321: How Rich Families Leave Tax-Free Wealth Behind

Welcome to Wealth on Main Street, where conversations about growing your wealth are fun and entertaining. Wealth isn't just about money, it's the skills and the knowledge that we develop to pass on to future generations. Tune in each week to grow your mindset and your net worth at the same time. He ditched Wall Street spreadsheets for workbooks. He walked away from a broken financial system and built real wealth on his own terms. Now, we're not just talking about wealth with money, but with intention, a family focus, and family values, plus learning how to harness the power of his own land. Now he's been practicing the Infinite Banking Concept and he's had the chance to experience working directly with a member of our team. We're really excited to welcome TD back from the Fearless Podcast. Welcome back to the show, TD. Good to have you here with us.

Thanks, Richard. Thanks for having me. Always have a great time.

Well, you know, we had the pleasure of doing some podcast swapping here, and so this is kind of another opportunity to do that. But, you know, since the last time we chatted, you know, a lot of interesting things have happened. You were bringing me up to speed a little bit on a few before we hit the record button. And, and unfortunately, Jayson Lowe wasn't able to join us last time, so he gets to have the opportunity to experience some of that fun energy as well. And I'm really excited. You know, we talked a lot about your background and your history in our last episode and how you spent time basically in the investment banking space as part of what we would refer to as the enemy over here now. And you, you realized all the shenanigans that were going on there years and years ago and found yourself pivoting in a different direction in life. And so, you know, since our last chat, what would you say has changed or is different now for you as you are thinking about and you're embracing even more Nelson's principles of becoming your own banker?

Well, you know, once you, you know, like Nelson says, it's more caught than taught. And as you continue to implement the process and then as you obviously, you know, we have 6 kids and our oldest son got married. They just had a baby. So as your family expands, your system expands. So I think the last time we talked, I think we had a total of 9 policies, but my one son just started his second policy today. And then on Monday, we're starting up a policy for the grandbaby. And so just, there continues to be more people, more family members and more policies. And we just continue to— what kind of really struck me last year with just considering the concept, and I am a higher income earner, I'm a W-2 income earner. But what really struck me last year is that even if you were making a modest income, But if you capture those dollars, it becomes exponentially— like if you're making $50,000 a year and you can just capture $10,000 or $20,000 a year over the course of 10 years, it could be $100,000 or $200,000. And when you think about that and you're 50 years old, that's not really a big deal in a sense. I mean, it can be a really big deal. But when you are 17 years old, so, so my 3 oldest sons, they started a small construction company about 3 years ago. And you know, my oldest son built a house. We gave him a loan to build a house. So he's building a house. He has a policy, his wife has a policy. And so he's into that process. But what's happened since the last podcast, we've always liked real estate and we've looked here locally and I feel we felt that real estate was still very overpriced. All the economic indicators look, it looks like that's going to change. But we were like, hey, what can we do to get in the space? So we have another property. We call it our La Finca. It's our little— it's not a ranch. I mean, a ranch in Texas is like thousands of acres. This is 25 acres. And we said, how can we utilize this property? So we said, let's do Small Acreage, Big Dreams, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we said, how can we utilize this property? So we have our cows there. So we said, let's do like a 2-story tiny home Airbnb with like this ranch experience. So what I did is I took a policy loan, and the beauty of it is, you know, we've so far we figured a budget of about $60,000. but since the boys have the construction company, you know, they're investing their sweat equity. So they're gonna put in about $50,000 or $60,000 of labor equity, and we're gonna end up with a maybe $180,000 property, and we're gonna Airbnb it. But that's the way we decided to get active in real estate and not have to come in at the top and and overpay. So that's a recent occurrence. It's almost done. Hopefully in the next 30 days it will be finished and on Airbnb. So we're looking forward to that.

Congratulations. That's— that we love hearing. And it's coincidental, Rich, the last few podcast episodes that we've done have been the utilization, the implementation of this process centered around real estate and The examples are always so amazing. I'm curious because Nelson often shared with Rich and I and anyone that he interacted with, the more you see the Infinite Banking Concept, the more you'll see you didn't see. And so, we're always curious with people that have been practicing it for several years or for as long as Rich and I have, what do you see now that maybe you didn't see when you first began this journey?

