Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You are listening to the wealth without Bay street podcast, a canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe, as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.
Get our simple seven step guide to becoming your own banker. It's easy. Head over to Sevensteps CA and learn exactly the learning process required for you to implement this amazing strategy into your financial life. That's Sevensteps ca.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: We are the only profession that can create in an instant, in terms of money, what it would otherwise take someone a lifetime to accumulate. So if you think about it from that perspective, the insurance contract. Yes, the industry aptly names it a policy, but it's a unilateral, binding contract. What does it do? It guarantees the delivery of money while you're alive and when you're gone. And those two things are certainties, you're going to live for some period of time and then you are going to die. And so if you have a contract that guarantees the delivery of money and you introduce logic, like we've been talking about a lot, you've been having a lot of logical conversations, then becomes a question of how much do you want to create? Death benefit has to have merit, of course, but how much do you want to create? In other words, there's got to be some form of landing spot, like, what do I want this contract to create for me? And if you're thinking about it, people, we shared this before we hit the record button. For all of our viewers and listeners, rich and I were jamming on this a little bit, is that people hope to accumulate. They rarely have rationale to support the number. Well, I hope to accumulate $4 million by age 68. Okay, why is it 4 million? Why isn't it three? Why isn't it seven? Why is it four? But we can create that and then guarantee the delivery of money. We're the only profession that can do that. That feels remarkably fulfilling.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: The late Ben Feldman used to say, know what is an insurance contract? It is a promise to pay a bundle of money. That's what I do. I create bundles of money.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: That's the truth. That's exactly what it is.
That's what we're delivering to people. Contracts that guarantee the delivery of money.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: He would ask a question like, would you trade all your tomorrows? Will you trade the price you put on yourself? Put what you're worth today and get an option on tomorrow, so that when you need it, you'll have it. In other words, he meant like, insure yourself for what you're worth today and then get a term insurance rider for your tomorrows, for your ability to increase your revenue, increase your net worth, et cetera. You can convert that into permanent stuff when the time is right, because one of the things about insurance is we're talking about a permanent problem.
One day we're going to be talking about you in the past tense.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: And we can all agree that that's the truth. So your problem is permanent. It is going to happen. And there's going to be a tax problem. There's an estate value issue.
There's a legacy problem.
Your family has a right to go on living.
I don't know anyone who would say, no, my family doesn't have a right to go on living when I'm gone. Come on, let's be serious about this. They do. And if you're not there to produce, or your assets aren't there to produce a continuity of income, you've created a big, fat flipping problem. Well, you need to solve that problem. And one thing that solves it is insurance. It's a promise to pay. And not only can you insure it when that day comes, but you can also create a capital pile as you approach that end result. So from whatever today is to whenever the day you're gone, you need capital, and you can build that capital pile inside of the very same instrument.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: It's a legally binding promise to pay.
And that is strong. That is really strong. And when you think about one of our mentors, the late Bob Shields. So this came up at our family banking summit that we just hosted in Toronto. Several hundred attendees, incredible day. Again, it was the family banking summit. We're doing a nationwide tour, so there's going to be more dates coming up in other cities across the country, which is something that we're all really looking forward to. And in that event, the late Bob Shields came up and he said, while he was alive, he said, you know, I wish everyone could die once for a week and see the problems that they've left behind. And the policy or system of policies solves a lot of money problems exactly when they need to be solved. And so when we describe all the attributes, we talk about contractually guaranteed daily cash value growth, which, again, we discussed before the show, cash value isn't money.
The insurance company doesn't have little bins inside of a vault where they walk in there and plop extra money into your bin every single day. The reason that it's named cash value, not like a cash balance. It's a contractually binding value that is attributed to that unilateral binding contract. And the value of that contract increases daily and you pay no tax on the build up. You get to access real money without interrupting your contract's value. Your contract's value only grows, it just keeps getting better.
