I Grew My Networth To $665,000 in Just 8 Years!

Eight years ago, we were about half a million bucks in the hole and we are, as of today, approximate net worth is about 665,000 bucks. That's a pretty big turnaround and that increases every month. I'm extremely proud of that. But none, when I say none of this would be possible, could I have done better? Could have done other things? Yeah. I'm not saying there's no other way to generate wealth other than building the process of becoming your own banker. But for me, none of this would have been possible without Nelson Nash and my entire team. What comes to mind when people see see this title From Financial Strain to Financial Freedom? That first part is the biggest thing. When I see financial strain on this screen and I think about, as it relates to my story, I would say that that is the understatement of a lifetime. But, you know, it doesn't matter where you're at financially in life. Even if you're brand new to this whole process, you're probably not going to roll out of bed tomorrow and just start the process and then start having family banking meetings, although it absolutely could. But even everything that I'm sharing can still relate just to you directly. And then, you know, you can always expand the conversation and start getting other family members involved when it comes to financial freedom. First book I ever read, cover to cover was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich dad, Poor Dad. And you know, the way that I learned about financial freedom was that you've created enough passive income from different types of investments or rental properties or private lending or dividend stocks or whatever it is that you're creating passive income from. That means income coming in while you sleep. You have generated enough passive income to sustain your living needs, like your desired lifestyle, without having to go to work every day. Now, am I financially free from that context? I'll be totally straight with you and say no, of course. We're, you know, we're well on our way. We're using our system to, you know, invest in opportunities and create passive income, which is amazing, but I certainly am still dependent on my income. So the key about financial freedom in my mind, though, is that we have a clear path as to how to get there. If we just keep following the path, it's literally inevitable. So I just have to keep on doing what I'm doing and I'm surrounded by amazing people who have achieved this objective. So I always want to give some, some love and some appreciation to the founder of this process, Mr. R. Nelson Nash, who you can see on the back of this book here I was listening to some content from his son in law, David Stearns the other day from the Nelson Nash Institute. And he had said that this is how Nelson would start every one of his webinars. He would say, you know, the infinite banking concept is an exercise in imagination. Because this is, you know, imagination is more powerful than knowledge. It's an exercise in imagination of what's possible. It's an exercise in reason. Like if you can use reason and logic and see what we're talking about here. This is not rocket science. This stuff is really ridiculously simple. Not something that's going to happen overnight. It's something that is simple, reliable, systematic. It's just a process day after day. And so when you use reason and logic, you'll see that this process is, it can help anybody, but it's not for everybody. And when I say it's not for everybody, I mean because it does actually take a little bit of energy and work and time. You're here tonight investing time in this whole process to learn more. You know, we read books, we're still learning today. Myself and my teammates, Nelson Nash was reading and learning more about money and finance and economics. And this whole process uses his imagination literally to the day he died. So when people get on calls with me and they say, hey, Vern, I've watched a lot of your content, I've read the book and got to tell you, I think I have a pretty good grasp on this process. But I still have some questions and I say to myself, and sometimes to them, well, I should hope so because I still have some questions. Right when Nelson says prophecy, like, I mean, he really believed that he was doing the Lord's work regardless of your, the higher power of your choice. And I really think that there is something way bigger to this whole process than just numbers and all the rest of it. There's something way bigger going on here. So hopefully we can paint that picture for you here tonight. Now I set the stage. I kind of already did that a little bit. The objective is really to help you guys imagine and see what's possible with this process. Nelson would often say that a man would rather die than think. Right, because you're too freaking busy to think. We're human beings, we're on autopilot. You people are different because you're here tonight challenging yourself and you're thinking, thinking and you're rethinking your thinking. There's a really simple, critically important element to this process that it is really, really easy for everybody to Step over. And it's something that we refer to as the problem. We all have a fundamental problem and we all kind of intuitively know it, but everybody jumps in and goes, hey, I got questions. How does this work? How's the policy work? Let me look at some numbers and here's my objectives. And what's it like compared to this thing or that? First of all, this process isn't meant to be compared to anything else. It's not an either or type of concept. This concept is all about, and we're changing the context. I want to implement the process of becoming my own banker and recapture all my debt. Implement the process, becoming your own banker and invest in passive income opportunities. I want to implement the process, become my own banker and lend my son some money to purchase his first car and show