Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Tyler Foley. Tyler, welcome. Oh, thank you for having me, Thomas. It’s a joy and a pleasure to be here. It is also my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Sure. I am a father and a husband, a former child actor, performer. I am currently a consultant, both in safety and for public speaking, ironically the two are connected and yet most people don’t realize it. So I have been training people how to be more effective presenters and public speakers for the last five years, a safety consultant on my own for the last 10 and I’m also a lover of fine chocolate and a seeker of warm beaches. I particularly like the bit at the end. Thank you for that. Your welcome. In terms of where your story begins, in your view, where would you say that is? Oh I probably rate at 6.
That’s when I first discovered the joy and the love of performance. That’s when I first started acting and performing. Uh it’s also the year that my father passed away. And so the two most significant sounds that I ever heard in my life were within two months of each other. The one being the sound of applause and the feeling of getting a standing ovation and making an audience laugh and then literally two months almost to the day later I my I heard my mom make this sound when an RCMP officer and our family physician came to the back door and told her that my father would never be coming home and the two significantly impacted my life because the one was a sound that I absolutely loved and that I seek and that I have been seeking basically my entire life and the other is a sound that I absolutely abhor and do not ever wish to hear again ever in my life. and a lot of the decisions that I’ve made have led to me avoiding that sound and that sound for others. There’s, you know, looking back in hindsight, there’s very obvious reason why I got into safety and why it is that I continue to help companies achieve greater success with their safety systems so that other people don’t have to have the same misfortune that my mother did.
Thank you for sharing that I always find, and I’m sorry to hear that you had to go through that what is a young age? Um I always find it beneficial for others. When I talk to people on the podcast about hardship, If I ask what if someone else is going through that right now, what advice would you give them? Uh that the impact of things like that are life altering and life changing, but it’s something that is always, there’s always a lesson and there’s always grace in it. I I used to hate when people would say, well look on the bright side or look at the positive. I’m like, don’t try to make me find a positive out of my father’s passing, but there is grace in all things in life and I think of the fact that although I didn’t have my father growing up In his absence, I had 10 surrogates who stepped in and became father figures, which I likely wouldn’t have had had my father been around and that profoundly impacted my life because I got to see very, very different viewpoints um sometimes contrasting viewpoints within these gentlemen who I admired and who helped with my development.
And so I would say to anybody who’s going through something similar, um don’t try to question the logic of the universe in the moment, right? When you’re in the eye of the storm, your only job is to survive, but once the winds have passed, the destruction can be observed and the rebuild begins. That’s when you can start to look around and say this is why. Um so the, the key there is to, you might need to be in survival mode for a little bit, but eventually the rebuild will begin and then you can look around and see why you needed to clear the first structure in order to build the second. I appreciate you sharing that and you never know how who’s listening and who you can help. So thank you. In terms of the first part of your answer about the applause, I’m thinking, I don’t know why, but the first thing that comes up is when thinking of people who have said similar things.
I don’t know if it was in necessarily a positive light. So they’re like, you know, I’m, I’m drawn to the applause and I’m not, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing for me. Have you ever thought about the positives and negatives of the of the applause Oh yeah, no, the positives are, it’s a wonderfully gratis phi ng feeling like you, you can, there’s an instant satisfaction that comes with it. Um The nice thing is if you’re getting applause or even better if you get a standing ovation, that means that you connected with an audience and that’s, you know, anywhere from dozens to thousands of people and to have had an impact where they want to share the one gift that they can with you of applause is incredibly rewarding and it means you did a really, really, really good job and very likely had an impact on on that audience. The downside to it is, it’s a very hard high to replicate, particularly over a period of um social restrictions where people cannot gather in large groups.
So if you’re somebody who’s only source of satisfaction or pride is through the validation of others that would have been incredibly trying, luckily for me, I don’t, I’m not seeking the validation of a crowd um but I do appreciate the reward and the gift that is applause or standing ovation or a laugh um because it, it’s an indication that I gave my best and was able to serve and I think that’s, that’s really one of those key components for me, I get my satisfaction out of knowing that I did my best, that I was of service to the public and um whether that comes in the form of applause or, you know, a private aside or even some testimonials, you know, it’s always good to hear that I was able to provide something of value to um to anyone.
