The joy of founding a business | With Kim Butler & Todd Langford | Founder’s Office™ Lunch & Learn

Well, hello. I know I've been absent. I was skiing and playing around south of— not just south of the border, south of the equator. It was kind of fun dealing with things. Candace, I know I mentioned to you one of the things that I learned was up here in the north, we're always talking about north-facing mountains, right? So when you have a north face, you don't want a north-facing driveway up here. without having it heated if you live in the north, because when the snow comes in, it doesn't melt. But if you run a ski mountain, you do love your north-facing mountains. And one of the most, like, eye-opening things for me going down south in this was that all of a sudden we had to be on south-facing mountains.

Yeah.

It's like, of course. And how many times does that happen in our lives that you're like, just a Duh moment that you're like, yeah, boy, I'd never even really thought about that before, but it was totally, totally interesting. Well, joining me today, of course, I'm Tom Powell. Joining me today, we have Candace Powell from the Founder's Office and the Brahan Group, and also Jacque Kuyper. And you guys have a special WTF coming up, recording later after this. Is that— did I hear that right?

Yes.

OK, we'll talk more about WTF. Here in just a moment. But, and Jackie, you just got back from a, uh, a brew-haha, right? Are we sure?

It was a brew-haha. That's a fair word for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was, it was right out of something where banjos and something was playing. I don't know.

The theme was Joe Dirt.

Joe Dirt. Okay, I got it. Well, we're gonna have fun. I haven't been here, but we're gonna talk today, you know, as a founder, you're building 2 things oftentimes at the same time, a business and a life, and that business is supposed to make the life possible. But what happens when the business succeeds and the joy disappears? Today you're going to hear from 2 founders who've spent decades exploring how better decisions about cash flow, control, wealth can help you build a successful business without becoming trapped by it. Kim Butler, a good friend of mine and the founder of Prosperity Thinkers, and Todd Langford, founder of Truth Concepts, have not only advised entrepreneurs and founders, they've built businesses themselves. They've created a movement and worked together to challenge conventional financial thinking. By the end of our conversation, you'll have a clearer way to think about one essential question: How do you build a business that creates wealth, freedom, and joy for the person running it? You. Kim, Todd, welcome. So glad to have you guys on.

Thanks for having us.

Absolutely. Are you guys coming to us from the ranch?

We are. Yep. Mount Enterprise, Texas. Population 500 and a few depending on the day.

How many alpacas in that 500?

Well, I did bring my little show and tell. You know, you have to, you have to have something soft. I'm sure there's a few plus some dogs.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that was so cool. Well, I don't know that there are, you know, other than farming possibly, but ranching and farming are probably 2 of the most difficult, challenging businesses, but are fundamental to everything we do. And I think there's always these great scenarios. But you guys are in the wealth management business as well as doing the ranch and everything else, right? I don't even know that wealth management would be the right term because you're in the wealth creation, wealth sustaining, all sorts of different things. So why don't we start there? Tell me about, I guess, let's talk about Truth Concepts first. And by the way, this is an ask questions from our audience, bring things in. So, Todd, as you're there, if you want to even say, have you thought about this, or however we want to get in there and prompt some questions, we're happy to do that as well.

Great.

So, Todd, Truth Concepts.

Yeah. So, it's software for advisors to help relay ideas. And it doesn't— it's not like AI where it solves, you know, you put somebody's name in and it spits out some answer that would fit the average of everybody. It's more in involved from the advisor standpoint, really understanding how the big picture works and taking these small pieces initially and at least looking at what are the impacts of if I stay on this path? What is the traditional thought? What is maybe a little different thought? So to be able to play some what-ifs, to be able to look at it and say, what happens here versus this in small, I would say micro-learning capabilities on small individual calculators, and then also the ability to Put everything in, make small tweaks, and see how stuff interacts with everything. Because a lot of times, what we see in the financial industry is like one-offs. This particular thing beats something else. Great. But how does it interact with everything else you're doing in your life? Or more importantly, what you want your life to look like in the future as far as stuff that's outside of the math? Yeah, the math just provides us the vehicle. To allow us to, you know, be able to come forth with our dreams, our desires, our legacy, all those other things.

And you're helping specifically the financial advisors in the space. Is that principally what you guys design? But you're taking these concepts and I've seen your stuff, which is just, it's fascinating because it takes complex concepts And makes them much simpler to understand for the financial advisors so they don't have to use the big words, and then they can help their clients, right? Because I think everybody's like, oh, I just want to hand it off over to there. Is that essentially what you do?

