Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You were listening to the wealth without Bay street podcast, a canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your host, Richard Canhield 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.
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How exactly do you create a financial tailwind to everything that you're doing in your financial life? Well, we're going to learn all about that because we are joined with the founder of Create Tailwind, my good friend Jim Oliver. Jim is an authorized infinite banking practitioner. He works with business owners all over the United States. He is one of the smartest and most interesting people that I know, and I'm very excited. After many attempts to try to get him on the podcast here, we're able to line the calendars up and get him to join us on wealth Bay street. Welcome to the show, Jim.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Richard. I'm excited to be here. Those are a lot of nice things you said. I appreciate that.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Now, Jim, you've got your own podcast. You formed create tillwind many years ago, and you've been doing and practicing the infinite banking concept not only in your personal life, but sharing that message, Nelson's message, with clients for many, many years. Maybe let's go back to part of the beginning. Walk our listeners through what was the pivot point? What was the crux where suddenly this message of becoming your own banker entered your life? What transpired there?
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So, Richard, I'm not going to do what Nelson did to me. When I asked him, hey, go back to the beginning, Nelson. And just because I got to tell a quick Nelson story, Richard, before I answer your question. So he says, my dad was born in 1904, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, he's going to go back to the beginning. Beginning, right. And so I won't do that to you. But I grew up in the inner city part of Los Angeles. I was very poor. So when I stood in line for government cheese, we were homeless at one point in time. So I was fascinated with money, Richard. And when I went to college, I said, okay, I'm finally going to figure this out. I'm going to learn about money in college. And I thought I was going to. I didn't. So then I left college because I was like, wait a minute. I'm not learning what I want to learn. I want to learn about money. So I went to Denver, Colorado, at 22 years old, after being in the gym business for a little bit, and. And I. And I started applying at financial planning firms. And guess what? Every one of them offered me a job, even though I didn't know anybody in Denver other than my in laws. And trust me, they were not going to buy anything from me, and they were not going to become a client. They didn't really have any money, but everybody offered me a job. Why? Because it's. It's based on high commissions, right? These financial planning firms, they'll hire you because you're a commission only, which means you got to eat what you kill. Okay? So I did that. I thought, I'm going to learn about money. I'm going to learn about how to make people wealthy. I make myself wealthy all at the same time. Well, guess what? The latter happened because I was charging 1%. I had over $700 million under management at one point in time, at the very end, and I was like, hey, this is so cool. My clients are making money. I'm making money. We're all happy.
And then something happened. I got this report, and it was from one of the platforms that we used, Richard, and it said, your clients got 9.38% during this period of time.
Thats pretty good. Thats really good. Wait a minute, though. Ive got money in that account. I think it grew by 9.38%.
That is not what they meant, Richard, as you know. So I said, well, wait a minute. How much did my money grow?
And I did. This is back. Okay, I am not a technology guy, but this is before spreadsheets. So this is all by hand. Everything else. I'm taking the perspectives taken, because there was nothing that told me that number.
Here's what it was. It was slightly over 4%. So more than 50% of the return was eaten alive before we even count inflation. So I was like, oh, my gosh, that can't be right. But I started digging in, and I found out that it was right. Well, about that time, God was looking out after me, and somebody said, hey, Nelson Nash is doing this seminar down in Houston, Texas, and you're going to be in Houston.
You ought to stay and see this. Become your own banker guy. And I said, well, that black book, somebody gave me that book. It sat on my desk for a year, and then I read through it, and I just thought, that's just a way to sell more life insurance. That's nothing special. You want me to go see that guy? But something just like when somebody knocked on my door when I wasn't a Christian and said, hey, can we read the Bible with you? I opened the door, then I can't explain it. And I went to Nelson's seminar. Can't explain it. Went to a seminar. About halfway through, I thought, this guy's either the biggest shyster in the world, or he's brilliant. And at the end of the seminar, at the end of 10 hours, and I asked probably 2 hours of questions after that, I still didn't know. And he said, jim, the problem is that you were in the financial services industry, and your brain, your, your paradigm is in cement. So I want you to come back. I'm going to do this again in two weeks, another location. I want you to come back and I, and I'll clear it with the guy putting the seminar.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: I said, okay, I'll come back. So I came back halfway through it, the light went off. I read the book three times in between the two seminars, and it was like, okay, that kind of makes sense. I mean, maybe it's not just for. But, man, this is out there. This is not what they teach us. And so that's kind of how I went back. Halfway through, I was like, boom, this guy is brilliant. Was one of the smartest men I've ever met in my life. One of the best men that I've ever met in my life. And I was like, oh my gosh, I am latching onto this guy. I'm not leaving here without his phone number, email address. I'm getting it all because I got lots of questions.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: That's amazing. And at that point in time, you'd been in the business. How many years would you say before you attended that first event with Nelson?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: 815 years, at least, maybe a little bit more.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: And you had every license on the Alphabet soup under the sun? Basically, yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: I taught the courses to get your CFP designation and your CLu designation. So, I mean, and I taught it the wrong way. I mean, right, we taught what the college for financial Planning and american college what their curriculum was. And so. And I had $700 million under management. I was getting 1% back then.