And then if you're a corporate owner and you've got a corporate owned contract, or even personally owned, if you think about contractually guaranteed daily buildup that you pay no tax on, you participate in the surplus generated by the company that you co own and you pay no tax on that. When you use the proper election for those dividends, which we obviously coach you to do, you pay no tax on the death benefit proceeds if the contract is structured properly and it's exempt from the passive investment income tax rules. And we all know that the government is just sitting around with a fork and knife hovering over all of your assets, wanting to take a nice big bite out of them. And so if you understand that you can store money inside of this unilateral binding contract, aka participating whole life insurance policy, that's dividend paying, how much capital of yours do you not want residing there, knowing that from this very place you can go and do all these other things? And I know that we've been expressing this in some of our recent episodes, but it bears repeating because the industry talks all about the things that the consumer just gets confused on. Well, the dividend scale, interest rate and internal rate of return components of this life insurance policy and all of the wonderful death benefit characteristics and the state transfer steel girder beam measurements of the estate plan. The consumer is like, what on earth are you talking about? I take a dollar, I create a contract that guarantees the delivery of money. Great, I'm with you. I pay no tax on contractually guaranteed daily buildup of cash value. Sounds good to me. I become a co owner of a company that's never failed to produce a divisible surplus and distribute it to the owners of the company. And it can't be repossessed, it can't lose value and it doesn't trigger tax. Okay, that sounds good to me too. And when you die, not if, but when it's going to happen, a tax free windfall of money is going to show up exactly when it's needed the most. And while you're alive.
Thank you. And you get to control how you finance all the things that you're going to need to purchase throughout your lifetime, anyway. Okay, I get it. I understand. How much capital can I have residing there? You can put almost unlimited sums of capital into this wonderful instrument called a unilateral binding contract. Stay away from all the other stuff that just confuses people. I'm speaking to all you advisors out there that are tuning in. Stay away from all the other shit that just confuses people. There are other ways to demonstrate to the world how smart you are. Using all that vernacular and describing all that stuff that the consumer doesn't grasp. Not saying it's irrelevant. Of course it's relevant. But you got to meet people where they're at, for heaven's sakes, and describe it in such a way that is understandable and ridiculously simple. Everything else is just complex and sensationalizing it, and nobody gives a crap. We just talked about our kids on Friday. Recognizing them and awarding them for their use of and repayment of policy loans. I haven't had a single juvenile who's insured ever ask me about dividend scale, interest rates, internal rates of return. What's the IRR on the death benefit? What's the IRR on the cash value? Not one child has ever asked me that that's implementing this process. But yet, in the advisor community, we can go out there and just bl.
It doesn't land anywhere. It just doesn't. So, like the late Ben Feldman said, it's a contract that guarantees the delivery of money. We can't guarantee the time, but we absolutely guarantee that you're going to have the money. How much do you want to buy?
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Well, speaking of, how much do you want to buy? You're insuring everything that you own right now for what it's worth, aren't you? Would you insure your home for half of its worth? If you have an $800,000 house, you're only going to insure it for $300,000. No, you want the replacement value of that house so you can rebuild it, right?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: And isn't that funny? The bank won't let you.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: The bank, they won't even give you the option. Okay, but if you're indebted to them, think about this. You're indebted to them. Yes.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Think about this. But is it impossible to have no debt if you're homeless and destitute? Maybe. Right? But think about this. The bank, the lender won't let you insure that asset for less than its value. Right, rich? If you follow like when you become your own banker. Banker. You shouldn't let yourself insure the bank owner for less than the bank owner's value, right. You should not permit that. Isn't that good?
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Just at a high level perspective, if you make $100,000 a year and you plan on being alive for the next 40 years, well, let's just do some third grade arithmetic. You take the 100,000 over 40 years. Isn't that $4 million?