Absolutely. And a big part of it is, really, when you boil everything down, financial decisions, there are a lot of simple decisions. And I think what's happened in the financial markets overall is it's become I don't know, a direction of trying to make everything so complicated that clients just have to say, okay, just tell me where to sign because I don't get it anymore, right? Versus them really having some responsibility of taking some of that on themselves to be able to make those decisions. And that's, that's what we hope advisors will do with the software is take it and be able to explain it to clients in a way that's understandable so they can actually make decisions on their own instead of just relying on somebody else's opinion.

Are you finding that most of the financial or many of the financial advisors are moving away from having that broker-dealer kind of relationship and more into the investment advisor where it seems like it's aligned with what the clients are as opposed to selling just good old-fashioned broker products?

I hope so. That really is the goal. That's really the desire of what we want to happen over time. How fast it's happening, you know, when it's part of what you see every day, it's never fast enough, right? But we hope that that movement is happening and that people can make those decisions. I think what's one of the big issues in the financial industry is that it's become very combative. Like, one part of the industry demonizes another part of the industry and another part, you know, and that process continues instead of saying, wait, we need all of these things to actually be in the most perfect situation long-term. How can we integrate and coordinate instead of beating each other up? And that's what really needs to happen. That's the only way the clients are really going to get the best.

I think it's critically important. I think you guys do a great job. And I know from Kim's standpoint, One of the products that we oftentimes talk about, because we do a— we've done a fair amount, uh, and probably too much at times, Kim, investments in closely held private companies, closely held private investments. And that's because looking for a yield and looking for security and matching, you know, ideally that with the right investment. But that comes about because some of the other fundamentals have happened. It wasn't that, you know, ideally it's not somebody's chasing a 12% yield Because they need to live off that money. It's there; they've got excess investment capital that they can put a portion of it into this kind of vehicle. And so, as you said, Todd, there's a fair amount of financial advisors that think that a currency is an alternative investment, which it is. But that's not that's not the whole basket of alternative investments, right? And so, and so then they demonize sometimes. private placements. And on the other side, private placement people will demonize, why are you doing stocks and bonds? Why are we— why are you doing an EFT? Right?

Right. And what happens in that conversation? Well, let me put it this way. Does every investment does nothing but go up all the time? Right?

It's always liquid. It always goes up. There's never any blowback. Yeah, exactly.

And how many people— I mean, you see this all the time, whether it's real estate, Whether it's private placement, whether it's stocks, whatever it is, the lull, the downside is usually only temporary. And yet it wipes people out when it happens. And the big reason is because they don't have any cash in place to get them over that hump. And so, we look at it and say, oh, cash is costing us money because we've got cash sitting there. And it's not earning the 12% we're doing in this. Yeah, but you can't do that with everything. And to be In a position to where, you know, that cash, let's say your cash is doing 2%, or ideally, if you have it in a better cash position, more in the 4.5%, 5% net, if you can do that, even though it's less than your other investments, it could actually make those other investments come out. So, what is the overall rate of return on that 4.5% if it made your 20% investment survive that downturn or whatever else might happen? And so it's part of that full strategy.

I like that. I think that that is critical. Candace, when you were young, I think probably 14, we started working on that financial plan that you still oftentimes use.

I still do.

And I hate to tell you, Dad, but I have just recently started deciding that maybe I should upgrade to something A little bit better.

But it works, right?

I mean, it totally works.

Yeah, you've got your sinking fund, you've got— absolutely, fund— you've got— yeah, you've got the capital that you can lose, the various things. Yeah. And this is what we started working on when it was 14, and it was a basic Excel sheet. Because, Todd, it doesn't have to be that complex, right?

It does not.

It really doesn't.

No, I mean, if it's complex and it doesn't work, What good is that, right? Simple, simple and something that we can actually get our head around so that we can make real decisions and understand why we're making them is going to be a whole lot beneficial.

Yeah. Oh, I would agree. Okay. Well, Todd, thanks for jumping in there. We're going to come back to that. And I know we've got a couple of questions that are already starting to come in. Kim, I just love all of the materials that you put out there and the Prosperity Thinkers, first of all, That's where you and I oftentimes just meet up and have fun, just, just chat back and forth back there, because it's not always— it doesn't always go well. Yeah. Right? You've tried so many things. You've had so many various experiences. We've shared some of those wins and those losses at different times. And it also happens that usually when things go right, it's not everything firing on all the cylinders. There's still something going wrong. But when something goes majorly wrong, It's usually everything going wrong at the same time, or at least it feels like it, right? And yet you always have a great smile on your face and you carry yourself through there. I think you said faith. So tell me about what your primary focus on Prosperity Thinkers is, because you're working with also kids right in there. There's so much to talk about. Start there. Let's start with the kids program.

