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 seven steps ca.
So what exactly does it look like to hit the reset button on your life after 30 years of working in a family business? Well, we're going to find out. We're joined today by Laura and of course, my good friend Jason. And we've got Henry Wong with us as well. Today, Laura is a business owner or mother of three kids, and she's got an incredible story of working hard, strife and resilience, and really having to start over fresh, really from scratch with a new business after a long history with one and a wild set of unfortunate events that essentially caused them to create a brand new venture in February of 2020, just three weeks before lockdowns began for Covid, a quick and decisive decision to pivot to Plexiglass in their business resulted in that creating a home run, something that looked like it could be very devastating, was able to be changed quickly into something that was quite profitable. So it's an incredible journey. We probably won't have the time to share all of it, but the impact of IBC and the infinite banking concept entering her life in 2022, when she started doing some additional financial research, has really been a blessing to her and getting connected with, of course, Henry Wong to help implement that. She is obviously a dog lover, someone who has her dog, Piper, that's with her everywhere she goes. And she's also going to be celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary next year in February. So, Laura, we're happy to have you on the program. We're excited to have a wonderful conversation today and thanks for joining us.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm looking forward to it, too.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, Henry, I'd love maybe for you to jump in and just share a little bit about how you got connected with Laura and what brought you guys together, and then we'll have Laura jump in and share some of these incredible aspects of her journey.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I will say I got introduced to Laura, actually through our team member, Jinjin. So Jinjin actually brought us to work together. And when we started to work together, we have our process that we go through to get to know our clients or people who are wanting to implement the process of becoming your own banker. And I'll ask a few questions. And we really started to get connected. And Laura loves to share a lot of type, really great emails and share a lot about the backgrounds and things. So even after our first conversations that we go through, she shared a lot more background and details behind it. And one of the things that really resonated a lot when we chatted about was just our perspective of things. And also when she was sharing those stories and things that she was with us, what I really picked up was just how hardworking she is. Her and her husband Ruben, who work in the business, and then once going through it, they would have these particular challenges that are actually very common in business owners. And when it comes to dealing with really great employees, dealing with spending, taxes, debt, or challenges, just overall as part of their overall business, she really opened up on sharing a lot of that information with me, and we definitely connected on several levels. And as we were just chatting, it was really enlightening for her to share her also side with her children and what she was trying to inspire with her children in terms of educating them with money and how to go about her.
So just on a general perspective, I thought it was really great for her to come on board, to actually share her story, because I think a lot of canadian business owners can really relate to her situation.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: That's about it.
Okay, we're done.
[00:04:20] Speaker D: Laura's like, oh, gotta run. Gotta go back to Florida.
Question that came up for me when I had the opportunity to read through the bio and the details that were shared with us before the show is when you discovered the process of becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept, what was it that tipped the scale for you? So what compelled you to reach out and to get connected with someone on our team?
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Well, that's a loaded question. No, honestly, when I found out about it through listening to a real estate podcast, the canadian real estate podcast, you guys do an advertisement on it, but it wasn't the advertisement that got me. It was a teacher who was talking in, like, Thunder Bay was talking about the process of this banking. And all I remembered out of that entire podcast was this concept. I didn't hear anything else that he said, just that part, and I don't know why. It just kept playing over and over in my head, and so I had to scroll through. Then I listen to lots of podcasts when I'm driving, et cetera. And so I had to go back and I couldn't even remember which podcast I'd heard it on. So I had to scroll through all my podcasts, know, fast forward, and try to find this sentence that this guy just happened to.
Um, so I googled, you know, I find Nelson's book. So then I go on Amazon, I'm like, I can order this guy's book. If this teacher can do this, I can do.
So that's what happened. I ordered the book. It came, and I was really surprised by how thin it was. I was expecting a much thicker, much thicker book. And I read the first few pages and I thought, this is ridiculous because this concept makes absolute sense. Therefore, there's something I'm not understanding. It must be wrong because I understood it, but I thought, it can't be this simple. So I just sort of put it aside. And then I was like skimming through and I was skipping all the charts. So it's page after page of going through and skipping the charts. I wasn't reading the charts. And again, I'm saying to myself, I'm missing something because I get this, but how can I get this?
Anyway, about a couple of weeks later, or a week later, I just decided to sit and read the whole thing cover to cover, including the charts.
