44. CPA & Real Estate Investors Embrace Infinite Banking Concept Canada – Cherry Chan & Erwin Szeto

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.

Being a part of a large community of real estate investors and making sure that you're getting proper accounting and tax advice as a real estate investor is very important. And we are super pleased today to be joined by our guests, Cherry Chan. Irwin Zito. Welcome to Wealth Without Bay Street. We're so excited to have you and I want to share real quickly. So Cherry and I were introduced from a mutual acquaintance here several weeks ago and it's since blossomed into just a wonderful relationship that is going to grow and be, be abundant over the years. And so I'm super excited that Cherry is with us today and Irwin Erwin is. I gotta tell you a little something about Erwin. So he founded the Iwin Infinity Wealth Investment Network and the Iwin Real Estate team. And we can't wait to talk to Irwin a little bit more about this expanding community of real estate investors that has been growing and we can't wait to discuss it. So Cherry, Irwin, welcome to the show.

I'll do the talking first.

Go ahead, Sherry, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you. It's funny how we are all in the same room but using different cameras that podcast. Thank you for having us. It's an amazing journey working with you and your team as well. We're so glad to be here.

We're grateful. Thank you so much. I can't forget to introduce my co host, my partner in wealth building, the Richard Canfield joining us again from Chilliwack bc, otherwise known as the wac.

Welcome, Richard the with a capital the.

Now, Erwin, I'm super pumped about this because we've got, like, for anyone who's listening on this, we've got such incredible guests here today. Yeah, this, this real estate community. Cherry as a, as an accounting professional, her knowledge base for anyone who's a real estate investor. And, and there's so many potential pitfalls which maybe we'll be able to discuss a little bit for people who are actively involved in real estate investment around their corporations and these kind of things that you're a ninja in that space. And so I'm hoping that, you know, wow. I'm just going to jump into it, you know, maybe you can share for us and our listeners what are some of the, you know, right now today, someone's looking at investing in a bunch of real estate in Canada and they're looking to use their corporation. What are some of the key pitfalls they need to be looking out for where they're often unaware that they could be getting themselves into some hot water.

I think the biggest challenge that people are hesitant to use corporation is that they don't know if it will help them save taxes. And quite honestly, for a lot of the people out there, they may or may not be able to save taxes by using corporation the specialty. I guess we are the more specialized accountants that focus on real estate investors. The reason is because we look at not just from a tax perspective, we look at the ownership structure from a holistic perspective. Hey, can you get financing? How does it affect your credit report? How does it affect your future ability to get financing if you set up a corporation that own the properties there? And how is your tax rate? Of course we always have to look at that, but we look at someone's situation from.

I guess, bird's eyes view and then see, hey, your goal is here. And if you start buying in your personal name, you will max out at 5. But if you started buying in the corporation, you could max out. There's no max out. So this is the reason why people, real estate investors like to work with us because of that holistic approach. And that's so how I feel it.

Yeah. And Rich, I think you would agree too. I mean, it's so important to work with a specialist, especially if you're planning to create, you know, a large or rather large portfolio of real estate. It's important early on to get the right advice. And Cherry is the right person with the right team of specialists who can help you with that advice. Being a CPA chartered accountant and with a laser focus on real estate investment, then we would wholeheartedly recommend Sherry and her team, you know, to listeners who are seeking that specialization in advice.

One thing that you said to Cherry that I, that really resonated with me, you know, as someone who has a number of real estate, you know, investor clients and, you know, everyone's starting in the real estate game. They're at different phases. You know, maybe you've, maybe you're on your 10th door, maybe you're at your 30th door, maybe you're just starting with your first one and you have to go through all these experiences along the way, you know, the plugged toilets and all, you know, the three T's of owning real estate and stuff like that. But ultimately what you identified is that it's not necessarily always about tax savings, why you might want to have the corporation. There's fundamentally other reasons why it may make sense for you or not make sense for you, depending on what your goals are, what your objectives are. So your viewpoint, that bird's eye viewpoint I call a helicopter view, we're going to get in our helicopter and fly way up there and look down at everything, is very similar to how Jason and I and our team look at someone around incorporating the process of becoming your own banker. And, and it's like, what do these objectives, what do these goals look like? And so I really appreciate you saying that. And I would imagine that that's extremely well received by the clients that you work with.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We help them structure so that they can potentially buy 10 properties or even 20 properties down the road. Right. Not necessarily just the immediate two or three. And sometimes you run into conflicts with other people that it could be, for example, like they may not like to work with us, the mortgage brokers, because we tell them, set up the corporations. And it's not exactly easy to buy properties directly under the corporation's name, but this is for the client's best interest and we just express what we learn and go from there.

