The Business Owner’s Guide to Infinite Banking and Sustainable Wealth Chad Holstlaw & Dave Swanson

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10X ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another edition of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and today I'm very excited to welcome 2 different guests with similar background. Chad Hulstlaw and Dave Swanson, who are the co-founders of Downstream Wealth. Chad has over a decade of experience in the financial services industry, including working his way up to head trader at a multi-billion-dollar investment firm. He then discovered how permanent life insurance serves as a unique and powerful tool to help small business owners left behind in the world of traditional finance, giving them the control needed to grow their businesses. Chad enjoys helping educate business owners and entrepreneurs about the hidden truths in the financial markets around economics, money, the banking system, and investment. By developing a thorough understanding of the financial system, business owners can stop outsourcing their financial decision-making to outsiders who have never had to make payroll. Chad resides in the Tampa Bay area, and he's a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner. Now, Dave is an 18-year commercial insurance and financial services industry veteran with extensive experience using permanent life insurance as a powerful planning and management tool. Dave is an exit planning advisor, and for the last 8 years, he's been an authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner with the Nelson Nash Institute. Dave loves working alongside small business owners and entrepreneurs to solve problems involving capital management, risk management, and employee retention. When these things are done right, it leads to value creation and the control every business owner truly desires. Dave lives in the Chicago area with his wife and children. So, welcome from— We got most of the country Covered between me and LA. We got Tampa. We got Chicago. It's a truly transcontinental conversation today. So welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us. We appreciate being here.

Yeah, absolutely. So why don't you tell us your story a little bit? What you know, Chicago to Tampa. You got the matching polos on, but other than that, how how'd you guys get together?

So I've been doing infinite banking for eight years. Like I said in like you said in my bio, I started in commercial insurance. I went into a little bit of financial advisory for a couple years, and just just kind of was dissatisfied working for captive companies and being told what products I had to sell and what metrics I had to pursue each year. And so when I discovered infinite banking, I decided to pursue that full time. Chad and I met 2 years ago, we were working at a startup agency that was doing some interesting stuff using permanent life insurance for a stablecoin. So we got connected there. And then we just, we decided to go out on our own. And we formed Downstream Wealth 2 years ago, year and a half or a year and a half ago. And we've been working together for over 2 years at this point. But we both kind of have that independent streak like small business owners. And so it was kind of an easy fit for us and we have very complementary skills and interests.

Anything to add there, Chad? Any disagreements?

No disagreements. I will say that we didn't necessarily plan the polos. I guess, you know, kind of goes with our— goes with our little bit of our logo, you know? Yeah. I mean, same thing as Dave. You know, I was working in the financial services industry at an investment firm. I kind of lost passion for it once I started to learn more about the industry and kind of some of the things that go on. and hearing about some of the, um, you know, financial advisors out there that I really didn't feel like were adding a ton of value to their clients. Now, there— this isn't all financial advisors. There are some that are really good at what they do, but it seemed to me like the majority maybe didn't have the best interests out for their clients or know exactly how to steer them in the right direction, even though they were being paid quite, uh, handsomely for that. Um, you know, and then you hear a lot of the talking news on CNBC and Bloomberg on a daily basis, and I felt like a lot of it was just noise. And I felt a lot of times people were kind of missing the big picture. And so really it was around the Silicon Valley banking crisis, you know, where I kind of got back into infinite banking. I had heard about it before. It wasn't explained well to me at the beginning, or at least enough for me to do more research on it. And I started thinking more about the banking system and everything that was going on. I did a lot more research and I realized, hey, this is a really interesting solution specifically for business owners. that have this banking need, that have all of this capital that's coming in and seems like it's going right out the other door. So it really, you know, it was really an opportunity to help business owners kind of capture a lot of that capital and be able to control their capital without relying on third-party financing.

