Achieve Financial Freedom With Ascendant Financial (Canada)

People can lose sight of the fact that you're going to need the use of money for the rest of your lifetime. And this process of becoming your own banker is not a get rich quick anything. It's meant to be accomplished incrementally over many years, over a period of time that's gradual. And.

I guess what I would say to someone who's exploring the process or thinking about it, it's meant to be a lifestyle.

Jason, let's let me just to familiarize people. What you do is very unique or what we do at Ascendant is very unique in the world of finances. Can you just give a high level to what it is that we do to help serve Canadian, Canadian families, Canadian entrepreneurs, Canadian investors. How do we, how do we do, how do we serve them?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to do that as always. And you know, we at ascended, I mean we're really the gold standard in educating households and business owners on the implementation of the process of becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept. The essence of the process is to recapture the interest that you're presently paying to credit card companies, finance companies, to banks, third party lenders for all those things that you need throughout your lifetime. If you think of automobiles, property, education, investment opportunities and anything that you would otherwise finance, lease or pay cash for, this process will enable you to change the flow of that money. So it's coming back to your family, coming back to your business and you're not seeing money, you know, being permanently transferred away. And so for the past 13 years, you know, we've been educating Canadians coast to coast on this process and it's been an absolutely incredible journey.

Awesome. Yeah. And I've been on for a couple of years now and I've witnessed the amount of growth. Right. Obviously you've been running senate for a couple years, but you've been practicing this for over 13 years. And maybe that, maybe you can speak to that in terms of what time does for this process. I think everybody's looking for a quick, easy, easy fix. I want to hit a home run grand slam every time.

It's what I correlated to here is that if you think of when someone wins the lottery and that, that becomes instant gratification in terms of this giant windfall, this giant large sum of money. And people believe, many people that, that we either know, talk to, interact with, they believe that money makes them happy. And all, all that money does is amplify more of who you are. And so if you're a, you know, self centered egotistical, person and you come into a huge windfall of money, then you're just going to be an even bigger self centered, egotistical person. If you're caring and giving and you have an abundant mindset, then the more money you have, the more caring and giving and abundant mindset you'll be. And so that what I'm getting at is that people can lose sight of the fact that you're going to need the use of money for the rest of your lifetime. And this process of becoming your own banker is not a get rich quick anything. It's meant to be accomplished incrementally over many years, over a period of time that's gradual. And I guess what I would say to someone who's exploring the process or thinking about it, it's meant to be a lifestyle. It's not meant to be, you know, this one transaction or this quick hit financial plan or it's meant to become a lifestyle. And so really, really important to continually communicate that because of the society that we live in with instant everything, instant food, instant coffee, instant product delivery, achieving becoming your own banker is, is far from instant. It's gradual and it's incremental.

Right. And part of it is, I guess, big part of this really understanding a concept that is unfamiliar to most and really kind of resetting that back. And a lot of people say, well, I don't have extra cash flow to do it, but a lot of times they do. So it's not a process of like, where do you find extra money? You know, how do I make more money to do this? It's actually using what you have, just redirecting it in a different fashion. What, I guess, where have you seen in the last, we're talking about maybe the last just this year till now. So let's, let's talk about 2021. Where have you seen growth in your business in relation? I know there's been massive growth within the pandemic. Are there any specific areas you're seeing growth in the business in the last six months?

Oh my goodness, yes. So people have spent a lot of time researching this process, but prior to 2021 and then in 2021, you know, arriving at that decision that this is something I want to implement, I want to get going on it. I've been researching it for the past several months. I'm ready to go. And it's, it's through all the content that we're putting out there, whether it's via cash flow Canucks, whether it's via the banker's Vault wealth without Bay street. You know, all of these different platforms where our message is getting out there, people are watching and they're listening and they're rethinking their thinking. And, and so the conversations that are happening now are much different than the conversations that were happening last year. The conversations now are, we've consumed the podcasts, we've watched content online, we are ready to go. And last year it was much different. It was a series of meetings, it was a process of interactive education. And so the timelines have really been compressed and as a result, you know, our business is 114% over last year, year to date. And we more than doubled our business last year. And so to think that we're having this conversation in the midst of a global pandemic, it really shocks a lot of other entrepreneurs. Like how's this possible? How are you achieving this? You know, this rapid rate of growth and by proxy were attracting a lot of great people who are gravitating to the message, gravitating to the culture that we, we guard so closely here and that we're, we're just so darn proud.