Thank you for that, Cherry. And you know what comes to mind for me is it's important that when, you know, when a person is implementing this, that they don't feel like a lone ranger. And I think that's where strength and community comes in. And so, Erwin, would you mind sharing with our listeners the community that's been created and what the advantages are for people to be a part of this growing community.

So I'm actually part of many communities.

So talk to us about the one that you, that you founded.

I don't even know what to call my community. For example, my outer reach would be maybe my email list or my podcast. And then I have some smaller reaches like within my own clientele.

Okay.

And I have a stock hacker community as well. So we have several communities that I'm part of. I'm a part of. I'm part of EO as well. Entrepreneurs organization. Cherry is as well. So we're both seven figure entrepreneurs. We're each individually seven figure entrepreneurs, us as well. So I'm part of that community as well. So it's. I'm a part of many communities. I'm a part of a really high level real estate mastermind as well. And that's actually where I learned about. That's where I learned about whole first learned about Whole life insurance.

Wow.

And what would you say to listeners are some of the advantages that you find in being a part of a community.

So from, from someone who helps people build wealth, what I find is that many people are uncomfortable with subjects they're not familiar with. If you look at the other side of what people are comfortable with, what they think is building wealth or investing, for example, is mutual funds. Because everyone does it because the bank tells them to do it. And the person they know at the bank is telling them I'm your financial planner, you should do in this. And then when you're at people at their jobs. And I was no different when I worked for a big corporate company. Our company plan was to invest in mutual funds. So everyone, all hundreds of all hundred of you folks, hundreds of you folks are all investing in mutual funds. So that's comfortable for people. Right? Right. So that's the norm. Right. And I'll give an example. One of our clients.

He'S now 26, but when he was 24, when he first met us, he faced significant resistance from his parents to invest in investment property. His parents are both teachers, very comfortable. They've done really well for themselves. You know, the house is probably paid off, two pensions because they're both retired, they're both teachers. Right. So significant, significant, significant adversity with his parents. He went out, he went out and did it. Anyways, it was really weird because we had one of those heart to heart talks on a late at night. It was really weird because he was asking me for advice and I was like man, this is like rich dad, poor dad, I'm your rich dad.

I like that.

Anyways, but thanks to the pandemic his parents were stuck at home. And so one of and you can't go anywhere. So what they became they befriended their neighbor who's also stuck at home. So they're making conversation over the fence and what they found out was that their neighbor owned 15 commercial properties. Is oh, so is this real estate thing is kind of normal then? Oh, you've done really well at it, eh. So people do this and then all.

These buildings that are around me, someone actually owns them.

Someone owns those, make money in this. And so what happened is my client who's now 26, his now joint venture partners are his parents.

Wow.

They used to be advert. They used to be against this idea. Now they're putting money into his next deal.

Wow.

Everybody bought it. Yes. 26 years old already has now three duplexes. Right.

Awesome.

And then the third one doesn't have his own money in it. So. Wow. But like you said, community. When people realize that this is normal, then you get into these, get into you feel more comfortable doing investments. And for example, with whole life, I think Richard said it how you have lots of clients in real estate. Like if I wasn't around, people are way richer than I am. I don't even consider ourselves rich. But all these people who are a bit older than me have a lot more property than me and they're doing whole life insurance and they're like, oh, so this is what I should be doing. Okay, let's dig into it. Right, right. And I think that's the first time I told Cherry about it. That's the first time I knew about it.

Wow, that's such a great story. And it's always interesting to know how your journey leads you to the people that can help you and can provide you with advice and help expose you to things that you didn't know before. And so that I think would be a great segue into maybe share with listeners your own journey with real estate investing and.

How life is different now that you've been involved in this process.

For some time since you kicked that corporate job to the curb.

Yeah.

Right. So with the end in mind, Cherry and I currently own 10 properties. We are with not a very high loan value. So that's pretty nice. And it started when, I think it started when I was close to 25, I graduated from business school and I don't think they spent enough time on investments. And also I graduated right when the bot.com bubble burst.

