150. Top Real Estate Agent Embraces The Infinite Banking Concept In Canada

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay street podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.

We're super excited to be joined here today by Donnie, who is a team leader in the downtown Toronto Keller Williams office, as well as the team leader for his own investor focused real estate team of agents. And Donny. With 18 years of experience, he's had a front row seat, really, as he puts it, to the real estate ownership ins and outs across Canada's largest city. And he's recently discovered creative strategies for building and preserving wealth through dividend paying, participating, whole life insurance, and has yet to come out of that rabbit hole, as you would say. But more importantly, at home, Donnie's a husb. He's a father to two amazing daughters, he's a die hard Raptors fan, and we're looking forward to a pretty awesome conversation today. We were chatting a little bit before the beginning of the show and so without further ado, Donnie, welcome to Wealth Without Bay Street. Hey.

Hey. Thanks, guys.

And you're nowhere near Bay street right now, are you? Being that you're in the.

You know what? Not too far. I could probably walk there.

But no, not that close.

Oh, it's good to be with you. And so, Donnie, let's kick things off. So what inspired, you know, your introduction to the. The infinite banking concept, the process of becoming your own banker? And what's gotten you so fired up?

Yeah, because Rich, Rich and Jay, you did say that I was in a rabbit hole. I am in a rabbit hole. I can't get out of it. I just want to consume more and more of what IBC means and how it's going to help me and my family. And I'm not kidding. I'm not blowing smoke for a podcast. I actually love this stuff and everyone I meet, like, let's talk about insurance. That's all.

That's all.

I want to talk about insurance more and more and more. So I'm probably losing some friends along the way.

But that will. That is a. That will happen. It does.

That's going to happen. And I'm not even going to plead.

To all of Donnie's friends right now.

Please, sorry, everybody. Don't abandon Donnie. He legit just wants to help you. It's not. I'm doing this insurance.

I'm doing this for you. You just don't realize it yet. Exactly right. So I actually backed into it. I fell into it. So luckily I am. I'm a big believer of behind you, Jay who, not how. Dan Sullivan's book. Know that book? Well, I subscribed to that mantra as well. I had the right who's around me. And one of my who's Jen said, hey, look, you have your real estate corporation set up. Have you heard of this thing called key person insurance, which I believe you guys did a podcast about last month? I'm like, no, tell me more about this. Well, do you have kids? Of course I have kids. Do you have houses?

Yeah, I do.

Well, you have to take care of yourself, prevent what is inevitable, the tax man and all that kind of stuff. And talk to me about an insurance policy that's going to help me just provide a buffer. And I honestly didn't know it was really what I was doing was IBC Infinite Banking. I now know that to be true because, you know, I've seen the results and I know what this is going to do for me and I'm happy to share with you guys so I can give you some feedback on that. But just the simplicity of the entire concept. I just love what it's done for me in the last two years. I love where it's going to be in the next three, four years. I'll be capitalized, which is a concept we'll probably go over in this discussion. It's just marvelous. It's absolutely changed my world. And it's insurance. I remind you, like, what? So anyway, yeah, happy to chat about my experience with that and my subsequent purchase of another policy with Roman on Ascendant and where that's going to lead me. And I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. Everyone I know is going to have an insurance of dividend, high yield, dividend paying, participating, whole life insurance policy.

Okay, we'll send you the check for pronouncing it properly there, Donnie. That's great. And you know what's fun about this is so we have to give credit to, you know, one of our amazing colleagues who's helped us immensely, and that's Evan Carmichael. And shout out to Evan Carmichael, who is one of the world's best YouTube influencers and who's also a client and just an amazing guy. And he said, you know what you need to do? Whether it's on the podcast or on the YouTube channel, you've got a coach go through a coaching session, real time. And the aha moments that come out of that are going to be the Aha. Moments that the listeners and the viewers catch as well. So you said a few things, Donnie, that are really, really important to amplify. And the first is, so you're right, the tool that's used to implement the process is dividend paying, participating, whole life insurance. And when you put the best tool to get the job done, which is the process of becoming your own banker. So the insurance policy is a product, the infinite banking concept is a process. And when you put the best tool for the job in the hands of somebody who's not only ambitious but perseverant, very determined to implement this in his life, then you're going to create very successful outcomes by embracing the process. Because regardless of where the insurance policy is, regardless of the carrier or anything like that, the insurance company itself is going to administer that policy if you do not implement the process to any degree whatsoever. And so the second teaching point is that, and God rest Nelson, you know, soul, he's still influences Rich and I day in and day out. He often said that the policy owner's behavior is far more critical than the behavior of the insurance company. And so by you working with a great coach who practices this process in his life day in and day out, he's going to be able to help you along in inspiring your imagination to get to work on how you can take this process even further, as you say in your life. And then lastly, I'll just say this is capitalization. Nelson always, always reinforced, don't be afraid to capitalize. And here's what we see happening, particularly with key person insurance or when there's a discussion about a permanent policy. It's always structured, especially with business owners are very successful entrepreneur business owners like yourself. There's always a conversation around, you only have to pay the premium for this amount of time. And when you truly embrace the process of becoming your own banker, your question is going to shift from how soon can I stop paying the premium? To can you confirm for me that I can pay this for the rest of my lifetime? Because the more capital you put in, the more capital you get out. But just from the first conversation you and I had together to see your ambition and your desire to not only embrace this yourself, but to share it with others is really inspirational.

