Hidden 401K Risks & Building Wealth with Pete D'Amico | Episode 131

What is your recommendation that a person's holding should be for cryptocurrency? Ooh, good one.

Yeah. So I hate crypto for the record, which I've said multiple times, but that's just me. Nothing against it. So shout out. Tim Hayden Crypto.

Shout out. With with crypto, there's it's one of those things where if you decide that you want to hold it, use a percentage of your assets that you're okay if you just lose it completely. Right? Come up with your with your comfort number.

It's like Atlantic City money.

Yeah.

Don't walk into the casino with your with your debit card ready to go if you lose. Walk into Atlantic City with 100, 300 bucks in your pocket. Like, if I lose this money, I'm done. I'm just gonna have some drinks and get something to eat. Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance, and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk.

This episode is brought to you by Property Management Redefined. PMR is not just managing properties, we're creating partnerships that build long-term success for property owners. John and his team can be reached at manage at gopmr.com or by phone 267-753-6005. Tim. Yes, John. Who's a good client for PMR?

Property management redefined is looking for property owners who value three things accountability, reliability, and a results-driven approach. I want to maximize returns, but still provide client and tenant satisfaction.

There's a lot of property managers out there.

There are. What does PMR do really well? Biggest thing is they're seamless and they're worry-free. So with that approach in mind, it allows the property owner to put their trust in PMR and know that the results will be there. The other thing I think a property owner is really going to value because they do it so well is that they have a local expert team, boots on the ground, managing your properties and your tenants' expectations every day so that you feel good about your investments.

We have millions of listeners out there. Tens of millions. If they want more information, how do they find PMR?

Right here, guys. Reach out to John Stacks and his team at Property Management Redefine. We'll take good care of you. I'm Tim Garrety.

And from Mooney Insurance Brokers in Amber, Pennsylvania, I am Sean Mooney.

Today, Sean, we have one of our boys on, local guy. We got Pete Demico, certified financial planner and accredited investment fiduciary with Dynasty Advisors. How are you doing today, Pete? Doing great, guys. Thanks for having me. Welcome on in, Pete. Thanks for coming on. So Pete is a Philadelphia native and he has been in the financial services space since 2002 as both an agent and a manager. His focus on business owners and their families distinguishes him from others in the industry. By utilizing the right tools and tech, Pete helps his clients plan for the accumulation, management, and distribution of their wealth. His vision is to help all of the families he works with navigate their way to the lifestyle they deserve. Pete graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School. And St. Joseph's University. The Hawk will never die. Otherwise known as St. Joe's. He currently resides in Flowertown, PA with his wife Jesse and two children, Nicholas and Luciana. So first is what is an accredited. What's your problem?

Crunch it together.

Okay.

Sorry, my body's too big.

Yeah, you got too much, too much schooling, too much letters, too much you know.

You finished?

Okay.

Can we continue, please? By all means.

So uh what exactly is an accredited investment fiduciary, an AIF? What is that?

Well, when I got the designation, my kids overheard my wife call me a fiduche. So for years they're going around saying, Daddy's a fiduche, daddy's a fiduciary.

Oh, I never heard that one.

Yeah, so they just they just found out what it actually means and and we're laughing about it. But uh pretty good. Yeah. No, so it uh as a fiduciary, and I know there's a lot of TV commercials about it, is your advisory fiduciary? It means I have to put my clients' needs before mine. Yep. Which is kind of crazy that you have to get a designation saying you do that, since that's what I've been doing my whole career anyway, but that's what the what the AIF is.

Remind me, with insurance, are you technically a fiduciary? No. Real estate we are. So same deal. You get a real estate license, you are automatically fiduciary.

I think I think it is kind of funny. Like Yeah. It is for you if you want to. Like, like you in your role, I would think as the consumer, it would just be like okay, number one. Yeah, client first. You do what's best for me and my money.

Yeah. Nah, but you need designations for it, apparently. When I got the CFP, the starter five financial planner, a lot of that too, is talking about putting clients first, putting clients first. So it's just it's if you want to be successful, you put clients first. If you put yourself first, you will not make it long in this uh industry or any.

So what would it be? Like, can you just go a little bit deeper, like one level in terms of what how would it be demonstrated that you would be doing like I'm trying to pick the examples of okay, so if if not everyone is doing everything in my best interest.

Yeah, like what is what's what's the industry like? Do people just assume it's like I really don't have to if I don't want to?

Or so it's when you're when you're talking with a client and there's different potential outcomes for them. And so something that I suggest, where it's a specific product or a specific strategy, they might both be able to achieve the outcome for the client, one maybe a little bit better than the other. You know, how am I compensated for it? Right. Yep. So essentially it's saying that whatever I think is best for the client, what makes the most sense for them, and the way I approach it is like I at some point I'm gonna get paid on it. Right. I so that's how I I view it. But there's a lot of people, especially when you're coming up in the industry, that it's like I need to eat, I need to live, I need to, I need to sell something. And uh, you know, it's tough coming up in this industry that way. The industry has an 85% washout rate within a couple of years. Wow. So similar to our industries. Yeah, yeah, because you you know, we all had these conversations when we were coming up in the industry together. It's just you have to find a client base, you have to build relationships with people, you have to build trust with people, and and that takes time, and not everyone has the has the ability to do that.

Yeah, so like I guess the example on our end, in terms of when we do like life insurance, say when I write a life insurance policy, good example, I may write the policy that pays the highest commission possible rather than you know what their needs are.

Yeah. What do they need to feel good about their life insurance? Like what is their plan? Because everyone's plan is different with life insurance.

Right, but if you're if your mode is I'm gonna write these strictly these policies because they pay X rather than sitting down and designing a plan that's the best interest of the client, I guess that's kind of Yeah, no, that's exactly.

I mean, that's a great example for something like that. Yeah.