My final year was the year of 9 11.

Oh boy.

So the job market was just horrific, just like it is probably this year. Yeah.

You went to business school to get a job and then when there was no jobs, so I was underpaid. I don't know, I don't think I knew that much anyways when I was 20, whatever, 22 years old. So I remember being at my first job and opening up my pay stub and seeing that there's no money here. I could barely afford my car. I live at home. I have a girlfriend. Like I can't afford anything. I can't even afford to save. And I was living at home with my parents and eventually they kicked off the point. It was actually my partner's father who convinced us to read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And then my partner at the time who's now my ex wife, she bought our first investment property and then I got pulled along with it and I was the one who was against it.

Wow.

But then being part. But then. And then 2007 rolled around, massive financial crisis. Like my stocks got destroyed.

And then. But we were getting. People were fighting for our rental properties.

Whenever we had vacancy, we'd have like three applications right away while we were increased rent. So then like, wow, this real estate thing's really working out.

You really knew you were onto something.

We were onto something. And then we just went full gangbusters into that. I invested almost all my non working hours to becoming an expert real estate investor. And then my relationship wasn't working out with my real estate broker. I didn't feel they understood investment. They didn't work with investors.

They thought they knew. There were those classic.

Agent that said you buy real estate, it goes up in value. That's how you may invest in real estate. It's a bit more advanced in that, you know, I want to buy near major infrastructure improvements so that I can, you know, benefit from all the government money. That's all those sorts of things, right?

Exactly.

I want to buy before the Starbucks gets there stuff. That's a pretty basic one, but much more advanced stuff. So I went and got my own license to. To really trade our own real estate. And then my friends were noticed what I was doing. My real estate friends would notice what I was doing. And then I've always wanted to help people and my business model was pretty simple. Help people have what I have.

Oh, wow. I like that.

Sounds kind of similar, A.J.

Yeah, it does actually. And you know, I'll share with you, Erwin, that when you spoke and shared your story, one of the things that came up for me was a mentor who has.

Established a very, very large portfolio of real estate once said to me years ago, he said, jason, you know, when you're driving around in the community, if you see a newly constructed church that seems to be out in the middle of nowhere.

Give it time. It's going to be surrounded by a suburb community. And when you start investigating it in that area, you start to see, oh, there are plans to, to construct condos, to construct townhome style units, to construct, you know, single family homes and so on. And sure enough, you just see over the course of time, especially out west here in the city of Edmonton, it just blossomed. And I'll never forget him saying that. And anytime I would drive by this newly constructed church in an area where it was like, why are they building this here?

Boom.

That you know, that advice would come back. And so thank you for sharing your story. That was Great. Cherry.

The church knew where things were going before anybody else.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, Cherry, you know, being that you've had some exposure to the process of becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept, could you maybe share with our listeners what compelled you to embrace this process?

So one of the biggest thing is that we recently just purchased, right before COVID hit, we purchased an office space for our own businesses. So Erwin and I share this 4400 sq ft office. And of course it comes with a huge mortgage. We're all into building equity using other people's money. So we got a huge mortgage on our office space. And then all of a sudden I realized, hey, like, whatever insurance coverage that we have is probably not enough. Cover that debt if anything happens to either me or Erwin. Like, I don't know if either one of us would be able to carry the mortgage on our own. So that triggers the point to, hey, like, maybe we need to revisit the possibility of getting bigger insurance. Now, I've always, Erwin mentioned to me before about the infinite banking concept. Before, I was just. I was not really that convinced. And it just so coincidentally, Peter, our common friend and a client of mine, introduced me to you. And I went through a lot like you went through a lot of scenarios. And then my best friend Monica, who's also your client, she forced me into this because she's looking into it herself. And so we started looking into it in a lot greater detail and we started working together with you on setting the whole policy up. I think the biggest thing people don't understand that the biggest thing is not about how much money I put in. It's really, for me is that I get the coverage. I get the peace of mind knowing that if anything happened to me.

My family is going to be taken care of to a certain extent. Of course, it helps that, hey, I'm also being able to get money out. I can invest using my business profit, essentially have my business profit funneled through the policy and get it back. I can still have like cover, be able to cover my daily expenses. There's no liquidity issue because I can always draw out from my policy. I guess one of the biggest thing is also our investment coach. Erwin and I have an investment stock trading coach.