It's just, you know, I actually feel compelled, I think, much like you guys do, because I've consumed your, the podcast, the YouTube, your stuff about the CPP, by the way.

Anger, the anger when I was listening to that. So Rich, you did an amazing job on that one. But just I feel compelled. As a hardworking Canadian with many hardworking Canadian friends and partners and colleagues, we need to make sure that people are aware of this specific option. And I think Ascendant's done an amazing job, by the way. This is not a plug for Ascendant, but this is. Ascendant's done an amazing job of making it available to the masses. Because this whole thing to me started off. I don't even know how I got onto something with. Mentioned infinite banking or that. Just that phrase in a podcast, which turned into a web search, which turned into Next Thing, Next Thing. And then I landed on. On Ascendance stuff.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, yeah. How much more content is there? There's. There's dozens and dozens of podcasts. Yeah, sign me up. And the. The further I go into it, the more I realize how valuable it is and how. How it just transcends everything. And everybody should figure out a way to incorporate at least a portion of this into their lives just to create an awareness about the whole thing.

Oh, yeah, that's. It's really good. And. And something that you said, Jason, earlier, again, just with Nelson, and Nelson pouring into us as he's done, and we're just, you know, really. We're kind of like a. We're just like a conduit to help channel what he was able to download into this, you know, this. This noggin. And we're just trying to, you know, project that Nelson knowledge out into the world. And I was literally sitting with a. With a client yesterday. We were doing a policy Review. Young guy, 24 years old, engineer, just earning all kinds of decent money, not spending a whole lot. Cause he doesn't have anything to spend it on. He's got a great policy, and we're talking about paying himself interest should he get another policy. All this kind of conversation. And I was walking through a section of Nelson's book on the equipment financing, and I was sitting there on page 59, and I was showing him something. I was about to teach him something out of the book. And I'm going back and forth with two different illustrations. And all of a sudden, like a ton of bricks, I was about to say something, and I was like, whoa. I just saw something I never saw before in the book right here. And it just. It just hit me. I stopped dead in my tracks, and I just started, like, chuckling.

I'm like.

And I just. I looked up and I said, nelson, you got. You got me again. You know, it's literally this. This gift that keeps on giving. And so you're, you're in, as you said, the proverbial rabbit hole. And you're going down this huge track of discovery. And because you're, you're excited and you're motivated, you're, you're attacking things. I get the impression, Donnie, you're a high quick start person on the Colby index. You're attacking things at some level of speed. And, you know, it's probably goes to some degree with a tagline on your emails, which is don't go bananas, go mangoes, which I love, by the way. That's fantastic.

It's so catchy. And, and so you're, you're, you know, you're literally in encapsulating your learning as quick as you can, you're gobbling it up and it's creating that excitement. And so as you go about your learning, everything that you're learning right now in this, in this short kind of period of time that you've been in your discovery process, you've been learning about insurance related things and then you've been learning about infinite banking related things and how there's overlap on these, these two things and everything that you're learning now. The beautiful thing is I'm just going to share this with you and maybe a couple of years from now we'll have another conversation about it. You're going to have the opportunity to even relearn all the things that you're presently learning.

I can't wait.

It's going to be this, like, it's just like this epic thing where it's all sudden like, wait a second, I already. But, but then, wait, there's like a whole nother layer of the onion that just showed up.

It's funny that you said that because this is what I'm. So I backed into this policy, right? I bought a policy with a, it wasn't a mutual company, it was a high yield public or a stock company, but two years ago, and it was more geared towards insurance and this cash. Someone was looking out for me. So someone was looking out for me. And then now, two years later, I'm looking at the results, saying, oh my God. Like, this is, this is amazing. So, and now I'm rereading, you know, Nelson's book all over again. My wife's reading it now. She's not really into finance, but she's now reading this because she can sense how passionate I am about the subject. So I completely agree that I know that two years from now I'll read it Again. Or I'll look at my numbers from the policy statements and just be blown away all over again. And I'll uncover another way, make this work for my life.

Because Nelson said. And he repeated this, and it's just so true. In our 15 years, now, in our journey with this process, when we first heard Nelson say, the more you see infinite banking concepts, the more you'll see you didn't see. And he is so correct in that statement. Because if, again, you may have heard this through consuming podcast content and reading and, you know, finding us on the YouTubes and the Facebooks and all that. Nelson's golden rules. The first one is to think long range, which means to think three generations past your own. And the second is don't be afraid to capitalize, meaning your money must reside somewhere. What better place to have it reside than here? And then from that very place, you can go and control how you finance all the things that you need throughout the course of your lifetime. And then the next golden rule is, don't steal the peas.