Awesome. I'm so happy to, but I really want to thank Todd first. So I don't know if you all made it clear, but we are married even though we have different last names and I'm so grateful, Tom, that you like all of our material. Our, because it's always a team, right? But I feel like my very big picture, very conceptual writing approach is only solid and good because of all of Todd's calculators. I love it. Because, right? I mean, there's just so many salespeople out there, so many people that are great at the concept, they're great at the narrative, they tell the stories, they get the inspiration going. But it's weak on the proving side, the numerical side, the mathematical side. So, like, just as an example, I have lots of books on Amazon. One of them is about life insurance, one of my faves. But look at Todd's book, right? Conscious Calculations, huge, big, calculator-oriented. And that's what it takes. It takes both the concept and the numeracy, the math behind it. And even though Money is not math, a challenging statement. It is absolutely something that must be calculated. And so to pick up on your kids thing, how do we involve these kids? So a lot of us either have kids or we have grandchildren that are young. We want so desperately to get them involved in money, but you can't homework money. And there's all these schools and they have all this financial literacy stuff and they have had. Since really all of us were in school, it's definitely more prevalent now, but America is not doing any better with its money. Our society, and I would include Canadians, Todd Software is appropriate for Canadians to use as well. We're not doing any better with the money. So my newest project, and because I am a 4/4/9/2 Kolbe profile, I always have a new project that I'm working on, is called Prosperity Parents. And it is to help parents talk to their kids about money. And whether it's a penny or $8 billion, it really doesn't matter. Those children, um, and I'm talking like starting at age 2 all the way up to the day we die. I mean, right? We always need to be having conversations about money, and families don't always do a good job of it. So. My Prosperity Parents efforts are going to be to help people have the conversation around money and make it really relevant and really implementable, which means really hands-on for kids, because that's the only way they're going to learn about it.

Okay. So, for both of you guys, and Todd, I think you work with financial planners at maybe a different level than Kim does, but Kim, I know you work with a lot of financial people, especially in the insurance space and such. How uncomfortable How easy is it to have conversations for other people to have conversations with their kids about money?

I would throw the question back to the community that's listening today. I mean, if you wanted to put it on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 is this is so easy, like piece of cake, we got this. I'm afraid, I'm embarrassed, this is hard, I don't know where to start, I'm stuck, I don't want to, I didn't have it from my parents, right? All the things. Where would it be? And I don't know if you guys have a chat box going or something that people can put in a 1 to a 5, but I know from my own research around our own clientele, and as you said, I deal with the advisor community as well quite a bit in just helping Todd do what Todd does. It's crazy high. People are all those things. They're afraid. They don't know where to start. They think it has to be complex. And one of the Prosperity Parents messages is it's one thing, just one sentence, one little conversation, one remembering that we have 2 ears and one mouth. And as parents, really, we can do best by just shutting up.

Kids know about money.

Oh yeah.

We shut them down on it, right, a fair amount of time. They know about acquiring stuff. They want it, and but many of them don't have to necessarily work for it, you know, and that's always been a complexity within there. I am going to share, you said something from the beginning of the, you know, age 2 or 3, and I'm going to compliment Candace out there from her little ones have been, so my grandkids She's been teaching them money management and opportunity of how to earn money, not just save it, you know, but also how do you invest it and how do you get— then how do you also live a lifestyle that's really cool, right? So all the various things. So you've got to be able to think of it. Scout decided she was going to start a rock band, right? Yep. Which was super cool. 9-year-old doing a rock band, gets a park thing going on. They're going to She doesn't really have—

not a single child actually had any sort of musical abilities or training.

Well, that's secondary.

Yeah, no, but you know what they did? You know what they figured out pretty early? Merch. They needed merch, and parents would buy merch.

She asked me— I was on merch. I was informed I was on merch, and then I asked her a couple things, and she was like, I really need you to focus on merch. Okay.

Are we gonna have a song list? Are we gonna— well, that's not really all that. So I'm thinking about like—

Stay in your lane, Mom.

You know, right? It was all about the shows that we grew up with, uh, Kim and Todd. So, um, I'm gonna change to another, another thing here. So as we were starting the show, I was mentioning, you know, we have a scenario going on today where our house here— I'm up at the cabin, uh, we're doing a hospice scenario for one of our family members as they are passing along. And one of the most interesting parts was to be able to watch, uh, my father-in-law have the conversation with his daughters, uh, and his wife about the finances and where they are and where they're aligned and what happens post. He's been thinking about this, as he put it, since he was 25. He's 85. This man has lived that life of doing those things, and I got to tell you what's most gratifying about it is he and I, you know, we skied. He had over 100 days last year at 85, right? He was 84.

That is amazing.