He's an ex hedge fund trainer. Trader.

Exactly. So he came out, he was telling us how this infinite banking life insurance policy is all he invested in other than the stock date trading account. And I was like, really? We have something similar in the real estate world. They are called heloc And I told him that. And I'm like, I don't like, why would you invest in that? Why can't you just invest in real estate? And the reality is that got us into thinking about life insurance that planted the seed meeting you. And I guess it's one thing led to another, but at the same time, I could potentially use the same one stream of cash flow, have two stream of asset buildup. We as real estate investors take it for granted. The HELOC on our rental property, we can always draw it out. So for me, it's really easy to understand that part. But now that we have businesses, how do we pass on our assets to our next generation? That's also one of the most commonly asked questions in my accounting practice. How do I give my kids all the assets without selling all of them? Well, this is your solution. So, like, everything fits into my whole universe. And that's why that's where we are, how we get to where we are.

And there's kind of like divine fate to have this knowledge and these different people in your life showing up in such a way where they would. They would create the environment for you to really be able to take this on and learn this information. Because it sounds to me what I'm hearing, Jerry, is that one thing that really I picked up in the last thing you said is that there's more to this than just for myself, my own family. It's the impact I can have now as an accounting professional on the clients that I serve. Am I catching that correctly?

Oh, 100%. Like, there's always a missing piece. Erwin and I host last year hosted over 1500 people to our conference. That's the first time.

We hosted any big event like that. We always host event, and there are always like 100 to 200 people. We've never hosted anyone have a speaker coming out to speak on our stage. At that time, when we were trying to distinguish ourselves from the regular and other real estate conference.

We were trying to come up with the name and we came up with the name called Wealth Hacker. So we named our conference Wealth Hacker Conference. And we weren't quite living up to the wild Hacker level. We do definitely introduce the concept of stop option trading to our people that are surrounded like that came to the conference. But I don't think we have quite lived up to that.

Wealth Hacker title. Not until this year. Like, I met Jason and I feel that Infinite banking or life insurance policy is one way to add to that piece. I have another piece that I'm adding in Next year as well, retirement planning and all these projections as well as our more mature version of stock option trading. Our stock school. Option school, we call it Stockhacker Academy. Of course, real estate. Through Irwin's network and Irwin's team, we help our clients build that wealth through real estate and of course my accounting team as well. So like all these pieces are kind of coming together to elevate us to live up to the stock, sorry, wealth. Hacker name.

Wow, that's awesome. And it becomes literally a one stop shop, right, for people who want to, A, you know, plug into a great community, B, get some great specialized advice and C, understand all the different pieces that could form a part of their own financial puzzle and solve for all the financial objectives that they want to get to achieve. Because you're absolutely correct. You know, the chartered accountants who connect with us on this process, one of the leading drivers is clients who are asking that question. They're asking the question of, hey, what happens when that day comes and I'm no longer here? Like, how do I, how do I transfer the wealth from one generation to the next in the most tax advantaged way? Because we haven't met with any client yet who's been referred from an accountant who says, yeah, just take a look inside my will. It's named Revenue Canada as one of the primary beneficiaries of my estate. And so, you know, it just doesn't quite work that way. But Erwin, anything to add to what Cherry was, was saying about that state?

Your point about CRA is also one of the, one of the big pain points from rich dad. Poor dad was. You know, I think our government is quite a good one in relation to many.

However, there's some things that I think that individuals can do better than the government. For example, Chair and I, we have our own charity with, with our overhead consists of buying tape and scissors. Right. Everything else is donated. So our overhead is like nothing compared to any sort of charity or any sort of government work. Right. So we believe that we can do better for the world and the world in our community through our charity and our own efforts than by giving it to the government. Wow. So I'm just, I'm just, I'm just someone who, I'm just a pragmatist and I love to optimize things. Right, right.

Well, and that's, that's why, you see, that's the truth.

Yes. Doing whole life, for example, it's like, it's, it's a gap that we didn't know we had. And that's the other thing as well, like this, that's part of the benefit of being in a community is you don't know your gaps. You don't know, you don't. You have blinders. You don't know what's in your blind spot until you have really someone who is an expert tell you.

Right, Very good point.

Like our, for example, our hedge fund coach, like his, he's got like, I don't know, like seven policies or something. He's probably got a record. All right. I don't know if you see that many. Yes, we've got 51. You've got 51?