Of is definitely very true to the essence of, of IBC and, and the teachings of, of Nelson Nash. Can you talk about the, maybe what you have Bill, you, you mentioned YouTube channel, you mentioned all like can you talk about the client portal, all those other things, those value add that someone gets as part of an experience of working with someone in general. Obviously we're all you're talking to infinite banking practitioners, people who have been through the program, through their mentorship and all that. But what else do you get an experience with Ascendant?

Oh boy, the list is long. But if I was to share with you, you brought up the client portal, that is just a resource that we are so proud of. It took the effort, time and energy of so many of our teammates. And what the client portal consists of is really a just a repository of content and education step by step approaches on each element of implementing the process of becoming your own banker. Whether it's in your, your household or whether it's in your business, people are looking for a resource where they can tap into it 24 7. So if you think about anything that you experience, right, if you need. For example, I worked for many years prior to becoming an entrepreneur. I was with Staples Business Depot and the genesis of the birth of that business was Tom Stenberg wanting to buy an ink cartridge for his printer. Late at night he drove all over town, all the stores were closed and so imagine if you're a client wanting to implement this process and you need answers to questions. It's midnight. Our headquarters, our world headquarters is closed. You'd be pretty frustrated. And so the client portal gives you access to all of that content from any device that connects you to the Internet. 24 7. And I'll add this, Peter, the other element is the group quarterly client coaching sessions. One of the things that are the late Arnoldson Nash indicated in his book becoming your own banker is to not feel like a lone ranger. You should be surrounding yourself with like minded people. And we've built this amazing community that we bring together. So these are clients that range anywhere from I'm just getting started to I've been practicing this process for several years. And we get together on a quarterly basis, we meet up, we do coaching on specific elements of, of the concept and then we record all of that and we archive it in the client portal. So this resource is just one of many that makes Ascendant financial so sought after in the marketplace. And what makes us most sought after is our people. And that's not just a platitude. I'm not, you know, it's not. That's the truth. The most sought after aspect of our business is our people and their unique capabilities which gives birth to all of these innovations. And because one of our core values is to continually create value for and continually impress our clients. And so it's through these innovations that that's becoming real.

Yeah, that's great. And I think, you know, those are all layers that are being built over time. So maybe we can, we're going to move into, you know, talk about you as a business owner, you as a leader and how that's been impacted. How's that, how you've been able to put what you've learned, let's say, okay, you're recently on Dan Sullivan's podcast. Can you talk about the things that you talked about there and.

How you apply what you've learned there into your business? Whether or not, whether or not it be automation that you talked about any of those other things.

I'll tell you, I really cannot extend enough gratitude and credit to Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach and I've been blessed to be a member of his 10x ambition program for the past four years. And one of the things that I discussed in the Multiplier mindset podcast, the episode that I'm very humbled to have been invited to be a guest on is if I take you back, Peter, to March 2020, you'll recollect that we had a conversation as an entire organization, and what I wanted to do is I wanted to make sure that all of our teammates felt that it was a safe and trusting environment to be able to express any fear, any anxiety that they were having as it related to the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and the impact that that would have on people's livelihoods, on how we go about serving people each day, how we continue to work together. And I met with all of our teammates and I said, look, I don't know how serious this is going to be, but we do know that it's going to have an impact. And we can choose to advance or we can choose to retreat, but we can't do both. We got to pick one now. And unanimously and without hesitation, everyone on the team said, we choose to advance. So that immediately gets your brain wired and thinking and working on how to advance. And so by shifting our state and changing our mindset in that moment, it was a game changer. Our business more than doubled last year. But what I did share with everybody is that everyone who's on the team today is going to be on the team this day, next year. Nobody's going to lose their jobs on my watch. As the leader, I'll be the last one to eat. And I think that really inspired our teammates to.

Continue to work with and for each other. And when you have a team that plays the game for and cares for each other, with that element and that element alone, anything becomes possible. And I'm so proud of all of our teammates. Like, Peter, you include it like everyone deserves the credit for the progress that we've made. As a leader, I have the privilege of handing out the credit when things are going well and reminding myself and being accountable that the buck stops with me when things aren't going well. And that is a leadership duty that I truthfully take very seriously. And I was just talking to one of our teammates, Dan Allen, earlier, and I said, look, whenever a teammate stumbles, trips, falls down, I'm going to be the very first person standing right alongside you, extending my hand to say, let me help you up. You know, we don't leave anybody behind on our team, and we never will.

