In an extraordinary season 3 episode of WyzeCast™, we welcome Reed Byers, a living testament to resilience and transformation. Reed’s story is one of overcoming domestic violence, parental divorce, substance abuse, addiction, institutionalization, homelessness, and the impact of mental illness. Today, he stands proudly as a beacon of hope and inspiration, embodying a message of resilience, belief, and encouragement.

Join us for episode 19 as Reed shares his remarkable journey from darkness to light, emphasizing the power of service, connection, and understanding. Despite facing the weight of poor choices, Reed has dedicated his life to helping others out of poverty, fostering thriving communities, and engaging in substance use prevention initiatives for the youth.

Recognized with multiple prestigious awards for his philanthropic and leadership work, Reed is a true catalyst for change. From running in a shark costume to advocating to government officials, he exemplifies the spirit of leading change and promoting innovative social solutions. In this episode, we explore the concept of “Cosmic Hope” as Reed discusses his passion for fostering positive change in the world.

Watch on YouTube – Premieres December 23rd, 10 AM ET

Listen on Spotify – Premieres December 21st, 3 PM ET

Melanie McSally
Welcome to another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive differences they are making in the world.

Folks, I am both honored and humbled to bring today’s guest to you. He is a true example of what it looks like to never allow others to dim your light. He is a living testament to the power of resilience and transformation, an advocate for connection and understanding, and a beacon of hope and inspiration; he embodies a message of hope, belief, and encouragement, and he stands as an example of the power of living a life of service.

Our guest today has overcome domestic violence, parental divorce, substance abuse, and addiction. He has felt the weight of poor choices. He has also been institutionalized, had periods of homelessness, and has felt the impact of mental illness.

Today, our guest is proudly living a life of service, helping people out of poverty, fostering thriving communities, and working with the youth on substance use prevention and other such initiatives to promote healthy, active lifestyles for children.

Today, our guest has been recognized and has received multiple prestigious awards for his philanthropic and leadership work. He has done everything from running in a shark costume to sitting on boards to advocating to government officials, all in the name of leading change and promoting innovative social solutions. He is a true catalyst for change.

My name is Melanie McSally, your host for today’s episode. And without further adieu, I would like to give a warm welcome to the handsome, thoughtful, and compassionate Reed Byers. Reed is joining us today from West Virginia in the United States. Welcome Reed.

Reed Byers
Hi, Melanie. Thank you so much for the sparkling introduction. I’m honored to be here. It’s flattering.

Melanie McSally
Well, the pleasure is all mine, Reed. So, I hinted to our listeners a little bit about your background. But you have an amazing story of triumph. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you ended up in this entrepreneurial world and being a motivational speaker?

Reed Byers
Yeah, gladly. I’ll try not to ruin the surprise about what I talk about or what I write about. And do not try not to go on too long, either. But there’s a lot that encompasses where I am, who I am, and what’s gotten me here. And it’s been a long journey. It’s kind of remarkable that it’s only been 31 years. For a long period of time, I just wasn’t sure that I would make it to a place of success.

I think the transformation and the shift for me occurred when I was sitting across the table from my mentor at Noble Correctional Institution. He was the executive director of the Ohio West Virginia Youth Leadership Association, and he was my camp director. So I remember back in high school, my guidance counselors came after me, and they said, Reed, we have this wonderful opportunity. We want you to go to the leadership camp at Camp Horseshoe. I didn’t know what that was. At the time, I was using drugs. At home, family life was just not great. I tried really hard in school to get involved in extracurricular and do my best; I hoped to go to college, but things were just troublesome. So when they came to me with this opportunity, I thought, wonderful, but also I was I was hesitant. I ended up going. I met my mentor. We’ve had a lifelong relationship. He’s been alongside me through my diagnosis with mental illness, substance use, and then incarceration. So he’s sitting across the table from me at Noble Correctional Institution, and I throw my hands up in the air. I said, David, I’ve thrown my life away.  I’ve given up ten years of my life. I feel hopeless. I feel like I have no purpose, no meaning. What can I do? What hope is there for me? He said purpose. What do you mean? Look around. Look at your choice to set drugs in the past, to choose your health, to focus on losing weight, living a healthy lifestyle, engaging in these different educational programs in prison- getting certified as a tutor, plumbing, horticulture, chapel, 12-step groups- all of these things that you’re doing here. He said, you’re transforming in this moment, and there are people on the outside and communities that need your story.

