How To Pay Yourself First Without Stressing

The concept of paying yourself first has been around for a very long time. A lot of people talk about, you got to pay yourself first, pay yourself first. But people don't really know how to do that. It seems so simple, but yet it's so. It's so ambiguous that they're like, they get stuck on what the how is. Well, the how is really simple.

For people that maybe don't know. One of the things I like to chat about every once in a while is the Colby Index. K O L B E Colby. If you're not familiar, you can go to K O L B Colby. I believe it's Colby.com and you're looking for something called the Colby A Index. And I don't know, there's like 36 questions or something you answer. And people like to refer to as like a, like a personality assessment. Man, I gotta really work on. I'm using a lot of air quotes lately. I can't help myself. Something about like the camera and I'm like, what does it look like when I frame my head like this? Is this a bunny? Do you remember on snl, I think it was Chris Farley? He was the guy, his name was Bennett Brower. He would do on the weekend updates and he'd be like, so, so what if I don't use deodorant and brush my teeth regularly? Anyway, Sometimes I do that in climbing. But talking about the Colby Index, just really quick, and then we'll, we'll talk about IBC stuff. But I, you know, both Vernon and I are high. Quick start. So there's kind of four measurements of, you know, how you do things. And Colby isn't really personality related. It's more about instinct. It's your instinctual, natural way of doing things, attacking your project or, you know, completing a task, et cetera. And so Vernon and I are very high on the Quick Start index. So whenever we hop onto a call, a lot of times, what are we gonna talk about? I don't know, hit go, but let's go, let's get started. And then it just kind of develops from there. So it ends up being fun and engaging and it's a varied amount of activity and discussions that can happen, which usually there's some ideas that get generated in a conversation like that. Would you say?

Yeah, I wish I, I wish I could say, Rich, that I don't occasionally over leverage my Quick Start, but I certainly, certainly do. But I'll tell you, thanks for sharing that with me back in the day when I first discovered it, because I mean, procrastinators are killer for everybody, but particularly for you and I. These, these quick starts out there. If I don't have a plan in place to take the action, or if I don't take the action immediately, consider it's not going to get done. Procrastination is a killer for me, which.

Which is funny because we just finished an amazing podcast recording with one of our teammates, Niffer, which was a ton of fun, so can't wait for that episode to come out. But one of the things you mentioned before, we kind of started the call, we were doing a bit of a positive power up, which is something that we do frequently at the ascendant organization. And you were indicating that, you know, hey, you kind of burned in the midnight oil last night and you. You basically smashed out a whole bunch of backlog of work, right? Because we have meetings. A lot of times we're doing meetings. It's back to back to back to back to back meetings. And you do that for like two, three days straight. It's. It can be a little taxi. You're on zoom, you're sitting in your chair, you're at a standup desk, and it's just non stop meeting to meeting to meeting meeting. And then there's a lot of tasks that get created as we're helping people implement this process in their life. And, you know, but you need to have time, carbon your calendar to start really working on that stuff. You got to do a needs analysis, you got to prepare, you know, some illustrations. You got to, you know, you got to think on what you learned in that client meeting. And, okay, how can we structure, implant? Like, there's some really, really intense, focused effort that has to go in. And it's. That's a lot of thinking work, right? But it takes time, and we got to put that time in because how we're helping people is what matters. And. And you using reminders with that thing. What are you doing with that?

