53. Be Your Own Banker Through Infinite Banking with James Neathery

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.

What is Banking with Life? We are incredibly honored to be joined today by dear friends special guest, James Nethery. And James Nethery has been an authorized infinite banking practitioner of the process of becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept, for several years. We are just so blessed to have him as a guest on our show here today. And I did want to share with all of our listeners, if you haven't yet had occasion to tune into the Banking with Life podcast, you have an opportunity. James and his co host, Ryan Griggs do such a fantastic job sharing the message that Nelson pioneered and created with the world. And they've made what he's created their own life's work and sharing it with others all over the planet. And so you would be very well served to tune into that podcast. Now, we do want to mention James is currently the CEO of James Nethery and Associates and has been providing successful financial guidance to thousands of clients. Now, James hails out of Texas, and I understand that Texas is experiencing weather very similar to what we've been dealing with up here in Canada. And so, James, welcome to the show. It is a real pleasure to have you with us on Wealth Without Bay street, finally.

Thank you, Jason. And you know, I'm as honored as I can be. I appreciate y', all, appreciate the invitation, appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with y' all and I've been looking forward to it, so.

All right, well, let's.

Thanks for having me.

Let's dive in, let's have some fun. James, could you maybe share with our listeners how you were first introduced to the process of becoming your own banker and where that journey has led you up to this point in your life?

Sure, I was, excuse me, I was licensed as a life insurance agent for 14 years. Successfully moderately successful. Anyway, I always say this, that I might not have been the first guy in line, but I wasn't the last. You know, I was paying attention, trying to do better for, you know, myself, our clients. And so in that vein, I went to a two day seminar that. That was industry. It was an industry seminar. Speakers outside, speakers from all over, you know, Texas. And they were, you know, we're just sharing best practices. And it seemed like, you know, Jason, everybody had a book to reference and so I bought all the books. You know, this was probably about 16 years ago now, but I bought all the books. It's a speaker's reference. I took them home, you know, stacked them up on my nightstand. And then every day I'm going to bed and I'm looking at those unfinished books, you know, that needed to be read. Feeling like an underachiever, right? After a couple of months, I literally went through the stack of books, picked out the thinnest book so I could finish it and not feel like an underachiever. And it happened to be Nelson's book. Becoming your own banker. 92 pages, you know, big print, lots of illustrations. I read it that night, and I was just angry that, you know, I had never heard of that. I never knew what you could do with life insurance. And so I got up the next day and I called the number on the back of the book, and Nelson himself answered, which I was shocked. That was back when his picture was on the front cover of the book, right? And that's when it started. I went to the next seminar that he was holding or that was being held he was speaking at, and, you know, sat in the back. A dear agent, you know, let me attend because I was an agent, right? And I took copious notes. I came home, restructured all my life insurance, and had been teaching my clients and promoting, advancing the idea ever since. So that's how I learned and. Or that's when I was exposed to it. And it's been incredible. You know, it's changed my life, my practice, our practice, our clients lives, the lives of their children, and then even future generations that none of us will get to meet. So that. That's how it happened for me. And, man, I'm as blessed as I can be to have been exposed to the idea and had the opportunity to spend the time that was able to spend with Nelson. So thanks for asking that, Jason. You know, Richard, I'll just. I love to share that. Every opportunity.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, James, a lot of our listeners, you know, I know we do have a lot of our listeners already who are tuning in, who have listened to the Banking with Life podcast, and we've certainly made a number of mentions to it, you know, on. Throughout many of our episodes. And one thing that I really resonate with, and I think it's important for our listeners to understand, is that you actually were blessed. You did get the chance to spend a great deal of time with Nelson, knowing him for those that many years. And also, you know, Nelson was quite Fond of Texas. I know. He even told me when I came down to visit you guys in Texas, you were very gracious with me and hosting and having dinner with yourselves, your family. And Nelson and he talked to, you know, he would kind of lean over, says, you know, if I didn't end up in, you know, if I didn't end up in Alabama, I would, ended up in Texas. You know, he had a real kind of deep love for Texas. And so that really came through in a lot of things. And Nelson was so well traveled, he would tell stories about doing seminars all over, you know, US and in Canada. And he would remember like exactly whose seminar it was, what time of the year it was, what the weather was like, like what the, what the leaves were like on the trees. And then he would relate some powerful story that he shared about someone in the group. And you know, he often referenced attending and doing live sess. You hosted Nelson so many times. Maybe would you share with our listeners a little bit about what it was like to have to host Nelson and to have him deliver his seminar for your clients and how their clients have received it?

Sure. You know, back then that, you know, we can all go on YouTube and social media today and you know, there's hundreds if not thousands of references to infinite banking and then all of these bastardized names that people have, you know, taken Nelson's work and done whatever they've done to it, added themselves or tried to retell the story, leaving Nelson out. And I don't want to be disparaging, but you know, it's like. And we kind of talked about, I don't know if it was recorded, maybe we get some B roll, but we were talking about the noise, you know, and so today you can go online. Infinite banking, you know, the infinite banking concept. And there's no telling what will come up. Right. In the majority of it. The majority of it is noise. You gotta kind of know.