I mean, its a pretty good gig, right? My office was beautiful, overlooking the mountains in Colorado. Had the nicest chair, the nicest furniture, the nicest clothes. Everything looked good, smelled good. But there was not, there wasn't. We weren't creating wealth.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: What's interesting is you weren't even sure. You didn't know until you thought about your own circumstances, your own statement, and you went to that discovery process. And so what I find is really telling, really interesting. I think its really helpful for our listeners to understand is that despite the time in the industry, the knowledge base again, teaching the courses to other financial professionals, after getting your start in the eat what you kill commission based sales practice to have that degree in that level of success and then say, wait a second, something isnt quite right here. Youre going to pop the hood. Theres a tick in the engine that you hear, and youre going to go try to explore, to diagnose what that is. You went and did that heavy, the heavy lifting, as it were, pencil, you know, and scratch pad fundamentally to learn really what was going on. And I can only imagine just, you know, trying to put myself in your shoes and picturing the feeling that comes up when you're, when you, when you made that point of discovery. Wow, it was only 4%. Wasn't 9.3. What's happening? Why the smoke of mirrors? How am I being lied to?
Correct. How is that impacting my clients? I didn't even know. How can I, how am I going to tell them now? Like, all of those questions come up? Because it's not like you were, you were doing everything that you knew to be well, and it's not like people weren't doing well. They were still doing well. They just weren't doing as well as it was being shown to them, fundamentally.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, okay, so Richard and Wall street and Bay street, the way that these guys work is you got to get somebody else to do something for you to make money. Like, you got to get somebody else to trust you like you and give you their money to go now invest in something.
But I thought to myself, I dont want to depend on anything like that to make my wealth. So I went back and I looked at my book of business, and again, I had a lot of really what I considered wealthy clients, but I took the top 20% of the biggest clients and I said, how did they make their money?
Came down to two things, real estate and businesses. That was it. So I said, okay, maybe that's just the top 20%. I'm going to look it further. I went all the way through my clients and I just used the ones that had a lot of money, okay? Every one of them, real estate and businesses.
And I thought, wait a minute, then why am I telling them to put their money here and these, I mean, look, I didn't go after the attorneys, the doctors, the executives, my people. I'm in a t shirt, right? I wear a t shirt most of the time because I'll tell you how to make millions and millions of dollars, but I'm still going to be me. And so I went to the welding shop, the plastics formation. I went to the blue collar people that were making way more money. I read a great book. There was two textbooks way before the millionaire next door by doctor David Schwartz. They were actual textbooks that he used in courses on how to market to the affluent, how to serve the affluent.
And I found that affluent people aren't who you think they are. They are in the blue jeans and tennis shoes and ripped t shirts, working at their little factory. Whatever they're producing, they're the business owners. They're, they're the guy painting the walls in the, in the apartment complex, if that's what they choose to do, because they own the apartment complex.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes total sense. And, and through that discovery process, you are obviously able to acquire and create and generate your book of business. And you, you still have obviously maintained that and that ability to connect with those same types of people today. And I personally love that. You know, you, you, you see Robert Kiyosaki puts on the purple tie or the nice suit, but on the street, he's wearing hawaiian shorts, you know, a hawaiian shirt, and that's the same kind of model. I mean, sure, you're gonna go up on stage, you might put a, you might put a suit jacket on, but beyond that, you just kind of, you.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Know, I can put it right over this, Richard. I can go get it if you want.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: In fact, I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you on stage, I introduced you, and that's exactly what you're doing. Black t shirt with a sport coat over top, I think, is how it went.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: I got a brand new Robert Graham one that's silver paisley. Look really sharp on here.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: No, that's amazing. So, so what, what year was it that you attended? Nelson Seminar. You did the back to back. You had the conversation one on one with Nelson. Nelson knew that there was something in you that he wanted to draw out. He, he thought you were savable to some degree. And he said, come on to the next seminar.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: And I think it was 2005. 2006. Somewhere in there is the first time. And then I'm a slow learner. It took me a little bit of time to get really all committed and going, but, like, because I was like, because here's what I felt like I had to do, Richard, is, I had to say, okay, well, if this is how these other people built their wealth, then I'm going to build. And I was doing fine, right? I was. I had a. I had a. I was fine. But I was kind of like the business owner that the business controlled them, right? I really wasn't the free business owner where they don't really have to do anything on a day to day basis, and the business will be fine, and it's running and it's growing and everything else. So I said, okay, I got to go buy some businesses, and I got to start these policies. I got to start some policies. And I did that. And I use my business. I mean, I use my policies to go buy businesses. And then I went, wow, that was easy. And you know what? I got all this money flowing back in. I don't need it. So I'm going to buy more.
And I bought more than 30 businesses using the infinite banking concept.
And I'm still looking for businesses. I've sold some. I've gotten out of some, and so. But I'm always looking for more businesses. I mean, every week. And by the way, if you're in the real estate, if you call yourself a real estate investor, you're in the real estate business. Got to run it like a business. We run our family like a business. We have a personal p and l at the end of every month. How much came in, how much went out. All the different companies feed into this, and we run it like a business.
[00:14:04] 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.
