26. CPA Solutions For A Business Owners Whole Life

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.

There are powers of influence who would like nothing more than to keep the control and flow of wealth to themselves because they know something that you don't. If you want to create true intergenerational wealth and experience a new level of long lasting financial independence and stability that you know your family deserves, then you need to understand how to control the banking function in your life. There's a system that you can implement that will help you take back this financial control, understand it and then own it. Make it part of how you and your family live. Head over to wealthwithoutbaystreet.commasterclass to register and start the process of becoming your own banker.

It's another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. Thank you so much to all of our listeners for tuning in. For everyone who's on YouTubes, on the Facebooks, wherever it is that you're tuning into Wealth Without Bay street, we appreciate you very much. We have a very special guest with us today, Mr. Frank Abate, who is a chartered accountant by trade, trust and estate planner, financial planner, who works with financial advisors in the industry, who is an incredible extension of our team at Ascended Financial and doing wonderful work with us. Frank, great to be with you. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

And I'm also joined by my amazing colleague, my Amazing Co Host, Mr. Richard Canfield, also known as Mr. Richard Canfield.

I go by many names.

Gentlemen, it's wonderful to be with you all today. And Frank, I'd like to invite you maybe just to share with our listeners because this particular area that we've been working in together with our organization, with your amazing guidance and expertise, can you maybe give listeners a sense of what we're doing and how we're serving the marketplace?

Sure, Jason. I think that the type of clients that we are dealing with and specifically that you engage me in are typically corporate owners. They're owners of privately held corporations and we know that that is a group that has a lot of tax that they have to face on an annual basis. Tax is something that they, that is really bearing on them. And what we do is simply we look at their situation and we assess what it is that they want to get out of the corporation. What is it that the corporation is There for. What's their exit strategy? I think the best way to talk about how we're serving the market is talk about our approach. And the approach basically is to meet with these clients and basically talk about what it is that they want to achieve, what are next step in their plan, not for the specifics of the business, but more so the actual ownership of the business. What is going to happen? How can we transition that business to the next generation? What's the exit strategy? And then how can we assist to do things as tax efficiently as possible? And.

The gap there is that.

They typically have fantastic accountants, fantastic lawyers, but it's a subject that might not get opened up or basically discussed in depth with those professionals. And it's interesting because I know that those professionals bring up those topics. Let's pick a topic as simple as the state freezes. That's a topic that my colleagues talk about with their clients all the time. But sometimes there's a nudge that you and I, Jason, may be able to give that client to say, hey, have you heard of an estate freeze? And now all of a sudden they're hearing it from their accountants and then from specialists in the estate planning arena. And that's what we're there for. We're there to work with the accountant, we're there to work with the lawyer to make sure that all estate planning, all estate planning needs are taken care of.

It's that cohesive outlook where you're looking at, okay, we're all here trying to support and help the client. How can we work together in a collaborative environment to make sure that it's not who's giving the best tax advice or anything? It's about this is what the client really is looking to achieve in their life. This is their goal. This is our plan. How can we bridge these gaps together and give them fundamentally the best options and tools available by packaging in that as a team to support their objective. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?

Frankly, that's exactly it. We're not there to tax advise, so to speak. We're there to look at the tax situation, recommend some tax ideas, always in conjunction with what the accountant is doing. And then the word that you use, tools is exactly what we bring to the table. So we have the tools, we have the solutions, we just need to fit them in with the overall strategy. And obviously with my tax background, I did a lot of tax tax consulting before going into the estate planning arena. But with my tax background, I understand tax strategies that are being implemented. I could recommend Something be looked at, something be explored. And then that's where Jason and I have the solutions vis a vis some products that we have access to to fit into that situation. So it's not by all means, the last thing that we do is sell product. That's the last thing we do. We basically sell solutions to, basically solutions to tax planning strategies. This is that tool that puts it over the edge, so to speak.

And you know, I can share just with all of the experience that we've had, you know, the feedback, the feedback from clients is so resoundingly positive because clients are saying, you know what? First of all, I wasn't aware that these solutions were available and how they would create an advantage for me as a corporate owner, as a privately held or family owned business. And when we walk through it in the way that we do in delivering that solution and describing the logic and the rationale and the problem or problems that it is solving.