That's really interesting. Well, and it also sort of speaks to the sort of the common thread between the 3 of us is the Exit Planning Institute. And, you know, the, for our audience that may not be as familiar, you know, there's a sort of a fundamental shift happening in the way that companies are managing their business, which is instead of working their fingers to the bone for 20 years and then looking up and realizing it's not worth nearly as much as they thought it was, instead taking a more proactive and long-term approach to managing their business so that it's ready for sale at any time. Actually makes it a better business, more enjoyable to manage, and more valuable and worth more at the end. Sort of exit planning is just good business planning is fundamentally the premise of this idea. But it also starts to open the aperture for business owners to think about things that they might not think about till the end and maybe sometimes when it's too late to take advantage of them. And specifically some things around, you know, sort of financing of a business and not only financing the way you run your business today, but, you know, making funds available for buy-sell agreements that might need to be exercised when there is maybe an unexpected need to exit or to, you know, change the ownership structure. And you guys obviously have a lot of expertise. And some of these less traditional, more innovative approaches to financing that can be valuable both for companies as they're building as well as as they're getting closer to exit. Talk to us about some of these and some of these different approaches that you see and why it's worth business owners thinking, you know, going beyond the box, if you will, and thinking more around other ways that they can take advantage of either financial instruments or things that might be unique to their business.

Yeah. So I think you make some really good points there. I will say that, you know, we didn't talk a lot about Dave and I's experience with the Exit Planning Institute before, but one thing we realized, you know, as we learn more about infinite banking and the underlying asset, which is whole life insurance, a properly structured dividend-paying whole life insurance contract, there's a lot of really unique things you can do with it. Right? And so that's really what what got us to think more about exit planning and how we can help businesses do more than simply find a place to capture and control capital. Right? Do more than than the financing aspect of it. And so really, you know, I I think you you know you you hit on this point where business owners work for all these years, and then they go to sell, and they realize that they don't have this tangible asset. And the thing to remember is that value is subjective. It's not necessarily what you think your business is worth. It's not even the value of the tangible assets on your balance sheet. It's really about a lot of other things like intangible assets. You know, you hit on buy-sell agreements, having a succession plan in place. You know, it's, it's about a lot of other things like that where, you know, another example would be employee retention, things where you can get creative to continuously serve your customers and build value for, for your customers and make sure that's transferable value. That way somebody else can come in and be able to run your business in a similar fashion that would justify paying those, those higher multiples that you want to get when you sell your business.

Yeah. Dave, anything to add there?

I think when, when we look at the exit planning side of things, you have so many businesses that, that are just— I think I look at a lot of the businesses that kind of have one person that really runs the show. Or maybe 2 people, 2 partners that kind of— they're— one guy handles kind of the sales and operations side and one, somebody else handles, you know, whatever else. Maybe not, maybe sales and operations are separate, but— or one guy that kind of, he knows how everything runs, he has all the relationships, he's built the business, he's run the business. And a lot of times those types of businesses, that guy suddenly gets to a point, or those guys get to the point where they either get sick Or they get burned out, or they even pass away. And all of a sudden, that business, which is producing tons of revenue, is producing tons of revenue dependent on 1 or 2 people. And so the exit planning side of things is really important because it allows them to begin to strategize and plan for kind of distributing those responsibilities among several people so that the business can pick up and run no matter what happens with the owner or owners. Or even with a key person. And so there's a lot of different things in the exit planning side of things that, that a lot of business owners don't think about. And it's not because they don't recognize they're important. It's because they're so busy running the business and that's what they've been doing for so long. And all of a sudden they get to age 63 and they're like, I don't know how much longer I want to do this. I don't know if I have the energy to do this anymore.

So, well, and you also bring a very unique perspective that it's, you know, specifically around sort of some of the financing and personal wealth components of it. What are some of those pitfalls or sort of unexpected negative consequences that you've seen business owners run into by not thinking about some of these contingencies? And, you know, they find themselves that, well, one day their partner that they thought they were going to run the business with for another 10 years says, hey, you know what, I'm hanging it up and I'm moving to the Caribbean. Or, you know, they have health problems where they can't put in the hours that they were, or any one of a number of things that might be unexpected? And then as they start unpacking some of these things, what are some of those challenges that they run into if they haven't sort of planned for them?

