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.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: 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 C: We have a return guest, Ryan. Greg's everybody who is well acquainted with wealth without Bay street, with our channel, with our podcast, is very familiar with Ryan.
Ryan's the principal advisor of Greg's Capital Strategies. If this is the first time you're hearing about and seeing Ryan, and he's been the principal advisor of Greg's Capital strategies and since 2017 has been assisting clients in the implementation of the process of becoming your own banker. The the infinite banking concept, prospective and existing clients in the United States. Now, Ryan's background is primarily academic, but we always have extremely insightful conversations around the current landscape of the concept. What we're seeing out there in the marketplace, the good, the not so good, the bad, the ugly, and we're going to have some really good conversations about it. Now, one thing that's going to be super exciting to know is that Ryan is on the cusp of releasing a book. I understand that there will be a pre order option, perhaps that is going to be available by the time this episode releases. If not, we will definitely get that out to our community.
Ryan is very well accomplished already at this stage in his journey, having earned a bachelor's and master's degree in economics, currently a PhD student in austrian economics, and so outside of being the co host of an incredible podcast, banking with life, if you've never listened to banking with life or watched the episodes on the youtubes, we would encourage you to do that. He's also got an incredible series on the youtubes around whole life insurance mechanics, and the author of the now, the title of the book that I was referencing is how to buy whole Life, a framework for becoming your own banker. Ryan, I'm going to start with this. I heard an expression from Joe Polish of the genius network a short while ago, and he said that wealth accumulation, this is what the marketplace focuses on, sensationalizes, but keeping it, making sure you don't lose it, that's a whole other skill set all in of itself. And so, having heard that expression from me for the first time. I'd love to hear what comes up for you in your thinking as you process what I just said.
[00:03:09] Speaker D: Yeah, wealth accumulation. I mean, wealth is goods and services, economically speaking, in my role, financially, strategically, in an advisory role, I distinguish between wealth and capital.
I'm interested in helping people secure property value, a certain kind of value, valuable on the most profitable terms available. I think the place you get it is in dividend paying whole life. For reasons we can talk about and have mentioned before, the wealth accumulation point may be terminological. I know wealth accumulation comes up online a lot. I think capital is. I think it's an important distinction, talking about the control and access over money.
It does involve. If we're going to do the second part of what you said, keeping it, keeping what you make. I think I said on the last time we talked, or maybe the time before that, the individual is the greatest generator of revenue. The best return is from the individual's labor. Not so much particular investment. It's coming from the individual's labor. And the question that the challenge financially isn't so much about squeezing out a point or two of return here or there on this or that asset. And I know all the portfolio type people online. The heads just explode. What are you talking about? That's all the quant people do, and they're rich. Isn't that the thing we should do? And yeah, I'm talking about the rest of the world, 99% of most of the people in life.
The challenge isn't so much squeezing out the point or two of return to get to Dave Ramsay's 12% annualized fictional figure. It's keeping what you make, and it's not keeping what you make in the sense of earning money and just not spending all of it. That's a prerequisite. And I think that people like pop financial guru advice types in the past who have said, look, you should save, okay, yes, you should save. And oftentimes when I'm critical of books, like, I've got a, I won't say the name of it, but it's a conventional, very popular book out there. And sometimes I'm critical of these well known conventional financial advisors. And then there's always the initial response, oh, but they say good things about, for instance, you shouldn't spend all your income. It's like, okay, well, yes, I agree, but if we go a little bit deeper and get into, like, okay, well, what should we do then? Where should that money go and what should happen after that? And what's the systematic, holistic view little. I think it's a little dry. I think the pop history finance advice, self help financial advice is a little shallow there.
Whereas with Nelson, it's like, it's too much.
You got to read a book and the whole thing.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: But he did say, but Nelson did say that becoming your own banker. So the infinite banking concept is not about addressing the yield of an investment. It's about controlling how you finance the things that you need throughout your lifetime, which can certainly include investment. But this is where that distinction simply doesn't exist in the majority of the marketplace.
It is a instantaneous, well, I need to immediately compare a process to a product when the person doesn't even realize that IBC is a process. So it's this immediate sort of, I need to compare it. I've got to compare IBC to insert whatever it is here.
There's a distinction between what you're buying versus what you're implementing. And that's so important to communicate forward to viewers and to listeners to get that out there.
[00:07:01] Speaker D: Yeah, I completely agree.
