Priceless Lessons from Watching His Dad Evolve into A Millionaire by Age 30 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. This afternoon we're talking with Tom Sanford. Hey, Tom.

Hey, Larry. How are you?

Good. You're over in Naples?

I am.

You're over in the West Coast? I'm in the east coast of Florida. So we could have done this thing in person if I'd known you were still down in Naples. Getting ready to head back up to Philadelphia tomorrow.

I am, I am. And it's been great to be down here in the winter and get out of the cold white north.

And so what percent of your year are you down here in Florida?

Well, we tend to come down November to May, so almost six months. But we head back a week every single month. I nor spend time with the grandkids and the kids when they can't come down here. So we're roughly down here probably four months out of the year and then spread around other houses for rest of the year. We're fortunate to be able to do that.

What's great about Cape Cod?

Well, I think maybe the 50 steps from my back door into the water is one of the great things to be able to do down here. And down here in Florida, you know, we do a lot of sports, play a lot of tennis, pickleball as well as golf. And up there we kind of put a lot of that aside. We do a lot of boating, go out on the boat, have some fun. A lot of crabbing, fishing, relaxing. So just two different worlds that way. And then Philly becomes the one in between where all the kids live. So great to do that as well.

Yeah. And having those locations make you an incredibly popular with the kids and grandkids, I'm sure for.

Exactly, exactly. I learned long ago that outlets and distribution centers make all the difference, so might as well have offices in all those different places so that it works out.

Yeah, right. Everything's a write off. And so let's talk the thing that people should know about you right now. I think you're up over 700 offices, around 720 offices and around the North America. Is that about right?

Yeah, a little bit more than that. We're actually up to about 910 now. 910 offices around the country.

That's a lot more.

All good. It's all good.

We can't keep up with you, Tom. And if we just do the one thing so people know you're in Financial services just in one product line. You've got to be in terms of assets under management on the mutual fund primarily side, probably well over the 10 billion mark. Right?

Yeah. We're right now at about markets down a little. So that always affects things. But right now we're about 14 and a half billion dollars under management and we do about 4 billion of new dollars each and every year. I mean, it's just gone crazy.

Yeah. And congratulations on all of that. And so it's, you know, you have a unique story and people can, you can give our listening crew a unique insight on growing up. A lot of times you're, you know, people that are successful had the.

You.

Know, a brutal upbringing and you know, at best maybe a mediocre upbringing, but somehow they were behind the eight ball either financially or parental support and had to. And sometimes it was negative, but the, the thing that, you know, brutally negative, but in your situation it was like brutally positive.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. I was, I was one of the lucky ones. And there's no doubt about it. You know, you hear of the funny things about the lucky sperm club and all that. But the fact of the matter is I had the unique opportunity. My brother, my brother and my sisters and myself had the unique opportunity of really kind of growing up. At the same time, my father, who became very successful, was evolving as a person. And so he was in the process of the learning to get better, learning to self improve. And so honestly, a lot of that experimentation came onto us as kids to find out whether or not this power, positive thinking, these concepts of Norman Vincent Peale's, the concepts and thought processes of Andrew Carnegie, Zig Ziglar and others really worked. And did it really turn out to be a game changer? And so, yes, I was very fortunate that in my upbringing I had the ability to. Some things are forced on me, obviously, because I was the child some forced on me. I really didn't have any say in the matter, but I didn't know any better and I trusted my parents. Right. So I was, I was very fortunate and yes, grew up in a loving home who had their, had their principles in order of, of God, family business, which became a guiding force from everything that, you know, I've done since. So to have. Not have to kind of call all the crap, whether I could say that or not, all the stuff that is, is handed down to people, I didn't have to do that. Of course, I had to deal with some of it because I'm a child and they're a parent and and we, as parents, Larry, you and I both know that we don't get it right 100% of the time. It doesn't mean that our attitude's in the wrong place or what we're trying to do is wrong. We just don't get it right 100% of the time. And that has effect on kids. But. So, yes, you're right, 100% positive. House sometimes maybe too Pollyanna to understand all this other minutia and stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but it was. It was quite idyllic for me.

And so the. The thing is that you. You. You said you're. Well, why, this is unique. People say, you know, I did a. A draft for a book that I never wrote once, because no matter how detailed I got it, Tom, I'd show it to people and they'd say, well, this is good. Why don't you turn it into a book? And I said, well, I thought I had, you know, but anyway, it was. I just gave up. But it was like the top 10 myths about winners. And, you know, I forced myself to kind of think about the myths that people have. And one of the myths is, you know, these guys that are born rich or born with positive parents, so they're. You know, the thing is the education, the environment, aunts and uncles are positive and the family's positive. All of these things give them an overwhelming advantage. And then what they don't know, and you will know over in Naples and Philadelphia and Cape Cod and we know over here in Palm beach and Aspen that the kids who grow up in those environments are just as likely to turn into drug addicts, neurotics, you know, depressed, can't figure life out. As a famous. I won't call his name, but as a famous singer. Said when they were interviewing him, he said they're talking about his son. He said, yeah, he's the most talented person I know. He said, unfortunately, life is just real hard for him. Everywhere he goes, he bumps into a fence post or a door or something and picks a fight. And he said, for some reason, moving through life is just very difficult for him. Can be very common. People that, you know, you grow up. I think that Tom, your father probably did a better job of that than most of letting you know, you know, you had to work and all, because kids just don't necessarily pick up the example. It's easy, you know, it's like water rolls downhill. It's easy to take the easy way, natural to take the easy way out. And if you come up in Privilege and all these resources, it's easy to just kind of move through it and take advantage of those things and really never buckle down yourself and, you know, to turn out a bump, you know.