Well, I'll just throw in one thing real quick and then I'll throw it to Chad here. But if you look at the statistics, and I've seen different numbers, but anywhere from 70% to 80% of businesses that go up for sale end up not selling. And that has to do with what you just said. So, either somebody stepped out, One way or the other, they stepped out voluntarily or involuntarily. And that's, I think, the biggest, one of the biggest problems is if you don't plan for that well in advance, you're gonna find that your business isn't worth what you think it is to somebody else who's looking to buy it as cheaply as they can. And they're gonna take every single piece of leverage they've got to reduce the value of your business to acquire it from you if you can get rid of it.

Yeah. And, you know, another thing too, one of the— I think one of the core keys to success with being an entrepreneur is being able to be nimble. And really what we do whenever we're talking about whole life insurance and we're talking about building this foundation that protects your business so that you have that freedom to be able to grow, you're not staying up late at night wondering, hey, what happens if, you know, my top employee leaves tomorrow? Or what happens if, you know, there's a sudden unexpected death? You know, whenever we talk about entrepreneurs being nimble, I think the key here is to allow them to exit under their control, exit on their terms, right? So you're building that foundation that allows them to pull that trigger because other things come up, right? It's like you may lose passion for the business at some point, especially if you're a younger entrepreneur. There may be another really big opportunity that comes up where you say, look, look, I really can't afford to spend my time on both things here, so I'm ready to exit this business. And the thing is, whenever you start thinking about the, you know, the private equity firms, you know, that come in, they're paying substantial multiples on some of these premium businesses. So if you haven't done the work, I think it's worth asking that question: why are these businesses paying so much money, right? And, and I'm not saying that's a perfect model because I think a lot of times some of the private equity companies, they, you know, outsource a lot of their operations and things that really provide that high-value customer service. But I think the key is to just providing that value so that entrepreneurs and business owners can exit on their terms.

So, you know, for business owners like me where, you know, my passion is in marketing and sales, the persuasive arts, if you will, and spending my time with my clients, you know, helping them think through how we can maximize that. And to be honest, although I, you know, I passed finance and accounting in business school, I didn't love them. And so, potentially, sometimes I, you know, out of sight, out of mind, some of these, some of these sort of financial issues. What are some of the ones that, you know, you would shine a light on so that some entrepreneurs, business owners that are listening today, that they like to focus where they like to spend their time, which may not be in that finance area, what are some things that they could do today to sort of make sure that they're at least aware enough of either options that might exist that they might, that might not come top to mind or may not come readily recommended by, you know, sort of traditional advisors or sort of watchouts that they should be thinking about?

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of this really starts with just, you know, the banking system we have today and understanding kind of what's going on at a fundamental level. I think that if you would talk to most business owners, perhaps some have found some at least short-term opportunities to store cash in maybe a high-yield savings account.

Mm-hmm.

The yields have been trending back down. You have the president right now begging for lower interest rates.

Right.

And then you have an environment in which some people are expecting inflation to pick back up. So really, what are you getting in that growth in your capital at this point in time? It's certainly not guaranteed. You end up paying taxes on it, right? And then ultimately, whenever you go to spend that capital, you have to start that saving process all over again. And Our goal isn't to get business owners to just save their way to wealth. That does not work. What we want to do is help business owners get more out of their capital, right? Make their capital work harder for them in 2 places. The other aspect of this is on the financing side of things. I think this may shock a lot of people. It shocked me when I first learned about it. But the Federal Reserve is literally, literally paying banks to not lend to small businesses and consumers. That's effectively the function of higher interest rates right now. Yeah. Right. So there's hundreds of billions of dollars because in our fractional reserve banking system, what loans are, it's money printing, right? We don't, they, they're not backed by, you know, 1 to 1 for each dollar. So they're effectively printing money. And so they cap these interest rates. And so they're, it's basically an incentive to the banks to say, hey, look, don't lend too much money out. Even though they're required effectively to lend to the US government, for example, by holding US Treasury bonds and what they deem safer securities. And a lot of this stuff is kind of a function of what we saw in 2022 and 2023 with the Silicon Valley banking crisis and the failures there. And so I think a lot of business owners would probably resonate with that, you know, in terms of the opportunities to get decent growth on their capital that they don't want to risk in markets that are highly volatile. And then the interest rates too. Again, that's a function of these Fed policies. That's why you're seeing interest rates go higher. That's why we've talked to business owners where they say, hey, look, you know, we've, we've never missed a payment, yet our bank pulled our line of credit, right? So there's a lot of examples there. But I think ultimately, kind of, you know, what we try to do is help business owners be less reliant on that banking system to be able to run their, run their business and maintain, you know, consistent cash flows.