He says there are people in communities, Reed, that need your story- government officials, the governor of Ohio, people who want to make a difference- that need to know what to do to effect positive change. You’re in a system right now. You’re looking around. You’re seeing people who have made poor choices. You’re seeing what works, what doesn’t work, what needs to change. You’re called to be a witness. You’re called to witness those past experiences you’ve had since being a child, the poor decisions you were conditioned into and that you made, how you’ve changed, and being a beacon of hope, you can help inspire the needed change in communities.

Well, at the time, I wasn’t hearing it. I didn’t think that that was me. I didn’t think I had a purpose. I didn’t take anything to heart, but he’s been so good over the years, planting those seeds of hope and encouragement for me, and it continued to blossom. So, before I came home, I had a three-page plan of how I could take care of my mind, spirit, and body to continue my pathway of recovery, to grow into meaningful work, purposeful work, amend past relationships, and have the life that I’d always dreamed about, but wasn’t sure that I could have.

Well, Melanie, when I came home, I was released in April 2020, and my life has been ultimately spectacular ever since. My first job, after coming home from prison, I thought that I wanted to come home and be a truck driver. I was so burnt out from being around people all the time. It was a pretty heavy experience. I wanted to just unwind, vent, and air out. So, I thought driving a truck was the solution. I’d get in this truck. I’d be away from people. I’d go over the road, maybe take courses online, and that would be my path. Well, I found out quickly that I was called for different things. I got enrolled in truck driving school; it wasn’t for me.

So, I’m talking to my case manager, where I got mental health treatment services, and I told her I bailed out a truck driving school. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I remember my grandpa, my mentor, and I may use that word interchangeably throughout the interview, I refer to my mentor David as my grandpa, because he’s the closest thing I have to a dad now. But I mentioned he had sent me this newspaper article while I was inside, talking about peer recovery support and how people with their lived experience with mental health and addiction are helping others in the same situation. And I mentioned that to my case manager, and she said, well, we have those positions here.

I think we have some openings. Would you be interested? Serendipitously enough, they had a youth peer recovery position open, where I could help 12 to 25-year-olds who are facing challenges with mental illness and addiction overcome their unique challenges. So I took it, and I spent the next six months in my first office role in a professional career. Dressing up, going, and learning the system on the inside of this agency that I’ve received services at since I was 17. I mean, after my first suicide attempt and diagnosis of bipolar disorder, this was the place that saw me into wellness. So now, to work on the other side, as a healthy professional, share that health with kids who were in similar positions as me when I was 15, 17 years old, it was just inspiring. I knew that God had his hand on me and was leading me in the direction I was meant to go. Well, I learned as an employee within an organization there are limits to the good that you can do. There are limits to the ways you get to interact with people. Your decision-making is limited. And I found that I was called to make greater change. I remember I had the opportunity to go and work at the high school that I had graduated from. Now, mind you, Melanie, this is the same community that I was selling drugs in during this dark period of my life. So, to be able to go into a school and impact those kids who needed my unique experience, to be warned not to follow this pathway. It was amazing.

I walked through the door and saw the old receptionist, the secretary who was there when I was in high school. She hugged my neck. I got to work with kids who I felt like I really made an impact in their lives, but eventually, I was never asked to go back to that school, which was alarming to me. Come to find out. The principal had reached out to our organization, and she said, do you guys not remember what Reed Byers did? So, leadership in the organization made the decision that I was no longer allowed to work within schools, not just in that school district but in any of the regions that we covered. Then, I was limited to not being able to work with kids at the alternative school. Not being able to work with kids at the Boys and Girls Club. Only being able to work with kids who were already in our active caseloads or had two criminal convictions at that point.

I saw some injustices. That organization, I still receive my mental health services from. They do a lot of great work in the community. They have their own challenges with being such a large organization. I knew at that time that the kids I was being kept separate from still needed me. I had to find a way to help keep them from going down the same road that I went, to show them that you don’t have to go that route to have an amazing life. There are decisions you can make today as a young person that I wish I had made a long time ago that will set you up for success.