Your gross earning potential, assuming a stagnant amount of income that never goes up in that 40 year time frame, just at a very high level surface, is $4 million. Well, today, from an income earning perspective, that's what you're worth all of your future tomorrows for the next 40 years, if you make 100 grand, is worth $4 million. So wouldn't that be a good basis for a starting block for your insurance? It's something that the insurance industry has a really magical, very cool sounding term, farm. It's called human life value.
It's actually pretty stupid, but just logically speaking, you're going to earn income. Some funds dependent on you, or dependent on your income or your bills are dependent on it. Insure yourself for what you're worth, get it done before you're not able to get it done, because it doesn't take much to take you away from being insurable in this day and age. There's a ton of.
I'm going to put it this way. I think we live in a pretty medicated society. That's just my opinion. But as you become more and more medicated, well, some of those medications could make it more difficult for you to even be insured.
There's things that are happening and causing insurability risk for people, even in younger generations. You have people now, as we're legalizing, we've got legalized marijuana and stuff. Depending on how much of that that you use and in what format you use it, that could give you an issue with your insurability. There's just all kinds of things to consider, and the sooner you get it done. Would you rather be looking at it or looking for it? Yeah, I've lost my keys. I lose my keys every once in a while, Jay. I hate fumbling around looking for my keys. I just want to know where they are. So when it comes to my future tomorrows, I want to make sure I'm covered for them. And I'm not looking around for how well I'm covered for those things.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Become your own banker and take back control over your financial life. Hey, is this even possible? You may be asking, can I even do this? Well, you better believe it. In fact, it's easy to get going. So easy that we put together a free report. Seven simple steps to becoming your own banker. Download it right now. Go to sevensteps. Ca. That's seven steps. Ca. Now let's get back to the episode.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: In addition to being covered, ask yourself the question, how much do I hope to accumulate? How much money do I hope to accumulate? Because we can literally create that. Yeah, of course, when I say we, I'm describing the fact that we can bind you to the life insurance company. Right? Rich isn't going to go out into his massive backyard with a shovel and dig up a pile of money for, like. That's not what we're talking about.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Although if you know something about my backyard that I don't, I would appreciate you sending me an email, because if I should be digging, I will start.
Don't feel bad about sending me a memo.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Right. So think about what you hope to accumulate. Because there's two sides to the coin.
Of course, the death benefit has to have merit. It's got to be justifiable. That's why there are questions associated with determining the need, how much is actually needed. But I would also encourage people to ask, how much do I hope to accumulate? I'm not talking about total death benefit. I'm talking about total cash value. How much do I hope to accumulate? And recognizing that going to need to use some money for the rest of my lifetime, I have to purchase things. I'm always working with borrowed money when I pay cash for things. And if I can control how I go about financing all those things throughout my lifetime, then I'm really going to do extremely well financially while I'm alive. And there'll be more than I had hoped to accumulate when I'm gone. And that creates a very peaceful, stress free existence financially. And as we often say, it just doesn't happen overnight. It's meant to be achieved incrementally and gradually over a period of time. But the conversation when you sit down with a life license advisor is to talk about the need. We shift the conversation. We cover the need. That's part of our duty of care. And of course, we address that and cover that. But we shift the conversation to what do you hope to accumulate? Because there's a difference between hope and certainty. Hope is a great word in romance. Certainty is a great word in building a bigger financial future. Isn't that good? So shift the conversation and follow Richard's advice, like, make sure of course you got to be covered. And think about it. Everything begins with the way that we think. A lender is not going to let you insure an asset for less than its value. So when you become the banker in your life as it relates to your needs, then don't allow yourself to insure the bank owner. Hint that's you for less than what you're worth. Your bank should have a golden rule that says that can never happen. Anybody who fulfills the character of being a bank owner, you are required to insure your life for what it's worth. That's part of the deal. That's part of the family banking system principle. That's really good. We just came up with that today, Richard. That's really good. We've got to make sure that we save this.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: You know, you talked about the growth of the cash value and the accumulation and cash value not being cash balance, et cetera. But if anyone listening in wants to get clear on how that cash value is growing and accumulating, and it's going to constantly continue doing that based on the foundation of the contract, we got a great little book that tells you all about it called cashfalls the leader. And you can get a free copy by going to cashfollows.com. Just walk on over to cashfolles.com, put in your details, and boom, that'll be in your inbox in no time flat.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: I like that. Cashfollows.com cashfollows.com and when you get to cashfollows.com, see, you're not going to be able to forget it now because just program that into your subconscious mind. If you wake up at three in the morning typing cashfollows.com on your phone, don't send Richard or I. Any hate is because your subconscious never stops working. That's why if you've ever woken, sprung up out of bed at two in the morning with that great idea, you're wondering, oh my gosh, why did that happen? It's because your subconscious was continually working on it. Never stops. And so when you head on over to cashfollows.com, when you get there, you're going to be able to request your free copy of Cash follows the leader. And it's a great book. It's been met with raving fanfare. And what's super cool is that for people. And you can pay for it too. You can go buy it if you want. Would be great because we get royalties on the book.