Let's go, all right. So let's go, let's go way back machine. Let's go back to Fountain Street and Maniock. Shout out to Fountain Street. Um You were just getting started in finance. Yeah. We were what, 23-ish? Somewhere around then. 22, 23. So when you got started in finance, did you have to be a certified financial planner right away, or is that kind of something you're working up to while you're like getting your finance legs going?

No. Um I started in 2002. I didn't get my CFP until 2007 or nine or started process in seven or nine. Wow. Yeah, so you have to get you have to get license first, life and health license, series seven, series sixty-six. So I passed all those before I could even start. And then it's just a matter of building a client base. And I started, I was 22, 23 years old, and I very much looked and probably acted like a 22-year-old and a 23-year-old. Probably a little bit. Yeah, of course. The way we all did. Yeah. So a lot of the people that would be willing to even talk to me were similar age, didn't have really much to invest. And it was one of those things where I was competing against a lot of the gray hairs and a lot of people that had a lot of years' experience. Yeah. And I wanted to go and differentiate myself from it. And the CFP designation uh carries weight in the financial services field when people are looking to hire someone in finance, you know, to someone that to manage their money that has a lot of um backing to it. It's a lot of tests you have to take. Um, it's very hard to do. So I remember I actually I got my CFP. The the final test, it's back then it was six tests, and then a seventh test that encompassed all six of those. Oh my god. It was a two-day it was a it was a two-day test, four hours on Friday, two, three hour sessions on Saturday. Um and then a couple years later, the CFP word came out and said that they want to make it more available to people. So they do. So they want they want that no, they wanted to more to promote it more and have more CFPs. I was like, no, I don't want to have more CFPs. I want to have less CFPs. Yeah. It was really, really hard to get this. Yeah. It's still hard to get it's still hard to get it, but they were actively making like a push. They raised our CFP dues. Like, we're gonna do a marketing program. I'm like, ah, yeah, yeah. I don't want all that, but it is what it is.

But it's my brother and sister are book nerds too, to Miko. Are they both CFPs? She's a CFA, and he's a CFP.

CFA, yeah. CFA is a different world. All right, so here's a question. Like, we were just talking about this before the show. You know, when we started Bricks and Risk, it was a little bit more focused on like real estate insurance, and we said, like, and everything in between. So we were very, very like focused, like zeroed in on like who we were talking to. People in insurance like him and people in real estate like me. But what it's really morphed into is become a little bit more about like small business, like being an entrepreneur, like getting started on your own, like full commission. These are all full commission jobs, all of our jobs. So when you got into finance and you had to pass your tests, I guess, to help clients, you know, invest in the stock market, different things. Like what you have any idea, like what percentage of the uh finance industry even goes for the CFP? Do you have like is that like the top 10%? Is like 80% of people do that?

I have no idea. Um You know, I'm at different conferences and I see people in my in my firm and and my old firm, and there are CFPs. I would I would probably say less less than half.

Noah, Noah, can you look that up? Yeah, it should be an easy stat. What percentage of financial planners have a CFP designation? Yes. I are we taking bets here. I would say it's less than 20%.

I would say, yeah, l I'm gonna say uh it's 15% or less. That's just my guess. It might be stupid. Um, so you get your CFP, five, six years in. I'm sure that cost money. Obviously, it took a lot of time. You're like taking all these classes, you gotta study, you gotta take all these tests. When you got your CFP, did do you feel like it made a difference in your business where you could talk to someone and say, like, here's where I'm at now? Or do most people are like, I just want to work with Pete. I don't care if you're a CFP and AIF or whatever the hell you want.

It would have been great that if the floodgates would have opened and people would have. Oh, you got your CFP. We're gonna invest millions. No, it wasn't like that. It was it was a it was a personal choice, something I wanted to do, something that I know um you learned a lot in the studying as well. Something I know not as many other people in the industry did. It was just more for me to have that confidence that when I was going up against a competitive situation where I was going up against an advisor that had 20 years, 25 years in the business, and I had seven at this point, you know, I had something that he didn't. I could talk about it. So it it's just it was always there that I had. It's just three letters after my name on my business card and the AIF came came any years later. But it was just, you know, I had it. You only all you have to do is pass the test one time, keep the CE up, and uh it it definitely helped it was more of a confidence level thing for me, and I just happy, happy I did it when I did before kids before I had kids. So a lot more time to to study. Oh yeah. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, all right. So it was the closest.

Do you uh do you remember early on what you were like we always kind of go back and kind of dive into the ideas of like how we were getting started? Like, what were you trying to do? How were you trying to find clients? Because as a new guy, as a young guy trying to get started and trying to like take people's money without that experience. What were you doing back there to try to find your way or to build your book of business? Yeah, no, it's great to grow.

It's a great question. That's why it's such a high turnover rate in in my industry. So people get into this industry in in a couple ways. One is they just make cold calls, which at one point in college I did that for a day for someone that I had known and they would pay me like 20 bucks, and I was this is horrible. I'm never doing this again.

Not your vibe. Yeah.

Uh you make a list of your family and friends. Well, I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia. Like, who was I gonna call? Like, no one had any money to invest in. If they did, they wouldn't have invested it with me at the time. Um, so the company that I got hired with actually had um agreements with a lot of school districts in the area. Yeah, I remember this. Going in and writing 403Bs, which is like 401ks for nonprofits. So that gave me an opportunity to go and see people and talk to people. Everyone needs a retirement plan, they need to help get set up in a plan. So I was going and helping them um do it. It sounds great if you're in the financial services. Well, it's like great, I have a market to talk to. You know, but even that, there's there's still a 85% turnover rate for people that had a market to go and talk to.

Right. They have people to talk to and still the failure rate is that high. When you were interviewing, did you did you interview with multiple companies when you started, or was that kind of like the interview, the only interview you had, and you're like, man, this is pretty sweet. Like they're gonna hook me up with like some people to like actually get in front of. Yeah, I I needed a job.