Yeah, that's really important. And I was on someone else's podcast recently talking about that very same thing, because the word investor tends to poison the way your brain thinks about stuff. But when you say business or business owner or your brain immediately tweaks to think about, okay, what are the things that go into running a business? And do I know them, or do I not know them? And who do I need to coach me to get to know the things I don't know, etcetera. So your brain starts to solve for different problems. I think that's really important point that you made. Now, in the process of buying all those businesses using your system, your policies, purchasing, taking the revenue from those businesses, returning back to the pool of money. That obviously would have created an expansion effect to your family system as well, I imagine is the case somewhere along the line getting into business and buying businesses, you probably bought businesses that were already ran by an operator to a large degree. And those operators, I'm guessing now that you're in a business relationship with and that business, you'd have to come in and operate it if something happened to that operator. You probably got some policies on those people too, didn't you?
[00:15:38] Speaker B: You know, that's what I love, Richard, is that I'm 58. As I've gotten older, my business partners have seemed to get younger. And so I love the efficiency. If the audience does infinite banking, you know, and I know in Canada the numbers are a little bit different than in the United States, but a younger person's cash value is just a little bit more efficient than an older person's cash value. Now, does it matter? No. But hey, if I can get a little bit of efficiency, I'm in. And I also felt like I was doing this is the amount of money that we would put on some of these young people was more than we needed for the buy sell agreements for the company. And without even saying this to them, I thought, okay, if one of these people get hits, gets hit by a bus, I'm going to be writing a big check to that company or to that family because, hey, some of this death benefit is going to be yours because I want them to be protected and stay in their own world because they used to back all the way up to 1980 when people always put more money in life insurance. They would say the miracle of life insurance, and the miracle is that death benefit, when somebody dies, everybody else has got a bill and the insurance agent or hopefully the IBC practitioner that you're working for, they are working with, they're going to show up with a check.
Right? And again, I don't give tax advice, but more than likely a tax free check.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: Well, and I would imagine you and your firm have had to deliver a number of those checks and I'm not sure if your system has ever experienced that, but perhaps there's something you can share for our listeners around going through that experience and helping your clients through that part of the process, you know?
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Yeah, no, Richard, you know, that's funny because I have delivered. I took over 3000 clients one time for an insurance company. Maybe one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, just because there were so many of them. And it was.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: I took over 30, and I can only imagine what that is with extra zeros.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah. I mean, so, you know, that you can only take care of so many. And so I had to hire staff and people and.
But the. The clientele was older, so we got really good at delivering death claims because they were older. But I'll tell you one, that this person died in an accident, and they happen to be of the Mormon faith, and I don't. And again, if I get this wrong, if you're lds, don't. Don't jump down my throat, okay? But they had the body on the couch, like, and they wanted the friends and family to come over. I don't know if that's part of. Maybe it was just their deal, okay. I just assumed it was something to do with lds. So I come in, and I'm, like, kind of shocked that, oh, my gosh, this body. So that tells you how fast this check was processed. Now, it was for $3 million. The wife had no idea.
Like, she knew I was coming with a check because I called her and said, hey, I got a check. She didn't. In all the hustle and bustle and everything else, he never told her, and she didn't know that she was the beneficiary for $3 million, tax free. This is 20 years ago, and so.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: It'S like $8 million today.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: $8 million today. Now, I almost didn't get to leave that house because the kids, the mom and dad of the person that passed it, the white. I mean, they were like, they were so grateful that. And I was like, he did it right. He's the one that protected his family and made sure that you guys would be taken care of, that you would have no worries the rest of your life. And, you know, and she didn't. Now, when you get that power and you put it with the infinite banking concept, and I promise you know this, but audience, I want to emphasize, you will end up with so much more death benefit than you ever would have gone out and bought for death benefit. Nobody wants to buy death benefit. I mean, you don't want to. I mean, nobody wants to buy car insurance, but we all have it. I mean, we're going to buy, but we're going to buy. Okay. Ten times my income at my age. I'm 58, right? Maybe at your age, 20 times your income, whatever it is. But. But, you know, when you can do infinite banking, you're like, hey, what am I going to do with this extra money? Because I don't want to disappoint my kids if they're listening. But I'm not giving it all to you. I'm not going to ruin you like that. I wouldn't take away that. Your ambition and your drive. You're going to get some, but it's only going to help you, boost you. I'm not going to try to make you.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you have to have an incentive to be able to have ambition and growth as you identified. And, you know, I would imagine, like you say, you're already running your family as a business in that way. You've got, you know, profit and loss statements monthly. You're looking at those things. You're probably having great discussions around that with your wife. I'm not sure. How, how does that come up in discussions around the dinner table? Where do you, how do you formalize that, Jim, in your world? Walk us through that a little bit.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: You know, in, in my family, it's funny because I'm the only one that wants to talk about money. I'm the only one that wants to know. They just go on and live their lives and do whatever they want to do, spend what they want to spend. And they're grateful for that. Now. They do all the other stuff, all the taking care of the home, taking care of the emotionals. I mean, like, I get involved, but it's really that traditional thing. My job is to protect no matter what, provide no matter what their job is, take care of me, take care of the family, take care of the house, take care of the dog, you know, take care of our friend. I mean, like, that's what we do. It's so we don't really have those discussions. They don't want to. In fact, I'll tell you a funny story. So my daughter, who's 20, she'll be 26 May 14. So she's in school ten years, not 15 years ago. And the teacher asks her, does anybody know what the golden rule is? She raises her hand, very excited, and she says, he with the gold makes the rules. And everybody laughs and she says, no, that's not the golden rule. So she comes home and she says, what you say the golden rule is, is wrong. And I said, no, no, no. What I'm saying is right, okay? It's absolutely the truth. And she says, all you care about is money. And I said, that's true because money gives you choices. Choices give you freedom. All I really care about is freedom. My freedom, your freedom. Everybody we care about is freedom. Anybody that wants to work with us, their freedom. Absolutely. That's what I care about. But the only way to have freedom is with money, because you need choices.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Preston, I bet you that was an impactful moment just to be able to have that conversation with her, but also probably the thoughts that came afterwards. But it's interesting, like, say, the golden rule and how we are looking at that from Nelson's vantage point. To me, it's the only thing that makes sense. And having that context, open school is very interesting. I suspect maybe there's an opportunity in my future for a similar conversation. You just never know.
