INVEST TO RETIRE: Episode 113 - Optimal Retirement Solutions with Tome Hegna

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest, Mr. Tom Hegna. Tom came on the podcast back in July of 2020, and a lot has changed obviously since the last time that we had him on. We talk about all the things that have changed the last couple years, where things are going both for the consumers and also for you as an advisor. He's the author of 5 books, a couple of them I'm sure many of you have either read or heard about before, Paychecks and Playchecks, and another one, Don't Worry, Retire Happy. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Tom Hegna. So, the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

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Tom Hegna, welcome back to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks, Brad. Great to be with you.

Glad to have you. It's been unbelievably 2 years since the last time that we had you on, and at that time it was a few months into the pandemic, obviously. And so a lot has changed. And so that's kind of really where I want to start, which is just take us from the past 2 years. What are some of the changes that you've seen happen in the, in the, in the marketplace?

Well, I think, um, the agents and advisors who shifted to virtual quicker did better. You know, my business shut down literally overnight because I'm a platform speaker and there were no platforms for like 2 years. But I immediately had moved to the cloud. And so for me, that whole COVID thing was a great thing, not for the loss of life and everything, but the fact that we had to change our business model was a good thing for me because it got me off the road. I was doing, you know, 200 days a year on the road or 200 days a year on the road for 30 years. And I'm not doing that anymore. And so I just think by shifting to virtual, you know, we can all be so much more efficient. Think of all the traffic that you didn't have to sit through, you know, for 2 years that you could actually be doing stuff in those hour, 2 hours when people are commuting and everything. And so I just think a lot of that is still going to move forward. So we're never going way back to the way it used to be. There's always going to be this hybrid system where there'll be some live things and some virtual, and I think that's good.

Yeah, no doubt. What have you seen from the, just the consumer side in terms of where they are because of what's happened in the marketplace the last couple years, of their appetite for different products and services? And, and I'll kind of ask another sub-question on that in just a second, but what have you seen from the— what the consumers are willing to actually want to hear more about versus what they did maybe pre-COVID?

Well, I think just in the last, you know, couple months, consumers are much more attuned that markets can go down. Like, for, you know, for 10— for 8, 10 years, this market's been going up and up and up and up, and it's been hard I talk to them about guarantees and insurance products. Oh, those are boring. Oh, the fees are too high. Well, yeah, how are these market loss fees working out for them when, you know, Peloton's down 75%, Netflix down 68%, you know, Roku, Square, all these major companies are down 60%, 70%, 80%. What about those market loss fees? I like to talk about. So I think right now, agents and advisors have a tremendous opportunity to get in front of clients that in the past 5, 6, 7 years, they wouldn't have gotten in front of because, oh, my broker gets me 20% a year. Yeah, how's that been working out lately? And so, and again, I'm not against stocks, I'm not against investing. I own stocks, I invest. But when you're at or near retirement, you have got to put some guarantees into that portfolio. You do not want to be taking money out when the market's going down. And so I think now, right now, when, as we're filming this, uh, this would be a great time to reach out to clients because people who wouldn't talk to you before, they will talk to you now because a lot of people are very nervous.

[Speaker:CASEY_WEADE] A lot of people, whenever they hear about you and your affinity for annuities, they immediately think— they almost dismiss it, and some advisors about like, "Well, I'm not going to put out everything that I have in annuities." You've never said to put everything into annuities. And just talk about that.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Yeah. I mean, look, everything in the right place. I mean, people thought my Facebook account got hacked a couple years ago because I put some positive about crypto in there. So, I mean, look, But everything in the right place. So here's what I say. Number one, you need to cover your basic living expenses in retirement with guaranteed lifetime income. That is backed up by PhDs all over the world. Then you can invest to protect yourself against inflation because you don't just want to have income, you want to have increasing income for the rest of your life. You got to have a plan for long-term care. And the most efficient way to pass wealth to children, grandchildren, and charities is with life insurance. So people would buy life insurance, go to their kids, which you can do for pennies on the dollar. I bought a million-dollar policy to go to my kids when my wife and I die. It costs us $150,000. So for 15 cents on the dollar, we get to leave our kids a million dollars plus whatever's left over. But now we get to spend the other $850,000 on us. And so if people would learn you're supposed to spend your money, you're not supposed to give money to anybody, you're supposed to spend it. And then you give life insurance, have a plan for long-term care, invest to protect yourself against inflation. I even said you can put 1% of your money into crypto. I put 1% of my portfolio into crypto, and I was the biggest crypto non-believer in the world. But, you know, I listened to this guy on CNBC, and he laid out a legitimate case to a non-believer like me that Bitcoin someday could be $1 million of Bitcoin. And he said, all I recommend to my wealthy clients is they put 1% in their portfolio, because if it goes to zero, 1% isn't gonna wreck your portfolio. But if it goes to $1 million of Bitcoin, it's really going to help your portfolio. And that made sense to me. And so I put 1% in back when Bitcoin was $3,000 a Bitcoin. So I believe in guarantees. I believe in insurance. I believe in life insurance. I believe in annuities, but I don't say put all of your money any one place. I never have.

