The Money Fit Show · Season 2, Episode 19
Obstacles, Opportunities, and Small Victories
A career can change direction many times without every change being a failure. Sean Tyler Foley joins Todd Christensen to discuss growing up as a performer, losing his father at a young age, medical and career setbacks, unemployment, entrepreneurship, housing changes, and why tracking small victories can help make financial and personal progress easier to see.
Finding progress inside an uncertain path
Play Season 2, Episode 19 directly through Spotify without leaving Money Fit.
Financial resilience is often built before the next setback arrives
Sean Tyler Foley began acting professionally as a child and spent much of his early life around stage, film, television, auditions, and performance. His career later expanded into other industries, entrepreneurship, speaking, consulting, and business leadership.
The path included difficult interruptions. Tyler discusses losing his father when he was young, a medical crisis that affected his schooling, periods of unemployment, financial pressure after moving into a dream home, and the disruption COVID-19 created for work that depended heavily on travel.
One of the recurring lessons is that earlier setbacks can become preparation for later ones. Financial adjustments his household had already learned to make before 2020 helped them respond differently when travel-related income was suddenly disrupted.
Topics covered in this episode
- Tyler's entry into acting, stage performance, film, and television at a young age.
- Losing his father at age six and using acting and performance as one way of processing difficult emotions.
- Balancing professional acting with school and continuing to perform while maintaining his education.
- How years in theater influenced Tyler's approach to communication, leadership, preparation, and business.
- A childhood memory involving receiving a wallet with $20 and the meaning he attached to having money of his own.
- Collecting stamps, trading cards, and other early experiences with objects that could carry value.
- A medical crisis that disrupted Tyler's final period at an arts-focused school and prevented the graduation path he expected.
- Withdrawing from a high school musical and dealing with the loss of an opportunity that had felt important at the time.
- Tyler's determination to leave his hometown and pursue opportunities in Vancouver, British Columbia.
- His perspective on living through a medical problem without receiving a definitive diagnosis and learning to continue moving forward despite uncertainty.
- The role mentors, books, training, and personal development played as his career and financial life changed.
- How lessons from financial difficulties in 2015 helped his household respond when COVID-19 disrupted a career that involved substantial travel.
- Experiencing unemployment and maternity leave at the same time shortly after moving into what the family considered its dream home.
- Tyler's story of receiving only a small amount of money after the eventual sale of that home once the financial obligations were settled.
- Reducing housing expectations and cutting luxury expenses further when earlier adjustments were not enough.
- Comparing the risks of self-employment and business ownership with the financial uncertainty employees can also face through layoffs, inflation, and economic change.
- Moving toward self-employment gradually through a business partnership rather than making the entire transition at once.
- Self-publishing The Power to Speak Naked and using the book as another step in developing his professional work.
- Tracking net worth and understanding assets and liabilities as a way to see financial progress beyond the amount of money in a checking account.
- Celebrating small victories instead of waiting for one distant financial or career milestone before recognizing progress.
Track progress that is easy to overlook
Financial improvement does not always arrive as one dramatic event. A smaller debt balance, another month of emergency savings, a growing retirement account, a lower recurring expense, or an improving net worth can all represent progress. Recording those changes can make a long-term plan easier to evaluate and maintain.
Speaking, business, and financial progress
Sean Tyler Foley continues to work in speaking, training, business consulting, and performance. Total Buy In also remains active in workplace safety consulting and employee engagement.
Sean Tyler Foley
Sean Tyler Foley joined Todd Christensen with a background spanning professional acting, stage performance, business, consulting, public speaking, and entrepreneurship.
Tyler began acting in film and television as a child and has appeared in productions including Freddy vs. Jason, Door to Door, Carrie, and the musical Ragtime.
He continues to work as Managing Director of Total Buy In and as a speaker and communication coach. He is also the author of The Power to Speak Naked, which focuses on communicating stories and ideas more effectively.