And so that I can see where the downside would be, if if you, if you need to have that feedback instantaneously or that is the only way that you can find validation in, in the performance, then it’s going to be a very lonely lonely time because the, you know, even a really good speaker is only speaking, you know, if you’ve got a full circuit, you’re doing a, you know, an event a week for all 52 weeks of the year, That’s only 52 standing ovations that you’re going to receive, there’s At least over 300 other days where you’re gonna be sitting going, why don’t they love me? So, um yeah, I can see where it would have, its, its, its drawbacks, but for me, I, you know, I’m doing it with or without the applause, the applause is kind of like, you know, the christmas bonus you get at the end of the year, you don’t know if you’re gonna get it, you don’t know how much it’s going to be, but when you do get it, you’re very grateful and thankful and and and it takes you through to the next time.
And when did you come to that realization? Was it early or did you have to learn that? Um so it was early in my life but late in my career because remember I started performing at six years old and when I started in film and television there’s nobody to stand and cheer for your performance and often times you end up doing a performance 5, 10, 15, 20 times in front of the camera until the director satisfied with the performance that he’s captured. And he’s usually, you know, or she is very fixated on a monitor. And so they’re not there to hold your hand and you could be doing the greatest performance on the planet. And it may be is your partner that they’re they’re not um feeling or you know, somebody drops a hammer back on the sound stage ruins the taking. You have to do it again. And so I rapidly learned that I needed to be happy with my performance and ultimately that’s all that mattered because there’s nobody to stand on a film set, there’s nobody to stand up and give you this rousing ovation.
Um And oftentimes the director won’t tell you you did a good job until the premiere of the show. So um I had to I had to know I had to find my own self satisfaction with it. And so I think that was a lesson that I learned in my late teens, early twenties, but 15, 15 years into my career, is there anything comparable in life to the applause that you found. Yeah, but this is a P. G. Show, so I can’t say it on air but my wife knows what I’m talking about. I wasn’t expecting that answer. Um But yeah you’re you’ve got your your first applause. I wanted to ask about, you said you were a child actor and for whatever reason about many reasons I would assume there are some negative connotations to that term these days as a result of perhaps knowing more about the experience of child actors.
How was your experience was wonderful? But I’m also not famous. So I think that helps right? And I got into acting in my own accord and continued acting because I wanted to. Um my mom never pushed me with it. Um She you know and I had other pursuits too. So I played basketball until I realized that a five ft eight guy probably wasn’t going to continue playing basketball. Um I for a while actually thought I wanted to get into marine biology. I actually I’m still fascinated with marine biology. Absolutely love the ocean. I love that. It is still the unexplored territory. Um You know, we know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the depths of the ocean. And I think that to me is is fascinating. Um So if I could, you know a lot of every once in a while you have somebody ask you, you know, if you could do something else completely different unrelated to the job that you do right now, what would you do for me?
Marine biologist is very high up on that list. Um Just again, so my mom, I remember for taking me to an information session that the University of British Columbia was holding in Alberta, which for anybody who doesn’t know Canadian geography is quite odd because the University of British Columbia is on the coast and Alberta is very landlocked. Um and so for them to to try and draw some of us prairie folk out to the coast to study oceanography with. Um it’s pretty interesting actually. So you know, she took me to this information session when I was in the 10th grade and allowed me to to look into it. And the funny thing is, the more I looked into it, the more I realized I wanted to keep acting, I ended up going out to Vancouver, which is where the University of British Columbia is located. I even applied to the school to get into the school um but ended up just acting like, like again, life happens for you not to Hugh and the things unfold the way that they should and I was, I was rapidly sucked into film and tv and I just stayed doing that.
