Dave Harter Shares His Inspiring Journey of Helping Others Navigate the Financial World & Secret Formula of 19xing Sales

Kevin Harrington
Hi, I’m Kevin Harrington, an original Shark from the hit television show Shark Tank and you’re listening to the underdog podcast.

Pamela Bardhi
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of underdog. Today I have an incredible guest here with me one of my amazing friends?, he’s like a brother. He’s a freakin rock star and y’all understand why by the end of this podcast. But Dave harder is in the building. How are you, brother?

Dave Harter
Hey, Pam, I am wonderful.

Pamela Bardhi
It is truly an honor to have you here today. You are such a rockstar in your realm. And I remember meeting you for the first time at Kris Krohn event. Where we were in Utah and actually it was funny because I met you prior to that. I remember seeing you rob and shot and Sean Calgary and the whole gang in the Marriott lobby and I remember I was on FaceTime with my husband and I was like. Who the hell is they got like a whole gang of people and I had no idea you guys like? Who the hell are these guys, I was on FaceTime and I remember Robin like you filming us? I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you are.

Dave Harter
You thought you were a fad or something?

Pamela Bardhi
No, I was like, Oh my God. I was like, Who are these are they’re running into like a whole gang. There’s like, seven of them. They run so deep.

Dave Harter
We ran deep that day. Yeah, we’re rolling deeper everyday cam. It’s incredible. I really

Pamela Bardhi
Love it. So that was my first encounter. I’m like, okay, these guys are ballers that clearly you guys are and I love it. And you know, getting to know you, getting to know Rob just like most heart-centered down Earth. But also just beasts in the insurance and like just living space in general, which is such a gift. So I’m just so grateful to have you here today. Dave, truly, and you know, I’m going to start you off with my favorite question, one of them. Which is what inspired you on your journey to where you are today, my friend.

Dave Harter
Incredible intent. By the way, I want to say that the honor and privilege of getting to know you has been something that I did quite honestly. I didn’t anticipate and see coming, how much I love you. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I knew that I look like you, but you’re like a sister, you really are. And what you’re doing is magical. It’s like it’s so cool to see each other, see you and my future like my journey. And like really what kind of brought me to where I am now what inspired me to move into where I am now honestly Pam. I think that you are a reflection of your most successful failure. So and I’ll give, I’ll give two very, very specific examples of what really motivates me.

And really what my why is, when I graduated Peace University. I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life. No cool whatsoever, I had a communications degree. Which meant that I could do anything now. It was 1999 you know, so we were at the height of the.com. Bubble, so jobs do you remember monster.com? So monster.com was, you know. Was everywhere and the jobs there were new ones popping up every millisecond back then.

And I got recommended by someone to take a look at a company named Smith Barney. Which is now owned by Morgan Stanley, well, listen, I’ve never done finance before. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing there. I’ll apply Sure. But sure enough, I get a job interview in Smith, Barney corporate, and I go down and it’s in the retirement plan division. Like, I don’t even know what a retirement plan is. I did well in the interview and I relate to people, I love people, I really really do. And I get a kick out of people, I think that everybody is incredible in their own uniqueness. Whether you like him, you don’t like him, I think that everybody has that level of uniqueness. That is interesting. You know, I got my first job down there, I was down there through 911.

I was down there until 2003 and then I moved from corporate to individual planning and individual financial advisory. Now I take that back in since 2002. And I remember that culture was all about managing assets. Insurance was not a part of that culture at all, at least in the office that I was part of. So if we ran into insurance, it was just like you stumbled upon it. You know, it was something that I just would always outsource. Because it wasn’t anything that was interesting to me. It really wasn’t what drove what we did. We just wanted to manage investments. But as time went on, more and more people were asking about life insurance. And there we just believe, okay, do term life insurance. Do term insurance and invest the difference.