Clients are very enthusiastic about moving forward and embracing those solutions alongside the chartered accounting professional that's already established and developed the relationship with that client. And one of the questions that comes up frank, as you know, in our discussions, is when you think about, for instance, you know, you have one specific tool that a lot of our listeners are gaining more familiarity with or existing clients who already have an abundance of familiarity with. When we think about dividend paying, participating whole life insurance as a tool, why is the utilization of that in terms of a strategy of, you know, minimizing tax during lifetime accumulation, minimizing estate tax, or, you know, creating this, this tax free windfall that shows up when it's needed the most and having all of the policies, policy loan capability, the leverage capability with collateral assignments, et cetera, why is this a strategy that CPAs often miss?

It's interesting, it's a good question. And I scratch my head sometimes trying to figure that out. Actually all the time trying to figure out why more CAs aren't recommending these ideas. And I think what it boils down to is if I looked at the roster of what a CPA or CA has to know, what he has to or she has to advise on, that roster is a very big roster. That knowledge, that amount of knowledge they need to have is very extensive. So we're specialists. And I tell you, Jason, when we come to the table and we start to break down the product for them, we start to break down the tax ramifications or the tax benefits and advantages, they always scratch their head and say, why didn't I know about this sooner, right? And My lifeline to them is, hey, listen, you have to know about GST filings, you have to know about income tax, you have to know about payroll, you have to know about filing trust returns. This is just one area that isn't pressing in terms of your to to do list. So often we are received with happiness in the sense that, you know what, Frank? You know what, Jason? You've made my job easy in terms of me getting my comfort level to the point where I'm able to give the thumbs up. So at that point then we've made this collaboration of professionals and ourselves, accounting professionals, insurance professionals, where they trust us and they know that when the time comes, I'm going to take a simple example, very simple example, but they know that when the time comes for them to file next year's tax return and they have an insurance expense item on their financial statements, they know that. They'll call Frank and Jason and we'll tell them exactly how to report that on their T2s one. Exactly. So that is, it's amazing. It's something as simple as sometimes the hurdle might be, my gosh, I don't know how to record the cash render value on my balance sheet. The amount of times I get that relief factor. When the accountant says, frank, are you going to walk me through how I'm going to book these entries? Simple things that I do on a daily basis. But again, I'm a specialist in this area. And again it goes back to the collaboration where the accountant has that sense of relief to say at the end of the year when I'm doing financial statements, when I'm doing tax returns, something as simple as reporting this instrument that I don't really know how to report, that's going to be facilitated by Jason and Frank. They're going to be there every step of the way.

I would imagine that's a liberating feeling for many of those professionals because they, they can just focus on what they're already really kicking butt at, which is the day to day operational world of that business and helping them get up and running and to know that they've got that resource to tap into. I would just imagine that's a huge relief. It's just a weight off their shoulders knowing that they can reach out to the specialist and get that done.

It is, and I've talked about the day to day, Richard, Then there's the bigger issue, the one that we sell life insurance to begin with. It's what happens at death. Who's going to provide me with the support so that I can do this calculation called a capital dividend account. And we don't wait until that happens. We show them the schedule right up front to say, listen, we have this ACD calculation and we could either A, keep it for ourselves or B, we'll share it with you, but don't worry about it. If this gets lost in your files, we always have that record. And when the time comes that a payment happens again, you will look at our team for the support as to how we're going to account for the increase in the capital dividend account.

Frank, if I may, I'll expand on and just share that. One of the things that I find most beneficial is that when we're working with a prospective client and the cpa, the chartered accountant is engaged in that discussion, the last thing that a chartered accountant wants to do is recommend to a client that they expand the expense side of the balance sheet.

