041: Shift Your Finances – Sound Financial & Investment Advice (w/ Darryl Lyons)

Summary: Darryl Lyons is the CEO and co-founder of the PAX Financial Group which helps people improve their financial planning and quality of life through strategies for investing. He is a licensed financial planner and the author of Small Business, Big Pressure. Darryl began his career in the financial sector right after university and throughout his career; he had won awards for recruiting and development form Fortune 100 companies. <br> <br> He started PAX Financial Group back in January 2007 with his co-founders Andres Gutierrez and Joseph Schuetze. He has built the company to officially become “one of the best places” to work in San Antonio. <br> <br> Darryl also served as the Chairman for the Brooks Development Authority which earned him the honor of having Mayor Julian Castro name a park “The Darryl W Lyons Park”. He was also named to the 2010 San Antonio Business Journal’s “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” which honors people making a difference in business and the community  <br> <br> Period in full-time business <br> <br> Started out alone about 12 years ago and after 2 years, brought in 2 partners to form PAX Financial Group. In the beginning he had a sole proprietorship business. <br> <br> Current Revenue streams <br> <br> The main revenue sources for PAX Financial are managing people’s money, insurance services and group retirement accounts. Darryl and his team take pride in liberating people when it comes to managing their money. Their services enable their clients to focus on what they are good at.    <br> <br> Starting out in business <br> <br> His entrepreneurial journey started while in college. He used to work at a bank full-time to pay for college and that’s where he developed his interest in finance. Decided to study accounting and finance which enabled him to go into the banking and investment world. He started by working for big companies. Started his own firm about 5 years later. <br> <br> Transition from formal employment into self-employment <br> <br> It was a painful process for Darryl. His father had always motivated him to be an entrepreneur. Getting his first child was the first factor that pushed him to quit his formal job because he had the fear of losing his job while having so many personal responsibilities. A series of other difficulties eventually led him to go into entrepreneurship and despite the challenges he faced in the beginning, he persevered until he achieved success. His faith in God played a major role in his success to date. <br> <br> Working on his new business <br> <br> Working in the corporate world taught him how to create a habit of excellence. He used to do aggressive cold calling coupled with direct marketing and they helped him achieve solid sales leads which turned into long term clients. He applied the same to his new business and it helped him achieve sales while also maintaining his previous clients. <br> <br> Getting the first set of clients <br> <br> He engaged in a lot of networking which helped him get a fresh list of clients after losing all the previous clients he had when starting out. One of the people he met at a networking event appreciated Darryl’s level of integrity in his work, which led to Darryl being endorsed by Dave Ramsey. That endorsement became the new catalyst to his growth. He started getting 100 referrals per month from Dave Ramsey. Still works with Dave’s team to date. <br> <br> Working towards getting endorsed <br> <br> Darryl had a high degree of authenticity in his work and that naturally led to influential people endorsing his work. <br> <br> Tip: Doing what you are passionate about will eventually make you visible in your area of business and if you maintain a high level of integrity and professionalism in your work, the right people will endorse and validate your work. <br> <br> 3 minute talk to 30,000 people <br> <br>