Pretty much everything. You know, I read the book and, you know, I was incredibly disenchanted with, um, conventional investments because of my background and was doing really well and accumulating cash and knew that was a problem. And I knew I didn't want to keep it in the bank. So basically when I was first introduced and I read the book, I really, I honestly had no idea really honestly what I was actually doing. My approach was I need to get my money out of the bank, you know, and so this was a way to do that. But then once I started implementing it, almost immediately I was presented with a private loan opportunity to make somebody a hard money loan. and within that first 6, 8 months, I made 3 hard money loans that did very well. Um, and I was able to turn that back over, put it back into the policy, max out my PUAs. So that was really— so when I first started, I'm like, oh, this, okay, this is how you do it. You know, you make these hard money loans and, um, which are, are probably the— these particular loans I made were probably more rare. They were very lucrative and very short-term and were kind of like a one-off. And so once I got through that process, I'm like, okay, well now what do I do? Who do I loan to or whatnot? You know? And so it's just, you continue your thinking process of, okay, well how do we, how do we make this money move or flow. And that's when we came up with, well, first my son needed a loan for his house, so we did that. And then we came up with this air, because, you know, when we, we brainstorm as a family and set our goals every year, one of our goals has been, you know, to get into real estate. And the beauty of the concept is, right, is like legacy building, working together as a family. And here I have the assets. And they have the skills. And even though they don't have the assets, they have the skill equity where I can, I can, I can be working off farm, I can be generating a large income. I have those assets to put the money down, and then they have the labor assets to invest. So we're 50/50 partners in the deal. And I put about— honestly, I mean, they've probably put more equity into it than I have, because it's real easy to just write a check than to go and sweat and hit your thumb with, with a hammer every day. But now we have this joint venture and it's really exciting and they're participating in the process. I keep, you know, it's real interesting when you have younger, you know, kind of older teenage boys and when they generate like Compared to what I made when I was a teenager, I mean, these boys are generating very large cash flows. So they've now bought several trucks and my second two oldest just went on a 3,000-mile Texas road trip where they visited all these high points in Texas. And you know, they get back. And, uh, and they disappeared and I'm like, where did they go? And they come back with two jet skis and, uh, you know, and it's, it's just so crazy. Like teenagers, I'm like, and, and all I keep telling them is I'm like, look, remember the process though. You can buy the jet skis. I'm, I'm fine with you buying the jet skis, but put the money in the policy first. Take the loan. Yeah, there's, okay, there's a turnaround period. But put the money in so that it's in, then spend it as you wish, but get the money in the system. So we're, we're still walking through that, you know, and, and they're still figuring it all out. But it's, it's, it's really cool. It's a lot of fun.

Oh, that's so good. And you are bringing a tool to the job site. You're bringing the policy. Yeah. And, and the insurance company employees. That's— those are the tools that you're bringing to the job site. And we love, love, love hearing these stories because what you're teaching your children and what we educate through the Family Banking, you know, system, you're going about it exactly the right way. Like, you're not changing their objectives. Their objective in that case was to get the jet skis. You're just teaching them to develop a rhythm and a behavior of the sequence. Here's how you get the objectives you have accomplished, make sure that money's flowing through the family's system first. And it didn't change the outcome for them. They still got the jet skis, but you're changing the process of who's getting the money.

And that's— I think that's one of the biggest factors, in my opinion, inside of the IBC realm and with these different, uh, financial entertainers, you know, so to speak. There are a lot of guys in the IBC space and it's their hack or whatever, and it's this tool, but you know, but there's still the bank and there's still the mortgage. The issue, okay, so I'm going to tell you why I chose Ascendit. And this is why I chose Ascendit because There's a lot of other quality voices out there that I think are giving good advice, but they don't have the philosophy. They, they understand IBC as a tool, but they don't understand the philosophy. And what's kind of interesting about my story is I started out more as a historian just out of my interest, you know, in history. And that's where I found the Austrians, you know. And that's how I started reading, you know, Murray Rothbard and all these different things. And then I stumbled across this Bob Murphy guy and Bob Murphy's podcast. I'm listening to Bob Murphy and then I get the book, you know, and then I start listening to some Nelson stuff and they mentioned Bob Murphy and I'm like, wow, this is really weird. You know, but the biggest thing for me is the philosophy. And I believe the Austrians have the monetary policy right. And the Austrians also have the history right. And if you don't know the problem, the solution doesn't matter. Right? So, I mean, if we understand the history and we understand the economics, the banks are not our friends. And that's why, that's one of the reasons why I was in the predicament I was in. I'm like, I knew I didn't want my money at the bank. I knew I didn't want my money in the market. So what do I do with it? You know, and, uh, you know, here, uh, God presented me with a solution. And the reason I chose Ascendant is because I'm like, these guys understand the philosophy. You know, it's not just, this isn't just this cool tool. Right. And it, and it is a very cool tool. Like even if, even if you don't understand the philosophy, You can still implement the process, but you know, all of these other guys, they'll talk about like, well, now you could use a mortgage and you know, since your policy interest rate is higher and all this stuff, but you're, you're, you're complete, you're completely missing the philosophy because I, I've experienced the snakes and dragons and I believe they are real because I have wrestled with them. And I think, I think a lot of people have, and so. So I can't discount that. And then sociologically, as even a country, okay, you guys are in Canada, but we're all North America or whatever. Maybe one day we'll be one gigantic happy whatever. But anyway—