So yeah, no, I I had a remarkable good time growing up performing and again where I grew up, it wasn’t like it was L. A. Or new york, you know, it wasn’t like I was doing a show a month or even a week. You know, I wasn’t out auditioning? My parents weren’t reliant on my income. Um I was in a very very small town with very limited access to devices that have varying moral and legal implications. So I, you know, I was I was very very lucky. It was a beautiful thing for me to be able to do very supportive too. And um gave me a chance to be exposed to multiple multiple different viewpoints and personalities, people and lifestyles and see more of the world through a very um geographically limited lens but from a intellectually expanded viewpoint.
Um And so a I I feel that it was probably the best thing to keep me rounded and grounded. Okay. And in terms of what you’ve learned from acting, you started off very very young. Um And how long would you say you’ve been in in acting? Well, I I retired at 25 but I still perform regularly. I still got an audition that I was semi retired. I I took a good hiatus for probably 10 years. But I mean you never, you never stopped being a performer. So you know, I would I would say 43 years because I’m 43 years old and I was tap dancing in the womb. I was a born performer. I was I was performing before I ever got my first professional gig. But professionally, you know, if you want to check my my union status and my union dues, um uh 37 years. Quick math in my head in that time frame. What are your best lessons that acting has taught you?
Which you can share with others. So it will sound specific to acting, but it’s universal to most things in life. A lot of people try to measure talent and they try to measure talent by the jobs that they book. And one of the things that I learned very early on was that talent is not what gets you a job. Talent is what gets you the audition. And there are so many external factors two, how you are a fit to any particular role that are outside of your control. So the the only thing that is within your control is you, how do you approach the work? How do you approach the preparation? How do you approach the performance? How do you show up? That is entirely on you And if you continue to show up, contribute and contribute unselfishly, you will be recognized and rewarded.
Going on, your talent will get you the opportunities, your talent will not secure those opportunities. So as long as you’re auditioning, you still have the talent and this speaks universality into anything because if you have a skill set that will be continued to serve up to you time and time again, that is your talent, that is your specialty. People will come and they will ask you for this thing. Sometimes we don’t recognize what our talent is until late in life, Sometimes we’re blessed to learn it early. But it’s there and there are signposts it’s that talent that is giving you the opportunities, whether you’re securing those opportunities or not is outside of your control. If you want to start taking advantage of those opportunities that come your way, the best thing to do is to know what your talent and your skill set our work on them constantly to improve them because everyone can get better at what they do.
Doesn’t matter if you’re considered the best in the world, You know, the you saying bolt still practice sprinting though, is the fastest man in the world and broke his own records a few times. You know, Michael Phelps didn’t stop at the first gold medal that he ever won in swimming. They, you know, we don’t just because you’re the best doesn’t mean that you can’t get better. And seven point some odd billion people were not the best at any given thing. The people in the world who are the best and everybody else is is uh, is in growth and improvement. So if you can focus on what you can control and that is you your attitude, how you show up, how you prepare, how, what you’re doing to invest in yourself in your own growth, that will help you secure more opportunities and more opportunities because you will be better prepared than the next person. So control the things that are within your sphere, control the things that are within your influence and let go of those things that are outside of your control.
I have booked roles as an actor because I have blue eyes, I have missed out on opportunities as an actor because I have blue eyes. In fact, I was trying to secure a job last month and that didn’t get it, and it was because they wanted a significantly more diverse uh selection for for the role and applaud to them. Absolutely, and I know the girl who got the role and and you can see that I am neither female. No, although I look great in drag, I do, I do dress up nice if you put a dress on me. Um but, you know, she did a wonderful job of it, and it had nothing to do with talent, We have the same amount of talent or we wouldn’t have had the audition, but casting wanted to take it in a direction and, you know, without a whole bunch of money and surgeries, I cannot replicate what she was able to provide uh that ultimately was the right fit for the role, but I still have the talent to audition, so control the things that you can control and let go of those things that you can’t because they’re outside of your influence.