No, what I do is I. What I do is I. When I finished my last client meeting last night, I had dinner with my family and I said, hey, what do you guys want to do? Dad's going to put in some midnight oil tonight or I'm working late Friday or possibly Saturday morning. What do you think's best? So, like, dad, go crush it. I'm like, cool. So I put on like shorts and a T shirt, got comfortable, grab my, do you call it Spotify playlist. I turned on my Bluetooth and I just like, blasted the music and I Just, it's like I'm in my zone getting everything taken care of, right? So that's why I showed my. My speaker that. That helps, you know, pump the energy up.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. And you know what? And that's the thing. You. So you've got, like, a little mental trick to help you get through that. But, I mean, it's enjoyable, but it becomes more enjoyable to do it that way. And you don't have to kind of be, you know, front stage necessarily. You're not. You're not. Not on with people at that moment, but you're working on really critically important things. And, you know, even I find, you know, yesterday I had a pretty. Pretty busy meeting, and, you know, because of my quick start and other Colby related activity, you know, people who have meetings with Richard, they start to learn real fast. Richard's not so good at watching the clock. It's. It's a. It's a real downfall of mine. So I'll even begin a lot of my means, like, just so you know, heads up. I tend to not pay attention to the clock at all. And some of my meetings tend to go long because I just get so ingrained and engrossed in what we're doing, our conversation and, like, the thinking and the planning and the discovery and the questions that get asked, and I just kind of lose myself in that activity because it's not only it highly enjoyable, you know, but we're accomplishing something. We're working on something really important. And then all of a sudden, like, I get a reminder pop up, and they're like, your next meeting starts in five minutes. Oh, right. I gotta go wrap this up very quickly. And so, you know, that's. That's part of my. My nature, my. And. And it's. And it's. It has been beneficial for me, but it also has counterbalance of where it's. It's not as well. So, you know, I recognize that it's something, you know, we're. We're all a work in progress, right? We're all trying to get better in our. In areas of our life, you know, and that we want to improve. And that's an area that I'm always seeking improvement. Sometimes I find, like, little Jedi mind tricks that work for a little period of time. Like, you know, these are not the droids you're looking for, but they don't. Oh, they don't always work or they work for a limited amount of time. And then I have to, like, you know, I have. I need Some other Jedi to come and, like, get. Get me back on track. So. But interestingly enough, on that very same topic, I was talking with a good colleague of mine the other day, Jimmy, and he's, you know, really good guys, amazing coach, and he's talking about, you know, the Power of Habits and a book, a couple of books that he's read, one of them, Atomic Habits, and it's been on my list for a long time. I haven't got to it, but actually smashed through most of it on audiobook over the last three days. So back back on audible. It's been. Been a hiatus since I've been doing that, but I'm back on it, and it's good to hear, you know, like, these little, small, intricate things that we do that create habits that have a really powerful effect in my life. And it's. It's the small thing that leads to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I was thinking as I'm listening to the book and I'm trying to implement some new, you know, morning routine. Habits. Routines are very difficult for me, and that. I rephrase that. I'm going to change my language. I have not prioritized routines in my life because they're kind of the antithesis of what my Colby says I should do. It says I should not be routine oriented in any way. And that usually works out all right for me, but there's certain areas where I really want to have a little bit more routine. So I'm focusing on some morning, new morning habits for myself, and I'm really happy about how it's going to. But as I'm doing that work and I'm thinking about this book, I'm thinking about the habits that are important for ibc, the habits that we're teaching and helping our clients learn and understand and having, you know, discussions with them on a regular basis or having them embrace the content that we're producing so they can really embrace those habits. They're going to watch a video from, you know, Sarblo or Roman or yourself or Jinjin or some, you know, Jason or some other member of the team, and there's like, some comment that just sparks them, like, that's the little nudge that I needed to improve that one thing a little bit more efficiently.

It happens. Rich, I'm so pumped. I'm so grateful for the team. I'm so grateful that I'm not the one who has to do all that on my own, because just yesterday I met with my client and and they were referring to maybe a couple videos that I was a part of or I thought I recorded. But just like what you said, they're dropping. They actually know our teammates. They're dropping other people's names and say, oh, yeah, Roman did this video and he said this. And man, that really got me thinking. That's why I booked this meeting today. Like, how good is that? Right? Like that. That is so good. And, and you're right about, about the habits. I'm with you with that. I struggle, I find it sometimes challenging to really create those routines and habits. I've often said this to you where I'm really good at following a process. I'm not really great at creating process. So I think. Is that the, Is that the follow through? Is that on the Kobe Report? Is that the follow through? I'm not sure, but. But I'm, I'm good at following the process. But if you ask me to create the spreadsheet or do the this or do that, that's another reason why I'm grateful for the team. In fact, I, I showed on a video today I, I just recorded with Roman earlier. So make sure you go to Bankers Vault. Eventually this won't be getting processed and posted. I can't remember. I don't know when it's going to get posted, but we recorded the top five money leaks for Canadian families. And so we talked about the things that can have you leak money and that you don't even maybe notice it. But more importantly, what are some systems and processes that you can put in? Of course, tied in with the process of becoming your own banker. But how can you actually tighten up those money leaks and make sure that that money is being counted for and flowing back to your family system? But it's. It's one of those things where I have my own policy loan tracker. I updated on a monthly basis. And I'm so committed to it. It matters to me. And when things matter, you prioritize the time, just like what you're doing with the atomic habits. And you recognize that, hey, there's probably some benefit for me to create some kind of a morning routine. Right? So same with, you know, managing your system or whatever. Right.

