7-Figure Mentor

What happens to your shop the week you go on vacation?

If the answer is "nothing," you don't have a business. You have a job with employees.

In this episode, Evan sits down with Clayton from Scorpion, a family company out of Cloverdale, Indiana that's spent over 30 years helping regular people get into the automotive accessory business without dropping $50,000 to $80,000 on franchise equipment.

It started in a barn. Clayton's dad was running an asbestos removal business (super glamorous) and mixed up a 3-part coating you could spray out of an air texture gun. That hobby turned into a real company. Clayton left a finance job in Hawaii to come help for "a little while" and never left.

Then he took a $1M business with a disappearing SBA loan and turned it into an Inc. 5000 company.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Tuesday is the biggest ordering day in the auto accessory world, and what that says about how small shops really run
• How they grew 20% two years in a row just by changing packaging and picking up the phone
• Why Scorpion only dropped 8-9% in the 2008 recession while competitors got wrecked
• The product suite mistake that lost margin on almost every single SKU... and how the one winner (window film) built the next decade of growth
• What piezoelectric film is, explained like you're 5 (it plays music, records sound, and the Army wants it wrapped around drones)
• Why Clayton thinks most shops will be run off a phone, not a laptop
• The honest answer on hand cutting vs. plotter cutting, and why he's not against hand cutting at all
• What it actually costs to test the software (free for a month, plus they pay you $29.99 just to download it)
• Why "we're fine doing it the way we've always done it" is the most expensive belief in the shop

About Clayton

Clayton helps run Scorpion, a family company out of Cloverdale, Indiana that's spent over 30 years helping people get into the automotive accessory business without franchise-level startup costs.

It started with his dad mixing spray-in bedliner coatings in a barn. Clayton left a finance job in Hawaii in 2006 to come help, took a struggling $1M business, and grew it into an Inc. 5000 company.

Today Scorpion is big in window tint and paint protection film, and they've built software that connects your phone straight to your plotter. Clayton's also working with Purdue on film that can play music, record sound, and make drones go quiet.

Connect with Clayton:

• Website: buyscorpion.com
• LinkedIn: Clayton Tomasino
• Youtube: Clayton Tomasino
• Tiktok: Clayton Tomasino

Most people think a life insurance policy pays out because someone died. That is not true.

In this episode, life insurance claim attorney Stephie Prestridge explains the part nobody tells you: a policy pays out because the claim survived a review. Not because your person is gone. Because the paperwork lined up.

Stephie did not plan on this career. She went to law school because someone told her she could not do it. She landed a great job doing international trade and maritime defense. Then her grandmother called with a question about her grandfather's health, and Stephie realized she had no idea what to do. That one moment moved her home, moved her into estate work, and eventually moved her into the fight she runs today.

The turning point came when a client walked in holding a letter. The insurance company was not paying. They mailed back all the premiums instead. Stephie's husband and law partner took that case, won it, and walked into her office with one line that changed both their practices: "If this walked in our door, it is happening way more than you realize."

He was right.

Now Stephie and her team at LifeClaim.com spend their days fighting denied and delayed life insurance claims for families who were already having the worst week of their lives.

Fair warning: some of this is going to make you angry.

What You'll Learn

• How a phone call from her grandmother rerouted her entire legal career
•  The client letter that made her pivot her whole practice
•  The number one reason claims get denied, and how easy it is to prevent
•  Why people in the hospital miss payments, and why the notice goes to an empty house
•  The free 30 second fix almost nobody knows about: naming a second person to get lapse notices
•  The reinstatement trap. That "I am in good health" box you sign can restart the clock on everything
•  What the two year contestability clause really lets the insurance company do
•  The line that reframes this whole topic: policies pay because the claim survived an evaluation, not because someone died
•  How a urgent care visit from 10 years ago can be used to void a policy
•  Why a mistake and a lie get treated the same in most states
•  The friendly phone call. Why the nice rep asking how your person was doing is taking notes
•  How those notes get reclassified as fraud, and why the fraud window is far longer than two years
•  The claim form checkbox that reopens every medical record you have
•  The one case where Stephie's team crossed that box out, signed it anyway, and sent it in
•  The surprising reason one of the country's largest insurers asked to meet with her every quarter
•  Never file your own appeal. The one rule Stephie will not budge on
•  Why work related policies follow completely different rules than private ones, and why that matters more than anything else in this episode
•  Where AI falls apart on legal appeals, and why insurance companies love seeing one show up
•  Basic vs supplemental life insurance through work, explained simply
•  The story of her chosen sister's brother, killed by a semi truck, and the reason his policy was denied