I'm on a green card path, full disclosure.

Okay. Okay. But we know—

He didn't say the gold card. He said the green card.

We know that there are these massive issues, right, with Social Security. I mean, it's an absolute foregone conclusion Social Security is bankrupt. And philosophically, this is what Nelson was talking about. Like, we can quite literally personally replace Social Security, right? We know that it's not there. We know that it's IOUs. We know it's going to collapse. Politically they say, well, you know, we know it can never collapse because grandma and they can't do that to old people and they won't get voted for. But at some point in time, fiscal reality, the fiscal reality chicken has to roost, has to, I mean, it, it, it just has to. And so if, you know, so I'm getting ready to start this policy on my granddaughter. And I mean, you look at the numbers, right? And it's like, they are like incredible, you know? And it's, and what is it? It's $2,000 a year, but by the time she's 50, she does not need Social Security. Wow. You know, that's, well, that's a lot of money over 50 years and that's a really long time from now. Yeah, of course. Of course. Right. But to— but, but this is the whole point, right? You have to curate. You have to curate your own life. Like, if you're on social media, the social planners and the social engineers, they're curating your feed. That's right. And that's how they're manipulating you. They're creating your feed.

And how they do at the grocery store too, because of where they place everything on the aisles. When you come in. So it's same, same, same element there. And what you're talking about with your granddaughter's policy, I was— I did an example for a client. We talked about some newborns coming up that I've got some messages recently, emails of some newborns, which we love. Um, it's so exciting when you get a picture from the hospital and like you're one of the first people. We get blessed sometimes to be one of the first people notified when a brand new life has come into this world. Yeah, because they're so excited about what's happening with their family and they get to now add to the family system. It's like, what an unbelievable blessing it is. And so, but, you know, looking at this and it's like, you're right, at 50 years old, well, when they put in a dollar and it's the same dollar from 50 years ago because we inflationarily protected the dollar on day one because of your foresight. Your foresight allowed an inflation hedge to exist, that, that dollar now, 50 years from now, every time it goes into a policy as a premium, it creates $8, $10, $12 in value. That, that is how you combat some of these other things that are out there and, and the big machine. And another thing I just love about this, TD, is like you're, you're talking about doing all these projects and this work with your, with your boys. You're teaching them and you're interacting with family money. You're setting a family, you're setting family goals. People talk about those things, but not everybody actually does it. So you're where idea and the rubber hits the road actually connect, you know, like you're getting traction with the tires. And I think that's really powerful. And we can't understate that enough, how valuable that is in your experience that you're sharing. But because you're teaching these lessons and if you borrow from the policy and you give a loan to your son to build a house and you borrow from the policy so you could do the joint venture with your sons. Well, when, when the money comes back from your son who built the house and it comes back on the loan because you've got a repayment structure, that interest, you're still going to pay interest. You're paying it to the insurance company, but you co-own that company, your son co-owns that company, and your granddaughter is going to be a co-owner in that company. So now all that interest benefit is inside of that mutual ecosystem. Not a— no, no element is leaving it. The only thing that leaves it is dividend profits that you share with everyone else who's a member of that company. But they got to give it to some of you first and your kids. It's just such an amazing closed-loop ecosystem. And the banking cartels can't get their damn hands on it. I mean, how good does that feel?