So when we're able to paint the picture very clearly that this is really a conversation about moving it over to the asset side of the balance sheet, everything changes and it just becomes a very natural. Yeah, this makes perfect sense because we've asked that question, you know, do we as professionals working together here for the best interest of the client, do we see any downside in this recommendation? Is there something we're missing? And when the answer is, hey, there's no downside here, there's nothing we're missing, I think it's all the good work that we do leading up to that versus, you know, chartered accountants have no shortage of life insurance professionals who are knocking on the door saying, you know, I'd really like love to get connected with you and to be able to provide insurance solutions to your clients. But we introduce education first and you hit the nail on the head earlier. It's not about selling a product, it's about clearly understanding the problem, mapping out the solution to the problem, and then providing the client with the very best tool to solve the problem.

Absolutely.

Now, there's lots of different tools that are out there and obviously our focus in our podcast and our conversations is heavily weighted and focused on the par dividend paying contract. But Frank, that's something that you kind of know. That tool upside, sideways, backwards and downwards, like the back of your hand. And so it's kind of like the multi tool. It's like that thing that has a little bit of everything available to it in the financial world. Can you maybe expand on why that tool specifically seems to know, obviously there's some adjustments and creativity towards the design elements to meet the obligations of the design for a client. But why does that one tool fundamentally have so many.

Advantageous components to it to help work with business owners in their corporate plans?

I think the important thing to remember, and this goes back to something that Jason mentioned, business owners don't necessarily want to part with their cash. They need their cash to be able to perhaps expand their business, to perhaps fund their retirement, to do whatever they need to do in terms of having that liquidity available. So when we talk about participating life insurance, that's just a reclassification, as Jason said, it's a movement of assets from perhaps cash to cash render value. So if I were to look at a balance sheet and I look at my short term assets, well, my short term assets may include cash. And there's so many times that I'll see businesses that stockpile money, they may have moved it from cash to near cash, call it GICs or whatever the bank's offering at 2% earnings or 1.5% investment earnings. But really the fear, so to speak, is I think of insurance as a business owner and I think that's an expense. Fantastic. And I've heard this over and over again, fantastic. I'm going to take care of my family. I love my family. But at the same time, if you're asking me to put $100,000 in per year, or 50,000 or 20,000, whatever the number is, that's money that's coming out of my ability to perhaps retire well, to perhaps go for another venture. So all of those factors come into play when they think insurance in general. Then we come on board and we talk to them about the fact that this wonderful product called participating life insurance is not necessarily what they thought it was. It does have that death benefit, it does have that insurance component which is the primary purpose or the primary reason that we buy the insurance policy to begin with. But it also has that secondary and very, very close to the primary purpose. It has that cash render value which builds up and is a tangible asset. I call it a tangible asset because at any time, just like the name says, at any time I can cash it in and get my money back or whatever the cash render value represents. So now all of a sudden I've transitioned that business owners thought process from I bought insurance and it was an expense to I bought insurance and my gosh, what an asset I just bought. I bought an asset that after I put in 10 years of premiums at X number of dollars, just for argument's sake, if I put 10 years of premiums at $20,000 a year, I put in 200,000. And now when I look at my retirement planning, that 200,000 cash render value has grown to half a million. It's grown to 700,000. It's grown to whatever that number might be and past my retirement age. So at age 85, at my mortality now, the number is astronomical. So that's where we transition and we start to talk about how can you use that policies, cash render value for you. And all of a sudden we've made the product a me product. It's not a. For my family product, it's a product that's for me. And, you know, I hate to say it, but I think there's a little bit of selfishness in all of us where I really like life insurance, but I would like it a lot better if I could get some access to it. Right? And when we talk about how. How that accessibility is there with a participating plan, it's hard to deny that when you marry it with all the tax benefits that are associated with the product as well, which we haven't even.

Talked about, the contract is one of the greatest exemptions in the tax code that exists today. And there's so many tax advantages that. Frank, you do such a wonderful job at clarifying when we're having these conversations and having you as a guest on our show. I think it's just so important for our listeners to really know just how much of an expert you are in this field. And we're very lucky to have you as an extension of our team and clients, really embrace that. Because as you mentioned, Frank, you do such a great job of describing. It's an entire team of professionals that are at the roundtable working for you, Mr. And Mrs.

Client.

