that would just be awkward without the leader of the company there with my husband's company. So I asked my team, I asked Dan's team, would it be okay if I bring Max? And they said, sure. So I brought him and, you know, at the end of the day, it worked out great because there were 10 babysitters on site. But without that, without seamlessly integrating the family life with the business life, and then also integrating communications and health and wellness, you can't be happy. And I think life in terms of margins. So you look at your business, right? You have your margins for your business, but you have margins for life. And I think about creating mini margins throughout your day. So I'm the type of person that would, Like, for me, not necessarily saving up an entire year's worth of savings to go on one trip, that wouldn't make me happy. I would rather go on a bunch of mini trips kind of sprinkled throughout the year. So when you look at daily margins, I think, what effort can I put in this morning in my work to actually be able to go to CrossFit at lunch? What effort can I do in terms of eating really well throughout the day so that I can actually allow myself to have a piece of chocolate at the end of the day? What mini margins or what effort can I put in today to create a margin to spend more time with my children? So I look at days in terms of mini life margins. What can I do to create those margins for myself? That's what creates happiness.
And I think that like simplifies it because if you do that daily, then, you know, overall, you know, if you can create happiness in your life every day, then you would be happy overall, right? So that makes sense. The next question is, what's the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
Oh man, I read so much. It's really hard for me to answer this question. But I will say that in the last 12 months, one book that had the most profound impact on my life was Ryan Holiday's book, The Obstacle Is the Way. And the reason why was I was overcoming business challenges and personal challenges. And while we had this book on our shelf for years, something inside me was compelled to grab it and start reading it. It just so happened that a couple of days before I grabbed the book, my youngest son, Noah, who was 3 years old at the time, broke his arm and had to have surgery. And I figured inevitably, being the mother of 2 boys, there's probably going to be some broken bones and bloodshed at some point. I just didn't think it was going to happen so young. And so for me, I don't know why I was just I was totally devastated by that instance. It happened in a bouncy castle and I was watching him and it was like slow motion in front of me. So then I went and picked up this book and just reading it, I was like, wow, like, this is so true. And so while the idea of my son being in pain because of a broken arm sucked, he rebounded so quickly. And that taught me that, yeah, that was an obstacle. But what I learned from my son was that he was so resilient. He was so incredibly stoic. And he taught me a lot about what I thought this wisdom I would get from an old wise guy, I got from my 3-year-old son. So that book is great for personal and professional reasons, especially if you're facing a lot of challenges in your life.
And what's your favorite quote and why? Maybe another difficult one.
Not at all, actually.
Awesome.
Okay. Yeah, I idolize very few people in this world, but there's one person in particular, Stevie Nicks. Pretty much everybody knows who she is. She's the singer for a band called Fleetwood Mac. Always loved her work, read her biographies and like the band's biographies. But anyway, she has one quote that she says, "If you are gracious, you have won the game." And I think that in any, in every facet of our life, if we can be gracious, then we've already won the game.
Well, thank you so much for coming on, Renee. The last question I have for you is, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Absolutely. They can reach me at familyacademy.co. And then on Twitter or Instagram at Renee_Warren, and I would be happy to chat.
Perfect. Thanks again for coming on, Renee. We really appreciate it.
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