You gotta have some kind of. It would be beneficial for the listener to have a basis in the infinite banking concept by reading Nelson's two books. Right. Then when you go online, you'll be able to rightly divide. That's exactly right. And that's a workbook that you have put into a spiral format, you know, and I bet you it's dog eared. So, um, but, so what I'm saying is back then, you know, we, we couldn't go online. There were a couple, you know, Pamela Yellen or whomever, you know, great marketer. But, and I'm not disparaging Anybody. But you know, everything she knew, everything she learned about the infinite banking concept Nelson taught her. But Nelson didn't teach her everything that he knows about infinite banking. So my, my point being very limited resources back in the day. So the resource was Nelson's book Becoming youg Own Banker. And he held 10 hour presentations, you know, all over if he was sponsored by an agent that was a member of the think tank. So this is kind of pre Nelson Nash Institute, which that started in I believe 2013. Yeah. Right.

So I, that's how I met Nelson. Right. We had a conversation over the phone, but I think I drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, a couple of states over.

And just watching amazement of all of these people in this room. And Nelson was talking to everyone individually, you know, and I've never heard anything about the infinite banking concept after being in the life insurance business 14 years, you know, so I thought, man, this is the most awesome thing ever. Why didn't I have. Why, why hasn't a life insurance company ever taught me this? Why haven't, why hasn't any, any financial guru, you know, told me that I could do this or this could be done? So.

And you know, you get to meet wonderful people. So I fly home, like I said earlier, you know, I did restructure all my life insurance and pretty sure I've made every dad gum mistake that you can make and probably a couple of them twice because I'm human, right? But what mistake I did not make was, oh my gosh, my clients need to hear this, man. So it's like, what does it take, Mr. Mayor Nelson? What does it take for you to come, you know, down here and talk? And he told me and we set it up and then we had, we, we hosted Nelson in Fort Worth or Houston, somewhere around North Texas in Texas ever since, you know, the, the. I met him one year and if it wasn't that year, it was the next year. We started hosting Nelson and it was awesome. I think we do a really good live event. I know y' all do been to one of yalls.

And it was amazing because sometimes you could barely get 12 people in the room and then other times, you know, you get 25 or 30. I think the largest crowd we ever had was like 125. But that was after a couple of years and you know, a lot of effort. It was a massive amount of work. Now it's a much less work. It would be much less work now. And I guess we hosted Nelson here in Alvarado, Texas probably, you know, the year before he graduated. And you could fill a room in a heartbeat, you know, because it just was the idea that you could become your own banker was getting out and more people were maybe paying attention or being exposed to it. So there was a lot of good times, I'm telling you, when, you know, when he. He speaking of the traveling or he would always have a slideshow of all the places that he had been talking about, all the people he had met. Right. And. And I remember he would start.

Like 25 years ago, you know, 12 months, 13 days and 14 hours. And that he knew to the minute.

Whenever his last quad bypass was.

Yeah.

Y' all remember that?

Yeah.

I mean, and you're sitting here. I didn't meet the man until he was like 73. And he worked harder, the average 40 year old that I knew because back then, I mean, he was doing 40 to 45 seminars a year all over the country.

Yeah.

I mean that's getting it done.

You know, you had the opportunity to, you know, pick him up at the airport, have dinner with him the night before, the night after, take him to the airport. And the airports are about an hour away from where we live. And so it's all that time that you had the opportunity to spend with him that, you know, I just wish everybody could have. That could have had that opportunity to spend with him. It was incredible. So.

Amen.

What's really cool about that too, James, is it wasn't just your personal opportunity. It was an opportunity that was extended to your family members. And I know, you know, speaking with your son at least last time I saw him, I think at a think tank and he referenced how much, how, how meaningful those drives were, those breaking bread moments where you would sit down and be able to have conversation with Nelson and how the conversation would go. But the learning opportunity that he had because of the virtue of that, you know, growing up with Nelson almost. And so what a blessing that has been, I think, you know, for your family. And. And now there's going to be a ripple effect that we don't even know it'll be. It's your ability for your children to be able to share that message and those memories, I think in memorial of Nelson as it moves forward in time. So there's going to be, there's going to be the things that we haven't even yet, yet to come. I think because of that and the impact that we don't even know, you know, you.

I completely agree. And the, the last opportunity I had to listen to one of Yalls episodes Richard, you were sharing that. Y' all were. You and Nelson were having a merlot. He was drinking Merlot and had the wine glass on the table. And the table represented all the knowledge, the known knowledge. And, you know, you put the wine glass on the table and that the base around base of the wine glass represented his knowledge. Right. And then if he doubled his knowledge, getting the picture, demonstrating with a picture, the. The maybe 10 times the size of radius. Right. From the. Yep. Sit down. And now his knowledge doubled. Right. But the more he knew, the more he was exposed to what he didn't know. Yeah. I mean, that's an incredible. You know, I never seen him do the Merlot. I don't drink. You probably drink, Richard. You know, so y' all were. I'm kidding.