We were talking just before cameras went on about the idea of commodification. And I think a trend for a lot of different reasons that would take a lot of time to go through, but it just has to do with sort of coincidental. Know when Nelson's book came out, when YouTube really got popular, when the Nelson Nash Institute became a formal organization.
These sorts of threads of history have coincided to this point where I think you've got, on the one hand, a very negative historical reputation of whole life, and therefore a poor understanding of it, because the negative reputation just eliminates the possibility of curiosity. So it's just bad. So there's that. There's just the development of social media on its own, the proliferation of things like TikTok and the different technological mediums that are changing.
And then you have a phenomenon that I recently talked about on the banking with life podcast called audience capture. And in journalism, audience capture is where the journalist is captured by the readers. The readers expect the journalist to say a certain thing, it's from a certain publication, and so the journalist has to write that because he's captured by his audience. I think that the line between financial advising and playing one as a media personality online is blurry for a lot of people, and it can get crossed pretty easily to where it just becomes a form of financial entertainment. And then when you're looking at the numbers, when you're looking at the clicks and the views and the watches, because that's your metric, that's what you care. On the entertainment side, there's going to be some tendency to become captured by that. And if you want to really excel and go like Mr. Beast mode YouTube style, right, and analyze every video performance, I'm not saying this is necessarily going to happen, but there is a sense in which this can become the predominant approach to determining what you put out.
You may become captured by an audience that once. I think the title of the video recently is bigger, number sooner, better. If it's bigger, it's sooner, it must be better. And whatever nuance might suggest otherwise is compressed and thrown away as just unnecessarily costly.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: I would add one more to that, and that's quicker. And the types of platforms you identified, many of which are quite new and or a modification to existing platforms, has centralized on the gimmick of how do we capitalize on 32nd attention spans and how can we move people from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing? Seeing which one of those things rises from a behavioral standpoint above the threat of everything else so we can feed more of it to them. And when you think about a lifetime of financial energy flowing through someone's hands, you are the listener. Your hands money is going to come in and out and flow through your hands for the rest of your life, one way or another. A little bit or a lot of it. Probably a lot. How much of it are you controlling for your lifespan? Well, in a 32nd or 62nd sound bite, you're not going to get enough insight or information to make good lifelong decision making processes that will allow you to retain more of that financial energy. So you can't learn how to implement a lifelong process in a 32nd sound bite. Sorry, didn't mean to break anyone's bubble, but that's, in my opinion, just the truth.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: To add what you just said and what Ryan expanded on, you cannot, on the one hand, address what Nelson teaches around this isn't instant gratification anything? And then tell someone you can explain the very same concept in less time than it takes to microwave popcorn.
Let's be realistic about that for a second.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: You mean the book that the very first sentence is that this is a workbook for a ten hour seminar? Is that the one you mean you can't distill in less than 3 minutes?
[00:11:05] Speaker C: Right?
[00:11:06] Speaker D: I want to add a couple of things here.
I think there's a tendency sometime to, and I'm not saying this isn't as pervasive, I just want to be cautious about it and for myself, too, is that I think these, a lot of the times I'm willing to. I've had the saying on the banking with Life podcast to assume angelic.
These, I think people who are on social media talking about IBC or banking and the context of life insurance mean well and want to do well and think that there's a lot of eyeballs on the apps. And so that's where I'm going to go, and that's what I'm going to do. And I'm all for that, of course. But the issue is that it creates a vacuum. It creates an advisory vacuum. Right.
The TikTok clips don't fill the advisory gap.
For some who don't know about all the things that could be done in terms of the customization and the tailoring and taking into consideration all the unique complexities of an individual's financial profile for people who don't know that that is possible and that you can get a wide variety of ultimate contractual outcome, they just don't know going in, they think, oh, this is how I buy this IBC policy.
So I don't know.
My encouragement to people is you're going to be exposed to that. If you're doing any of this research online, you're looking around at this stuff online, you're going to see that I can't help that. You can't help that it's going to happen. Some of it may even be good. I'm willing to assume that some of it's even very good.
I want my people to be in a position where they feel competent enough and confident enough to vet what they're being told by other people, myself included, and to come to their own decision about whether the proposal or the solution or the response or the answer makes right. Right. Because then they can sift it for themselves. And James has made this point that the book you just held up and the one that's in Richard's background on the right, becoming your own banker, is a great tool for exactly that. It can help you sift and maybe on the advisor or the agent or the marketer or the media personality, or however the individual sees themselves, maybe a good way to self censor in the sense of self monitoring, to make sure that what's going out aligns with what was originally taught. A good place to start would be the book, too.