Because we want to keep the money and we think you’re gonna get better rate of return the market and blah, blah, blah. So this one client, in particular, contacted me one day and said. Hey, Dave, and I had just taken on his money. And he was a friend of mine from college, and he said, Dave, I need life insurance. I want you to get me $750,000 of 15 Year Term insurance with Mutual of Omaha, right I did my research. That’s what I want. No problem. Let me figure out how to do, so I make like 10 calls. So you know, to see who could help me to, to get him underwritten. And so if I look back so ludicrous now. But anyway, long story endless, we put him through and he gets his life insurance. He got a great rate.

And he was a younger guy, I think at the time he was late 20s. But his wife was pregnant, right and she was gonna have their first kid. So this was in 2004. Fast forward the clock to 2010. I saw him at a holiday party and he said. Dave, I need to get more life insurance and I’m like, Oh, you don’t fantastic. Are you having another baby? He said, No, I have cancer. I said I got diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Yeah and I’m like, I know. Oh, my God. Alright, so we took a look at the group insurance that he had, and it was okay you know. When he had the 750,000 of insurance with me. But when you’re acting cancer, there’s no hope of getting additional insurance.

So we had to just really hope that they did a mastectomy on them and remove cancer. We had to hope that he would go through remission and move on and unfortunately. That didn’t happen, unfortunately, died in 2013. Unfortunately, cancer came back at 12 and took his life in 2013. And I remember delivering the death benefit to his spouse. I remember her telling me how grateful she was and inside. I’m sitting there like, I am so sorry. So sorry that I didn’t do my job. Because this is a guy when we did it. He was 32 years old, he was working in an accounting firm. Making a really, really, really good living and when he passed away, he was a long trajectory. And I should have been delivering millions of dollars to his spouse, did I deliver money?

Yeah, I did right, and did we set up a trust? And did we pay off a mortgage, yeah absolutely. But I’ve never forgotten that I keep this mural in my office. I’ve never forgotten my responsibility as a financial advisor and a financial planner, or a coach. Or whatever you want to call me is to make my clients aware. Even if they don’t want to hear about it, of what risks they have in front end. The risk of leaving your family with not enough protection for your own life, or human economic value is a real risk, you know. So that was obviously something that I’ve carried with me, I share that story quite a bit. Because it’s important to me to always, keep my eye on the ball of risk for my clients.

There’s other stories, but that’s really for me. That’s what has consistently and constantly been a driver and a motivator. Because I think about my wife, Melissa. And I think about my kids if I were to pass away. I want their hopes and their aspirations and their dreams to happen as if I was here. You have to protect that and that’s what insurance does. And so the fact that happened to someone motivates me every day to want to accelerate. Do my job to the best of my ability.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Dave, thank you so much for sharing that, and wow. And the thing is, you lead with such power. You leave with such purpose and it’s like. That is exactly the reason why I was so drawn to you guys. Because it’s way more than just being a financial adviser, like, it’s like I hear that term all the time. I’ve introduced to so many of them and like everyone’s interest. Especially when they see that you’re high net worth and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But really, at the end of the day, like what you focus on is really the person in the family.

And making sure they’re protected and all of that which is absolutely amazing. When you lead with purpose. I think the whole business game shifts, it becomes a whole nother thing. Because you are now solving a problem you are protecting. You are doing all of these things and it’s not about money anymore. It’s more about the impact and making sure that’s first and foremost. Which is the reason why I think you have all exploded. But before we get to that, I want to reel it back in your life a little bit. What did you want to be when you grew up there?

Dave Harter
So you know, originally I wanted to be a broadcaster for the New York Knicks. You know I wanted to do that. It was either that or be a professional lacrosse player and I was terrible across. So I thought that I could be a broadcaster with the next event. When I went to college and I found out how long. It was going to take from you to get your legs and broadcasting, et cetera, I was like. Okay, I better find something different. But no, honestly I wanted to be my dad. You know, really more than anything else. As you know, he’s still to this day a hero. He was the dean of a college and I didn’t want to be the dean of a college.

I just wanted to be him because he had this aura about him. And still, to this day, that lacrosse stick was actually given to me by the University. Lacrosse players and fraternity brothers that I had when my father passed away. Because he actually started the pace of the cross-program. Yeah and I’ve never had one person tell me that they didn’t have a good experience when they met my father. It’s crazy and so he was just a super loving, humble giving person. And I’ve always tried to model myself around that and to the best of my ability and give of myself more than I expected return.

