Award Winning Sr. Partner at ActionCOACH Central Texas | Entrepreneur, Business Owner, & Coach | Host of 'Business Spotlight' Austin

Most business owners don't struggle because they're doing the wrong things.

They struggle because the business depends on them for everything.

I know that life.

I spent a decade helping businesses grow—from small credit unions to Bank of America, where I rose to VP. I led nonprofit teams as an Executive Director and Program Director for a local chamber. I learned how organizations scale, how teams perform, and how systems create leverage.

Then I left banking to join my family business.

Within the first year, I learned the truth most owners eventually face: the business worked, but only if I stayed in the middle of it.

Decisions bottlenecked. Time off came with anxiety. Growth increased pressure instead of freedom.

That experience clarified the real problem I've spent my career working on:

**Business success is still too dependent on the individual owner.**

Too much heroics. Too much personality. Too much luck.

And the cost isn't just financial. It's paid in stress, absence, and postponed life.


What I'm Building

Over three years, I deployed systems that grew our family business 5X in revenue and 8X in profit.

That transformation became the foundation for everything I'm building now:

ActionCOACH Central Texas – Helping business owners build companies that run without them through proven systems, clear accountability, and disciplined execution.

Benefic Marketing – CRM infrastructure and automation that enforces consistency and removes owner dependency.

Benefic Capital – Acquiring and transforming businesses using operational excellence as the competitive advantage.

I'm not teaching theory. I'm sharing what I'm building—with my own family, my own money, and my own business.


What I Believe

Ownership should create agency, not obligation.

Agency over your time. Agency over your attention. Agency to step away without everything breaking.

A business should expand your life, not consume it.

The next decade belongs to companies that can execute the same process the same way every time, regardless of who's on the job.

AI and systems don't replace people—they replace inconsistency.

Great companies don't run on heroics. They run on clarity.


The Long Game

I'm not building a coaching practice. I'm building a platform.

One designed to make ownership repeatable, reduce burnout, and create companies that can scale, transition, or be acquired cleanly.

Real wealth isn't how big the business gets. It's how much agency it gives you in your life.

— Tanner

Tanner O'Brien

Welcome to the Round Rock Chamber  Ascend Class of 2026! 

What a phenomenal day kicking off the year with our annual retreat. Excited to see what this amazing group of leaders will accomplish this year.

Building businesses that give owners agency in their lives. | ActionCOACH | Benefic Marketing | Benefic Capital

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Incredibly honored to be named a finalist as Emerging Leader at the Round Rock Chamber Annual Business Awards!

I have so much love for this community, its history, and what it yet to come in the future.

I hope y'all will come out and celebrate the amazing nominees in all categories this year! See you on February 5th!

Entrepreneurs start companies for freedom.

Then they build a prison with their name on the door.
The calendar fills up with calls only they can take. Decisions pile up because no one else has context. They tell themselves it's temporary.

It's never temporary.

I know because I did it. I taught business owners how to build companies that don't depend on them - while building one that completely depended on me and my parents.

Then life forced me to step back. And I found out which parts of my business were systems and which parts were traps dressed up as systems.

The gap between those two? That's the whole game.

If your business can't run without you for 30 days, you don't own a business. You own a job with worse benefits.

We’ve been intentionally creating more spaces for business owners to connect in real life, not just online.

Next week, our team is hosting a small office hang where they’ll walk through the exact frameworks they’re running with our clients today, then open it up for discussion.

If you’re local and want to spend an hour learning and connecting with other owners, we’d love to have you.

Leander | Wednesday | 11:30–1:00
Free | Limited spots

Link in first comment or feel free to shoot me a DM 😀

I was sitting in my son's school lunchroom last week when I watched a lesson in leadership play out in real time.

A teacher had the microphone. You could tell she thought she was in control. She dictated. She scolded. Her tone made it clear: compliance was expected.

The response from the fifth graders? They tuned out. They pushed back. She got louder. More forceful. It still didn't work.

I see this exact pattern in workplaces all the time. Different setting, same dynamic.

Here's the truth most leaders resist: communication is the response you get.

If people aren't responding the way you intended, that's not their failure. That's feedback. About you.

The leader's job isn't to be understood. It's to adjust until they are.
Tone matters. Delivery matters. Context matters.

If you're not getting the response you want, the answer isn't to get louder.
It's to look in the mirror first.

The best business lesson I’ve ever taught? I gave it to a 6-year-old.

The best business lesson I’ve ever taught? I gave it to a 6-year-old. I didn’t grow up learning how money worked. I didn’t know the difference between

Open article: What My Kids are Learning That I Didn't by Tanner O'Brien • 1 min read

Over the last few years, my life and work have gotten objectively better on paper. The businesses are stronger. The systems are cleaner. The opportunities are bigger. But with that growth came something I didn’t fully expect. The weight of responsibility got heavier, not lighter.