About Stephie Prestridge:

Stephanie Prestridge is a life insurance claim attorney and partner at LifeClaim.com, where she and her husband and law partner represent families whose life insurance benefits have been denied, delayed, or disputed. She started in international trade and maritime defense, moved into estate planning after a family health crisis, and pivoted her entire practice the day she realized how often insurers deny valid claims. She has an ongoing working relationship with the legal counsel of one of the largest life insurers in the country, and has won the majority of the appeals she has filed against them.

Connect With Stephie:

• Website: lifeclaim.com
• Phone: 888-615-3172
• LinkedIn: Stephanie Prestridge
• Facebook and Instagram: search "Life Claim"
• Tiktok: Life Claim

Most teachers plan the whole year in advance. Then they teach it exactly as planned, no matter what the students in front of them are actually doing.

Douglas Fisher says that's backwards. Plan backwards, teach forward.

In this episode, Doug breaks down the four phases of learning he and his colleagues built out of an old reading theory called the gradual release of responsibility. It started in reading comprehension. Then Doug realized the same thing happened to him as a competitive swimmer, getting pulled out of the pool by an Olympic coach who fixed the angle of his hand.

Turns out the way humans learn to swim, read, and run a business is basically the same.

We also get into why collaborative learning is the most skipped phase in America's classrooms, the dead-simple colored-marker trick that ends freeloading in group projects, whether kids "can't read anymore" (Doug's answer will surprise you), and the one AI use case that convinced him screens still belong in school.

What You'll Learn

• The 4 buckets of instruction and why the order people assume is wrong
• Why practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent (and what that means if you're teaching it wrong)
• The most neglected phase in classrooms today, plus the 3 fears keeping teachers from using it
• How to design group work so one kid can't carry the whole team (the "divide and conquer" test)
• What social loafing is and how to engineer it out of a task
• The colored marker system that makes contribution impossible to fake
• How to model your thinking for 35 students at once using teacher think-alouds
• Why cognitive overload means you can't model for more than a few minutes
• The 5th thing most people leave out of the framework: collecting evidence of learning in real time
• Plan backwards, teach forward. What that actually looks like Monday morning
• Why comparing your 3rd period class to your 5th period class is a trap (and how schools stack the deck without telling you)
• The truth about reading scores: an alliteracy problem, not just an illiteracy problem
• Why the screen time debate is asking the wrong question, and the question we should ask instead
• How one teacher used AI to build 36 personalized budget scenarios in a single class, and why the conversation after mattered more than the tool
• The real reason teachers are quietly leaving: the broken link between effort and impact
• Where optimism comes from, and how it's different from idealism

About Doug:

Douglas Fisher is an author, educator, and co-creator of the modern interpretation of the gradual release of responsibility framework used in schools worldwide. He still works in a school. He still writes. And he still believes teaching is the profession where you're never done learning.

Connect with Doug:

• LinkedIn: Douglas Fisher
• Website: FisherAndFrey.com

Most of us grew up believing the same thing: you get sick, you go to the doctor, they fix you.

Dr. Joe Jacko spent 36 years inside that system. He's board-certified in internal medicine and sports medicine. In this episode he explains why that simple story leaves a lot out.

This is not a doctor-bashing episode. Dr. Joe is clear that medicine does a ton of good. His point is more useful than that: the system is built around sick care, not health care. There is very little money in prevention. So you get medicine that keeps you alive longer without making you healthier.

He breaks down how half-truths work, why they are harder to catch than flat-out lies, and how the same trick shows up in commercials, media, and drug marketing. Then he gets practical: what labs to actually run, why the "normal range" on your bloodwork is a misnomer, why brain fog and low energy are so often a hormone story, and the truth about the peptide craze.