Sometimes that worked to his detriment, you know, but it’s very, very noble detriment to hats as far as I’m concerned. So for me, that’s what I wanted,I knew that I wanted to help people. I didn’t know that it was necessarily going to be in the area of finance. But I knew that that was something that was important to me and that good at. And I wanted to have the ability to influence people. I always knew that the course of action towards getting into financial services was really just kind of a natural one.

But as time went on, as time went on in financial services Pam, I think I realized that I wanted. I’m not an independent individual, I like to work as part of a team. I like the camaraderie of working with team members, I think that the client experience is better with team members. And so that was when I met Rob, and I met the team at Epic and identified that as a company. This is a place that you could really put a foothold and accelerate in and that’s you know. That’s, that’s why I joined the company.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that day, thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for sharing that about your dad too. So he was like, your hero, and still insists that he’s always with you. What I love is your last name is harder, so hard. Very fitting very kidding and it’s such a beautiful. Such a beautiful tribute to him, I absolutely adore that. Absolutely adore that and I love the journey that you had in joining epic as well. Because I mean, listen, this life is never a linear one if you will. And a lot of people look at Highly successful people like yourself. Like Rob and like all of us and they’re just like, wow, like you’re so lucky.

Dave Harter
You know, lucky and intentional, I would say because you’re 100% right. Nothing is linear about life and that’s the thing. I think what excites me about the work that I do is knowing that there’s nothing linear about life. And knowing that you’re always going to have something to plan for. There’s going to be something new and interesting that you can introduce to people. It’s a changing world that we’re in right now, economically, all that stuff. We can’t concrete plan, you have to be able to pivot and you have to be able to account for the future. Luck of linear life for lack of a better description, right.

Pamela Bardhi
100% and I mean, in your world getting to where you guys are. Because I mean epics like crushing it at this point. That you guys are just on a whole nother stratosphere of amazingness that’s happening. And there’s a lot of reasons why that’s happening. But what were some of the challenges in building yourself up to that level? Because again, like people look at you guys now and I call you all they’re so lucky because of this. But it’s like, they don’t understand the whole hustle and look at all the obstacles and things that you had gone through. Be there business-wise, or personally, to get to that level.

So what were some of the obstacles that you’ve run into? I guess, professionally, personally. Whichever ones you feel like sharing? Sure, because life is crazy. Like I remember when Rob, I was interviewing Rob, and he was talking about how he had an addiction at one point. And I was like, Dude, I never knew that about you. But thank you for that’s like, thank you, people, can relate and then they’re like. Wow, I can resonate with him like he’s human. Right? But yeah, they’ll push you and you made it. Look at where he is now.

Dave Harter
Yeah, that’s an awesome, awesome question. And I’m so proud of Rob, by the way, so for over 25 years, I think it’s incredible. It’s something that you model after for a long period of time. I was in like a leadership capacity in financial services, you know, I still kind of ran my practice. But for the most part, I was managing and coaching others, I tired of that. And I just got to a point where I felt like, I was not in control of my own world. So when I made the exit out of leadership and went and started my own business, it was intentional. It’s when you have a plan and God has a plan, and my plan sure as hell did not work out.

The way that I envisioned it because I created this. This runway and this plan for moving from essential salary over to a commission-based environment. And two weeks after I do that, my wife got downsized from her job. So that threw this massive monkey wrench in and what I decided to do is. Rather than push her into trying to get back into the workforce. I said you know what, no, there’s a sign here. I’m going to double down and I’m going to control my destiny. And I’m going to just, I’m going to do what I need to do to accelerate my practice. So the first year went well. But in our world, sometimes just one little thing, if you count on. You would appreciate this.