Well, and it's funny that you mentioned that because in our client portal, for anyone that's a. A client instead of financial, we have a client membership portal. Many people will be familiar with it. And there's a ton of. Not only is there a boatload of content in there, there's also a ton of like, kind of Templates and resources. And so there's. There's links to access a loan amortization that we recommend you use to build an amortization or take a policy loan. How do you want to set repayment terms? You control all these things, but the act of. Of opening it, of printing it, of making that happen, doing that step is telling your brain, this is important. And here's what. Here's a commitment that I'm making. We have a loan commitment template that we've built where you can write down, hey, I, you know, Richard took a policy loan from this policy and this policy. And there was. This one was three grand, this one was ten grand. And so it's $13,000. I'm applying this too. And there's like, checkboxes. So what are you putting it towards? It's like repayment of debt. I'm recapturing this. I'm buying a car. I'm making an investment. I'm buying Bitcoin, like, whatever it is that you're doing. And then there's a big other box, and you just fill in whatever it is. You know, so get. Get specific with that. And then how I intend to repay this back is by doing blank. And there's a couple check boxes. And so then there's like a page two, which is just like. It's like bullet points of things to remind yourself and be aware of. Don't steal it. There's a. Literally, there's a picture of a can of peace right on it. And. And you can sign and date it. And so we've been trained over our life that when you sign your name to something that is usually important, you're making a commitment. You're. You're signing a contract, usually, you know, mortgage contract, real estate purchase contract. Like, these are things that are really important decisions where you sign your name. And so they're. The act of doing that is just one little kind of habit. And when you're talking about being your own banker, those little things matter and they compound and they build up. And then you start to see, okay, maybe you have kids and they're seeing you to take a policy loan. You want to start talking about the family bank. Well, now you go. Go to the file folder and you pull it out and like, boom, here's all these loan requests stapled together with a loan commitment and an amortization. These are all policy loans for the family bank. Here's, you know, we bought the hot tub with this. We bought the RV with this. We went on our family vacation. With this. And now you have like all this data that you can use to have really cool and powerful conversations that support the financial growth of your whole family.

Yeah. And you can actually, to that point, I'm actually using. I don't want to name drop here, but a client of ours, I think it's specifically Sarvalo's client, but you know what I'm referring to. So from that last. Sean. Yeah, that last client coaching session on May 15, you know, we're building a community here. People sometimes they start implementing this process or they hear about it and they go, hey, Richard, how come I've never heard of this before? And they assume that no one's doing this. And this is like out of nowhere. They're the first person who's going to get a policy and start accessing loans and banking this way. But we have literally thousands of clients across the country amongst our team who are practicing and implementing the process. Not just the, the guys over here that tell you that, the guys and girls that tell you that it's a good idea. And this is what I've been able to do. My clients are achieving objectives every day. And so we get together on these client coaching sessions and, you know, the team is there to coach and share, you know, advanced case studies or different ideas and different ways that you can implement the process and expand your system and so on. But now we're starting to get clients who are totally embracing the concept. And if they weren't already successful in the lane that they are in right now in life, they'd probably be here coaching people to implement it. And we've had clients. Come on. Sean did a great job. Like a 25 minute video where he showed how his own policy loan tracker that he created, there was a couple hundred people or 100 people on the call and everybody was like blown away by the way that he manages the system and, and it makes his loan repayments and does it on a very, you know, scheduled, diligent way, including me. So again, being good at following a system, not so great at necessarily creating them. Guess who downloaded that spreadsheet and is now using that policy loan tracker as a, as an excellent tool to make sure that I'm accountable to those money leaks, those expenses that can come up, you know, the AC unit, the Calgary Stampede, the Blake Shelton concert. Those are all paid for by policy loans. And it's really easy to trick yourself to think just because I put lump sums of cash in my policies here and there, that's really me being. It's Kind of like escapism. It's like me, you know, using my quick start, whatever. It's easy to slam cash into a policy. But am I actually being diligent as a banker? I issued my family a loan to go do that thing. So did I create a loan repayment schedule to be accountable, to make sure that I'm not stealing the fees? I'm putting back more than what I use. So I'm using a specific policy that I, I pulled the maximum loan out to recapture some debt, and now I've got my policy loan tracker and I'm taking those specific payments. I put other cash in other places in my system, but that specific payment, right now it's up to about 4,000 bucks a month for my loan repayment schedule that I have. I'm putting it specifically in a segmented policy that had $0 to borrow out of it. But now I can actually a. I get to, I like watching it, but now I get to walk my clients through my own tracker and I can show them, hey, I took the policy loan on this date. Can you see that? There was nothing there to borrow as of that day? And, and then now I put back, you know, $4,200. Well, how much can I borrow? They're like, oh, you can borrow like five grand. You see why you want to become your own banker? It's because I'm putting it back into a system I own and I control. And that cash is growing every single day. So I've been pretty excited about that process that I just started to implement here the last couple of months.

