90. CPA Loves Infinite Banking In Canada – Henry Wong

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.

Chartered Accountants becomes an authorized infinite Banking Practitioner. We are delighted to be joined today by Henry Wong, an amazing colleague, teammate, authorized infinite banking practitioner here at Ascendant. Henry, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. What a privilege to be here and join in and share, you know, one.

Of the things that we love to do and of course always joined by our co host Richard Canfield, hailing from Chilliwack, bc, otherwise known as the wac. And one of the things we love to do, Henry, with this particular series is to give viewers and listeners a glimpse into the essence of our teammates and the folks who do such great work, continually impress and bring value to clients that we have and to clients that we want to have. And so it's a real pleasure having you and I'd like to begin with maybe sharing your background prior to discovering the process of becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept. What was keeping you busy before you were inspired to become your own banker?

Well, it's a pretty busy journey that I had. I'd say I started out initially being naive in terms of starting and thinking, oh, I wanted to get better control of my finances, know how things work, what, what a better profession to jump into accounting. And so I started going into accounting. I actually initially got nervous doing accounting because I realized that there were some exams afterwards and everything along those lines. And I thought once I finished university, that's the first thing I would never want to do again. But the curiosity that I got out of accounting was such a great thing because I got to go into understanding how other businesses did things and learn from that experience. And you know, as somebody who's actually did my co op in university with one of the big four accounting firms and in that, you know, for what I was getting paid, which I think was still pretty decent at the time, the experience and exposure that I got to see and interact with levels of executives, owners and really hear about their challenges and why they got into business and what was going on in there, there was no other way I could have gotten that same exposure. So I kind of lucked into doing that and I went into. That's kind of where I started to think about, oh, this was a great place, or now I see it. If I were to reflect Back a great platform for me to go through doing that. So that's, that's kind of how I started my journey in doing that. And I worked with a lot of clients and I started focusing specifically on real estate portfolios. Multi residential, it's multi residential apartment buildings, hotels and you know, when people go through real estate a lot of their goals and objectives is wealth building. And when it comes to wealth building, it includes areas of tax planning, advisory services, how do, how do I grow my business, how do I get more capital, how, how do I get more properties, how do I get more financing? So there was a lot more diversity involved. So not only from a wealth growth perspective, but also from an operational understanding, you know, when do I need to do an H VAC replacement or understanding how to do those things. So that, so the real estate industry gave a lot more clarity and breadth in my understanding of how business works. And so that's kind of where I actually had a lot of fun doing real estate from there. So I kind of focused on real estate from there. And speaking positively in terms of the experience that I got. I was growing a lot with the firm, but at some point I kind of got to a level where it was, I kind of plateaued. Most of what I was doing with volume of work, it wasn't as challenging anymore. And so as I became more efficient, I got more work to do and so I wasn't learning anymore. So I got tired of that and I moved towards one of Canada's largest telecom companies. And from there I was a controller for, for that company. They were doing about 400 million in terms of revenues. They, that company went through a huge restructuring and that's kind of where I learned and saw that people can be let go just like, just like that. And when I'm behind the numbers, I, you know, it was, I was quite naive to see that there were, there's planning in place for that to happen. And it was really, you know, kind of a reality for me. See but within that company my opportunity came because of all that restructuring that happening and because we were short staffed. I also got to be part of. Because I was an outsider coming in from the first time and I was quite young at the time and the culture was a little. It was harder for me to influence people when it came to sharing my experiences and expertise. And so fortunately I had support from another new vp, her and I got quite close in terms of seeing eye to eye to things. And so she would help open the doors for me so that I could implement Solutions for them. You know, one of the biggest things in terms of a culture coming from the outside, I could share things like using data to make decisions. A lot of the time they relied on making decisions from their gut feel some experience. But it was very hard to replicate, very hard to understand, very hard to plan and move and grow the business from that standpoint. So that was kind of like my corporate life, the second part. Then I kind of got tired in the corporate world also, you know, kind of spurred on other things. I was kind of, I didn't, I didn't know entrepreneurship was, was sort of a way to go, how to build something in my life. So that's when I started to realize and I needed to discover myself. And part of that discovery was what can I leverage in terms of my experience? And I learned that. And stores, sorry, businesses, E commerce stores were just starting new. They were all on an old platform. And actually at the business that I was at, they were just building up their E commerce presence also. And so from there I was like, okay, E commerce is going to start getting pretty big. And I think you can see right now it's quite big.