Yeah, yeah. So the um the branch manager was from my neighborhood and knew my older sister and my brother-in-law. So that was that was through Fox Chase. I had I had graduated St. Joe's, I was a food marketing major. Yep. And I actually had gotten a job in California working for Walmart. I know I didn't want to work in retail, but I grew up in Philly, went to school in Philly, wanted to see what the West Coast was like. And I was in San Jose at the 2001 at the which is at the bottom of the Silicon Valley, and this is the end of the tech bubble. So I was just surrounded by money, like ridiculous amounts of money. I graduating college, I made more money than my dad coming right out of college, which I thought was more than God had until I got out there. And you're like, whoa. And it was it was a whole other world. And I was sitting out there thinking to myself, I I don't understand money. No one from my neighborhood understands money. My family certainly doesn't understand money. I want to get into finance so people can do better at it life and have a better life. So when I came home, I was talking to my my sister, and she said, Oh, I know someone, I can get an interview, and that was it. I said, I don't have a natural market, all I know how to do is work like 80 hours a week. I will work as hard as I possibly can. Um, and that was basically it. I said, Well, here's an opportunity, go for it. Wow.

I'm a grunt. Do you know any people that are hiring grunts? Yeah.

Hey, uh, I listen to a ton of podcasts, we both listen to a ton of stuff, watch business shows. You see people like Gary Vanderchuk on social media, you see all these like influential people. What do they all say? There is no substitute for hard work. Like 85% of people getting out of finance, just like 90% in insurance and 87% in real estate, is really nothing more than that. Well, I'm not gonna say it's just hard work. Hard work plays a big part. Yeah. And also like the feeling of instant gratification. Like, if you got into finance and you're out there, you know, half-assing it and you're not making a lot of money, you're gonna be like, this sucks. Like, I'm not making any money. I've been working for three months, six months, two years, and I'm still not making any money. Same thing in insurance and same thing in real estate. But the problem with our industry is that they don't really tell you teach you about this in school. You're not in school and they're like, you know, if you're a finance major, let's say, they're like, go work for a big company, get a W-2, get 401k, get benefits, and retire. That's what basically like college is pitching you for like finance, let's say. There really isn't real estate in most colleges, so you can't really take these real estate classes. You definitely is there insurance anywhere? Certain colleges are having risk management.

Yeah, risk management. They have insurance insurance classes, but they're not teaching you how to sell it. There's no subject called insurance. Yeah, no subject called build a client base from nothing.

And I hate to say it, like, there there should be more opportunities to learn this when you're young, because like you said, we all went to college, same time, had a great time, like did well enough to graduate, and then we get out of school, we're like, now what the hell are we gonna do? Because the dot-com bubble burst, 9-11 happened, like there were the stock market crashed, there were like all these things, and we just paid all this money to go get these degrees. You were in food marketing and you went into finance. You you were English major, went into insurance. I mean, I was marketing and I went into mortgages, so like kind of similar, but not really. It's different. It's different.

The um when you were getting started, it was slow burn, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Can you do you remember a time when it kind of like hit you like a bolt of lightning where you're like, oh my god, like thank God I did this, and now now you kind of turned a corner where you're like, Okay, yeah, you see it. You see it now. You don't have to worry about things as much like before time.

I've gotten that question before. There, there's not an aha moment where it just clicks. It's just it's gradual over time that you're able to start doing things differently and and and you change the way that you approach things. I change the way I view things.

Because there's no like Iverson's not knocking on your door being like, I need to set up a retirement.

Yeah, not not yet. No one is no one has come has literally come out of the blue and said, I have twenty million dollars to invest at the OC. You seem like a nice guy. Let's go.

Sure.

You have your CFP and you're a fiduciary.

So let's go. Let's do it. Yes.

I'm gonna use that one. Yeah, feel free. Um trademark. It it just happens in in my industry when you build clients and eventually you get referrals from them or you get their spouse as a client. Like I do a lot of work in the group space, four or three B's, four or one Ks. Then that's how I get individual clients from that because they've known me for years when I've been helping them with a retirement plan. And then if if there's an event that happens in their life, spouse switches jobs, they get an inheritance, they sell a property. Well, I've talked to them for years about their retirement plan. So it's like, hey, call Pete. So it it it gradually builds and builds and builds. I mean, you guys, we all had these conversations when we were figuring out what what is the cheapest happy hour we could go to.

Maui. No cover before nine, penny drinks and drags. And literally me and Den went with like five dollars each, and they would change you out at the bar, but then they would get mag because you weren't tipping, so you'd have to go to the other side of the room to the other bar too.

I'd always tip. I've been a bartender, I never had a tip, but it's like we could buy what, 10 10 cent wings and five dollar pitchers or something like that. I was we needed that. Yeah. That's literally all we could afford.

Yes, we did. McGillon definitely needed that.

McGillens on Tuesday nights, they had the five dollar pitcher and like ten cent wings or and they would bring them out on the lunch trays.

And that was like the nice happy hour. Yes. You were like, whoa, you went to McGillen's for having what are you doing? Oh, you must have closed a big case. Like, I went, I went to the Gaiou in Maniock. Uh uh Pop Pops.

I think they uh pop pops too.

All right, so alright. We're getting started in Manneonk, move into an apartment, me and a couple buddies, early 20s, get back from California, you're broke, you get into finance, you hook up let me let me let me yeah.

Since when I was in California and I had a a a good paying job, what I thought is good paying job. That's true.

Walmart was paying you pretty wealthy.

I had more money saved up than I knew what to do with. I had $5,000. Wow. I had it in Bank of America, which was not on the East Coast, so when I was driving back home, I had to close out my Bank of America account because this is 2001. There was a lot of people. It was huge. I had $5,000 in cash in my in my pocket the entire time. I slept with it. Like I was paranoid. That's it, but and to me, if I had $500 at some point in college, I was like, oh my God. Like after I paid rent and food and everything else. I was like, this is great. Like I'm rich. I was like, dude, I'm gonna make this money last for like a year.