Oh, that's fantastic. And that was an amazing presentation. And again, it's, it's available in our client portal for clients of the firm, which is fantastic. And there's many other ones. And there's great, great conversations about family banking. Lots of, we've had certain videos that we've been able to play and then talk through and discuss. And I think a lot of the real value comes from those open discussions that we have. And we also, we try. I mean, it's all technology. I mean, we're not like technology wizards or whatever. So you try to do a breakout room in Zoom. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But we try to, we try to get some engagement and community building opportunities in those sessions as well. And I'm excited because I think our next one scheduled around the end is September, if I remember correctly. And you know, and then, and then we're also planning a big event sometime in October in Edmonton. I don't remember the date offhand, but I believe we got. We're going to be doing a good event for both for our clients and I think also for the general public, which will be a lot of fun. It'll be good to be together with our team because we all work remotely and virtually and we're scattered, you know, across a lot of the country. And it's nice, you know, a lot of us haven't been together in the same room in quite a long time. Part of that's because of geographic distance and then also just because of, you know, the whole Covid business. But it's gonna be a lot of fun to be together as a family, the team oriented aspect, but also as, you know, as the greater IBC kind of family comes together in an all in one building, which is kind of nice to see. So I always love that. That's an area where I get really inspired and enjoy and, you know, hearing your story, how you're implementing Sean's. Sean's tool that he shared with everybody. And my perspective, again, this kind of goes back to the Colby we're talking about earlier is I'm a simplifier and that's probably too much energy and effort that you're putting in that I would want to do. So I try to keep it even simpler than that. I don't track anywhere near that well. And because of it, I'm not tracking as well. I may not be seeing the same level of gratification or success to the point that you are, but I'm also like, you know what? How much energy do I got to put in to do that tracking? I want to. I want to control my energy inputs a little bit. And so I do a lot less tracking in relation to how you're doing it. But I think what you're doing is fantastic. And one day maybe I'll get there, or maybe I'll just like convince someone else in my family to do it so that I don't have to. That's another question.

Who not how?

Right? Who not how?

Yeah, like I said, you know, you and I are very similar in those, in that way. All I'm really doing, all I did was originally I just said, okay, I'm just going to start with one loan. I know that I bought this microphone, that camera and my tripod when I downloaded the spreadsheet. So thank you, Sean. He did make it available again to our teammates, but also it's available to our clients. They can go on there and they can download the spreadsheet. Super robust and very intuitive. But I downloaded it and I started playing around with it and I just put in one loan. I just said, I'm just going to put in this one loan and then I put it in there. And then I was like, oh, that was pretty easy. And then I just kind of. Now I have probably 20 loans in there. They're all just there. So now I just got to spend a couple of minutes each month when I go to make the payment to look at what I have to send in and then I just have to update. Okay, made a payment, made a payment, made a payment type of thing. I say payment number two. My tracker will go from, let's say it's 12 payments. It'll go from 11 payments down to 10. It'll tell me exactly the balance of the loan that's left there. And I'm totally with you. But yeah, it is, it is. It's just something that I'm slowly kind of integrating. We were talking about atomic habits earlier and, and yeah, it is so far. Like it actually it's one of those things. You're probably like this with me too. Like I might take me a little while to get started sometimes, but when I start seeing or doing something and then I can start seeing the benefit, I kind of get like, kind of hooked. I kind of get, you know, you kind of get a little addicted to it.

