Tim Harrison is the Founder and CEO of Harrison Financial Services, a premier financial planning and wealth management firm serving decision-makers, affluent families, private family offices, and foundations. Tim has been a wealth management advisor for about 30 years, helping his clients achieve financial security by providing innovative solutions for their personal and professional needs. He started his career at Northwestern Mutual but currently leads Harrison Financial Services’ team of 22 employees with over 30 post-graduate credentials.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran sits down with Tim Harrison, the Founder and CEO of Harrison Financial Services, to discuss networking and investment tips. Tim also shares his entrepreneurship journey, his financial struggles during the 2007 economic crisis, and the effects of AI on the investment industry.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [02:14] Tim Harrison’s childhood and early entrepreneurial ventures
- [06:18] How to teach kids about investing
- [07:36] Tim’s experience hiring an assistant while in college and working with his father
- [12:55] How Tim got to work with Conagra Brands and Deloitte
- [19:04] Tips for networking and maintaining key relationships
- [23:10] How the 2007 financial crisis impacted Tim’s business and finances
- [28:46] The effects of AI on the investment industry
- [31:36] Tim’s book recommendations and the people who’ve had a significant influence on his life
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
- Harrison Financial Services
- Tim Harrison on LinkedIn
- Entrepreneurial Masters Program (EMP)
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
- EOS Worldwide
- Cesar Quintero on LinkedIn
- The Profit Recipe
- Conagra Brands
- Carnival Cruise Lines
- Building a Financial Services Clientele by Al Granum
- Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth: How You and Your Financial Advisor Can Grow Your Fortune in Stock Mutual Funds by Nick Murray
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
- Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t by Verne Harnish
Sponsor: Rise25
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Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 0:00
All right. Today, we’re talking about networking and relationship building and connecting with clients. Even if you feel like you don’t belong in an industry how you can connect with some of the most amazing people in your industry in your field. My guest today is Tim Harrison. I’ll tell you more about him in a second. So stay tuned.
Intro 0:17
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now, let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 0:34
Hey, John Corcoran here, I’m the host of this show. And you know, every week I get to talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs, from all kinds of companies we’ve had Netflix, Kinkos, Grub Hub, Quicken you name it, and EO. Check out the archives, you can check out all those past episodes. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help B2B businesses to get clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn about what we do at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. And this episode is also brought to you by the Entrepreneurial Master’s Program, EMP, which is a three year long, highly selective training program for members of Entrepreneurs Organization. My guest here today and I connected through this program. It’s a wonderful program, you learn from thought leaders, experts and peers on personal and professional growth centered around five different pillars highly recommend it and we’ll link to it in the show notes so you can learn more about it.
And I also want to give a shout out to Cesar Quintero, who is the organizer facilitator of that program and also an EOS implementer. And you can learn about him at theprofitrecipe.com. He’s based out on Miami Beach works all over the globe. But my guest here today is Tim Harrison. Now he’s a wealth management advisor with Harrison Financial Services, has been doing it for about 30 years now helping people with financial security through solutions for both personal and business needs. He’s beginning his career with Northwestern Mutual today leads a team of 13 professionals at Harrison Financial Services. And collectively they have 20 different professional designations and postgraduate degrees. And he is based out of Omaha, Nebraska. And, Tim, I want to start with this story of you are six years old. And you did two things that your mother told you not to do. Not to ride your brother’s bike and not to ride in the street. And it almost ended disastrously and we almost wouldn’t be having this conversation here today. You end up a car comes out of nowhere. You go across the windshield, you broke your leg, you broke your head, you’re in the hospital for a long period of time. And we were talking before and you said that that gives you the idea that every day is a gift reflect back on that for me what that was like starting off your your life starting out your life, tender ages six years old, and having that kind of perspective.
Tim Harrison 2:57
Yeah, thanks, John. And I would just say that car accident was a life changing event, even though at a very young age, it sticks out in my mind, I remember waking up to my father and just saying where am I and again, I’ve only been told the rest of the story which is coming down the street there and turning behind a truck and a car close by and so hitting the windshield. And as you said, I broke my collarbones leg, my head had a lot of stitches in it and still have some things you probably can’t see. But nevertheless, you know, a young age, having been big into sports and a lot of things, it was just a very much impactful for dramatic thing at that time. And I know is traumatic for my mother because unfortunately, she was at the kitchen sink and kind of saw what happened. And it was, you know, not good. But obviously I’m here and he survived that. And just I know that every day I feel like is a truly a gift. It’s like I’m on borrowed time. And so since a young age, I had a greater appreciation for what we can do every day and the impact we can make.
John Corcoran 4:01
I’m always interested in how those types of pivotal life events shaped someone and and carve who they become eventually. And you also you know, you grew up in a lower middle class family in Omaha, Nebraska and you you ended up kind of having good work ethic you you worked a paper route for from age eight to 16 You did snow removal. Talk a little bit about the sons a little side hustles you had as a kid.
Tim Harrison 4:29
Yeah, my older brother had a paper out and even though I think you had to be certain age to have a route, he had three of them and fortunately was able to give me one at eight years old and then I took over the next couple the next couple of years. And you know, I would just credit certainly Mom Dad and watching them growing up working very hard and always instilled in us how important that was. So I Yeah, at a young age, I was doing whatever I could to earn a few dollars and I think I shared a few started investing at a very young age as well which certainly had a lot of input into Have what I eventually ended up going into my dad, who was with Transamerica at the time said, why don’t you start putting some of that in a mutual fund? And so, yeah, I would say it’s hugely impactful, and what I ended up doing,
John Corcoran 5:12
and your father guides you to put money into this, you know, into a mutual fund, that’s pretty rare for an eight year old to be putting money into a mutual fund.