Oh, I can, yeah. I can tell you firsthand that yeah, it's definitely big.

There's a little company that delivers boxes to my door all the time. I don't know, it's got a big a, something about prime. I'm a prime member. I don't know how it works, but.

Some prime member, you know, something like that.

And one of the things that I kind of learned to discover is I didn't need to own the inventory. It was called drop shipping. So I found an industry that worked quite well in drop shipping, which was smart home technology. And you know, just the way the product was would work really well in terms of sales because the value came in when you assembled systems for people that could essentially have what they wanted to automate, whether it be their garage door to their lights and everything. So when you put those, the problem in the terms of the marketplace is very sporadic in pieces and it wasn't well organized. So that's kind of where I found that opportunity. But I was a one man show. It was very, very stressful and hectic at the time. Dealing with customer service, call design, putting together the website. I had no coding, designing skills or anything. So I actually have to learn all that, learn how to put all that stuff together and then do the marketing. And it was from the marketing of doing all of that I really learned how to connect with customers and hear about what is it that they actually want? I learned how to write website copy and, you know, like, those were things I really started to go through and do. But I also went through my own challenges. Like, I. Because of the type of business and the science that I was dealing with, the product price baskets, you know, like over a thousand or two thousand. It was exposed to fraud a lot, and I didn't know how to properly handle fraud. So I had a lot of fraudulent transactions that I had to. I learned to unfortunately absorb. So anyway, so it got to a real big point where I, I was getting pretty burnt out dealing with that. And this, this whole journey was really, when I look back at it, I wanted to build something for myself and my family to, to, you know, we came from very modest beginnings. And, you know, I knew the corporate route was not the way to go. This entrepreneurship route wasn't really. I, I mean, aside from my skills and experience moving into being an entrepreneur, the biggest part that I really discovered was the mindset had to really, really come. And that's really why I also spent a lot of time fixing my mindset, I'd say. So I.

It's a constant work in progress. Right. For all of us. You know, it's because you, your mindset is influenced by your surroundings, by, you know, the people that you're with, the environment you're in. And so it's, it's a constant. It's much like anything that you want to, you know, maintain well, you have to keep it tuned up. And so it sounds like through all these different experiences, you were getting closer to, you know, what really would truly bring you energy and sustain that energy. And if you, if you think about the moment that you were introduced to this process of becoming your own banker, can you take us back to that moment and what, what came up for you?

Yeah, so it kind of came in a lot of smaller phases. The first big phase actually came from me learning how to trade the financial markets. So, I mean, there's a lot of people who will say they trade the financial markets that's very heavily sensationalized. Where they talk about, you know, I've made these gains, I've made those gains. One of the big things that's really important is actually understanding the, how they got those big gains. Is it actually a sustainable or repeatable process? And it's about designing systems to get there. So, yes, you can have those lucky windfalls. Funny enough, the mindset, a lot of my mindset started to develop from because I had all these mental limitations. I was actually afraid to get windfalls and make big, make big gains because I was like, oh, I didn't, I wouldn't know what I would do with those big gains. I don't even know what I would do if I started to really be successful. So I had a lot of these doubts that I actually had to reverse and deal with. But as I was designing those systems, part of my research included getting some understanding of how the economics of our economics, how it worked. And I actually started first realizing the economics that we learn was, was not what I'm actually now understand or appreciate more, which is now Austrian economics. And so I had an understanding of Austrian economics, at least in the format of currency, but I didn't know even more how at least our monetary or our banking system worked. And so now then, you know, fast forward all the way to about 2018. So I read about a book every week, sometimes two. And so I digest a ton of books. And one of the books that I came upon was Becoming your own Banker. And when I first come through that, I will tell you that at first it was, it's a very simple read. I was like, there's no way. There's good, some good value going through. So I had a little bit, I had some preconceived, you know, thoughts. So I go through it, I read. I'm like, oh, this is really interesting. But I didn't know of anybody or how it was done. Where I could do was in the U.S. i was like, oh, it's not going to be applicable to me. I was also personally going through a lot at the time. My father unfortunately passed away and I was. So two years prior he passed away and I was still overcoming losing my father at the time. So I kind of had a small gaff of just enjoying myself. But. But when I, when I came back to look at, when I saw that that's kind of where I parked it at the moment is I didn't. I just parked it temporarily before I. And then in the year after I found my wife, then my wife got married. So all. I couldn't prioritize so many things at the time when you came it at.

