Sponsor And Show Opening

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The following programming is sponsored by Marc J. Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management, or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, founder, author and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success. Founders’ Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, revealing the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they’ve learned. Join Marc and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun! Now, let’s dive in...

Why Magic Grabs Our Attention

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in.

Marc Bernstein 0:52

Good morning, America. How are you? My co-host for the show, Steve Berardi, president and founder of Omni Building Group, LLC, who's in the business of new residential construction and residential and commercial renovations. And our guest today is Tyler, who I will introduce formally in a minute. But in the meantime, uh good morning, Tyler. Good morning, Steve.

Tyler Jensen 1:16

Good morning.

Marc Bernstein 1:17

Tyler, I have a topic for you. And this the there's there's a little the name of it the topic is is about thing things being revealed. So in a minute it'll be revealed why this is the topic, but the topic is magic. And I was just thinking about magic both as a show business kind of thing and magic as um things something that happens, in my opinion, every day in real life, if you look for it. So tell tell us about magic and how it's influenced your life.

Tyler Jensen 1:50

Yeah, absolutely, Marc. Now, for those of you listening, I am a magician, and that's why Marc brings this up is I love to perform magic. So there's the first reveal there keynotes and speaking in my teachings. Now, one thing that I love about magic, I actually my background into magic, it was actually ironic. My wife and I were watching America's Got Talent, and it was when Matt Franco won the first year, and then the next year they had John Dornboss, who was Philadelphia Eagles. Philly guy, yeah. And he was he was on the show, made it to the finals, and I looked at the the the magic and I was like, I bet you I could learn that.

Marc Bernstein 2:32

By the way, I just have to tell you. Can I tell you so so I you may know this, but John Dornboss. So I've had events with him and I've seen him do his magic, but he tells his story. He had a very crazy um childhood where if I have it right, I believe his father killed his mother. He comes home one day and finds his parents are dead. And very, very painful. And magic was what was was what saved his life. And magic was also what got him in the NFL, if you read his whole story, which is really interesting. So anyway, go ahead.

Tyler Jensen 3:05

Yeah, and so I I loved that, and I was like, okay, I can I bet I could learn this. And so I started practicing magic, I started performing, I started learning these. I actually met John as well at a conference and told him that story of why I got into magic was because I watched him, and we actually spent almost two hours together after the show. Nice, and he taught me some of his tricks and some of those things, and it was a great conversation. He was a magic mentor too, yes, for two hours before his plane had to get to the airport. So we wow, cool. It was it was fun, and what the reason why I love magic so much is it draws people's attention. People become so focused in wanting to see the magic, experience the magic, catch the magician, figure out what it is, and not wanting to be tricked, right? But we all love to be tricked, but right, and that's why it makes it fun. But we also want to discover it, right? We want to figure things out, right? And people put a lot of focus and attention into that. And I love that concept because we live in a distracted world. Um, we're connected, more connected than any time in history. All right, I'm connecting with you over in Philadelphia and I'm in Utah.

Marc Bernstein 4:25

Yep.

Tyler Jensen 4:26

Yeah right? 20 years ago would be like, how's that even possible?

Marc Bernstein 4:29

Right.

Tyler Jensen 4:30

But we're so connected, and yeah, human connection is fading because we're so distracted. And I actually have a trick for you here to show you that.

Marc Bernstein 4:39

Cool.

Tyler Jensen 4:39

So here we have these three cards, and I I can't. If you're listening on audio, we'll just we'll describe what happens.

Marc Bernstein 4:45

Okay, gotcha.

Tyler Jensen 4:47

So we have these three cards. Yep. And the thing is, I'll actually show these to you. We have the Jack Two and Seven. And the thing about it is oftentimes people will never even notice when these change.

Marc Bernstein 5:01

It just changed to Queen, King, and Jack. I don't know how that happened, but it happened.

Tyler Jensen 5:08

Magic. Just like that with those three cards. That distraction, we lose the focus, and it's easy to lose focus. And the thing about that in in life is when we lose focus on things that matter most, when we're distracted, we miss the little things. We miss the little moments that can be magical and provide experience of our day. Every day we're meant to gain experience, and that's the magic behind it.

Finding Everyday Magic With Kids

Tyler Jensen 5:35

I was literally, my wife and I do something fun with our kids every day at dinner. We do what's called silly sour sweet. And we have three kids, and they share what was sour or silly about their day, something that's funny that made them laugh, made them smile, something that's sour, so we can learn that yes, every day we have things that suck and are awful, and those trials, but that's part of life. And then what's sweet, and how we can learn from those and the good things about the day. And it's just those little things that can make a big difference when we just focus on the case.