Family businesses do that to you.

I didn’t start this vlog because I needed more content. I started it because I needed clarity. Over the last few years, my life and work have gotten o

Open article: Episode 1: Why I’m Building This in Public by Tanner O'Brien • 2 min read

Episode 1: Why I’m Building This in Public

I need a favor (and your ears).

I’m currently deep in the "messy middle" of writing my first book, The Ownership Advantage.

It’s one thing to build systems for my own business and my coaching clients. It’s another thing entirely to articulate them so they actually move the needle for someone I’ve never met.

The book covers the "Pillar vs. Anchor" test - the framework that kept our business running when my family hit a health crisis last October.

I need to road-test these ideas out loud. I’m looking to guest on 3–5 podcasts over the next 90 days.

The Criteria:

• Host Quality > Audience Size: I don’t care if you have 10 listeners or 10,000. I’m looking for a great host who asks hard questions and pushes for clarity.

• Format: Virtual is fine. I have a small studio setup, so I can jump on a call anywhere.

• Topic: Moving from being the "Hero" of your business to the "Architect" of a system.

Who is the best podcast host you know who gets into the weeds? 

Tag them below or shoot me a DM. I want to have a real conversation that helps your audience fire themselves from the day-to-day.

Most people don’t miss their goals because they don’t work hard.
They miss because they never become the person the goal requires.

As many of you know, I’m on a mission to retire my parents from our family business before the end of 2026.
That’s the North Star.

Once that was clear, I did the obvious part:
• Set goals
• Put timelines around them
• Back into what needs to happen

But here’s the part most people skip.

If you can accomplish a goal tomorrow, it’s not a goal.
It’s just a task you haven’t done yet.

Real goals are things you’ve never done before.
Which means there’s a gap between who you are today and who you need to become.

That gap is the work.

The secret ingredient to actually achieving goals in the next 12 months is simple:

Learning.

What do you need to learn to make the goal inevitable?
What books, conversations, skills, mental models, or environments do you need to expose yourself to?

Growth doesn’t happen by wishing harder.
It happens by learning and applying.

This week, I took it a step further and used AI to tighten the process.

I sat down with ChatGPT and did a long back-and-forth conversation:
• What I want to accomplish
• Why it matters
• What success looks like
• Where I might be wrong

Then I asked one key question:

Who do I need to become to achieve these goals?

From there, I had it build a month-by-month learning plan.
Books. Topics. Mentors. Conferences. Podcasts.

Now my personal development plan actually aligns with my business goals.

January’s focus is capital allocation and signal clarity.
The first book on deck: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

My challenge to you:
• Look at your goals for this year
• Are they real goals, or just glorified to-do items?

If you’re unsure, run them through your favorite AI tool and ask for feedback.
Then ask it to help you build a learning plan around who you need to become.

If you want accountability, comment below with:
• The month you’re in
• What you’re currently learning

This year has a lot of potential.
Let’s grow into it and build some great businesses together.

Some of my clearest business decisions don’t happen at my desk.

They happen when I’m away from it.

Over the last couple of weeks, I stepped completely out of my normal work environment. No office. No Slack. No “quick thing before dinner.”
We took the family to Disney World.

And yes, it’s fun.
But the real value for me isn’t the rides.

It’s the mental distance.

When you remove yourself from the environment where problems are created, you finally get the perspective to solve them.

At Disney, I wasn’t reacting.
I wasn’t context-switching.
I wasn’t putting out fires.

Instead, I was reflecting.

We used that time to do what most owners never give themselves permission to do:
• Step back as a family
• Revisit what we actually want the next year to look like
• Get honest about what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to stop

That space is where the real clarity showed up.

Not just business clarity.
Life clarity.

What are we building toward?
What does success actually look like this year?
What needs to change if the goal is to retire my parents from the business by the end of 2026?

Here’s what I’ve learned:
If you never leave the work environment, your thinking stays trapped at the same altitude as your problems.

Distance creates altitude.
Altitude creates clarity.

Disney happens to be a place where my brain slows down, my guard drops, and my thinking sharpens. For you, it might be somewhere else. But the principle is the same.

Getting away isn’t irresponsible.
It’s strategic.

If you’re feeling stuck, reactive, or foggy right now, the answer probably isn’t “try harder.”

It’s “step away long enough to think clearly again.”

That reset is what set the tone for everything we’re building in 2026.

Sometimes, you don’t need more hustle.
You need a little magic ✨

Same scenario. Different lesson.

While I was at lunch with my son last week, I watched a teacher call out specific kids by name in front of the entire fifth grade. Public criticism for things that had happened earlier.

The result? Kids shut down. Eyes went to the floor. You could feel the shift in the room.
Here's what leaders forget: public criticism doesn't correct behavior. It creates shame.
And shame doesn't motivate. It paralyzes.