Yeah, I mean, it feels great because the whole point is, is, I mean, we, we strategically relocated 12 years ago to live a more basic, intentional, simplified life. We wanted to kind of be involved with our food, know where it came from. And even 12 years later, I mean, that's way easier said than done, and we haven't mastered it. But at the same time, you know, when you study permaculture and how to properly raise animals and, and food and if you want some semblance of reliance, I hate to say self-reliance 'cause we're building a community, but, and technically there is no such thing as self-reliance even in our concept, right? Even legacy-wise as a family or on a larger scale as being a mutual participant with the insurance company, right? Like it is much obviously larger than us and it has to be that the reason it works is because it's larger than us. The reason it works is because it's It's not my little bubble, right? It's, it's a collective group of people contractually agreeing and working together by contract. And so that's, and that's what actually makes it powerful. That's how come it can do these things is because of that system. But like when you're growing your food, I was in the back food forest and I did a ton of pruning and I did some, I did some automated grazing because we don't have animals back there right now. So I went through with the lawnmower. And I'm burning my brush pile. Well, what makes it— what makes it work is it's a closed system, right? Because what's going to make you self-reliant is you have this closed system and you develop within your closed system what you need to make that system function. But what's fascinating with permaculture and working within your closed system is the work that you personally do interacting with whether it's trees or cows or rotationally grazing. These, these personal things that you do to interact actually are what create exponentially, which is exactly like with your policy and with your funds, right? If you, if you just throw the money in there and it stagnates and it sits there, is it great? Is it better than probably anywhere else you're gonna put it? Probably. But when you're interacting with it, when it's moving, when it's flowing, it becomes exponential. It creates abundance. And it's just— it's so neat how, as you're doing different things like husbandry and how you see these illustrations that apply both to family life and being a husband and being a father or being a rancher or someone that watches cows or prunes fruit trees, these principles are universal. They work with your family, they work with your food, and they work with your money.

That is so true. And what you mentioned is something that Nelson— again, all credit to Nelson. We miss him. We think about him. He's right next to us in every every conversation that we have. And he said, you know, when you're in business with people who were thoughtful enough to ensure the lives of people that they care about, what a wonderful group of people to be in business with. And it's so true. Like that, that is the ticket to entry. You can't go to a mutual life insurance company and say, can I just stroke you a check and be a passive investor in the business? I don't need the— I don't need the policy. I don't need all—

there's no one I care to protect at all, right? I'm not even interested in the insurance.

Versus the only— the only way that you get through that front door is by insuring the life of someone that you care for, or being thoughtful and considerate enough to insure your own life so that when that day comes, when graduation day comes, and it will come, there's a windfall that shows up exactly when it's needed the most. And, and the second piece was around the kids and the grandkids. We have 77 policies in our family banking system, 27 individual lives insured. Someday someone's going to graduate, and that happened with my father-in-law. And we had 2 policies on his life, and not only did the windfall show up, but we were able to create additional policies on the lives of all 9 of his grandkids, fully funded, as part of his legacy.

He worked out as part of the legacy before even taking the policy in advance of— and it was predetermined.

It was— everything was pre-planned. And so when we talk about the kids and the grandkids And you hear this, this term that's used over and over and over again, especially in marketing— generational wealth. What about generational wealth mentality? What about generational faith? Generational family values? What happens is the policy owners, who much like you described, TD, maybe they're— maybe they, they just bought a policy because they got you know, really excited and euphoric about all of the amazing features and attributes of having high cash value participating whole life contracts.

Probably those exciting illustrations and spreadsheets.

Yeah. And then down the road, the parents go, ah, you know what, the kids are old enough now, let's just gift them these policies. The kids, the moment they get their hands on those contracts, if they don't have the generational wealth mentality, if that has not been transferred to them, The first thing they're going to do with those contracts is surrender them for the cash value because nobody told them.

Yep.

And so we do it different, right? Like we as fathers, as patriarchs of the family, we're doing this differently. Isn't that good?

That's awesome. And I mean, that's the whole, you know, the biggest thing we contend with is buy term and invest the difference, right? And right. Well, you know, when you're 60, you don't need life insurance. And I'm, hey, look, I'm 50. Okay. And we still have little children. And even if I was able to make 2 to 3 times what I make right now, I am absolutely going to need life insurance. Like, and that's, what's kind of fascinating is with all the financial entertainers out there and all the like talking points, it, they're not based in reality. You know, I'm 50 years old. My youngest son is 7. And so like, yeah, I'm going to need life insurance, but the, the, but the beauty of what we do is like, okay, I do have life insurance and that is in place, but I also need that to benefit us all now, you know? And, and it's something that buying term and investing the difference, just like the illustration you just gave, right, of your father-in-law and then what the exponential product of that was that, that literally cascaded a legacy almost immediately. That's— you can't invest the difference in any type of way to get remotely close to that.