You with, with so many different opportunities. But it sounds like having read the book, you know, after you met your wife, there was probably an opportunity for it to resurface somehow. Maybe it was like you were packing boxes and it came up again or where did it resurface again for you that you wanted to relook at that.

At the material that you'd gone through before.

So how I came about it was I was looking for more business opportunities to grow and I actually got contacted by, I would say a good, a good mentor of mine. And he, but he was in, he. He was in, in the health. Health field. He's actually a practice Chinese. He practices in Chinese medicine. And so him and I had a lot of discussions and he actually shared a lot about his life with me and instilled a lot of wisdom that I definitely learned from that. And culturally, what, what I really place a lot of respect to our elders because they've gone through a lot of experiences that I, I want to always learn from. So I either don't make the same mistakes or maybe if I'm that stubborn, I'll make the same mistake. But at least I know I made that mistake and I can learn from it. So he was sharing a lot of that with me and he was telling me, you know, you should think about life insurance. He was part of, he was part of an organization that is involved in, you know, he had his life. Life insurance license and he kind of shared and talked to me about that. And then afterwards I met with his other. Another colleague of his who was more into life insurance and started talking to me about life insurance. And I'll tell you right off the bat, I was, I was already like, you know, stay away. I was, I was not really interested into going into that. But he was very persistent. He was talking whenever he could for about nine months or so. And I'll be very candid with you that I. My knowledge around life insurance, I was very ignorant around it. I only knew of term, but I didn't even know there were different types like universal life, whole life. And now, you know, we're talking about participating whole life. I didn't even know there were different types of life insurance. It's. And you know, just, just getting that idea to know that, you know, when people say, oh, I'm in life insurance now, I tell them, well, so, so you drive a car. So can you tell me? You know, everybody drives a car, but it's different types of cars, specifications and goal, different styles of cars, features and benefits. So it's just as broad of a category. But. And once I kind of knew, once he's kind of opened my eyes to see the benefits of life insurance, then I knew about whole life insurance. And then I realized, hey, this is a very important thing that people actually need in terms of having it a part of their financial plan. And unfortunately, being very candid, the, at least the Education process that I went through and the curriculum. So I've been involved in the CPA curriculum aspect of things. Life insurance is very seldom or very, if anything involved in that discussion at all. So. And that, I guess that's kind of where the journey started and what ultimately.

Inspired you to.

You enter into the profession.

And when. So then I remembered, I'm like, I remember reading this book about life insurance, and here I went back to go pull that book up, becoming your own banker. And then now those, those ideas now started to come true. And then I started seeing that, okay, so actually, as broad as life insurance is, it's also how the product is designed and how we use the tool. And then that's once I started to realize and I mean, there's actually a real good quote or story from Steve Jobs. And I always remember, and this, this story was about a journal that he read in the scientific journal back in like 1970 or so. So there's a published interview of Steve Jobs. And that interview that he said was that in this, in this story, in the scientific study, what they did was they put together all of the species in, in the world, and it was ranked in how fast they were able to travel in terms of us, like how fast they could cover in terms of the grass and, and, you know, in terms of the top, the top speed, the. Let me actually look at, find that the top, the, the people who are the species that was at the top was, was what's called the condor. And so the condor surpassed everybody else when it came to that speed, whereas humans actually ranked a third all the way down that list. And so when you kind of look at that as humans.

For me, at least, what I realized, we're not.