If you count on one specific either commission or relationship to come through. And that’s all you’re focused and all you’re banking on and something goes sideways. Everything can trickle down, everything can change and I got caught in a situation like that. I was so sure that a relationship that I had was going to accelerate forward and one person was uninsurable. Right and, you know, had to pivot, right. But that created a lot of financial turmoil in my household for a period of time. Because you eat what you kill, you’re right in the world, we operate. And so it took a period of getting right sized and I don’t think personally. I don’t think you can give people good advice on how to manage your wealth. Unless you went through a hard time that you had to manage yourself through.

That’s me personally and so I went through a hard time. But I had to manage myself through and right-size my ship. And that was at around the exact same time that I was joining Rob. We were developing this new relationship with Kris Krohn and we were developing new relationship with Sean. Then ultimately new relationship with you. But If people thought we were nuts. Because we’re focusing on videos and YouTube and building out our social proofing and all these different types of things. As opposed to doing what everybody does traditionally. In financial services, we were doing the polar opposite. We were marketing in a totally different way. And people thought Rob was crazy for that. The peaks and valleys of that were from compliance and getting notoriety on our page.

And there’s a million naysayers out there. That will go on to YouTube and say that our message, not epic specifically. But the message of, hey, use insurance as a vehicle that you can use as leverage to make investments. And it’s the base camp for where we believe you should keep your money. There are people that are out, that think that’s crazy. You know, there are people out there that say that that’s something that you should not do. When your message goes against Dave Ramsey. So it took time for us to really kind of, I think, build that social proof. But now if you fast forward the clock three years. We’re in a much, much, much different position. Thankfully, thank God, you know then we were at when we were first really kind of putting this all together.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that because that’s the thing. Like, everyone thinks that you’re so lucky and it happens overnight. And all of this and all of that

Dave Harter
I didn’t take a day off for two straight years. Sunday’s Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely you know, every single day, you know. There were plenty of conversations with my wife, Melissa. Like, Hey, are you going to make time for us? And I’m like, Yes, that’s my vision. He is, oh, yes, that’s absolutely going to take place. But right now, I can’t do it. Right now, I have to produce this.

And the biggest, I think the biggest victory for an entrepreneur. Especially a married entrepreneur is to have your spouse buy into your vision and support what you’re doing. As opposed to thinking that you ought to be seeking something that is like more nine to five-ish. If they don’t understand your business or understand your vision. That level of stress is so big, so thank God over time. She’s not only supported my vision but she’s bought into and understands what we do. So it’s been a huge help.

Pamela Bardhi
And let’s talk about the entrepreneurial journey for a little bit. Because a lot of people don’t see that part, right. Like you think you’re just gonna start a business or a new venture, and you’re just gonna. They miss where your back is up against the wall like you said. Seven days a week cranking out like non-stop trying to figure out that balance between work life, everything. Your family and the whole thing, like you were saying because it’s not easy. It’s not easy to balance that and try to figure it all out. While in the midst of figuring out financials. Especially if you put your whole soul in it from day one. What were some of the things that helped push you through during that time? Dave? Like some motivational things like anything, anything that you could share that helped you? Yeah,

Dave Harter
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Well, first and foremost is exercise. I rediscovered exercise over the last year. And I didn’t realize I always considered myself athletic, I always consider myself you know. But when you get to listen, when you get into your 40s, you know. Things change a little bit and I had always heard that the highest level of success, entrepreneur or business owner, is addicted to exercise. And is constantly centered and focused on their health. Tony Robbins talks about it, Kris Krohn talks about it. Shawn cow, he talks about it, and, for me, I’ve adopted an exercise regimen and a regimen in general that I love, and that I’m really, really excited about. So my energy level remains high there. That’s number one and then I think number two is either your schedule. Can command you or you can command your schedule.

And so I’ve made it the point that every month at the beginning of the month. I’m blocking out specifically the time that I need away from business. It’s not a tremendous amount of time other than I have specific family time every single day. But days when I can’t necessarily be reachable because you need to be able to kind of decompress and be alone with thoughts and do something. That’s totally outside of the scope of what you typically do on a day in and day out basis. And for me, that’s been super, super, super helpful. COVID has been crazy. Working from home is totally different. I was always in the office 9am to 9 pm, you know. Working from home and adjustment, I think for anybody. So I’ll tell you what Pam, actually is, you’ll get a kick out of this.