It’s a great lesson, it’s very stoic, have you heard of any stoic philosophy at all? Yes, That’s one of the things that they teach you, and I think it’s cool that you learned that from from your profession. Yeah. And interestingly enough was reinforced when I started to read um Toltec wisdom uh and the four agreements, and I went, oh yeah, no, okay. You know, I’ve I’ve found that I’ve had a lot of lessons in life that I have learned the hard way and then read some material and I went, oh, I wish I did years ago, that makes so much sense. But the nice thing is that all those lessons have been learned in a way that ingrained them into my soul. Because there’s something about, you know, when you can have an experience um both positive or negative that really imprints itself on you uh that those lessons are the ones that are hard to forget. And so I’m very grateful that I’ve learned them in currently and intrinsically as opposed to just reading them and being like, okay, no, that makes sense.
From a philosophical standpoint, I can say no, this, this this is practical and universal. Yeah, it’s very easy to read something profound and just go about your day, not not taking it on board. So I know exactly what you mean in terms of biggest wins for for your acting career. What would you, what brings to mind for you there? Oh, getting to be shown on the Golden globes. Um I did a wonderful project with Dame Helen mirren an absolute gem, an icon and William H Macy called Door to Door and Door to Door was based on the real life of Door to door salesman for the Watkins company named Bill Porter. And Bill Macy played Bill Porter and was also a producer on the show. And dame Helen, mirren played his mother and I was just in a single scene with them seen in a diner where I was making fun of Bill because um, the real life Bill Porter was one of the top salesman for the Watkins company, which was primarily a Door to door sales thing very similar to Amway, but he had cerebral palsy.
His dad was a top salesman in the Watkins company and then he took over and he, you know, had some of the best sales despite being handed the worst territories when he first started off and overcoming his perceived disability. Um, and he was actually one of the first people to pioneer online sales. He was one of the first people to adapt technology when the internet first became available and sell his products online over the internet. And so it’s just, it’s a fascinating story, Absolutely wonderful. It’s heartwarming. Um, I strongly encourage anybody to watch it. It’s just a feel good movie. But I played a bully and I made fun of for Bill on the day of his first um walk about his territory after his first sale and his mom takes him out to celebrate and I’m making fun of him for the way that he talks and I play a very, very, very, very mean guy. He’s not a nice guy, he’s not lovable, nobody will like me in the show, but they will love the show and during the Golden Globes um Helen mirren was nominated for it and they played the clip at the awards ceremony of the three of us doing our thing.
So to have been featured on the Golden Globes was like a super cool thing and that whole like everything about door to door, I’ve been in a lot of projects, if anybody goes through my imdb um, internet movie database for those who don’t know what that is on the internet You can see, I’ve done a lot of shows and that doesn’t, that doesn’t show all of the stuff that I’ve done because a lot of my stunt work isn’t on there, a lot, none of my theater work is on there. None of my commercial work is on there, none of my industrial is on there. It’s just strictly movies and only the movies that have released and have tagged your name. So a lot of my earlier work like um, 397 isn’t on there either. Um, so I’ve done a lot of stuff, but that one was that one, I felt like a movie star. It’s the time, it’s the time where I felt like I had arrived and in my performance in my craft, in my industry. Um you know, I had a, I was just a day player on it, you know, I think I had, I was, I was technically a principal performer.
I had more than eight lines, but um just a single scene and I had like this massive double wide trailer. Normally I’m stuck in the honey wagons, which is just like this, it’s next to the toilet, you’ve got this little six by eight room with a little caught in a bathroom to get dressed in and, and you just sit there and you try to stay out of the way that I have this double wide trailer with um, you know, a lounging couch and like uh bathroom that had a tub and a shower, the bump outs and like everything. I had a whole bunch of people over party and then Bill came in and he actually played guitar with, he was learning how to play guitar and he asked if he could play for me and my friends and I actually had my drum kit with me. So we ended up like having a little jam session in my massive trailer and you know, I had my name on the back of the, of my chair, on my set chair. It was just, it was just a really um amazing experience for me to really feel validated as a performer and the highlight of my career.