Yeah, yeah. Right. Let's see if I can do that. You know how many happy hours that would give me through? Right. So you get back, you're not broke. Yeah, you got your for like a month. I'm not broke. You got your $5K. We're paying two, three hundred. A month in rent each in Manion. Yep. You hook up with this company, the company says, okay, here are the schools. Okay, this is where you can go. Yeah. Because we have a relationship with them and you can get appointments. So you get appointments. How did you start to kind of like either build the trust or convert the sale conversion, whatever you want to call it? Like, how did you approach that when you would go into these schools? Like what was your mindset?

Just repetition, being there over and over again, finding ways to be in there, to talk to the clients. Anytime something happened with the news. A lot of people, if there's bad financial news or bad news or the market drops, a lot of advisors shy away from talking to people. Yeah, I always thought. It's the greatest opportunity as a financial advisor to go talk to people when the market's down to appease their fears. Right. You know, going back into school, more and more, getting more and more clients. The more clients I have in a place, the more I'm there, the more people see me, the more it's just like, well, oh, hey, Pete, like even if I'm not, we're just passing the hallway. They just see my name, they see my face, that's it. So eventually, you know, it it grows eventually when when I do get those calls. But a lot of it was just being there, working hard. I remember I was, you guys know I played rugby after college for a long time. Oh, yeah. Probably too long. I remember. I would drive down to practice either super early and all my lead cards, people that I couldn't schedule appointments, and I would for an hour and a half before practice make phone calls. Or I'd carpool with another buddy from Manic, and he would drive and I'd have my date book with me, and I'd be making phone calls while he drove to practice because that's the time to see people. Run appointments like Friday nights, run appointments Saturdays when husband and wife are together, run appointment at eight o'clock at night. Again, this back before I had I had kids and I and I had a life, I could do things. But you know, if I would drive two hours, if you would listen to me talk, I would drive two hours to talk to you. Right? I may not do anything with you. You may not do anything, but I view it as an experience that I needed. There's always an expression in sales. The more news you get, it's closer to a yes, whatever it is. So you have to you have to see people, you have to get your name out there, you have to talk, you have to learn. And badly. Like, all right, if I didn't close something here, like why didn't I? What didn't I do right? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? It was all just about long-term approach. It's you know, again, you mentioned before, Mooney, not instant gratification. It's just focusing. Every everything I do personally and with my clients is focusing on the long term, focusing on retirement, focusing on the long term.

Marathon or mindset, as Mooney calls it. Trademark. You gotta get a sweatshirt that says that next time.

I do. Hashtag. Um but you also must have had opportunities too. Like if everybody's getting into the business and flaming out real quick, and there's this guy over there, hey Pete, I keep seeing Pete. Pete's always around, Pete's always here. My guy that I signed up with is like, you know, got a newspaper out now. You know, did that create opportunities just from people uh seeing you?

And it's it still happens to this day. Yeah. Because there's there's companies that I've worked with for decades now at this point. Last year it happened twice, like out of the blue. People that I know are at at these companies that had never worked with me before. Like, you know what? I think it's I think it's time. And then we get to, yeah, we talk about the retirement plan, but then we also get into the aspect, again, now 20 years in. Yeah. So these people are also 20 years into their career. Right. So there's more to talk about than just the retirement plan, right? They're talking about insurance, they're talking about investments, they're talking about the spouse's money, we're talking about planning for retirement. Like they're yeah, it it's it happened back then. Well, not right away. After maybe like a couple years, it would start to happen. Yep, but it still happens today.

Hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show. Where, all right, so where do you think you learned that work ethic? Again, we're we're talking about hard work here. That's that's how all three of us really started.

You referenced 80 hours a week at one point.

We were just we were willing to hustle and learn. Like the part of the hustle culture, I think when we were young, just my own perspective, was really like you're okay going out, getting a no, and trying to go out and learn why it was a no. And then the more you learn that, then your conversion goes up. You get more yeses than no's. Or maybe you never do, but you're willing to put in the work to meet enough people to get enough yeses to have a sustainable business. So when you're growing up in Fox Chase, shout out to Fox Chase. Um, where where do you think uh where do you think you learned that? Was that instilled in you by your parents? Was it just you went out and just started hustling young? Like, where do you think that came from? It's definitely family.

My dad worked till he was 70. Yeah. Because he, you know, he had to. That's part of the reason I want to get a few. But my parents want to do that. Yeah. So my brother, my sister.

I didn't want to work till I'm 70.

My my sisters, like it it's the neighborhood. Like we all grew up, we we all knew each other in high school. We all had jobs in high school, multiple jobs. Like all of our friends did. There was literally not one person that we knew that we hung out with that didn't have a job. Didn't have a job. Same thing. Everyone had a job in high school. Um, I worked in college. College, I was I was paying my rent, getting my books, you know, getting my own food. It was like I was responsible for it. I I didn't I never the only time I went back home was freshman year when I lived in the dorms and between Christmas and New Year's when they kick out for the week. Other than that, I was paying my own rent. Yeah, you were living at school. Yeah, the whole time. And I was working because I had jobs there. I was working. Overbrook Pizza. Overbrook Pizza. Shout out to Overbrook. And then the duck. The duck. Absolutely. Gotta mention that place. A couple wild times of that. Unrested soul. Yeah, right. Yeah. But and it's funny, I the jobs I had in high school were when I work when I bust tables at the Austrian village, which I don't know if you guys knew closed. Shout out to the Austrian village. God, we're missing missed the the special. Missed the schnitzel. So good.

It was a great place. It was my dish was the I gotta get this right.

The Biener Schnitzel?

No.

Uh the farmer's feast.

Oh, it was like multiple. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You got everything.

So good.

I eat there once a week. It was so good. You know where I ate the uh other day. Uh we went out to Gaul, which was the US. Oh, yeah, Gaul's great, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Salad. Yeah.

Salad food. But anyway, I was busting tables. So I learned early on the harder you work, the more tips you make. There was busters were lazy and the waitresses didn't tip, and they complained about the waitresses. The waitresses complained about the buses.