[00:06:48] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:06:49] Speaker B: And this time I was like, this makes absolute sense to me. And I'd always had life insurance. My parents took life insurance out on me, whole life insurance when I was born.
And when I was, I guess I was about 21, 22. My husband, then boyfriend had gotten a condo, and we were both working full time. So we both basically, I have one year of university. He went to work right out of high school. We weren't into post secondary, we were into making money.
My parents said to me, oh, you know what? You're 20 something now you can take over this policy. It's like $20 a month or something like that. But I had this cash payout of like $2,500. So I was like, well, forget that. I'm just going to cash it out because I could buy all my furniture.
So that's what I did.
Ruben bought this condo and I furnished it, and I thought this was the greatest thing ever. And of course, now I regret cashing that out. So anyway, the concept of life insurance was not new to me. I did understand all of, you know, reading through the book. So then, of course, I google and I find you guys and it says, make an appointment. And I thought, what's the harm in me talking to somebody right about this, because I must be missing something. And I got connected with Ginjin and she was great. And she was asking me about my business and I was telling her about my business.
And then she's know, do you want to make another phone call, your hour long call or something? And I said sure. And she sent me the calendar and I clicked a date. And somehow I ended up with Henry, not her. I ended up with his calendar, not her calendar. And that's how it just, I got it right away. I don't know why, I don't know how, I don't know why it stuck in my head. The only thing I can think of is I was ready to see it.
[00:08:46] Speaker D: That's the key. When the student's ready, the teacher appears and our Nelson Nash, the book that we're referencing, by the way, is becoming your own banker. And Nelson described in the very early pages of the book that this message is more caught than it is taught. And to hear what you're describing around life insurance hadn't been anything that was new. And Nelson shared that in the book. He said it's nothing new that people can access policy loans from a life insurance company and utilize a policy in this way.
What was absent from the industry at that time was the knowledge of all the financing characteristics of these policies. So that rewinding back in time to when you were ready to buy the furniture for the condo, an advisor could have sat down with you and said.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Hey, you know what?
[00:09:41] Speaker D: You can continue putting $20 into this policy as premium. We can borrow against it to go get the furniture. We'll keep that 2500 plus dollars growing every single day and shown you what the possibilities were. But the industry, just for your own awareness as well, Laura, the industry doesn't teach that.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I see that also. So after talking with Ginjin, my parents still kept their own policies going. So my parents have whole life. So I asked for my mom to reach out to her advisor to give me authorization on the policy. And so she did. And I had a phone call with him and because again, I'm still thinking this is too simple of a concept. I'm still missing something here. Where's the catch? And so I reached out to him and I said to him, my parents had these policies, can I borrow from them? Can I take a loan on them? And he was like, well, you can, but you don't want to do that.
Why don't we just take a bank loan and this will be the collateral?
And then I'm like, no, I know about that. I don't want that. I want to know, if I can just take a loan against the policy. He did everything to discourage me from that. And he said that I can get way more money. I can go to the bank and fully leverage the full amount. And the catch is, if I don't pay it back in the year, though, then it becomes part of our yearly income and it's taxable. I'm like, whoa, wait a second here.
The last thing I want is to be paying any more tax.
And so he didn't get it. He was absolutely adamant that it could be done, but that's not the right thing to do and not to do it. So I was like, okay, thank you very much. And that was the end of that.
[00:11:34] Speaker D: Another reason why Nelson said that he wrote the book for you, Laura. He didn't write the book for Henry, myself, or Richard. He wrote the book for you.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:44] Speaker D: So that you could see.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: They know that was within the last year. That wasn't something I did in my.
Yeah, so my parents still have those policies going, and my mom keeps wanting to cash it out and like, no, no, just let it ride, leave it.
[00:12:06] Speaker D: Great.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's how I got into just. It just clicked. I was ready to see it and I was ready to hear it. And I think I was pushing Henry. I was trying to move too fast.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Even that never happens, Henry, does it?
[00:12:20] Speaker C: We were talking almost daily and weekly for quite a while.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Right, Laura?
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Well, one thing I think is interesting, Laura, prior to discovering the book and ordering the book, you were in the process of doing some reevaluating. You are looking at moving some money around, making some larger financial decisions around your business. And personally, because of the success that your new business had been having and the things that were being recommended to you were kind of the white label plain vanilla. Here's what everyone else on planet earth in Canada is doing. You should just go and do that. And something about it didn't sit well with you, from my understanding. Can you talk a little bit about that and share that with our listeners?
