Pamela Bardhi
Hello, everyone. And welcome to The Underdog show. Today I have a super awesome guest here with me, Rob Gill. What’s going on, my friend?

Rob Gill
Pam, thank you so much for having me. Awesome. I’m totally pumped up.

Pamela Bardhi
I’m totally pumped up to meet you, my friend. And here we are in person at Omni, killing it, you’re killing it. We’re all killing it. Everybody in the room is killing it. So I’m excited to learn all about you and what you do in your world. So we get started, my friend.

Rob Gill
Let’s go.

Pamela Bardhi
All right. So tell me about yourself. The number one question that everyone always asks.

Rob Gill
Would you want to start from the beginning or where we are now?

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah. Who you are for you, Rob. Rob Gill. Who is Rob Gill? What does Rob Gill do?

Rob Gill
Rob Gill is the founder of Epic Financial strategies, which is really a one-stop-shop financial planning Centre for individuals, entrepreneurs, business owners, and corporate executives. And we do proper planning by really showing folks how to organize all their financial data on one landing page. So they can see their world in real-time with a click of a button. Whenever it comes to those decisions on what to invest in, they can do it logically, with mental math and science, not emotional timidity because they don’t have organization, if they can measure and monitor then they just throw things against the wall and see where it sticks. So we try and avoid all that for everybody.

Pamela Bardhi
There you go. Epic. So that’s an epic name.

Rob Gill
Yeah.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s, that’s cool.

Rob Gill
That’s cool, right?

Pamela Bardhi
It’s super fun

Rob Gill
It actually means something that means empowering. So we want all the folks that work with us to be empowered, protect, integrate and coordinate, you know. So, if you think of maybe some situations where you may have bought certain products from different people for different reasons, without really having a true approach to it. It’s almost like having a junk drawer financial planning. Well, the integration and coordination part of the I-C at EPIC is we show how to folks to have to show how their money can communicate with each other in different buckets. And, you really give them the financial freedom that they’re looking for.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing. I have a lot of questions for you. I’m gonna start with what did you want to be when you grew up?

Rob Gill
Well, they gave me a nickname two years ago, which was Big Sugar. But that’s not what I wanted to do when I grew up. So I was fortunate enough to, and I share this whenever I have an opportunity to do podcasts because I think it’s important for the listeners. I grew up in a very basketball-rich family. My sister married Bob Hurley, who’s the winning his high school coach in high school sports history and basketball.

And he goes to a competent company. He coached a team called St Anthony’s, 27 national championships, four national titles, six division- six NBA draft picks, and 142 Division-One scholarships for a school that only held 300 people. And I bring that up because early on in my life, my sister was a lot older than me when I first met them through marriage because she married my religious brother. I was thrust into, a basketball environment that the standard was so high. So as a result of that, I was fortunate enough to be around proximity, right?

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah.

Rob Gill
And I was able to play college basketball because I was surrounded by high-level achievers. Fast forwarding. So when I was growing up, I wanted to be in the NBA. You know, by the time I got to high school, I realized that wasn’t gonna happen to answer your first question. But the lessons I learned in the age of myself when I met folks like Kris Krohn, and Shawn Kalburgi, and I saw what I saw it, I knew I was not going to make the same mistake twice. Because the same thing I saw in the 80s is what I saw the last three or four years from now. And that’s greatness on an entrepreneurial business level.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. When you’re talking about being at a higher standard, that’s what happened to me. I told you, my dad was a basketball player. So when I play, I was captain of my team. And the pressure was on man, my dad went to my games, he was like four points, just like I scored like 31. I’m just like, No pressure. That sort of reminded me of all about those I would walk up the game on like, I did score 30 points. But you know, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So what led you sort of in your career path to be sort of where you’re at today.

Rob Gill
You know, thanks for that absence, I had the good fortune of living two lives one of self-imprisonment, and one of freedom. And what that meant was, you know, at the age of 26, I got sober from alcohol and drugs from age 18 to 25. I live the life that, there were many chances that I could have myself shuffle off this mortal coil, you will not be here, got shot, I got arrested.

But the beautiful thing is, I was lucky enough to have winners in my life that introduced me to the swap, 12 step program. And when you think of Alcoholics, the first thing in my life before anything else, family even, and finances that I have to show up. Because if I don’t, then I’m not going to have any of this stuff, right? So if I show up with the 12 steps in mind and don’t drink that day, and I help another alcoholic, or just another person achieves some kind of be the fiscal sobriety, sobriety from drugs, or alcohol, or any kind of sobriety, then I’ve won that day.

And once that happened, a buddy of mine who got arrested for arson introduced me to a job in Wall Street, and I became a cohort. And I had nothing else going on in my life. I didn’t have a college degree. Prior to that, there was no history of me having a job. So for the next seven years, I made four to 500 dials a day, every day, from eight in the morning till seven at night,

Pamela Bardhi
like the movie, wolf on Wall Street,

Rob Gill
It’s the same exact thing, except in the Wolf of Wall Street. And here’s the distinction for the folks that are listening. In the movie, if somebody invested 5000 in the stock, the stock didn’t exist. And they made $5,000 or 2500 dollars. In our world, when we had somebody invest 5000 in stocks, we made like 100 bucks, because it was a real company. So but we did the phones just the way they did except with your life, but the same energy and the same enthusiasm that it takes.