So whenever you're accessing policy loans or you're going to control how you finance those things you need in life, you have to be an honest banker. You have to replenish the vault. You have to get capital back in. And the fourth is don't do business with banks. And that takes the average person 20 years to achieve that end. It took Nelson 13 years and it took us the better part of nine years to get rid of the banks in our lives. We were very aggressive in that process. And then the fifth golden rule is to rethink your thinking. And now the sixth is to have a storage place for windfalls, meaning at some point, death benefits will show up. And if you have a number of people that you have a beneficial interest in, your spouse, your business partners, key people in your agency that have a direct impact on creating value for the agency. And God forbid, if the unthinkable happened, there would be a remarkable setback. So when all these lives are insured and death benefits start showing up, you should have a place to store those windfalls, meaning you should have outstanding loan balances inside of your family banking system for these windfalls to be placed in so that you keep that money in the family. And then in thinking three generations past your own, you're not only transferring wealth in dollars, you're transferring wealth in knowledge, the knowledge of the process. Because early in the journey, and Rich and I are guilty as charged as well, our excitement and how enamored we were was all focused on the product. Oh my God, look at how fast the cash value is accumulating. Look at the dividends and look at the paid up additions and oh my God, it was all product focused. And Nelson, in his amazing way, he would just go.

Like you would just have a little chuckle because he knew that we didn't know what we didn't know. And so as you immerse yourself more in this process and we're going to have you back and believe me, we're going to have you back, we're going to bring you in and we're going to help case study check in with you along your journey. And it's going to be so cool for you to reflect back on this episode and go, oh my God, wow, have I ever progressed? And we're just so excited for you like this.

Thanks guys.

This is like being kids in a candy store, man. Just talking to you about this and.

Well, I've not pulled out, I've not done a policy loan. I've not been that banker yet for myself. Right. So yeah. And I'm looking forward to that part of it, like everything. I'm trying to be strategic about how I leverage that. But you know, thanks for giving me permission to at least to solidify it. You can do this then. If you want to take out some money for this reason and you're going to make it work for you, go on and do it.

Look at it from this vantage point, Donnie. If you and I owned a Loblaws grocery store together, how soon would you want to start shopping there? Exactly.

Right away.

Yeah.

Hopefully the next time you need food, you're going to want to go to the Loblaws that we co own together.

Agreed.

Totally.

And so that is the mindset that we would encourage you to receive inspiration to say, okay, it's really important to apply strategy. Right. Where you're looking at how you're put together financially, what your objectives are, how much capital you need to get those objectives accomplished, what timeframes you envision getting them done in all those great things that are really important to do. But the process of banking is going on no matter what, no matter what's happening in your life. And so there won't be any breaks or pauses in your need for money. And so if you have already accumulated a reservoir of ready access capital, then you're already well on your way in terms of being equipped to get started in implementing the actual process. Far too often we get introduced to people who have policies that are seasoned a few years old, sometimes even Longer. And we ask them, hey, describe to us how implementing the process has been going for you. Oh, I haven't been doing that yet. I've just been piling up cash value. You haven't yet gone down the path of becoming your own banker. Somebody's told you that you have an infinite banking policy, whatever it is. That means what you have is a dividend paying, participating whole life insurance policy and you're building up an aquarium of capital. And now it's time for you to implement the process and that's what you're going to do. And it's going to be awesome, awesome to see how this works for you very, very soon.

Looking at acquire, acquiring real estate because that's what I do. And it will be using, it will be my corporately funded, my corporation is going to be acquiring it through, through a loan, let's say. And yeah, I absolutely should be using these funds rather than whatever other savings or other personal loans that might come out of that. So yeah, you know what, I will make sure that I execute on this strategy and just give it a whirl. Just try this policy loan thing out and see how it could work for me.

Yeah, it all begins with that first loan. And so I was having a conversation with a lady yesterday. She's just in the process. She'll be going into application for hers policy next week and she doesn't have a lot set aside for retirement. She's a single mom, et cetera. So this is going to be a big component of her financial life. She doesn't really like or trust the banking system. Not a big fan of, let's just say big government in general. So she wants to have a little bit more autonomy and control. And so she's very excited. But I said, you know, as soon as you get this policy issued, we're going to be meeting within, you know, roughly 15 days or so. I mean as soon as you can get a meeting booked in my calendar, we're going to be meeting. I would be going over some resources and I'm going to be giving you some homework. There's going to be actual tactile things you're going to need to do. And I'm going to give you a list of videos that you need to watch in our inside of our membership platform because these are going to be training for the next year of your life. But you will be taking a policy loan right away. She said, well, what if I don't need it for anything? I said, I don't care. You're going to take it anyway. Because if you don't, if you don't get on the bicycle, you can't learn how to fall off and get back on it again.

Yeah, totally.