For the first three months of work from home during the beginning of COVID. I literally would wake up in the morning, do my exercise. But then shower and put on a suit, I swear to God and not going anywhere. I’m in my home but I dressed as if I was going to go into the office and into the corporate structure to keep myself in momentum and invasion of what it was before. And as weird as it sounds. It was really really really helpful to keep my mentality sharp around like. Hey, you’re at home, I don’t want to do this right now, I could go do something else. That is so easy people. It’s unbelievable to me that people are as productive as they are working from home. Because there’s so many distractions.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that Dave like you’re putting yourself in the visualization process of like. You actually being there and like kind of cranking it out goal setting. Like what have you done to get to these levels? I’m sure, like you and Rob and Eddie, like have sat down together. And what you’ve accomplished in the last three years is like.

Dave Harter
Oh, my God, look who’s talking and the power of the business plan is so critical. And not only that but having your business plan audited by other people is so incredibly critical for me too. You know, and I think for anybody if you put together the 12-week year is a really. Really popular method of approaching goal setting during the course of the year. It’s like managing your world in 12-week tranches. I think that makes a lot of sense. I’ve looked to adopt that myself. And just okay, I’m benchmarking the next 12 weeks, as if it’s a full calendar year. What are the things I’m gonna get concluded and then level up and level up after that. So that’s been really, really helpful for me, I also joined in accountability.

And I cannot stress enough how important it is not to have just one accountability coach, but a group. For me, having an accountability group got me to quit smoking. I was a 25-year smoker, I quit smoking as a result of my, yeah, yeah, I quit that. I benchmark goals for wealth accumulation. I’ve benchmark goals from making specific investments. And they held me accountable to the things that I was going to do, I hate bananas. I mean, hate, hate bananas. They’re the most disgusting food. This guy just keeps my accountability group if I didn’t hit my must makes for the week. They made me eat a banana on Facebook Live, I mean, you may as well put kryptonite in my blood. That is the most disgusting thing.

Another thing that they had me do pen was they said. Write a check to the person that you hate the most. And if you don’t, I swear to God, if you don’t accomplish what you said. Or if you don’t do what you said that you’re going to do. You have to write a check to that person. For you know, whatever, cause it is that support, you know. I can’t remember exactly what it was. But the thought of having to send that cheque to the person that I had in my head is such a strong word, I don’t hate anybody. But personally that I can do without man. I’d say it’s so it’s stuff like that. I think that has, you know, I never did any of that stuff before. It’s a whole new world that I’m experiencing growing pains.

Pamela Bardhi
I absolutely love that. Dave. First up, I love the icons. Whoever created that accountability group. That’s pretty freakin awesome and the 12-week model. Can you dive into that a little bit? Like how could one learn about that? And what’s kind of what’s it all about?

Dave Harter
Sure, sure, check out the book the 12-week year. What it does is give a roadmap and breakdown of how you can model your business and personal goals in 12-week tranches. Or quarterly tranches, and it accelerates what I found more than anything else is it accelerates your sense of urgency. Because especially when you’re working in what you do, Pam, you’re a rockstar and periodically. When you have a big sale or if you have a big flip. Or you have a big inflow of new wealth, right of new cash, sometimes it’s easy to get checkouts.

And say, Okay, I’m gonna check out for a little while. Because you I just had this massive inflow and I can lay off the gas per minute. The 12-week year doesn’t allow you to do that, because it’s constantly centered and focused on the must-haves, the must deliverables in every single quarter. And by the way, the next quarter, you have to level above that you have to exceed what that is. So it’s something that’s new. I’m learning more about it* I like it, though. I really like managing Fortson, the accountability group that I work with uses it as well and I highly recommend it.

Pamela Bardhi
It’s freaking awesome. Oh, my God, Iraq. So it’s super helpful to understand. How you set these goals and how you’ve cranked through. Because there’s obviously a strategy and I love that strategy. And wow, oh, my goodness, and now back to your financial side? What are some of the common myths that you look? Oh, wow, the financial space. I know, there’s people listening, they get settled or stuff by financial advisors, or what they hear and all these things.