Yeah, well, that's great. And maybe we'll extend deeper into that leadership component in relation to a couple things, I think I was just listening to another podcast recently, Lewis Howes, and he had his marketing guy, Rory Vaden, on talking about so many things about Just like his is more about multiplying time, right? And so, you know, thinking of, thinking of his mention was using automation as equivalent of comp. You know, how we compound money over time. He's saying automation will compound, you know, what you can do and it'll serve you down the road. Can you talk about integration of automation into your team and how you've done that?

Absolutely. You know, we look at every opportunity in our business to automate, with the exception of the relationship. That's one thing that we never automate and we'll never delegate is the relationships that we have with clients. We've done so much work. You know, I have to give credit to Devin, to Moses, to Jen, to so many leaders on our team who have built this incredible platform that helps create more freedom of time for advisors on our team, for connectors on our team like yourself, and business developers like yourself on our team. It helps us to create leverage and more freedom of time so that we can continue operating even more in our own unique abilities. And that is something that so many businesses have an opportunity to set out to do. But I'm here to tell you that it requires a significant investment of money, energy and time and then a significant investment of integration. Because automation requires an inherent element of trust. And as you remember, there was so much chatter within our group when we were launching all of these different levels of automation. And our group would say, oh, you know, gosh, that that's going to piss people off. Like, we're communicating with them too frequently and too effectively and we're going to repel people. And the feedback that we're getting is the complete opposite. You've been privy to so many interactions that we've had with people who, Peter, you can attest to this, who have said directly, wow, we really love your automation. We really love the way that you're set up and we'd love to learn from you and learn how to do that.

I had to really trust my belief and my instincts on, okay, we need to do this. There are reasons why. There's strategic reasons, there's freedom of time, freedom of purpose reasons. And it's becoming real. And so automation is good. But just my advice to your viewers and listeners would be don't ever automate a relationship or delegate a relationship.

Sorry. To expand to the, the leadership in terms of, okay, so you can run this business by yourself. You know how to. You're probably obviously best. I don't know in terms of speaker on the topic, you know it as well as anybody implement or all those pieces, how easy it is it as a leader, how do you, you know, know that easy to, to pass on those, delegate those responsibilities to other people within a company?

Oh, gosh. It's so much easier when you have full faith, trust and belief in your people and their capability. I want to continue to surround myself with thought leaders, with people who are comfortable constructively criticizing, with people who are comfortable challenging ideas and challenging strategy and offering their input and bringing their solution oriented ideas to the table. I value that. I embrace it. You know.

I don't ever want to be the smartest person in the room, otherwise I'm in the wrong room. I think people have heard that saying before and that the same applies to Ascendant Financial and the team that we surround ourselves with. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I love developing a business that continually creates value and continually impresses our clients. I love watching people develop and grow. It's a passion of mine. So I love to coach and mentor and I get to operate in that unique ability here. And so by relinquishing control and actually again, changing your mindset around that and embracing it. And the more you embrace it, the easier it is to do. And the easier it is to do, the more you want to do it. And so for me, it's incredibly fulfilling. And I know that entrepreneurs inherently struggle with that. Entrepreneurs want to continue to be in a position of control. You know, I'm the best person that can get that done. And you're going to end up being the one person that holds the organization back. And through a lot of great coaching, a lot of great mentoring, I had no problem whatsoever leaning into that approach and has worked so well. The approach meaning relinquish control. Give people the opportunity to rise and to allow your team's talents to come to the forefront, lead from behind. And that's one of my core philosophies as a leader.

All right, so this leads us to the next question. A sabbatical. So that's the ultimate, you know, empowerment for your employees. You talk about why you're doing it and what your expectations are of going into it and that next level of really just handing the reins off to the team to, to run the show while you're gone.