Amen, brother.

Well, and, and the idea— I say it's an idea because it's not even a strategy because it's— it only works if there's a habit. So it's an idea of buying term and invest the difference. But everyone who does it, they buy term and they spend the difference. And in fact, they spend more than the difference. And then what happens is— and Jayson Lowe, how frequently does this happen? One of our teammates mentioned it, or you've gone through experience. I had it happen recently. One of the gentlemen I met last week has a term renewal coming up in 3 months on a 20-year policy, and the value is going to go up 800-900%. On the premium. Well, he's in, you know, at a stage where in his, in his early 60s, that's not going to work out, but he still needs the coverage. So he, he was sold a bill of goods that didn't work out for him. And even though if he tried to spend the difference, he actually lost all of it in 2008 anyway. So he's in a rebuild phase. So that plan, not only did it not work out for him, it wouldn't have been possible to work out for him given the circumstances. So you can't predict those things, but you know who can predict it and who actually has designed those predictions actuarially over 200 years? Insurance companies. Yeah. And you, you know, you could just own one of those and you make your life real simple. Yeah. You can still do all the investing you want, but you change the reservoir of where you access the capital from and everything, the world becomes your oyster and you sleep better at night because you have that peace of mind and protection knowing that it actually will be there. And it doesn't mean that you might not use some term insurance, but you're building up an amount that's always increasing so that when you get rid of the term insurance, you have this beautiful, amazing accumulated cushion that is vastly larger than what you started with. You phase things that are— that you increase the value of what's valuable and you phase out the stuff that isn't naturally over time when you implement this process.

Maybe I'm naive, right? But so we're starting up another policy on my son today and Gary Garrett sent me over the proposal and then he is like, oh, did you get a chance to check out the proposal? And I'm like, no. He was like, well, do you, you know, do you want to get it started? And I'm like, yeah. And I don't need to look at the proposal. I don't like, for one, for one, in a very real way, the proposal is totally irrelevant.

You know what I mean?

So, uh, it's the process. So like, I don't need, I don't need a proposal. And, you know, maybe some people would think that that's maybe foolish or naive, but I, I'm participating in the process. So, you know, all the proposal is, is a snapshot in time. And, you know, it can absolutely truly project nothing. Um, it can project out numbers at a certain stated rate at a pinpoint in time. But once you start, once life starts happening and you interact with that and you are implementing the process, it will exponentially change in the right direction. Amen.

And to add to that, such a good point. Nelson described it best. You can have two identical vehicles come off of the assembly line and you and I both know people who can get 400,000 miles out of a car and people who can't get 40,000 miles out of a car. Has nothing to do with the car. It's the operator. It's the driver.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you just described what Nelson was trying to emphasize, that the policy owner's behavior is far more critical than the behavior of the insurance company. The illustration represents the behavior of the insurance company, not the policy owner. You can't illustrate that. There's no way to illustrate that. And so great, great, great, great example.

I did an example of that with an illustration for somebody recently where I came— there was a context to it. It doesn't particularly matter, but I showed, hey, look, what if you only put in the paid-up addition premiums that you're able to do, that the policy allows you in year 1, and then you didn't do it for the rest of the policy? And then we went down to age 100. This is on it. This is on a child. And we looked at the number and then I said, okay, well now let's check in on your behavior. Let's show putting it in in year 2 and let's see what the impact of your decision, because version 1 was the insurance, the work version 2 is you choosing to do some of the work yourself. And let's see the impact. And the impact at the end in, at age 100, you know, I'm going off my memory here, but it was, it was somewhere around the $400,000 mark. And we're talking about an input. That was maybe $3,000, $4,000.

Wow.

So, you know, the child was pretty young, so the advantage was that we had time.

Yep.

And that's how compounding operates. It requires the ability to sit still inside of something, in this case an insurance contract, well designed, and then it needs time. And you put those two things together and that's how you create some serious power.

Yeah. Yeah. And once again, right, you know, when's the best time to plant a fruit tree?

Right?