And then where I have found there can be some difficulty is where parts of Nelson are used to justify something that sounds sufficient, sounds right, in order to justify a claim, though that is not fully supported, like the idea that Nelson said in the book that you have to have not, you don't have to, but that over time, one would develop a system of policies. You're not going to get it done with one. And I have seen occasions out there, not where this argument is explicitly made, but the implication is definitely there that, well, since Nelson said you can go get more than one policy, we don't have to take any care with the design of the one you're getting now to make sure that you can pay premium into it for a long time.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: For instance, 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.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: I've also heard the opposite of that in that Nelson says, oh, maybe you can get a system of policies, but he didn't have the ability to put things together the way we can now. So let's just get you a really big one now and then you're good. So I've heard both what you've indicated, but also almost the opposite of that from the advisory space here.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: In addition to that, gentlemen, here's something else to consider.
If you were to look at all of the marketing that goes on, and marketing is a necessity. It's an essential component of business development. Granted, but if you look at all of the marketing that goes on and you were to line up 100 unique producers, agencies, companies, whomever, you're going to see a very common thread. And it's all about how to build wealth with IBC, how to get rich buying, insert whatever thing here with the infinite banking concept. How to create financial freedom by becoming your own banker. How to build wealth. How to create wealth. How to be wealthy. How to get rich. The list goes on and on and on.
But think about this.
How many will we find who are having a discussion around not only recognizing the importance of the banking business as it relates to your own needs for money throughout the course of your lifetime, but also recognizing the four characters in the financial play?
Rich and I had a great discussion on a recent episode where we talked about this. We said, look, really, you can get rich buying cars with the infinite banking concept. Well, if I'm lending money to Richard, so I'm the banker. I'm the bank owner. I get the policy loan from the life insurance company. I lend the life insurance company's money to Richard. He's the borrower. He ain't getting rich. Buying the.
He's not, he ain't getting rich. He's got the use of the car.
I'm receiving a stream of payments that I'm sending back to the life insurance company. This extra interest that everybody talks about is not really interest, it's more premium. Yet everybody's telling you to pay the least amount of premium, when we should be having the discussion around how much premium can we pay and for how long?
[00:17:22] Speaker A: How much interest do you want to pay yourself so that you can find a method to pay yourself more premium?
[00:17:27] Speaker C: The reason I get on my soapbox about this is because I really, honestly want to see unrealistic, of course, but I want to see everyone be successful in educating the general public, having a great business, being in abundance. I authentically, in an integrity want to see that for people.
But when they're expressing things and using generalities, or they're using terms that confuse the general public, I think it's also important just to point that out. It's not meant to be a personal slant against anybody. It's just meant to say, listen, we have to be very aware of what we're saying, how the general public is interpreting it, and we have to tell the truth, the entire truth, and most importantly, resist every urge to sensationalize the message. Nelson, had he still be alive today, would tell you the infinite banking concept. Ridiculously simple. It does not need to be sensationalized.
And if you understand the grocery store example, meaning you truly understand it, the rest of becoming your own banker is a piece of cake. And that is so true to this day and always will be true, because we're describing a process. We're not talking about how to get rich buying cars, or how to get rich buying real estate, or how to.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Design the best policy or how to get the cookie cutter policy off the shelf. Because the, the, the, the, the, the.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: The infinite banking concept thing, nobody's talking about. Remember what Nelson said? All the financial geniuses out there that talk to you about the power of leverage, the power of using other people's money to go and build. In that example, he was describing real estate. Nobody is talking to you about what happens when the lever goes the other way.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: That's when the geniuses disappear from the marketplace.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: Yeah, it's crickets. And so when you look at what's going on in the current economic situation, that both Canada and the United States find ourselves in, and you've got all this promotion going on about how to get rich in that sector called real estate and investing in property, land, et cetera. There's nobody out there educating you to say, here's how to shield yourself when the interest rate lever goes the other way. Yeah, the discussion is not.
[00:19:57] Speaker D: Mean. My, as I was talking with you before the show started, Jason, my thinking has developed on this subject in general, when it comes to other know, they use the term IBC or they use the word banking, or they talk about life insurance. And then either the marketing approaches we've been discussing seems insubstantial, kind of weak and or the end result in terms of the nature of the product put in place.