This guy or girl sucks. They're not doing what you do.

You just work harder and you make more money.

And then let me pause right there.

So I was down uh busting tables at uh Sylvester's in Avalon. And and we used to split tips, right? So there were two two uh bus boys. I was a bus boy and our guy. Our guy didn't do anything. Yeah. Because he knew you were good. Right. I would do it all. Like I'm like and the the so we were supposed to split the end of the night, and like every waitress would come over to me and be like, Don't tell Greg, here's like extra. Oh, what a lesson. Because because they knew I was I would turn tables, I would get them in, they were making more money because of me. So, like, here, Sean, here's an extra 20 or whatever. I mean, and I would walk out of there like $200 just from busting tables for a couple hours at night.

Yeah. Well, no, but when when you learn that, right? You you worked in the restaurant industry before too. So I was selling papers at the Jersey Shore. I was eight years old. Yeah.

Like a restaurant you you worked at. Oh, I worked at many restaurants.

Yeah. And when you when you're in that type of intent, I think when my kids get older, and my wife and I have talked about this, we're forcing them to work in a restaurant, customer service, learning face-to-face pieces. Special choice, yes. Learning that the harder that you work, the more money you're going to make. I think it's a great skill for anyone to have. But you know, I got to college, I was bartending. Overall pizza, it was hourly, but they were great because I would work my ass off and they would just give me raises. I wouldn't even ask, but they knew I was a good worker. Yeah. Then I work at the Duck Bartend, and it was the more you work, the harder you work, the more muddy you make.

Is that how that worked at the same time? Absolutely. The Muddy Duck was a legendary institution. At St. Joe's on City Avenue.

It was awesome. It was uh it was it's a good thing it's closed because a lot of people that might not still be married anymore if it if it continued to be open. People just randomly stop back. After you graduate, you randomly stop back. Yeah, you're like, why did I why did I do this? And then four o'clock in the morning you stumble home. But yeah, what happened? But anyway, I had I had always worked when I think about it now, right? I'd always worked on commissions, even though I didn't they were called tips. Correct. The more you work, the harder you work, eventually you're gonna make more money. And as a manager at one point with my old company, it was you you have to try to find the right person to know that. Like there's a lot of hard workers out there, but they may not necessarily want to or be prepared mentally for that, like we all were. Yep. We knew that mentality. We were paying a lot of our own way, and you have to know that you're just gonna put in a lot of time, a lot of effort, and you're gonna you you might not live the lifestyle that you want early on when people are getting these higher paying chat. Coming out of St. Joe's a year later, when I was back home, all these all these kids were making $70,000, $80,000, $90,000, out of company car, expense count. I I had none of that. Anything I wanted, I literally had to pay for on my own out of at whatever little pittance that I made. Right. So it's it's hard getting started, but the reward, you know, as you guys know, is once you finally hit a certain threshold, it's just it's a it's a great lifestyle.

Yeah. Um, so you start out kind of restaurants was how you figured out your hustle. Same with you, or were you doing something before restaurants?

No, I uh I worked in the family business, yeah, the nursery. So I just I had to just you just showed up and forced labor as a hustle. I mean, like but it was tips, so like Christmas trees, I remember like making man money like like there was all these lessons built in. Like I would carry like bushes out and load up the mulch bags and like tip, tip, tip, tip, tip, tip. And it was obvious to me, same thing. It's like, well, wait, what the nicer I am to people and the harder I will be.

So if I'm polite and I'm willing to do what they, you know, oh, can you put it over here? Can you can you grab it for me? You know, can you just knock it any needles on the you know, you're like, hey, like you're gonna get needles.

I remember one story too, delivering ice uh at Sea Isle Ice uh for Joey Romano. Uh I remember the old man senior came out the one day and I I he was blistering me because he's like, he thought I came back and was like sleeping in the ice box, just uh getting more hours on the clock. And so he's like, What do you think you're doing? What he didn't know was that I came back and Joey Jr. sent me out to clear another person's truck. He's like, take it around, see how I'm get rid of it. So I literally took the truck, cleared the whole entire truck, came back, and it came to a point where he was like, the son was like, Whoa, dad, what are you doing? And he's like, This good, da da da da da da. And he's like, No, he just sold a half a truck of ice in like you know, 40 minutes. And he's like, Oh, sorry, sorry. Oh, Mooney's my boy. So, like, it was in my mind. Now I'm gonna go take a nap in the ice class, right? I just earned that one. But it was always work, work, work, work. I mean, like, yeah, I don't know any other gear, you know, then other than working, working hard.

That's it. I'm gonna give a shout out to my dad, John Gardy, and my mom, and my mom, Sue Garrety as well.

Right, exactly.

Fan number one, fan number two. Um, so we started spending time at the shore in Ocean City, New Jersey. I was very fortunate and blessed to have an opportunity down there to like be at the beach, enjoy the summer weather. And and Pat started selling the Philadelphia Inquir. We're both young, young kids. And he's like going out to the Acme and selling all these papers and coming home with like a money belt full of bills and change. And I'm like, whoa, like what is this? So then I like begged my dad. I'm like, can I go? I was like, I'll sell papers too. And he was like, Yeah, come on. So I'm young. And we go out to the parking lot, and the acme had like two entrances, one at the one on 34th Street in Ocean City. Shout out to Ocean City. They had the one, the north side and the south side. So he's the south side. I'm like, well, what about that side? And he's like, take some papers. I took five papers, went over there, sold all of them. Everyone gave me tips because they didn't have any change, and I came back. I was like, I came back with all this money. They're like, well, I'm like, they I'm like, they just tipped me out. They gave me a dollar for like a 30 cent paper. And he was like, Wow, you just made a ton of money. I was like, give me five more. And then I started doing that the next summer. And and shout out to the Philadelphia Inquirer. There was a family that just ran this business with all these young kids. They just went to like bakeries, grocery stores, gas stations, like boardwalk, like all these places, and just started selling papers. And they would make a ton of money, and the family distributing the papers would make a lot of money. They're like a wholesaler, basically. And doing that taught me so much. Taught me how to like count money, taught me how to blow money too. I'd take all the money I had, I'd go down the arcade, and in less than two hours, I would be done with all of my money at the age of 10. Like it was just, but that taught me it's like, you don't take a dollar or two and put it here, and then go take the other five bucks and like go have a good time. So even like stuff like that, but I like that we're like diving down this this channel, but let's get back to finance a little bit. Um so one thing you provide knowledge on and expertise, you've you've helped me out with this as well, are the unseen risks of 401ks. Like, why is that a subject that you're comfortable talking about?