And when you're dealing with our team, you're getting all of us, and that helps us to show up in a way where no one else is showing up. It really, you know, makes. And it also helps the chartered accountant show up in a way that no one else is showing up, because the chartered accountant is positioning it as, hey, if we're getting the referral directly from the accountant, which we receive a large number of referrals from chartered accounting professionals who say, the feedback that I've received. I was just speaking to another professional from M and P yesterday who said, you're just so unique. Her words, not mine. And, you know, I said, well, thank you. I'm very grateful to hear that. And like, we want to recommend that our clients have this work because, you know, the feedback. Corporate owners out there, they're busy running their businesses, their time, their energy, their focus is on running their business. And when they sit down and they say, well, what can I be doing? Because all of my net worth is tied up primarily in my company, what are some other things that I can be doing to expand and diversify and all these other things. And they look at taking capital out of their company and investing it in someone else's business. And we have that expertise to sit down and say, you know what? You can create additional assets inside of your corporation and you don't have to strip out any of the money and transfer it away to someone else to help them build their business. Let's create this wonderful, amazing gift, this dividend paying, participating, whole life insurance contract. And let's create an additional asset inside your own business. And when you need access to the accumulating value, you're not interrupting any of the cash value that's growing inside the policy. You now have a tool. And what do business owners despise? They despise personal guarantees. They despise having to jump through lengthy, nosy credit applications, gatekeepers at banks to access money. Well, now they have a tool at their disposal that puts them in a position of total and absolute control.

I want to comment, Jason, on the comment you made about our uniqueness. And it's something, you know, obviously, and perhaps it's the reason that you and I work so often together is that we both like to make things simple. And anytime we get engaged, I think it's like a broken record. I always repeat after our first meeting, which is our fact find. I always talk about the fact that you and I are going to prepare a deliverable and that the deliverable is always said in this fashion. Deliverable is meant for the client. And I always, tongue in cheek, I always say, Mr. Or Mrs. Accountants, you may find this deliverable a little bit basic, right? Time and time again, the accountant will reach out to me and say, that was actually perfect. I now understand it. It wasn't basic at all. So it's a fantastic delivery of that product. And that's part of our uniqueness that the clients and the accountant walk away and they say, I actually understood that concept that Mr. ABC or Mr. XYZ, Mrs. XYZ showed me, and I had no clue. And we've gotten deals like that over and over again where they say, you know, I just didn't feel comfortable because I didn't understand it. I was presented with spreadsheet upon spreadsheet and let's face it, apart from accountants, there's not many people that love to make decisions. Just looking at spreadsheets.

That's right.

So you and I are very good at showing them and walking them through that process and trying to make it as easy to understand as possible for the clients that want to see spreadsheets. Absolutely. We do spreadsheets and we do very focused spreadsheets so that we're not looking at a million numbers that just create noise. We're looking at the most important decision making numbers. So I think that without going too far along on this, but I think that that's what gives us our uniqueness is that ability to take that difficult subject matter and moderate it so that it's understandable by both the client and we're not lulling the accountants to sleep.

Right.

We definitely don't like it when people go to sleep in the meeting. That's not ideal. Now, Frank, we talked about these tremendous tax advantages and obviously there's a, there's a number of them. You know, a number of years ago there was some big changes around passive income tax rules in Canadian controlled private corporations. That's something where I think that the, the PAR policy and its advantages with the liquidity components and so forth seem to have a really good resonate really well with, with business owners. Is that something maybe you could speak to a little bit as to how it can be an advantage in that scenario?

Yeah, I'll touch on it. Because Richard, when it was released, the changes to the rules, they were big in terms of the impact that they had. And what it was was basically the government saying when you have passive income above $50,000 within your corporation, then we're basically going to grind down your small business limit. And that was huge in the sense that my small business limit, that means, at least in Ontario that means my first half million. And in Alberta it's also half a million. But my first half million gets afforded a rate of 12.5%.