And then it’s like crazy regulated. So you can’t even get like an honest opinion on stuff, which, by the way. Whoever’s listening to this will put the disclaimer so that you’re protected. Dave, this is not financial advice, whatever. But like, in your experience, what were some of the myths that you’ve broken? And then next that, we’ll add some of your recommendations. What the best moves would be, how to leverage life insurance.

Dave Harter
Of course, one of the myths is that in my opinion. You mentioned life insurance is that you should buy term life insurance and invest the difference you know. That’s a big one, you hear that all the time and mathematically speaking, that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work and the reason for that Pam is not necessarily during the working years. Because I mean, if I like term life insurance, don’t get me wrong, I own term life insurance. I think people should have that because it’s an inexpensive way to protect your family. And to have a link to a large amount of death benefits that weren’t replaced. What you wanted to have happen and the difference between. So  the term insurance price would be and a permanent insurance policy would cost for that death benefit.

People would say that you should take that money and invest it in the markets. And that you’ll grow more wealth in that space. Whether or not that’s true, whether or not that actually happens. There’s two sets to the journey, there’s accumulation of wealth, and then there’s spending of wealth. Because the second half of the journey is retirement distribution. And the math works totally differently. It works totally differently, in if I Gone are the days of just being able to live off the interest in the portfolio. Because interest rates have just been so low for so long. May our rates gonna probably rise here. Yes you know, the Federal Reserve already just raise rates, but are they going to rise dramatically? I don’t know the opinion. That’s not going to be the case personally.

But when I’m spending money, first of all, I’m people are living longer. Life expectancies are longer now than they were years ago. And so if I have a bucket of money, and I’m spending that down and I have just even one bad market. One bad market, now, I’ve shut down principle take about you got 100 bucks and you lose 50%. You have $50 Getting back to breakeven, you have to get 100% return. And that means that you have to take on double the risk, you have to take on much more risk. Just to be able to get back to break even. Because you’re no longer saving your spending. So that shoe down puts people in really, really dangerous positions and so permanent insurance. Whether it’s whole life insurance or another vehicle.

I love whole life insurance, personally, I’m just a big, big fan of it. But permanent insurance is almost like a permission slip him to spend your money in the future. Wherever that’s coming from, whether it’s market. I mean, even if it’s spending down real estate. You know that you’re going to be able to keep bit of a legacy intact for your family. As a result of having that permanent insurance out there. So I think that’s one of the biggest myths. Also, another one that we’re seeing quite a bit is. And I am not a CPA, I want to put that out there on top of my opinion of what is going to happen in the tax world as we go.

But you know, I look at look, I mean, I look at the GDP. And I look at cost items that are the large cost items for the US. I look at that in relation to the amount of money that has been printed and the amount of money. That’s going to continue to get printed. That money’s going to have to come from somewhere. It’s going to have to come from somewhere and if you look at the history of US taxes. Compared to where we are today, we’re in a low tax bracket, or tax environment. I should say, in comparison to history. History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes periodically, you know, I think the writing is on the wall.

This is just my personal opinion, writing on the wall. That tax rates could not only go higher but substantially go higher. And if I’ve been taking my money, and I’ve been saving it in tax-deferred accounts. Deferred doesn’t mean free. It means I’m deferring tax for the future. And when I start spending that if tax rates are higher. Well, then did I do myself a favor by getting a tax deduction in a low tax environment? Or did I do myself a disservice by having fully taxable income in a higher tax environment?

And I would argue, I would, I would argue the latter. I would argue that you did yourself a disservice. You get tax write-offs all day long, I would imagine you know. Operating in the space that you operate in. There’s so many different ways that you can legally create tax reduction for yourself in the world that we operate in now. That I think that people need to find more creative ways to save money than necessarily just the traditional form. Okay, I you know, I think that there’s better ways of accumulating wealth.