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Well, to be perfectly honest, it was of my own doing.
I can't really blame somebody else for that.
When we were with my husband's family business, there was no long term succession properly set up. And I always had a concern that if something were to happen to my husband, who is going to take care of me and the children? Yeah, I'm working there, but that's not going to sustain us for the rest of our life. And I kept asking family members about creating a pension plan, and my husband's family is a little, we'll call them superstitious, I guess, or, I don't know, they didn't want insurance policies and they didn't want a pension plan. And I kept insisting. So I had found out about corporate pension plan and it can come from pretax dollars to reduce your taxable income. So I had already planned this before, but it never came to fruition. And so when I started my own business and we were profitable, I thought, oh, well, I'm just going to carry on where I left off before and I'm going to start these pension plans. And then it was also suggested to me that we take out a lump sum of money reported as income, but put it directly into RSP. So we offset our income with the RSP contributions out of a break even at the tax point. And to me, that's kind of all I knew. Pensions and rsps, that was it.
And when I first started with Henry, we were really only talking about personal insurance. And then I guess I watched one of your YouTube videos on the corporate policies. So then I started asking Henry. I'm not sure if I asked Henry, he brought it to my attention, but one way, or is that we started talking about corporate policies. And then he helped me realize that I would have been better dumping all that money and paying the tax, going over the threshold or whatever, and putting that money to work in a policy instead for a much greater return later on than this little pension plan was ever going to pay out. And I have to hope that the markets do well or my pension is just going to disappear anyway.
And then, of course, I learned I didn't know about all the clawbacks or all of the other things.
I guess I was just ignorant. I just didn't think. It wasn't that people hid it from me or tried to trick me. I just didn't think. It didn't cross my mind that I would end up in a higher tax bracket. I would be paying more taxes on my rsps, clying back my Canada pension, if that even exists by the time I get there. And I didn't know any know, my parents worked really hard their whole life. They had pensions. And I think probably what really bothered me is both my parents are retired and my parents ended up with a $2,000 dental bill. And it really made me angry. They worked their whole life here and now they don't have dental coverage and got to pay $2,000 in dental bill.
It's something small like that that really struck me that this country is not set up to take care of the elderly after years and years of contributing, of contributing to the growth of this country. And it's very sad to see, and I've realized that I have to take matters into my own hands. And so that's what I ended up doing.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: 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've 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.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: I want to just jump in and just share that. Laura, you're a little hard on yourself that you've taken, actually a lot of initiative to learn. Now, some of the information I shared with you, I would say was pretty surprising in terms of maybe a revelation to you in terms of the pension plan and the unfunded commitment that could happen because of that lack of performance in it. And then, like you were mentioning, what's generally missing is that integration from the relationship of a corporate environment and the personal environment. And so the most common advice is to give to say, oh, just draw a salary so you can defer the tax liability to some point in the future.
And you follow and watch a lot of our webinars and our content, and I've done some content related to clawbacks and issues on when you actually draw on that, how you start losing more money. So give yourself a little bit more credit that you actually go through learning about the systems and how they're designed, and you are actually working and putting that plan into action for you and your family. And I just get to be in a fortunate position to coach you on that. And you're definitely very receptive to learn about that. I think for a lot of business owners in Canada, the amount of information that they get, I'm sure you felt very overwhelmed with. There's a ton of information, but it's all fragmented but never structured in a very particular way to your situation on how to handle it for what you actually need.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: Okay, thank you.
[00:19:09] Speaker D: Sounds great.
What's exciting you most right now about being in business?
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Saving enough money to retire?
I just want to retire.
[00:19:25] Speaker D: And what is retirement? Without delving into specifics about what aspirations you have for being in retirement, but what excites you the most about I'm.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Really looking forward to having more time.
There are a lot of benefits to being a business owner. But there is a lot of pressure.
My husband often says he feels like he's parenting 30 kids.
We're always worried about our staff if they have their own personal issues or financial issues. And the last year, when a lot of our staff had variable mortgages and when the mortgage rates went up, we felt that for them.
Luckily, our mortgage was locked in at those nice, low rates. But our business, we have 30 staff. I'd say a good 20 of them. We've known for some of them 20 years. So they're family to us. We're not just like our employees are our family. So when they have stuff that's affecting them personally, it affects us.