And there might be a slight difference between Ontario rates and Alberta rates. But after I earn half a million dollars of income, I then have 26.5% tax rate on my corporate earnings. So what the government was saying was, listen, that small business rate is meant for small businesses. So if you're doing fantastic and you're able to stockpile assets, stockpile investments in your corporation and those investments are earning you passive income, we're going to start to grind down that small business benefit. When you earn 50,000 passive income, we're going to start to grind down that passive income benefit, or I'm sorry, the small business benefit. So what was happening was we were looking to insurance products and the industry ran to insurance products because guess what, anytime we have passive income earned within an insurance policy, that's not considered to be passive income. So what happened was we were approaching clients and saying if you deposit cash into a product, into an insurance product, then your problem of passive income is going to be going away. So to a sense, it still applies for federal taxation. Here in Ontario, the government didn't follow suit. So the provincial government said we're not going to follow and piggyback off the federal rules. And they left things as they were. So it's not as big an issue, Richard. But having said that, I'm glad you brought that to light because the big reason that we look at insurance policies to begin with is because we get away from any passive income taxation. So when I'm looking at assets, and I always like to talk about fixed income assets, and the reason I talk about fixed income assets, not because they're the ones that are taxed most heavily. And that tax rate, by the way, is north of 50%. It's somewhere around 50% on interest income. When I do my comparisons, I always compare the returns and basically the growth in a participating policy. I compare them to an interest bearing portfolio. And the reason I do that is because when you look at the assets within a participating policy or within a participating fund, they're very heavily invested in fixed income tax of investments. So I'm trying to compare apples to apples. And when I'm comparing apples to apples and I'm looking at that conservative fixed income portfolio, well, I'm just saying I'm trying to match the conservatism that we're looking at that we're reviewing in a participating portfolio. And when that happens, we're Talking about a 50% taxation on that fixed income portfolio. So that's. I'm glad that you took me down that path of passive income. I'm gonna say that the whole issue of passive income and trying to.

Trying to bypass the small business, it's not a big issue here in Ontario. I'm sorry, I can't remember if it is in Alberta. I think it still is in Alberta, but it is. Okay, so in Ontario it's not as big an issue, but there's still that whole issue of passive income.

That was a great, great overview of that, Frank. Thank you. And you know, I would say for many clients that we work with, it's a moot point at the present stage that they're at within their operation. But we have to look ahead and we have to say, look, one of the things that we ask corporate owners, at least in my preliminary conversation, is would you agree that your business looks different today than it did 10 years ago? Yeah, absolutely. Now can we agree that your business is going to look much different 10 years from now? And so we need to get in front of these things to make sure that the proper planning mechanisms are in place, the proper tools are in place and it's, gosh, it's such an incredibly underutilized tool. And I think we're, you know, we're having an impact and that's going to expand greatly. You know, one of the questions, Quick comment.

Do I have time?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely, yeah, please do.

So I just want to comment on the fact that sometimes it comes to light when it's too late for a client. So what I mean by that is that when they're looking at insurance ideas, Perhaps in their 40s and 50s, they're not foreseeing the fact that that passive income issue will be an issue. And then you and I know that, Jason, we've worked on many clients that are in their late 60s and 70s when that passive income issue becomes a reality.

Oh yeah.

And they always say, I wish I did this sooner because part of the process, and I don't want to get too to down into the weeds, but part of the process of getting a life insurance policy is A making sure that the client wants it, but B, just as important is making sure that the carrier wants to engage in the contract. So when we get point, when we get higher up in age, that tool becomes less and less attainable. And the frustrating part as insurance professionals is that we know that that 50 year old will come back to us for perhaps at 60 or 70 if they're not, if they're not convinced at 50 that this is the right solution. Unfortunately, not every 50 year old that decides to come back at 60 and 70 will have that option anymore.

Right. Very, very good point.

It's very important. I've had a few cases in the past couple of weeks and I think it may be part of this whole Covid people are just taking a temperature check on their mortality. And I've had several cases in the past couple of weeks where we've had some people that were a little bit more senior in age and unfortunately are not able to get insurance. So it's something to keep in mind.