Because when you’re dialing all day long, you could be the most educated person, you could be booked while you could have all the answers and rooms like this when it’s not the real report, right? Once you get on the phone if you don’t understand that enthusiasm and if you don’t understand how enthusiasm is what makes the world move, you’re not gonna succeed in that business.

Pamela Bardhi
Right? And it’s energy too. So it’s like and I tell people in business all the time, I’m like, hustle out beats talent every single day of the week. So it’s like, you walked in there and you’re just like, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna do this.

Rob Gill
I did it. It was interesting. I wasn’t good.

Pamela Bardhi
Really?

Rob Gill
not at first. It was amazing. Someone my first mentor Jay Goldstein, had me read a book thinking Grow Rich, which was awesome.

Pamela Bardhi
Napoleon Hill.

Rob Gill
Yes. And he also had me read a book by Robert Cialdini, which is How to Master Influence into Six Tools, limited consistency, reciprocity, scarcity, liking social proof, and authority. And if you have these tools in your language, you can really begin to move people along. So when I started working on Wall Street, I worked after my first mentor, Jay Belson, a gentleman by the name of Joe Hagen, who one of my partners that’s behind you. I’ve known him since the late 90s.

He’s known for the financial plans that he created for the problems that were coming over. And he’s done a tremendous job. With that being said, though, Joe Hagen, gave us a book, two books, Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World, which is rinsed and repeat model all day long. The Magic of Thinking Big. Right, so those are four or five books are still in me, you know what I mean? And I went from opening, like eight accounts a month, you know, maybe like it was a slow grind. Yeah. And then one month, I open 64, four years later.

Pamela Bardhi
Wow.

Rob Gill
So what was interesting is where the ceiling of complexity comes into play, you might not remember this, but in the late 90s, we would be able to buy a stock at three and sell it at 50. Because the internet stocks were running real fast. Also not making 30 grand didn’t make sense. That just was something I could never make. I came from blue-collar, they own money. Work ethic kind of slows down a little bit. And then all of a sudden, the internet stocks got blown up, Microsoft gets sued by the government. And now they don’t work anymore. So now I had stocks that were moving so you couldn’t buy and sell because we did it the right way. Then I had to learn how to open new accounts. This was four years into my career. Because of that desperation, God, gift of desperation.

I just took all my years of learning and everything else. And in that one month, I just, it was a breakthrough of epic proportions. Because you know, I went from my normal, maybe 10 or 15 accounts to 64. At that moment, I was able to create a model and train like all the guys and gals in this room right now, the language and the presentation of the six tools of persuasion. Give it to Billy and have him read it over and over again. Knowing that there are only six things a client can say. And I was able to share with everyone in the room, how to do it. And that’s what we’re doing now with Epic and a whole ‘other thing that I’m doing with questions.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s incredible. That’s incredible. So basically building out the system and kind of going from there and scaling it up.

Rob Gill
And learning from the mistakes I made in the past.

Pamela Bardhi
Right. So what were some of the biggest challenges in your past? You know, when starting up? Oh, that’s always the hardest part. The first three to five years of business, I always say are the most.

Rob Gill
Yeah,

Pamela Bardhi
Difficult.

Rob Gill
You know, what happened for me is I was so used to now making money. So in 1986, I made 12 Grand, 97, 29, the 42, internet thing that about 30, internet school, South, I went down to 75. That’s when I say my career started. And what happen is, that’s what I was training everybody showing from like about 25 to 200. And then I opened up my own office, so it’s no longer working for Joel and for Jay.

So when the same business that I was making 250 on my payout doubled. So now I’m making half a million on what I would normally make 250 on. Because I grew up with no money, and because I had a chip on my shoulder, and because I weaponized everything in my life, then came out the Mercedes is Nicole chain. You know, Diamond crosses and sweatpants and sweatsuits, floor sweats, yes.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, Valore’s sweatsuit.

Rob Gill
I was actually invested 100 grand into a boxing promotional company, oh, just crazy, you know, doing like good investments, but spending time very bad. And I wasn’t recruiting. I had the same core guys. And I wasn’t, that’s the mistake I made then on. That’ll never happen again. Because what happened? Is it eventually just kind of eroded. Things happen in business, some challenges came up, everyone went their own way. The rebirth of our business began in 2014.

Pamela Bardhi
Wow. Because this will be my next question was what was it was the biggest aha moment in business for you. Not even just in business just in life in general, that sort of like that pivoting moment where you’re like, Okay, sound on?

Rob Gill
There’s a lot, but I’ll tell you what’s present for me. Yes, right now, I used to be able to make a million dollars. And now it’s not like, hey, if I make 1,000,000, 2 or 3 million, it’s not like, it’s really about what can I do with that money to make society better? What can I do with that money to make my community better? What can I do with that money to make my family better? And I don’t mean vacations or anything like that.