So, I stepped out. I left the organization. It wasn’t long before I realized that maybe I could start my own nonprofit doing the same things I was trying to do. So my mentor, being a nonprofit executive for a long time, said, why don’t you go talk to the local nonprofit leaders and see what they think about starting a new organization? So, I go visit, I remember stopping at The McDonough Foundation, and talking to Bob Boone and talking to Marion Klaus at the Parkersburg Area Foundation saying, hey, I want to start a nonprofit. What do you guys think?

So, I’m talking to these nonprofit leaders, and I say, what do you guys think? I want to start a nonprofit, and they say, Reed when people come to us asking to start a nonprofit, we ask them two questions. One, is there a need in the community that you’re going to provide a service that’s going to assist with? Two, is there somewhere in the community that’s already providing the service that you can fit in with? I said, well, absolutely. Our area is ravaged by addiction, mental health is ramped, kids really need more support, their home life is just tragic. Is there someone else that’s helping with that? Probably. So, can I fit in? It just so happened that my therapist at the time, who operates a for-profit counseling business, also had a nonprofit for mental health and supporting families. I asked him, and I said, hey, I want to start a nonprofit. This is the advice I’m getting. Would you be willing to help? So, they come back with a contract. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a professional contract. It outlines me being a 1099 contractor. I’m responsible for creating the program, developing the program, executing the program, and at which time it’s funded, only then can I be reimbursed for my time, or paid as somebody that provides peer recovery support, or is the executive director etc. So, it’s not as autonomous as I would have liked. Starting my own nonprofit. However, I don’t have to establish my bylaws. I don’t have to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars, assemble my own board, have my own office space, they provided all these things for me.

So, I took the deal. Signed the contract, and I spent the next eight months developing this program called: How To Save A Life. In partnership with Get More Connections, we would provide youth recovery coaching to help 12 to 25-year-olds with their addiction and mental health challenges. We would provide a running club that would offer mentorship to younger kids so as to prevent them from facing those same challenges. I would use my public speaking and sharing this message of resiliency and hope about our purpose of the program to try and raise money to support the program. And then we would offer family-friendly events for the community, to engage with people so they would have something to do because I remember as a kid, and I hear all the time, there’s nothing to do in our area. So, I am creating things to engage with people to change the landscape of the community and help kids from these difficult situations. It was a massive success, Melanie. It was just so incredible, the people I met and the things I learned along the way. I got involved with our local Chamber of Commerce and assembled an advisory team of people who worked with whether it was the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, youth leadership, the local community college, bringing people together, having these conversations, promoting this message of mental health awareness in the business community, and garnering support from people. It was just such an accelerated education in business. A lot of it, I still apply today. I’ve had so many people reach out talking about, I want to start my own nonprofit, what can I do? Or, I need resources to help, not just my own mental health but the families that I’m working with or my own kids. It’s been amazing to see that. Not necessarily going to college or getting a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, or a Ph.D., but just saying I’m going to do this, let me go ask people who are doing similar things what they think and maybe model the things that they’re doing, and implement them.

So, after eight months of building up the program, we had enough funding and support to launch a pilot project, and God called me in a different direction because it was difficult to work with the founders of a nonprofit and establish another organization to work with inside. Frankly, in addition to that project, I had another job at the health department working on opioid response. I was directing a Healthy Kids Running series. We brought that program to West Virginia for the very first time. I was on all of these different boards of directors. I ended up running for public office. I wasn’t really making enough money to sustain myself, which was so discouraging because my passion since I came home from prison was to make a difference and share my experience in a way that helped people transform their lives. But when I didn’t have money, and I couldn’t make it to the business meeting to fundraise to help the kids, I knew that there was a glaring problem. There was nothing holding me back from having more money and making more money other than my focus. My mentor, who was in the nonprofit realm, was a great mentor. I’ve learned a lot from him, and then I applied all of it, but I still had no money. So, what if I shifted my focus to doing for-profit things, earned a lot more money, and then still gave back and contributed to these causes in certain unique ways? 