Frank, that is such a good point and a Great reminder for listeners, because we share. Don't delay. Once you understand that this is the solution and it's a great tool, don't delay, because the longer you delay, the more you penalize yourself without even realizing it. And so it's so important that, you know, for listeners to know that, A, we've got the capability, B, we'd love to obviously, you know, connect with you if you're a business owner. And I'll just maybe caveat that just a tad in terms of. If you're an established business owner, you're running a business that's generating revenue, producing profit, and, you know, you just like us to maybe do a bit of an analysis of how you're currently put together and structured financially. And if we feel that we can make some improvement to what you're already doing, that that's great. But I. Otherwise, it may just be a confirmation that you're already doing everything correctly. And there's no downside to getting that type of affirmation. But what we find most often, Frank, and I think you'll agree, is that there is always something that we identify that we need to. There's a problem lurking there. It's either present or it's on the horizon, and we want to get in front of that and solve it.

It's interesting, Jason. It's a fresh set of eyes.

Yeah.

We always find, you know, when we have the engagement of a client where they say, you know, the financial statements, they're all yours, Jason. You can attest to this. I'm always finding something in those financial statements that as a new set of eyes, a ca, I'm not there, by the way. I'm not there to shed any.

Discomfort on the existing ca. But they've been doing the financials over and over, and sometimes when an outsider looks at the situation, they say, hey, have you considered this? And nine times out of 10, that happens with us, Jason, I would agree.

We kind of look at it and we go, am I seeing this? Like there's something jumping off the page at me here? What do you think? And, Frank, you'll look at it and go, oh, yeah, we definitely need to bring this up and we need to talk. Talk about it. And most often, in fact, always, you know, the. The client is very receptive and says, hey, thank you for. Thank you for pointing that out. And so in a collaborative fashion, it's always.

It's always done in the sense that, why don't we engage the accountant to see if we could just improve on what's Been done. You got it on how this is being released, represented or. Yeah, it's always done in a collaborative fashion.

All right.

Hey Richard, welcome back. We, we know that your battery died on your computer there and so.

Welcome back.

It's good to have you with us.

A little bit of technical glitch, but the good news is, is that I left the conversation. You're talking about power life insurance. I came back, you were talking about power life insurance.

What I was what I was really curious about Frank, and just kind of listening to some of what you chatted about. There is you, you talked about the horizon and there's an identified problem that exists right now or something that's present in the business owner's mind. But often they're either maybe that problem is a horizon issue or it's a present level issue. I find that a lot of times they're stuck in that present level world because they're looking at the business and what's all around them and they're in the day to day kind of world. But how often do you find that it's this horizon or future event type of an issue, whether it's the sale of the business, the exit of the business or the impact of what happens the day that they walk off planet Earth where you're spending a lot of time and really educating them on the impact on if we don't have something in place, here's the ripple effect, the trickle down of how things could go really sideways if we don't institute this solution.

Richard, that's a fantastic point. I think Jason knows that some of my favorite cases to work on are transitions. And when we talk about family transition in corporations, what I find is a hurdle is the business owners openness to bring these issues to the table. And I'm always very upfront to say, listen, this is a discussion that has to start. Have you had the discussion with your children? How do the children feel that are in the business? Do they know that they're going to take over the business? Do they know that they're going to run the business?

A, do they want.

B, do the children that aren't involved in the business, what are their feelings? How do they feel about the fact that they're not going to be included or can we put together a plan that includes them? So it's amazing. There's just so many things I'm talking about just two separate situations or two small little isolated situations. But it's amazing. The reluctance sometimes I find is.

The transition. It's the worry that If I start engaging in this, I'm giving up control. And we're always very cautious to say, listen, when we start to work with your accountants, all of us at the table as professionals know that you could do some fantastic estate planning, you could implement some fantastic estate freezes, and you do not have to lose control of that business. Unless, of course, it's time to give up control. So what I find hinders that movement on the discussion is sometimes it's that business owner themselves that worries that this is it, this was my baby. I started this business 30 years ago. And now this is final, this is, this is real, where we're starting to talk about bringing in the kids, giving them common shares. I'm freezing my value. How does all of that work? And so many times I could put my finger on the fact that they're not doing it because they're just not ready. And it's tough to get them to understand it's better for you to plan and still keep that control than just sweep it under the rug and hope that you, you can continue for the next 10 years. And when you're ready, you're going to snap your fingers and everyone's going to jump and everything's going to fall into place. That doesn't happen. That happens in the movies. It doesn't happen in real life.