That included down south of the border in Bariloche. He just got back from 7 weeks in Europe, felt a little under the weather, and we find out that, you know, he doesn't have much longer to live at that point. But all of that was because of the financial freedom. And that financial freedom was because at an early age, he decided that that is what enslaves him to other people is if he does not have financial freedom. He's got to take care of his health. He's got to take care of his family. But he's also got to take care of the wealth. And it's not about passing on the wealth and making somebody else's lineage wealthy. Here's the things that I need to take care of. And I think that that's a piece. And Kim, you guys do that in a special way, right, in your Prosperity Thinkers, because you also help talk about not insurance as a life product that most people think when they're in their 20s and 30s and they have a kid and they've got to take care of that, or their spouse, they buy more, they got to do. You guys actually use insurance as a savings product as much as anything else, right? Can you give an example of how that actually works?

Sure, sure. It's so interesting, you know, every single person with their money is on 2 parallel paths. There's the growth path, the investment path. That's what every financial advisor talks about. That's what the media talks about. People think there's only one path, but you guys know from the legal and the structure perspective, and we know from the insurance perspective The protection path that is right along parallel with that is just as critical. And frankly, for the young founders that you all are talking to, probably more important than the growth path, because they're going to figure out the growth path. They're going to be somehow involved in a business, and maybe they already are, that is growing. But that protection path, it's the boring stuff. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's why your guys' process is so valuable. Life insurance is the Oldest financial product out there. And yet, like Todd was saying, it's so vilified. Everybody hates it, right? Crazy.

Well, and it's interesting when you look at that protection path, most people think that it's perpendicular or opposite to the wealth creation path. It always looks like something that is going to impede that, that wealth path. And it is because of the way most people acquire that protection. And what we look at is rather than separating those things, if we combine them and look how they coordinate and work together, it might be that we can kill 2 birds with one stone, that we can actually have the wealth path and the protection path supporting it in the same direction. But that comes down, again, to strategy and the right products in place. Most of the way people buy insurance and other things, It is a cost, but what if it wasn't?

What if it wasn't? And I think that that's a key part for those who are founders out there. And Abdullah, you even asked a question about raising capital, which we'll try to get to that. Maxine, we'll make sure and answer your question as well. But the risk side of the equation is in most cases, we're dealing with a founder right now that she's like, no, I can't afford that right now. And like, you can't afford not To do that right now because it is going to catch up. She's like, no, I got to make payroll. I'm like, absolutely you do. And in another 3 months, you're still going to need to make payroll, but let's make some quick decisions about how you can start doing certain pathways along there. And insurance is one of those products. And insurance can be a product that actually helps you retain employees. You can help, you know, gift it to your, to your family members. You can help build this Retirement account, and when you don't have sometimes many founders find they have more month than they have money. And so when you have those periods of time, you can't make it there, right? But if you I think I love the Jim Rohn. I'll pay attention to it. His his quote was, "I'll pay attention to it when I have more money." Well, you'll never have more money, right? You'll never outpace that. There will always be something, a new business idea. Kim, you're you're only a nine as a quick start. I'm sorry. You know, I'm in that which. On that, if you don't know the Kolbe, it's a 9 is phenomenal, phenomenal ability. I think Dan Sullivan, myself, and a handful of others are in that same range of people.

Or 10s, right?

We're 10s, yes. Yeah.

So, you asked for an example and Todd set it up really well at the beginning of our call, and that's pull together life insurance. So, we're talking about whole life insurance and term insurance. So, that's for your founders that don't have extra cash flow. Term insurance is vilified by life insurance people, and it should never be. It is a very appropriate product for people that do not have a lot of cash flow right now, really no matter their age, but especially critical for young families with those kids, right? So, if people get no other message from me, it's please go buy some term insurance. Now, if you want to uplevel that just a tad, and I'll get to my example in a minute, buy what's called convertible term insurance or switchable, because that means in the future you can convert or switch it to whole life when you do have cash flow. And there's a lot of convertible term insurance out there that's not convertible to whole life, W-H-O-L-E, the kind that's been around a couple hundred years. So, here's your example. If you have somebody that's got real estate, they have alternative investments, they probably have some stocks, bonds, and mutual funds as well. And you want to combine it. So we've talked about coordination, we've talked about parallel paths. You want to combine it with whole life insurance as an asset. Tom Wheelwright, Robert Kiyosaki's CPA, he says, if you want to convert an expense to an asset, convert your term insurance to whole life. So you build up this protection path, this cash value. That's very boring. Like Todd said, it's earning 4%. Now, that's without taxes. So it is a very efficient place to store cash. And because you have that cash, you can solve emergencies and take advantage of opportunities. Well, what might an emergency be?

I'm gonna throw another one in there too.

Yeah.

And it's not easily Attacked by creditors and regulators.

Yeah, another protection.

It's a major, major, major protection.