I'm Canadian.

Yeah, well, I'm Irish as well. I don't drink. Right.

But I seen him do that with a. With a nickel and a dime and a quarter, you know, and I mean, it's so powerful. Yeah. But, yeah, the opportunity. I'm telling you, we have photos because, you know, you take photos every. Every opportunity that you have to spend time with. Every opportunity you had to spend time with the man, you take photos. And, you know, all the. The attendees would take photos and they would get their books autographed. And. And, you know, we have a lot of photos. And so my youngest child, Riley, is 13. So we have photos pre Riley. We have photos with Jana, my lovely wife, when she's carrying Riley, you know, pregnant. And then we have photos of Riley and Nelson and me, you know, and Riley's, you know, one or two and then six and then seven and then eight. You know, it's. It's awesome. So.

I'm very grateful for the opportunity that my family has had to meet him and all the clients that we have that had the opportunity to meet him. And, you know, especially now, I'm really not a selfish guy, but, you know, I'm most thankful that I had the opportunity to meet him.

Absolutely.

And so, you know, I remember one time, I think it was at a night of Clarity. You know, everybody was attending one of the first one or two night of clarities in Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. And Carlos Lauer's lovely wife sent me. You know, she was in charge of the seating arrangements, and the guest speaker was Ron Paul. So I had the opportunity to sit next to Ron Paul. And, you know, Ron Paul didn't know me from Adam. Right. Well, he didn't know anybody there, but maybe Nelson. But, you know, I had the opportunity to talk to Ron Paul. And I'm like, Ron, you know your mentor, Leonard Avery? He goes, oh, yeah. I said, did you know that he mentored Leonard? Leonard E. Reed mentored Nelson Nash as well. He said, no, I didn't know that. And my point here is, you know, Leonard Reed touched a lot of people. Right, okay. And look at how many people Ron Paul touched in, in. In the arena of politics. Yeah. And then look at how many people that Nelson touched in the arena of finance life. Absolutely. I mean, it's incredible. So I want to grow up and be just like them.

Well, and that, you know, what you shared, James, reminds me of what Nelson would say to us all the time. He would say, the more you see this process, the more you will see you didn't see. And that you don't have to be a lone ranger, you know, surround yourself with other like minded people. You can learn from each other, you know, provided that a person hasn't stopped receiving the inspiration to learn something new. And we never forget that. You know, we remind ourselves of that all the time because each time we go back to his book, we truly do see something that we didn't see. And there's always something new to learn about this process. And the one thing that we see going on out there in the financial world because of social media as a platform and how quickly a message can get out there, whether the message is accurate or not, is we are seeing so much focus on.

The tool that is used to implement the process. And these are things that we're hearing on your podcast as well, that you and Ryan are faced with and dealing with. And Nelson would refer to that as the noise. And he would always talk about the headset that he started wearing in his later years when he would fly. And he would ask, hey, have you ever flown with a noise cancellation headset? And he said, this is just a marvel of technology. It's incredible. Everybody needs to get their hands on a financial noise cancellation headset because there's so much noise out there and it's. And it's being proliferated and it's just so completely unnecessary. The process does not need to be sensationalized. And regardless of.

The type of tool, referring to all those things that come up out there in the world about designing a policy and focusing on the anatomy or the attributes of that particular policy, when conversations like that come up for us in our part of the world, we always ask the person to just take a moment and describe the problem. And to answer one question. The one fundamental, most Important question and that is understanding first and foremost that someone has to perform this function of banking in your life as it relates to your needs. So who is performing that function today for you? Regardless of set the tool aside, set all of that stuff aside, what is the answer to that question? And you know, for most people it's not me. And so if you understand the problem, the solution becomes clear.

Yep.

And go ahead.

No, I completely agree with that. That's the problem, excuse me, is who's performing the banking function. Everything else is, you know, is really, it's conversation. You know, you're splitting hairs. I'm not saying that policy design is not important or product selection is not important because, you know, universal life, for instance, which I consider. No.

You know, it has an account value. Right. And oh my gosh, it has a loan provision and somebody's going to get paid a commission if they write it. Right. So. And they illustrate beautifully. So products do matter in my opinion. Right. But then, you know, whatever version of the noise is, it is. But most people don't even know that they can become their own banker. And most people have no idea the importance of that over their lifetime.

Right.

They don't know because they've never been told. Because the financial world has never talked about banking unless we're giving you non recourse loans or the greatest lowest interest rate or whatever, you know, the latest creation of the financial product is voicing on the UN American or the unsuspecting North American. Right, yeah. So I completely agree with you.

That the, that's the problem is who's performing the banking. And most of us have abdicated our responsibility to someone else. And that someone else is extremely profitable.