Thank you for that. What’s it like to play a bully. It’s really fun, It’s really, it’s what I’ll be honest, it depends um that one was really fun because it’s outside of my normal character, like it’s a real departure from who I am. So you get to a stretch um as as an actor, as a performer and and just, you know, explore things in a safe way of being kind of mean, but at the same time you’re being kind of mean and uh and sometimes it can feel really bad I’ve done to um true crime reenactment shows and where I played not just a bully, but like a genuinely evil and vile human being because true crime reenactment tends to be, I played murderers both times and really, really horrible individuals. Um and so part of the problem and then part of the gift of that is exploring what would cause a person to come to that point where taking another human being’s life was justified and so that like that, that never feels good um because the the better you do at it, the the worse you feel, it’s kind of this weird dichotomy, you know?
And um yeah, for me, like the one, the one guy um I was just messed up and so trying to find any humanity in that and trying to find a connection and and personalize that was incredibly difficult and definitely didn’t feel as good as getting to play the guy who picked on bill porter in a diner. I understand Kind of took a strange turn for a moment that one. Welcome to a conversation with Tyler fully. You never know what you’re going to get. I am the ultimate box of chocolates. You said that you semi retired. What happened next for you after after acting? I um I kind of grown complacent with the craft. I mean I’ve been doing it for 20 years and it had become a job as opposed to a fun thing that I could do where I was still able to earn a living. And then it had become the living as opposed to a living.
And it just, it stopped being fun. So I stepped back from performance and took all of my residuals. You know, the nice thing about performing, particularly if you’re unionized is they take a portion of your pay and put it away in an RSP. And for those who are not in Canada, that’s a registered retired savings plan. Um I think they’re like ross and the are one of the in the States, I can’t remember what they call them. And I think the U. K. Has a different name for it, but basically a government funded retirement plan and and the union always matches contributions from the producers and then you have to have matching contributions. So this money grows quite rapidly and then as a child performer under legal contract I had to have a whole bunch of the money put away in trust until and my mom being um an unbelievably gifted financial mind.
Um instead of putting it the trust to be available to me at 18 or 21 it wasn’t available to me until 25 And 25. I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. I actually didn’t do anything with it until I was about 26, But the decision was to go back to school and get an engineering discipline. I studied JIA Matics, which for anybody who doesn’t know is a fancy word for saying um Earth study and mapping and surveying. And I specialize in photograph a tree. So anybody who has ever turned on satellite view on google to make the earth be flat and be able to have straight lines and and have pretty pictures that match up to straight lines. It’s actually remarkably difficult thing to do because the earth is curved despite what you know, 0.1% of the world believe. Um it does have curvature. I know I’ve measured it and uh it’s it’s a pain to make that thing flat. But that was my job. And so I was able to make the pretty photo pictures and photo maps of the earth.
And from that I started my own company. Unfortunately that company failed within about 34 years of me starting 2008, so four years, 3.5. And that that kind of took the wind out of my sails for a little bit because that I had thought that was going to be the plan and ended up getting into the safety thing based on all the training that I had to do or the photograph metric company because primary client for geographic information like that is the government and it doesn’t matter what government you’re working for, they want you to have safety systems in place for you to be a contractor working for them or working with them or subcontracting out to them. And so I needed to get all the safety training and then I didn’t have a company but I still had the training and a friend of mine who runs um An electrical company and not producing the electricity but wiring um residential homes, multi unit residential and commercial had said I need a safety officer for this big project that we’re doing and you have most of the training if I upgrade these couple of course is that you need to get this fancy designation when you come be my safety manager and I said sure, and that you know, introduced me to this realm of safety back in 2012 and then when that project was done I still had all the training and then I was free to put up my own shingle and start my own company.