I think that to date on all our books, I think we've gotten like $14.23 in royalties, it's a little bit.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Higher than that, but it's definitely nothing to write home about. I could tell you that much.
If I go to my backyard with my shovel, I'm not digging up the royalties that we've earned on books.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: We give so much value.
Joe Polish says it best. Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker, and we don't want the royalties from the book. And rich is right. It's a lot more than that. But we don't want the royalties from the book. We want you to get the value that's in the book, and we want you to take action, and we hire the book to do a very specific job, and that's to get people into a conversation with us. That's what we hire our book to do. Courtesy of Joe Polish of Genius Network. I'll never forget him saying that.
I'll never forget him saying that. I'll never forget. He's like, go write a book and hire the book to do a very specific job. What job is that? To get people into conversations with you. Okay, I'm going to go write a book. Rich. Let's write a book. And rich is like, why? Well, we need to hire it to do a job. Well, what job is that? To get people into conversations with us. Okay, let's go ahead and write a book.
And so we've written a few books, and we have a few more books.
Um, so for all you aspiring authors out there, go and write a book and hire it to do a job, which is to get people into conversation with you and then send a letter to Joe Polish thanking him very well, very much. Pardon me for his amazing advice. And if you don't know Joe Polish, you should founder of the Genius network. You can find him on the social media platforms, on the YouTubes. He's an amazing guy and grateful to be in his genius network mastermind.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: And if you're someone who just doesn't want to have conversations with people, then you should write the book to have the conversation you would have with people so that you don't have to. And then way of looking at it.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Put right in the front cover, don't.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Call me, I don't want to talk to you.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: And people do not like talking to me. So don't request a conversation with me because I'm about to have it with you in this book.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Just read my book.
Read this as though we're having a conversation.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: So good. And we just literally, we come up with these ideas about what we want to share and talk about, because we receive inspiration from the people that we serve and the conversations that come up with them. And it gives us inspiration to really transfer a lot of that great knowledge and awareness to the general public because we get contacted all the time from people who say, we've been following you guys on social media for several months. We've consumed a ton of podcast content, a ton of YouTube content, and we feel ready to go. And the feedback that we get at the family banking summits for people who come up to us and disease. I can't believe I'm actually talking to you. It's like, wow, I didn't realize you were that tall or I didn't realize. I didn't think that I was going to have an opportunity to meet you. And the feedback is that we come across, which we're very humbled by, we come across very genuine. And we're always giving credit to Nelson because we miss him. We think about him every single day and we never forget the impact that he's had on us. And we're talking about R. Nelson Nash, the late developer and pioneer of the process of becoming your own banker. The, the, the infinite banking concept.
That's what I wanted to share. I was asked a question the other day. So this gentleman, he met with a practitioner, an authorized infinite banking practitioner, and he said, I've talked to a few practitioners and I'm trying to figure out who I should work with. What should I base my decision upon?