I mean, my whole career has been about retirement plans, whether it's 401ks, 403Bs, 4037s, they're all they're all the same thing with with different names. So I know that topic very, very well. Um, biggest regrets that my clients have is they didn't start early enough and didn't put enough away. So people know what a 401k is, but sometimes getting people to actually start a 401k can be difficult. Trying to convince them to save more money for themselves. Even if the company has a match, trying to convince people to start and get free money sounds very easy, but sometimes it's like pulling teeth, and you just have to keep trying and trying and trying. There's nothing else out in the world that you can give you free money. And then once people start investing in it, it's great. And then you have to talk to them year after year about are you increasing your contributions? That makes a huge, huge difference. Clients of mine that increase their contributions every year versus those that don't, huge disparity. Right. Huge disparity. Even I I tell all my clients to call it the 1% challenge, is keeping the back in mind. Every year, try to increase by 1%. 1%, 1%. After one or two paychecks, you will not miss it. Right. You can easily blow that money at Wawa or anything else. True. But if you know, set a reminder for yourself, every year do another 1%. Even in nowadays, people switch jobs so much, also, but that still holds true. Wherever you go, do your 401k, do the additional 1%. Um, and then the other risk that I that I deal with a lot is the way people have money allocated. People are very scared of the markets, and I talk to them about like conceptually what all this means, right? The the Iran war on February 28th, the market dropped significantly. People freaked out, but then the market came back significantly in April. And I have a lot of conversations with people about just long-term perspective. I say don't make a long-term decision based on short-term circumstances. Right. Short term is two weeks, two months, two years. I don't know. But if we're talking about the rest of your life, your working career could be 30 years, plus your retired career could be another 30 years. We're looking at 60 years here. Don't make a decision based on sixty years on an events that are happening today. Know that you just keep buying, keep buying, keep investing. When you're seven years old, you'll be happy that you that you did. That's awesome.

Being a seasoned financial advisor, Pete. Yes. Yes, Sean. I want to know. What's your what's your inquiry, Sean? This is a hypothetical question.

Okay.

Scenario. What is your recommendation that a person's holding should be for cryptocurrency? Ooh, good one.

Yeah. So I hate crypto for the record, which I've said multiple times, but that's just me. Nothing against it. So shout out. Tim Hayden Crypto.

Shout out. With with crypto, there's it's one of those things where if you decide that you want to hold it, use a percentage of your assets that you're okay if you just lose it completely. Right? Come up with your with your comfort number.

It's like Atlantic City money. Yeah. Don't walk into the casino with your with your debit card ready to go if you lose. Walk into Atlantic City with a hundred, three hundred bucks in your pocket. Like, if I lose this money, I'm done. I'm just gonna have some drinks and get something to eat. And if you turn 300 bucks into 3,000, fantastic.

Exactly. So there's some people that are all into crypto. I have clients that that do tons of crypto. And they do it on their own, right? I we don't we we don't do that. But it's it's one of those things where personally I own some, right? A couple years ago I bought some. I went to see someone speak about it. I read the white paper that was came up online that they don't even know who wrote it and talked about it. I didn't understand any of it. But I was like, just because I don't understand it fully doesn't mean that it's going anywhere. Sure. You know, governments are taking it, businesses are taking it, and there's a whole there's all other side industries that are created from it. So I I bought some and I bought three different ones. One has done well, the other two have done nothing almost to the point of worthlessness. So that's it's one of those things where I just bought it in 20 years. If it's worth something, great. And if it if it's not, yes, it would stink that I lost money, but I'm not gonna be destitute because I put all my eggs in one basket.

I think his name was Satoshi. It could be. It was a author, it was a Japanese name.

I don't remember the name.

I mean Satoshi. You would know. Yeah. Because you're Mr. We need to get you another sweatshirt that doesn't say Glenside on it. Shout out to Glenside, by the way. It's it should say Mr. Crypto. Yeah. And start a whole brand.

Well, you know, like the Doom mask. I take it you're into you're into a lot of crypto, Sean. Uh I have a little bit.

But here's the thing. Uh I'm not like I didn't capture my 401 to go buy crypto. You know.

And look, um I'm not crapping on crypto. It's just not something that I personally see worth speculating on with the investments that I make. I probably put more money into real estate or target funds, as you know, then most people like, what it's not, it's not enough. It's too slow, it's not sexy enough, it's not fun enough. Like, I'm getting 20% over here, you're getting like eight, 10%. Like, what why are you doing that? And I think part of my mindset too is just with any kind of investment, let's call it finance, crypto, real estate, is I have to one, I got to believe in it. So if I don't really believe that this thing is going to be something of value to me personally, at a reasonable point in my life, I just have no reason to put money into it. But I think I'm more of like a touch and feel kind of guy. Like, again, when we when we have meetings, we're sitting down and we're like talking about you're showing me stuff. And I'm like, cool. I like that. I don't like looking at my phone like every other day and being like, okay, you know, and then real estate, it's touch and feel. You open the door, like people can live there. You can live there, you can rent it, you can sell it, you can hold it, you can do, you know, you can refinance it, like you can do all sorts of things. So I think it's probably just my general mindset over some of that stuff. The reason Sean and I are 180, a little shocker.