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's also. That's also. You say myth, that's also a little bit part of a myth where, you know, again, dad graduated college in 1959. I was. My brother was born in. Excuse me, in 1956. My brother was born in 57, my sister in 60, me in 62. So dad hadn't evolved. He didn't start his first business until 64. And so so through that process, although my father became, you know, became successful and became well, to do that was not my upbringing. My upbringing was very much having to worry about. My mom worried about the budget each. Each week. My mom worried about, you know, what clothes to put on us and what those. That. What those expenses were going to be because my dad was in sales. And as you and I both know, Larry, if you're in sales, it has got a great upside. But if you don't, if you don't sell something or if you don't have people in a distribution system that has people selling something, you can starve to death. And so one of the great advantages that we had was my grandfather, my dad's dad was in sales. And my father loved it when things were great, but he really took the heart when things weren't great. And he said, that's never going to happen to my family. And then when he had the kind of the Marine Corps background in order that distilled or instilled discipline into him, those. Those kind of then disciplines then came over to us as kids saying, listen, my dad said, listen, I grew up poor. We're not wealthy yet, but we're gonna be. Because he always would put it out there is what the life is gonna look like, what we're gonna be. And so when we get there, this is the type of humans we hope, you know, me and mom had raised. And doggone. And if it didn't work, I humbly submit he did a fabulous job with me.

And you were. It's interesting that he was building his business while you were growing up. That. And you got to. You said a minute ago, you got him evolve.

Yeah. There's so many things that get in people's way. Right. So everybody in the world basically falls into two categories. They're either work processors or work creators. And, you know, we've come to appreciate the work creators, but we understand that the world is Made up of work processors. And those are really your nine to fivers that are punching a clock in and out every day. And you give them a task and they're smart people and they do the task and things get done. But if they have to think outside of their box about how do I create my own success, how do I create my own widget, how do I. How do I become an entrepreneur? That takes time. You can have huge goals and you can have huge thinking as to what you want it to be like. But at the end of the day, I don't care what your education is, I don't care what your background is. If you don't have the drive to do something different, to do something bigger, to put aside some of the things that must be put aside to get rid of the distractions in order to make life turn out on your terms, it's going to be tough regardless of how you were brought up.

Yeah, yeah. Sales. The thing about sales is you're unemployed every day.

Exactly right.

I'll always remember the cartoon from when I was in the sales stage of life. It said, let's say prospecting is like, you know, your number one job when you're in sales is prospecting. And prospecting is like shaving. If you don't do it for a couple of days, you start to look like a bomb.

Exactly right.

And.

Exactly right. And so part of that was, you know, I got to see my. I got to see my father determined that he was going to be an expert at something when he wasn't yet. And so through that, I said to myself, and it was taught into me, you know, we've all heard about the 10,000 hours. You know, in order to become, you know, really an expert at something, you need to have the 10,000 hours. And my dad and my mother said to the all four kids, we don't care what you excel at, and we don't care that if your level of excelling is just above normal, we don't care where that is. But you as an individual, you better max it out because God poured this stuff into you and you've got every ability to get better. And so that was very much helpful for me and I think my siblings to see dad and mom still working on who they were, getting up early, doing the reading, doing the studying, doing the self improvement, still working out. Try not to be, you know, fat and out of shape, which I might be closer to right now, you know, but I got to see that. So I understood that it wasn't just theory that it was actuality and I could build on that.

And so what was he doing earlier? You know, and as you grew up and you become conscious of the world, what was he. He was in sales the whole time. And how did you see, you know, where was the first turning point where he said, I'm going to make this decision, I'm going to start evolving. I'm going to buckle down and start developing leadership management skills, get into business of my own. That type thing?

Yeah, well, you know, he started it when he was 12 years old, so when he was living in an apartment building and his family never owned a house, and he was doing the paper routes and he was delivering papers to those houses on the hill. And he came home to his dad some one time and said, you know, dad, how come they live at the house on the hill and we live in an apartment? And his father said to him, son, those people own their own business. And so my dad, at a very young age said, okay, I'm going to own my own business, because basically I don't want to live in this apartment any longer. And so I'm going to do what's necessary to get out of that. So. So his thinking was there early on, it was the Marine Corps that really got him to understand that if he was going to have any shot of it, he needed to be way more disciplined. Because dad tend to like to have fun, as any person in their early 20s likes to. And he wanted to. He wanted to have fun. And through that process, he said to himself, well, I'm not going to get what I want unless I make changes. So he was early on, got a hold of some experts, got a hold of some mentors early on, which everybody needs to do, the challenge with getting hold of a mentor is sometimes you don't like what they have to say.