51.

I think he just has seven on himself. He probably has like four on his son or something ridiculous like that. And then who was he taught by? Okay, sorry, Chris is 20 something. And then who was his dad? His dad was an insurance executive. Right?

Yeah.

So how do people on the inside invest? That's always, I'm always curious. Yeah, like you're an insider. How do you invest your money? I'm interested in that versus the person who's in front, who's on the other side of the table trying to sell me something.

You got it.

I love that.

And I love to ask established entrepreneurs all the time, what are some other things that you're doing with your capital? How are you multiplying your capital? And the definition, the best definition of an entrepreneur, and Erwin, you hit the nail on the head, is someone who takes something from a lower level of productivity to a much higher level of productivity. And the world looks at us, all four of us as entrepreneurs, as really strange people. Like, we're just, we're different. How on earth is it possible that you can do all these things? We just do it.

We're the people on the other side of the fence. Like your 26 year old client there and his parents talking to the guy on the other side of the fence. And one of the things that you mentioned, you had the idea of the blinders, and I really love how you identified that because that's something we learned from Nelson Nash as well. You know, we don't know what we don't know. It's not until you're exposed to a new set of information that suddenly your brain fills with all this new capacity of learning about that whole segment of the world. It was unaware to you before. So here you have your young clients, teacher parents, with their pensions and the world that they lived in. They've gone an entire lifespan, not really recognizing or understand the real estate world. Boom. Covid Hits boom. One conversation. An entire new world in the universe of real estate investing got exposed to them that never looked at it before. It was like it didn't exist. That's the same thing we find with people incorporating and learning about the process of infinite banking. So the fact that you identified the importance of good coaching, being in a community of people so that you can have good conversations of value about something you're actually naturally interested in and then you can learn about where your blind spots are so that you can get exposed to new resources of information. Fundamentally, I just love everything you said there.

It's beautiful, it's good. This is how we live. Like we're open minded. White belt mentality. Right. You know, I know a bit about real estate investing, but I'm always trying to learn. There's always something that I don't know. Right. And I'm gonna try to get better. My black belt for BJJ for example, Brazilian Jiu jitsu. Like I think he's been a black belt for 17 years. He's held the highest designation for 17 years. And he himself says, I think I know half.

Right.

That's a very humble person right there.

I do not want to accidentally like rear end that guy in traffic. That would not be good.

It is not fair at all. Yeah, no, that would not work. Finding a child.

That's how we make my chiropractor a very rich man.

Yeah.

That'S the thing. Like never judge a book by their cover.

No, definitely, Absolutely. And Cherry, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the webinar that, that you do. Would you mind just sharing with listeners a little bit about that?

I do host a bunch of webinars like, like I mentioned earlier, we do hold quite a few events during the year. Irwin's team also holds a bunch of events.

For my own accounting practice. Marketing. I hold a bunch of events as well. We are planning to roll out a bunch of webinars next year for public to join. One is specifically for real estate agents. High producing real estate agents, how they can save taxes. And the second one is for real estate investors who want to help to grow to the next level. And those are the clients that we want to work with so they can find out more about our webinars on realestatetaxtips.ca Erwin's team also help coach a lot of clients to make money from real estate. And you can find out more about his.

Events on infinitywealth ca.

That's excellent. Yeah, we'll be sure to include those in the show notes as well. We'll get everything plugged in there so that people know how to get in touch and how to get in front of the resources that all that value, that content that you create in the events that you host, that's that's just awesome. And that, you know, what comes back to you is in direct proportion to the value that you create for other people. And so it sounds like you've got a lot of really good things going on in 2021. Really exciting.

It is quite interesting that like.

I mean you and I probably share a lot of similar way in terms of marketing. So as Irwin we always offer value out there and sometimes in traditional, at least in traditional accounting firms world, it's a little bit too much not getting paid, offering too much free advice on the Internet and it's not getting paid. But that gets us to.

That gets us a lot of people asking us questions and against the door keep, sorry. The phone keeps ringing because of the free content that we are providing. And I'm just forever grateful for our mentor, our other mentor who introduced us to this content marketing world.

Wow.