So even if you take that loan and then you're just sending it right back to the life company, that means you're going through a full rotation of activity. You filled in the form, you sent it in, you received the funds, you've completed that process, you say, yes, check, check, check, I know how to do this now. Then you send the money back, you've completed the transaction from that standpoint, which means you've gone through a full loop or rotation. Now you know how to make the payments to the policy, you know how they accept it. You can see the difference in the values and changes in the loan going up, the loan going down. And you've, you've experienced. And so experiential learning is the most fundamental, valuable way that we can learn anything. And so it's learned by doing. And that's really where the rubber is going to hit the road. So all the things that you've been learning so far.

You'Re going to level up. It's kind of like playing whatever, a Super Mario game or something. You're just looking to get to the next level. And you're just one policy along away from that right now in your present part of your journey, which is just so ridiculously exciting.

Thanks, guys. So my next question then is who do I need to involve in my life to start this policy loan application? I just got to figure that part out.

Yeah.

And the rest, make sure your coach is right there with you to lead you through it. And you know what, if you were to look back again on what triggered your inspiration to really immerse yourself in learning about this process, what would you say to other top producing real estate agents out there? Because there are so many who earn a great living who are really passionate about the profession, but just want to, they want to take that next step in, hey, I'm doing really good in this chosen path that I'm on, but I want to either improve or expand the wealth that I'm creating for myself personally and for by proxying my family. So what would you say to those other top producing real estate agents?

Okay, well, absolutely. You don't know what you don't know. So part of the problem is awareness. We don't. I'm going back, Donnie. Five years ago, you don't know this is an option. You don't actually know this exists. Well, now if you're listening to this podcast or you're watching this, you do know this exists now, so you can't claim that anymore. There are, there are better ways to go about achieving your goals or more efficient ways, which. I know you're a big fan of the word efficiency. There are way more efficient ways to leverage your money. So a couple years ago, the reason why this whole thing started. So my peers, if you're listening in on this, in Ontario, we couldn't hold our real estate license within a corporation. That changed October 2020. So now that we had the ability to incorporate and we're able, you know, we can earn commission income within that structure. Well, after tax is a very different number in that category than it was when you were doing it personally. So the number that you're pulling from has you can buy your policy within the corporation if it funds it. And there's a lot more after tax dollars in that category. So you could, you could use that to achieve your personal goals because you are the owner of that corporation. So you don't know what you don't know. Well, now you know that you can incorporate if you didn't know already. So you can buy key person insurance in your corporation and turn that into a lot more after tax dollars quicker to fund this kind of stuff, which helps you go ahead and become your own banker a few years from now. Did I summarize. Did I summarize that well enough for you guys to understand?

Absolutely.

And so, Donnie, when you think about having, you know, having not only consumed our content, which we're sincerely grateful for, and we, when we extend that sincere thanks to people, we truly mean it. You know, Rich and I are so passionate about sharing the message, getting it out there, being a source of inspiration for people to do like what you said, to uncover a different way of doing things financially and understanding that it exists and that it really works extremely well. And so when you think about your exposure to Nelson and to Nelson's book titled Becoming youg Own Banker, what can you share from your own vantage point in terms of what inspired you? Like, when did you catch it? When did you catch it?

So this guy here, so this. I too despise, hopefully listening. I too despise big banks and that whole world and big government and intervention. And I don't. Not a big fan of where. Of how this whole system works.

Yeah.

So I'm a big. The wealth is one thing. I'm a big fan of what the wealth does, which is give you freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationships, like, all that kind of stuff. I want freedom above all else. Yeah, this is freedom above all else. So it's not about savings accounts or what, it doesn't even matter. It's what represents the freedom that it gives me. I don't want to ask permission. I don't. You know, like, I think it was in his book. It might have been in your podcast. Just saying, like, when do you need money the most? When times aren't great. So look, we might be heading towards a recession right now, might not. Unemployment might. It's likely going to increase. People are going to be out of a job. They're going to need. They're going to need money. How does that work? When the banks, when you ask for the bank for some money for a loan, when you need them the most is when they're going to abandon you the most. Well, how does that make sense to me? I just couldn't understand how that is a concept that we knowingly accept. We opt to live like this. We opt to encourage savings in the banks and all that kind of stuff. So it really upset me this, the book title probably got me and said, okay, what are you talking about? Where are you going with this? And then I had no idea I was reading an insurance book when I first picked it up, but it was very much, very clear. You could do this on your own. This is how you can do this. It looks a little different, sure, but it's ultimately going to give you what you want, which is that control and that independence away from big banks.

Amen to that.