And, and we don't even know that we've abdicated it because we're not even, we didn't even know that we had the option to take back control of it.

Exactly.

And so by teaching this message and channeling our inner Nelson, taking it out into the world the way that we are, we, we're just trying to shine a big giant flashlight on the fact that you, yes, you can do this, someone's doing this for you now, but it should be you start carving out every little piece of it that you can back into your own realm under your method of control and start firing the other guys one piece at a time.

Yeah. As soon as possible. Right.

And that's another thing that Nelson would say. He'd say, you know, people will take a little bit of information and they will jump to an absurd conclusion. And we see that all over the place. And we actually see it. I think certainly we see it with consumers, but I would say we see it even more so. And James, I'd be curious your thoughts on this inside of the industry, in the financial realm of people who are licensed in some format. What's your take on that?

I completely agree with you. I think that. And I'm. I'm kind of harsh on most, you know, financial advisors or life insurance agents.

But I love them. Don't misunderstand me, you know, but I think that. That the life insurance injury industry itself has forgotten its heritage. Right, right. They, in the, you know, 80s, through the demutualization, through the. The back and forth competing with Wall street, you know, prior to the 1930s, prior to this creation of mutual funds, you know, the average all American, the Canadians, you know, they held money in life insurance. It was not a foreign thing. You know, Nelson's daddy gave him his first policy. He purchased it at 13, right? And he gave it to him at age 14 and said, here, boy, this is yours. You paid for it. It was not. And he was a sharecropper, right? So Nelson's father was. Sure. Sharecropper. I'm just saying that it was not a foreign idea to put money in life insurance at all. Now.

People have a hard time even getting past the word life insurance, right? Because that dang life insurance agent is gonna make a commission, you know, and it's like, oh, we can't have that. So it's almost like you're playing word games, you know, to. To. To maintain your preconceived idea that life insurance is bad. Okay? And I don't want to berate it, but, you know, they did forget their history. They did forget their heritage. You know, the competing with Wall street, you know, with the mutual funds in the 30s and then the qualified plans in the 80s, you know, the Keel plan, the Kehl plan, and then they demutualize it. It's really convenient for the life insurance industry to demutualize right after they get accosted by The Senate, the U.S. senate, in collusion with the term promoters and Wall street, right? Because they're like you. This is a tax loophole for the rich. Right. And so. And Ryan Griggs points it out very well. You know, there's nothing. The only thing worse than a bad argument or, you know, it's a weak argument. You know, the weak argument is the worst argument. So they get accosted, the life insurance industry, and then they start demutualizing and then they, and then they become all things to all people. You know, it's a financial services. We want to do this and we want to do that. And it's like you're jumping smooth over the power, the history of dividend paying life insurance. You know, all the life insurance policies, the majority of the life insurance policies that Nelson purchased, they were not weighted to the pua. They were typically structured dividend paying whole life insurance. Now he did buy a lot of ten pays and y' all know, but the average all American out there in the North American, the Canadian, they don't know that Nelson, you know, didn't wait all of his premium payment to the paid up addition driver. Like that's the only thing that makes this a good idea. Right. So does that give you an idea?

Are you telling me that it was okay just to get it the basic way and it still worked out okay? And that Nelson didn't even really realize that what the power of what he had, dad. Even though he'd been paying premiums until the early 80s when he was already into his 50s, and that's when he realized he needed to increase dramatically increase the amount of money he was putting into premium.

I don't want to pick on him, you know, since he's not here, but I did give him a hard time every opportunity and he deserved it most of the time. And I believe he became a life insurance agent in 1964. Right. Okay. And you know, in the, in the one policy that he talked an awful lot about was his 1959 state farm policy. Okay.

$20,000 death benefit, 388, 40 a year.

Yeah. And that was big money. You laugh now, but he was only making 10,000 a year.

Yeah, that's a lot of money.

And he, and he tithe, him and Mary tithe 10%. Right. And he was, his brother worked for IDS Investors Diversified Services, purchased by American Express. You know, he had that plan, crossover plan. So you know, if you, if you put X number of dollars into this plan, the, the crossover point is going to be somewhere about seven years by the time what you've paid in what you can have the value of, then you can buy you a mutual fund boy. Right. Okay. So he was already doing that because of his brother. And that's when that was the first conversation that he had. Many of y' all know this, that you know, he's going to pass the pleasantries and talk to his brother about that. Why didn't his brother tell him to pay, you know, a thousand dollars a Year in premium instead of 300. Yeah. So I'm not saying anything that y' all don't know, but I do want to point this out. So if he was, excuse me, a life insurance agent 1963 and he bought his state farm policy in 1959, it took him 15 years on that state farm policy before he changed the dividend election. He had the dividend going to reduce the premium. They took him 15 years to say, oh my gosh, I shouldn't do that.

That's right.

You know, yeah, traditional, typical structured whole life without a PUA 10 pay policies.