Right.

So now I'm kind of like, you know, I like kind of popping open my policy on tracker and adding things to it and making sure that I'm well fulfilling on my commitment that I make. Because now that I'm doing the tracker, my brain won't let me not do it now.

Right. Yeah, that's right. It's, yeah, Atomic habits that it's all about. And like that's one of the things that the book talks about is, you know, the, the thing that it's usually something that you really don't like that makes a habit make, makes you form a habit because you don't want to have this, this bad result continue to happen or it's something that you really like and so it makes it easier to enforce more do those habits is that there's a reward on the other side. And this, this reward is a very powerful reward because you log in and you take a look at your, your, your policy portfolio and your loan portfolio. Like, oh look, look how much loans went down and access went up and you know, and then you're looking at, okay, upcoming in the next 90 days. What are some of the you know, big picture target items I have where I'm going to need access to capital for. So part of that, diligent items, like at the end of the day, we all want to have more success in our financial life, right? We are all different people. So one of the things that we do teach people is that, look, here's our method, here's our way of doing it. But because your natural way of doing things might be different than somebody else's, you know, some people are more inclined to be a little bit more detailed. They're going to be, you know, excited about messing around with a spreadsheet. Whereas other people, if they're not doing it, you know, in physical paper or whatever, then they can't and they can't see it, then they're not going to see the same success. So we try to help coach to what works for you. We're going to give you some, some tools and some ideas and then implementing and recognizing what Nelson taught us. If you get and focus on the primary conceptual level of what's happening. Don't take a policy loan unless you have a purpose for the loan and a intention on how you're going to pay it back. You know, when Nelson says don't steal the piece, what he, what he means is you, if you take a loan, put the money back in, put back more than you took out, okay? And if you put back more than you took out, you're paying yourself, quote, unquote, a spread of interest. Great. That fundamentally means there will be more money available for you to work with in your overall financial resources because the money that you intentionally paid yourself didn't disappear to some other frivolous crap running through your life. It didn't go to, you know, 45 double doubles last month at Tim Hortons and 14 donuts or whatever that you went and got. It went to some strategic area of your life. Well, I mean, it's Friday. I mean, it's gonna be a good day for a donut. But that little premise is, is a very simple. Like the concept of paying yourself first has been around for a very long time. A lot of people talk about you got to pay yourself first, pay yourself first, but people don't really know how to do that. It seems so simple, but yet it's so. It's so ambiguous that they're like, they get stuck on what the how is. Well, the how is really simple. You go get a well designed, high cash value, participating insurance policy that builds like a cash machine over your entire lifespan. I don't care who the body is. That's an amazing way to pay yourself because you have a forced payment in your life. There's a premium that must be paid, and then there's a big flexible portion which, which is optional but highly important. It's, it's a turbo booster for the insurance, and you get to build and design that with your coach. Then as you get that machine working, now you have capitalization taking place. Now there's things you need to do in life.

Boom.

You have access to a resource of capital that you own and control and can use. And you have habits and skills, coaching, mentorship, tools and resources to begin implementing that so that you're improving little bits and pieces along the way. Know there's a saying about the, the death of a thousand paper cuts. Well, those money leaks that you and Roman talked about, that's how we have money disappear out of life. And it has a compound effect over a lifespan. So if we can close those leaks and we can, and we can harness the potential of that money by being focused with our energy and focused with our habits, more financial prosperity comes to you. And that's why we teach people. This isn't about an insurance contract. This is about how you think. Nelson would say it's all about how you think. It's all about how you think. It's all about how you think. And that's how he would say it. He would begin every presentation, he would do every seminar with that statement.