him what a loan contract looks like. It's an and process, not an or process. But there's a very important problem that we need to acknowledge, and that is the banking problem, my problem, or the problem that we had and that we have basically solved and we're continuing to expand upon. Albert Einstein is a pretty smart guy, as I've been told, and he said that, you know, if he was given an hour to save the world or save the planet, he would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and 1 minute resolving it. Because when you're crystal clear about what your problem is or what the problem is, you'll know exactly what to do. But we're always looking for solutions and we haven't even clearly defined the problem. So we're going to talk about understanding the problem now. I'm going to lay the foundation, keep it simple, the problem that you have, and then I'm going to dive into where we were at. So who is the one actually doing all of the work to generate all of the income that you earn? It's you. But the question is, who has all the risk as it relates to everything that you do financially, that's also you. Now here's the thing. You're doing all the work, you're taking all the risk, but who has all the control? Is it the bank? Here's the other thing. The key is capitalized your money. Who has all of your money? See, there's something in Canada called the Bank Act. You can't get around it. Your money has to flow to the bank. Isn't that just a little bit suspect? Isn't that right there? Just give you something to think about. Gosh, that's odd. And so the question that I have for you Is this okay with you? Are you okay with that? We're just going to sit back and take that. So who else has this problem? Everybody has this problem. So I want you to think tonight, who's your best friend, who's your business partner, who's your closest family or family members? Right? This is what we're talking about. If you're benefiting from this process, if you're listening to this right now and you're already implementing the process, we can coach you, we can give you some support around how to get folks introduced so that they can learn more and get informed and make a decision for themselves. It's not about pressure or anything like that. So the question is, who else has the problem and who else wants to solve this problem? I would assert everybody wants to solve the problem. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our IBC journey and where we started and what we've been able to achieve as a family and then how we've kind of expanded this conversation into the extended family. Unstable income. When you become an entrepreneur, when you get into a self employment, stuff like that, you just never know what's going to happen. But I believed and my wife had amazing belief in me and she supported me and we worked together and that was pretty stressful. But that also led to some big mistakes and some massive debt because we had to rely on things like credit cards and lines of credit to solve a lot of problems. You know, look, I could always pull the pin at any point and go back and start lugging pipe again or doing construction, I could do that. But I talked about prophecy. I just knew in my soul that I was here to do something bigger. And I believe in my core that I'm doing that right now. And so my wife said that to me too. She said, look, if you go and do construction again, that's fine, but you're going to be miserable. You're, you know, you're not going to live a fulfilled life. And she knew that. So we had, as a result of, you know, a negative net worth. We were, you know, at least 470,000 bucks in the hole. You know, here's zero. We were way below that. If we sold everything that we owned, we would have been in the hole about a half a million bucks. We had well over thirty four hundred dollars a month just in minimum payments alone to sustain things. We weren't making any headway by making those payments. That was a lot of money, particularly at that time. 3400 bucks today can barely buy some eggs. But 10 years ago, $3400 was a reasonable monthly income. Am I wrong? I mean, even four or five years ago, pre Covid 30, $400 was quite a bit of money. But the inflation is so out of control right now and the costs are going up so quickly, our incomes aren't even staying nearly up with that. So that's why it's so much more, even more critically important for us to get really real and get really serious about implementing this process. Because we got to do something. It's actually up to us, the people, because we know, top down, ain't nothing going to happen there. Top down, thinking it never happens. And I mean, you know, up at the institutional and government level, it isn't going to happen. That's what Nelson used to talk about is the banking function has to be at the you and me level. We should control that process because we're the ones doing all the work. The banks have convinced us that we need them. But the reality of it is even though they do fractional reserve lending and all that stuff, they lend out a lot more money than they have on reserve. We know that we're not going to go there. But the point is, is banks still can't make a loan without deposits. And who, pray tell, are the depositors? A look in the mirror and you'll see one. So you're working hard and you're depositing your money in a business. That's what a bank is, it's a for profit business. And who do they share the profit with? The owners, right? The shareholders. And I know you can go and buy a little bit of stock in cibc. I'm not talking about that guy. I'm talking about significant shareholders are benefiting off of the sweat from your back. So we got to do something about this. We had over 30 automatic debits, probably more. So that means I like to talk about, to my clients about something called a debit to deposit ratio. We've completely flipped our debit to deposit ratio. We have a lot more deposits coming in today than