If you have ever walked out of a doctor's office feeling like you got sold instead of helped, this one is for you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why "health care" is really sick care, and what that costs you
• The difference between getting out of sickness and getting to optimal health (most doctors only aim at the first one)
• What a half-truth actually is, and the 3 ways it gets used on you: withholding key info, pulling things out of context, and making small things look huge
• Why "30% lower risk" almost never means what you think it means, and the one question that exposes it
• How we get groomed into medical dependence starting before we are even born
• Why your "normal" lab results might be hiding a real problem, and what a reference range actually is
• The testosterone trap: why a guy at 700 can feel terrible and a guy at 350 can feel great
• When to get your first hormone baseline, and why waiting until you feel bad is too late
• The real reason so many people are tired, foggy, and running on caffeine
• Common prescriptions that quietly interfere with energy production
• Peptides in plain English: what they are, why they are everywhere, and the mistake Dr. Joe sees patients making
• How to look up whether your own doctor takes money from drug companies
• The Blue Zones shortcut: why copying 100-year-olds may beat following longevity experts
• The 5 self-protection moves every patient should know before their next appointment

ABOUT DR. JOE JACKO:

Dr. Joe Jacko is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and sports medicine with additional training in hormone replacement and regenerative medicine. He has trained or practiced at leading institutions including the Hughston Clinic, the Cooper Clinic, the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic of the Carolinas, and Cenegenics.

He is the author of Bamboozled, Duped, and Hoodwinked: Keys to Escaping the Tricks, Deceptions, and Half-Truths of the Medical Industry, a 560-page book with 380 references. He has also published 1,177 free articles since 2011 on exercise, nutrition, hormones, peptides, and healthy aging

CONNECT WITH DR. JOE:

• Website: jackomd180.com
• LinkedIn: Joe Jacko
• Instagram: Joe Jacko
• Youtube: Joe Jacko
• Tiktok: Joe Jacko

Most people think they did everything right. They maxed the 401(k). They didn't touch it. They followed the plan.

Barry James Dyke says that plan was built for Wall Street first and for savers second.

Barry started at Prudential about 40 years ago and was named rookie of the year. Then he spent the next four decades taking the whole system apart. He wrote The Pirates of Manhattan, which has sold roughly 40,000 copies in 23 countries, and his newest book is Black Eyes for BlackRock.

In this episode he explains the shift happening right now: private equity and private credit are being moved into everyday retirement plans. Barry says that money is stuck, hard to sell, and hard to see inside of. And there is about $12 trillion sitting in 401(k)s that Wall Street would love to point it at.

He also lays out what actually works instead, why the best retirement systems on earth are built on guaranteed income, and the one subject he says every person should study before anything else.

This one will make you look at your statement differently.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why debt, not the market, is the number one thing quietly wrecking retirements
• The reason a $30 toaster from Walmart carries a stronger promise than a 401(k)
• What private equity really is, in plain English, and why it started as the 1980s buyout game
• Why private equity firms cannot get out of their own deals right now, and who they want to hand them to
• The $12 trillion pile of 401(k) money Wall Street is aiming at
• Why the countries with the best systems (Netherlands, Iceland, Israel, Norway) lean on guaranteed income instead of the stock market
• Where the U.S. actually ranks, and why Barry calls it a banana republic retirement system
• The double standard: default on a billion dollar buyout and walk away, default on a $30,000 student loan and get chased forever
• What IBM, GE, Ford and even the Federal Reserve quietly use for their own people
• Why Barry says most financial planning today is malpractice, and the one thing that's almost always missing
• The first move for a business owner between 50 and 70 who's rethinking everything
• Why understanding how banks work is the real starting line for building wealth
• The free public research Barry put online so you can check every claim yourself

ABOUT BARRY JAMES DYKE

Barry James Dyke is a best selling author and financial researcher based in New Hampshire. He began his career at Prudential, where he was named rookie of the year, then built and sold a pension administration firm and a registered investment advisor.

He is the author of five books, including The Pirates of Manhattan and his latest, Black Eyes for BlackRock. His work backs every claim with SEC filings, FDIC data and bankruptcy records.

He also runs a division called The Prosperous Pilot, built specifically for pilots and their families.

CONNECT WITH BARRY

• Website: barryjamesdyke.com
• New book site: blackeyesforblackrock.com
• Email: [email protected]

You've hit every goal you set.

The house. The car. The revenue number you swore would make you feel done.

And you still can't turn your brain off.

You sit at dinner with your family and your body is there but your head is somewhere else. You check your phone 10 minutes into your kid's baseball game and nothing even buzzed. You end the day exhausted but you can't point to one big thing you actually moved forward.

Rob Stein went through all of it. He went from an overweight, underpaid middle school teacher to a full-time entrepreneur, a championship bodybuilder, a published author, and the builder of the number one online coaching platform for real estate agents in the US.