And so I’ve been doing um I’ve been doing my own thing, running my own company, total buying ever since. And I say semi retired because I can’t say that I don’t act anymore because once my daughter was born, I was like, oh my goodness, this child is cute, objectively. I know that all parents think their Children are beautiful and I am no different, but I had external validation of that because um my agent who specializes in um in child or Children and child actors had said she’s really gorgeous and if Sylvie says that, you know that your kid is is definitely photogenic. And so my daughter got her first job In performance at 11 months old. And the thing is when they’re that young, they need somebody to show up with them and they’re like, Oh the dad, because at that point you’re no longer Tyler, you’re the dad.
Mackenzie and the dad, oh, the dad performs. And so we would say, yeah. And then now her, her agent, Roxanne here in Calgary goes, yeah, me! So now they submit us both, you know, so Mackenzie gets submitted and then her dad can also perform and now I show up and I’m Mackenzie. Mackenzie’s father on that and that’s, that’s an absolute thrill and a joy for me. So I still perform every once in a while and sometimes I get things outside of kenzi, I do my own thing every once in a while and it’s just, it’s a fun thing, but at this point it’s, it’s back to being fun because I don’t need it for income. It’s, it’s play money, you know, any of the money that I get from acting goes into a fund where I can use it for vacations or buying, you know, the weird silly toys that I want. You know, I most recently purchased goalie gear because I’m Canadian. So I see hockey is in my veins and I’m even weirder.
I like to go attend. And so I, you know, goal goalie equipment by the way is not cheap. I dare anybody to look into what the expense of new pads are and understand that it’s a sacrifice that I’m willing to make. Well, you mentioned the, the failure of the company, I speak to many people who have gone through that same experience. The question is, what lessons did you take away from that? Oh, it’s not that I necessarily took lessons away, but I had lessons reinforced that despite all your preparation, you can’t prepare for everything. Um, again, life happens for you not to you. Uh, and it’s really hard to see the, the divinity of events at the time that they’re unfolding and often times you need the luxury of hindsight. So the key is to get through it initially. You know, you need, sometimes you do need to do that survival mode before you can start the rebuild. And I definitely needed, you know, a bit of a reset after that because I put everything into it.
Not only had I sacrificed years of my life into school to train to put together that job, I had also put in, you know, sweat equity and real equity. I put all of the money that I had on the planet into getting that company up and going more specifically, um, revitalizing a company that was already there. I, I entered in a relationship with my business partner and She, she had been running the company I think for 10 or 12 years at that point. Um, but it was fizzling out and my uncle was well, very well respected, um, authority within the space. And so my name kind of had a little bit of clout and I had worked for him um, when I was much younger, um, in, in his firm doing, you know, very not necessarily technical work cause I hadn’t gone back to school yet.
I was doing very simplistic things to help out at his firm. And uh, so I was able to enter into this relationship and unfortunately near the end of the company, me and my business partner had a falling out differing of opinion on how to do things and that following out never did get resolved because she passed away suddenly. And literally out of the blue, she wasn’t feeling good on a Friday, went into the hospital and we’ve lost her by the Sunday. But, I didn’t have the right directors insurance in place. I certainly couldn’t take on the, I didn’t have anything left the leverage to take on what we needed to get for me to take over the business, it wasn’t even really an option. And so you know literally over and over a weekend, it all disappeared and those are things again there’s that, I don’t care what you could have put in, you can’t prepare for the death of a business partner. And ironically I had learned that lesson very early in my life at six years old because my father passed away starting a business venture with my godfather Putting together a restaurant and uh they they hadn’t even had it opened 10 days and my father passed away and I had to watch my my aunt and my uncle brad um you know try to keep that legacy going for about a year and a bit before they had to to close it down.
And now all that remains is a couple of logo t shirts that say suspenders and and that is that is all that is left of that restaurant. So you know those those lessons come over and over and over again I suppose until you learn them. But that was the big one that um you don’t always necessarily see the grace in something until you have the luxury of hindsight and as prepared as you want to be, you can never be prepared for everything but again it becomes that internal focus of focus on what you can control as opposed to what you can’t I can do nothing about my business partner passing. Um of course that I couldn’t continue on with the business without her um but I could control kind of my next steps and how I approached it and again there you know the phoenix from those ashes was I had the safety training so what do you do with it you know or do I continue going on with the photograph a tree?