When it sounds like one thing you've really recognized is as those people keep coming in, the phone keeps ringing, people keep coming in the door. It also gives you the ability because you guys have identified something that's very fundamentally important. You said you've identified the people you most like to serve. So it does. Doesn't mean that you don't want to help. I'm sure you want to help everybody. But the reality is you're best suited to the people you love working with and how you feel you could support them based on your niche. And you've really narrowed that down. And so there's people who are going to come to you and they're going to get some of your free content, they're going to pick up the phone and call. But you may recognize, you know, this person might be better served to be helped by someone else. And so you get an opportunity to pick and choose in business the people that you most want to work with. And I think that's one of the wonderful things about business that's available to us. And one of the things that attracted me to being an entrepreneur. Any thoughts on that?

I mean we are so good at picking our niche and saying all to things that we can't serve. For sure, if there is a company that's doing manufacturing, we'll tell them that, hey, like we're probably not.

We won't be able to add much value to your business. And it's better that you go somewhere else than working with us. So majority of our clients, I would say 99% of our clients are real estate investors or real estate agents. And that's the community that we are trying to serve. And Erwin and I have to unite all of our businesses because we have several businesses together to unite all of our businesses. We also have something called a big hairy audacious goal. I don't know if Jason have heard of it before.

Good to great.

Yes. So that big hairy audacious goal is Han, can you explain it? I think we explain it better.

It's a bit of a rewrite. Uh, but the. The where it's in the middle of a rewrite. Cause our businesses have changed. Uh, but Our goal by 20 Cherry changed the date on me. But I think it was by 2030 we will have enabled 10,000 hardworking Canadians to have at least one six figure side hustle. Hopefully more than one.

Wow.

Love it. For example, like my stock options is my third six figure side hustle.

Wow.

Fantastic. And.

And what we have, and what I said earlier before is like, you know, what we have, we want everyone to have. It's not even that hard.

That is abundant. That is one of the sharpest examples of abundant thinking and not scarcity thinking. And set big goals. There's less competition for them.

And so good for you both. We certainly, of course we wish you well in achieving that goal. And I got goosebumps just hearing him share that.

Another big support that too.

Yeah.

One of our other big hairy audacious goals is Terry and I have a registered charity. So you know, hopefully before we're Gone is a $10 million charitable foundation that will.

I think we need to revisit our contribution to the life insurance policy.

I don't think we need a $10 million plan.

I'm taking this year right now. We're going to get that policy in place Monday.

One of the beautiful things about that is to support the charitable objective that you have. As you know, in incorporating the idea of insurance, you want to pass things on to the next generation. But you guys specifically you've identified, you want to bless so many other people's and what you do you have insurance that now has purpose of funding a charitable contribution. Well, if you have all this real estate, all these other things that have some capital gains and potential taxable consequences, I mean there could be a pretty good advantage there to basically equalize who's going to get the money. In this case you want the money to go to something that you care deeply about and who's going to be able to manage the money effectively, which in your example is the charity versus perhaps the folks over at CRA who haven't necessarily demonstrated the best management skills of late on those dollars. So I think that's really amazing to identify that. And man, I'm so pumped. I'm so excited. This is just wonderful. Can you speak to us a little bit more about the charity? What's the primary focus of the charity that you have? And maybe just walk our listeners through that a little bit.

The first thing about the charity is that I've come to the determination.

There's a really good question around charity theory. Philosophy. Charity philosophy. Let's start with Mother Teresa. Like there's no doubt. I don't think anyone questions that she's a saint. Right. She took care of people in their darkest times. And there's Bill Gates, who.

Many people hate, but he's written some.

Eight figure checks to cure diseases in third world countries. So he's saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Is he a saint now? Don't answer the question. It's a rhetorical question.

So I personally know I'm not Mother Teresa. My gifts are more around making money. It is my highest and best use to.

Generate wealth. Create wealth to support a charity. Right. And then, and then also the gifts that we have are that we can make money, make more money. And then the charities, the foundation, you know, my goal for the foundation is to be able to generate 20,000, 20% returns. And then that will be the operating budget, annual operating budget for what the charity does. And so we've been pivoting. We've been always looking for highest and best use of a charity. We used to do a lot of food delivery.

