20: Gary Sirak on Mastering the Art of Family Businesses
Your First Thousand Clients with Mitch Russo
Mitch Russo
5.0 • 104 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gary Sirak has been helping other people achieve their American Dream for the last 30 years of his life. He does this with the tools of his trade; insurance and proper planning. But not just an insurance agent, Gary is the alchemist of success and prosperity for family businesses where psychology, finance and good humor makes everything else work.
He is the CEO of Sirak Financial Services in Canton, Ohio. For the last 60 years his business, started by his father, Stan Sirak; taught Gary the most important lesson of his career: “My job isn’t to make as much money as I can. It’s to help my clients accomplish their goals.”
In this episode, Gary and I discuss:
- Filling in the gaps and how he got into family business
- Challenges with firing family members
- How thinking a bit more about solving problems and less about money
- Being the sole problem solver
- What is the imposter syndrome?
- Helping people to learn how to retire
- Mastering sales and getting clients
- Importance of relationships
- Practical lessons on becoming a great networker
- Building your reserves slowly
- The “Change the world” question
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Gary’s Website
- If Your Money Talked...What Secrets Would It Tell?
- The American Dream, Revisited: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results
Podcast Sponsor:
- Oscar Hamilton - Podcast Editing & Production services
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to your first thousand clients with Mitch Russo. |
| 0:08.0 | Listeners, what would you say if I were to bring you today an interview from a gentleman who has 30 years of experience helping family-owned businesses transition to the next generation, I bet you're going to enjoy this one. |
| 0:23.0 | Mr. Gary Serrick is with us today and he is an expert at helping families transition their business from generation to generation. |
| 0:32.0 | Gary is also the author of two books. transition their business from generation to generation. |
| 0:33.0 | Gary is also the author of two books. |
| 0:35.4 | The first, if your money talked, what secrets would it tell. |
| 0:38.5 | And that was released in 2012. |
| 0:40.6 | The second one, The American Dream Revisited Ordinary People Extraordinary Results, and that was released just last year in November of 2016. |
| 0:49.4 | Gary, welcome to the show. |
| 0:51.4 | Thank you, Mitch. Pleasure to be here. |
| 0:53.4 | Awesome. |
| 0:54.2 | So you know, it's interesting because I used to work for a family business |
| 1:00.5 | and it was probably the most dysfunctional business I've ever worked in in my life. |
| 1:06.0 | I don't know if you run into that, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you got started doing this. |
| 1:11.0 | Well, I can tell you I'm not shocked by what you just |
| 1:14.3 | said. If you were in a family business if it's not dysfunctional something is |
| 1:19.0 | clearly wrong. I'm a positive proof of that myself. So I really kind of fell into this by accident in the financial services world and advising people. |
| 1:32.0 | It wasn't what I really intended to do. I was an English |
| 1:34.2 | major from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and but my family had this |
| 1:41.2 | financial services business so at some point in time I decided to join the business because I was tired of doing what I had been doing |
| 1:48.2 | and I found myself in a middle of a family business with an uncle, a father, and a brother. |
| 1:53.8 | And being the youngest member, it was very fascinating to see how everybody was |
... |
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