20 years ago, right? And the next best time is today. But if you do it today, you're not gonna get fruit tomorrow, you know? And I, I think people's biggest problem is, is we're in this instantaneous gratification generation. And you know, you still need time. All, we all have time. We don't know how much, right? But we all have time. We are all going to die and we're all going to pay taxes. And if I have a strategy that I know that I'm going to die and that strategy gives me a windfall when I do, so I have one known factor and I know that my family's going to get a windfall and if structured and done properly, it's going to be a tax-free transfer, like I just eliminated death and taxes. You know, I know where I'm going when I die, so that's taken care of. I know that my family's taken care of when I die, and I've also eliminated their tax burden.

The only thing that doesn't get worse when government meets is death.

It's funny that you mentioned, of course, you know, that we all know about death and taxes. And the thing is, like, we know about the taxes that you have— they have to deal with every year or every day depending on where you live. It's pretty much every day in Canada. But, but, but there's also the, there's also the taxes that come after death. So, you know, a lot of people, they might kind of sort of know that that's there, but they don't really understand and really put a lot of effort in because it also means they have to think about the first thing. And a lot of people don't want to think at the first about the first thing. And so they don't plan very effectively for what comes after it and who has to deal with it. And what's beautiful about having properly well-structured permanent insurance, and that its permanence allows for that other thing to be taken care of so that it doesn't become a burden and emotional drain on the people that you leave behind. And just that one thing alone is worth value, because what, what do you want? What's the emotional— there's going to be emotional context no matter what happens when someone passes away. But if there's a bucket of money that shows up, that's going to go a long way to giving them the time and the necessity to help go through the process that they need to, to get on the other side of that. And that process and that timeline will be different for everybody. But the IRS and the CRA, they don't care about that timeline and they certainly don't care about your grieving process. Yeah.

Yeah. And that bucket is so valuable that the insurance company would even give you a living benefit to leverage while you're alive, right? To facilitate financially pretty much anything else you can conceive or dream up, or, you know, any concept that you want to implement. You can use that engine. And once again, this comes back to philosophy, right? The system the system in America and Canada is broken, you know? And we have governments, right? And our governments are unhinged, you know? And there's a very thin veil between the conservatives and the liberals. And especially recently here in America, you're like, what are you gonna do? Like, no, don't blow people up and don't kill people and don't steal their stuff, you know? And all this stuff. And like, I thought you were conservative. And, you know, so, so many people and it's good to be aware of what's going on and to point that out and all that stuff. But most people, all they do is it— they're frozen with fear, you know, like, oh yeah, you know, they're polluting this stuff and the food and, and all this stuff. Well, you have, you have to take some type of personal responsibility. I'm a father. I have, I have kids. I have a wife. I have to provide for them. And like I could sit around and suck my thumb and blame everybody else and say, maybe we'll vote harder next time. And maybe the right guy, you know, 48 years from now will finally get in and do something right or whatever. And maybe, maybe somehow they won't spend an extra couple trillion dollars every year. You know, like, look, I mean, just follow the—

A lot of maybes in there.

Follow the trend line. You know, like if, if I'm wait, I'm waiting for that, like, uh, I'm going to be waiting for a very long time, but what, what can I do? Right. So, so what can we do? The beauty of what we're talking about is this is something that you can do. You can implement it now. You can work on it daily. You can implement your children and your wife and you can work together at it. This is where, just like in Jayson Lowe's case with his father-in-law, you know, it exponentially unfolded and multiplied. Well, when you're working with your kids, right, and then they're having kids and they're earning income, you know, my, my two oldest that still live in with us, well, everybody still lives on the property and they actually have their own little tiny house too. But, you know, they don't have a lot of overhead. You know, they have a couple trucks and a couple toys, but other than that, They have a very, very low overhead, so they have an inordinate amount of discretionary income. And if they don't get married just for the next 2 or 3 years, if each of them funded their system with $50,000 a year, just for the next 3 years, which is incredibly doable for them where they currently are, you know, they can start off their married life with $150,000 in their financial system. Them maybe $200,000, will in turn, you know, will joint venture and build their properties. You know, this thing, it can get— it does take time. It can get very large, very fast, but it requires attention. You know, it requires work, it requires sweat, it requires, uh, it requires unplugging from the curation unplugging from the social media, because like my Twitter feed, okay, I know it's X or whatever, but you know, I'm 50, but like my Twitter feed is like insane. And what's wild, right? This is why I was saying you have to curate your own life, right? So like my Twitter feed is like this weird, it's like people getting punched in the face all the time. And then it's all like this like global conflict and bombs and stuff blowing up. And then my Instagram feed are like all these homesteaders, like petting chickens and collecting eggs and all this stuff. And it's just, it's so weird, but this is what I mean. Like, like we're being influenced.