I had an email today, actually from a client who is only really in this first year of his journey. You know, he has, he's very, very successful as a physiotherapist and he's got a lot of great rental properties. He's done some really well things and he's, he's been actively trading, you know, stocks on his own. He's done really well with that. Of course, the markets, I don't know if you've heard or not, but a little bit around the water cooler, but they're kind of in a tank. You could say they've the bed a little bit to some degree. And so, you know, he has experienced some of that downfall as well. I mean, he's confident that, you know, he's, again, he's been very active, so he's aware that this can happen and how he's going to address that. But it has put a squeeze on things. And then plus, you know, looking at now doing A refinance situation on one of his rental properties. Now he's getting new questions, different questions. Things that how the bank was looking at his rental income a year ago, two years ago versus today. It's totally changed. So it's putting him in a bit of a, bit of a squeeze. Not a huge one, but one that he just didn't expect. And again he's done well, he's got good capital and so he's just becoming very aware how in this environment now with the changes that are happening presently, it's, it's a totally different landscape and these landscapes shift and change as thing. You know, you see one rate hike, it changes and really, you know, trying to try to close on properties for your clients, helping your clients get into properties, you know, condition day, right, Mortgage condition day is a big deal because at the, if you can't remove conditions on the property, not only does does your buyer client not get the house or your seller client not sell the house, but you know, the realtor has done all the work, it doesn't get paid either. So nobody really wins in that deal. And banks kill deals that impact the real estate agents lifestyle pretty quickly and I'm sure you've experienced a lot of that. So these changes are changes that are real and they're going to impact people. And so you want to be well capitalized to be able to deal with them and put yourself in the best possible position. And if you haven't started already, well, that again, when's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. Second best time is today.

I would add to what you said Richard, and share this with you Donnie, that you know, I was similar to Richard. So you know, we're in conversation day in and day out. This is what we get to do, we get to talk about this day.

In and day out.

And I was having a conversation with a gentleman and helping him to kind of put things into perspective. Being an active real estate investor who hasn't experienced a downturn. And so if you took, if you took a look at a mortgage rate and I'm picking arbitrary numbers here, please forgive me, but if you took a look at a mortgage rate of, you know, three and a half percent versus a mortgage rate of 6.25, but the property you wanted to buy was $700,000 nine months ago and it's $420,000 today, not really a whole lot of difference in the payment there, right. If you look at it from.

No, that's where we are right now.

From that perspective.

And that was like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you can continue your real estate investment activity. You can achieve great success with it, especially in periods of time where there's correction and all of that. But always reminding yourself again that capital, your wealth must reside somewhere and it's not an either or, right? Do I become my own banker and expand my real estate investing activity? No, you gradually and incrementally do both. You take control of that financing function so that to your point, you don't have to ask for permission when an opportunity of high caliber tracks you down. You've got ready access to capital, albeit maybe in the early stages for just the down payment on the property. But you've got ready access to capital to take advantage of a high caliber opportunity without having to ask permission from anybody. And if you can do that faster than the next person in line who's wanting and has their eyes on that same opportunity, you're going to win. That puts you in a position of total and absolute, total and absolute control. And who doesn't want that? And so any successful real estate investor that I talk to or any successful realtor that we talk to, they grasp that immediately. Like, who doesn't want that? It's a win for the realtor, not only personally, but for their clientele, especially active clientele who are actively growing a portfolio of real estate. You want to be in a position as your portfolio expands, of less or more control.

Logic and reason would say, of course I want to be in a position of control, especially when the market goes the other way, because that's when the greatest opportunities are going to present themselves to you. So food for thought. A mango for thought.

You were talking about again, the high performing realtor, and really just in realtors in general. And obviously you've been doing this for a long time, I think, I think you said like almost 18 years, Donnie. So you've been, you've been hair rich.

I had a hair. I had luscious, beautiful hair.

I can picture the business cards that used to be there at that time and, and now. But, but let's be honest though, the reason you don't have the hair anymore is because you really wanted to double down on that tagline about go mangoes.

And so did you just say my head looks like a mango? Is that, is that basically what I'm.

Just thinking from a marketing perspective? I can see how this could really be an advantage for you.

Some of my staff at. I think it was like, I don't know if it was a gag or if they actually created a screensaver of a mango, like my head was the mango. So this has been done before. This is humiliating.

It's a hidden opportunity is really one way to look at it. But you know, being a recovering realtor myself from my past and thinking about knowing that, you know, you operate in an environment where income is inconsistent, it changes in ebbs and it flows, you do an awful lot of work. And then, and then you have these closings. Sometimes closings are 30 days, 15 days, and then sometimes they're like 90 days, 120 days and you're waiting for this future income. And then off that income you have to, you know, put some aside for the GST and government slavery tax as some people call it, and all these other kinds of things so that you can, you know, you run your life, run your business and, and what I always encourage for people who are in that environment and other types of like similar sales related type environments, consider at least do it putting away two deals a year, right? So two ends a year, whether it's a purchase and a sale or you know, again, whether you double end deals or however, as you do a minimum, consider you want to contribute to two deals a year into your family banking system. That's a great way to start the thinking of capitalization and whether you earn more of your revenue in the summertime, fine, but make sure that you plan. So again, because of the cyclical nature of how commissions can come in on deals like that, you can owe on a policy while you're waiting for deals to show up, and then you could backfill the policy when those deals come in and you have a bigger month, essentially.

I did not know that.