Interesting. I was having a family banking meeting with, my kids are six and eight, so we're a little bit behind you there in the timeline. And we had our first family banking meeting about two years ago. And when we were there, we were actually with another family, another group of, uh, another, you know, couple and their two kids. And we get along great. It was kind of a. This retreat that we did for about a week, and we reserved near the end for about 30 minutes because the kids are pretty young. Had my wife get treats to keep them engaged in the conversation. And we just started off by sharing, hey, what was amazing about our vacation, our trip, what did you love? Got them to list off all the positive base, basically, like a strategic coach, positive power up, essentially. And then we took that energy, that good energy, said, okay, now, how are we able to accomplish having this vacation and doing all this while we access money from the family banking system? And, you know, my. I got to ask kids questions. They already know about the family bank, but they don't know what it is. And. And I had Nelson's book with me, of course, and I pointed. I said, do you guys know who this is? And my daughter's like, that's Nelson. Like, why do we keep this book around? Well, it's really important. Nelson was your friend, and he. He taught you stuff, kind of a thing. So we had this really powerful discussion, and I said, now that we've come and had this trip, if we want. We want to do this trip again, don't we? Like, yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Amazing. We got to do it. Well, what do we need to do so that we can come on another trip? We have to put the money back, dad.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Boom.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: High five.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: High five.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: We got to put it back. Why do we got to put it back, everybody? So we can use it again later, you know? And that simple kind of premise has sort of latched on with my kids, and I'm grateful for that. And so, obviously, we'll be expanding more and more as we go. Um, but just that recognition of. Of them seeing those basic principles. But one of the reasons I brought the story up is my son asked a question. He says, why aren't our friends and the two kids that were with us joining us in this family banking meeting, like, well, their family, they run their family differently, and they may not have a family bank like ours, and that's up to them to decide if they want to do that or not. But for us, it's important that we learn and we talk about money together so that we can keep the money in the family. The more we keep in the family, the more things we can do as a family together. And I just kind of left it like that.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: You know, what's so cool about that, Richard, is, you know, everybody's heard the story, you know, when there's the book, the Rockefellers versus the Vanderbilts and all of that. But if you really go back to JD Rockefeller, there's a couple of things that stand out to me, and one of them, or a few things that stand out, but one of them is he grew up super, super poor. Some people don't know that. JD Rockefeller, right? Not John Rockefeller, but grew up super, super poor. And he said when he was a kid, he was going to be the richest man in the world. He had that vision. Right? Which, again, tells you the strangest secret is absolutely true. Whatever you think about the most, you will become. Right. And so. But there's a great book, and if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's a cool, audible listen to is it's. And I'm going to butcher. It's. Because this is not the exact title, but I promise you this will help you find it. 38 letters to my son or something like that by JD Rockefeller. Okay? And it's literally 38 letters. There's nothing else in it but these 38 letters. But in one letter, Richard, he says, I figured out what the banks do, and I became the bank.
And I was like, this is in like 19. Oh, 419. Twelve or something like that, right? And I'm like, oh, my gosh.
I know. We know that you had to borrow money if you wanted money from the family. And maybe, hopefully still today, the Rockefellers, you got to borrow it. His son lost a million dollars in the stock market. This is in another letter. And he says, I know you're upset. Now, think about that.
Around the turn of the century, 1900, you lose a million dollars.