Marc Bernstein 6:10

Did you guys create that or did you hear that somewhere?

Tyler Jensen 6:12

My wife created that. I'll give her a lot of things. Really creative?

Marc Bernstein 6:15

Well, good for her. That's really cool. I may take. I'm hoping to have grandchildren soon, and I'm gonna I'm gonna use that. So I felt like that. That's great.

Tyler Jensen 6:23

That is the cutest thing you say. I oh, we we look for stuff now, right? We look for silly things, and that's the magic of life. My the other day, my three-year-old, we were having breakfast, and she stood up on her chair and stood on one foot and held her toast and said, Dad, look, I'm standing on one foot and holding my bread. She was so proud of herself. That's right. That's right. That just made me laugh.

Marc Bernstein 6:49

That is so cool, right?

Tyler Jensen 6:51

Yeah, and it's the magic that you know a three-year-old can bring to your life when we just focus.

Marc Bernstein 6:56

Hey, listen, our our 28 minutes on the show goes really quickly. So that was so great. We could talk just about that for the whole show. But I now want to introduce Tyler Jensen, who is a rec nationally recognized business strategist and speaker who helps individuals and teams achieve top performance through systems, focus, and optimism. He was named KSL's five KSL Five's Business Coach of the Year in 2025. He combines real world real world experience with practical frameworks to help people grow their business and lead with confidence. And let's get into

Choosing Entrepreneurship To Serve More

Marc Bernstein 7:32

it. You had a your family all were in education, and and it makes sense because you have a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge and helping others improve their lives. However, despite that background, you went for entrepreneurship. Despite your uh passion for teaching, sharing knowledge, and helping others improve their lives, uh, you gravitated towards a riskier way of life, which was entrepreneurship. How did that happen? And you describe yourself as the black sheep of the family for that too.

Tyler Jensen 8:03

Yes, yes, absolutely. And that happens a lot of just my drive to, I would say, help others and serve others. Um I I'm an individual where when I learn something and something's helped me or something's blessed me, I want to share that. I want to be able to make somebody's life better. I want to be able to um improve in that way. And entrepreneurship was just a way that I could see myself doing that. Um not necessarily in a search for money, but with more money, the more people can help, right? The more time freedom you have, the more you can serve. Um, and so there's a lot of benefits that come from owning a business that related to those values of wanting to be able to serve and help more people and to be able to influence others. And I think that was kind of one of those main drives since a young age. I was always looking for ways I could do that.

Marc Bernstein 9:00

Interesting. So, um, and I know you had little businesses like like we did, I did as well, long care, you know, cutting grass, right? Yeah at that point. Yeah.

Tyler Jensen 9:10

14-year-old.

Marc Bernstein 9:12

Yep, that's about that's about the age. Yep, got it. So uh you uh but then you got out and you worked as actually a corporate i IT trainer at a university for a while, right?

Tyler Jensen 9:23

So that was I did, yeah. Weaver state.

Marc Bernstein 9:26

And how did how how did you like that? Because that's not necessarily entrepreneurial.

Tyler Jensen 9:31

It is not, it's not entrepreneurial, but I loved the aspect because I had a lot of a lot of freedom with training. And we did outsource training, we did in-source training at the university, and it allowed me to use a lot of my creative skills as well as design skills. I'm also an artist, and so I love that aspect. So I was actually a more of a software trainer for that university. So Adobe, Microsoft, how to use these to either better your classroom or better the business that we'd outsource those classes to.

Marc Bernstein 10:06

Um, so after that, you then did get in your first entrepreneurial uh deal in the insurance business, right?

Tyler Jensen 10:13

I did, yeah. Uh for some reason I opened a scratch insurance agency. Don't ask me how it happened. That's how a lot of us find ourselves in that industry.

Marc Bernstein 10:21

Right, right, right, exactly. It just happened. Probably recruited, I guess.

Tyler Jensen 10:26

Yeah, I was. Right.

Marc Bernstein 10:28

So um you then it happened to me too. You then spent uh six to seven years as a corporate trainer after that, after having a successful agency, correct?