I've had instances where people will come to me. They have policies enforced from these agents. And as I see the illustration, we talk through them. They learn things about what they have that they didn't know because they weren't told about it, like what kind of writers they have or what the degree of flexibility is or what the recognition treatment is. Things that we always cover in an initial advisory process weren't covered. It's like new revelation to them.
That's unfortunate, but the underlying point is that there's a form to the business.
There are some empirically predictable characteristics about the nature of the policies that go in force on the heels of this commodified, anti nuanced, short term approach.
Typically, my impression is, my observation is, I've seen this a few times, is that the agent will just observe what the life insurance company will allow in terms of at the limit, in terms of what they'll allow between the relationship between, for instance, base and pua premium, or the initial death benefit and the term death benefit, for instance. They'll just observe these restrictions that the company places and they'll say, okay, that's the way we're going to do it.
That's what the rule allows for. So that's what we're going to do. The speed limit is 65 miles an hour, so we're always going to drive 65. Doesn't matter if we need to get there at 95 or if we're going to take time. That's what the rule is. So we're going to do.
And I think that's what they were taught in good faith, and I think that's what they do in good faith. But then you start to work through what the trade offs are. When you start to play with the premium design, or when you use one term writer instead of another. When you go with one company instead of another, there is some important nuance that gets lost and you might end up making a different decision. And then here's the other part of this, too. People think I'm critical of this or that kind of policy design, or that we are in banking with life, or that we are being so here. And they'll say the animosity is magnified unnecessarily. Right? It's not that this 1090, antibased, premium type thing is per se bad.
That may not blow up on you. It may not cause you a negative tax event. It may, in fact, may in fact result in more cash value than cost basis, a significant death benefit. If you end up keeping the policy, things could be fine in terms of that one contract. But that's not what we're talking about in an advisory conversation. In an advisory conversation, we're talking about trade offs. This is what you could do. Or we could do something else. Right. We're in a position of optimizing. We're going to do something that most aligns with an individual's financial profile, given what we want to accomplish with the principled understanding from Nelson's book. And so that's going to result in a different kind of business. And I've started to leave it there. I think if people, Nelson always used to say, if you know what's going on, you'll know what to do.
And so to my mind, if things are happening in ways that I think should be different, well, then it must be the case that we must not understand what's going on very well. And if that is the case, well, then maybe I'm not sharing it well enough. And so maybe it's really on me and I could be wrong.
So it would be better for me to just get out and explain to people why I do things the way I do them, because of how I understand the business to operate. And then if someone wants to do that, then I am more than happy for them to become a client. We're going to take great care of them. But if somebody wants to get fast food and they can go to jack in the box.
I just don't do the bad business style of approach. People listening should know it's not good business. And when an agent says that, we mean that the business shows low persistence. It means policies purchased in that sort of turn and burn, high volume, low nuanced, compressed, commodified style.
A disproportionate number of those policies lapse early, before the company predicted they would. It's impersistent. Persistent business. A persistent policy is one that is purchased and stays in force until natural mortality.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Which doesn't help long term dividend scales for the remaining.
[00:24:41] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Because the lapse ratio is included in the measuring stick on what determines the end output dividend surplus in a given year basis.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: And look at it. Let me invite the both of you to examine this from just a different perspective, because Nelson, again, God rest his soul, he's with us every single day. He sits in on every single meeting. He's right next to me at my computer, every conversation that I have. But Nelson often said that everything begins with the way that you think. And so let's do just a quick exercise in thinking for a moment.
Having total and absolute control over the repayment schedule of policy loans, can that also be a bad thing?
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: As it relates to the human condition, sure.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Could it also be for many people, it actually probably is a bad thing.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Okay, thank you. So there's two sides to that coin.
There is the advantage of total and absolute control in having an unstructured loan proceeds issued to you, and then you control that repayment schedule. But recognizing that the human condition exists, that can be a bad thing as well.
[00:26:07] Speaker D: With freedom comes responsibility. Yeah.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Thank you. And when you examine how a policy is actually designed, quote unquote designed, can a structure like 1090, ten being you have a dollar premium, minimum amount required, ninety cents more, is your contractual authority. You have the authority to deposit it, but you're not contractually obligated to. Can that be a bad thing? You bet it can. Because when you get that annual policy statement and it says your minimum payment required is $0.10, that's your minimum payment required. Again, words have meaning. The policy statement, your minimum payment required, the human condition kicks in. Not if, but when. And so how much is the policyholder going to send to the policy?
[00:27:05] Speaker A: If they're not well trained or educated, whatever, they can get away, they're going to do probably the minimum.