And he says, but don't worry, we'll loan you the money, you can make some smart investments and businesses and real estate, and we'll get you out of that hole because you owe that million bucks back to the family and you lost it in the stock market.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Amazing. I'm going to be picking that book up for sure. That sounds unbelievable. I've heard it. It's been recommended. Maybe not the book itself, but these letters. I've heard of them before, but I've never had a chance to see or experience them that way. So I'm actually very excited. I think a lot of our listeners will be as well. And it also makes me think about writing letters and doing things for my own kids. And so one of the beautiful things about, of course, this podcast, you yourself have an amazing podcast, is those discussions that we're having just like this one we're having right now, Jim. This will live on. And so if my kids ever need a roadmap to something, they want to know how dad felt about things, how he looked at the world, how he communicated with other people, what was important to him. They have a, they already have 200, 5300, 400 videos of content already in 2024. They can go back and look through to kind of epitomize some of that, I think, over time. And so that's a, that's a unique blessing that this, this methodology, using YouTube, using a podcast medium to get a message out and have good discussions and share the thinking processes that we go through with our clients and with the people that we like to serve, it can really expand even beyond that because it can be there in perpetuity as long as the, you know, the, the, the platform still exists. I don't imagine YouTube's going anywhere anytime soon. But, uh, really, really powerful now. You know, Jim, when we've talked in the past and we've had one on ones conversations, and of course, you've done a lot of really incredible presentations at the Nelson Nash Institute annual think tank conference. Uh, the last one that you did, uh, I think it was maybe in 2017 that I remember seeing you do, is, was a pretty good mic drop moment. You had someone build some, some really awesome slides for you, as I recall. It's not your forte, but they had some pretty sweet slides. But you really focus on talking to business owners. And so what is it you think about the conversation with business owners that you find either that you do or that just in general connects with them more than maybe some other people? Walk us through that?
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Let me use an example of a business owner from the book and let's assume that a lot of people in the audience, hopefully have read Nelson's book, and if they haven't, that would be the first thing for you to do as soon as you get done. Listening to this podcast link is in the description.
Yeah, but let's assume that you've read the book, and everybody loves the equipment financing example, right, Richard? Everybody loves. Hey, Terry went out and he got these trucks. You know, he financed the trucks for trucks. Instead of having the bank finance them, he financed them. And he has 200 or 2 million or $2 million more than he would have if he didn't finance the trucks himself, didn't work any harder, didn't take any more risk, et cetera, et cetera. Everything people say, right? I go, yeah, but how much did the trucks make him over those 30 or 40 years?
And they go, oh, yeah, because one thing I didn't tell you is that he was hauling diamonds in them.
I mean, he wasn't. Right? But if I said that. So how much did those trucks make?
And they're like, oh, wait a minute. Those trucks are cash flowing asset, and real estate is a cash flowing asset, and my business is a cash flowing asset. And like, doctors and dentists and business owners, which those guys are, too, they don't realize the opportunities that they have. And a lot of them, a lot of business owners don't have degrees or advanced degrees or whatever. And so I I feel like sometimes they're more open, you know, like a. If somebody is a CPA, and there's great cpas out there that get infinite banking, and they're super supportive of it, but there's so many of them that have been trained that it's black and white. No, I don't want anything that could be outside of this, filling out this form.
And so I feel like these other people need my help, and they're my people. And one of the reasons, Richard, is, when I was 13 years old, my adopted mother, she worked in a casket factory. So the handles on this, we would do the hardware that go on a casket. And at 13, I was swinging a hammer for 8 hours a day to bend the metal around itself, and then somebody else would buff it out, and then they played it, and then they'd buff it again, and then it was ready for delivery. Right. And I'm working in this hot. I mean, this was tiring. I'm. I'm not afraid to tell you. At 13, every time I got a 15 minutes break, I was taking a nap, okay? And I did this all summer long. But I watched one thing that happened to me is, is Dwayne McIntyre, the guy that owned the factory? He'd come in maybe for an hour in the morning, he'd putz around a little bit. He'd be in his office, then he'd be gone.
And I live in the inner city of Los Angeles, and, you know, bars on the, on the, on the window would make you rich, right? So, um, I thought, where does Dwayne McIntyre live? He lived in Palos Verdes. Now, I mean, literally, it's up there. It's on a hill, right? And if you know Los Angeles, it's the nicest. Well, it's not the nicest. Bel Air, Beverly Hills, but it's for everybody that's not a movie star or whatever. That's the nicest place to live. And it overlooks the Pacific Ocean and everything. And I would ride my motorcycle up there and I'd go, what do these people know about money that I don't? That's where Dwayne McIntyre lives, in this little casket factory. So I.
Since I was 13 years old, I've had an affinity for business owners. I want to help business owners. I want to show them what they can do with their business.
And just to prove that everything that I ever needed to know about money to become as wealthy as I wanted to be, I learned when I was 13 years old, the summer when I was 13 years old. I'll give you another quick example, Richard. One day I'm in my crummy neighborhood, and I'm walking along, and we're going up to the liquor store. Now, in LA, at that time, a liquor store was not just to go get liquor, okay? We were going to get a pop, a coke. We always called everything a coke. So we're going up to get a coke, and we're going by one of the most run down houses in my neighborhood. And we thought a witch lived there, to be honest. And I looked down, it's a sunny, bright, sunny day, I'm sweating a little bit, it's the summer. And I look down, and who's pulling weeds in this yard? Dwayne McIntyre. Now, I'd like to tell you that I was really polite. And I said, mister McIntyre, I didn't talk like that. I was not a polite kid. Probably say, hey, what are you doing here? And he looked up at me and he said, oh, I own this house.
Own this house? Yeah, I own a lot of real estate in Los Angeles.
Well, why would you own it here? Own it up there in Palos Verdes.
And he goes, I own a lot of real estate around Los Angeles. Just said the same thing.
And so he owned my neighborhood, parts of it. The people that lived there didn't.