And in the middle of all that "success," his marriage was suffering and he was more stressed than he'd ever been.

The problem wasn't execution. It wasn't work ethic. It was decision fatigue.

In this episode, Rob breaks down what decision fatigue actually is, the exact symptoms that tell you you've got it, and the full four-part framework he uses with CEOs to fix it. He gives the whole thing away. No gate, no upsell inside the episode.

If you feel busy all day and productive none of it, this one is for you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

• What decision fatigue really is and why the average person burns through 35,000 decisions a day before they ever get to the ones that matter
• The "decision bank account" concept and why answering emails all morning means you have nothing left when a real opportunity hits your desk
• The 6 symptoms that tell you decision fatigue is your root problem and not sleep, supplements, or a bad morning routine
• Why "embrace the suck" advice stops working at a certain level, and what to do at that ceiling instead
• The one sentence that reframes everything: these people don't have an execution problem, they have a decision problem
• The 3 fears that keep smart owners stuck doing work they should have handed off years ago
• Rob's full 4-part framework: Identify, sort into 3 buckets, build the architecture, then execute
• The Decision Audit you can run yourself this week with nothing but a notepad
• The 3 buckets every decision belongs in: eliminate, delegate, or protect
• The math on what your bottleneck is actually costing you (a real client losing $180K a year, and why the real number was closer to $3M)
• Why your morning routine will never outperform your daily routine
• Who this actually works for and the revenue level where the payoff gets explosive
• When to make your biggest decisions and why the "wake up at 4:30" crowd might be wrong for your wiring

ABOUT ROB STEIN

Rob helps CEOs and business owners spend less time on decisions that drain them so they can make more money and get their time back without losing quality or control.

He's a former middle school teacher turned entrepreneur, a championship bodybuilder, an author, and a speaker. He built and developed what is now the number one online coaching platform for real estate agents in the US, and he's had a real exit under his belt.

He works mostly with owners doing at least half a million a year, because that's the point where the decisions carry real weight and freeing up hours turns into exponential growth.

CONNECT WITH ROB

• Website: robstein.com
• LinkedIn: Rob Stein
• Youtube: Rob Stein

Tim James was about to be handed the keys to a multi-million dollar business. On paper, he'd won. Inside, his body was falling apart. Eczema bleeding through his dress shirts. His gut bleeding for two and a half years. His energy gone. Then one class flipped a switch and changed his whole life. In this episode, you'll learn how to spot the real root of low energy, gut issues, and skin problems, plus the simple "inside job" Tim used to turn it all around and help thousands of others do the same.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why low energy is the warning light for almost every health problem you have
• The real reason your skin issues are actually gut issues (and what to do about it)
• What Tim saw under a microscope that made him change everything overnight
• The "inside job" shift that took him from bleeding daily to running a marathon
• How he lost 42 pounds in 60 days without dieting or killing himself in the gym
• Why eating half as much food (without willpower) fixes your sleep and energy
• The simple daily habit that helped 14,000+ people rebuild their health

About the guest:

Tim James is the founder of Chemical Free Body and the creator of Organic Energy Juice. After years of chronic gut problems, bleeding eczema, and a near-death experience, he healed himself through detox and nutrition, then walked away from a multi-million dollar financial services career to help others do the same. He's since taught thousands of people how to get their natural energy back and reclaim their health from the inside out.

Connect with Tim:

• Website: chemicalfreebody.com
• LinkedIn: Tim James
• Instagram: Tim James
• Youtube: Tim James
• Tiktok: Tim James

Most people visit Italy and see the same postcards everyone else does. Joseph Walker spent 30 years finding the Italy hiding underneath it. A sunken Roman city off the coast of Naples, wines you can only taste in tiny local pockets, and forgotten kingdoms no guidebook mentions. In this episode, he shows you how to travel Italy like an explorer instead of a tourist.

What You'll Learn

• How Joseph rediscovered Portus Julius, a Roman city sitting underwater near Naples that almost no tourist ever sees
• How to spot the "real" Italy versus the version built for tourists
• Why the famous Marco Polo pasta story is completely made up, and where pasta actually started
• What makes Italian wine taste like nothing you can buy in a store back home
• Why a small group of 10 can reach places a 40-person bus tour physically cannot
• The mindset shift that turns a good trip into one you remember for life

About Joseph Walker

Joseph Walker first came to Italy as a teenager in the US Navy and never really left. He earned a master's in history with a focus on Italy, learned the language, and turned a lifelong obsession with discovery into a career. He's the founder of Chameleon Travel Shop, which runs intimate, off-the-beaten-path tours, and the creator of "Italian History with Joseph," where he shares the buried, sunken, and forgotten stories behind Italy's most famous places.

