May 23, 2026
20 min
Built in the Fire: Buddy Clay on Running a Mental Health Practice Through a Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis
What happens when the person who spends his days helping others heal is the one quietly fighting for his own life? In one of the most human conversations Healthy Mind, Healthy Life has hosted, Buddy Clay, founder and CEO of New Hope Healthcare Institute in Knoxville, Tennessee, sits down with host Yusuf to talk about building a mental health and addiction treatment centre while navigating a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
You will hear how Buddy kept showing up for his team and his two young daughters when the diagnosis brought him to his knees, how he learned to let people support him after a lifetime of being the supporter, and what living one day at a time actually looks like when tomorrow is not promised.
About the Guest:Buddy Clay is the founder and CEO of New Hope Healthcare Institute, a Joint Commission accredited mental health and addiction treatment centre in Knoxville, Tennessee, offering individualised outpatient care for teens and adults. With over a decade in the field, Buddy began his career at one of the top adolescent programmes in the United States and has worked across nearly every part of treatment, from behavioural tech to programme director. He is also the author of the upcoming book Built in the Fire, written across five years of building a business while moving through a stage 3 and then a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
Key Takeaways:- The people who help others heal are still allowed to need help. Working in mental health does not make you immune to pain. It just gives you a better vocabulary for it.
- Knowing the answers is not the same as living them. Buddy is honest about how much harder it is to take your own advice than to give it, especially when life throws something unimaginable at you.
- Find your why and write it down. When Buddy was overwhelmed, his anchor was simple, his wife, his two young daughters, and his team, and that became the question he kept returning to.
- Letting people in is its own kind of healing. Allowing your spouse, your closest friends, and your community to see you at your weakest is not weakness, it is what gets you through.
- A serious diagnosis can collapse the gap between you and the people you serve. Buddy has used his honesty in conversations with clients in his programme to bridge what used to feel like a hierarchy.
- "One day at a time" stops being a cliché when tomorrow is not promised. Buddy talks about how his goals shrunk in size and grew in meaning when he started focusing on what he could do today.
- New Hope Healthcare Institute website: https://newhopehealthtn.com
- Company on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/new-hope-healthcare-institute
- Upcoming book: Built in the Fire by Buddy Clay — newsletter sign-up available through the New Hope website
#podmatch #healthymindbyavik #podhub.club #mentalhealthpodcast #addictionrecovery #cancerjourney #stage4cancer #mentalhealthleadership #newhopehealthcare #fatherhood #faithandresilience #onedayatatime #builtinthefire #buddyclay #knoxville #mensmentalhealth
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