Well, I'm taking a six week sabbatical and it was inspired by Joe Polish of the Genius network of which I'm very proud to be a member of such a great community of entrepreneurs. And Joe Polish inspired me because he's taking a year off, so he's well into 20, 21. Sabbatical and I said, well, you know, I'm going to start with six weeks and see how that pans out because it's the longest period of time that I've taken away from working since I was a fetus. And so it's, it scares me. I'm, you know, going through those periods of anxiety about it. But I really believe that the way to learn about how the significance of a sabbatical and how to do it and how to truly honor it is to do it. And in order to achieve the vision of having a self managing organization through the coaching of Dan Sullivan, I have to do this. And Dan told me, he said, look, when you take this sabbatical, you're not going to recharge your batteries, you're going to replace them. And when you come back, make sure that your team is prepared because you're going to have a tsunami of innovation, a tsunami of new ideas. You're going to be rejuvenated. And I need to, I need a break, honestly, I need a break. I need a break mentally, I need a break spiritually. I've got to work on sharpening my saw in all of the areas that are going to prepare me to be the leader that this organization requires to achieve our next painted picture vision, which is 2022 through 2025. And so this break is something that on the one hand I am excited about and on the other hand I'm terrified of. And so it's, I am creating a website. I'll just say you're actually the first person to hear about this. But it's. People can stay connected with me on the sabbatical. The website will be jason sabbatical.com and so people are going to have an opportunity to just stay connected with me over that six week period. And then looking into the future, who knows what the future will bring in terms of extending that time frame and taking the time away and allowing my teammates to come to the forefront and to shine. And so I appreciate you asking about it. It's been coming up a lot lately.

Yeah, I know for sure.

Yeah, it is. And so.

Whether or not it's yourself or whether it's Joe Polish, what do you do in a sabbatical? Is it, you know, are you, are you on social media at all? Are you, how are you connected? Are you taking phone calls? Where does that, where's the line drawn?

Really good question. So my, my executive assistant Lana is going to be changing my passwords to all of the tools that I would utilize to access anything, work Related. So I'm going to be spending a lot of time really reading, so feeding my mind with. With new knowledge and being inspired with new ideas. I'm going to spend a lot of time listening to great music, to hopefully being able to attend a couple of live venue concerts and just letting my hair down, you know, and doing a road trip, connecting with a few of my mentors to talk about a number of things that I want to continue to. To develop and grow and work on personally so I can be a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better contributor to my community. I'm going to spend time refining my diet and my physical activity, and I'm already working out three days a week, which I love, but there's other things that I want to incorporate, including dietary improvements that I want to make. So it's. It's really just taking time to prioritize you. And so that's what I'm doing on this sabbatical. You know, I'm prioritizing me, every element of me, and that's. That's something I'm very much looking forward to.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

I mean, I. I'll speak from personal experience. Just trying to take a vacation, but not getting fully untied. It. It's. It's hard. Right. You kind of have to make that. That full switch. Otherwise you're kind of letting more than one person down.

Right.

It's, you know, you're kind of halfway in to one thing or another. So. Yeah, I know. It's. It's good to hear. And I think, you know, it sounds like something, I think something I would like to do at some point as well, too. Right. I mean, that's. We all need that refresher. The thing is, nothing's ever going to stop. Like, everything's. Everything's going. Everything seems to be, like you said, instant and, and, you know that. And to be able to have that opportunity to just really take that pause, take that breath and reanalyze what, you know, what is your vision, what's your purpose, all those things. And I think it'll just become that much clearer in that time.

Absolutely. And coming back, you know, with replaced batteries and feeling rejuvenated and having just a whole new, fresh, full tank of energy is something that is really going to be of a benefit to all of our teammates and to all of the people that we serve and all of the people that we will serve and just how much bigger we want Ascendant to become. And it's going to require me to step up and to be the leader that this organization needs to be. And so I'm really looking forward to this sabbatical to work on me and to get everything ready for our next painted picture vision.

That's awesome. Well, Jason, I appreciate you, you sharing this, first of all, what, what you do. But then I love these little chats where we can get into more about, you know, what you're doing as a business owner, as a leader. Right. And how you're developing yourself and your team. I think that's so important for people to hear, and I don't think that ever stops.

Right.

So always take time to invest in yourself at the end of the day. Now, before we wrap up, can you just tell us how people can get in touch with. If someone's interested in Infinite Banking, they want to get started, where's the best place to go? Where should they start?

Oh, boy. Well, I would aim people directly to our website at Ascendant Financial CA. Again, that's AscendantFinancial CA. There's some really great ungated content there. If you learn best by watching videos or by reading or by listening to audio, you can, you can essentially access all of those resources without having to provide, you know, names, email addresses, anything like that. So we have a lot of great ungated content. We have some great content on our YouTube channels, the Banker's Vault and Wealth Without Bay Street. Again, that's the Banker's Vault and Wealth Without Bay Street. So if you hit those two YouTube channels and subscribe, we're posting, literally publishing new content on the podcast side every week. And on the YouTube side, we're posting on average, five to seven videos a week. And so there's no shortage of great content out there for your viewers and listeners to consume.