Which is funny because I ultimately ended up blending the two. My next consulting gig for a year was with a survey firm that specialized in mobile mapping and that was what we were pivoting to at in view was very specialized interior mobile mapping and the company that I went to um after working for my friend it was they specialized in exterior mobile mapping which is very similar and more traditional and um and so I was able to be their safety consultant as well as um do more than just safety and actually do data processing and uh extraction of geographic information for them and really serve their clients well and then develop this skill set of speaking that’s where I first realized that I could really help people effectively with presentations because um the president and CEO who are both incredibly brilliant and very articulate, would make me do all of the presentations and I was like, well why don’t you guys do this?
No, no, no, we don’t do that. I’m like, but you could, you’re really smart, you could do this, let’s just tweak it. And so they were literally both my second safety clients in my first public speaking clients. And from there it’s grown so it’s, it’s again, hindsight is a remarkably straight path when you look from the present into the past. But if you were to ask six year old me What I was going to be at 43, I think I would have been a pilot or an astronaut and it was a very circuitous and winding road to get to where I am now. But looking back on it, it’s a straight shot. Like obviously this is where I, where I landed. Do you remember a, a first speaking gig at all? Is there one that stands out as being like, this was the main one for me? That was the first one. I have a lot of first, so there is the first time ever on stage right? Which technically would have been my first speaking gig.
That was six. I, I remember the first time I one of uh speech competition that was a festival here called the Qantas festival for spoken word and I read a poem called the Dragon, I think I was eight years old and my teacher wasn’t actually even my teacher, she was, she was like the general art teacher, so she did like the plays and stuff, but she, I never actually had her as a teacher in elementary school, um but she was, she taught me music and she directed the plays, um basically handed me a poem one day, I was like third grade and she said, I want you to memorize this and said, okay, so I did, because I’m used to that, that was not an odd occurrence for me at eight, I’ve been doing that for like a couple of years now, that was easy, and she said, I want you to memorize this poem and she registered me in um in the Qantas Festival and I went and I delivered it and I won first place and then got to compete provincially with it and I think I placed third or fourth provincially and so that was, you know, that was kind of my first time really just using spoken word um without kind of like props and staging and other actors and performance was the first time I was just on my own on stage, And I remember the first time I ever got stage fright at 14 delivering um remembrance day recital of flanders fields and absolutely freezing up and being terrified by it.
Um I remember the first time I did um kind of like a self development workshop where I was, I was the presenter and I was helping other people bind um transformation and be the catalyst for change in their life. And I remember thinking, wow, this is a remarkably heavy responsibility. I remember the first time I I had my big stage like where I was on with other people who are names, you know Les Brown and Bill Town and Tony Robbins, and when I got to the on the roster with with people like that and the feeling of of coming out into a stadium, You know, six, people and uh and the big stage and the lights and the sound, your own mic and an emcee introducing you all of those are highlights along the way. Well, I kind of feel like that’s a that’s a whole another topic, I kind of, you know, you can’t name drop Les Brown and Tony Robbins without me wanting to ask questions about that, but I have to make a decision about, I want to ask you what’s next, so what’s what’s in Tyler Foley’s Future?
Um continuing on with that. So, um I very closely aligned with a group here out of Canada called The Power of Success and Their Power Within Down in the States and putting on um workshops and seminars with them and, you know, being on their uh not a headliner, but definitely one of the people on the Bill for for their day long presentations, we’re putting together a an event in Cancun at Planet Hollywood um in this uh spring break of 2023 so that is going to be a really um fun event that’s seven days. A lot of big names that are going to be there um that I even get to be involved with, it is still surreal um and the power of Success is helping me put on my own a program.