We'Re not always the most, we're not naturally somebody who, we're not naturally good at being, you know, we're not naturally designed in physical skills. But now when you kind of look at it, what Steve Jobs says is we humans are tool builders and with the tools we can enhance our capability. So the man with the bicycle could actually ended up being the facts there of the species. And it's because of the tool of a bicycle that's designed. And he says that, and he says because of that tool and the way that he sees computers, it's like the bicycle for the mind. And so then, you know, so I see tools always as ways to enhance our capabilities. And this tool that we have in terms of life insurance, how you use the tool can really benefit you. And so what Nelson Nash now that I finally, you know, got a lot more mature and for me to understand it can really enhance my own financial.

Well being and my wealth as so well put. So well put. And a great analogy because that's one thing that Nelson often said was that if you put the best tool for the job in the hands of an incompetent, not only is the incompetent not going to turn out any good work with the tool, they're likely going to break the darn tool. And so you, you can.

You can get your hands on the best tool to get the job done, but you need a good coach to show you how to use the tool properly. And up, up to this point in your journey, you know, to, to move from chartered accounting to telecom to E Com to embracing this process in your own life and then into this profession. It's, it's quite remarkable.

You know, the journey that you went through. I was sharing that before we hit the record button. I said wow, you know, we were kind of looking at all of our talking points and is rather extensive. And so what I liked about what you said earlier too around how in your accounting experience you had an opportunity to interact with a lot of businesses, a lot of business owners to understand the challenges that you know they're facing. And I would wager that one of them was ready access to capital. That would, that'd be a fair, a fair comment.

There's always a strive to that or a need for that access to capital.

Exactly.

And we all thought, at least I thought the only way to get it is through equity or from the bank.

Right.

And now even further with the bank, it's under their terms. Under their what? What is security for them versus are they really there to help you with the funding?

And what would you say to other existing chartered accountants out there who like you said, you know, through the accounting curriculum, the topic of life insurance, let alone dividend paying, participating whole life insurance rarely or if ever came up. And so what would you express to you know, those colleagues, those designated colleagues in, in the accounting field about this process and the tool that's used to implement it?

I think there has there one. Let me kind of take a step back as a professional. When other people come to us for professional advice, having some humility is, is very tough to share that you don't know the answer. It's always before you meet the client you need to know that you know the answer even though you may not know what the best answer you have to have a answer. And as, as a professional I Think what's really good in terms of how the profession is designed? We all have continuing education, so the first part is first recognize. And in terms of the first part of the curriculum and getting through that national examination, the national exam is focused more towards accounting of being good at recording transactions and putting together a set of financial statements. But there's a whole spectrum or a bigger view of holistically what that is. But now when you get clear about what goals and objectives clients actually want, and especially if you are looking to become a practitioner, where you are, where clients are looking for you to, let's say, file their tax return or give them some tax planning advice, most of what they actually ask for is tax because they want to manage their taxes and also set their financial view forward. How do I move forward from there? And so as a profession, it's designed very well that we have these learning opportunities. And this is something that is very underutilized in terms of exploring additional education for yourself.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And because, you know, the accountants that we meet with, and Rich, you can attest to this as well, is that there's very limited knowledge of the tool. And. But once that knowledge is gained, it just opens up a whole new set of possibilities where the, the accountant is saying, okay, I, I recognize this is something that, you know, my clients need to be made aware of. This information needs to get in front of them. Because ultimately, if you have ready access to a growing pool of financial value, which is very easy to record in terms of transactions that, you know, you would be accessing policy loans and, you know, self financing for a number of things, equipment, people, technology, et cetera. The accountant himself or herself asks the question, okay, how, you know, how can this work for. For me? And how does this, you know, and I think that having you a part of our team virtually is just been a real joy. And you've got a lot of capability, you know, that, that you bring to the, to the entire team. And so.

Knowing that you're in this practitioner capacity now and you can be working with clients and helping them to implement this, what energizes you the most about that?