So what you're saying is that hope is not a financial plan.

No, unfortunately hope is not. I never saw a financial plan with hope that beat out our accounting recommendations and planning.

Frank, maybe should with our listeners. You know what, what is your inspiration for being, being in our profession? What, what inspires you to, to do what you do?

That's a good question. I guess what inspires me is educating business owners about what their alternatives are. And I say that because when I was in tax practice, I felt for that business owner who is, was constantly paying so much money in tax. And of course we did what we could to minimize the tax bill. But my repeat line that I say to individuals, and it's a rebuttal, my rebuttal to individuals who say, you know what? The kids are already gonna get 5 million or they're already gonna get 10 million or they're already gonna get X amount, I say, no problem. Fantastic. I can hear what you're saying. You'd rather give more to the government at death than making sure that your kids get more. And really that's why I do what I do is because I think that corporations have done enough in terms of financing the government with their tax liabilities. That they pay every year, they're successful. And I think that at time of transition, when we put in a good plan, then they're providing more for their family and they're cutting out the middleman being the cra, being the taxation at that. So that's really what's inspiring. And when you put it in that light, customers look and their clients look and they say, I never thought about it that way. Well, really, that's what we're doing. When we're showing you a plan where you put in X amount of dollars, call it a million of dollars into this idea, or 500,000 or 200,000, and now you're creating X amount of dollars, call it 3, 4, 5 million. You can thank the government because they funded that for you. They funded in the sense that when everyone's taking their checks on your passing, they have their hand out and the kids and the accountants say, no, I'm really sorry, you don't get any of this because there's something called a capital dividend account. So at the end of the day, that's what inspires me. I guess it's a little bit jaded in the sense that I'm trying to enhance that successful business owner. But I think they deserve it. They worked hard and they paid a lot of tax throughout their lifetime and now at death. I want them to transition as much as possible and for once in their life, I want them to cut out the tax man.

And if they do transition as much as possible, it falls to a next generation, it falls to charitable causes, to all these other endeavors that have a ripple effect on social goods. Because now either those charitable institutions or the individuals that receive it, well, they're going to go and plug that right back into the economy as well. And so it really enhances things. It's a value add connection to a much bigger thing than beyond just the business owner. So I encourage everyone to listen more to what Frank has to say. I commend you for all your great work, for your knowledge, and I'm just so excited about having this conversation with you and having people have a chance to listen to the power of what this type of a tool used the right way, in combination with collaboration with an accounting professional can really accomplish for the business owner.

Richard, you know, I'm glad that you said what you did because you reminded me I really missed a big part in what I was talking about. It comes time where the business owner says, you know what? The kids are going to get enough. But if you could provide more for the charity and again, cut out the tax man. Then why should the tax, why should the government decide how my money gets spent? I really want to give to XYZ charity because they helped me throughout my lifetime. So it doesn't necessarily have to be increasing the wealth of the children that are already going to get more than enough. It might be increasing the wealth of a charity. And again, it's going to happen at the expense of the cra. So as you're saying, it's socially, it's just going right back to where it should go. And it's you controlling who's going to get access to that cash instead of the government taking that money. And you know, they're not necessarily the best managers of money. The best manager of your money is yourself. So you should be able to make the financial decisions that you want to, even from your grave.

As perfectly said, Frank. And I would ask you too. So being that, you know, obviously such a great extension of our team and you interact regularly with our amazing client service teammates here in our organization and, you know, what would you share with listeners who are corporate owners, who are established business owners about, you know, working with Richard, myself, our growing organization, what would you say to folks who are considering that, well, you guys are an.

Outstanding bunch in terms of how much you care. You know, there's going the extra mile, you guys go the extra hundred miles or thousand miles. I'm very impressed at how the process works from A to Z, from, you know, taking the application all the way to making sure that everything is coordinated with everything that happens to get that application into the underwriting department to the point of delivery. And then your after sales service, you know, you've engaged me on some after sales and that's fantastic because, you know, you want to be with an insurance professional who cares about you today and 10 years from now and 20 years from now, not just today and tomorrow. And then slowly you fall off. And when someone asks you who's your insurance person, you scratch your head because you don't know who they are.