So three days in Las Vegas with the Power to speak naked and the power of influence, and that’s going to be really, really fun, where we’re gonna have 2 to 300 people who are going to come and learn from me and Buisson and a couple of other surprise guests on how to really show up powerfully on stage and tell your story and tell it an effective way, tell it in a way that um can impact an audience and provide change and and really again, you know, some people don’t discover what their talent is until late in life, we want to help people discover what their story is, even if they don’t feel that they have a story because everybody has a story and then continue to push the book. So, you know, I’ve got the best selling book, the Power to Speak Naked, we have um a new edition of it, the revised edition, bigger longer and uncut is coming out in um the beginning of 2023 so I’m really, really, really excited about that, I have another book that’s launching with the founder of pod match Alex sanfilippo and it’s called pod pod match Guest Mastery.
And uh so I co authored that with a couple of other of the top um Influencers and guests on the pod match platform, teaching other people how to really, really effectively use the platform to get their message out and how I’ve managed to use it to be in the top 10 ranked guests um on the platform for the last 18, 19 months uh and who knows what the future will look like. I very seldomly em out of the top one or two spots and even when I am, it’s only briefly, so technically over aggregate, I’m actually the number one ranked guest on the podcast platform over the last year and a half. So showing other people the power of their story and showing people the various options to them to get the story out there is kind of the focus of the next 12 months and what’s next, Whether that’s the the platinum event in Cancun or my event in las Vegas or these various book launches or just things like what you and I are getting to do today Thomas and and having a conversation uh that’s that’s kind of the focus of what’s next, thank you for that, I definitely feel like you’re an authority on on the podcast Guesting.
So you know, I have, I have seen you being in the in the charts even though we haven’t connected yet, but if people do want to connect with you or by the book, where do they go? The best place to go is my website and I’m sure we’ll post that in the show notes so they can do a quick scroll down to find that. But if they’re going to hit pause and scroll before they do, I would ask one favor Thomas and that is that they’re already listening to your platform. So if they’re they haven’t yet done, so if they could hit pause and give you a five star review, because I know how hard it is to put on a show. There’s a reason why I’m on the guest mastery side of the book and not on the host mastery side because it’s exhausting being a host and I it’s so much easier on this side being a guest and just getting to show up and and the work that you do. And I don’t think a lot of listeners really understand anyways, the amount of effort that goes into putting on a podcast and regularly contributing content out to the world, so they already listen to you and they’re listening to you for a reason.
So I would love for them to share with you what that reason is and the best gift they can give themselves is to give you a five star rating with a very detailed description of what it is that they enjoy about your show. Well maybe one of their favorite episodes was what was the favorite guest? What do they like about the content that you’re bringing because that will help you be informed on what content is resonating with your audience so that you can bring more people on like that, it only benefits the listener. So if you’re listening to this right now, please please please give Thomas a five star review and say why and if you’re willing to do that because you already hit pause so you’re already there. So give the five star review, scroll down to the show show notes and you will see Sean Tyler Foley dot com. Sean has spelled the proper Irish way. S E A N T Y L E R F O L E Y dot com. If you come over to the website, it would be my gift to you as a thank you for giving Thomas a five star review, to give you a free pdf download of the Power to speak naked, my number one best selling book, we’ll also give you free access to my drop the mic trainer program.
It’s a video series that I put together, very quick, seven videos, doesn’t take very long to get through, with some very actionable steps to make you a better presenter, better public speaker. We’re gonna give you access to that for free. Plus invite you to my Facebook group, endless stages where I go live every Tuesday at noon pacific to Eastern time to give a 20 minutes live training on whatever happens to be the hot topic of the week out of the group. And so we do that training every Tuesday. All of those are my gifts to your listeners, Thomas, but only If they’re willing to give you a five star review. No five star review, no gifts for you. Well, in 265 episodes, that’s the first, so class act. Thank you Tyler, very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity to come on and share with your audience and have this wonderful conversation. Truly, if you weren’t doing what you would do, I would have no platform to to share my message. So thank you for what you do and thank you for having me as a guest on. I enjoyed listening to your story. Tyler Foley, thank you very much.