Tyler Jensen 10:39

Correct. So I ran the agency for about two years, after which time the RVP approached me and saying, hey, our corporate trainer is gonna be moving to a new position. That position is opening up. I know you have background in corporate training and you've done a wellness agency. Would you want to take that position? And that was a tough decision, right? Because here I am, I'm an entrepreneur, I own a business. Making money. Um but I I looked at training in two facets, and this is why even today, when people say, Well, why why don't you continue to open an agency or why don't you continue to do this? When I took that position, I said, Okay, right, as an insurance agent, at most, right, I'll be able to help a thousand to two thousand people. Right, those are good agencies. If I become a trainer, I could help 200 agents, help 2,000 to 1,000 people. And now my impact is well over a million and how many lives I could bless in that way. And my service mindset kind of drove me to that position of how can I have this impact to share my knowledge, share what I've learned to help and bless others as much as I could.

Marc Bernstein 11:58

It goes back to your interest in helping others improve their lives, going way back to your family instincts and everything. Um so while you were there, I'll just read this because you you had I know that retention in the insurance business, in the life insurance business, is somewhere between 11 and 15 percent after four years in the business. And you your agent retention rates after training hundreds of agents was about fifty to sixty percent. That's pretty amazing.

Tyler Jensen 12:29

Yeah.

Marc Bernstein 12:30

And how did you do that? I know there were some things you studied and learned

Retention Through Human Connection

Marc Bernstein 12:34

during that time that helped you with that.

Tyler Jensen 12:36

Absolutely. And the number one thing that I saw within there was first off, you have to make a human connection. And when it comes to insurance, you had to break the script. So I taught all of our agents how to sell based on education and not price. And so the agents that I trained or and still trained, they never focus on price, even if their companies do, right? That's what everybody advertises. So we'll save you on insurance, save money, save money, save money. The reason they want that is because the insurance company wants you to sell the cheapest policies. So they don't have to pay out on the back end. Right.

Marc Bernstein 13:19

Right, it's risk avoidance on their part, right?

Tyler Jensen 13:22

Exactly. And so just teaching agents how to sell and how to educate through sales allowed them to actually make connections with clients that increase their attention, reduce their turnover. Our agents who have stayed have over 90% retention of their clients. And for an insurance agent, that's huge. Most of the time it's 60 to 70% turnover of your clients every year. Because when they come to Yon Price, they leave you on price.

Marc Bernstein 13:48

Now that you say our agents, are you still connected with Foreign Bureau?

Tyler Jensen 13:52

Um, I'm not connected with Foreign Bureau anymore, but I I call them my agents because I spent so much time with them as well. Um, even the agents that I help within the top performance group who have gone through our program and who I've consulted, I'll still call them my agents because they're creating this impact out on a world that I've had a part of.

Marc Bernstein 14:15

So we're gonna stop there because it's break time for a minute, and then we're gonna talk about two entrepreneurial activities that began right after that. So, right after this.

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Staying Friends Beyond Business

Marc Bernstein 15:44

We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Tyler Jensen. And Steve Birardi is in the studio with me. And Steve, I know, has a question for you, Tyler.

Steve Berardi 15:53

Tyler, uh, it sounds like uh everybody you trained, did you end up becoming friends with them? Do they, because of your influence, do they constantly ask you your for your advice going forward?

Tyler Jensen 16:05

A lot of them do remain friends. Um, I'm in contact with a lot of them still to this day, and a lot of my clients as well within the top performance group, I stay in contact with. Um, I recently actually just started a mastermind um that's free to attend, but it's invite only. And so I still get to see a lot of those individuals uh on a by-week every other week basis. And that's one thing I'm a big proponent of is I don't believe in paid relationships. I'm gonna be friends with you well after um whether we do business or even don't do business. And that's just one thing I love doing.

Marc Bernstein 16:44

I love that. Uh I and I'm I'm imagining that some of the agents at Foreign Bureau might even be clients of Top Performance Group. Would that be right or not? Not necessarily.

Tyler Jensen 16:54

Yes, yep. There were several that I did join.

Marc Bernstein 16:56

Yep. That's why when you said IR agents before, I was thinking that you still you were still connected with them. I figured that must be the case. So that's pretty cool. So tell us about Top Performance Group. And

Four Pillars Of Top Performance

Marc Bernstein 17:07

we believe it or not, we have less than 12 minutes left. So we're gonna do that. And I also want to make sure we talk about focus gate, because that's really interesting.