And it's a lot of pressure to feel responsible for so many people in the situation that everybody's in right now with these high interest rates and the crazy cost of living, it's hard. And managing all of that, not just for our own family, but for all of these families.
And that's what I say about retirement. I'm looking forward to just taking it easy, not having to worry about so many other people, and that's maybe a little selfish, but that's how I feel.
[00:21:21] Speaker D: That's not selfish at all. So many people have difficulty articulating what they want because they're worried about why people might think they want it.
It doesn't matter to anybody else. You want it because you want it. That's the reason.
More freedom of time. That's where I was going with this, because I can share with you. Just hopefully you find this beneficial or valuable is one of my coaches, Dan Sullivan, said, the one thing that you have to worry about as you enter into retirement is that you have to deal with the force of gravity, and gravity wants to pull you down right back into the ground. And so don't become low hanging fruit for gravity. Meaning, be very clear about what exactly it is that you're seeking. Are you seeking to be out of service to other people, which retirement truly means? Or are you seeking more freedom of time, purpose, relationships, money? And so what I heard you describing to me, if you've built a business where you have 30 plus team members who are like family to you and you want more freedom of time, I couldn't see somebody like you. And we can all attest this is the first time I've met you, unless you and I have interacted at some point in the past that I don't recall. But you want more freedom of time is what you said.
And so to achieve that freedom of time, but while not taking you out of service to others.
I don't know. That's what I pick up on, that you truly desire, and that's a great thing to pursue. And through your business, if you're creating a self multiplying company, if you get the business to that stage where the business is literally multiplying without your involvement, that gives you more freedom of time, but it doesn't take you away from your extended family.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Right?
Isn't that good? Yeah, that's great.
[00:23:41] Speaker D: Okay. Excellent.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: What's awesome about that is the power of possibility and the power of potential. And through your story and your journey and many of the hardships you've had, again, a life of working hard, raising a family, all the things that most Canadians are dealing with, finding that position and that strength of fortitude. I think about Jason's statement and then reflecting on in your story, that kickoff point of beginning your new business, the business you're in today, in February of 2020, and having to make the decision to basically go all in and put all your chips down on that new venture based on the circumstances that were surrounding your life at that time, there's a lot of heavy weighted decision making process that goes into doing that, and there's a large commitment to make. You have to have the courage and the commitment to develop the courage to do that. And then shortly after making that powerful decision, to have the rest of the world decide it was going to hit the stop button on letting people even out of their household doors, et cetera, but to push through that and find a way to have this incredible decision to pivot so that you could make a business sustainable in that environment because of the responsibility you feel to the people that work for you and your family members.
It's a very interesting environment you found yourself in. So I'm curious if you take us back to that point where you and your husband had made the decision to begin this new business, and then what was going through your mind? What was happening when these Covid announcements came out and you were trying to figure out how are we going to keep this ship afloat that we just started three weeks ago? I'd love to hear a little bit about that from you and see how that journey's progressed from that point on.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Okay, so this could be a long winded answer.
Henry, don't laugh.
So, due to a lot of family issues, we were essentially forced out of a business that my husband had grown for 30 years. So he started about age of 14 and full time by 18, and he fully expected to take over that business, that's what was promised to him. I started there just shortly after we were married, so we worked really hard, and due to the circumstances, we essentially left that Business. We had a lot of plans to grow that business so that it would continue to be self sustaining and be able to have more time to work less. My husband is one of those people who worked 16 hours a day. He very rarely ever saw our children when they were little, and he just had this thing. He worked really hard now, and I'll take it easy later on. And he was at that point where he was just about to start taking it easy, and we had enough staff in place. The business ran itself. Essentially, we wanted to grow into anyway an opportunity to buy a very similar Business, but on a much smaller scale in a different part of the city became available to us. And because we were in negotiations to take over the business he'd already been working in, we had to purchase that separately ourselves versus through the company. Because the Paperwork hadn't been finalized, we had purchased this other business, and the deal wasn't going to go through because of the landlord situation of the property. And it just sort of sat dormant for a few months. But things came to a bit of a head over the holiday break, and I had enough, and I said to my husband, you know what? You can stay. Work in the Stanley business. I am going to quit and retire. And, like, I can't. I can't work anymore. I'm done. And I left. And then this other side business sort of the landlord came through, and it all just sort of Happened. And three weeks later, here I was sitting completely alone in a different part of the city like a deer in headlights. I had ThIs business, and I had these two new employees that I didn't know, and I'm sitting in an offIce, and I don't know what the HecK I'm doing because I'm so used to my husband running that end of the business, and I was, like, literally by myself. So 8 hours a day, sitting in a room by myself, and I said, I need help.