So I was doing all this work, developing this nonprofit, volunteering, serving on boards, running for office, and all of these amazing things that I just felt had such an incredible impact. No money. Well, let’s shift. It’s been difficult because my mentor continually urges me that there’s value and meaning in my story, and I was raised that we don’t share our personal lives. We don’t share our personal story. That’s our business. What meaning could it have? Well, since I came home and got on social media and shared little successes, message by message, and saw the response, people reaching out feeling encouraged and inspired, I knew that I was on the right path. So, I decided that I wanted to write a book. And when I shifted out of being an employee developing this nonprofit, I said, I’m going to take time off, go stay in a cabin, and write this book. I was talking to my best friend at the time. I said, I’m going to start a business to do speaking and coaching like what I’ve already been doing with youth, based on the book that I write. He said, well, the natural progression for that is consulting. And at the time, I didn’t even know what consulting was. Full disclosure: I had no idea. So, for $65, in the state of Ohio, I filed a business license and came up with the name Reed Byers Change Agent. Now, I’m a motivational speaker, and I’m trying to find ways to monetize the message that I’m sharing in hopes of creating enough revenue where I can contribute to the causes I’ve been supporting at a grassroots level. If I can scale my impact and reach more people, raise awareness for these issues, and bring in more income, then I can bring in resources to an area that is severely limited on the things that we have. It’s just a different, a different perspective and a different focus than what I was conditioned into and it’s been amazing to make that shift. So, I think I want to offer a bit of encouragement to people who are new to their entrepreneurial journey or stuck as employees wanting to make a greater impact. If they’ve ever considered starting a business or wanting to earn more and serve more, volunteering, stepping out your front door, and creating solutions in your community are some ways to do that. And it’s a way that I’ve modeled and been effective in. Another way to do that is to start a business and find out what your gift or talent is. Then, how can you provide that and promote that in the marketplace, and earn more, so you have more to give?

Melanie McSally
Yeah, I love all of that. Entrepreneurship is like a crash course in twelve years of schooling. Even if you went to college for an MBA, I mean, I have basically an MBA, but it’s for managing engineers. Still, when I set out to become an entrepreneur, I was blindsided by all of the intricate details of what I didn’t know I needed to know about running a business.

Have you ever seen one of those lists? It’s all the things, all the jobs, a mom is, a mom is a professional cleaner, and a taxi driver and all this. I think an entrepreneur, and I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s like, you’re acting as a lawyer and a therapist, and a motivational speaker, and all these things. So yeah, I love what you’re saying because you just give people so much hope. You have the type of background, and you have the level of success where you are modeling. Just by being, you’re modeling for people that it doesn’t matter what your circumstances are. I also love that you brought up the fact that they wouldn’t let you go back to the school because it just showcases the limited mindset that’s out in the universe today and what needs to shift because everybody deserves to be recognized for the change that they are making within. We can’t expect people to change, but if they desire to change and they’re making that shift, we should be able to honor them for the new person they’re becoming and not judge them for all of the things they did way back when and give people a chance. So, I love all of that. We were talking earlier. I’m from Boston, a big city, and so we have big city services. We also have lots of hospitals and lots of schools in our city. So we have lots of services readily available to us. We have this program in Boston called Year-Up, which does a lot of what your mentor was talking to you about – helping people out of their circumstances and into better ones, whether it be to go to college or just to get a job. And that’s great for big cities, but what about all the people who don’t have a big city next to them or don’t have access to those services? Do you have aspirations of reaching these people?

Reed Byers
Yeah, so that’s it. It’s such a massive question that I’m glad you asked. And it’s something I’ve been given clear glimpses of and opportunities on how to do over the past few years. It kind of outlines the work ahead. So, the Ohio West Virginia Youth Leadership Association, the organization my mentor has directed for such a long time, saved and changed my life. We have two physical properties: Camp Horseshoe in West Virginia and Cave Lake, a campground. We’re currently working on developing this Center for Community Leadership. So that we can host programming, have people come in and rent the place for conferences, have summer camps, do workforce development and programming, and partner with community colleges. So, really building out the opportunity for the region.