And so everything that I needed to know, be the owner, owner, owner, owner, right. Because the owner of the business makes the money. The owner of the business has freedom.
And then be the owner of real estate. The owner, don't be the renter. Don't rent. Don't be the employee. Be the owner. So that's why I'm passionate about it, because I grew up with two people that didn't know anything about money. My adopted parents. One was, drove a trash truck, and the other one worked at a casket factory. They were evicted from more places than I can remember or count, and they didn't know anything about money. So I want to teach business owners, because business owners get it. They understand they're willing to risk every day to write the checks, do what they need to do, the lines of credit, whatever it is. Hopefully, it's through their banking system to provide jobs for other people that really just don't understand money the way that the business owner does.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Robert, there's so many amazing nuggets in that. And one of the things I really want to isolate and just kind of reiterate for the listener is what really connected with me in that story. Jim, is your curious mind, okay, asking the right question. That's. That's. That's 13 you were thinking about your thinking.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: And that, that is, uh, hey, what does this guy know about money that I don't know? Well, at 13, you probably don't know anything anyway. And so he's probably, you know, most people are going to know more than you know. But specifically, this guy knows something more than other people know. And what does he know that they don't know? So that question leads you to, you know, the brain is this powerful computer. It wants to solve problems, going to solve the problems that you give it. And if you give it a good problem to solve, it's going to come up with good solutions. And that's really fundamentally we did in an early age. And I suspect that you've continued to do that throughout your whole life to a large degree. You know, good. Getting into the financial industry early on in the commission sales. How do I sell? How do I talk to people? What might I say? How does that guy do it? You probably sell. How's that guy doing? He's doing well. How's the, how's he doing it? I better go talk to that guy.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:36:43] Speaker A: You can become your own banker. There's a guy that does that. I probably shouldn't go to it, but maybe I will go. I'll go. Oh, I don't know if this guy's on track or not, but I'm going to ask him 2 hours of questions because I'm curious, and I'm curious enough to attend. Again, I'm open. I'm open to learning that trait is. And I think, first of all, one of the things that makes me most interested in talking to people in general is the natural curiosity that they display out in the open. But ask the ability to ask good questions and think about a good question. Even if you're not asking the question, if you're thinking about it in your own mind, you're still asking someone. You're asking you. Asking yourself a new question is part of the process. And, you know, I think fundamentally, you're also someone who's attended a lot of strategic coach in the past. I would imagine that that helped formulate some of your journey. Maybe talk a little bit about what the role of mentorship and coaching has done for you as you've been growing your own business and the multiple businesses that you own, because you're obviously a mentor and a coach to the many businesses that you own and the people who operate them amongst the clients that you serve.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I can't say how much I appreciate strategic coach and the materials that Dan Sullivan and his partners have put together, babs and all those people on his team, because it's changed my life. It's. It taught me again, I was looking for the answers in a 1990, I think is when I was exposed to Dan Sullivan.
I was like, what do you mean don't have an office? Well, guess what? I don't have an office.
Not have this. Well, I fought it, man, because I fight everything, okay? I fight it. He had great advice back then. It's probably the same stuff today. I think most of it, but I fought it every the strategy circle. I fought that thing. I tried to build that thing full of holes, but same thing with zig Ziglar. Help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want and more. I fought that. I fight it all because there's some. You're right. I have this vision thing, but I also have to have proof, right? And the only way that I know how to have proof is to do it myself. And so once I, you know, so I was stubborn. I was in here's I'm going to give you this thing that I learned. I learned this from a janitor. Okay? Richard, this janitor said, I don't even know why I was listening to the janitor, but that's where I was in life. Okay? Is he said, if you read an hour a day, in six weeks, you'll separate yourself from everyone else. And I thought, well, I want to separate myself. I don't want to be poor. I don't want to stand in line for government cheese and be homeless. So I started reading an hour. I did not like to read, but all of a sudden I was reading books that I was like, wow, that's interesting. Is that true? Again, I'm going to challenge it. So this is a technique that I learned not from the janitor, because every time I read a book, I have a pad of paper next to me. Even if I'm listening to the book, I have a pad of paper next to me. I write down questions. Back then we wrote letters to the author. I've got questions.
They would send answers back. I would make a comment back. Now, guess what we have. We have a relationship. We're communicating, right? Today. I tell people, write down the questions, email the author, ask them to call you, ask them to email you back. I promise you, more will do it than you can imagine.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Because very few people ask.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Because very few people ask. The way that I got to know Bob Berg, great author, the go giver. Is that?
And he was like, thats a good question. Let me tell you what.
And it was like a podcast interview, right? And then thats when I was like, you know what, reading a book or taking somebody and getting their knowledge of success, their pattern of success, its kind of like a podcast. And thats why I wanted to do the podcast, because I want to interview people like you and like Jason and like go, hey, so tell me your path. Because our paths are different, right? And your experiences are different, and I'm going to learn something from you. Then what Dan Sullivan says is, I'm going to learn something from you, you're going to learn something from me. You're going to take what I taught you, you're going to make it better. You're going to give it back to me. I'm going to say, hey, did you ever think about doing it like, and we have this creativity explosion and not a competition, right? It's a collaboration.