Yeah, yeah. So you solve emergencies— your business, your investment real estate, your, uh, property that needs a roof redone, your biz, your investments that have a capital call. Okay, we could all Look at those emergencies, but then it also enables you to take advantage of opportunities. That deal that's the deal of the decade that frankly probably comes along once a week, but we're not looking at it because we don't have the cash, right? So you want to store that cash. And the example is, if you can look at the life insurance alongside all those other investments, and Todd's calculators can actually measure this, whether it's investment real estate, alternatives, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, doesn't matter, whatever your flavor of the decade is for investments, you look at your cash position along with, then your investments will do even better because you have the ability to deal with the capital call. You have the ability to deal with the parking lot that needs to get resurfaced or the new air conditioner or whatever it is, the payroll, right? And then furthermore, last sentence on this, for those raising capital, you're going to have a requirement from your investor, your bank, your VC to have term insurance.

Key person insurance is critical.

They want that in there too.

That's one of the first things we look at whenever we are working with a client. And it's one of the biggest areas that we see founders have a big gap. Um, I think we've, you know, we've talked about it on the Lunch and Learn before. We lost a key member of our team. And it was virtually impossible to replace her with 1, 2, even 3 people. And these are, I mean, these are just realities for founders that, I mean, you've got to think through it, not just for yourself, for your extended team and also the impact for those team members' families as well. And so, having products that can be flexible in both helping support the business, but also supporting key team members' families, using it for retention. There's so many benefits, retirement. I mean, using these things as a plan, a strategy for founders because we know that majority of founders' net worth is tied up. into the organization. And so, there's so many strategies to this that, you know, we— and how often should somebody be looking at their overall financial health, including their insurance strategies?

I would say once a year. It's a nice calendar reminder, right? But holy cow, if you've got a fast-growing company and you're hiring like crazy, then probably more like once a quarter. That's why strategic coach Yeah, no, I agree.

The main thing is to be looking at it. It's amazing how many people, their business is at a certain place. Let's say they get to a place of saying, hey, this is getting serious. We need to put some protection in place. And then they never look at it again. And 20 years later, they realize they've got keyman insurance or whatever else in place for 20-year-ago salaries, which, you know, that's not going to work very well.

And the wrong people. And the wrong people. Possibly the wrong people even insured on that scenario, right? So that, that is— I mean, it is why we should be looking at— I think, I think quarterly is great. I would, I would be thrilled if people looked at it. If their birthday comes around, you know, go change the batteries in your smoke detectors and go get your evaluation of what everything's going on that. And, you know, so I— there's a question from, from Sean to kind of expand on what is this great protection. And it's not a single point.

Right.

You can't just say it's even a life insurance product because it varies for everything from— it's using insurance in total. And I'm going to give you a brief example of— we've had a reinsurance company in Bermuda, and it came about partly because we did very large-scale structured financing. We're talking billion-dollar projects. And you'd utilize insurance. Most people never even think about that. And those companies, Lloyd's of London, never think about life insurance, right? But you would not run a business, you wouldn't own your car, a thing that's just not that valuable really compared to your life, and not have it insured. Because first of all, we require it to be able to drive on shared roads. Well, it's the same thing within The human life, except for that there's products that allow people to actually have that insurance grow with you over time and give you a cash savings that you can use, right?

These are products too that you scale. I, I say this gently because I think we have come across founders that, you know, they, they started with an insurance product that worked for them And they just kind of keep going with that product or that insurance person. And we're all about loyalty and recognizing that you may have outgrown and you've likely outgrown the products that your person that you originally started with is even able to offer you. These aren't necessarily the same, you know, off-the-shelf type products that fit your life at one point in time. And so, oftentimes, people don't even realize that they've outgrown their providers and the product offering that they're able to have access to. There is this, like, I hate to say it, but almost like secret world of products that are available that you kind of have to scale into and do that check-in and recognize that you may have outgrown what you have access to.

Candice, that's an interesting question. that's gonna take me back to what we started very much at the beginning. Todd, you're working with all these financial planners. Kim, you had this massive army of people that did have the insurance network out there of people. And we're founder-focused. I mean, we really put it there that when we come in and we provide the advisement to founders, it's from the founder's advocate standpoint. So it's not just about growing the business, it's about how to grow that. And we know that from statistics, roughly a founder's wealth is about 80% their business. And without the founder in the business, that actually could end up being very devastating to their whole entire estate. But Todd, I've got to guess with the majority of population are not founders. So that means the majority of financial planners out there are not working with founders. And you guys are unique in that you guys are both founders and work with founders. How does that change the ups and downs of cash flow? And one of the things you're looking at with insurance is it looks like it's a monthly outflow always. How do you do that?