Yeah. You know, something you just mentioned right there that I actually want to call out is the fact that you have developed over your entire career very strong beliefs that here's somebody who presents an idea around crypto, and you said, you know what, I'm actually going to grow and, and, and, and be willing to change my beliefs about something, that is a— that is the epitome of Carol Dweck's book, A Growth Mindset, versus the fixed mindset is, no, this is what it is and that's what it's going to be. And, and if somebody comes and gives me new information, I'm not even willing to change. I think that's an important point.

Well, and I've never heard it put that way that you just put it, but that's really good because Like I said, I was a big non-believer because what is Bitcoin? It's nothing. It's the greater fool theory. You got to sell to somebody who's stupider than you. I mean, that type of thing. And that was my mindset. But if you start studying it, some of the most smartest, brilliant minds in the world are working in the crypto space. So I got to say to myself, well, you know, 1%, that makes sense to me. I mean, and just so you know, when I bought that at $3,000, when it hit like $68,000 back in November, whenever that was, That was worth $1 million in my portfolio, just 1%. So, I mean, and I didn't sell it. I think it's a long-term thing. It's 1%. It doesn't matter if it goes to zero. It's not going to hurt me. But to me, that made sense. And so, yeah, I did change my mind a little bit on that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have heard you say, and I think this is a really important topic that I want you to mention, is that you have advisors. And then you have insurance people, and they get so stuck in what they can sell as opposed to what is the right thing for the client. And so instead of being so product-focused, being prospect-focused, and then being able to say— I mean, it's kind of like what we just mentioned right there. It's saying, listen, I, I'm not so into— I only sell universal life policies, as an example. It's the right product for the right client in the right situation. Talk about that.

Yeah. And I think that is so important. And another guy that maybe your listeners want to follow is a guy by the name of David Macchia, M-A-C-C-H-I-A. He'd be a good guest for you too. But he says, we really need to focus on the client, not on the product. And that is so true because right now you've got these, I call them fake fiduciaries because they're out there. They're saying, oh, I'm a fiduciary. I'm a fiduciary. I don't do annuities, but I'm a fiduciary. Well, you can't be a fiduciary if you don't, if you take tools off. It'd be like a carpenter saying, I'm not going to use a wrench. I only use screwdrivers and hammers. I don't believe in wrenches. That'd be stupid. And so, then you've got some insurance people that won't ever talk about investments. Oh, everything should be insurance, insurance. That's not true. It should be insurance and investments. It should be annuities and investments. I've never said annuities instead of investments. I've never once said that. And so, I think that's where we got to focus that there is a proper mix and a proper balance. You shouldn't put all of your money any one place. But let's follow the research that's been done by hundreds of PhDs around the world that they have ample proof and evidence of the optimal way. See, there's a difference between optimal and best. People say, what's the best way to retire? I say, I don't know. Nobody knows what's going to be the best. I mean, if we knew what the stock market was going to be, if we knew what gold was going to be, if we knew what oil was going to be, if we knew what Bitcoin was going to be, we'd know what the best was. Nobody knows the best. And so what math and science does when they don't know the best They go for the optimal. And the optimal simply means this is your best chance of being the best, and it will never be the worst. That's optimal. So, that's what I talk about is the optimal way to retire. There is an optimal way, and that's getting that balance right.

Oh, man. I really like that. I like optimal versus best. That's really good. I was preparing for our episode, and I remember you telling this story about— and I'll tee you up so you make sure you say it the right way. Somebody had done a study that within 90 days, they took maybe 3 or 4 different hypothetical people who retired within that period of time, all within the same amount of money, etc., and they got completely different returns. And so I think it was around the timing of returns and timing of retirement, not just sequence of returns. Can you speak about that?