Tyler Jensen 17:14

Perfect. I think the best way to describe top performance group is really what we get to teach is the psychology and really the science of a top performer. And that's what makes it so unique when we help these business owners. Is over probably two or three years, as I was working with agents, I always knew I wanted to do my thing and help and deepen that time period. But there's a moment when I actually owned an agency and I was sitting back and forth between a payroll check I was writing and my business bank account, deciding, okay, I gotta write this out of my personal checking account. Thinking, okay, how does this even, how do I even continue, right? How do I grow this? And that happened due to the fact that I had a policy, it was my first policy that ever canceled on me. And they only stayed with me for a few weeks. So I got paid on the account, $12,000 check on that account, and then it canceled. So an insurance had to backpay it. And so here it was. I went and backpaid a check to the company for $12,000, now thinking, great, what do I do to bring my payroll check this month? Right. And that was kind of a catalyst to decide, okay, how do these agents make it, right? What do top performers do? And that's what started me on this study of top performance and looking at that and researching it, trying to decide is there a pattern, is there frameworks, is there something that can be modeled for individuals to have top performance? And I discovered that in my research, there's actually things that keep people from it. That was the three thing I discovered first before I discovered our four pillars. Was the thing keeping people from top performance is complacency. And we get into our own way, we're distracted, we decide to be busy, and I foremost.

Marc Bernstein 19:08

Distraction has come up a lot today, and it's gonna come up again. Yeah, so interesting.

Tyler Jensen 19:13

It has. And yeah, so we developed the three complacency models, and to describe those, we describe the first pillar of top performance, which is optimism. And optimism doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means, Mark and Steve. It means best. The Latin word for optimism meant best. In its later translations, it got translated into positive or happy or outgoing, but in its original context, it was simply best. Are we providing the best experience? Are we doing what's best for the customers? Are we providing the best experience for our employees? Are we becoming the best version of ourselves? Right? If you just think of, oh, optimism is just positive, and you just have to be positive. Well, if you're positive all the time, you miss empathy. Sometimes people don't need positive, they need empathy, they need connection, they need your best version to help them. And so we teach that first off, and then from there, when we're taking these good actions, we actually get busy. And that's the first thing that business owners face in life and businesses, they just become busy. And we call that complacently busy because you're just going from one thing without structure. And then our second pillar pulls you out of that, and that's systems. And so, how do we create systems for employees, for sales, for marketing research, um, ourselves? And that pulls us out of busyness, but then we get in our own way again, and we become our natural complacent state where our brain says, Oh, that didn't work, that failed, that was a failure, you got yelled at, don't do it again. And then we're stuck in our own way, and people become distracted, and they spend two hours just I'll just scroll, I'll just do the things that are easy. And then our last two pillars get you to top performance, power and focus. And from there, that's your own uniqueness, and that's focusing on things that matter most. And then you experience top performance, and you're just like, this day was awesome! I did this, and then you fall into the third, which is the self-made, where you say, Oh, I'm good. I don't need to change anything now. I made it to the top, and then really the the pattern is daily discipline. That's like the ultimate complacency. Every single day.

Marc Bernstein 21:33

Yep. That self-made is the ultimate self-self-complacency uh form of complacency, right? I mean, it is.

Tyler Jensen 21:40

Yep.

Marc Bernstein 21:41

So interesting. Oh, I'm gonna move on from that because I want to make sure we cover Focus Gate, which there is a theme

Focus Gate And Phone-Free Classrooms

Marc Bernstein 21:47

here. So let's tell tell us about what Focus Gate is. Yeah, Focus Gate. And by the way, you were found, I just want to point out founder of Top Performance Group, which is still going on with it with a team of consultants. And the Then there's focusgate.

Tyler Jensen 22:01

Yeah, so focus gate actually derived from a early challenge of the top performance group, right? Because there's gonna be challenges in business. Right out of the gate, focus gate was not as successful as I anticipated. There was other foresee factors that we weren't expecting that came up, which then caused my wife to go back to work. Uh she was a stay-at-home mom for years, and she went back to work. She was a teacher, she's a teacher before, um, physics teacher, and she went back to work, and that's where this problem really discovered is the issue of these cell phones. She saw it before, she saw she was a private tutor as a stay-at-home mom the whole time as well. But she saw this issue of cell phones. From there, we decided, okay, well, what can we do about this? This is a major issue plaguing America and teachers all over the place. And so then we decided to say, okay, well, what if we just like signal jammed these cell phones? And it was like our our business partner that we brought in and said, Oh, that doesn't work. And so we actually developed a mobile app that solves the issue of cell phones in the classroom. It gives teachers full governance, so students download it day one and integrates with the software. So when they enter class, the phone enters a focus mode, eliminating all distractions. But then it keeps emergency context such as parents or medical apps needed for the student. And then the teacher can decide what they want for the class period. So with one click, they can open up an app or a website or a resource on the student's devices. They can use class period and another click and it goes back into focus mode. And that's focus gate, it's educational tech.