Well, I think that even if you're not a founder, you still have, to use Kim's words, linears. And green years, right? That still happens. And Tom, I think what you said earlier was right on point. And that is, it seems like it's not one thing that goes wrong, it's everything that goes wrong. It's like, how does everything go wrong at the same time? All of a sudden, the car has an issue, but now I can't get to work. So, I've got an issue with— I mean, it's a whole circular problem. And I think that's part of it is most everything builds on everything else. And so, when it's building negatively, Guess what? It just compounds that problem. And so, being in a position, whether you have the bigger problems or I guess more problems from a founder standpoint because of the intricacies of so many moving things that can go wrong, still on an individual basis, the same things happen in life. We need to be in the same spot and the same types of opportunities might come along if we're in a position of cash. And I think A lot of times what we see people do is, let's say they get into a position of cash because they don't have anywhere to sit on that cash where it's earning a reasonable rate of return in the midterm. They, they make a rash decision. They buy something they haven't thought all the way through because they, they feel like, I need to get this working, rather than waiting for the right opportunity to be there.

Or they've got to go— they've got this cash, they're like, oh, and I can get into a SpaceX, or I can get into all things that are great. Right, potentially to be able to get into as these investments, and they're the flavors of the day. Oh boy, if I would have bought Google originally and rode that up type scenario, you know, so now I need to buy the next whatever I think Google's going to be. And, you know, I love the— it may even be Will, right, that says, you know, get rich slowly type scenario from investments.

Well, it's funny, even with investments, it's the same thing as Vegas, right? Do you ever hear about the losers? No, that's not exciting. You only hear about the winners. So you think, Everybody wins who goes to Vegas, right?

Yeah. You know why they build those big buildings? Being in Nevada, they build the big buildings because the casinos are the winners consistently, right? And it's the same way for horse tracks. Horse tracks are always the winners. It doesn't matter. And that, by the way, is Wall Street. Wall Street is always the winner, and so are the insurance companies, right? The insurance companies don't, at the end of the day, lose money, but they do provide, in many cases, great products that help people along the line. Well, so we've got one major question out there, which I know, Kim, you're gonna be able to answer it really quickly, but what's the difference between permanent life and whole life? What's your primary piece on that? What do you say?

So permanent life insurance is a term that gets used a lot out in the marketplace, and it is unfortunate because it's applied to 2 specific types of permanent or long-term life insurance, and they're typically called whole life insurance and universal life insurance. This is not easy to answer quickly, but let me give it a shot. So, there's term insurance, which is clearly temporary, and it's so good. I reiterated that earlier.

But by temporary, we mean you make the payment, you have the coverage, and it may expire in time because you get too old. Yep. Or it expires because you stop making the payments.

Right. Yep. And it's beautiful and it's up to human life value, which is a terminology that is so important for founders because that's that top line. Okay. Then you have this space called permanent, and to us, permanent means absolutely, positively, for sure, going to be there for the rest of your life, no questions asked. And that is what whole life is, W-H-O-L-E. Unfortunately, the word permanent has started to be applied to something that's called universal life. And the easiest analogy that I can come up with is your brick-and-mortar home built on a cement foundation. That's what whole life is like. Universal life is like an RV or a trailer or a mobile home. Nothing wrong with it. You can still sleep in it. Todd and I were just in one 2 weeks ago. Candace has been in one. Like, they're great places to live for a short, kind of medium, maybe, term of time. And I'm not making a political statement or judging anybody for what home they live in, but we all know that mobile homes are not going to be their absolute They can't last 100 years. They cannot.

You cannot live in a 100-year-old— you can live in a 100-year-old house. You cannot live in a 100-year-old trailer.

Yes.

Universal life is like that trailer. So it's called permanent. It shouldn't be, but it is like a trailer, still called a home, still life insurance. If you die short-term, it will pay. But there's just a lot of problematic arenas around it. So sorry, but dig in there. My bottom line recommendation is go on the ends, right? Do the term insurance and the whole life. Don't mess with that middle that just isn't really going to do the job.

That's interesting. Um, I do want to say this from a shout out of just from my personal standpoint. Uh, my children had the benefit of me having at different times some money, right? And so one of the things that I was able to do for for them was to give them security in that they have whole life policies. And so those were prepaid, fully paid, paid-for type scenario. So they never had to worry about having a job or something that along the lines that they couldn't be taking the risks financially because they needed to make sure and put those things in places. And so that's something that you can do and think about how do you do those things. And the younger It is in most cases. It provides that opportunity for the kids to have that opportunity. The second thing is, is that if one of them happens to have— and any of us can have this at any moment in time, right? You can have a life event that changes your ability to have insurance. Okay? And so, by that, what I mean is you get cancer and all of a sudden, you can't— you're not easily insured. Right. But if you'd had that policy in place and convertibles and all these things, the main piece is you got to talk to financial professionals out there, not people that have just one hammer, one nail, and that's all they're looking at. Ideally, Todd, it's what I love about you. You approach this from the math, accounting, finance side. And Jackie, I'm going to poke fun at the side. I remember Jackie picking up one of the books on my library a number of years ago. And it was Intro to Finance, and I think it was about that thick. And she's like, yeah. Now, Jackie's gone on to get an MBA, and she's brilliant in securities and all these other things. But it was funny because it was really that very educated person, but she's like, this is the intro to finance? And I'm like, it doesn't even begin to touch it, right? But you can take those and bring them down to concepts that are really actually pretty simple. Right.