Anyway, we brought in a little bit of help for me, and he was continuing still to negotiate his existing business, and things came to a head there. And finally he had to leave two weeks later, and he came with us, and within, I think it was like, the next morning. So 12 hours later, six or seven of the staff walked in our door and said, hire us. Like, they left that other business and said, hire us. And we were like, okay, we don't have any clients, but okay, we'll take you. And then it was the long weekend in February, the family day weekend. And then the day after that, three more showed up at the door.
We quit. Hire us. And so all of a sudden, I had a payroll of about ten people and no work.
So I had bought this business with my line of credit, and on my house, on my hELOC, and I borrowed from my parents line of credit for payroll, and to start buying inventory. We had part of the purchase deal, the asset purchase. We included inventory and so on and so forth.
And then what happened is, as clients started finding out, because the community we're in is a very close knit. It's very intertwined. All the customers know each other. It's all property management businesses, and they've all known my husband for 30 years, so they would actually phone his cell phone and phone him up and look for services. Like, listen, I'm not with my company anymore. I started a new business, and they're like, oh, here, fill out our vendor application form.
And then it was like our loyalty was always to you and Laura, not to the business. So we're sending our business your way. And all of a sudden, we started having business, and we had to. Thankfully, Ruben had friends at Ford dealership and was able to get, like, three trucks, right?
It was. It was crazy, but we were leveraged like you wouldn't believe.
Everything was on credit.
So here I had hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans to myself, to my parents, to Ford, to landlords, all of this debt. But I thought, okay, I have lots of business. I have all these clients, I have all this staff. And then the GTHL announced they were closing down hockey.
And my husband and I looked at each other, and we went, this thing's real. If they're closing down hockey, this thing's, you know, we had heard, oh, there's this don't travel. And we were, ah. But the minute they shut down hockey, we knew something real was going on in the background. And that day, I went to Walmart with two shopping carts and filled them up with everything I thought my family would need for the next two months. And everybody in Walmart was looking at me like I was crazy.
I was literally two carts full to the brim. I think I spent about $800 that day in Walmart on essentials for three children and two adults. And I'm loading up my car. And the next day, they basically announced, businesses are all closing, schools are closing. But it started with the GtHm, and we were like, oh, my God. And then I thought, okay, well, we're all just going to die together, so who cares? Because I got loans, because we're all just going to die, so it doesn't matter.
And after about three weeks, so, of course we called all of our staff in and we said, the government is shutting us down. So a few people put up their hand right away, and they said, you know what? Don't worry about it. We've got savings set aside, and we're going to take whatever government assistance comes, and you don't have to worry about paying us. And the other half said, we're going to stick it out for a week and see what happens. We said, okay, we can make payroll for another week.
We went down to about six staff with myself and my husband included, and we had a little bit of work. And I started seeing these shields going up in canadian tire. I think canadian tire must have been one of the first people to put up these shields. And I thought, so we're in the glass and lock and door business, okay?
So we already have glass cutting equipment and so on and so forth. And I said to Ruben, I said, we need to get a hold of some plexiglass. And he's like, what are the plexiglass? And I'm like, they're putting up these barriers everywhere. Let's just get some plexiglass. So I started calling every plexiglass dealer in Ontario, and it was like cat and mouse. You were chasing a sheet here and a sheet there. And I'm sending guys out to pick up anywhere we could find. And we started trying to figure out how to cut this stuff because it's not like cutting glass. And then it just so happened that one of the plexiglass dealers, I thought he was a dealer. It turned out he was a plexiglass furniture maker.
And we start talking, and he was annoyed because everybody was trying to buy his plexiglass from him and came down really hard on me that I was trying to steal all of his plexiglass. And I was like, no, listen, how about we go into a partnership together? Like, you fabricate this stuff for me and I'll sell it.