Okay, right. So as an example, you know, let's say you have a policy and one thing we don't really necessarily control is the, the start date of a policy. Okay? So whether you've backdated it or whatever it is, but you know, today we're recording this, we're, we're stepping into this December of 2022. This might, might air into the new year of 2023. But you know, whatever day it is that you're listening is, is that day. And if that's the start date of your policy or the policy anniversary date, well, the anniversary date goes around the clock and it, and it renews on that day. It doesn't match the calendar year, it matches the policy year. And so if you have a policy that starts, let's say in December or in January, I have several policies that Start actually in December, then maybe December isn't your highest income earning year or month. So you might want to say, okay, well I'm gonna, maybe I'm gonna earmark capital that I earn in the summer because I earn a lot of revenue in the summer. I'm gonna set that aside inside of the policy system so that I can fund my policies up to the maximum that I need. Maybe I owe a little bit of my policies, but I'm going to backfill that now as I generate more revenue as the year progresses. So again, if you have a seasonal type of a business, this is one way to consider how you can maneuver those cash flows through your life. So people, I think in the, in, in real estate, in real realtors, specifically Realtors, mortgage brokers, etc, this type of a system that allows them to self bank with their, their income and the deposits and deal with kind of trying to level out some of those highs and lows of a commission structure is extremely advantageous because you have a warehouse to store capital, access capital during the low periods of the year and then you could just fill it back up again. And farmers, you know, is another example of that as well, because again, a lot of their income comes after harvest. Right. So there's not a lot going on until after harvest. And then they have big boatloads of money that show up. Right. So that's how you know, you can think about the ebbs and flows of, of your income versus someone who just kind of gets a consistent, you know, monthly or bi weekly.

Yeah, absolutely. You can jump into what Jay, what do you say? It's an aquarium. Your aquarium of cash. Right. Like it's a very visual. But if you need it, you can take it from there for now. And then just, you know, when you get those sales in, in three months time or whatever it is, replenish it.

Absolutely.

And that as long as you're not.

Going over there, you're grabbing it from here.

Precisely. And that speaks to Nelson's fifth golden rule, which is to rethink your thinking. And money must reside somewhere. And so Rich is describing brilliantly how someone with variability in commission income can begin to smooth out not only the growth of their aquarium, but also making sure that there's more money flowing back to you versus money that's flowing away. And if you've got a corporation where you've got retained earnings or surplus capital.

If you're not implementing this process, then who is actually retaining your earnings? It ain't you. It's all on the books of Someone else's bank. So if you get that surplus capital, those retained earnings inside of an entity that you control, then you're just expanding the square footage. No pun intended. You're expanding the square footage of your own warehouse of wealth. Where do you want the wealth to reside? When you know that you can grow your own square footage and you set the terms, you're the one that controls it. So realtors again, grasp this very quickly. Okay, yeah, more square footage. I control it. Wealth expand. Yeah, I get that.

Going to add a basement suite, a garage suite.

Okay, talking guys. Now we're talking.

Yeah, I can do triplex on one lot without any bylaw house hacking.

We could figure we can insurance hack or something.

Totally. And so this is.

Again, it's just so, so gratifying to speak to people when they catch it. And you've clearly caught the concept. Nelson, again, we give him all the credit. You know, he often said that infinite banking, the process is more caught than it is taught. So you can, you can impart knowledge and like you said, you know, you're sharing with people who are in your inner circle. Hey, you need to, you need to know that this is an option that exists out there and some people will catch it and other people won't catch it right away or perhaps not even catch it at all. And it cannot be taught through a method of convincing. Hey, let me convince you that this is the something that you should do. The whole step that got missed was why don't we talk about a problem that you might not even be aware exists and then once we have clarity that you truly understand the problem, which is you're not the one controlling the banking function in your life. And more importantly, you're abdicating the opportunity that it represents for you to actually control it. And you're doing all the work to earn your commission income through the sale proceeds of real estate transactions and someone else is getting all your damn money. Can we agree that that's a problem.

We don't like?

Nope.

The solution to the problem. And again, assuming we're making a big assumption here that people out there want to create a more peaceful, stress free way of life, financially fair. And if that's true, then the way to go about doing that is to implement the infinite banking concept. And so in other words, once you understand the problem, the solution becomes clear and you'll know exactly what to do. And what happens far too often is we lead with the solution. I'm so excited to share this solution with you. You need to know that this exists. You need to go out there and do it. And a person's like, gosh, I really don't grasp that. Versus, if we start with clarifying the problem, once we present the solution, the person goes, that is what I need to do because I understand I've got a problem.

Yeah, the problem. So the problem, pardon the steal that word there is. It's just difficult to explain on a billboard. Whereas. And that. That is the issue. We can't communicate this concisely enough for the masses. And not everyone has the, has the ability or the curiosity to just pause what they're doing and just say, wait a second, what's this about? And yeah, so I feel your mission. I like, I am thankful for what you guys are doing and I'm encouraging others to like, even if it means I gotta stop what I'm doing for 10 minutes and try and explain as best as I can to get them to see they have a problem. They haven't realized it yet. I think there's like, there's certainly a need for, you know, just sharing what this is.