[00:27:11] Speaker C: And so, Richard, you raised a good point around the training.
So I encounter. You encounter. I know Ryan encounters. Any of our esteemed colleagues out there can attest to this. You encounter people who reach out to you and you say, hey, I'm curious. Because part of our process, we prefer not to interrupt or disrupt any existing advisor client relationships. We acknowledge and respect that relationship.
Out of curiosity, how did the last conversation go with your advisor? Would you mind just sharing maybe what you covered? And the person says, well, I haven't spoken to my advisor in a while. And you're like, well, since when? Well, since Jesus was a cowboy.
So has there been any training?
And then you examine.
Walk me through what your premium payments have looked like the last three years. Let's just pick the last three years as an example.
Well, I've been sending in last two years. Yeah, but you just finished telling me about you can put a dollar in. Why aren't you putting in a dollar? Well, look at the statement. It reads very clearly, the minimum is going on out there. And so everything begins with the way that we think and the human condition. There's a reason, there's rationale, there's logic as to why. Nelson placed a high degree of emphasis on the human conditions in his book titled Becoming your own Banker. The one condition that Nelson would share with you today is he would say, it is so important for us as human beings to understand that a skyscraper won't stand for very long on a weak foundation.
So make sure the foundation of your system is strong.
So make sure that it.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: You don't want to put 10% of the concrete required to strengthen the foundation. Is that what you're getting at, Jason?
[00:29:05] Speaker C: That's precisely what I'm getting at. And we lose the understanding that Nelson taught us that it's meant to be a system. It's not meant to be achieved through the device of one policy. And so I don't think that 90 ten is anything other than it just is.
It has its own characteristics. It's just important to understand that every prospective policy owner who's going to implement a process that they truly understand, there's a difference between what you're buying versus what you're implementing.
Understand the distinction.
[00:29:43] Speaker D: Yeah. I want to touch on one important thing. You mentioned about the 1090, and I think it has to do with. I can just pay the minimum. I mean, it's so flexible. Right. And I have heard that comment that, well, if the proportion of the total annual premium outlay to the company in a given year, if a larger proportion of that consists in PuA premium, well, then that necessarily means that the overall contract is more flexible. And that is not true.
All of these companies, PuA riders have some sort of use it or lose it provision. They don't call it that, but there's always a way whereby if you don't pay the maximum originally planned and that the maximum allowed on an annual basis going forward will be reduced, there's always some element there. And then in order to get a 1090 type thing done, there's going to be a few things on that policy. One of them is going to be annually renewing term, which I don't like and other people have maybe not so much a popular opinion, but I think that introduces fragility from a MEC perspective that ultimately results in a lack of control that will manifest in far fewer premium dollars going to that contract than what the client otherwise would have paid.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:55] Speaker D: All it takes is for one out of pocket premium to diverge from what was originally assumed. All it takes is for one dividend to be different from what was originally assumed to throw off that targeting calculation, and people are going to get sick of that. And the annually renewing things built to fall off earlier than a level version would anyway. So it's going to be short term. So I think what's going to happen as the years continue to go by is people who became clients, became customers, purchased policies under that type of approach, short term oriented 1090 type design, they're going to eventually get the letters that say the term cost is going up.
If you don't pay the term but insist on the PUA, you'll cause a mech that's going to start happening. I think Pua to those contracts is going to start coming off earlier than people thought. I think term writers will come off earlier than people thought.
I'm speculating here a bit, but I think that it's possible that companies know this. I think it's a way to manage liability on the back end. I think that's why they can afford to be a little more loose on the underwriting side up front.
If the death benefit is not going to pay, then is it? Why not carry the risk? And I'm not saying that's exactly going through anybody's mind, but I can see how. Look, if you've got a product where the company retains pricing over a significant proportion of the death benefit through annually renewing term, and the ability to change that pricing can be triggered when any number of things that no one can control happens.