Something I encountered when I was working as a peer coach was the lack of beds, residential treatment beds, and crisis beds for kids who want to stop using substances. So I had a seventeen-year-old client who’s using heroin. He was willing to go get treatment, but we had nowhere to send him. In the entire state of West Virginia, there’s maybe a handful of beds. What’s our excuse as a state? The DHHR has millions of dollars to divert to these things, and we just don’t have the capacity to support it. So, at the end of the day, the kid goes without care. Two years later, he overdoses and dies. Unacceptable, especially when places like Camp Horseshoe and Cave Lake are sitting there with site plans not fully developed. Or, maybe they have seven weeks of programming- we have a leadership entrepreneurship camp and four weeks of youth opportunity camp for seven to twelve-year-olds, but from September to May, the cabins sit vacant, and the water is off to protect the pipes. We could be providing family-style meals, educational programming, and an entire setting that creates an atmosphere of love, support, and understanding for kids who don’t have a strong home life.

Reed Byers
We have the opportunity to accept referrals from around the state. So, I’ve been advocating with the DHHR to spread this message and bring awareness to this problem because I think over time, the more that you spread the message that it’s a need, the more you get into the right rooms in front of the right people.

This week, I’m flying out to Texas to talk it up. A mastermind. Small setting. One hundred fifty entrepreneurs who are not only focused on growing their business but also want to have healthy relationships, a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a healthy spirit. I’m going to share this message of Cosmic Hope and social impact. What the needs are in our communities. The challenges that create over the long term. Now, we have a limited base of people who can start businesses and patron businesses. So, if we want to create an impact and serve through our businesses, maybe we should give to these causes that are doing something about it because some of our challenges at the Youth Leadership Association are that we don’t have enough good people or enough funding to turn these things into reality. But maybe on the entrepreneurship side, or the government side, there’s enough money for us to give, we just don’t know where to give, or how to give in a way that’s going to make a difference.

So, when you talk about nationally and globally, how do I hope to make an impact for that kid, and whether it’s rural Appalachia, rural Alberta, Canada, or India, spreading the message of having one, loving, caring, supportive adult who is there no matter what; Invest in me; pour into me. Then, I had a setting where I could connect with peers who were like-minded and who accepted me, no matter who I was. How has that changed my life? Talk to the authorities and figures of influence, whether they’re business folks or government officials, and ask, hey, who in your communities, state, or region is doing things to support this cause? How can you contribute to their mission to grow it? How can we go into local communities and make the connections and coordinate the care to get to the kid who doesn’t know about the Youth Leadership Association or Camp Horseshoe? How can we meet that person where they are? So, by me going into a school and talking about this being a transformative experience, talking hope into the kid, that there’s hope for him outside of his home, talking hope into the staff and the counselors and teachers, that identifying that kid and connecting with the organization in your state, who makes that transformation, is of the utmost importance. So I think just the message itself, getting out to as many people as possible over time, is going to create that opportunity for those youth. And that’s the mission that I’m on.

Melanie McSally
That’s awesome. So earlier, we were talking about Cosmic Hope, the title of this episode. Do you want to segue into what that means?

Reed Byers
It’s so exciting for me for this topic to come up, for it to be titled Cosmic Hope, because this idea, the name itself, just emerged a few weeks ago. I mentioned this coming week that I’m going to Texas, just a couple of days from now, to talk about Cosmic Hope at this mastermind to a small group of entrepreneurs. It was one of those entrepreneurs, Yannick Silver, whom I met back in July at this 30-hour run. We were celebrating 30 years of sobriety for my friend who’s in recovery, Charlie Engel, known as the Running Man. He’s run across the Sahara Desert. He is an amazing person.

So, I met Yannick there, and he ended up sending me the book that he wrote called Evolved Enterprise. He talks about, in this book, dozens and dozens of entrepreneurs that he’s friends with, who have businesses, but it’s not just a business. Every step along the way, they’re looking to bake in social impact into their processes- the way they work with their employees, the product they sell, and the end impact to transform the world. So, I was really inspired by his message and his mission. He has also founded a company called Maverick 1000. It’s a global invitation-only network of entrepreneurs who want to multiply their social impact.