Yeah.

At the risk of sounding cultish because, like, it kind of does come across that way. I just want to make sure that people get. They're not, they're not going to be. You may not be okay. And this can make. This will certainly set you up to be okay. I wish my dad, like, my dad is 74, I believe, and he's okay in his retirement. But his retirement could have looked very different if he had done. If he had been told at my age, yeah, hey, man.

You got, you got problems here.

That's that you hit the nail right on the head. And that's why we emphasize with people, look, you're going to need the use of money for the rest of your life anyway. And Nelson didn't begin his journey with this process until he was in his early 50s. And so when people say to us, you know, gosh, you know, like, we meet with folks who might be a little more mature than that. Maybe they're in their late 50s, early 60s. Am I too old to do this? Well, the last time you went to deposit money at your commercial bank, did the teller ask you how old you are?

Same thing.

They just want to know how much are you planning to deposit. And by going back to the communication and getting this message out there, you know that it's all a function of rather than. And this is something that you may want to share with some of your colleagues as part of your, your. How you lead them. And Coach them and inspire them. Rather than saying, I don't have the time, try replacing that with, it's just not a priority for me. Yeah, and see how much. And see how that makes you feel. And so you've got the time. If you look at your smartphone, which is a very interesting name for that device, if you look at your smartphone, it'll give you a report of how much time you're spending on average daily on that device. It is jaw dropping. And so if we just shift priority and say, look, rather than spend 32 hours a week on, on the smartphone, maybe I shave off two hours of that and I discover this process. Rather than binge watching that series on Netflix in one evening, maybe I just carve out another few hours and just shift my priority and immerse myself in learning about this process. If I go to watchibc.com, again, that's watchibc.com I go to that link. I watch an introductory session on the process. I either catch it or I don't. I read Nelson's book Becoming youg Own Banker. I either catch it. I don't. If I have thoughts or inspiration in terms of questions. If I read Canadian's Guide to Wealth Building Without Risk or Soon to Be Cash Follows the Leader, which is the second in our quarterly book series, there's no shortage of resources to give yourself an opportunity to catch this. And when you begin to go down that rabbit hole like Donnie, believe me, it is so inspiring because you're going to be asking yourself, gosh, it's like it was always there, right? The function of banking has always been there. For as long as you've been handling money, nobody's ever talked to you about taking control of it. Isn't that good?

It's amazing. The same way that we just described my dad and his generation. And now here I am, maybe on our next call or next podcast you guys might put out there, I'd love to hear about my kids. So, you know, they're 12 and 9, and there's certainly going to be a way to incorporate IBC in their lives so that they can, you know, they can start young. So this guy, 24 years old, that's amazing for him. How do I get my daughter at 12 to really see the, you know, the value?

Oh, my God.

Well, I. I think, you know, on that note, so perfect segue, by the way, because I had a note here. I wanted to ask, you know, mention about your kids because you mentioned them earlier and you mentioned your father at his stage and so now as a father at, at a, you know, you're just like a section, a chunked section in time differential. And then you have kids roughly you were about the same age your dad was when you had kids, if that makes sense based on the math I just did there. So you, you have the unique opportunity to practice Nelson's rules and the first rules, you got to think long range. So now your thought process is going to begin to shift into third generation thinking. And so you can begin with your children and you can start planting the proper seeds and things in place to plan for your grandchildren that aren't born yet today. And I was actually doing that, I was on a conversation yesterday with one of my clients. Amazing guy. So he had a windfall event. He just sold a property in Ontario. He's going to be buying a property in Mexico. He's kind of semi retired. He's done pretty well for himself. He has twin daughters and one of his twin daughters just had twins. So he's going to be, he's going to be looking to get some policies on the grand, the grand twins. Right. And so just fantastic. But in doing that, what's going to happen is we're going to be adding a rider onto these policies that will allow for guaranteed insurability on those children, which means as those grandchildren age and they get to age 21 and 25, there'll be an opportunity for the parent or the child themselves to be able to kick in a new policy. And what we're doing is we're actually, by instituting that policy on the grandchild, we're automatically creating a value proposition for a generation that does not yet live. And so we're creating a cascade effect like a, like a rock in a pond of generational impact with decisions that are made for people that aren't old enough to make the decision themselves. And that's part of the power of what we can do by changing the way the, the breadth and length of thinking that is possible for us, by having a future outlook and, and, and, and cascading a vision about what you want your, your generations to look like moving forward by taking certain actions today. So you're in a position where you're able to do that now. And I'm sure after this call you'll connect with your coach to, to initiate that. Even one of your emails, I think you'd indicated about, you know, getting things set up with your kids and everything because you want to move away from the, the government sponsored plans that we've been taught to use such as resps. And we have several. In fact, with my friend Roman, I did a webinar back in the summer about the difference between doing a policy versus an RSP that was very, very popular. So this is really, really powerful. What can happen. And you know, again, circling back to your question about a 12 year old daughter. Well, Jason, your 10 year old daughter was on stage at an event that we did in Edmonton A month ago, 100, 170 people in the room for our family banking summit. And the way we closed out the day is Jason invited his daughter up on stage to sit on a stool and he interviewed her. And then not only was she drop dead hilarious, like total comedy career in the future for her, she's basically telling him how she's going to take over the business on stage, which is phenomenal. Everyone just floored in the whole room and then she fielded questions from people in the room and he's dead. She understands becoming your own banker better than most people ever will because she doesn't have any preconceived stuff getting in the way.