They're both they're both valid points. Yes. Right? And it's not that if if people don't invest in crypto, are are they look it if the ones that they have take off, then yeah, there's always that, well, what if maybe I could have, maybe I should have. But on the other hand, if you do other sound investments in the market and you give enough time, it it'll make money too over the long run.

I got it at VCX at eleven dollars. No idea what that is.

Stock.

Good for you. Good for you. All right, so biggest struggle. So we've been talking about a lot of you know good stuff, but your biggest struggle you put down was always trying to find new clients while giving phenomenal service to existing clients. Why why has that you know been a struggle for you, the balance?

Well, you know, like any business, the people that that got you here, you want to take care of, you want to be loyal to them. And I've had clients for over two decades at this point in my life, right? So I've known these people a long time, they've known me a long time, so I still want to make sure that I'm that I'm treating them with the amount of time that they deserve when I do the reviews, when we talk, when we you know make suggestions, the research, uh, you know, all the work, the plan that goes into it. Yep. But like any business, you always still want to want to grow. So it's try how do you how do you balance that time between focusing my time on growing the business and and maintaining the business? I mean, that's not um distinct just to me or to financial services. It's it's it's to any business. So it's just you you it's a trial and error, I think. I don't think there's any specific equation out there that anyone knows. If if you do, please tell me, I will happily.

Is there any uh efficiencies you're trying to that you've built in to to maybe touch more or like you know, host events to where you're in front of people and and and that's a way to engage with more people?

Yeah, it's it's always a tough thing too, right? So the more infrastructure you have and more and more people that work under you, you know, we all started our our our our business and careers like we we helped grow it, right?

We we were very We wrote the applications.

We had a vested interest in making sure that the applications were correct and it doesn't screw up. Legible. Making sure we get paid on it, making sure that. It goes through correctly, and there's even the smallest issue, the client could care less. But we were like, oh man, this is yeah, I gotta go back and get an initial or signature.

They're gonna like we will be perfect.

Yeah, it had to be perfect, right? So then when you give up some of that to someone else to make, you know, doing the training, making sure that they care as much as you do about this person or about this issue is is always our thing. But when you get those those in place and they work, then then it helps where you can, yeah, again, focus more on your existing clients, focus more on new business, focus more on your family at that point, you know, take some time off and uh and enjoy it, which is for years, none of us ever did that. Like there was never an out of office. Yeah. It was just even if you're even if you're away, you're still working, you're still on your phone, you're still out there somewhere, totally doing something. So it's not again, 20 plus years in the business, it's not quite like that for me anymore, but it's yeah, it for many years, many, many years, it was.

All right.

So you hustled with the schools early on, walking, you know, going to the school, setting appointments, converting people. Like, what do you do for new business today? Like, is this still school related? Is it something completely different? You just like, hey, I got enough clients now, they just refer my business or the portfolios get bigger. Like, what do you do for new business today?

I do we have relationships with some accounting firms that send like 401ks or 401k referrals, and then meeting with those employees and the and the C-suite people, and then my existing client base and just making sure that I'm a lot of my new business that I get comes from existing clients. Right. Whether it's referrals from them or other business that comes along as just year after year doing review, and then you get get the group space. So uh at this point, am I out there like handing out business cards everywhere I go and go on all these networking? Yes. No. You know, it's what my business isn't isn't necessarily like that. I'm not looking for just like a one-off sale and like thank you. It's you know, I'm looking to build a relationship, build it, build a long-term 10, 15, 20 year client relationship out of it. So that that just comes through long-term relationships on Farrells now at this point.

So what is the uh you're with Dynasty? Yep. What's the Dynasty story and how'd you get hooked up with them? And what do they do that's like really good or something that's different? Why Dynasty?

Yeah. So Dynasty is an independent um financial company. I joined them in in 2021. My previous company I was at 19 years. And I had independence there, but not fully the way I do here. Being on the independent side is great. Like there's not that people don't care what you do, right? They as long as you're doing right by the client, it's fine. It it's there's less the company I was working for was a very it was a public company, it was a very big company. It was rigid. Yeah. Well, in certain areas, a lot of stuff there wasn't. A lot of stuff was great. I could as long as I was doing my thing and and everyone was happy and no one really cared, but there was a lot of just BS to deal with. There's none of that on on this side. Um it's it's smaller, it's a very big, independent, small firm. So we have all there's a lot of resources that we have on an individual side, and the idea is to still grow it because they're they're all we're all the same mentality. Everyone has the same idea to grow your business, to grow it. Um, I'm the only one that is not organic. Everyone else that was Dynasty started with them and grew it that way. I'm the only one transplant.

Really? Yeah, you're the only one who like came from another company.

Um, so the one guy started one of the the three founders of Dynasty, he was with a different company, but you're going back like 20 years. So then Dynasty kind of became that when he and this other guy joined up. There was another guy working for an insurance company who came and joined as well. But like other than that, it was all the other advisors were basically homegrown for the most part. They or they built their careers, may have been in place one or two years, but they didn't like build a career there. They built a career at Dynasty. So I'm the only one that came, and I had the you know, the ability to just reach out to all my clients, tell them I was switching. Um, 95, 96% of my clients came with me. There's always a couple that for random reasons don't go. Um, and that was it. It was great.

So, what is uh being uh an independent, right? Is it the the products that you can sell? Is it like like how is that different than LBS?

Yeah, well, yeah, so the products is one thing. So I do a lot of work on the advisory space. So it's like um I someone has an IRA and an investment account with me. We can pick and choose the stocks, the mutual funds. That really wasn't any different from from my old place. Um when we do other products, if there's insurance, if there's annuities, which I don't do a ton of, but other guys do a lot of annuities. Um, you know, it was a lot more strict on the other side than it is here. Um like You mean the companies that you would work with or sell products from?

Yeah.

Okay. So it's it's it's basically unlimited what we can use, who we can use. There's no and it's not like there's you know, when you worked at the at the other place, it was a lot benefits could be potentially tied into what you sell, things like that.