Connect With Joseph

• Instagram: Joseph Walker
• TikTok: Joseph Walker
• Facebook: Joseph Walker
• Tours: Chameleon Travel Shop

Most successful people have already "won." The money, the house, the safe neighborhood. But almost all of them carry one quiet doubt they never say out loud: if things went bad, could I actually protect myself and the people I love?

In this episode, close protection specialist Sam Rosenberg breaks down why even the toughest, most accomplished people freeze in a crisis, and the simple skills anyone can learn to fix it. Sam has protected some of the most high-profile people on the planet, and he's spent 25 years figuring out what separates people who take action under pressure from people who lock up.

You don't need to be a black belt. You don't need to carry anything. You just need to know what to look for.

What You'll Learn:

• Why bigger, stronger, and faster doesn't save you in a real crisis (and what actually does)
• The real reason people freeze, using Sam's simple "SAFE" framework
• Why "playing dead" isn't a choice, it's your nervous system shutting you down, and how to unlock it
• The two big myths that keep people helpless: the "myth of helplessness" and the "myth of randomness"
• Why violence is a predictable process, not a random bolt of lightning
• The "watch for the watchers" trick that takes you off a predator's menu in seconds
• How to stop talking yourself out of your own gut instinct (this one saves lives)
• The "TIME" timeline every bad guy follows, from picking a target to the attack
• Sam's own story: 20 years old, working the door at a bar, a gun in his face, and the freeze that changed his whole life

About the Guest:

Sam Rosenberg is a close protection specialist and former Marine officer who has protected and trained high-profile people, and taught teams how to protect figures like Tom Cruise and Warren Buffett. After a life-or-death moment at 20 years old, he spent the next 25 years mastering personal security and teaching everyday people how to protect themselves using the same skills the pros use. He's the author of the book Live Ready.

Connect With Sam:

• Website: liveready.co
• LinkedIn: Sam Rosenberg
• Instagram: Sam Rosenberg
• Youtube: Sam Rosenberg
• Book: Live Ready (available on his website and on Amazon)
• Contact: Fill out the form on his site and it goes straight to him

Amanda was a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader finalist working in private equity. Training every day. Eating clean. Doing everything right.

Then her body shut down in two months.

35 pounds on. Gut swollen four inches. Estrogen in the post-menopausal range in her 20s. Brain fog so bad she went from nine productive hours a day to two.

Six doctors told her she was fine.

In this episode Amanda breaks down what "normal" lab results actually measure (and why that word is costing people years of their life), the leading indicator that showed up in her data months before she felt sick, and the exact order the body has to be worked through if you want real results instead of another supplement bill.

If you're winning on the outside but something feels off in private, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn

• Why the symptom is the dashboard light, not the problem under the hood
• The four kinds of stress and which one is quietly draining athletes and high performers
• How 70% of your immune system lives in your gut and connects to your energy, your focus, and your season
• What comprehensive testing actually covers: 65+ blood markers, gut microbiome, 24-hour hormone panels, toxins, and endocrine disruptors
• Why the order you work through the body matters more than the protocol itself
• The difference between managing symptoms (usually covered by insurance) and resolving the root (usually not)

About the Guest:

Amanda Soukoulis is a functional medicine practitioner who works with pro and Ironman athletes, high performers, and everyday people who've been told their labs are fine when they know something is off. Her testing goes deep where most doesn't: 65+ biomarkers, full gut microbiome, 24-hour sex and adrenal hormone panels, plus toxin and endocrine disruptor load. Her whole approach comes down to one idea, that nothing in the body works alone, and the order you address things in matters more than any protocol or supplement you throw at it. She doesn't call herself a health coach, and she runs a full round of testing on herself every six months even when she feels great. 

Connect with Amanda:

Instagram: Amanda Soukoulis

Best way to reach her: She lives in her Instagram DMs. Send her a message with the word OPTIMIZE, tell her you heard this conversation, and share what hit home for you.

Heads up: That keyword is for this episode only.

LinkedIn: Amanda Soukoulis

Youtube: Amanda Soukoulis

Tiktok: Amanda Soukoulis