Their company is telling you that they're managing that liability. They're going to make sure it's no bigger in the future than it has to be. And that necessarily means that if you don't stick right close to what that contract premium says on the illustration, then you're not going to get what's there. And the illustration is based on the current experience of the company anyway, which also is going to change. So you're asking for fragility. Anytime you start squeezing a base, a pure base only whole life contract, start to manipulate it by squeezing the base down, putting a heavy p way. Want to keep the tax status and have the heavy p way because you have to have your cake and eat it too. Okay, you're going to use annually renewing term and you can have your cake and eat it too right now, but you're going to eat up a lot of extra insurability with it. And if you go to solve your actual underlying need to pay premium and accumulate cash value, you're going to be relatively more limited because you can't get all the life insurance you want. Everybody's limited on how much we can get. So if you buy some in a relatively inefficient fashion that will only accept premium for a short time because we needed to satisfy that near term desire for liquidity now so badly. Okay, but you're paying for that. You will pay for it. You won't see it, but you'll pay for it with foregone capital growth in the future. And if people want that, okay, but I don't think people get all of the implications that come with selecting that approach.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: You're assuming that they're making an informed decision.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: I wish on the illustration, when you print a copy of the illustration that you provide to your proposed life insured, the policy owner, whomever, that there was a few pages in there that outlined the human condition, I wish that were added in there to say, we just need to fully disclose to you and help you understand the following regarding your home behavior, because no one's talking about that.
It's just that regurgitated. If you don't do it this way, all you care about is how much you're being paid and you're not doing right by the policyholder. And all this other complete and utter absurd, unsubstantiated nonsense. Nobody's saying, hey, where's the illustration for the human condition?
[00:34:58] Speaker D: Where'd that one go? Hey, is that one based on current experience?
[00:35:03] Speaker C: So your book, Ryan, which we're super beyond excited for its release, you and I can attest we were discussing this before the release of the show.
We're also going to have a book released, and the book is going to be titled Live the Lifestyle, love the process. Infinite banking.
[00:35:21] Speaker D: Oh, wow. Very nice.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Where does that exist out there today?
[00:35:28] Speaker D: No, that's great.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Again, all the credit to the pioneer and developer of the process for helping us to think about our thinking and to again, continue to emphasize, David Stearns himself said, infinite banking is not a financial plan, it's a lifestyle.
Live the lifestyle. Nelson Nash himself said, infinite banking is a process, not a product. Love the process. What process? Infinite banking. Live the lifestyle. Love the process. Infinite banking?
[00:36:02] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker C: Isn't that good?
[00:36:05] Speaker D: That's good.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: I'm curious, when we talk about these human behaviors and you're talking a little about the different types of terms and everything. Ryan, I'm sure you've had experiences with people that have come, knocked on your door, come to your office, hopped on a Zoom meeting, booked a call, and they have the junk drawer full of insurance contracts that they've received over a lifetime. And typically there is a bundle or a bag of some varied level term that is already there, standalone term policy, term ten, term 20, term 30, whatever it is. And have you ever had the conversation or received them reaching out, prompting to reach out to you because they just received the notice about the term renewal prior to them coming to you, or has that been a discussion?
[00:36:46] Speaker D: I've had people come with the piecemeal patchwork of prior insurance contracts for sure and sort of unrelated, but I was just having a conversation with an insurance company last week about term rider convertibility. So that has come up separately but not together at the same time. But I know what you're talking about.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: The reason I bring it up is that I have had that experience a number of times, and I suspect you have, Jay, whether someone's coming to the office or whatever, and you're looking at the statements like, hey, well, your renewal is coming up in a year or in two years, or they say, oh, hey, I just got this renewal notice and they are blown away, astonished at what the new premium is going to be and the fact that it's three, four, five, maybe even six times the current premium level.
[00:37:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: And in every instance that that's happened and I've asked them, well, do you remember looking at the schedule and when you signed the paperwork and understanding that this was for a certain term period and that the premium is going to go up? It's like, no, nobody told me that.
Well, I'm pretty sure they did. I'm pretty sure you signed the application and you looked at whatever the illustration was, and I'm pretty sure the fact that it said term ten is a pretty good indicator, but it's indicative of how little people retain and recall about a meeting that they had ten years ago. So if you're building a plan that's going to be there for your entire life and you can't communicate or connect with the person helped you set it up, or you're not actively involved in that process. What iota of chance do you have that in ten years from now you're going to remember one damn thing about what that individual told you. What was on that illustration except what you choose to remember.
[00:38:26] Speaker C: There's a reason why at intersections that are lit, you have a red hand that says don't walk and you have someone strolling. When it's time to walk, you follow.
It's because that became a necessity.
People were literally walking into intersections and getting plowed down by oncoming traffic until somebody said, maybe we should put something up that lets the people know don't walk when there's oncoming traffic.