I’m talking more about how can we continue to give back? How can we continue to train? How can we use this money to really move epic, the company into a whole other stratosphere? So we’re, educating agents and advisors on how to do proper planning with clients in non-traditional ways. And at the same time, we’re serving our community, both locally, statewide, and hopefully, nationally, maybe even around the world, approximately,

Pamela Bardhi
amen. You’ll get that I know, you will, with that mentality. And that also, you totally will. And this team, all you guys are awesome. So with that, what’s different about epic because you know, there are so many financial firms and I’ll and some people are like, I don’t even know what that is, you know, like, what differentiates your company from anybody else who’s out there, besides the fact that you’re epic? Because you are.

Rob Gill
I think for us, we want to make sure that whenever we talk to somebody, we meet them where they are, not where we want them to be.

Pamela Bardhi
Nice.

Rob Gill
Right? So that’s like a real starting point. If you look at our industry, no, you’ll have the advisors over here and the insurance agents over here and they’re all fighting for the same dollar. And they both kind of make fun of each other. Right? their worlds can be integrated because I think that your financial plan can be different than Parker’s than Brianna’s. Then Billy’s and listen, John’s 90, and you’re 30. Those are two different plans. Right? So Eddie’s 40 and Brianna’s, 22, whatever, right? So those are two different plans.

The problem is in the industry, they try and do a cookie-cutter plan on everything. So I think for us, it’s like everything, you know, in a customized plan for you for john for editing ability for Brianna, those are five different plans, they should not look alike. And I think what we’re really good at because we don’t work nine to five is executing on what people really are looking to do with their money. So if I say to you, what are your goals and objectives and you share with me, and you also share with me your economic philosophy, and we do a full deep dive in really understanding who you are from the court. We could create and execute a plan that sits in fit with your goals and objectives.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing. This is golden right here golden. This is a major question that I asked everybody but what would your older self tell your younger self-face somewhere?

Rob Gill
So like a 50 or 30? Because I’m 50 or, or 70? Tell me because I don’t know what the 70-year-old guys you got and wait for something. What’s going on…

Pamela Bardhi
It’s just like, like your teenage self? What would you tell yourself? Yeah,

Rob Gill
Thank you for that question, wow, tell my teenage self to stick with a game plan, have faith in the long term of what you’re doing. Avoid as much as you can desire to have social proof. And understand the world is a lot bigger than your neighborhood.

Pamela Bardhi
Right? Right. global marketplace? No?

Rob Gill
I would love to be able to tell that to my 17-year-old self, I know

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. And now you mentioned those four books that really influenced your whole mindset. So which one would you say was like your favorite.

Rob Gill
You know, when I’m in the mode of scaling my business and bringing on advisors, the one, one that stands out is Og Mandino’s is The Greatest Salesman in the World like that book is rinse and repeat all over the place. Because we have a good fortune, I think one of the things that we have right now that no one in my business has, if I’m going to hire you, I’m gonna say, look, we’re gonna train you and our model and teach you how to fish. And during that time, we’re going to give you 30-40 leads a month, while you’re lifting off into your career. No one’s doing that. All they do is they’ll say, hey, do me a favor, come work over here at epic.

Give me a list of 200 people that you know that family and friends and set up meetings for me and the rest of the team. And then you can learn by watching us, 99% of industry do that. And I think because we’re creating ways to bring in leads every month and appointments, we have the ability to scale at a very, very fast pace. So if I’m going to scale in that sense, we’re gonna go with Og Mandino, definitely set up mastermind groups, and get more into Napoleon Hill as far as really understanding how each person or each individual can be part of the overall team but it really comes to effective change the seven steps, right? Number one, it’s you want to meet the person where they are.

Right, if I’m meeting you where you are, and I’m appreciating your world, right? And I’m doing a lot of listening through rapport-building questions. And then through that you’re feeling comfortable and communicating with me some of your challenges, I could then define your challenges, but in a solvable turn, meaning I don’t like when someone in my office says, Hey, this is a problem. I like when someone says this is a problem. Here’s my solution, right? And then create empowering alternatives, test them. But if everybody in here is part of something bigger, what begins to happen is they create world movements in their own individual world from the collective move of whoever it is. You can follow that.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. I love that. And now like where can the world find you, my friend? How can they reach you? How can they contact you and epic?

Rob Gill
You know that Thank you. The thing that’s awesome is every day we’re pushing free content on YouTube every day. We have videos coming out non-stop. And it’s not just me, it’s about my team, right? So each member is bringing out different information so they can pick us up at the YouTube channel EPIC financial strategies and just subscribe. That would be the greatest gift you can give me. You know, that will be the greatest gift.

Pamela Bardhi
That deal is done. Gotcha.

Rob Gill
The website is epicfinancialstrategies.co

Pamela Bardhi
Nice. So everyone that is where you can find awesome Rob and his awesome team. Rob, I want to thank you so much for being here today. Such an honor to have you on the team here in the room. Thank you. I know everyone’s gonna is learn so much from your interview. I can’t wait. Thank you so much.

Rob Gill
Thanks for the opportunity.