You know, he didn't. But, you know, 1980, had a quad bypass, dang near uninsurable. You know, so he didn't, he didn't have that policy that, you know, the equipment finance, for example, he didn't own that his policy didn't look like that.

Well, and he would talk about, you know, when he went into surgery and his heart was out of his chest cavity for several hours and he obviously doesn't, you know, he said, listen, I can't recall the experience, but I know that I was, I know that I was alive because I was being kept alive by a heart and lung machine. So I was only existing during that window of time. I wasn't truly living. And he said, that is the equivalent of what's going on out there in the world as it relates to people and their understanding and absence of control of the banking function as it relates to their needs. Because that's the equivalent of living off of a heart and lung machine. Someone else is controlling that function and it's absurd. It should be held at the you and me level and going back to our advisor community, you know, with all due respect to colleagues out there in the industry who I'm sure you know, they're doing the best that they believe they can for their clients and that's. That's great. We wish them well. We have not yet since. Oh, gosh, James, we met in February 2012 at the annual think tank event.

You sound pretty sure.

I would say since that time. And Richard, you can attest to this, I have never been contacted by an advisor. Life license, chartered life underwriter, certified financial planner, whomever that financial professional may be. I've never been contacted by anyone who has asked me a question that involved becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept and the process. It's always about the product every time. What companies do you use? Dividend scale, interest rates, what about loan rates, policy design, all of this stuff that means absolutely nothing if you don't understand the problem, you can put the very best tool for the job in the hands of an incompetent. And not only are they not going to turn out any good work with the tool, they're going to break the damn tool.

Yes, sir. Every time.

And so we, and James, we, much like you've admittedly shared, hey, you know, I've, I've made mistakes along the way, probably made some of them twice because we're human, we're fallible. And we found the biggest change for us was when we, we moved away from, you know, highlighting all of the, the great benefits of the tool and.

Wowing people with what truly is remarkable. I mean, all of the contractual guarantees and not getting into percentages and all that other stuff. But.

None of that mattered if the person couldn't describe the problem and how this tool was helping them to enable a process to solve the problem. And the moment that we started moving entirely in that direction, everything changed. The people who catch this, who read Nelson's book, and they catch it, they say, you know what.

Something'S resonating with me here and I need to understand more about it. And then they implement it in their lives. They're not sitting down and talking about all that other stuff. But advisors feel like they have to become subject matter experts on a tool when they don't even have even a rudimentary understanding, understanding of the process and the problem that's being solved.

Plus, they usually don't even own the tool. And they certainly haven't taken a policy loan. And they definitely, if they have, they haven't paid it back.

I'm going to teach people how to become their own banker. Like, you know, I used to say, and I still do.

You know, if you don't understand the problem, the details do not matter. They don't matter. But if you understand the problem, the details don't matter. And I'm not speaking out of both sides of my mouth. I mean, that's factual and I completely agree with you, Jason.

Banking is right. Banking is, it's a process. It's a, it's the oldest profession, second oldest profession in the world because somebody financed the first profession. All right, so it is whether you recognize it, we recognize it, our clients recognize it or not. If there are clients, they do recognize it. But if the, if the, if you don't recognize that the banking is, and I mean, it doesn't matter. Just, it's a moot point. Just you use the word caught. Nelson used to say that all the Time this is caught, it is not taught. Right. And I find that, you know, most of our clients, they've, they understand some quite a bit actually, about money or cash flows. And, you know, most of them have had bad experiences with lending institutions. Mm. You know, I mean, I remember when I was growing up.

You know, my dad had banker friends and he had lots of relationships with bankers because he did a lot of financing. Right. And, you know, he was, he was declining when I met Nelson, so he didn't really have the opportunity, we didn't have the opportunity to talk about the infinite banking concept because literally he was on his deathbed. Right. But I remember he told me, you know, before I ever met Nelson, he said, you know, James, when I was young, I used to have to go to the banker with my hat in my hand.

And then later he said, you know, well, he said all this at the same time, which was later he said, now the banker comes to me with their hat in their hand. All right? And now whenever you can, like, control the banking function in your life, does it really matter what interest rates are or are not? You can't control them anyway. Does it matter what the market is? I don't care if it's bitcoin, gold, silver, real estate, I don't care what it is. You can't control that. Right, Right. So if I'm controlling the banking function in my life, I'm controlling the cash flows in my life, right? I'm. I'm in control. And you know the golden rule, right? He has a goal, makes rules.

That's right.

So I don't care at the end of the day what the markets are doing or not doing. I don't care. I don't care what the interest rates are or are not. I don't care. You know, it's. And I don't care what the policy is. I mean, I don't. We're very particular in my practice how we design policies in the companies that we do use or work with. And I don't, I mean, I don't even mention life insurance companies. I don't promote them. You know, they're just a, they're just a tool, right? They, you know, dividend paying, whole life insurance has every characteristic that's required for a private banking entity. So.