Yeah, so that That is from David Mackey. So that's one of the things he wrote. He did the 10-person thing and he had 10 people, totally identical financial situation, same financial advisor, same portfolio, same everything. The only thing that was different is they retired 90 days apart. And these 10 people, so over, over what is that, like 2 and a half years, these people retired. But they all had the same thing. They all took the same amount of money. Everything was identical. You know, 2 of those people went dead broke. 2 of them wound up as multimillionaires and still took out the money and 5, 6 of them did just fine in retirement. They didn't leave a bunch of money to their kids, but they didn't run out. And the only difference between those 10 people was the day they retired. And what David says is, and that's how he explains sequence of returns risk, he says it's timing risk. And the only thing difference between those people was luck, good luck or bad luck. And as an advisor, are you really going to submit your clients to good luck or bad luck? And that's why these fiduciaries who say, "Oh, I don't believe in annuities." Well, that's ridiculous. You're subjecting your clients to time risk and longevity risk. And if you're not taking timing risk and longevity risk off the table, how can you say you're a fiduciary? You're not acting in your client's best interest. And I don't know how this whole fiduciary thing wound up commissions versus fees and commissions are bad, fees are good. It's ridiculous. Who cares? If you're focused on what's best for the client, it shouldn't matter whether it's a commission or a fee. It's what's in their best interest, not what's in your best interest.

And that very well, that may often, if you stay client-focused, then it may be a product that you don't offer or don't have the access to, but you, you know, someone in your town, or certainly could find somebody else that can help the client with that. And I'm sure that there's a way for you to be able to help them in some way, but that oftentimes may not, may mean a product that you don't exactly have in your tool belt, to use your carpenter.

Yeah, especially if, if it's a, if it's a agent with a company and they don't have those products and they don't let you sell other products, then, then yeah, you might have to go outside. Um, but a lot of agents have access to various products from different companies, and, and in those situations, most of them can solve the problem if they focus on what's best for the client.

Well, given the fact of what, you know, what has propped it up, the economy, for the last couple years, um we have to talk about taxes and we have to talk about like where things are going. And so I guess I'm asking you almost, Tom, to pull your crystal ball out as much as you can and kind of begin to— let's talk about where things are going specifically with taxes in the future.

Well, I mean, taxes have to go up, and it's not a Republican or Democrat issue. It's a math problem. I've said in the past we need a math party. We need a party that can add and subtract because these two parties just can't, quite frankly, because no matter who's in charge That debt keeps going up. And they say, oh, we're cutting the deficit. I mean, I wanted to laugh. The deficit means we're still going in debt. We're just going in debt less fast than we were last year or something. I mean, stupid. We're $30 trillion in debt, climbing at $4 billion every single morning. Every single morning when you have a cup of coffee, our debt climbed by $4 billion. And people don't even know what trillion is. I mean, we just throw around these numbers. But that's $30 trillion growing rapidly. We have $200 trillion of unfunded obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government pensions, military pensions. I mean, taxes are going to have to go up a lot. And the people I follow, you know, people like David Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States, I mean, you know, he's saying taxes are going to have to double for a lot of people. They might have to triple for some people. And what's that going to do when everybody's got their money in 401(k)s? You know, what I've been doing is I've been converting my IRAs and 401(k)s to Roth. All right? And I've been moving more of my personal wealth to cash value life insurance. Because I'm trying to build sources of tax-free income. And I think one of the best things you can do for your clients is to build sources of tax-free income. And with your younger people, what I would do if I sat down with a younger person now and I talk about their 401(k) and I say, do you have a 401(k)? And they say, yes. Does it have a match? Yes. How does the match work? Well, if I put in 4%, they match me with 4%. Good. I would do that. That's 100% rate of return. Do that. But anything above the match, I would not put another nickel into a 401(k). I'd put it into a Roth IRA. I'd put it in cash value life insurance. But I want to build up sources of tax-free income. And I just think that's so important. You know, I was talking to a guy one day and he said, oh, I got $1 million in my 401(k). And I looked at him, I said, well, how much of that is yours? He said, what do you mean? It's all mine. I said, oh no, it's not. I said, you have a partner and you're the limited partner. The general partner is the federal government, and they get to take their cut first. And here's the deal, you have no idea how much they're going to take. Now, think about that. This is your retirement. You have no idea how much of that million dollars you're going to get. Is that what you really want? That's not what I want. I do not want that. And so, I've been moving away from that as fast as I can.