we do automatic debits because we control the financing function as it relates to our needs. Who hates automatic debit? I was talking to a lady about that today. She goes, oh yeah, they're all over the place. All kinds of debits are coming out and some they'll come on this date and that date. It's hard to keep track of. I got to constantly move money around. It's insane. And you're doing all the work and all you do is you see your paycheck land and then it just gets dwindled down as those automatic debits come through the that's all a part of the banking process. Now how did we solve it? This is the key. Here's the solution. The solution. If we can agree that banking is the problem, the only way to solve that problem is to become the banker and become the bank owner. That is ridiculously simple. And here's the deal. If you're brand new to this process, you may not be aware that we use a tool called a dividend paying participating whole life insurance contract. I ideally with a mutual insurance company. A mutual insurance company simply means it's mutually owned by the participating policyholders. It is a private business that's owned by me, my teammates and all of our clients. So you have to flow your money to some institution, some deposit taking institution. Guess what? Life insurance companies qualify as one of those. So we are using the whole life policy designed a very specific way with the right type of company as a tool to implement this process. But the process of becoming your own banker in the infinite banking concept has absolutely zero to do with life insurance. Nothing, nothing at all. And you don't even need a life insurance policy to implement this process. So there's a lot of different tools and products and financial companies and all that stuff out there. And you may be able to use the back of your toilet tank if you do it right. As a to implement the process of becoming an oil banker, we just need to warehouse or capital somewhere. But the back of your toilet tank or a shoebox or a safe is a crappy tool to implement the process of becoming your own banker. Okay, so the solution is becoming your own banker. The family banking system. I got into the insurance industry in the year 2011. The first time I laid eyes on this book it was 2013. So you're noticing something right there. I said the first time I got introduced to the process was 2013 and I didn't really start, although I did buy my kids some whole life policies in 2011 and 2012. But again, I knew nothing about the process of becoming your own banker. Just because you buy a whole life policy doesn't mean you're becoming your own banker. Right? I just had the tool and I had no idea what I actually had. I knew there was something there, but I had no idea. So I learned about it in 2013, but I didn't start implementing until 2016. That's three years of capitalization, three years of learning and development, three years of growth potential. And not to mention those three years from 2013 to 2016. What would that have done? 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now? A lot. So I implore you, do not delay. That's not pressure. That's not me trying to get you to buy something. I'm just telling you, you don't even have to do business with our team. If you don't want to or don't see value there, that's fine. Just make sure you're working with somebody who references this book and who has policies of their own, and they can show you that they're actually practicing what they teach. And more importantly, that they are authorized infinite banking practitioners through the Nelson Nash Institute. I started in 2016 because at that point I. I was at my absolute rock bottom. I was really trying to make this industry work. And it is not easy. I'm not. None of this woe is me stuff, but this business is not easy. It's very difficult. And you have to wear a lot of hats. And I didn't really know what I was even getting into when I started. So I was basically in survival mode from 2013 to 2016, and I was basically at death's door as it relates to my business and getting out. And the thing is, I was not the human being that I needed to be at the time. I just hadn't developed myself and I wasn't hungry enough and I didn't have the desire in 2013. And unfortunately, I waited till crisis mode, until my back was against the wall to get started. Guess what? Learn from me. You don't have to do that. So you don't have to wait until you're at rock bottom and your back is against the wall before you start implementing this process. I didn't have mentors. I didn't know people in 2013. In fact, I didn't know in 2016 either. But in 2016, I just drew a line in the sand and I said, that's it. I'm doing it. I had the course material for this process because I got trained directly through the Nelson Nash Institute to learn how to implement this and coach people to implement it. I had the course material since, like 2013. I made it too difficult. And what I did was I drew a line in the sand and I said, look, it's all in or it's bust. I'm going to make this work. I know I want to implement this process and I'm going to either figure it out myself or. Or that's it. So I started to Study and within about 30 days I got through the course material and I wrote my exam and got my practitioner certificate. So I made a mountain out of a molehill. You know, things are different now with the Nelson National Institute. Luckily it's developed so much since then. They have a mentorship program. It's actually mandatory. They have an interview process. They don't just let anybody in. We're really trying to maintain the integrity of this process because it's getting, pardon my French, bastardized. That's what happens is it gets sensationalized and, and people use it as a sales gimmick and all the rest of it. And Nelson would be turning in his grave. And it's really frustrating, but it is what it is. At least if somebody's doing it incorrectly, at least they're