Yeah, right.

She doesn't need to know about insurance. She never asked Jason, oh, dad, can you tell me about the dividend that I earned in my policy this year? She doesn't care.

He doesn't care about that. And I would add to what Richard said, Donnie, with your children, without delay, get policies going on them. Because Richard raised a very, very important teaching moment where if you think about, if you cast a vision into the future and someday you'll be your dad's age and you'll be looking down the road and saying, hey, you know what, I know that graduation day is coming. And if you envision having created policies for your kids today and those death benefits have increased significantly because they'll end up with more than one policy. All four of our kids have six policies on their lives. And my oldest is 14.

And there's also a giant.

He's massive, dude. And so the reason that was done where we've added more policies along the way is because our Rebecca and my death benefits have grown over the years. And the insurance company says, look, as a general rule of thumb, we don't like to see children having more than 50% of the total death benefit that the parents have on their lives. So if you have an ever increasing total death benefit on both mom and dad, can you create an ever increasing death benefit on the kids? And then when the grandkids come along, you don't have to wait. You can create really big policies for those grandkids right away. Because the general rule of thumb works to your advantage where you say, gosh, you know, wow, okay, my kids have total death benefits of $22 million, and I can go and create policies for the grandkids right out of the hopper that have significant starting death benefit that I could have never created on day one with my own kids. So I'm already positioning for the third generation by getting these policies cranked up for my kids as early as possible so that when they are my age and grandbabies come along, I'm going to crank up policies on the grandkids. And so are they simultaneously cryogenically.

You'll be cryogenically sealed in this device.

Well, I'll tell you, if anything, I.

Have a client who's going to do that, by the way.

Listen to this. If anything ever happened to me where I became totally incapacitated, I've instructed my family, don't pull the plug, because the cash value keeps growing every day, alive as long as possible.

That's one way to do it.

And get that total cash value growth.

That's great.

Get me past at least one more dividend on every policy.

Well, if you think about it right, I said the power bill will more than be offset by the increase in cash value. So just keep that plugged in, keep me going.

But anyway, I digress. But no, get going. Look, get going on your kids right away.

There's no disadvantage other than the longer you wait, the more you penalize yourself.

Got it.

I want to say I'm gonna add one more thing on that. And, Jason, it just sparked something for me. So recently, this week. So I had some good friends of ours, wonderful, amazing people. Their son, about 12 years old, he has. Was developing headaches and. And some stuff. And he had some stuff going on. And he actually had to go in and got a spinal tap done this week.

Oh, boy.

And they were trying to verify if there was some inflammation in the stuff happening. The good news is, is that of the two possibilities that were on the list, it was the better of the two outcomes. And so through medication, I believe they're going to solve the problem. But little things like that would have the position of making it so that that boy was uninsurable. You know, if it could have gone the other direction. So thankfully, he already has coverage, he already has insurance. So they've already put planted things in place to create some protectionary mechanism in there, but we never know. And nowadays we do hear from time to time, like, there's no guarantee that we can get covered. The only way we can find out is if we submit it and get the insurance company to say yes. So we want to make sure that we initiate that process quickly because we'd rather be looking at it than looking for it. There you go.

Donnie, what a world. It was an incredible pleasure.

Yeah.

So good to have you on the show. You can rest assured we're going to have you back. And for all of our viewers, for all of our listeners, we appreciate you tuning in. And go make sure you grab that free training.

It.

There's no charge. It's on the house. Just go over to watchibc.com and when you get there, grab the free training. And if you really want to, we think you'll enjoy it.

If you really want to learn how to become your own banker, you can quite literally read seven steps and figure it out. You just go to seven steps, ca and boom. In your inbox, there's a whole little list that says here's what you need to do.

Done. See giving resources. And if you're on the youtubes you just saw that playlist show up, click through the next video. Keep, keep progressing on your journey of learning and make the rest of your week outstanding. Donnie, we look forward to having you back. Thanks for being so great and we wish you nothing but the very best in your pursuit of this process in your family. Undoubtedly, you're going to do great because you have a great coach in Roman and by proxy, the rest of the ascendant team who are all here to support you and cheer you on along the way. So thank you.

I'll be in the rabbit hole for a bit longer, but. All right.

Thanks for listening to the Wealth Without Bay street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. Definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies and the mindsets that maximize your wealth.