[00:21:35] Speaker A: It's a good question.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah, precisely. I said, that is an excellent question. And I think what's really important is that who you're really looking for is someone who possesses the optimum mindsets of someone that you most love to work with. Like, if you think about, I shared it at the family banking summit, I most love to work with people who are respectful, responsible, kind, strong family values, who are coachable, who make decisions based on fact, who are action takers. I love serving people with those optimum mindsets. And he said, nobody's ever suggested that to you before. He's like, I'm going to have to put some thought into that. I said, you already know what those are because who you're looking for is going to be someone very similar to you. And that was kind of like this big eureka moment for him. And he's like, I really feel like I'm dating and I don't know who to ask to marry me.
So this gentleman was referred to me, and he had already talked to a few practitioners and a lot of great practitioners out there. And so we were hosting this event on Friday. I was talking to him on Wednesday, and I said, well, do you want to go on a date with me on Friday?
He's like, pardon me? I said, yeah, why don't you come out to our family banking summit? That'll be our date.
And so we recognize that not everybody's going to work with us is what I'm trying to say. There's plenty. Of course, yeah. Plenty of marketplace for everybody. Right. And you don't have to own the ocean to sail on it, but really important to take some time to really think about, okay, what are the optimum mindsets of a person that I would most love to work with in having that person coach me and mentor me on this process? What are those key attributes about someone that I think would be really important to me? Because when you show up in the marketplace and you're either trying to sell against someone or something, or you're trying to compare attributes people buy people they don't buy, attributes they don't buy based on the fact that you're trying to sell against someone or against something or some product, people buy people, plain and simple. So identify the attributes of the best people that you most love to work with, and that's what you should be looking for. Of course, you've got to have designated experience, and the person has to be able to demonstrate to you how they've been implementing the process in their lives and ask them one important question, which I believe carries a lot of weight. And for future advisors, this is obviously not possible, but nonetheless, it's the truth. Just ask the question. How much time have you spent with the late R. Nelson Nash? Because you don't have to spend time with him while he's alive. There's a lot of great, we've curated a ton of great content that we didn't have to put it out there for the world. We did it because we want to be in service to other people, because we think in abundance, not scarcity. We put a ton of stuff out there. I hope it's benefiting other practitioners that don't work with us.
You're welcome.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Really good. Question is, when was the last time you read Nelson's book or read from.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: The book and then ask the practitioner some really important questions. Walk me through the grocery store example. Describe the problem to me in your own words. Walk me through the fundamentals of this concept. Because the moment you start jumping from that right into product attributes, you may want to just think through a little bit more.
I was on a call. Before you make a decision, I think.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: It was last week with someone who kind of a similar circumstance. We didn't talk about dating or anything, of course, but I was like, my.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Wife'S going to be really upset with me.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: No, there was like, no, I get it.
This gentleman was just doing, again, his own research, and he was looking up life companies and looking up the life companies information and contacting life companies to get quotes. I'm like, quotes for what? You don't even know anything about the process. You don't even know what you're looking for.
And he's using all this verbiage, which he had read from reports and trying to get this industry knowledge. I'm like, but you're getting all this knowledge. That doesn't mean anything to you. There's no relevance to it yet. Anyway, he had met with, not even met with, I think had reached out to a practitioner who had sent, apparently sent some illustrations. That sounds like without any real conversation. That was my interpretation. I could be wrong. I don't really know, but I thought it was interesting. And again, I'm sure amazing practitioner. Don't really know, but I thought it was interesting. It's like there are certain people who are actively involved in the community, around the practitioner community, and they come to our annual conference.