But Covid put a stop to a lot of that. And so our most recent pivot is we've partnered with a wholesale company. So we're buying, we're, we're buying about winter, we're buying winter wear for about 200 families. Wow. Next week. So winter coats, boots, shoes, mitts, hats, mainly for kids. And then we'll do some care, care packages for the family, for the parents and the families. So like basic everyday items, shampoo, deodorant, underwear. Right. So that's. And because we're partnering with the wholesaler, we're able to do it for 20, 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. Again, highest and best use. Not only can I think I can do this more efficiently than the government, I can do this better than Retail. I don't have to shop at a big box store and pay retail. I can get, I can get it from the wholesaler who's giving me a. Who's not even charging me the wholesale markup.

Wow. And. And the wholesaler gets to feel great about what's happening. And you both communally get to contribute to a worthy cause and support the benefit of over 200 families. And once you do that, once your ability to duplicate that goes up. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing.

Sure. And then to continue with. You guys are probably Dan Sullivan fans, you know who, not how.

Dan Sullivan, he's my coach.

There you go. So you know his book knew who, not how. Sure do. Right.

Oh, you got the bulk. Amazing.

We did the audible and we partner with the public in the Catholic elementary school. So we're not out there on the street handing these out. We give them to the schools because the school knows who needs these things. Right. The teachers know what kids show up with busted up shoes and they're walking in the snow and salt and that stuff.

Yep.

Right. So that's what we do.

Wow, that's terrific. That's a great, great, great overview. Thank you. And you know, just a word about Dan Sullivan. You know, we always, we always give him credit where credit is due. And he's been my 10x ambition coach for the past three years now. And he is.

He is beyond incredible in terms of how he helps you to rethink your thinking. And having coached entrepreneurs for the past four plus decades.

It was a gift to be introduced to his program and to enroll in it. And I would wholeheartedly recommend that program to any established entrepreneur because the incredible value there ties right back to community. People who are part of that community, the relationships that are formed, the ideas that are exchanged, the value that gets created because of people combining their unique capabilities to do something that they couldn't do as effectively on their own is outstanding. It's very similar to what we're doing in our strategic relationship. We're combining our unique capabilities and it is the recipient of all that value is the, the people that we serve. And so it's, it's awesome.

And we're like I mentioned, we're EO members. So EO has a deep partnership with strategic coach. And you talked about community. We found our wholesaler partner through eo.

Wow.

Right. The community is, you know, like for your successful listeners, I'm sure they know it's a lonely road.

Right.

You need to go find. And we're like I say, we're really lucky being in Toronto, for example, we have a large number of successful people to be able to connect with versus I had a friend in Winnipeg. He'd have to fly all the time out of Winnipeg to find. To connect with high level people.

Right.

But yeah, interesting.

And Jerry, so may I ask you, what would you say to listeners who are considering going back to the process, the infinite banking concept for a moment, Quickly, what would you say to listeners who are tuning in for the first time and they're asking, gosh, what is this infinite banking? It sounds really interesting. What would you say to those listeners?

My primary objective isn't really the infinite banking concept, but rather.

You'Re actually coming to our webinar in January and I already had that headline down in my head. I'm a little bit of an artist, not quite copywriter level, but I want the title to be how to Kill Three Birds with One Stone Using life Insurance. Permanent life insurance policy.

Wow.

So the way I look at it is that I thought it through. I probably need a copy of this so that my copywriting team can write it down.

Sure.

But through I could make $100,000 from my business and that $100,000 can be used back to. In the business to generate more revenue. But I can funnel that hundred thousand dollars through my whole life insurance and I get the whole life insurance. But then because it is also, I shouldn't say whole life. It's permanent life insurance. And then because it's a permanent life insurance, I can then borrow against that permanent life insurance. And so the money, that $100,000 could come back to me and I could still have my money for my operation. So I have the money for my operation. I have money for my life insurance purpose. So I have two growing assets at the same time. And I'm also paying down my. Paying down my. Not necessarily paying my. But I have the coverage to pay off my tax liability when I pass. So that's why I would have like three things at the same time. Killing three things all at once at the same time with the whole life insurance policy.

That's the reason why I do it. I don't know about your listener, but I'm a beginner in terms of this concept.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Well, sometimes, you know, it's the best, the best perspective can come from a beginner. And so it's.

Thank you for sharing that.