That's something that I can honestly say about you guys. Your team cares and you show the love to your clients in that constant, that constant communication with them. And if there's a problem, you know.

Whatever questions. I shouldn't say problem, but questions. We actually dealt with one earlier this year where it was a question that came up on a case that we had done and we took the time to educate again and we took the slide deck and we actually emailed the slide deck and the actual slide that answered her question. It wasn't something that was new, it was something that we had addressed and she had forgotten the discussion at time of sale. So she was so thankful. The email that she sent back was so thankful and saying, you know, you guys went out of your way to re educate me and you know, I feel kind of stupid because we already dealt with this and that wasn't our intention. It was no, remember in this slide, this is exactly how we addressed that fantastic question that you have. And guess what? When you ask it again next year, we're going to send you that same slide again and we'll have that same dialogue. Don't mind, because that's part of the sales process.

You got it.

The sale doesn't end the time that we deliver the policy. The sale never ends. It ends at time that we deliver the check.

You got it. Speaking of questions, one of the things that we ask every guest who appears on our show is first of all, we pre position to talk about, you know, so Frank, not all heroes wear capes. You know, you might think of yourself as a hero, but you might not think of yourself as a hero. But every time that you're creating value for others, that you're benefiting people, that you're making life easier or better for them in some way, you are. And so my question to you is, who do you want to be a hero to?

That's a good question. I guess it's all the families that need this planning and just need that nudge from us. And it's not even a nudge from us because after we talk about what we talk about, it's them realizing and us being the ones that really brought it to light to say, yes, this is something that I really need. So I want to be a hero to the family that really needs what we're talking about and doesn't say, oh my God, they did such a poor job. And because they did such a poor job at educating me and showing me why I need this, I didn't go ahead. I think that that's the worst thing. That's the opposite. It's being the villain is not doing a good enough job to educate that client to say, here's exactly why you need good planning and you need to implement some good structure now. And I keep repeating now because it's almost like getting to the will and talking about the will is part of what we do in our. But it's all part of estate planning. Estate planning has so many elements and our piece of that we run with all of it, so to speak. But that important tool that we keep talking about, don't put it off. Just like you don't put off doing the will. Let's juggle everything at once and get it all done.

Yep.

Awesome. Richard, any parting remarks that you'd love to share with Frank with our listeners?

Well, my takeaway there is that if you had a hole in your gas tank and it was burning a hundred dollars of fuel a day, how long would you take to fix it?

So with that being said, Frank, I appreciate you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being such a valued member of our extended team and all the assistance that you provide and your expertise. Really, we couldn't help the people the way that we do without input and expertise like yours to bring into the equation. So thank you for that and thank you for joining us today.

I appreciate you guys taking me on the team. Thank you very much.

Well, that concludes another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. And again for all of our listeners, if you're tuning in through a podcast platform, if you're on the YouTubes, the Facebooks, be sure to smash the like button. Leave us a comment, let us know that you're getting some value from this episode. Frank will be back with us again. He will be a returning guest and we can't wait to have him back. And so, Frank, on behalf of all of us here, we thank you sincerely again and to all of our listeners, thank you. Thank you for inspiring us to do what we do because you are who we want to be a hero to. Thanks again everybody. We wish you an amazing rest of your day and we'll catch you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Wealth Without.

Bay street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content.

Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player.

And be sure to rate the show.

We definitely appreciate 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.

There are powers of influence who would like nothing more than to keep the control and flow of wealth to themselves because they know something that you don't. If you want to create true intergenerational wealth and experience a new level of long lasting financial independence and stability that you know your family deserves, then you need to understand how to control the banking function in your life. There's a system that you can implement that will help you take back this financial control, understand it, and then own it. Make it part of how you and your family live. Head over to wealthwithoutbaystreet.commasterclass to register and start the process of becoming your own banker.