How the Seeds of Equivalent Benefits Payoff Big Time with Tom Safford

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. And let's get going. I'm here with Tom Safford. Tom is in financial services and he's down in Naples today getting ready to head back up to his home base up in Philadelphia. By the way, you know, my grandfather was from Camden, right across the line.

Oh, really?

I grew up going to Philadelphia.

Better than now.

Tell me about it. Trust me, I don't go back to see the old homestead.

Wise choice.

Yes. When we go, we look at the size, the breadth of Your having over 900 offices and 14 billion assets under management and all the other product lines are obviously as strong huge to keep the momentum going on that and you be the guy. That's quite a transition that you went through from helping but the fact that you've been seeing it, your dad evolved from the beginning that really prepared you to take over. Especially that your brother was first born. He was in line and he went off and he was over in the UK with us and he stayed. He had an extended stay of building business. Everything over there now, but we won't get into Bob Jr. But fantastic person. But the slot came open or you made it open but you elbowed everybody else out of the way. How is it to take, you know, to move up and be out of four siblings, to be the one that takes over the family business and is now running that is kind of a touch and go transition, isn't it?

Well, I mean, it can be. Fortunately, I've got great brothers and sisters that understand. And again, like I said, my dad kind of prepared us that we each had to be able to make sure we stand on our own two feet. And I say this to my kids all the time. Of course, now that they're 30, 29 and 28, I don't have to say it as much as I did before, but them all growing up, I said, listen, life is just a series of decisions. And every single decision has a consequence. And that consequence is either a good one or a bad one. But they all have consequences. So be careful of your decisions. Of course, for me, the biggest decision that any, in my case, any man can make is, is who they choose to choose as a bride. And so, you know, I've been so fortunate that I made the right decision with leila. And here, 41 years later, you know, we started dating when we were 18 and 41 years later at soon to be 60. You know, life has turned out the way we dreamt it would as 18 year olds. But the evolution I got to see kind of Larry, was, had its like every, every another principal dad taught me, like you, I was thinking of writing books that I never got around to it. And it was really books of some of his sayings that he lived by and then kind of examples of how that worked. But one of them was, you know, every adversity carries with it the seed of equivalent benefit. So. And like repeat that we sure. Every adversity carries with it the seed of equivalent benefit. So you could be dealing with all this crud, right? But look for the value in that crud as to how you're going to use that as a strength or use that for your benefit later. And that's a principle that for me was huge and for my kids was huge. Because, you know, as kids, you know, you have my kids, a couple of them had dreams of really being kind of pro athletes or very high level athletes and injuries took them down a peg. And every time, or for most people would take him down a peg and every time something would happen, we'd say to him, like my middle son Scotty, who TORE his first ACL when he was 10 years old, we said to him, okay, Scotty, this is an adversity that you had to deal with. Now the benefit you're looking for is what else is in Scottie Safford that you could pull out there that you didn't know. And then he found out he had the love of, the love of music and the love of singing and the love of acting, stuff that he wouldn't do because otherwise he'd be on the playing fields that now he got to cultivate and use to his advantage. And so that teaching, I was an Andrew Carnegie teaching and I mean, it just makes a huge difference in my life. So right after we had started the business as a family, you knew my mother, Larry, and you know, she got sick right quick. And so in the first two years she got sick, it really took her a seven year battle before we lost her. And so through that process, there was a lot of dads there for the first two years of it. And then dad wasn't there a whole heck of a lot. My brother wasn't there a whole heck of a lot. So really when I graduated college and I'm 23 years old, there were so many parts of the business that I was already in charge of that when the, that when dad finally passed 10 years ago and that that figurehead or that strength was gone. I'd already been doing it, parts of it since then. And then when, when dad and my brother went to the UK in the early 2000s, you know, at that point we had a, you know, a very big business and they were handling the new and I was taking care of the old. So that, that evolution was there and the relationships I built with all the people while my dad and my brother weren't there, you know, carries us through. So when you talk about, man, you got all these product lines and sources of income that we have now, like, how do we control it all with just Leila and myself and one admin. Well, we've got great people and we're, and we're very good at spinning plates and just to make sure that we give enough, enough time to people in order to keep that plate spinning. But when they really need a lot of time, like, you know, you and I both know sometimes people can take time. And, you know, I was on the, you know, before this, I was on the phone for an hour with someone who simply wanted to vent their frustration over something. And you try to. And they're a big, they're a big builder of ours. And so you want to make sure that, that they continue to keep the eye on what keeps them focused. And so at this stage of the game, keeping people's focus at where it needs to be is really what the strength of what we do. And when we lost dad again, those relationships made a difference. But also the goal setting stuff I learned as a kid made a big difference because I said, okay, here we've got this business that it's gotten this far. Now there's some changes we need to make, some things we want to do differently, frankly, things that I was never able to do before. Let's make some changes. Let's, let's make sure that our focus is what it needs to be to sustain itself on a balanced business. Where's the market heading? Where's the financial services heading? What should we do? Brainstorming. Leila is great at doing that kind of stuff. So we kind of put those two heads together in concert with our biggest people and said, you know, here's where are you headed? How can we help you? Head to where you want to go. And I think any great leader, any great manager finds out what their people want and finds a way to help them to get it. I think most managers do a lousy job of finding out what their employees want and what their employees are fighting for in life. Surely it's not just to get the paycheck at the end of the week. It's something greater and something bigger. And so, you know, we did that, found out what that bigger was and what that better was. And so there's no surprise that some of our biggest people in our company today all are growing at the same time. Leila and I are growing. And that's popcorn effect. And so that's what we've got going on right now. Popcorn effect.