So, I say too, like, if you have been with the same person and you may be with somebody great, but I think a lot of times founders have outgrown maybe their initial provider because you can get term insurance from, from so many providers pretty easily. A lot of people, when they're young, it's maybe offered through your employer or you get it because you think you should. And that is not necessarily going there. They may not have the solutions. that you need as a founder with a business, with a family, with an executive team that you want to use insurance as a potential retention strategy.

Yeah, we use insurance as golden handcuffs, right? So we go in, we buy in a company, we want to retain that management team. We can utilize that product not just to have a A key person policy, but it can actually provide security to their family, but then also retirement benefits. It's amazing when you work with the right type of providers. And we're not selling anything here. So guys, all of that scenario— and I love one of the questions, it's Maxine's out there. So this is about finding the people that look at it more than just the hammer and nail. They've actually got this whole quadrant of solutions. And more so, what I also love about Kim and Todd is they ask the questions. They don't profess to be the experts. They surround themselves with all these other experts and people that know about it and come together. And you guys are doing that here in September, is that right?

Correct. Yep. Okay. We have a truth training.

A truth training. Now, it's typically for financial advisors, but a founder could come and learn more about being What it means to be in that, because Ernest has got a great— I think Ernest and Maxine, maybe Jackie, you can go through their questions on there, but they've got some specific questions about it. But this is where you can go to this live event. And so you don't have to be a financial planner to come and learn about it. But I think most people that learn about it understand that they want to know more about being financial planners.

Well, it's interesting. They want to know— hey, Todd, hold on. Sorry. They want to know more about personal finance. It's not the side of the business that's the advisor side or the planner side, right? It's personal finance. And it has been so complex out there in the future. And I think that's Todd's gift. And that's why I wanted to speak because he won't brag about himself, but I will. To go as a conceptual person and learn what Todd can learn. And even in his book has been called, and the training has been called, a PhD in personal finance. finance. And it doesn't matter how many zeros these founders have, that's what they want. They want to have knowledge about finance that's on the personal side, not on the corporate side.

Well, and, and, um, there's so much to learn, it can be overwhelming. The best place to start is like plant the tree today, you know, if you didn't plant it 30 years ago. And so it doesn't matter what age you are, it's It's still the right time. And Ernest's question is like, how do you get this all to work together? And Ernest, this is the whole founder's isolation paradox, right? So, if you think you've just got one financial planner and they work at XYZ company, and especially if they are a company person, which I'm not trying to discourage you about that, but they're only going to sell the investments that they're allowed to sell, right? Potentially, they may know a lot of other things, but they can't necessarily even talk to you about it. So, you need to have a cadre of people. You definitely should have your attorney and your CPA talking to each other because there's impacts on all these. And we saw this back in the oil and gas, Candace. We'd have people say, oh, you know, you can't write off oil and gas. And it's because they'd never seen it done before because they'd never had any clients that had oil and gas, right? So you got to have the right people and the right— and it ideally grows with you. The other one I use is it's usually your small town bank that most founders start with, and if you have success, you will outgrow your bank. But most founders are so slow because of loyalty to that small town bank; they don't move on to find the other bankers that they actually need to have in there. And it's kind of the same thing with their financial advisors. If your financial advisors aren't keeping up with the times and looking at things and looking at opportunities, they may not— they may be a part of the equation, but they may not be the right part of the equation.

And it's not that they're not telling you something or not doing anything right. Like Tom said, there's limited products depending on who you're working with. And so that's why I say you may have graduated out of some of these spaces. And as the Founder's Office, that is what we do is we're looking at all of these components and insurance is a big part of that. And we're looking at where have you maybe capped out and who do we need to get you to, to get you access to different banking that you didn't know existed because your bank doesn't have it. And then they can't tell you about a product they don't have, insurance that you don't know is available, you don't know exists. And we're going to help you get to the right group. So we're looking at it from this whole approach and helping the founders graduate up to The products that in general aren't, you're not finding them on billboards. You're not finding them in ads all the time.

Yeah. Well, that's a big deal. They're not on billboards everywhere, right?

They're not, they're not out there because their clientele is, is very niche. And a lot of times as you become a bigger founder, you're getting more into that niche clientele.