Yeah.

And I would just, I would just Add on to that. So the access to capital is a huge issue. I mean, most businesses are using some form of financing, whether that's SBA loans, lines of credit, credit cards, and things like that. But I would guess that based on this audience, a lot of those business owners who listen to this have seen that credit squeeze where they're not getting— they're either not getting the credit they need, or they're getting much higher interest rates, or they're having lines of credit reduced. And I have a client from several years ago. Even before I met Chad, and about a year into him working with me, he he got two letters from he worked with two local credit unions. He's a he lives in a rural area, has a property that he has a business on that is unrelated. It's it's a it's a repair business, like a heavy equipment repair, and then he has a property that he basically leases out for farming. He has been with two community credit unions. in the area for over 20 years. And they came to him out of nowhere in the beginning of 2023 and said, hey, we need to see your tax returns from 2020 and 2021. And he presented them and they both completely pulled his lines of credit. And they said, your, your revenue was down in 2020. Well, that was during COVID Right. His revenue immediately, immediately increased back up. And at the point they were asking, his revenue was actually back higher. than it had been previously.

Wow.

But the credit unions were being squeezed. And this goes back to the Silicon Valley stuff and all that. They were being squeezed and they were having to pull lines of credit because they didn't have— they didn't have the lending capacity anymore. So a guy who had never missed a payment in over 20 years lost over $300,000 in a line of credit just overnight, out of nowhere, with no warning whatsoever. You know, in fact, the conversation that we had had previous to that in 2021, he even said, He goes, you know, these bankers are your friend until they're not.

Right.

And then a year later, he literally experiences it personally. And so he was very thankful that he had started doing, working with me and then ultimately working with us.

That's interesting. And it actually reminds me of a sort of a common paradox that a lot of entrepreneurs have dealt with, which is this idea of, you know, we're working 9 to 5 is safe and stable. But I know so many entrepreneurs that the reason why they're entrepreneurs today is because they thought working 9 to 5 was safe and stable. And then one day, they got met with redundancy or laid off or whatever. And very often through no fault of their own, through 2 companies merged and you were paid better than your counterpart at the other company. So, now, you're out on the street and because you were better at your job, You are now deemed to be redundant. So, that raises something that probably resonates with a lot of our audience, which is maybe these traditional safer vehicles aren't as safe as they might seem. What are some other ways that entrepreneurs and business owners can go about having some financial security that isn't as reliant on—

Sure.

things like revolving credit lines or loans from their local banks that they work with.

Yeah. I think another thing too kind of goes back to the financial advisory world. And we speak with a lot of business owners and pretty much everyone we speak with, they have a financial advisor. And what we find is that a lot of times the financial advisor is telling them, hey, you need to be taking capital here, and you need to be diversifying into the market because you don't know what's going to happen with your business.

Right.