And so I love that about life. And I love that at 58 years old, I am not going anywhere. I hope I'm doing this 40 years from now, Jeff.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Well, and the fact that you'll be able to do it 40 years from now, a lot of people think, and they set in their mind that they're done. They have a checkout date already in their mind. And usually that's because either the thing that they do, they don't really like, or, or it's because they're around people that are always also using that same language, the same communication. But there's a checkout date. And what you're identifying is that there's no need to have a checkout date. Just like Nelson. Nelson was working right up until his very last day calling people. Now, it may not have seemed like work, really. What he was doing is he was giving, he was, he was selfless in that, that environment to say, hey, how we're going to continue this message on. I'm going to check in with some people. I'm sure you probably had a conversation with him right near the end. Is, did I? And, you know, at 88 revolutions around the sun, he still wanted to give. He had no reason to stop. And if he was still with us, he'd still be doing it today.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: You know what's amazing about that, Richard, is he was giving a lesson to the nurse that was prepping him the night before, getting him ready for his surgery the next morning in austrian economics. And, you know, I, I didn't talk to him about it, but that's what he, I was told by David Stearns, uh, his son in law, that that's what he was doing. And I think that is so cool and so amazing. But, you know, if you think about it, when you would have Nelson, and I know you guys did, many times you have Nelson come up and he would do his two day seminar, right?
Which was incredible, which I swear, the best $200 that you're ever going to spend is on that six hour course. That, okay, it was ten. Hey, but they made it six. It's worth 20 grand if it's worth a dollar. And you can get it for like $200. Okay? So I encourage everybody, by the way, to watch that. But what Nelson would do when he would come visit you, you learn because you could, you learned every single time he did that talk, even if you saw it ten times or more. I know what, I don't know how many times I saw it and how many times I read the book, but then it's in between.
And I remember one time he sat on my couch in my house in South Dakota, and he gave us a 45 minutes bible lesson that was as good or better than any sermon I've ever heard in my life. And I just, this man wanted to teach, like you said, until the day he graduated. And I, you know, when things are right, they're right. And when people are good examples and mentors Dwayne McIntyre, he's right. He's right. Right. Nelson Nash, when he's right, he's right, is you do yourself a disservice if somebody mentors you, pours into you, and then you don't do it.
And so the way that I honor Nelson, the way you guys honor Nelson is we teach other people what he taught us, and we, and we treat them with the heart that he treated us with.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Very, very well said. And one of the things that as you're, as you're sharing that I had this image in my mind, I know that you really connected with the backwards bicycle example. And I actually sent that video to Nelson originally.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Did you really?
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. And so I just, the moment I saw it, I thought, oh, my God, I know. Exactly. Immediately, like within seconds high quick start. I know who to send this to. And I sent it to Nelson. I got a response back from, I'm sure, within about ten minutes.
And so we have that in our membership, client membership site. It's one of the videos that's there. And it's like, this has nothing to do with infinite banking and everything to do with infinite banking, but you actually have a backwards bike that you bring to bring out two sessions. So for anyone who's not familiar, we'll put a link into the show notes about the backwards bike. It's only like a ten minute video. It's fantastic. Walk us through, Jim. What's the experience of bringing that out to a live event and having people use it?
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, now, because I do everything virtually, I don't do any live events right now, I think I will start to do some again. I actually gave it to a great friend of mine and yours to Russ Morgan and Joey Mira with wealth without Wall Street. I gave them the backwards bicycle, shipped it to them. Okay. But what I did is got this bicycle, and I think it was a Schwinn. And Schwinn, if you're my age, was like the coolest thing in the world back in the day. So I wanted it to be a Schwinn. Right? And then I went to this guy and I said, okay, here's what I wanted to do. And he goes, oh, I can do that. I was like, really? And I showed him the video. And he goes, I can make that. And so he made, it was like, typical welder guy. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that. And so I had it sitting in my lobby. And then I would take it to seminars that I would do live, and I would basically do what the guy does in the video. And I would say, okay, what I'm going to try to teach you today, it's different. It's backwards from everything that you've ever learned. And when I tell you everything you've ever learned about money is wrong, you're going to say to me, well, wait a minute, Jeff. You know, my uncle, my dad, my brother in law, my CPA says, this is all crazy. You just want to sell me a big life insurance contract.
And I would say, okay, look, here's the bicycle. And I would make them a challenge. I always had $1,000 in my pocket because I would say, if you can ride this bicycle 10ft, you can have the. Had a kid, he would do slack lining backflips on a slack line like this, wide right, boom, I can do it. I guarantee I can do it. Couldn't do it. Can't do it. Because. And so think about that. What I love about that is Nelson said, it's all about how you think, right? Well, and you got to rethink your thinking. If you won't do that, then leave the seminar. Don't stay here. Don't eat the free food and everything. Just don't do it. You're wasting my time, your time, just leave it. Because if you can't think differently, you can't do this.
Because everything you've been taught is not this.
Everything you've been taught is to make you a slave.
Now, you can accept that. You cannot accept that. It's not a white thing, black thing, and it's not anything to do with the color of your skin, your ethnic ethnicity, nothing. We are all financial slaves. If you don't believe that, if you can't believe that, you can't accept that. Don't do infinite banking. Don't go out and buy businesses and create all kinds of great wealth, don't do it. Stay in that system.