Pamela Bardhi
100% and what I love Dave is thank you for those myths breaking by the way I always love doing that. Because you know, everyone hears about man. It’s awesome to get some real-life insight because you’ve seen it right. What are some of the tools used to leverage life insurance policies. Because you guys were the first ones that I ever spoke to that told me that I could actually leverage. Life insurance to do anything, I just always thought like. Okay, that’s a life insurance policy in case I die or something like literally.

Dave Harter
I remember our first conversation.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, I was like, I don’t want to think about death.

Dave Harter
They think about death. I’m not married yet. Like, what the hell are you talking? Yeah.

Pamela Bardhi
Just use it and leverage it for here. You and Rob like, you just take it and you do this? And I was like, oh yeah.

Dave Harter
The easiest way for me to look at it and I think that there are merits to any type of permanent life insurance. Whether it’s indexed universal life, variable, Universal Life, whole life. Which is my personal one of choice, that’s what I prefer. Yeah, it’s like buying a house, especially whole life insurance. In my opinion, is like buying a home, you’re financing it. As opposed to term insurance, where you’re kind of renting it, right. When you’re financing it, you’re building equity. Right and not a lot of people are aware that you’re building equity in an asset that you’re purchasing. The mistake that people make Pam is that they compare growth rates on equity in an insurance policy to a market.

They’re like, Oh, I could get a much better rate of return in crypto. I could get a much better rate of return trading stocks. And on a one year basis, ah, that might be true, that probably is true, right. But the fact of the matter is that no one wealthy individual that I know no one has made all of their money off of one specific holding. Or one specific investment, they own multiple assets, and to me. Permanent insurance is an amazing tool. Because yeah, if you think you can get a better return going into investing in real estate. Then you want to be able to do so leverage the equity. Leverage the equity from the insurance, that’s the whole thing.

It’s an asset, that you’re building equity. Regardless of market condition, you can use this leverage to make investments into larger-yielding things. And we talk about that with our clients all the time. We use it as the base camp because of the leverage that it creates. When people really understand the power of that type of positive leverage, it clicks. And you have the ability to create higher velocity and better rate of return on your money. Because it’s working for you in multiple different places.

What Would Dave Older Self Tell His Younger Self

Pamela Bardhi
I love that day. Oh my god and that’s one of the favorite things that I love about working with you guys is like you can make your money work for you. And not just in real estate, but in different avenues like life insurance. Which is kind of like the unexpected route to go on. Right,

Now, here comes one of my favorite questions for you, Dave, what would your older self tell your younger self? Based on what you know now? business, personal anything?

Dave Harter
Wow, what an amazing question. I think that might number one, double down on the time that you spend with your kids without a shadow of a doubt. Because no, I’m somebody who lost a parent at a younger age and be lying to you if I didn’t feel like I got robbed of time every day. Now is the time as a man, you really start to recognize how correct your parents were about so many different things. As soon as you have kids, you know what I mean? And so now being a father, I think about my father all the time. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, he was so right about everything.

Now is like the time when I envisioned myself playing golf with him and going to dinner and getting advice and doing all those things and unfortunately. That wasn’t in the cards for me. And so I look and I say, Hey, Dave, spend the time now, do the things that you want with them. Now, while you’re still on this mortal coil to port route. You know, while you’re still here. While you can take advantage of that. I think that’s first and foremost, number one. And then number two is do not ever put yourself into a position where you are 100% reliant on one or a couple of individuals that dictate your future.

Don’t put yourself into that position, you know, maintain a level of ownership and a level of control. And continue to do that and continue to innovate. That’s the third thing continue to innovate. Because those who are not innovating in the world that we’re operating in now are going to be dinosaurs. Absolutely going to be dinosaurs, right. Whether that’s innovating and understanding. We were talking about crypto before. You know, understanding what crypto is innovating and understand how that different ways to message yourself in social media verticals. Who would have thought that one of our largest verticals is tick-tock who would have thought that you know.

But it is and that’s something that’s continuing to grow. So I think those are the things and be intelligent. One of our business partners, Kris Krohn always says I love this quote, he says, you know. My last piece of advice, my last piece of financial advice after I’ve done all the other things is being intelligent spender. Spend responsibly in the future, because I think we’ve all been guilty of not spending wisely in certain. So those are the things I think it was on the side.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that Dave, thank you so much for sharing that it’s such a freakin rock star. It’s such a big rock star. And so what are you guys up to in the next like six to 12 months? What’s up in the epic world, your world?