So Yannick had reached out to me and said, Hey Reed, I got this idea because he knows I work in nonprofit, mental health awareness, and youth leadership and says, I want to see what you think. I’m speaking at this conference, and they’re buying like 200 of my cosmic journals, this awesome journal he’s created. We’ve got money in the budget for an extra giveaway, and we want to support your organization. We’re thinking about doing bookmarks. We want to contribute and make a donation to the organization of your choice. Maybe you can help us with these bookmarks. I said, absolutely, we’ve got our youth leadership conference coming up. Maybe the kids could design positive, encouraging notes on these wooden bookmarks with these flashy tassels and stickers and draw on them with saying, such as, you matter, you are loved, dream big, all of these things. Then the people you’re talking to about your Evolved Enterprise concept, your Maverick DNA, and making a social impact can have a token of what it actually means to make a cosmic impact, to create Cosmic Hope in your community.

The kids who made these bookmarks not only did they participate and make a contribution to these people’s lives, but with the donation we’re receiving, we’re offering mini-grants, $250 a piece, to the local delegations across Ohio and West Virginia of youth leadership kids to apply for this money and then use it in their communities to create projects that support positive mental health outcomes. Whether it’s offering mutual aid supplies to individuals who don’t have access to those things or whatever they can dream up. They have now funding to support that.

So Yannick is a shining example of how to create Cosmic Hope and bacon social impact into your business. And I had the opportunity to be an integral part of this project. We named it Cosmic Hope. Now I get to go out to Texas to share about it. As I pondered the Evolve Enterprise concept, I saw how I’ve always seen the need to step out of your front door, identify a problem in your community, and take action to find a solution. Seeing that kids are interested in leadership. They’re interested in making a difference. Giving them a tangible way to do that, participate, and then offering the opportunity to take it a step further and say we just don’t want your help making these tokens, we want you to step out into your communities and create the vision that you want to see. It’s just been an integral part of my mission.

Now, I’ve adopted it as essentially a part of my brand. Disclosure: it’s going to be the title of my book that I’m working on that we’re going to release in 2024. We’re going to have an amazing package. We’re baking in all kinds of social impact into that book. We’ll then add some additional courses, giveaways, and an event to inspire people and get them on the same page so that you, too, can create Cosmic Hope in your community. Just by looking around yourself and saying, what is it that’s bugging me? Or, what is the need? What is the gap that I have a gift I could give to, taking action, and then bringing people in to work with us on it? We always keep that at the forefront of our minds. How can we collaborate with one another? Because we’re in a market, in a society that’s not strictly capitalism. It’s not strictly socialism, it’s not just a bunch of social services that are trying to fix problems, it’s not just businesses that are trying to capitalize on customers, it’s a mesh and a blend of all of it, and all different types of people from all different types of backgrounds. Finding the best way to navigate that with the most ethical and moral approach is my mission. Not just my mission, but I think a lot of people’s mission, and we’re realizing that there’s a lot of work ahead, but there are innovative, new ways to do that. This is just one example of working with a number of people to change the way that business is played. I am super excited to share that message and to continue creating more examples of it.

Melanie McSally
I love this on so many levels. I started this podcast because I’m an Oz. I like to be behind the scenes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make a big change in the world. And so I figured out early on that the best way for me to do that is to lift the change makers up and give them the platform, literally and figuratively, to get their message out because the bigger impact they make, the bigger impact I make by supporting them and showcasing them. It started out as if I had this intention, but I wasn’t actually saying it out loud. And I still, with the support of the universe, was getting only heart-centered people. So the call that I put out, that you came to this podcast on, was I literally said, you must be a heart-centered business looking to make a big change in the world, and the pouring of people that came, was like, I want to be a part of that, was just amazing, and what you’re sharing is just such a bright example of that, of how many people, because in the news, we only hear about the crappy stuff. And so what I love about this show and what you’re sharing is that we get to hear about all the good stuff that people are doing.  

Reed Byers
Jim Rohn talks about that. You’ve got to learn how to celebrate your successes. I mean, connecting with people who are servant leaders and sharing a message of hope, how positive to be in a society now where podcasts like this can comprise such a big portion of the media that people consume. I don’t watch the news and haven’t for a long time, not for lack of wanting to keep up with current events, but just because of what it’s become now. I filled my social media feed with positive, inspiring entrepreneurs, authors, and change-makers to learn from them, connect with them, and grow with them. So to have the opportunity, and again, the platform that you’ve provided Melanie, to try and just make a small difference in people’s lives, I think we are now shifting our culture in such an encouraging way.