And then.

And then you've got to determine, am I willing to do the dirty work necessary in order to remake myself or do some changes in it? And it was through that that I saw dad then really, really make some changes. He also, you know, found. We kind of found religion in the middle of that, which changed who he was. And then when he and three other guys decided to start their own business in an industry they knew nothing about, boy, I saw what hard work does for things. And we can really, you know, you and I both know that hard work beats brains in a lot of instances. But if you've got brains and hard work and the right vehicle, whether it's something that you're in or something you create well, then, boom, now you've got all three. And so I got to see those early workings of that, which was extremely helpful now.

And before that, now you had known your dad as a salesman. Right. And he had something. He went through some. One thing with having three kids is that you run out of money a whole lot faster. And so the idea, the reality of a sales income with a family of three, the realities of that may have eventually added up in his head that it's now time to kick it into another gear where I can get other people involved.

Correct.

And you got to have a company to do that. You'd have a team to do that. And so he. The positive thinking side of things, there was no one change where all of a sudden he started getting mentors, he started doing that. It sounds like there was a moment in there where he came and talked to you guys and said, you know, things are going to be different. I'm moving up. Hang with me.

Yeah. I mean, what he said is he and mom both came to us and dad said, listen, I'm not going to be around really much at all during the week. We're starting a new business. It's going to take a lot to get it off the ground. I'll probably be gone before you wake up. I'll be home after you get to bed. Mom's going to be in charge of. Mom's going to be charge of pretty much everything. But in a wonderful Marine Corps way, he said, don't mistake the fact that I'm not here for me being an absent father, because two things are going to happen. I'm going to make sure that you treat your mother the way that she should be treated. And if it's not, if it's, if she's not able to handle it, then I'm going to bring in the heavy. And, and also. But when we get to this, so I'm going to be working all during the week, but when we get to the weekend, I am all yours all the time until I've got to get back after it on Monday morning. So we understood. We got dad for two and a half, three days, but it was, it was, it was wall to wall time where we just had a, had a blast. And during that time, not just of playing, but of working and being together and, and us then seeing, you know, who he was and how he was and, and all that is, you know, what makes up the person. And so all that was extremely helpful to have that time. But, boy, did it make a difference for Them coming to us saying, here's how it's going to be. And all the kids bought in. We said, okay, if that's the way it is, we didn't know any different.

It's only fair to do that. However, that's usually a skipped step. So your father showed amazing foresight in being able to do that or he's very fortunate to have someone to tell him to do it.

Well, here's the difference Larry is, you know, he then his parents, when the war came, World War II came, his dad went off to war, met another woman while he was at the war, so came home with someone else. So he was in a broken home by the time he was 11. Yeah, 11 or 12. And so he also understood that he wanted to make sure that he was a father who was there all the time.

Right.

Because he knew what it's like to not have one there all the time. So that bridged that gap.

And so how many. I'd always heard that, something about the fact that he made his first million by the time he was 30. Is that true?

Yeah, it is, it is. And that was basically because the business that they had developed and had grown, they had some stock offerings in order to capitalize it further and that pushed him over the edge. And that was basically a four year, five year journey from wanting to be one to being one.

And so you basically had a behind the scenes education in the transformation of your father from being a salesperson. I'm sure he was great at it and a gung ho dad to all of a sudden he's building a business and it's super successful and now your finances have changed for the rest of your life and all kind of other doors open. And that had to be a eye opening evolution. Like you said, you saw the evolution. What did you happen to notice thinking back now the most about how he changed?

Well, I think what I saw was the fact that he continued to be a fabulous goal setter. So he had always had those out there. He really took the principles that Carnegie taught him in a book, how to raise your own salary. And he really took those and said, all right, I'm going to make those changes. And then to see him continue to goal set and really even though on paper and maybe even in the bank, the money was there, we never knew the money was there and our lives didn't change. We were the same people having the same conversations. Yes, we might have lived in a little nicer house, but man, it was frustrating as a kid when kids were getting new sneakers and mine were worn out and I couldn't get the new sneakers. And and so they really kind of kept us sheltered from that side of things. And, you know, and I think one of the things that comes to mind is something that Albert Gray said. He said, if you don't deliberately form good habits, then you unconsciously form bad habits. And so my dad was helping all of us consciously form those good habits that were going to carry us through so that we could be our own person. Never once was it ever expected. He told us all along, you're basically, when I die, you're not going to get anything. So you better make sure you make something of yourself and that you do a great job of saving your money. So lessons we learned early on which made a huge difference in our lives.

And I'm sure it was great for him to have the three of you at home as he was learning lessons to be able to pass those right on to you step by step rather than having a big company that already and spending his time talking and training inside there. He had you guys at home right from the beginning and tremendous insight. Tom. I don't think I've ever had anyone go explain that to me or go through a talk about watching the evolution of their parent. It's a pretty unique benefit you had in those key years of your life. So thanks for sharing that with us.

Sure, sure, sure.

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.