Well, this, because this process works and it's. And I have to tell you, before discovering this process, once I knew about it, there was no way. So before, you know, we, we got connected. I was doing client work and exposed to, you know, need for financing and everything along those lines and being asked for tax advice. And then, you know, like, I have extra money. Where do I need to store it? What do I need to do with it. I can't with, with compromise to my own moral feelings of things. I, I don't. Because of the change of what my discovery has gone through, I feel uncomfortable telling the conventional ways of where to store your money and what you want to do with that. It's very difficult. So that's why I wanted to be a part of this team and be able to share, share that. And what energizes me, it doesn't even matter what type of client I work with. If they're somebody who has that optimal mindset, who wants to get involved, who's really eager to learn, who is very coachable. I am very much. I will be there to make sure that we get you out of. If you're in a difficult situation, help you get out of that financial prison that you're under. And when you see those, their eyes light up when you present how you can help them and the possibilities that they see.

It's, it's, it's very, very emotional to go narrative.

Very different than reviewing a tax return or a set of balance balance sheets with a business owner at the end of, you know, six months later after they, you know, when you're looking at last year's reports and stuff, what's interesting too is, you know, I don't know too many accounts that I've met who aren't interested in helping their clients save tax. That's often one of the things that they, they put their self out there and, and most of them don't have a, don't always see eye to eye with CRA and the rules that they have in place. And so they're always looking out for, trying to help create the biggest and best advantage to their clients and their, in their business clients. And so when they get awareness, you know, from a CPA's perspective, when you think that, that an accounting professional gets awareness of just how par whole life can bolster the balance sheet of a business and how it can create liquidity options, how it can create stability through difficult times like the COVID pandemic that we're, we're presently still dealing with, how it can augment the retirement potential or the passive income potential of the business owner, give them more ways to look at exiting the business by having another asset that they've built and created and then the impact of tax savings over a lifespan with the impact of the CDA account. When you, you, you think about people, colleagues of yours in the past, in your CPA life, what do you think? What do you think would resonate with them by being able to understand this. If, if they could really truly take the time to learn and understand Nelson's concept. How impactful do you think it could be to the business community?

Humongous. I mean, when you think of an accountant, what's the first thing you ask that most people would ask for in terms of an accountant?

How can you help me save money on taxes?

Well, I just kind of want to share some numbers with you. Right in 20. So every year I'm heavily involved in mentoring people through these national exams. So every year 8,500 people candidates write this national exam. It's a three day exam, 13 hours, 5 hours, 4 hours. 4 hours. And that pass rate is around 70%. So you know, we can round that to about 6,000 people in that exam. One of those exams focuses on a depth area which is taxation. There's taxation, audit and assurance, performance management, finance. And so one of those is tax. You want to guess how many take the taxation route?

Give us a number.

How many?

300 out of the 6,000. So that kind of turns out to be 5%. Wow.

That'S astonishing.

No kidding.

That just shows at the beginning their emphasis is focused on how to report financial information. That's really and by no means, by all means, accountants are very strong on recording that information. Oh yeah. Now drawing together the insights from a taxation standpoint, the ones who actually go there, I won't go even to the, the, the level of depth that they go into that, that it just kind of shows, you know, that let's say over the, the five, five years. So the chartered accountant. I'm, I'm a chartered accountant. I, I'm a legacy designation. All of the designations merged in 2015. So 2015, till now 6000 people have written, written. So 6000 times 5,30,300 times 5 is like 15, 1500 candidates are, I'm not saying like more specialized in tax, but those are the ones who actually pursue that tax side of things.

Oh, you learn something new every day. Wow, that's a remarkable, remarkable data point that you just shared.

So that, that's, that's at least just from a tax standpoint. So there's a, there's a very big gap between what people think about for tax and what's actually there. Not to say like those who are in being, who are actually a practitioner servicing, most of them are focused on what the client wants, which is how do I minimize the amount of tax currently. But very few look at in terms of opportunities serving the client from a holistic standpoint, even just beyond one year. What about a five year range? What about your lifetime range? What about your phase range from let's say you, you start the workforce all the way to retirement. So to be able to see that forecast or that length of time, that's very, that's not very much emphasized in practice. In practice and the accountants that actually have the experience when they see that like you're mentioning from your, probably from your experience when they see the opportunities that they can serve the clients, that's when the clients didn't even know they had a problem until because they trust you to raise those problems. But as part of either from a business model standpoint or something that's something you want to raise to your clients that here's a wonderful opportunity that you can serve your client and they can be very happy with you for that.