Maybe they speak at the conference, or they actively participate into discussions. They go out for dinner. They're meeting with people at different stages throughout the whole event, and they're irregular. They come on a repetitious basis, meaning they've been there more than once in a decade. And when I hear about someone talking to a member who has never attended the conference in the time that I've been going there for, what is it, 1213 years or something, that we're going 13 years, I find that very odd. And again, and that's a choice. And maybe there's ancillary reasons why they haven't attended. I don't know, but it seems very strange to me that they're happy to dispense knowledge and information that I think a lot of which you would only learn from attending and coming to that environment and being around your community of peers to hear context of what other people are doing, the challenges that they're facing in the industry around many things, rule changes, just a whole host of different things, and how they're communicating the message forward. Because we go to that conference every year, Jay, and we come back with all kinds of additional value that we can then share and communicate forward to our so again, if you're thinking about know, talking about know in making a decision or communicating with a practitioner, you want to find someone that's a fit. That fit should be a fit around mindset. But one of those things that, in my opinion, has to be there is there has to be a good knowledge and understanding and communication level about Nelson's message. Not about product design, about the fundamentals of becoming your own banker.
And if you can't get questions like that answered, I mean, regardless of how good you are at a personality match level, you probably should consider checking in with someone else. Not to say that that person won't be good or isn't good, but just like get really clear, are they teaching from the core content and do they have a good grasp on that content? And are they heavily incentivizing you to go and continue your own research on that content?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Without Nelson's book, if you're looking at doing this and you don't even have Nelson's book, you probably shouldn't be doing know talking to people recently as well, even just at our family banking summit, they've ordered Nelson's book on the Kindle version, or they've listened to it on audio, all of which are good, by the way. Everything there is a great step.
This is my personal opinion. It's my opinion. Take it or leave it. I don't really care. You need to own a physical copy of Nelson's book. It's meant as a workbook. It was designed in the very first paragraph. This was designed as a workbook for a ten hour seminar course of instruction. If you don't have the workbook, how.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Can you work in it? Right.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: I can't work in my Kindle very well. I can highlight some things. I can make some random notes, but I can't really visually see them. And from our perspective and from our team, when we communicate this message to people and our clients, what are we doing? We're bringing them back to the book. We're referencing page numbers. We're getting them to go to a page number in our communication platform of how we talk to one another to make sure that we can be on the same reading from the same sheet of music. Well, the music was written by Nelson. If we want to play to the same song, don't we need to read from the same sheet of music? Otherwise, we're going to be playing different songs. So we want to be able to bring people back to a specific moment or point in time. In Nelson's book, we need the page number for that. It doesn't match up on the Kindle or in the audio version of the book. Not to say that those aren't good resources, but those are supplementary resources to the physical version of the book. That's my opinion.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah, very good opinion.
Wow. We talked about a lot of great stuff today and I think we reinforced some really important fundamentals and everything from making sure that you're insured for what you're worth and making sure that you're also creating a program that accumulates what you had hoped to accumulate and making sure that you're really thinking about the optimum mindsets of someone that you would most love to have coaching you and mentoring you on this process.
And again, a lot of great practitioners out there and just a lot of people that need to be served. And so there's plenty of space and room for everybody to do a great job at that. And all we can suggest is that it all begins with reading Nelson's book, really reading it cover to cover, and then having a great conversation to share what insights come up for you, what you're thinking about after having read the book with an experienced practitioner who really understands the fundamentals and there's value in surrounding yourself with people in our community and having attended think tank events and really immersing yourself. And you and I were blessed beyond that to have so much wonderful time with Nelson. And he shared so much with us beyond what was written in the book because he wanted to expand upon everything that he had written in the book. And we've taken those insights and shared that in many different forums and we're going to continue doing that for the rest of our lives. But really appreciate all our viewers and folks for tuning in the feedback that we receive at our live events about our podcast. It really, really makes us feel even a higher degree of fulfillment to be able to do this and stay tuned for a ton of additional great content this year. It's going to be incredible. And you've seen the video playlist that popped up thanks to our amazing editing team. So continue your journey of learning by clicking that next video. Keep going, keep learning and make the rest of your week outstanding. Thanks so much everybody. Thanks so much everybody.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the wealth without Base street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. We definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies and the mindset that maximize your wealth.