I just. We're very particular on how we structure, right? And it's not a, it's not, it can't be a cookie cutting thing. You're different from me, I'm different from you, and, and we're all different thank God. You know, we all have different needs, so one size does not fit all. So the idea that you can do this and this with everyone is just wrong. But, and two, let me say this, that, you know, like I had mentioned earlier, we get contacted from all over the country, all over the world. Right. And when somebody contacts us from the uk, which, you know, I have come to discover that. That I don't know of any company that has not demutualized in the uk. They've all demutualized, to my knowledge. And since y' all are under the crown. And, you know, my question is this because there is a question in here, you know, can y' all practice? I mean, in Canada, you know, can you do business with people in the uk Whether it's Ireland, Wales or England, you know, is there. Is that possible? Because you're all under the crowd. Okay, so thank you for sharing that. But when people, you know, ask me, well, can we do this? Can we do this with a mutual company? I'm like, no, you don't have any mutual companies. You know, you can think you're, you know, you're elected or selected leaders over there. However, there are a lot of stock companies over there, and you can practice infinite banking concept with the stock company if that is all you have available. Okay, get to it.

Yeah.

Nelson would always say, work with what you got.

Yeah.

And he would also say that, you know, even because there's a number of countries who don't even, from what we understand, don't even have any type of participating policies really, of any really nature to work with. And, you know, Nelson says, you know, you read in the book, you don't need necessarily need the insurance to make this. It's just way more efficient, way more effective. If you do. If you wanted to use a shoebox, you know, with, you know, cash that you store under your mattress or whatever, I mean, you have different risks, such as someone's going to break into your house, your house is going to burn down, and there goes your shoebox. So we're offloading some of the risk to the insurance company. And it's an efficient way of accomplishing the objective. But it's the mental prowess, it's the mindsets and the rules, the golden rules that Nelson taught us, which are the basis by which you can activate this process in your life. The tool that we utilize to get it done is simply a medium that makes it more effective. That's it. You have to. The process of banking isn't about insurance. It has no bearing but the two things are independent of one another. We're just adding efficiency onto the fire, right?

I agree. To my knowledge, the only participating life insurance companies in the world reside in the U.S. canada and Japan. You know.

When they do business outside of Japan, their stock structures, they're not participating. That's my understanding.

Well, this reminds me of something that Rich, we were just having this discussion earlier this morning and talking about and reminding ourselves of what Nelson shared in his book. And again, the book that we're talking about. If we have new listeners tuning into this episode, the book we're talking about is becoming your own banker. And we are going to provide in the show notes, we're going to provide a link to James and Ryan's podcast, Banking with Life. If you have not yet listened to that podcast, you have an opportunity. It is outstanding. We're also going to provide a link if you want to get your hands on a copy of R. Nelson Nash's book. This book has sold north of 400,000 copies for a reason. We wholeheartedly encourage you to read it if you're a colleague in our industry. Thank you for tuning in and we hope that you're receiving inspiration to learn something new. And I just want to point to page 38 in Nelson's book where he goes on to say, after all, we are not attempting to accomplish all of the banking needs through the device of one policy. We will need a system of many policies in order to do the complete job. This is just a description of the design for each policy to accomplish to best accomplish the system. And basically he's saying it's best to select the plan, the base policy that is in the middle of the scale, such as ordinary life or a life paid up at age 65 and add a paid up additions rider to the plan. Ridiculously simple. I can't find anywhere in here where it talks about put a dollar into base, $3 billion into paid up additions, get a starting death benefit of $420 million, and get all this done with a single policy. I'm not suggesting that those types of policy features are good, bad or indifferent. They just are. It's just important to understand that like I shared with Richard and James, I hope you'll agree when a client says, listen, this is the amount of money that I'd like to see going into a policy because it's comfortable and it's affordable. If the person says, I want to put a dollar into a plan, I understand the problem that this is going to help me solve. I have a Policy design based on what Nelson shared page 38. It's right there, black and white. And you can offer that person a policy where it's like, hey, I understand you want to put a dollar in, but if you put five cents in, I can help you put $400 in. Who cares if the person's not actually going to do it? This is about comfort and affordability and making sure that we understand this is not an overnight get rich, quick, anything. And it really. Using the word borrowing from yourself and Ryan, it really triggered me like I was on my soapbox for a good 40 minutes. Rich is like, hey, can we move.

On to something else every week before we actually turn on a podcast? There's. There's some clear soapbox. Either Jason or myself go into some kind of soapbox moment on something.

So listen, man, y' all need to. Y' all have to turn the mic on and make that, you know, B roll available to us. Come on. We will. We will start doing that.

Well, Further to page 38, though, Jay, you know, I always circle Back to page 85 point number two. If you knew at passive income time, you would be getting back everything that you put into a system potentially tax free, would you ever object to putting any more money into it? So the structure of, you know, again, going back to what James said, Nelson didn't have policies with PUAs and all these kinds of things on him. He did just fine. He was very happy. He had one. He experienced a death claim. He had. What was it, James? I think he had $47,000. A premium paid in. He'd borrowed out a loan. He had an outstanding loan of 48,000. He had. He had a $250,000 death benefit. It paid off the loan. He got 200 grand tax free. Didn't that cancel out a lot of mistakes I made in life?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Business.