But as we've seen over and over again, um, diversification does not necessarily mean safe. That's exactly what happened after the Silicon Valley Bank crisis when the Fed raised rates and you saw both stocks and bonds decline in value, right? And then you look at where we're at today with the market multiples, the S&P 500 trading near all-time highs, The NASDAQ at, you know, over 3 times revenues right now. You look at a blue-chip company like Walmart that's not necessarily growing super fast, trading at 41 times earnings whenever they, you know, import a lot of their goods from China ahead of these tariffs coming. And so the real crux of this is what you're effectively doing whenever you follow that advice is you're taking money out of your business, And you're investing in someone else's business where you have no control over your capital. You have no access to those profits. You may get a small dividend yield, and hopefully the shares go up higher at some point in time so that, you know, you can exit on the right multiple. But ultimately, ultimately, I think that that's kind of one thing that business owners should think about. How do they maintain control of their capital, you know, rather than, you know, just placing it in the market somewhere else under the The name of diversification.

Yeah.

And I think that kind of leads into infinite banking, just like explaining a little bit about what infinite banking is. I don't know if you had another question there, Mark.

No, that you're sort of reading my mind. Tell us, sort of unpack that term for us because—

I'm not trying to be the host. Sorry.

No, not at all. Not at all. You're the star. So, you know, unpack that term for us. So for folks that maybe have heard it but maybe heard it misused or folks that are not as familiar with the term, what does that mean? What does infinite banking mean?

Yeah. So, it's called the infinite banking concept. And it was created by a guy named Nelson Nash. He had a long history in— he had started his career in forestry, which in forestry, you think over 40-year periods where you're planting and then each year they're coming in and they're taking out the weakest trees and, you know, they're recycling those or, you know, that stuff is not good for much. But as that forest gets more and more mature each year, the trees are bigger, the yields are bigger because they've waited long-term. And so he saw this connection with finance because— so I'm trying to give a really basic background on Nelson. So Nelson kind of, he always said that he discovered the infinite banking concept. He had been a real estate investor, among other things. And back in the '70s, he was invested in all these real estate opportunities where interest rates were around 7.5%, 8%. And he was involved in a pretty large deal with a business partner. And then Reagan gets elected. Paul Volcker comes in, says we need to crush inflation and raises rates overnight to 21.5%, which meant that Nelson's loans were now at 23%. And he realized, I'm in trouble. Because I don't have the capital to now pay these loans. The interest is so much higher now. So what he realized was that he had all these whole life insurance policies, and these were just traditional straight whole life policies, one that he bought when he was 14 years old in the '40s and several that he purchased over his life. He had— he realized that he had cash value in these policies at 5%, 6%, and 8% contractually. So he took max loans on those and started to pay those— that real estate deal, those loans down. And he was like, he kind of had this aha moment. Well, what if I had been paying more premiums? And then at that point, by the time he was discovering this, there was also something called a paid-up additions rider, um, which allows you to get cash value directly into a contract by paying a paid-up additions premium. Okay, all that to say, the infinite banking concept solves a very simple problem that we all have that most people don't really recognize. It's that you finance everything you buy. You either pay interest to somebody else for the use of their money, or you give up interest on the money that you would have saved by spending cash.

Yeah.

The infinite banking concept, by using properly designed whole life insurance policies that are from mutual companies that are dividend-paying whole life policies, allows you to both accumulate capital, protect that Protect that savings in a contractual instrument where it's growing interest and dividends uninterrupted, compounding, while at the same time having it as leverage, guaranteed leverage from the insurance company. And so what we do is help people see that you can use this product to engage in the process of— that's why we say it's banking. We're not— it's not creating a bank. We're engaging in the process of banking.

Right?

How does money flow? Where does it flow from? Where does it flow to? For most businesses and households— and by the way, this works for households and individuals as well— but most people get a paycheck, it goes into their bank account, and then it's immediately— most of it's spent. And then if you are a saver, goes into a savings account temporarily, and then you spend it away and you're back to zero, and you've lost— then you've lost all the future interest on that capital, right?

Right.

So the infinite banking concept solves both sides of that. coin so that you could both have the ability to save uninterrupted, never give up future interest while at the same time having guaranteed access to capital.