Tim Harrison 5:20
Yeah, I think it can be. And in the 90s, everything was going up, which turned out to be So I have a journal I’ve kept since a very young age, and I was tracking what that thing was becoming. And so definitely had something to do with the planning. Part of what I do today, unfortunately, now pass it on to where my son and daughter or so my son, just, you know, he can’t have a mall. But, you know, regular gives me cash that he’s saving from working. And so yes, we’ve passed that along.
John Corcoran 5:48
Do you have that journal with you? Is it sitting next to you?
Tim Harrison 5:51
I have a number of them and I keep them all? Yes,
John Corcoran 5:54
you do you do you hold one of them up? Do you have
Tim Harrison 5:57
nearby one right here, in fact, look at recent? Well, I don’t keep it as often as I used to, but I still do keep it. Just try to capture some of the major moments and things that are going on. And I’ve just always been a planner, I used to track the fish we caught and backtrack the day that whether the type of lower the how long the fish were, you know, I just that’s the kind of thing I do. And so
John Corcoran 6:19
I got young kids, and I’d love to teach them about investing. What where should they get started? If they were to do something like that? I hand them a journal, what should they write down?
Tim Harrison 6:28
Yeah, I’ll give you one idea. You know, I don’t know about you. But I’ll tell you my daughter’s example, she would regularly come and still does today, you know, she’s in college and ask for money for this or that she wants this and that, I would always say, Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a deal. There’s a, I want you to read this book, we’ll discuss after you reach, it can be sometimes as each chapter, sometimes it’s after several chapters, we have to sit down and have a discussion about it, you have to share a little bit of what you’ve learned the moral of the story. And at the end of the chapter, and at the end of the book, you do a little book report. So they would so we’ve done that through quite a few books. And actually, one of the podcasts that you may be familiar with, I had her actually and my son do that as well, where they’ve tracked, you know, entrepreneurial stories and different things through time. And they’ve had to do reports on that. So that may be an idea for listeners out there. That’s been awesome. Because I mean, I have these reports. It’s pretty amazing through time, how good they get to doing that. And they’ll come to me now and say, Well, what if I do this? And what if I do this?
John Corcoran 7:27
I’m not beyond paying people to listen to podcasts. So hey, my kids, that sounds like a good idea.
Tim Harrison 7:32
Absolutely. Pure bribe, I
John Corcoran 7:34
guess. Yeah, exactly. So you end up? I mean, it’s no wonder you know, you were eight years old, you start working and you work straight through 16. You go to college, and you actually end up hiring your first assistant at 1819 years old, you’re already hiring an assistant. While you’re while you’re still
Tim Harrison 7:54
in college. Yeah. So my dad knew of I went to him one day, I said, I’d like to come work with you. Long story short, he said, Well, I don’t really have a place for you. He suggested I looked at Northwestern Mutual, he knew they had an internship where you can essentially work for yourself. So I did, I went through the full time training class, I was a freshman in college. Again, I just I thought I honestly would get a business card or resume that eventually I would go do something else. I mean, I certainly didn’t want to sell insurance. And I got my securities license pretty early as well. And just started developing a business from scratch down, I really did like it really did find a lot of interest in it. And then kind of went down that that path. Basically,
John Corcoran 8:34
you’re at 18 years old, you’re getting clients and you’re investing your clients money.
Tim Harrison 8:39
Yeah. And I started to mainly work on the insurance side, initially, I got the securities license and started doing mutual funds at a pretty young age as well. And then that was going well enough. And what we learned and my dad always said that Northwestern has the best training is that I knew what my per hour was worth, I figured out it was definitely worth more after, say the first six months or so than what I could pay somebody. So I hired my first assistant, a woman who could help come in and just do some basic paperwork and just do a lot of things that I knew is at the time eight to $9 an hour work and I could make $20 an hour. And so I’ve continued to do that through time. And then my next employee, as I mentioned to you is my younger brother who was 16 at the time and he came to work with me doing some of the planning analysis. And soon after, hired my dad which he was in the industry but no longer working within clients. And at 62. He retired from where he was and came to work with me.
John Corcoran 9:35
So you had a business that was successful enough at that age that he could go and work for you and earn actually a higher income then he’d made its entire career. What was that moment like for you as a son for for him as a father when he came to work for you?
Tim Harrison 9:52
It was weird. I guess that would be the word you’d use but I’ll let you describe it is Word. It was cool, though very cool. And the coolest thing about it is that my dad was such a humble person that he couldn’t do that. Because honestly, I don’t know if I could do what he did. And when he did it, and it just so cool that he saw in me and believed in me enough to leave where he was, I mean, because he was still going to work for a while. And I was able to fortunately pay him a little more than what he was making. And by the way, I’ll just share. So the year before that, I made slightly more than I was about to pay him for an annual salary. But I thought and it was it you know, as you know, you take a risk, I thought that if he would come in and run the inside Office, and I could go out and work with clients directly more of the time and not be doing any of the inside stuff. And he can kind of take care of that. Yeah. And you know, I didn’t call my CEO, but he was kind of like it at that time. I thought that might work. And fortunately, I knew that if it didn’t, that my mom, my dad, we were kind of all out of a out of a job at that point. So anyway, fortunately, it worked out, okay. And it worked really well it multiplied the next year and kept moving there. So