Yeah. It's like a bomb in the future, and you have no idea. You made an agreement with someone, you don't even know what that's going to be. Let me ask you this. What about— We have a lot of listeners that are advisors, small business owners themselves that have maybe just started. They're in their mid-20s to early 30s or so. What are some of the things that— because it's one thing to talk about it from the perspective of other clients, but oftentimes advisors don't do the thing that they tell to others that they need to do for themselves. Okay. I'm talking to somebody out there who's listening to that. Let's be real. You actually started, was it last year? I think you started with the millennial, how to become wealthy for millennials. Yeah.

So last year, I came up with a new presentation. I said, who wants to be a millionaire? That's what it— because here's how it happened. I got called by a couple of companies and they wanted me to do a presentation on financial wellness. Financial wellness is the new buzzword out there. And so I'm doing all this stuff on financial wellness and it was super interesting and I learned a lot and I put a lot together. But, but, but the title is boring. Financial wellness. It sounds boring to me anyway. But, but, but what I did was when I was a brand new agent, you know, people would come up to me at a party or something and say, so what do you do? And my line, my answer was, I help people become millionaires.

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I help people become millionaires. You tell me how many million you want, I'm going to show you exactly what you need to get there. And that is how I— so, so I changed the title to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And then I added some of the stuff that I did when I was an advisor to help my clients become wealthy. And so in that thing, I teach them how to make more money, how to spend less or spend more wisely. And then how to invest in appreciating assets. Because if you think about it, most Americans put their money into depreciating assets. They buy cars, they buy trucks, they buy jet skis, they buy RVs, they buy iPhones, iPads, laptop. All of those things are depreciating assets. And if you want to get wealthy in America, you put your money into appreciating assets, not depreciating. So, and these are just common, a lot of them is common sense things that, you know, at least as a baby boomer, Most of us baby boomers were taught, but I don't think a lot of the millennials, Generation X, Y, and Z were taught a lot of this stuff. And so I think it's a good refresher. And by the way, your listeners can go and watch it right now. You go to www.tomhagener.com/webinars. I have about 6 free webinars there that are loaded with great content, but the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, that's in there. And it's really teaching advisors how to help their clients become millionaires. Help your clients become a millionaire. Yeah, I threw that one in there. That it's been kind of fun too.

Well, you know, the hook is important and that's a really good hook, you know, for sure. Much better than financial wellness, no doubt about it. I do want to say, I think you're so right, Tom, that oftentimes we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. You need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. You know, I mean, it's one thing to— oh yeah, I know that. But if you may know it, but are you actually doing it? Are you doing it? All right, so let me ask you this. Let's take— now let's go from the advisor side. Advisor side, let's think about it in two ways. Let's talk about their current clients and then how to prospect for new ones. So let's first think about if you were advisor and, um, you were going to come in and say, here's what you need to do with your current clients, what would be the messaging and the approach to be able to re-engage them to come? Because here's the thing, some people now are more hesitant to come into an office than they ever have been, which is both an opportunity and a challenge. So the default 5 years ago was pick up the phone, call them, set an appointment, they come to your office, the whole 9 yards, etc. So let's talk about their current clients and, uh, where— what your approach would be there.

First of all, I think you have absolute gold in the book of business that you're working, okay? And, and there's so many opportunities to cross-sell. And, and I, I think you've probably seen— and Cohen and I have teamed up on this, writing 70 Life Apps in 70 Days And we've helped many P&C agencies now write 70 life apps every 70 days, and it's helping them qualify for all these awards and everything. And one of the things that Anne is really good in there is she has this thing called the provisional conversation. And it's just anytime somebody calls up to add a car, drop a car, add a driver, you know, anything, change a bank account. Oh, I've noticed in our files here we have no provisions that if something happened to you that your that your house would be paid off and your car would be paid off? Where do you have those provisions? And I mean, it just sets up— she's not asking, do you want to buy life insurance? She's just saying, hey, where do you have these things? And most people are, I don't know, I don't have any. And then that's a perfect opportunity. And then I give some great transition phrases, how to go from auto to life and from motorcycle to life and homeowners to life. And so, we put this whole course together and I think— We've got like a free 30-minute thing going on right now where people can watch kind of a 30-minute highlight reel of that thing and get some ideas. But that would be a great way to work with your clients, because if you're a P&C agency, just think of the opportunity for retirement accounts, annuities, life insurance. That's the gold that's sitting in there. And if you're a life insurance agent, maybe you can team up with a P&C agent and help get the auto and the home and all that other stuff. And so I just think there's a wealth of opportunity to work with clients. Now, many agents now can do stuff remotely, do remote apps and all that. So that's good. If people just want to do virtual, you can do that. If they don't want to come into the office, one of my tips is meet them at Starbucks. They'll go to Starbucks, say, hey, I got a gift card here and I want to get you that new pumpkin spice latte or whatever, and make up an excuse and meet them at Starbucks. I know there's an agent who makes top of the table every year out in Queens, New York, and she literally has her own table at Starbucks. I mean, it's got her name on it, and she holds— she comes in there all day, and that's what she does. And they just come through, and she makes top of the table in Starbucks in Queens.