Marc Bernstein 23:38

So I think it's ingenious. I see a couple of challenges. One's I know Steve wants to ask you about.

Steve Berardi 23:44

Yeah, uh, do do par you know, will parents give you pushback about this?

Tyler Jensen 23:49

Oh, that's a great question, Steve. From a lot of the the conversations we've had with parents, is first off, they think that they love the fact that student cell phones are gonna be the distractions are gone. Right? Because a lot of students are concerned of the of two things. They're concerned about safety with their kids and being able to communicate. Then they're also concerned of the fact that we know that the presence of cell phones is decreasing test scores, it decreases cognitive performance by 20%, and parents are aware of that. And so with our solution, they actually have a parent portal. So if the parents designated the emergency contact, they can still get through to their child. In an emergency, we have emergency protocols. So not only do all phones instantly unlocked, but notifications are sent to parents and students on the exact next steps that the school wants them to take in that emergency.

Marc Bernstein 24:44

So it's again, I'm sorry.

Tyler Jensen 24:47

Oh, I said it's m it's organized, right? It allows everybody to be on the same page, and parents have loved that aspect.

Marc Bernstein 24:54

And you have it operating in pilot programs now or in in actual working programs now in schools?

Tyler Jensen 25:01

So we're starting our pilot schools kind of January of this year. Um we're gonna start in the private sector, and then from there we'll move into the public sectors after that.

Marc Bernstein 25:12

Interesting. Um any other challenges that you see with it?

The Fight Against Social Media Distraction

Tyler Jensen 25:18

Yeah, this is a this is a good question. My wife and I were traveling up to Yellowstone and I shared this thought with her this l weekend, honestly, and I said, I feel like the biggest competitor on our app that will block out all these distractions for students is our our big social media companies. When you think about it, this was a research done by one of our board members, Stanford Kind, they're in 10,000 schools, and they surveyed students and they asked them how often do you spend time on your cell phone? And 95% of students said they spend 90 minutes or more on their cell phone every day. And when you look at that, and we're stealing 90 minutes per student away from these social media companies, we're our IT team's gonna have to, I feel, is gonna have to block these social media's workarounds on trying to get notifications through to these students.

Marc Bernstein 26:12

So it's gonna be a technology battle for the hearts and minds for of our school children, unfortunately. You're battling battling the big guys. Hey, real quick, because believe it or not, we're out

Favorite Book And Fast Closing

Marc Bernstein 26:23

of time, but real quick, I know you're a voracious reader. What are your favorite books? We've got about 20 seconds to answer that.

Tyler Jensen 26:29

Oh, favorite books. One of them is from a mentor of mine, uh Rory Vaden. He actually mentored me through keynote speaking and everything. It's called Take the Stairs. Uh love this book. It's all about um success and doing the hard things that normal people don't want to do.

Marc Bernstein 26:49

What's Roy's last name?

Tyler Jensen 26:50

Rory Vaden.

Marc Bernstein 26:52

Rory. Yeah. V-A-D-E-N.

Tyler Jensen 26:55

Yep.

Marc Bernstein 26:55

Got it. V-A-D-E-N. Just want to make sure people got that. I never heard that one. Great book. Okay, good. Yeah.

Tyler Jensen 27:01

Take the stairs. Don't take the elevator escalator. Take the stairs. Do those things that people, normal people don't want to do.

Marc Bernstein 27:08

All right. Take the stairs. On that note, thank you for being here, Tyler. It's a great show. It always flies by. Steve, thanks again for being here. Thank you all for listening. And we'll see you next week on Founders Forum.

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Founders Forum was brought to you in part, by March Forward, LLC. We partner with entrepreneurs like you to assist in accomplishing your future vision. Your life. Your business. Your legacy. Comprehensive wealth planning that starts with you -- not a product. We hope you enjoyed your time with Founders’ Forum and that you found something of value to take with you throughout your day. Join us again next week for another episode of Founders’ Forum on WWDB 860 AM Philadelphia, or on your favorite podcast streaming service. Securities offered through DFPG Investments, LLC (“DFPG”) Investment Advisory Services offered through Diversify Advisory Services, LLC (“Diversify”). DAS and DFPG are affiliated entities. March is unaffiliated with DAS and DFPG. Member FINRA/SIPC The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as investment advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of Diversify or DFPG.