Hard boy.

And that. That had. So he didn't. It didn't. The PUA didn't matter. He got all of his money back plus 200 grand that he would have received or his family would have received anyway when he passed on, when he graduated. There's still three policies in existence that Nelson started in his own lifetime that now are owned by members of the family. That there will still be a death claim.

It's.

It extends beyond his own lifespan. He got to learn how to think beyond your own lifespan.

Oh, my gosh, too. And all the children and the grandchildren. I mean, and the great grandchildren. But I want to ask. And I know you know, and I know I shouldn't ask questions that you know the answer to, but what do you think he did with that $200,000 income tax free that he received?

Didn't he buy Bitcoin?

Well, he tried to get into GameStop stock but they weren't public offered at that time.

I know they beat him up a long time or pretty harshly for when silver was hitting $40. He bought silver at $40 an ounce. I gave him a heart. And he writes about this in his second book, Building a Warehouse of Wealth. So I'm not sharing anything that is not public knowledge and I just had so much fun with that because I like, you know, coins. But I did give him a hard time about that. And then, and then I want to say that that policy that you reference, Rich, that was on a business partner and that reminds me of the, you know, the airplane driver, remember that he tried to, you know, set beside. And he's trying to get this guy to understand the power of dividend paying whole life insurance.

Yeah, he was a lawyer.

One lawyer.

He was a lawyer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the lawyer would never buy life insurance. But Nelson financed his plane and guess.

What he did with the payments? Put him in a policy.

That guy wouldn't buy the same thing that I was trying to sell that guy. And I got the same commission I would have got if I would have, if he would have bought it. But I ended up with the policy.

And so you know, for any, anyone listening, I mean if you understand the problem and you've had an opportunity to read Nelson's book, now you don't have to.

Purchase a policy or implement this process with us. There are so many wonderful authorized practitioners out there that you can be working with. But here's what we would suggest that you do. The first thing that we would ask you to do is to please make sure that at minimum you're dealing with someone who is an authorized infinite banking practitioner who can demonstrate to you how they are implementing this process in their own lives. And again this is real demonstration, not just how much premium they're paying. Talk to me about an example or two of how you've actually implemented this process in your life and make sure that you know, this is, you have to have a very clear, I can't emphasize it enough, a very clear understanding of the problem because if you don't, then all that you're going to remember is what you purchased, not why you're implementing this process in your life. I have to give credit to your co host Ryan Griggs because in one episode, now, I can't quite recall the title of the episode, but Ryan pointed out something.

So simple, yet so true. He said in the episode, the two most important words in the title of this book are right here. Becoming your own banker. And so whomever you decide to work with, recognize that. Think about a coaching relationship. A coach is responsible to you, not for you. And so you have to embrace this process and become independent. That's the whole purpose of becoming your own banker. It's not become your own banker, provided you have a good advisor who can guide you every single step of the way and make sure you don't.

Drive.

Off a cliff financially. This is about becoming your own banker, becoming truly independent and controlling this function as it relates to your needs. And you need a good coach. Absolutely. But the coach is there to be responsible to you, not for you.

Well, something that came up in a recent conversation we had, Jay, is, you know, sometimes our. When you get started this process, we all. I don't know about you guys, but I'm guessing life comes at you at like a hundred miles an hour pretty much every day. And sometimes it's so fast, and it's. It's like a barrage of activity and things and responsibilities and commitments that you have, and you can only do one thing at one time, right? So there's times when people who get started in this process, maybe they really excited and they're engaged, and then life gets in the way a little bit and they fall off the track for a while, and then they realize, let's say they take a policy loan, they are not making repayments back to it effectively. Then they recognize, oh, geez, I'm stealing the peas, or I'm not doing it the way that Nelson intended, and they start putting peas back on the shelf. Well, those moments in time, those lessons, those are lessons where all of a sudden you go from, this was just this thing I was kind of doing on the sidelines to, wait a second. This is actually this core aspect of every single thing that I do financially for the rest of my natural life. And if all I did is just focused in on this and I optimize this process, everything else by which I'm conducting my life around becomes better.

Right?

And so sometimes we have moments where we don't do everything perfectly, and that will happen in all areas of our life. But what you'd have to do is recognize, wait a second, I probably could improve in this area and then seek improvement.

James, what would you. Would you agree with that? I Would imagine you've had that happen with a client or two along the way.

Yeah, it happened to me first, you know.

Yeah, I completely agree. You know, when I came back from the first time listening to Nelson, and I had the opportunity to listen to him many times and I took notes, copious notes. Every time kind of speaks back to what you'd referenced earlier, Jason. You know, every time you go back and reread Nelson or every time you have the opportunity to listen to him, you'd learn something additional. More.