If you help them with something like this and put them in the right place for that. What do you think the relationship between as a tax practitioner with your client, what type of relationship do you think your client is going to have with you after that?

It'd be much stronger.

Absolutely.

That's for sure.

Yeah. The account that showed me how to create a legacy that's going to outlive me and my business and allow my family to extract a crap ton of tax free capital out of the corporation when I'm gone. And yeah, that's probably a relationship I'm going to want to emphasize and probably.

Send some referrals to when, when you.

When you're known to do that, be able to do something like that. Clients will come to you in droves.

Absolutely.

I mean how often have you heard I wish I could find the right accountant that can help me tax plan and structure my taxes and go through where I want to do. Very few want to know about. You know, I filed my tax return.

This, this is awesome and really good insights too. And you know one of the things that to preempt our listeners and viewers is that you know, on our, our platform. So when, when folks become policy owners they become clients of, of Ascendant and they receive this access to a client portal that has just an abundance of resources and great video content step by step approaches on how to execut of the process. And we're going to also be launching in 2022 just an entire section around what you're describing and how chartered accountants can add more value and impress their existing clients even further with helping them to accumulate ready access capital to bolster their balance sheet to make sure that the key people in the business are well taken care of, God forbid if the unthinkable happened, and to provide ready source of financing for all the things that the business needs to thrive.

And to do that, while also providing great tax planning or tax advice and, you know, mitigating tax and all those things. But we're going to have a whole section developed specifically, you know, for that audience, and you're going to be a very, very big part of that. And so we appreciate you sharing those insights.

Very valuable starts with the education and the willingness to get there. I think a lot of CPAs who will have a base of clients to really nurture that relationship. I think you owe it to your clients to get this education to know how you can better serve them. And when a client's happy, they're going to stay with you for the long term. There's reasons why they love you because you've done a great job. Why not, why not serve them?

Very well put, Rich.

Well, you know, you've done a great job of serving us. More today, Henry, with your. Your great commentary and understanding a little bit about your journey and how IBC showed up for you and how it's taken you from a career over in this path and then brought you into the world where you get to be a part of our organization, part of our team, and you get to share those lifelong insights with the many clients that we will work with now and into the future. So, so excited to have you a part of the organization. So excited to have you on this podcast now when you help people understand the impact of what Nelson's message is, and they get to embrace the becoming your own banker principles, you're really showing up in a. In a unique and different way. You're adding tremendous value to their lives. And so you may not always think of yourself as a hero, but every time you show up in a client meeting and you get to embrace this concept with others and you get to see that light bulb moment where they understand, finally they can control their own financial destiny. You are showing up as a hero. And so our question for you, Henry.

Is who would you like to be a hero to?

I want to be a hero to the working class. I want to be a hero to my family, people who really make things happen. I'm very, very grateful to all of the lessons and the mentors that I've learned from. And the part that I'd love to be able to give back for are those people who feel very defeated, that have gone through challenges and know that if.

There, there's some. We're here as a team to help you and know you don't have to go through the challenges.

That's very well said and such a pleasure to have you on the Advisor series of the Wealth Without Bay street podcast. Henry, you're an exceptional teammate. It's a pleasure to work alongside you and we have a lot of really, really great work to do and things to to get done here in our next painted picture vision. And you know, anyone who will have the pleasure of getting to know you is going to know just how much you care and how much you genuinely and authentically want to serve others and have a positive impact on their lives. And so you're a perfect, perfect addition to art for that very reason and so many more. And so, gentlemen, thank you so much again. Rich and I have been going all day. This is like our longest marathon of recording podcast episodes in a single day. We've literally been talking all day. And so we want to say to our viewers on the YouTubes, just take a look at the playlist that's shown up on your screen. We want to encourage you to continue your journey of learning, continue to acquaint yourself with teammates of ours who do such great work. Rich and I have get to have the fun and hop on the podcasts and, you know, interview so many great people and we're supported by amazing teammates that get the great work done every day. So thank you for tuning in and gentlemen, make the rest of your week great. And Henry, thanks again. Thanks for your insights. It was awesome.

My pleasure. It's been been grateful to be part of this.

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