And he was like, great, come up with some drawings. So we did. We came up with some drawings, and my husband bought some hardware, shower door hardware, from his shower door supplier to build these plexiglass sheets. And then I just started googling all of the property management companies that were already in my head from 30 years, got all of their head office contacts and just started emailing them pictures of this shield we had come up with, with this furniture guy. And everybody was like, yeah, I'll take all these different sizes for all of their desks and everything. And I hired. Well, I didn't hire my parents. My parents are free labor. They drove around the city dropping off Plexi shields for me to all of these buildings. Property management.
And then, luckily enough, because we're in the security business, we're in locks, it was deemed essential service, so we were able to stay open. And within three weeks, I had to call all my staff back because I had enough work just in security, maintenance. And some of the riots that happened around that time helped us out with broken glass.
And then all the property managers began to realize that Ruben and I were now somewhere else, and they just started giving us all of their regular work. And as things started to open, we just started getting all of the work that we had had before through our other company. And, yeah, we just kept growing and growing and growing. And now we're up to 30. I think we're at 31, 32 staff now. So that's the long wind of it. But I think you had asked me how I felt at the time, right? So it was pretty scary, those three weeks when I thought that all that money that I had borrowed from everyone was going to go up in smoke.
But it didn't.
The work just kept coming. And, yeah, like I said, thankfully, we were considered a central service, and we just kept going at it. We just kept hammering customer after customer after customer until they didn't know where else to go.
[00:36:29] Speaker D: You got to record that story, or just use this recording and share that with all future team members that join your company and they understand triumph through a period of tragedy. And how you, as a co owner of the business, how you can utilize that past as raw material for a bigger future for the company.
No pun intended, but it's the truth, right? Because somebody joining your business, you can share that. You've got this, hey, we've got this great story, but you need to record that, and then you need to actually have it. Whatever version you want. Have that printed out on a piece of plexiglass.
I'm serious. And have that posted in your headquarters as something for people on the team to read and watch what happens to the culture and how it's even further amplified than what it is today. Isn't that good?
[00:37:44] Speaker B: I would never have thought to do that.
Like I said, the guys that had been with us for a long time, they were right in there with us, willing to do whatever had to be done. And the first few months, even when we had emergency after our service, they didn't even want to be paid for overtime. They just wanted us all to be successful. And thankfully, at the end of that year, we were. And we made sure to compensate a great. I have a really great.
My staff is. And I'll be like. Even though Ruben and I worked really hard, and while my children, unfortunately, were locked up at home having to do online schooling, we were not there for them. But thank God I had my mom, and she basically moved into my house.
And she was of the mindset that if this Covid thing was going to kill her while she'd rather be with my kids than not. So she just basically moved into my house, took care of my children, and Ruben and I worked like crazy. But what I was going to say is that if it wasn't for my staff, we wouldn't have been able to do that.
[00:39:07] Speaker D: That message needs to be packaged for people to see who come aboard your business and your customers.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah, my customers, too. My customers were so loyal to Ruben and I and to our staff, because a lot of them even knew the staff. Some of them just call my staff directly for service work, too. And yeah, we were very fortunate, and it was sad to see others that weren't. So that was it. But it was a lot of work, a lot of hours, and a lot of time away from my kids that I unfortunately cannot get back. So maybe that's why I want to retire, so I can spend more time with them as adults.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: And three years later, having the success that didn't materialize, that was created. The success that you have now was success that was built on.
It wasn't just something that we visioned, and it just happened on its own. It was you putting the work in. You did the work as well as your staff, your team members, and so on. And of course, your mother helping out, doing some of the work as well, and your kids doing the work, so that you guys could be able to get this new vision off the ground.
Moving back into the world of connecting with Henry. Since you've gone through that process and had multiple meetings with him to look at how you're structured, a lot's transpired in that. So you've been able to begin implementing this process on the personal side, yourself, your husband, and your kids, from what I believe, corporately. And also there's been some corporate restructuring that's been taking place, I think, with Henry helping to facilitate some great discussions with other strategic professionals. And even maybe the implementation of a trust in, you know, is there some things you'd like to share about going through? There's a lot of work in all that as well. That's a whole different kind of work. So talk to us a little bit about the importance of doing that and spending the time to make strategic decisions around building the future that you actually want to create with the infinite banking concept centered around the helm of those decisions.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Well, I think the most important thing I learned is there is no such thing as a handshake anymore. Unfortunately, my husband and his father were very close. My husband completely trusted his father's promises, and they never felt the need to put anything in writing, and there was never a proper succession plan. It was just, you're going to get it all when I die.