Oh, that's awesome. That's really cool. Um, all right, so let's think about the person who has an account. Uh, they're, they're a P&C agent. They have an account that's a really great account on that side of the business. Maybe they've even spoken to them even sold them some life insurance at some point in the future. But they know that they have a significant amount of money. And I'm talking about on the investment side now. And they want it, but they know that they have it with another advisor. But they don't feel that, that, that they're, you know, that their neighbors are best friends with this advisor.

There's—

so there's an opportunity, there's an opportunity to be able to acquire that customer from whatever other carrier that they— advisor, broker that they may have it with. What do you feel like is their approach?

Well, a couple of things. Number one, I would want to get a copy of what their investments are, their holdings, if they're in mutual funds, if they're in stocks or bonds. I would want to look at that and see what we're looking at. Like, are they all in blue chip stocks? Are they in some fly-by-night things? And then what you can do, like, let's say they're in a mutual fund. You can use Morningstar, and Morningstar has this quadrant thing, okay, where there's the northwest quadrant, the northeast quadrant, the southeast, southwest. And what it is, is it measures risk and return. And so there's the farther you go out here, the higher the risk, the more you go up here, the higher the return. And so where you want to be is you want to be where you get high returns and low risk. That's the northwest quadrant. And if I find that their mutual fund is down there in the southeast quadrant, that it's high risk, low return, that's an easy one to beat. Because you say, I don't know why he's got you here because, or he or she's got you here because You're, you're, you're having lower returns, higher risk. I would want to see you move over here where we can get you to high returns, low risk. And, and that's a great conversation. It's a very simple conversation. It's not too technical, but everybody can understand it. And, uh, and so I would, I would do that. But, but I'd also want to build the relationship with the client in, in any way that I could. And then when markets are crashing like this, that's when you give them a call and say, you know, You really should have some money guaranteed. We've been talking about it. You know, I'm not saying you want to sell low now, but, but boy, if this market comes back, you need to take a chunk of that and put some guarantees in that portfolio. And I would, I would start having that conversation. And right now, people are more willing to listen than they were, you know, 6 months ago.

That's a, that's a really good point. That's exactly what I was going to say. Two things you mentioned there. One is that even though the markets are, are really taking a hit the last few months, and they may continue to do so. That's actually a great time for advisors to be engaging with clients, as opposed to— don't you believe most of them are actually retreating and trying to— like, they don't want to— they don't want to take the calls. And secondly, you brought up just the aspect of visuals as opposed to spreadsheet numbers. There's a time and a place for spreadsheets and all the numbers, but if you can keep it simple, have it as a visual, then most people will be able to see that much quicker.

And many of you have access to variable annuities, and they're the ones that get all the crap because the fees are high and blah, blah, blah. Well, the fees are high because you're protecting against market gains that could be 30%, 40% a year. So what I would say to these people is, hey, look, I know you want to be in the market. I know you're concerned the market could go up or it could go down. Why don't we put a floor under it? Let's just move this over this variable annuity. We're going to put a floor under it. If the market goes up, great. You're going to get to participate in that. But if the market goes down, guess what? We have this guarantee. It's either an income guarantee or withdrawal benefit guarantee or a cash value guarantee, depending on the variable annuity. But let's just put a floor under it and let's let it run if it's going to run. But if it crashes, we got some guarantees. I think it's a great time to have that conversation with a client.

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Yeah. You know, that brought up— I wasn't going to ask you this, but I think it's actually good. What are a couple, from an advisor's perspective, what are maybe 2 or 3 of the biggest myths that you hear about annuities that are like, I'm going to debunk these absolutely right now?

[Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Well, that the fees are too high because most annuities are not even fee products. A single premium immediate annuity, SPIA, not a fee product. A deferred income annuity, DIA, not a fee product. A fixed annuity, not a fee product. A base fixed indexed annuity, not a fee product. Those products do not have fees. Variable annuities have fees and some optional riders have fees, okay? But that doesn't mean they're bad. It means you have to weigh out what is the fee versus what is the guarantee. So that's the biggest myth of all. Another myth is that you're giving up control. I say you're not giving up control. You're gaining control over risk. The people who run out of money are the ones who want to control their money, but they're out of control with the risk, so they run out of money. You know, and so, you know, or that— here's another one. Well, if I die, the insurance company keeps all my money. That's not true. That's not even true if you pick life only in a SPIA. If you do a SPIA, single premium immediate annuity, and pick life only, that means when you die, the checks stop. The money doesn't go to the insurance company. The money goes to the other people who pick life only and live. That's why the payout rate is higher. So, I mean, and then people say, oh, I'm only getting my own money back. Well, then run a life with 30-year certain and show them they're going to get way more than their money back. So, these are just simple objections, and I've got a free video at tomhagener.com/webinars that handles 100 objections. So, just, you know, that one's free too. So, you know, I just think if agents just learn some just simple language to use with their clients, This is not that. This isn't rocket science. It really isn't.

You know, uh, you have put out— and you and your team have put out so much free content. I really mean this. I think it's a good lesson for us all to hear, for our advisors too, because if you go to people from the perspective of wanting to help the client and give them more information, free information, then they will see you automatically as the person who can actually help me solve this problem that I have in the future, because you're so willing to be able to give free things just as you have for advisors, etc.

Yeah, I mean, I, I give a lot of free stuff now in my, you know, in my, in my coaching stuff and all my online Tom Hegna On Demand. There's even more stuff in there, but I give a lot of free stuff because, I mean, that's how you build followers too. And, and so that's a strategy, you know, like we're going to talk about how do you handle new people. Let's Let's use this as a transition to get there. If I was an agent, I would build my social media presence as big as possible. I get 4,000, 5,000, 10,000 followers. I connect with people at Chamber of Commerce. Anytime I get a business card, I'm going to be sending them a friend request on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever. And then put out constant good information, things that they're not getting from anybody else. And if you don't know what to do, just share my stuff because my whole social media strategy is to build stuff that you can share that you don't know how to do it or you don't want to do it. And that's what I do. So I'll put out great content and you can just share it with people. But put out content regularly and then watch your social media. Hey, we just had a baby. Hey, we just got engaged. Hey, my mother died. Hey, this. Hey, that. And guess what? Those are all life events. You know when people buy life insurance and annuities? When they're going to retire, when somebody died, when somebody got married, when somebody had a baby. That's when they buy these things. And so if you would watch your social media and then reach out to people when they've had a life event, you're going to see your sales go up as well. And then there's a couple other things I would do. Um, again, on, on those free webinars at tommagna.com/webinars, there's one called The Webinar Method. And what, what I did there is I teamed up with Jeremiah Demore. He's a marketing guru, and we put together this system where I deliver the webinar. So I'm going to deliver the webinar. We've got the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in there. We got Don't Worry, Retire Happy. We got Paychecks and Playchecks, and we got a life insurance webinar. And you just send the invite out to clients to watch this. I do the webinar, and my only call to action in the webinar is that they sit down with you. And I'm just telling you, instead of cold calling your 100 best friends and relatives to try to sell them life insurance, why don't you have them watch a webinar where I don't sell financial products? You say, this guy didn't sell anything. He's just going to show you how to retire the right way. He's going to show you how to become a millionaire. Let me do it, and then they're going to call you, and then they're gonna, they're gonna buy from you. I mean, these are some of the new prospecting methods that we didn't have 20 years ago. There's another one, The Baby Boomer Dilemma. It's a movie, all right? And I'm having a thing on June 8th. I don't know when this is going to air, but on June 8th, I am having a free meeting with the director, Doug Orchard. He's going to show you what advisors all around the country are doing to make a bunch of money and easily fill movie theaters. And then he has streaming gift cards. They can watch it on their their computer, they can go to a movie theater. It's unbelievable what's happening. And then he's going to show the movie for free. So if you haven't seen the movie, you could see the movie that day, but it's only on that day at that time. So you got to go to my LinkedIn and go down and find the invitation or whatever, go to my Facebook, reach out to my staff at 855-TOM-HAGNER. They could hook you up. But these, these are ways to prospect today that you didn't have 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. And, and the advisors who pick up on this, they're going to be seeing profits and sales instead of all of cold calling. I don't want to cold call it, okay? But I can get people to watch a movie. I can get people to watch a webinar. I can do that. And that's what I think the future is.