[00:39:06] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a good illustration. And there's a deeper point too about service, because another thing that goes along with the commodification 1090 antibase, maximum pua, higher number, bigger, sooner, better type mentality, turn and burn style is no service. Right. And people think life insurance, no service. What do you mean service? Okay, well, if you have more than one policy, you're managing policy loan repayments of two different amounts to two different contracts and the company doesn't have authorization to draft the funds and you're out of the country, who are you going to talk to? Right? I don't know. Changing policy ownership, maybe? Changing policy ownership was a strategic part of the application process. How about bringing in other members of the family? How about coordinating across family members within the same family and then across generations? Are you going to do that with a bunch of different fast food places?
These things kind of go together.
You can know a tree by its fruit type of thing. I tell all my clients, you get a policy through this office that forms a client advisor relationship. Mine looks different than maybe the conventional advisor does. I think a lot of, and maybe I'm wrong, but my brief experience in the conventional financial world suggested that a lot of the post sale interaction with the client is kind of disguised sales opportunity, and I don't really care. Now there's going to be some time for expansion.
Point is, I have an individualized post sale new policy enforce process, a customized service process for every individual. And most of them just prefer to get in touch whenever they want. And we have calls or whatever, we handle it, but we handle it. So then there's two elements to that. I distinguish between ongoing access to the primary advisor and ongoing administrative support. So, substantive and administrative support. One thing I found that people don't love who have acquired policies is that when they go back to the agent that sold them that contract and they want service, either administrative or substantive and strategic. They can't get to the guy or the girl. They can't get to whomever it was that attracted them to that outlet in the first place. They deal with somebody else. And there's not to say that dealing with teams is a bad thing. Teamwork is a great thing. And that's how you do provide service at scale. Don't get me wrong. I would say, though, that that's how you provide good administrative service. And if you provide good education, then you handle a lot of the things substantively and strategically that might otherwise clog things up. But when you have a meaningful strategic need or a meaningful substantive point to discuss, or you forgot things from that meeting ten years ago, you want to talk to the guy. I'd want to talk to the guy if I was doing something with 25 50% of my income per year in this financial strategy, or more or less, if I was making a decision as it pertains to a substantial percentage of my annual cash flow each year. I want to talk to the guy about the big things. And my point is, in the turn and burn marketing type where the guy is not an advisor, he's a media personality who plays an advisor on YouTube. When that's the situation, then one should just not expect that that service will be there. And so insofar as that that's the expectation, then there's no problem. Again, my issue is that I think the expectations are off and it results in frustration and resentment to the industry, to the agent, to the concept, to Nelson, and often, if not always, don't. I think if people knew better what was going on, they would know what to do. If they wanted better service, if they understood the need for that service long term, then that along with other things one might want, that follow from a long term oriented perspective that you read about in Nelson's book, well, then you're going to go about starting IBC in a particular kind of way and not in a different know, I think a lot of know. And then let the.
And there's nothing wrong with TikTok in particular. I actually find it kind of fun. So if people want to on whatever the platform, but any kind of. Here, look at the illustration. The numbers speak for themselves. Just look at the numbers. The numbers do not speak for themselves. Numbers have never spoken for themselves. If numbers spoke for themselves, people wouldn't speak because the numbers would do the talking, right? So they don't ever speak for themselves. Financial advising and financial analysis is not just finding the bigger number. That's not it. There's more going on.
And I think another part of this is understanding what a professional advisory relationship can look like, whether it's financial or legal or accounting. I mean, I've helped people. I have an attorney friend I like. I have an accounting friend I like. We don't have financial relationships. It's not anything like that. I like them. They're good. They've been good for me and they've been good for other clients. So I share their information, that's all. But having those professional, really, I find that a lot of people just don't know what that even looks like. Like what should I expect? What's reasonable, what's unreasonable to expect from a professional relationship? There's not a lot of conversation about what that is. And if you started with nothing, which in a developing economy, that's a lot of our story, we start poor. I did.
You don't know. Parents didn't know. My parents didn't.
Or maybe I come from money and have had relationships that were negative and I got put through the wringer, emotionally bludgeoned as someone. A new client once told me once, yeah, and then you enter into IBC, something I've never heard of whole life. Terrible reputation. Found somebody on the Internet where there's a bunch of other sketchy guys. It's commission sales process. OMG, it's amazing. Life insurance gets sold. And it's only because at the bottom of this, through all the noise, is the truth.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:45:06] Speaker D: That's the only reason.
And people are going to be distracted all the way. And I get distracted, I get tempted and all other aspects of life, too. And so I'm sure it's going to happen. It is happening, will continue to happen.