And, you know, one other thing too, I'll add on this, you know, I think that's a really good explanation, but kind of goes back to the banking system. You think about these, these mutual insurance companies, at least the ones that we work with, you know, infinite banking is, is a, is a much newer term. It hasn't been around for a really long period of time. I believe the, '90s, Dave, you can correct— early 2000s, you can correct me on whenever it really started to get more popular. But the, the concept of people saving in whole life insurance contracts is not new. A lot of the companies that we work with are over 100 years old. Some of them, um, you know, precede one— well, I believe one of them precedes the Civil War. So we're talking about things like the Great Depression, the financial crisis, periods of heavy deflation, heavy inflation, world wars. you know, COVID-19, all sorts of things like that. So, um, they've demonstrated, you know, without, you know, significant taxpayer bailouts like we've seen with the banking system, that these companies are very stable. And the reason for that is because of the underlying asset, right? It's not— they're not taking your money and buying random stocks or leveraging your capital to take on more risk so that they can generate more revenue. These are mutual companies. So The the owners of the company are the policyholders themselves, not external shareholders that are saying, "Hey, you need to increase your earnings per share this quarter and pay me a higher dividend or buy back more stock." Right? You know, and ultimately, it's it's these actuaries that are you know you know very complex and and highly analytical in terms of estimating you know someone's age of death. Right? And so that they can accurately forecast. the death benefit claims that will be paid out sometime in the future. And by doing so, that allows them to invest in very safe long-term securities, primarily high-grade corporate bonds, which pay out, right? So that, that's generally how they kind of come up with some sort of return. That's where you can get a guaranteed growth rate on your capital by using infinite banking. Yeah, I think that's, that's pretty much You know what I wanted to add there.

Well, and that's a really— that makes it really clear so that, you know, it basically, it's a guaranteed return because it's invested in, you know, essentially guaranteed returns. But you also have the ability to borrow from it. And so that you're sort of not losing it out from either side so that you can use it and then pay yourself back that interest when you pay back the loan instead of paying that interest to some disinterested third party. Uh, who might change the rates on you at any time.

Yeah.

And then go ahead, Chad.

Yeah, I did think, you know, there was one other thing I forgot to say too, is that really, um, the wealthy already do this. And, and the term infinite banking, like, um, you're really supposed to— like, infinite banking was meant to be with a specific asset, the properly structured dividend-paying whole life. Um, but the thing is, the wealthy already kind of replicate this strategy. If you look at Elon Musk, for example, when Elon Musk went out and bought Twitter, he didn't go out and save up a bunch of cash and use that cash to buy Twitter, right?

Right.

He's not making a bunch of W-2 income, at least proportionate to his net worth. But, and then, you know, he also didn't go to a bank and say, hey, look, I want to finance this entire purchase and pay you heavy rates of interest on this company that really wasn't doing that well at that point in time, right? What he did He used a little bit of bank capital, but, you know, he leveraged his, his cash-flowing asset, which was, which was Tesla. Right. And so that allows him— now he's kept those shares of Tesla. They've continued to appreciate. So his capital is working harder for him in 2 different ways. Infinite banking, you know, you're not going to see the growth like you would in Tesla because we're not taking risk. There's no contractual downside to your capital. So this is something for, for business owners that aren't worth, you know, $500 or $400 billion to be able to start this saving process where you can safely leverage your capital to buy the things you need for your business, your family, and to be able to invest in new opportunities.

Dave, anything to add there?

Yeah. So I would add too, if you, if you look at the way, the way that cash flows through your typical business, they, you know, you've got your, your revenue that comes in and it's, it's already a lot of it's already spoken for. You've got rent or a mortgage, you got payroll, you got insurance and all these other things. And so a lot of it's already spent. And then you have other things that they're kind of like setting aside, like your quarterly payroll taxes, maybe quarterly income taxes depending on how they're filing. You have savings that they're planning for equipment purchases or they're planning to do financing. And so the way that infinite banking fits into this is we help businesses create a place where they can start storing, start accumulating in that, in that contract, that capital that they're going to need for those future expenditures that they would either use their savings or that they would go to finance. So an equipment loan would be a good example.

Yeah.