Dave Harter
We have multiple trips that we’re taking out to Provo, Utah, to you know. My partner speaks on Kris Krohn’s stage and we have those lined up. So we have multiple webinars that are lined up. And we are exploring opportunities and relationships in the real estate space as well outside of you know. In addition to what Chris is doing and we’re also expanding our team. We’re taking on more fiduciaries, I think that’s really, really important. Especially right now, we have a lot of inflow of assets coming in, in a market that I think could be relatively topsy turvy. I think the whole amount of fiduciaries that we bring in the door. So I think the better I think we’re going to benefit from that, certainly.

And, you know, we’re going to continue to look at ways that we can innovate in social media spaces. I think it’s tick-tock and I certainly think it’s on YouTube as well. We’re continuing to build out the YouTube channel, and we have infinity that’s my podcast as well. And I think we’re gonna be doing some interesting things in that space also. So we’re really doubling down you know, we’re doubling down on our company. The presence of our company and bringing on the staffing in our company and pay attention. But I would tell everybody out there pay attention. What we’re doing is unlike what anybody in our space, hands down bar none.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Well, that’s the reason why we call it epic because you guys do epic things. Gotta let everyone know where to find your day. Where can everyone find you in your awesomeness?

Dave Harter
Absolutely. So you can get me at either daveharter@epic financial strategies.com. You can also get me on Instagram @daveharter_epic. And you can get me on Instagram @weareinfinityX. we are infinity x.com. So you can get us on we are infinity X YouTube and epicfinancialstrategies.com.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. Dave in the infinity X. Do you want to chat on that for just a second so that we can plug some people in there? Because that’s a phenomenal show that you’ve got going on?

Dave Harter
Absolutely. So about 16 months ago, we launched the podcast entitled infinity X actually at the time. When we first launched it to him it was called 19xing. Because it was centered around, hey, how do you 19 extra sales, because that’s what happened with us. When we developed partnerships with people like you people like Kris Krohn, we saw a 19x in our sales meetings. But then we said that puts a limitation on what we could create. We want to create infinite sales opportunities by helping people to hear from entrepreneurs. And hear from people that are doing things different, and so rebranded as infinity X.

Since we’ve really doubled down on it. We’ve built out a wonderful podcast studio we have a great audio-visual team, a great marketing team. We are speaking every Tuesday evening, East Coast time at 7 pm. And we’re doing it live on Facebook as well and YouTube Live as well replay we are infinity x.com. But we’ve had some real power players. We’ve had the wonderful Pam Bardhi who we just repurpose the content out on we are infinity X YouTube. Pam’s in-office live interview has gotten, I believe the highest number of views, Pam have any of the Yes, ma’am. Have any of them? Yeah.

Pamela Bardhi
I got a promo. I didn’t know that. Yeah,

Dave Harter
We’ve had Dan go through to America’s accountant from Fox News live in-studio as well. This Tuesday night, we have a guy by the name of Eric Allen. I’m excited to get to know a little bit more entrepreneur out there. And what we’re looking to do is we’re looking to develop partnerships. Potentially with people that are like minded and what we’re doing and merge ecosystems, and Shawn Cow, he talks about that all the time. That’s, you know, it’s something that I think is really, really relevant. But we’re just constantly looking to bring good content and things that are interesting. And topics that are interesting for people that are trying to build and scale.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Oh my god, you’re up to so many amazing things. My friends truly an honor to be in your world in Rob’s world. The epic world and just thank you so much for your time today. I’ve learned so much throughout the process and just enjoyed hearing everything and how you speak from the soul is so beautiful. So thank you so so much for being, so that’s it for today’s episode of underdog. Catch us next week, always dropping on Thursdays. And remember, if you’re interested in real estate. Or want to learn how to create more money and magic in your life. Check out meetwithpamela.com and let’s chat sending you so so much love.