Yeah. There's a— this actually got brought up on a podcast the other day. I was talking to Colleen Francis, as a matter of fact. I'm sure you probably know Colleen. And so we were talking about this Google's zero moments of truth and what Google had found is this, uh, that people will consume 7 hours of content across 11 interactions in 4 different locations. So it's the 7-11-4 line. And so basically what you're sharing is you've created all of that content because it comes down to engagement. Think about how you listening to this, how you purchase things. When you decide to buy coaching program, etc., you are going to go and research that person to see the what messages they put out, even if it was referred, because there's so many ability, uh, so many avenues now to be able to consume content— YouTube, social media, LinkedIn, on all the different platforms, etc. You know, one thing, um, that, uh, you were mentioning there is there was a book that Dan Sullivan just wrote called Who Not How, and you basically could be a who for all of the advisors, and they get the credit for putting someone like you who's an independent thinker, right? Who's not selling anything in front of a client to educate the client, and they automatically are going to contribute you, the advisor, with that knowledge because you shared Tom's information.

And the advisors make all the money. I get zero sales out of this. So I mean, that it's, it's a— I think it's an incredible opportunity. And so between the Baby Boomer Dilemma, the Webinar Method, building your social media And then watching it and calling people up with life events. You know, as a MetLife agent, we had these Snoopy bibs, you know, bib with Snoopy. And somebody have a baby, I was over their house giving them a bib. And then, hey, you know, we should talk about college savings. We should talk about upping your life insurance. You know, we gotta— and it just comes natural. Those conversations come naturally. And, you know, if somebody's getting married, maybe you do something for them. Or if somebody died, maybe you send flowers or you do something. You know, think of ways that you can engage with clients when they're having these life events. And I, I'm telling you, you can see your sales go up a lot.

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Yeah, that's awesome. Last question: what do you see— where do you see things going over the next, uh, say, 2 years? I mean, it's too hard to predict 20 years out, obviously, but what do you see happening over the next couple years, and how does that affect Pfizer.

Well, you know, okay, so the market's been going down because the Fed started raising interest rates, but, but that's not really the tale. The, the, the real thing that's going to happen is they got to take $9 trillion off the balance sheet. So remember when they were printing all this money, they printed, and then they were spending these trillions and trillions? Well, guess what? Now they got to take it off the balance sheet. So now instead of printing money, they got to shred money. So it's going to be like they're putting trillions of dollars through the shredder and they're just shredding it. Now They don't literally do that. What they do is they just let these bonds roll off as they mature, and they don't buy new ones. But it's the same effect. It's just like taking out a shredder, and over the next how many years they're gonna shred $9 trillion. Well, the market's up because they printed $5 trillion last couple years, and then they printed $4 trillion under Ben Bernanke, but now they got $9 trillion on the books, and at some point they gotta take that off the books, and that's like shredding money. And so just like the stock market went up like crazy, guess what's going to happen when they start shredding? It could get ugly. And I, I can't predict it, but I mean, that's why interest rates— the 30-year bond right now is still under 3%. Now think about this, inflation's at 8%. A 30-year bond should be at 11% or 12% under normal circumstances. Why would you ever invest your money at 2.9% when inflation's at 8%? That makes no sense at all. But what's happening is the bond market sees the future. And the bond market is saying, no, inflation isn't going to be at 8%. Inflation is going to come down. And that's what the bond market is telling me. I don't know what's going to happen, but the bond market does not see a lot of good things coming up with interest rates at 2.9% and inflation's 8%. Makes no sense at all economically.

Things are propped up. I mean, it's got to come to a head at some point. I mean, you see the supply chain issues and worker shortages around the country. I mean, at some point this has all got to come to a head. I mean, it really does. So, Tom, it's not going to be 2 years before we have you come back on. Thanks so much for, uh, for all you do. Uh, obviously you've shared a lot of call to actions. Where would you like for us to point everybody? Well, all of the things that you mentioned about the webinars, etc., we'll make sure—

I'm easy to find, tomhagener.com. Those webinars are free at tomhagener.com/webinars. All right? And then I have a YouTube channel that's free and, you know, I'm on Amazon and all those places. But, you know, I'm just, I'm trying to help advisors. I'm pretty much retired now. I'm not, this isn't, you know, I'm not working that hard anymore. I'm not traveling 200 days a year anymore. I'm doing virtual things. I'm playing golf 4 or 5 times a day. I just played pickleball. I had to end my pickleball a little early to make this podcast. But so, you know, I'm trying to have some fun and live my life. I don't want to be the richest guy in the cemetery. I want to live the richest life. And I think that's what we should all strive for.

So, so good. All right, well, you and I are going to play golf one day soon.

All right, very good. Thank you.