If a business, somebody who pays cash, like, hey, we're going to buy this recycler, you know, at this scrapyard. Well, that's going to cost us $85,000 or $150,000 depending on the machine. Well, they can save for it and pay cash, or they can finance it. Or if they know they're going to make that purchase in a specified period of time, they can store that up in cash value by paying premiums and then get that policy loan. But the difference is now there's no terms on the loan from the insurance company. It's not like you're going to a third-party equipment financing company that has— it's like, what's the piece of equipment? Is the collateral, right? Got monthly structured payments. They set the terms, they set the interest rates. You know, that piece of equipment is going to be potentially confiscated if—

or—

That's right. What's the term? Repo'd. If they don't pay that and there's penalties and then you don't have any control over the terms in addition to going through that exam, you know, when you Fill out the application. There's a fee on that. Well, you've got the capital of the insurance policy. You go to the insurance company and they give you a loan against that. They don't—they're—they're not taking it out. It's a loan against it. Now, not only do I have a loan that has favorable terms, better interest rate more than likely, it's a simple interest loan, and I set the terms of how and when I pay that back. But on top of it, I own the asset outright. There's no lien against that asset, so it's already on my balance sheet. And that works with—with all kinds of things. Escrowing taxes is a. great opportunity for businesses to take those quarterly things. And then where are you putting it right now? It's going into a bank account, right? The tax— the bill comes due and you pay the taxes, and then you accumulate again, and it's just spent through. You never earn anything on it. But you can do the exact same, the exact same thing with infinite banking, and you can escrow those quarterly taxes, pay them through a policy loan, and pay that loan back, and then just keep replenishing it. But Your principal is always staying inside of your system working for you, and that principal is earning dividends and interest.

Wow. So you're obviously both experts in some really interesting and nuanced topics that we could spend all day talking about, but I got to be mindful of your time and everything. But so for folks that are listening, and this is setting off some light bulbs for them as they're thinking of, wow, that does sound like maybe a better or at least a more unique way that I could be putting my cash to work on both You know, who do you work with and what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, so we work with small business owners. Generally, there's no size constraint on it, but we typically find ourselves working with business owners from, call it, $3 to $15 million in revenue. Typically, those businesses that are $25+ million are more involved with, with private equity. And this isn't something that, that they necessarily need for, for, or look at for financing. But we also work with, you know, entrepreneurs, individuals as well. Business owners are our focus, and we find ourselves working mostly with businesses in the trades just because of their heavy equipment financing needs and things like that. You know, you can, you can find out more from us at downstreamwealth.com. We did write a book called Infinite Banking for Small Business Owners. You can download it free there if you check us out there. And we also have all of our socials our blog and everything else linked at downstreamwealth.com.

Yeah. And I would just point out too, with the way that we work, we take a very educational approach. We don't ever do a hard sell. Like our goal is to, you know, we enjoy talking to business owners and learning about their business and we analyze financial statements and things like that and kind of uncover things like, hey, you've got revenue here that you could actually put to work in a better way where you could immediately capture some efficiency that you don't have right now. But we, we take a very consultative approach with all this, and it's not— there's no hard sell there. We don't move through this quickly with people. It's a, you know, we work at their pace. You know, we don't have a timeline for, hey, you gotta, you gotta be done with this in 30 days or 90 days. Like, we—

Right.

We have clients we've worked with for very long periods of time before they were ready to pull the trigger. So we're just, we're interested in talking. If you, if you want to hear about it, learn more, see if it might be a good fit, we'd love to talk.

Fantastic. So Downstream Wealth, Chad, Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I really learned a lot. I'm sure our audience did too. Thank you for having us.

It was great. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

Talk to you soon. Thank you for joining this episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast. We hope you've gained insights to grow your business. If you enjoyed this discussion, Please rate, comment, like on your favorite platform and share to others who will find it useful. Do you know a CEO, founder, or leader at an early-stage B2B services, tech, or SaaS company who would like to be a guest and share their story? Send us a note. Let's schedule a conversation.