Now talk about that. Okay. Every virtue carries with it the seed of equivalent benefit. Yes.

Yeah. Equivalent benefit.

Of equivalent benefit. Now, in 10 years of being in control, I wanted to ask you this. You've been in, you know, you've been running it. Your dad's been gone for 10 years now. How is the business? Businesses like you were, you're at over 900 offices now.

We had 540 offices when dad died, you know, so we're up 360, 370 offices. Our assets under management when dad died were just about, just a little over 6 billion. Here we are at 14 billion today. Our annual, on the investment side of our equation, our annual new volume was about 1.3 billion and we're at 4.5 billion today. So revenues have really taken off because of it. And through that process, it's been great for us, it's been great for the business, it's been great for my siblings. So everybody has been able to benefit, which is wonderful for all of us.

Unbelievable. And so that's got to give you great confidence to build your own track record like that. And so when you had one thing you can't do, when you get one of your big key people on the phone with you and they're, they're raging. I guess you had experience with that handling your dad. But one thing you don't do is say, grow up.

Shape.

Look, listen to yourself. You know, you don't get anywhere. You got to have kid gloves. And you know, that's, that brings up a point that I mention frequently on here because it's such a myth that big time leaders, super successful people never get pissed off and make excuses and whine and, and they never complain. It's like, who are you kidding? Some of the biggest whiner complainer groaners I know in the world are the wealthiest people I know. But the thing is, don't pay it. Like you said, don't pay attention to the explosion. Watch what happens after. Okay? After the steam goes out in the head and they vented this, that and the Other it's amazing how quickly they go, they click it into another gear, they come up with something they hadn't thought of before. They. They make a move and it's just like a total complete turnaround, you know, in a short period of time. So, you know, everybody's going to get, you know, have situations, get the best of them, because we're all running into different situations we never had to deal with before. If you're growing, you know.

Exactly. Right. And. And again, so some of the, as I said, dad was learning who he was to become and through all those process. So Albert Gray is a guy that we had a lot of learnings from. And you know, and he said, Albert Gray. Albert Gray. G R A Y. Albert Gray. He was the certified life underwriters at one point. And he wrote a paper. It's a PDF. You can pull it down, it's free. But some great principles in there. But in the process of it, he kind of did a study of what successes, what made people successful and what made people, you know, failures. And, you know, he said successes do the things that failures don't like to do. I told you that already. But he said, he said when you really look at it, the very things that failures hate to do, successes hate to do, they just do them anyway. And through that process, because you know where you're headed and when you know where you're headed and you know what the goals are, then it's okay to go through that crap. But if you don't know where you're headed and you are a listless ship, I'm sure you know, in today's world, Elon Musk knows exactly where he's taken Twitter.

Right.

Exactly what it's going to be like when they go to the. Not only go to the moon, but go to Mars. And he knows exactly all that kind of stuff. It's in his mind. He's already. He's already seen it. And my dad was great at learning from others and what the great Deacon Davis said to him, a former Harlem Globetrotter. He says that you have to. That you have to see it with your eyes. You have to seize it before you seize it. And so I think most people don't see it. They don't open their mind to the possibilities. And my dad had a great saying. We opened up every one of our kind of our new business orientations with every time. He said, just remember the mind is like a parachute. It only really works when it's open.

Yeah.

And. And so open up mind to the possibilities. And when you open it up to the possibilities, then you say to yourself, you're. You're like, you know, P.T. barnum. And you say to yourself, my gosh, the world is your oyster. You can really. You can really bend it and mold it and shape it any way you decide to which you've done a fabulous job of.

Thank you. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you, and it contains my best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening. And do it big.