You know, you can tell Tom is just loaded with knowledge, not just about the past, but just where things are going. I think that a few things that stood out to me— the example that he gave around the crypto and where that fits and how he himself had— has a growth mindset to know where something like that fits in whenever he was really against it for a long period of time. Was something that really stood out to me. It's just another example of making sure that we're constantly challenging the beliefs that we have about everything in business. Number 2, I thought the discussion around what's optimal versus what is best was interesting. NetYard now is a really great time as an advisor to be reaching out to our clients, especially whenever people are— most advisors are retreating and not reaching out to their clients. And then I thought his analogy of being a carpenter and saying, you know, if you're a carpenter and say, well, I only work with hammers and nails, and but I don't use wrenches, as an example. And we use that metaphor for products and policies and different types of things that we can share with our clients. I thought that really stood out to me as well. You want to learn more about how Tom can help you in your business, go to tomhaglund.com/webinars. And that's where all the content that he was mentioning on the podcast is at tomhaglund.com/webinars. Hey, many of you may have heard that we are now putting all of our podcasts on YouTube. So if you want to be able to— if you're a YouTube person and love to be able to kind of just watch or listen to YouTube's, uh, whenever you're cutting grass or hitting golf balls or just driving to and from work, go to the Club Capital channel on YouTube and search for Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and you'll start to see all the episodes that we've done. Well, to make that happen, I've got an incredible team behind me that pulls all that together. Courtney, my executive assistant, Ellie, my creative marketing assistant, they're the ones that edit the videos, get the guests on, get it on the schedule. I'm terrible about scheduling. And that's a big thanks to the partners that we have at Rock Solid. So make sure you go to Rock Solid assistants.com. If you've ever considered having an executive assistant for you yourself, so that you can start doing more of the things that you know, that you need to be doing more of those income-producing activities. You know, people talk about that, but they don't actually necessarily do it. Well, I think the best use of time is to— best use of money, excuse me, is to buy back your time. And this is a really good way to do that, both with your team, and then also shortcutting success, learning from other people who have gone ahead of you. And are doing the things that you hope to be able to do. Go to rocksolidassistance.com. Now, I mentioned about just not only buying back your time with your team, but also in investing in those who have gone before you. And a really good example of that is David Peterson. David's been able to, to grow his agencies. He's one of just, you know, a handful that have 3 agencies now. He's really at a level across the country that a lot of people aspire to be able to get to. And he's done that through systems and processes and repeating successful actions, repeating successful actions. Well, if you want to know what some of those successful actions are, and you want to be able to just hit your goals, maybe yours isn't to be number one in the country, and that's totally fine. Maybe you just want to be able to start hitting the goals that you set out for yourself. You know, you need to invest in your own development. Go to coachpconsulting.com, coachpconsulting.com. Let him know that you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and he'll give you your first free month. You know, Tom was talking— we were talking about content and being available online and the use of social media, etc. I think it's a really good example as to why being ultimately being online and having a presence online so that people can digest your content and your information, things that you're putting out there. And a really great company that can help you with that is DirectClicks. So go to directclicksinc.com. They can help you with your pay-per-click, your SEO, so that you show up in more of the Google organic searches, as well as being able to get really hot leads that are looking to be able to buy insurance products in your area, so that you can stand out at the top and get really high-quality leads that your team can convert. Go to directclicksinc .com. And lastly, we wouldn't be able to have all this content if it wasn't for our partners at Club Capital. Go to club.capital. You know, we're talking about money with Tom, and we're certainly thinking about it from an advisor perspective. But as a small business owner, and it's so important that you know your numbers, not just on the production and sales side, but you also can read the scoreboard of your financials. So that ultimately you can make more money. I mean, you took a lot of risk on to be able to, to grow your business and you want to reinvest and help more people. And to do that, you've got to, number one, be able to make more money for yourself. And then number two, you got to be able to invest back into the business so that you can hire more people, so that you can go and serve more in your community. Go to club.capital and book a no-obligation demo. Make sure you tell them or ask them about the new CFO services that has gone over incredibly well. In 2022. People are just blown away about the results they've been able to get and the insights that they've been able to glean from their financials. It's— there's a reason why Club Capital is the largest for insurance agency owners around the country. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone, it was awesome having Tom on. Hope you guys are all, at the time of this recording, are getting ready for summer. And being able to still spend time with your families, but at the same time grow your businesses. We appreciate you sharing. We started putting the videos on YouTube to be able to serve you in more ways. Until next episode, lead well. So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agent the owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.