Where I have come is that I don't really have an interest in stopping it anymore. I don't care anymore. Because once that goes, there will be something else to replace it. That will be always the condition.
And so it's really more about focusing on what I understand to be the method of implementation that follows from Nelson's book. Because I think what people want is what Nelson taught.
And that's a crucial supposition, crucial hypothesis, because some people might not, and if they don't, that's fine.
They're just not my client, and that's okay. But if people want what Nelson taught, then we can do that. And I think there are meaningful implications that if we've took the time and fleshed out at the beginning, would help naturally and organically inform the strategy. Because if you know what's going on, you'll know what to do. This is the other part that's so funny to me. It's like people run from a financial advisory conversation, because I don't know, they know they don't have the financial experience. Or the guy who's got a marketing degree, he went to work for one of the big four. They gave him a presentation to memorize, and he's so nervous because they have to memorize everything on the pages rather than here's a class on the economics of life insurance, and here's how these policies work, and here's what we're doing when we're doing financial strategizing. Here are the opportunities to plug the gap so that people keep more of what they make, rather than putting someone through that. They put them through a sales program. I get a kick out of this. The only textbook published by the board of Certified Financial Planners in the United States is a textbook on the psychology of sales, which I think is so exactly like the west in 2024. I mean, yes, this professional financial advisory board and their one educational textbook is on the psychology of sales. And then you wonder why there's high turnover in finance and why people have a negative opinion of financial advisors. Maybe they should. Maybe you're spending all your time trying to mind trick them into how to say yes at the right time, rather than just telling them the truth of the matter and letting that do the job.
I've had this recent conversation with a new company we're contracting with. Great. And they want all the business. They want. Redirect all your business over here. It's like, yeah, that's not how this works. And I told him, I'm like a natural part of my process is I go through with clients just how things happen in the industry. What are the differences between the contracts? And as I was sharing this with them, it just kind of came out that I don't really have much control over this.
It kind of is what it is. And if I start going through terms and conditions governing this company's PUA writer versus that company's PuA writer, or whether that company will allow a certain kind of term or that company won't, if I start going through those, the one or two or three or whatever, that's relatively more flexible, that affords more control to the client, that's more amenable to the purposes of IBC, that company might kind of shake know. And if it's you, great. If it's not, I don't know what you want me to like, is that going to mean less commission? I don't know. I don't care. Again, I don't know that I can be effective if I'm just attempting to manipulate to achieve a sales goal or a commission. Target these rvps regional vice presidents at these companies before they know me really will call. Okay, how are we doing this quarter?
What do we need to get that production number up this quarter?
[00:49:03] Speaker A: I took a look at our files.
[00:49:04] Speaker D: And I think it's going to change. New business.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: Submitted by you this quarter. What's going on? How can I best help you?
[00:49:10] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, God bless them, they're trying hard. But my underlying point is, if you know what's going on, you know what to do, so just do that. It's so much simpler than having to do the numbers.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Nelson used to talk about planting corn. Of course, if you plant corn, you're going to get something else.
Weeds. But, you know, if you get rid of those weeds, doesn't the corn stick out like a sore thumb?
And doesn't matter what you're said, if you're planting things in your head bone, you're going to get.
[00:49:43] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, that's good.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: Awesome. Ryan, we got to do this more.
[00:49:53] Speaker D: Right?
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Because iron sharpens iron, courtesy of James Nethery, something that he's said repeatedly for years, which is just the truth. And so it's always nice to sharpen iron with iron. And a real pleasure to have you on the show, as always. When your book is released, we promise our viewing and listening audience we will have you back. We'd love to dive into what inspired you to write the book. What are some of the key takeaways that you want the readers to really grasp? We'll just have a really insightful conversation because you've put a lot of time and energy and you've really thought carefully, as evidenced by your posts where you've sort of kept people up to date to say, look, I'm really thinking through this. I want it to come out correctly. I've gone through a couple of editors. I just want this to be right. I want it to be a really meaningful piece of work. And we have no doubt that it will be. So, Ryan, thank you so much again for being so generous with your time. Richard, always a pleasure as well.
This was a great conversation. And to our viewers on the youtubes, you're going to see a video pop up that we've curated especially for you to continue your journey of learning courtesy of our editing team. There's always something new to learn there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. So, gentlemen, make the rest of your week outstanding. Thank you so much.
[00:51:10] Speaker D: Bye. Thank you.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: Thanks, Ryan.
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