But when I. When I returned from the first time of hearing Nelson. Excuse me, Like I said, I restructured our life insure. Never paid that much life insurance premium in my life. And I look back now, and my gosh, my thinking was small. I think it was a lack of faith on my part. I'm like, pennies in man. But it was huge premiums to me at the time, you know, and of course then I said about, you know, doing the policy loans, credit cards, dental, medical deductibles.

You know, I mean, we were. We were doing it, you know, we were paying premium, making loans and. And financing things, shaking and.

You know, in some sporadic loan repayments. Right. You weren't. You know, it's this. Not a magic money machine. You just put money in and let it alone carry forever. And hopefully someday in the great buy and buy, you're going to sell your business and pay all those loans back. No. No.

So I'm shaving. Well, no, let me, Let me. Let me get my. Let me be correct here. It was about four years into practicing the infinite banking concept. Multiple policies, multiple companies, and I'm sitting outside the parking lot. My dad is inside in a hospice facility, right? And it's in April, and I'm sitting out in my truck and I'm writing a check that will choke a mule to Uncle Guido. Uncle Sam. All right? And it dawned on me that this should have been a premium first, then a loan to pay Uncle Guido, because I'm going to have to pay the guy again next year.

That's right.

Right. And the next year after that. And so I equate that to a man shaving every day. You know, we all get up and shave and you know, four years into it, you're like, oh, my gosh, that's a nose on my face right there. How did I miss that? You know, so. And then.

So you're like, okay, well, my premiums have not been large enough. I can't believe I've been squabbling over these little things. At that time that I was finding they were big. To me, to be honest, at the time, they were huge. Looking back, it's like, man, they got to expand your thinking, you know, and literally it's like you got to get your thinking up. But, you know, I'm human, I'm looking around. And Nelson was only available every now and then. You could read his book. You couldn't just go on to YouTube or the Internet and pull up a kazillion, you know, gurus talking about the infinite banking concept, you know, so you literally, you mentioned it earlier, the Lone Ranger. You know, you felt like a lone ranger. We used to, you know, back in the day, we would host Nelson two or three times a year. One year we did 27 events. Wow, you're working, right?

Yeah.

We used to give away the Lone Ranger award because, you know, 10 years ago your clients couldn't put, you know, five names together that paid high premium or trying to become their own banker. They literally felt like the Lone Ranger. Nelson mentions it in his book, you know, so I completely agree with you, Richard. You know, we all get off track and you know what the solution is. I don't care what the problem is. I do not care what the problem is. The problem is. The problem is. The problem. The solution is premium. Yeah, I don't care who you are. Premium. If you don't pay a premium, you don't have access to capital in the same format and fashion that you do with dividend paying life insurance. So a premium. Premium, premium, premium. Amen.

Well, on that note, Richard, any.

Final remarks that you'd like to share with our audience?

Well, I think that we're all just blessed to have James with us today. And you know, this, this guy's one of the got one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met. So if you ever get a chance to get to meet James, he's a phenomenal individual. His whole family is pretty amazing and they're very gracious with hosting down in Texas. So I can't wait to see you again, James. Normally at the time of this recording, we would typically be Birmingham, Alabama. We'd be able to do this in person because of global pandemics and such. Day. What is it? 4,298,000 of the pandemic today, Jay?

428,000.

Yeah.

So.

We'Re just blessed to have James with us and I appreciate you tuning in. Make sure you check out their podcast. And I would say this James is one of the most well read individuals that I know, especially around Austrian economics. In fact, when I was down in Texas with James and he was hosting Nelson, Nelson was very clear to tell me, and in fact, we looked at some of James's library, that James has found more books about cool stuff than Nelson even himself was aware of, including Eustace Mullins and Secrets of the Federal Reserve, which is a very cool gold book that I have somewhere here on my own shelf. So, you know, Nelson was very impressed with the way that James was so read up on his Austrian econ and thorough understanding of this concept.

So, listen, y' all are so kind, you know, very kind, and I appreciate the opportunity to be, you know, a guest with y'. All, and I'd like for y' all to come be a guest on our podcast in the future. And you got it. I gotta say that I tried to convince David Stearns to hold a live event in Florida, but I couldn't stretch his thinking enough. So the think tank is online, it's.

All digital, so I'd much rather be in person.

Right.

Well, James, it's a pleasure, sincerely. We are grateful and very honored to have you as our guest today. And for everyone who's tuned into the episode, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And if you look over to this side, if you're on the YouTubes, there's going to be a playlist there. So continue to, you know, advance your journey of learning about this process of becoming your own banker, the infinite Banking concept. Get your hands on a copy of R. Nelson Nash's book, Becoming youg Own Banker. And then get in touch with an authorized infinite Banking practitioner to talk about how you see this process being advantage to you, your family, your business, and to those that you love and care about and you think would benefit from the gift of this process. So thanks again for tuning in. We appreciate you and we'll catch you on the next episode. Have a great rest of your week, everybody.

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.