Melanie McSally
You mentioned earlier your shift into for-profit because of the empty bank account syndrome. Every entrepreneur goes through this. In fact, it took me forever to become an entrepreneur because I was like, I don’t want to be broke all the time. And what I realized is that, in my early days, money was not my currency. When you. Because I was, too, in the early days, I was beating myself up for having an empty bank account. I was questioning if this was really my purpose. Am I really making a big change in the world? Am I really doing good? Am I fulfilling my greatest purpose in life? What I realized is that freedom is actually my currency, and so no matter what I’m doing, if I feel free, free of mental, emotional, physical, and societal clutter, if I can just be me, be myself, and do what I’m meant to do, then I don’t really care how much money is in my bank account. And it’s just like anything in life: when you stop caring, that’s when it starts flowing. So, I would say to all the entrepreneurs out there, don’t define your success by money. Define it by whatever you feel makes you successful. What is it you care about, and do you have enough of that in your life? So, what is your currency? What is your definition of success? So, along those lines, I know that you have a special way that people can connect with you. You have a special gift for them. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

Reed Byers
Yeah, so one of my favorite parts of this journey is sharing my story, especially on social media and even when I give talks in person. For example, at the Youth Conference, after I spoke about cognitive open, engaging the kids with the bookmarks, the kids who stayed afterwards said, hey, I really appreciated your talk on mental health, do you have any resources that I can take back into my community? Unfortunately, at the time, my answer was no, but my answer is not no today.

So I say that because when people reach out to me afterward and say, hey Reed, I want to get in shape and start running, or I want to set the drugs behind, or I want to start a nonprofit, or I want to start a business, are you able to help me, or can I ask you this question? I love that opportunity to connect with people and see what they need to get them across the line.

For the conference organizers, teachers, and people in organizations, what are the challenges they’re facing? A glimpse of something from my story can help solve those problems for the people that they serve. So, anybody who wants to learn more about Cosmic Hope, my story, the different experiences I’ve had, and how they can apply to not just their lives as individuals, not just their communities, but also their businesses and their organizations, I want them to look me up on Facebook or LinkedIn. Send me a message, just the word Wyze, so I know that you guys are watching The WyzeCast Show. I want to share with them more about how Cosmic Hope can help transform their lives. They’re also welcome to send me an email at [email protected] with the subject line Wyze, and we can talk more about Cosmic Hope transforming their lives and their communities.

Melanie McSally
Yeah, so just to build on that. So, we’ve been talking about the youth, and quite honestly, the youth are the folks that are changing the world; you’re obviously one of them. So if you have kids, nephews, nieces, neighbors, if you have any children in your purview, young adults, and you know that they need some Cosmic Hope, then we will put everything on the screen below. We will put it in the description, so you don’t have to go out in search. I think we’re connected on social media, Reed. So we can, we can give people that deep links to your just DM him, we spell our name with a y and a z because we like to do things differently. So we say do it the Wyze way, which is W, Y, Z, E. And it just means that things don’t have to be hard.  If it’s hard, let’s look for a better way because we need a better tomorrow. That’s what we’re all about here at WyzeTribe and Reed, you’re making such a positive impact on the world such a positive difference. And I can’t thank you enough for everything that you’re doing in the world and for being here today to share it with our audience. So thank you so much. It’s been such a delight having you.

Reed Byers: It’s been such a pleasure. Thanks so much, Melanie

Melanie McSally
I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like what you’ve heard here today, please do like, share, and comment. We are trying to get WyzeTribe™ to be a hot new release. So if you feel inspired, if you feel moved, if you feel called, if we earned it, please do like, share, and comment. It is free for you to do so and really helps the podcast grow. And we really do love your engagement.

This was another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive difference they’re making in the world.

If you want to learn more about WyzeCast™, you can visit our wyzecast.com. We dropped ten episodes every month on the 21st, so you can binge-watch or spread them out over the month. Whatever suits your mood and lifestyle.

Once again, my name is Melanie. It has been my pleasure being your host today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, thank you for your engagement, and I invite you to come back and join me once again for our next episode of WyzeCast™.