So now there's there's Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

There's none of that. And I was at the point where I didn't really care about any of that. I was I was doing enough where I was it was all my own. I was paying for all that stuff. When I first started, I needed all the benefits. I had to sell some of their products, but it eventually times changed and I didn't I didn't need to do that.

That's funny too. When I started uh uh with State Farm like early on, it was uh like how many of these did you sell this month? And you know what I mean? If it did you get like a bonus kind of thing, or yeah, but even like a slap on the wrist, it's like why didn't you do this or why didn't you sell this? Or you know, so it was um for me at least, it it really didn't I don't know, it it it was I don't want to say a bad taste, but but that um formula for business Yeah, you didn't agree with that approach, yeah.

And you're like, well, why am I here then?

Well, and then you know, with me is like in being independent for me, similarly, having the access to any career that I want with all the any product that I want, like you kind of are able to uh position yourselves and and really align yourselves with the companies and the products that you want. Yeah.

Well, I think I'll I'll quote Billy Williams again, his past guest we had as an insurance guy. He said when you work for like one of those bigger companies, let's say big box insurance, you fit the company around the client. Yeah. And then when you work for an independent like Mooney, you know, you fit the client around the right carrier. Like, let me match you with this one because that's what you want or you need or you ask for, or whatever. And it's it's interesting, you're probably seeing that on your side too, where it's like if someone asks you for something or said, My goal is this, or I want to feel like that, or I like looking at this, you're like, Oh, well, I have so many choices. And if I have so many choices, which out of these do you like?

Yeah, it's a Mooney and I did this. He does my my homeowner's insurance, and my neighbor had a sinkhole, not a big one, but there's random sinkholes. Yeah, I need a policy that covers sinkholes. And if you're at a big box insurance company, probably not happening.

So you was able to go out and find one that hopefully we never have a sinkhole, but if we do, or honey, or if you have a pool on a separate lot down the shore that you need to ensure that's true, we have the solution for you. Yeah, we do we do pools on separate lots, yeah. Um, but that that's the point is like the needs of each individual client are always going to be different. Yep. And and trying to come at them with your one company, one product, one solution, you'll be able to build a business around that, but to what you know, where are your limitations on what you can do? Yeah.

So your your tip was awesome for our bricks and riskers. Uh, the allocation of your time. There's only so many hours in a day, make the most of them. Why that tip?

As you progress in your life, you know, more things come up. You know, you own a house, there's always house issues that come up if you get married, if you, you know, if you have kids. You know, there's only so much that you can actually parents get older. Parents get older, people get sick, uh, you maybe have some some physical or or medical you know conditions and and limitations. So it's there's only so much you can do, and you have to figure out how what's the best use of my time. You know, none of us are really like hourly employee guys, so that that was never an issue. Like I was telling you, I was driving a rugby practice with my buddy, and I was making phone calls. Like, right, when I would get home.

Is that Meathead?

No. No? No. Shout out to Meathead, my buddy Frank. But um, there would be, you know, I'd come home after running meetings or practice or or or going out with my wife, and it's like, all right, well, let me answer emails, let me do some more work. Like, it's just now when with my kids running them, you know, my wife and I are Ubering them everywhere, and I'm getting older. Like, do I want to have do I have the energy to to be working after all that to like 11, 12 o'clock at night, and then getting up at six?

Like, but do I even need to? Yeah.

Like, that's you know how do you how do I figure it out? And how do I allocate? Can I offload that to somebody else? Exactly. Which again is another hard thing to do, to give up some of that control to somebody else, knowing that they is this person gonna be up at 10 o'clock at night sending these emails? Probably not. Yeah. Like, but they're gonna have to make sure that they do it first thing in the morning. Yep. Um, one thing I did also learn along the way too is I do try not to work weekends anymore. Like, clients will reach out to me on the weekends, and I just unless there's like an emergency or something, or maybe Sunday night when I'm getting my my week ready, then I'll I'll respond to stuff so I have less to do Monday morning. But I really try not to on the weekends now, um, just push it to push it to Monday. But that was, you know, that was 15 plus years in the making. Yeah. I gotta get back out right away. It's been a half hour. Right away, yeah. And clients get it, they understand. Um so for anyone out there looking at you know, looking to do any of this who's listening, it's at some point you have to make that switch from always being on call to setting kind of a precedent. Like you have you have things to do too. Boundaries.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome tip, man. All right. So before we shut this one down, why don't you tell our listeners and watchers where they can learn more about you and everything you got going on?

Yeah. Um, I mean, the best place to just go is at dynastyadvisors.com. Um, I do have a LinkedIn. I don't I don't have socials, I don't have any of it, which we know. Yeah, God bless you. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, the best. It's it's great. It's pretty smart. There's there's fun things. Like you guys send me some stuff like on uh on you get the humorous stuff. A lot of them I can't open. Right, right. But I'm like, oh, tell me about it. This seems funny. Everyone's commenting on this clip. It seems hysterical. It should look funny, yeah. Um, so I purposely don't have any of that stuff. Um, so yeah, there are dynasty advisors at uh dynastyadvisors.com. Reach out to us that way. Um my email address is on there. So we are very receptive, we are very responsive. I just socials are not not me.

We had a guy in here, another McDevitt graduate, and he was Manila Folders. That's how he works.

A few MCD boys.

Yeah, we have.

Yeah, everybody's you know, whatever works for you.

There's some people like you know, people have their socials, great, good for them. You need to have their presence, you need to be out there.

Yeah.

Again, me having like a social media presence is someone with $20 million going to come knocking on my dude. Like, oh, I saw that Instagram post. That was great. You're working with yeah. Probably not. Probably not. I'll just focus my time and energy and not not be scrolling all the time. Awesome. Appreciate it.

Love it. All right, well, that's all we have for this one. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you next week. Thanks, guys. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets, and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BR episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content. Until next time, keep learning and keep growing.