What I also think is really great about what you shared, Cherry, is that your perspective on it, although from, as you stated, a Beginner status. It's beginner with your experience of the concept, but it's not beginner with your experience level in life in business and as a knowledgeable individual and accounting professional cpa, your understanding of how, what are some of these future progressions that these tax liabilities that are out in the future and how they need to be dealt with? Well, if I need to deal with them anyway, what way do I want to deal with them? I want to deal with them in the efficient way to go back to what Irwin suggested about optimizing things. So I just, I love how you identified that in your own framework. And I think that anyone attending that webinar in January, you know, perhaps by the time this releases, it'll be right, you know, leading up to, or just, just after that webinar. But anyone attending that is going to be in for a treat because you're going to learn a ton in that session. And thank you so much for putting that on.

The timing is perfect because our community, they've never been more successful financially. I've never heard this concept talked about so much because investors have done so well, right? Real estate investors, our stock hacking community.

I see people asking about it from middle class people from middle class jobs, but they're making so much money in their side hustles, they can now afford whole life. Right? Right. I imagine these folks had term life before, but now they're into that next discussion.

And kind of the lesson is that the pandemic, recession, depression, whatever you want to call it, has taught us like, man, if you invest, the investor was rewarded. That's, that's basically what's happened. The investor has been rewarded. Wow.

Interesting insight, Rich, that this is perfect timing to lead us into our question that we ask every guest at the conclusion of our podcast episode. So, Rich, take us away.

Well, you know, you guys have shared so much with us today, and it's a blessing to have you here. It's a blessing to embrace you into our community. So thank you for that. And you're already doing so many things, I think, that bring in this trajectory, but I think you can recognize even in the skyline of Toronto, not all heroes wear capes. You might not think of yourself as a hero, but every time you add value to others, the things you're doing with your charity, these families you're helping your give back, your coaching that you're doing with all these people, helping them build wealth, every time you're adding value at benefiting people in some way, you're just creating this amazing Ripple effect. What we really want to know and we'd love for you to share with our listeners and perhaps, Erwin, we'll start with you is who specifically do you want to be a hero to?

I'd say my kids. I want them to be proud of their dad. I remember seeing someone's T shirt. I think it was a T shirt. It said something like, be the dog parent your dog thinks you are.

Right. So I just apply that to my kids. I want to be the person they think I am. Thank you.

Amazing.

Cherry, who do you want to be a hero to?

I think I started my entrepreneur entrepreneurship with the goal to become the hero to my daughter specifically because I know how difficult it is being a woman in a way, at least from where I came from originally came from. And then over the years, the journey has evolved. We have achieved so much and we've got so much feedback from.

I guess, women in general. If we show a picture of us doing soft trading, a bunch of them would come to us and say, oh, my God, Cherry is doing it. So I can do it as well. And then there would be people who are minorities because I'm minority in Canada anyway, and they look up to us and say, hey, like, Cherry can do it. So that means I can do it. And I've heard feedback from my book. People bought my book. It's not a very well put together book. It's just a very good content. It provides really good content, but it's just put together very last minute. I published that book in 2017 and I got all these people coming back to me saying that, hey, like your acknowledgement or whatever, that's the practice really, really resonate with me. I'm also an immigrant. I don't speak perfect English and it really helps. Like, so my goal is. Has been evolved from really just being the hero to my kids to hero to people who think they don't have enough and they can achieve much more.

Well, there you have it. Thank you. Thank you to Cherry Chan, Erwin Zito. Thank you both so much for being a part of our community now and for sharing such great wisdom with our listeners. We really, really enjoyed today's episode and for all of our listeners, be sure to watch the next video tune into the next episode now. You'll see the next video come up as a playlist or however we've got that formulated. Richard, on the YouTubes and the Facebooks and all those other things. But Richard, any closing remarks before we sign off for today?

You know, the only thing I would say is I just, I really want to do a quick shout out to obviously these two folks who joined us and for all of the, you know, our existing clients and our listeners. Listeners, the folks that are tuning in and you're getting value out of the episodes, please make sure that you share it with us, reach out to us and let us know what you took away from this episode. From an episode you've listened to something that connected with you in a different way that maybe you hadn't heard it before. We love hearing those stories. I've heard a number of them recently on some great telephone conversations. We appreciate it so much because it helps us know that our message is connecting and that we're doing what we set out to do for you. And so please feel free to reach out, share that with us. Share us a win that's going on in your life so we can celebrate with you.

There you have it, folks. Wealth Without Bay Street. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you all again real soon. 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, 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.