Your YouTube feed is all Austrian content and economic knowledge.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that, and that's why I'm saying you gotta curate your own feed. You know what I mean? You have to take control of your life. You have to realize all the Bernaysian, you know, influence and, and all of the leverage and the push and the nudge. The shoulder in the back, and you have to, you have to take action, you have to implement, you have to focus on that, because if you focus on that, it can expand rapidly.

I agree wholeheartedly. Um, my coach Dan Sullivan, who founded Strategic Coach, it's one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever been blessed to, uh, to be influenced by. And he says there are 3 elements that you need to be acutely aware of: your past, your present, and your future. Be very careful what you feed each one of them.

Think about it.

Isn't that good?

Yeah, that's great.

And I can hear Nelson in my— in the background saying, well, Richard, you see You just need to secede from their way of thinking.

That's exactly right.

You see, what you end up with is, if you don't do that, what you end up with is stinking thinking. Can you hear it, Jayson Lowe?

100%. Well, take us home, Rich.

TD, this was great. I mean, I knew we were going to have a lot of fun today. Didn't know what direction our conversation was going to go, but it never ceased to surprise and delight along the direction. I think Nelson would have been really happy to have been a participant or even just in the room to hear this conversation. I think it would have brought him a lot of joy. Jayson Lowe, would you concur with that?

Wholeheartedly.

We're very grateful for you sharing your— what's true for you in the way you go about doing it and what's important to you in the process of doing it, because you talked about things that we talk about a lot, but we talk about it all the time. And, you know, there's a, there's a very different scenario that comes about when it, it comes from someone else's vantage point. But, you know, if, if, if there was a, if there was sheet music in front of us and if I could play an instrument, Jayson Lowe actually can, you know, we would actually be playing the same tune. And I think that's really valuable and it speaks a lot to why you, you mentioned, you know, what, what made you cho— choose to come the direction of working with someone at Ascendant because there is that connection point, there's that similarity about the mindset and the value system. And hearing it from your words was very, um, both interesting and inspiring for me. So I want to thank you and appreciate that. And of course, you know, uh, one of the things we always like to do here, and, you know, I, I, I think I would have asked you a version of this last time, but I'd like to come at it a different way this time, is When you consider all the things that you've shared and what you're doing, your past, as Jayson Lowe indicated, and your bigger future— the bigger future you've already identified and talked about has a lot to do with the integration of these principles with your children and your grandchildren. When you think about that, who is it you most want to be a hero to, and why is that important?

Well, obviously, you know, I want to be a a hero to first and foremost my wife and then my children and now my grandchildren. And it's important for several reasons, but you know, a hero has influence, right? So if someone is heroic in your eyes, you consider their opinion and you will give what they have to say weight. And I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and I've screwed a lot of things up. And I think we all have certain regrets of different things. And if we could potentially go back, maybe we would change things, maybe we won't. These things have made us who we are today. The reason that I want to be a hero to my wife and children is so that, one, we can do it together. You know, it's not like, hey, hey kids, you go do this. It's like, no, we're— no, let's do it together. We're going to do it together. And if the hero or the father said, says, let's go do it together, the kids are like, wait a minute, I'm not afraid. Like, we can do this because Dad's going to do it with us, you know. And, and Dad's kind of set, um, he's shown that he can— he's, he's done it before and he can do it again. And if we do it with him, maybe we'll do it 5 times better, or, or 10 times better, or 100 times better, you know. And, and that's just with my children. And now I have a grandchild. And once again, this is how it's going to exponentially explode. And, and that's the type of influence, um, I want to have a direct influence and an indirect influence on my family. And if, and if somebody can watch this and they can say, you know what, that's a great philosophy, that's a great idea, I'm going to try to do that, or something like that, you know, if it inspires one person, like, that's powerful.

All day long. TD, this was fantastic. And all of our viewers on the YouTubes, click that next video that you see. That's, uh, Rich and I recommending that you continue your journey of learning. As Nelson would say, there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. There's always something new to learn. And so TD, thank you for helping our viewers and listeners learn something new today.

Thanks, Jayson Lowe. Rich, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Want to connect with more people just like you? People that love this podcast, love the show, love the concept of infinite banking? Well, you can do that by joining our private community. Go to wealthonmainstreet.com/community. That's wealthonmainstreet.com/community.