With ten-year-olds, the impact is amplified. But adults aren't immune. We just hide the damage better.

I've seen this play out in workplaces, in community organizations, in teams of all sizes. The pattern is always the same: call someone out publicly, watch trust disappear, wonder why performance drops.

The rule is simple: criticize in private, praise in public.

Private correction protects dignity. Public praise reinforces behavior.
Get it backwards and you don't build a team. You build fear.

BeneficIQ is officially in development. 

Snow day = Build day

Lots yet to do, but excited to create. 

Here is the simple overview of what I’m working towards:

BeneficIQ is designed to be the execution layer that sits on top of your existing tools and playbooks. The goal is simple: make it easier for your team to do the right work, the right way, at the right time…with the right data.

Let’s talk about what’s next. You’ve made it to the end of this first chapter. And I don’t take that lightly. The average person never signs up. The a

Open article: If You're Still Here, You're Not Average by Tanner O'Brien • 1 min read

October was a heavy month for our family. We lost my grandmother, and the last week of it was spent almost entirely away from the business. Travel. Funeral. Family time. The kind of moments where work has to take a back seat, even when you don’t want it to.

If you run a business, you know how uncomfortable that can feel.

This episode almost didn’t get recorded. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because life showed up hard. October was a heavy month for our family

Open article: Episode 2: Proof That the System Holds When Life Doesn’t by Tanner O'Brien • 3 min read

Episode 2: Proof That the System Holds When Life Doesn’t

If you’re a local business owner and free next Wednesday, come grab coffee with us.

We’re opening up the office in Leander for a small group hang. Just a handful of owners, some coffee, and a real conversation about how to build businesses that run with more clarity and less chaos.

Our team will walk through a few of the core frameworks we’re actively using with clients right now. Things like how they’re planning for continuity, reducing single-point failures, and putting simple systems in place so the business doesn’t stall when life happens. Then we’ll open it up for discussion and Q&A.

Relaxed. Practical. Useful.

📍 Leander
🕦 Wednesday | 11:30–1:00
💸 Free
👥 Limited spots

I’ll drop the link in the first comment, or feel free to DM me and I’ll send it your way ☕️

Hot take: The entrepreneur who works 80 hours a week isn't a hero.

They're a bottleneck who hasn't figured out how to lead yet.

Our culture loves to celebrate the grind. We reward founders who sleep under their desk and haven't taken a vacation in three years.

We pin medals on people for slowly destroying themselves.

And here's the thing - it works. For a while. Hustle will get you to a certain level.
But eventually you look up and realize you've lived the same year on repeat for a decade. Same fires. Same problems. Same missed dinners.

At the end of it, you have a business that can't run without you. Essentially unsellable. A decade of your life traded for an asset with no value to anyone but you.
Hustle gets you started.

Becoming strategically lazy gets you free.

As the saying goes..."Busy is the new stupid in business"

Challenge Yourself - Are Your Goals Pushing You to Grow?

I help business leaders protect their institutions and sleep better at night.

When a regulator tightens requirements, cyber insurance premiums spike, or the board starts asking hard questions about your security posture, you need more than an IT vendor. You need a partner that makes cybersecurity and compliance predictable.

I am the CEO of TorchLight, where we help regulated organizations turn IT and cybersecurity from constant noise into a strategic advantage. We focus on creating stability, eliminating surprises, and giving leaders confidence that their environment is secure, documented, and ready for any audit.

What leadership teams tell me before we start:

• “Our exam is approaching and our documentation will not stand up to scrutiny.”
• “A single breach could cost millions and damage member or client trust.”
• “I am spending too much time managing IT instead of driving growth.”

What they say after working with us:

• Clean regulatory examinations with no cybersecurity findings
• Seventy five percent reduction in executive time spent on IT oversight
• Lower cyber insurance premiums due to measurable risk reduction
• Consistent uptime during critical operational periods

Why TorchLight Works:

✔ Two decades serving highly regulated industries
✔ Expertise in SEC, FINRA, GLBA, HIPAA, and NCUA compliance
✔ A unified Secured and Managed IT operation that replaces multiple vendors
✔ Predictable, transparent costs that keep your board conversations simple

Who I Serve:

• Investment and Wealth Management Firms
• Credit Unions and Community Banks
• Family Offices
• Healthcare and Life Sciences
• Small and Mid-Market Businesses in Regulated Environments

If you want your next audit or examination to feel routine instead of stressful, let’s talk. My goal is simple: make your IT and cybersecurity boring so you can focus on leading your organization with confidence.

📧 Connect with me here or visit TorchLight.io

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Tanner O'Brien

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The Battle

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Nolan Garrett

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Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tanner O'Brien's LinkedIn Performance

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