And you can insure everything. I think, I can't remember who it was. I want to say it was Bette Davis, her eyes, or it was Somebody, uh, uh, Bridget Bordeaux with her legs, or somebody along the lines, right? And you get pictures and you get everything. Businesses insure all of those various things, right? But they also utilize that as part of their financial products. As individuals, we get that same opportunity. And as founders, it's just crazy that you don't understand those parts. And it's because it takes time to get there. Kim, Todd, thank you so much. Again, your event's coming up. We're gonna put that back up there in September. Where are you hosting it?

Houston, actually at the airport in Houston. It's, it's, it's pretty easy. Everybody just flies in, you go down one level to the subway after you pick up your bags, and it takes you to the, to the bottom end of the hotel, and you're, you're there.

Talk about convenience. That is phenomenal. Remember, Todd, you and I can share this. Kim's too young, but no, the— remember you used to be able to hold meetings behind in the American lounges? You'd actually have meetings because we didn't have the TSA security lines. And you go to some of these old lounges and they still have these big meeting rooms and various things in there. So when you first said that about the airports, like, oh, is this before security or after security?

It is amazing, isn't it, what we used to be able to get away with? You know, meet people as they're getting off the plane, all those things, right?

All those things. And it wasn't that long ago, right? I know it makes it sound super old, but, uh, well, thank you so much. Um, I, I— there's so many different stories, and, uh, Kim and I get to catch up, uh, you know, relatively frequently. She does have one of our team members', uh, alpacas that has become part of your whole breeding ranch down there. Is that right?

That's correct. I think we've got 3 or 4 of them from her.

Wow, that's awesome. So we get, you know, this is interbreeding between the alpaca families that make them healthier and go on there. And you actually, for your clients, you harvest that, am I correct?

We shear the fiber with some help, and I like to crochet gifts for our clients as long as the item is square or rectangle. The end of my skills.

I love that.

No hats or gloves.

No hats or gloves.

Yeah.

I love that. I love that. Well, if you have not felt an alpaca, I've been able to feel it. It's just unbelievable. Unbelievable. So, well, Todd, thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you in person. And Kim, as always, is just such a joy. You are going to move from here over to WTF, Women Talk All right. They get to take this further into other conversations. Maxine, I think you were asking questions. That'll be a good place to be able to ask a few further questions. But if you don't know Women Talk Finance, yes, play on the WTF, but it's an awesome show you should check out where you get your podcasts and talented, talented team members that are talking about all things finance and women and The meeting of the group, I guess. I don't know. What do you got, Ken?

Thank you, Dad.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, everybody.

He's our dance mom. Yeah, and if you did have questions, or if you think that you need that kind of full look, be sure to reach out to, you know, the founder's office. We'll direct you to where you can Go and level up in these resources. We realize nobody's telling you necessarily that these things exist until you find out that you've got a big, huge gap or you're now at risk or you're wondering how everybody is kind of running circles around you and you're going, why don't I have this? And so, that's what we do here at the Founder's Office. Exposing you to the things that maybe nobody's shared with you before about, about being a founder.

You know, Candace, I'm gonna close out on that. I think that's a really important part because it is, it's the whole picture. And so we, the rise of what are called family offices, which we've had a family office for, you know, a long time now, but the rise of family offices is this thing about It's people get about $10 million in wealth and then they're— how do they invest it? Where are they going to put the money? And the real true family offices that have been around for a long time were about how do you build wealth for the family that's beyond just retention or growing the financial wealth? It's the whole person, right? How do we get them educated? How do we have them have experiences? Candace and her children and her husband just spent a month in that RV traveling around. You know, how do you have those experiences? Jackie just got to—

what did you call it?

Alaska. It wasn't Farmer Ted. What was it called?

Joe Dirt.

I don't know, but you had a phenomenal experience, right? And you're constantly having great experiences. And so within our family office, it's not just about the finances. It's the finances that allow us to do these things. And the last part of that is, if someone says, you know, don't take a no from somebody that can't say yes. So when you're talking to a financial planner and they tell you it's a bad idea, make sure that they don't just say it's a bad idea because they can't help you with that idea. A great financial planner, even if they can't help you with that idea, still needs to do the due diligence and say, here's what you should be looking at. So same with, you know, Ernest, your question about that financial planner or that insurance agent or that CPA. They may say no because they don't know, or they may not even be able to tell you if it is. And that's where you want to surround yourself with. That's why we have our family offices. Our family can come in and ask the questions, and we talk about everything from, you know, what kind of— how do you want to pass away? That I'm dealing with with my father-in-law. You know, that's an end-of-life question. And how do you do it all the way through? I was just in Chile skiing for 2 weeks in some of the best snow. with some of the greatest people, right? Those are quality of lives. And insurance is that product. Financial planning is part of that product. Stability. And there's so much more to talk about. Todd, Kim, thank you so much. And, uh, have, have a great day. Thanks for coming on.

You too.

Thanks, Jackie. Thanks, Candace.