But I hope you don't.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: The thing that comes up for me thinking about you talking through the experience of using the bike in front of people, I mean, really fundamentally, there wasn't a bike involved. But when you went to Nelson's first seminar, that really happened to you.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: It did.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: And he saw that you were open to new things. But it's because of that past programming. And so I always equate it to, if you think about a tractor in the field and it's a had been a heavy rain and there's a bunch of mud and it's just spinning and it's spinning and it's digging these big ruts. The ruts get so big that it can't get out on its own. You need another tractor and maybe a third tractor or whatever to come and pull it out. But as you're pulling it out, sometimes if you don't finish it properly, you slide right back into the rut, and then you're right back to where you were. So we have these moments and these glimmers of hope where we get our thinking outside of the rut, that we're stuck into that. That paradigm. But if we're not careful, we're not mindful, and we don't, we don't keep moving forward outside in a new path, we're going to slide right back into the old ruts that are there, and they're just locked in our brain, fundamentally. And even if you're a couple of years through that process, you can still slide back into it. The difference is, the more and more that you're outside of the rut, the quicker and faster you can. You can move yourself back out of it again. If you do slide into that old pattern, that old habit, and a lot of that will be relevant to the people that you surround yourself and the type of conversations that you're having, are those conversations asking good questions like we've talked about today. So a few really key things that you shared with our audience today is, number one, that you can learn from anyone, and you can learn at any age that you're very impressionable when you're young, and that you need to ask good questions both inside and outside, around the world. And the things that you want to achieve in life, those are some of the fundamentals I'm taking away from this conversation to Jim, would you say I hit it on point?
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. And block out the noise.
And one thing that I would say is, wherever you are, you can do it. Whoever you are, you can do it. You know, I can't build this house, but I can find somebody who can build it.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: You can find.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: And so, like, you can find people that can teach you and be patient and be persistent, because the whole thing about not falling back in that rut, like you said, and I love that analogy, is you have to learn from how you got out of the rut, learn from being in that rut, don't make the same mistake twice, or if you make it twice, don't make it a third time.
And so, yeah, I think those are great points. And I think that.
Figure out who you want to be, who you. What you want to do, and what you want to have, and dream big. We do not think big enough, Richard, as you know, and I would encourage everyone to take three pieces of paper, write down everything you want to be, everything you want to do, and everything you want to have, and I promise you, infinite banking and wealth without Bay street can help you get there.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: I think a lot of people will. Will fill up their have a lot faster than they'll fill up their do.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: And that's why you do it. That's why you can't do it in that order. You gotta.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: You gotta start with. You gotta start with the b.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: You gotta start with the b. Tell me everything you wanna be. I wanna have a. Sorry, no, no, no. I don't care about that, you know? Cause guess what? If you really. If you really describe who you wanna be and what you wanna do, your haves will really be anything you want, right? You can have everything.
But then it just doesn't mean, you know, like cars and, I mean, you know, once you really figure out what wealth is, and it's not about money, really doesn't, those things, they just don't matter as much.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: I'm not sure why, but that reminds me of the comedian Stephen Wright with his deadpan comedy. But it's like, love it. You can't have everything in the world.
Where would you put it?
[00:52:09] Speaker B: That's right. I love that.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: Now, Jim, one of the things you may be even familiar with this, I think, from, you know, some of your past, but one of the ways we like to close out our show is we always want to leave that final insight to our listeners. And though you showed up in a t shirt today, and clearly anyone watching on YouTube will see you're not wearing a cape, I think you'd look pretty smashing in one, perhaps in the same pattern as that suit coat you were talking about. But you're showing up for the businesses that you serve, the people in your life, the people listening to this podcast. You're really showing up as a hero. So our question for you is, who would you most like to be a hero to?
[00:52:42] Speaker B: I would most like to be a hero to all of the young people out there that think that the world's more messed up than we thought it was when I was 40 years ago, when I was 18 or 25 or whatever, is I want to, I want to show the young people that their generation actually is great. And the reason that they're great is because they're thinking differently. They don't think, go get a job for 20, 30, 40 years and then retire. Right. And so I want to be a hero to them. I want to have materials that they can go back and look, I want somebody to play my stuff 50 years from now or 50 years after I'm gone and say, you know what? Back in 2020, this old guy, that look, look, he's wearing a t shirt. He's like, whatever, whatever. You know, he gave me an outline that changed my life. That's who I want to be a hero to.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Amazing. Fantastic. Well, Jim, we appreciate so much you coming on the program today, dropping lots of golden nuggets, words of wisdom, inspiring your own journey to the people that are listening in, thinking and reflecting on theirs. Hopefully, they'll take some amazing nuggets and put them into action in their own life. Be do have. Go ahead, three sheets of paper. Write it down. For those of you watching on YouTube. Go ahead. You'll see right there down below, a new playlist just popped up. The next video. Go ahead. Click on that. Continue your journey of learning because there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. Thanks for listening to the wealth without Bay street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels. For more great content. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show we definitely appreciate. And don't forget to share the subscribe 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.
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