That's not how it works.
And we didn't know that at the time. We were very naive about that. And I think the most important thing that I have learned in all of this is to have the family trust set up properly. And that is thanks to Henry.
If the one thing that I've learned with a family business, and now I have my own family business, it is so important that my children are treated equally, even though they're not even in my business right now. I have learned that the minute you don't treat your children equally, you're growing a cancer in your family.
And when I was setting up the trust and the will with my lawyer, she wasn't too happy with me doing it with them at the ages that they're at. And she didn't think that I should give them all equal shares and setting it up this way. And she's like, what if you don't like who they marry?
And I was like, I don't care who they marry. I don't care what they do wrong in their life. I am never going to treat my children differently. And I want it in writing now so they know it and I know it, and nobody's going to change it. And I think that's the biggest lesson, that if I could pass that on to other people, is that how important it is to have everything in writing and have all of your children equal, because now, unfortunately, my husband has no relationship left with his sibling and his family because of what happened, and I don't want my children to ever have to deal with that.
I've taken the decision out of their hands that they can't fight over anything.
That was the first and most important thing in terms of setting it all up.
Thankfully, Henry was able to direct me with a tax expert accountant who was able to very clearly tell the lawyers what had to be done in the order that it had to be done.
It's a lot of work. It is an absolute lot of work to set up the family trust.
I didn't understand the concept of having a holding company that our retained earnings so after tax dollars could be moved into and sheltered, I didn't understand all of that. I do now. Originally, we were setting it up to be in the operating company, but after all of the conversations with Henry and the tax specialist, we realized it was better to put it elsewhere. And so there's all these bits and pieces, and if I can share a little bit of a funny story, if I have the time on this, the thing I found the most funny in all of it is the concept of this transaction of $20. So when you set up a family trust, there's another person who has to give you $20 to set this thing up. And it was so particular, it had to be $210 bills that had to be given to the lawyers. They have to be kept on the lawyers files. There's just all these little nuances that if you don't have the proper coaches or people in your life telling you how to do things, you could really mess it up. And if every t is not crossed and I dotted later on the tax man, he's going to come.
And so it was very particular things had to be done in a certain order and had to be dated with certain dates. And these $210 bills apparently are the most important thing in this entire set up.
So it was very awkward for me to call up a friend because it had to be a friend. It couldn't be a family member. It couldn't be anybody who ever stands to inherit anything from our family trust and call up a friend of mine and say, listen, I need you to give me $20, and I can never pay it back to you. It has to be a gift. And it was a bit strange. And she was like, okay, no problem. And I said, and it has to be two tens. Two tens. And she's like, but the bank machine only gives 20s.
[00:46:27] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: But, yeah, it took about four or five months to set up the entire structure, and thankfully we did. And I had kind of mentioned to you that I was in Florida, and I was in Florida because I closed on a condo that I bought down for my parents.
So super excited about that. And they're going to be spending their winters down there.
[00:46:56] Speaker C: They also got some helpful guidance on where to place that property.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Yeah, like I said, it was a lot of work. I probably still don't understand half of what happened.
I just know I signed a lot of paperwork.
It was a lot of different professionals. So, other than Henry, there was a business valuator who had to value my business in order to set up the estate planning to do the estate freeze. And then there was a lawyer who did the estate freeze, who happens to be the same lawyer who wrote my will. And then there was a different lawyer who was a corporate lawyer who set up the holding company. And then there's the accountant, who's putting this all together. And then there's the banker.
Not you guys, unfortunately, the commercial banks who had to set up the various bank accounts. And that in and of itself was a problem because they didn't know how to set up a certain trust account. And it was very convoluted. And like I said, a lot of work and a lot of time. But I'm so grateful that I did it.
And I have protected my children from a very large tax bill later on in life. So that was the main goal.
I don't want to work all this time and so hard and then graduate, and my children left with scrambling to find the money to pay that bill at the end. So the holding company itself and the family trust and the capital gains tax exemptions from setting up the family trust, I am so confident that my kids will not have to worry when I pass to the other side.
[00:48:51] Speaker D: Well, but it won't be to the other side of plexiglass.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: That's correct. It will not be the other side of plexiglass.
[00:49:00] Speaker D: I have a question that I'd like to sort of cap off this incredible interview on.