Yeah, that's so good, Rich. You nailed it. A couple things, the reason why I was pointing to those specific words on there, your own, you know, the key words are your own. So just because maybe Vern or whoever uses this tracker and Richard does it his way. Well, that's because that's Richard bank and that's his family, and that's how he runs his bank. And that's what works with, with him. Right. So every client's banking system and how they operated is going to look as different as their, as their thumbprint. That's the first point that I wanted to make. And the other point was when you were talking about paying yourself first. You know, some people say that, am I really paying myself first if I put my, my payment quote into some savings account at someone else's bank.

Really kind of paying them first. So what I want to do is I want to build a system with a contract that has guarantees at a company that I co own where I get to participate in the profit. And every time I drop that premium in there or a loan Repayment. I'm truly paying myself first because I'm the one who gets use and control over that money. And it's actually being put to work for me and my family rather than somebody else's. So you hit some good points there.

There's a spot in the book and I'm just trying to remember where it is. I believe it was somewhere near like page 37 or 36 or something. And it talks about, you know, Nelson talks about the First national bank of Midland, Texas. The whole purpose of putting in the book is to help people understand how do you kill the best business in the world? A bank. The First national bank in Midland, Midland, Texas was the most like profitable bank per capita population base in the United States. You know, for, for quite a while, a long period of time. You know, a lot of oil money and stuff like that. And then the shareholders of the bank, they all got onto the greed money cycle of everyone's making, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever in the oil business. And there's all these oil projects where they're trying to find oil and discover oil. So they're, they're now getting involved. Well, what do they do? They're taking loans out of the bank that they own, the main like shareholders, but they weren't paying the loans back. They were non performing loans.

Right.

And because they weren't paying the loan back, there was no capitalization left in the bank. They had stripped all the money out and they weren't making repayments. And then, and then oil went down and everything kind of, you know, went bad. And so the actions and the habits of the shareholders running that bank caused a major problem that caused that bank to fail and that, you know, thousands of people were out a lot of money, the depositors, everybody had a problem because of the poor habits and poor decision making and the lack of knowledge and understanding of banking in general. For the people that own that bank, that, that whole story is there to teach us an important lesson. Again, we sound like we're kind of, you know, on a wheel here of just a repeat. But it's all about how you think you, the policy owner, the policy owner's behavior is far more important than the behavior of the insurance company in this process.

Yeah, I know we're running out of time here, Rich, but you're exactly right. Just, just one quick point about the unseen, you know, about those money leaks. If I spend the money. You talked about the compounding factor of that basically working against it because you know, you spent the money. It's gone. It's no longer working for you. You can't really see that. But to contrast it, what's really cool is going back to my loan tracker. Even if you make lump sums or do whatever it is that you're doing, the cool thing is you actually kind of can see the benefit of when you're paying it back to your system. You're putting back more than what you use. Plus, your cash flow is rising every day. You can actually see. I equate that as, oh, that's me actually recapturing that lost opportunity cost on those dollars. When I put 4200 bucks in and there's 4500 there for me to borrow. Where'd that 300 bucks come from? That's just from the way that I think, the way that I structured myself, the way that the policy, the. The tool that I choose to warehouse my capital in, the way that it works, it allows me to recapture that. That interest and have more capital available to do more things with for my family. So I just wanted to kind of share that because I just. I'm just super now. You got me all jacked up, man. I can't. I'm gonna go do some jumping jacks or something before my next meeting. Otherwise, I'll be talking a thousand miles a minute.

Well, I mean, maybe for me, I probably should be talking a thousand miles a minute. It would get me through my meetings a lot faster, you know, because my meetings always. We were talking earlier how my meetings always go over time, but we covered a lot of ground here today, dude.

It was great.

But, you know, for everyone that's tuned in and for the folks who are watching on YouTube, make sure you continue your journey of learning. There should be another set of videos that's going to pop up here shortly, and I bet you one of those is going to be pretty fantastic. It might have my face. It might have Burn's face or somebody else. Go ahead and click it and watch that next video because you're going to learn a ton. Thanks for being with us today and make your day amazing and make your financial life fantastic.