What advice would you give to people who are. They're investigating this process of becoming your own banker? The, the, the, the infinite banking concept, some great resources on it. So what advice would you give to somebody who's on their journey in learning about this process in terms of who they should decide to ultimately have coaching and mentoring them? What advice would you give?
[00:49:35] Speaker B: I give them Henry's number.
[00:49:40] Speaker D: And when you do that, you have to make sure you say, now, henry. The gentleman I'm referring you to, his name's Henry Wong. But there's nothing wrong with Henry Wong.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: A couple of things.
Yes, I would definitely, first and foremost, direct them to Henry.
Beyond that, I actually do have a friend right now who's very interested in what I'm doing.
Unfortunately, I don't feel confident enough myself explaining the process. I'm doing it, but I still stumble.
I told Henry the other day, I keep doing stuff and then remembering, oh, wait, I'm not supposed to do it. I'm supposed to do it in reverse, right? Because I keep thinking, okay, whatever I'm doing, just do it backwards, because that's not how I'm supposed to do it. Whatever just comes naturally. Don't do it. That.
And so I've been talking with a friend of mine, and I've actually given her the accountant's contact information that Henry set me up with because she has three children, too, and she owns a fair bit of property, and she's looking at setting up a family trust to secure her children's future, too. So I think that I would definitely try to explain to people probably first the downfalls of not doing it this way, because you can work 30 years for someone and end up with nothing if you don't set it up properly. And then tell them what I did do and then give them all the contacts that I used and have at it, because I don't feel qualified enough to teach somebody. But I feel the people that I worked with were very qualified. So I would tell them the negatives of not doing what I did and then give them the context of the people that did it for me.
[00:51:41] Speaker D: Great.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Sounds like a who not how model to me.
[00:51:46] Speaker D: All right, rich, bring us to the finish line, my friend.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Well, Laura, you came out as a hero with your family by making a big pivot, finding out that the need for pexiglass was as big as it was for a period of time. I'm sure many people who are on your team would recognize you as a hero for keeping them employed during a very odd and strange and weird time that impacted our society. But my question really for you is, who do you most want to be a hero to?
[00:52:19] Speaker B: My parents.
I'm going to cook a tear up. If it wasn't for my parents helping me at that time, I think I would have just buried my head in the sand.
They're getting older, but funny enough, they come to work. My mom comes to work. My dad comes to work. We pay my dad in hot chocolate. I go to Tim Hortons and I buy him a hot chocolate, and he comes in and he makes screens for us. And I'm so happy to be able to help them with the place in Florida, and they're so excited, and they want to bring their friends down, and my kids will go visit. And, yeah, like I said, if it wasn't for my parents helping us out at that time when everything fell apart, I don't think we could have gotten through it. So my mom is always worried about are we okay? And are we going to do okay? And is the business doing okay? And so for me to be a hero to my mom, to be able to let her have peace, knowing that we're financially secure and the kids are financially secure and we don't have to worry so much, that's why I hope that I'm a hero, too.
[00:53:38] Speaker D: Well, we tip our hat to all those amazing parents out there and those who are still with us and those who aren't and who have had such an amazing impact on their children's lives. And so thank you, Laura, thank you for being with us today. This was incredible. And thank you, Henry, for being such a great teammate and know caring enough about our client experience to want to deliver the very best day in and day out and rich as always. Another incredible episode. Great, incredible value for our clients. Laura, you have no idea the impact that this interview is going to have. And you just never know who listens to this and says, I'm ready to take this next step and have them be able to share their story and their journey someday. And so thank you sincerely for the impact that we know you're going to have in advance. So here's an early thanks for that impact.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate that. I was really looking forward to kind of telling a little bit about my story.
I think that what I've learned, I don't want somebody else to have to go through. And if I can help them avoid some of the pitfalls of the family handshake, just put it in writing.
Just get it in writing no matter what.
It's better to hurt somebody's feelings today asking for it to be in writing than to destroy an entire family 30 years later.
[00:55:10] Speaker D: 1000%. And again, thank you for being so generous with your time today and for being so vulnerable and sharing your story. And to all of our viewers and listeners, a video just showed up in the playlist that we would like for you to watch, and there's a reason there's no destination or landing spot for knowledge. Continue your journey of learning. Watch that next video that we've recommended. Make the rest of your week outstanding. Thank you all. This was a wonderful interview.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the wealth without Basery podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content today. 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.