introducing people to the idea and hopefully those people don't get turned off from it, but they hopefully find the right teammates, the right coaches, the right mentors to help them implement this properly. Because there is a proper way to implement it. I didn't say a perfect way because nothing's perfect, but I said a proper way. We have now just gotten the 13th policy in our family system approved. And I'm super thrilled. I'm super grateful. It's on the my two month old niece, baby Winter. And I'll tell you one thing, man, like, it's a really exciting time because I missed that opportunity for my kids. They were like three, four or five when I got their first policies. But age zero. We got that policy in place and I'm super thrilled about that. I think that's our first age zero. So we've got 13 policies in our family system, minimum required premiums. Now, if you're new to this process and you're not exactly sure what I mean by minimum required premium. Look, if you're going to start a business, a banking business, is it reasonable to assume that it might require some capital? And this process is really, really simple. The more you put into the system, the better it's going to grow and the more you'll get out of it. Is that complicated? It's ridiculously simple. So every policy that we structure, generally speaking, it's going to have a minimum required premium. Like, and by minimum, I don't mean low. 61,000 bucks. I would say that's a pretty reasonable number. It's not necessarily low, but when I say minimum, I mean a minimum contractual, agreed upon amount that you've agreed to put in. So every policy will have a minimum premium and every policy will have A maximum premium or optional premium that you get to decide to put in these policies. Now I'm talking about the policy for a second, not necessarily the process. These policies are amazing. They've been around since the year 1847 in Canada and, and they've never failed to produce a profit. And yet we've been convinced the general public that this is a stupid place to put money. It's absolutely ridiculous. Now I have optional premium of about 180,000 bucks a year within my system. Now does that mean that I always max that out? Not necessarily always, but it's up to me to make the decision and have the desire. The more I flow to it, the better my system performs. The life insurance company actually responds to to my behavior. So our behavior as the policy owner is going to make a much bigger impact on how the policy performs than anything the life insurance company does. Doesn't that sound like control? So our maximum premiums are north of $240,000 a year. We have six lives insured currently in the system and the total starting death benefit. Every policy that we get, it's a life insurance policy. Yes, we use it for a tool to implement the process of becoming our own banker. But, but every policy has a death benefit. So that means if God forbid, one of those lives insured pass away, a bunch of tax free money is going to show up. So when I added up all this, all the death benefit on the policies to start, it was those brand new policies. The minimum guaranteed death benefit when we started between the six policies is $3,729,534. And now as we pay premium and as we participate in the profits with the insurance company, we structure the policy so that the death benefit will actually grow and expand over time. And there's a very specific reason for that. Not just death benefit protection, but because the more death benefit we create, the more cash value the policy is going to generate. So that's called paid up additions. So to date our paid up additions have accumulated $2,794,976. So the total death benefit on those lives insured as of today, $6,224,510 so far. And our total cash value as of yesterday was $675,424 rising daily. So our daily cash value as of today is growing by about 175 bucks a day. And the only reason that that money is growing is because of a contractual guarantee. And every life insured is aging. Have you ever been Paid for aging before. Are you interested? It's very simple. So every single day that we age as a group, as a collective, this policy year, the cash flow is increasing by about 178 bucks a day. And guess what? That's the worst we can do because it's only going to get better. Guaranteed. Right. It can only get better as time goes on, just by virtue of how these policies are structured. So my net worth is increasing by $5,340 per month just because we're aging. I cannot share this enough. I'm extremely humbled by all this. And we have a long way to go. Okay, a long way to go. But I started out by telling you about eight years ago, we were about half a million bucks in the hole, and we are, as of today, approximate net worth is about 665,000 bucks. So that's a pretty big turnaround. And that increases, you know, every month, like I said, by 500. And, well, that's not including any kind of investing and stuff like that we're doing. We're just talking policy growth alone. I'm extremely proud of that. But none, when I say none of this would be possible, could it have done better? Could I have done other things? Yeah. I'm not saying there's no other way to generate wealth other than building the process of becoming your own banker. But for me, none of this would have been possible without Nelson Nash and my entire team. So I am eternally grateful to all you guys. And so as of today, we are now recapturing about $5,000 a month north of $5,000 a month within our policy system. So we set the terms on the payments. I beefed up the payments a little bit. And so this is $5,000 a month that I'm repaying back to my own policy system that otherwise would be going to commercial banks today. I put that as an abbreviation. PL just stands for monthly policy loan payments. So when I borrow money from my policy, and I use that to do things, just like if you borrow money from a bank, you have to make a payment, right? So best practice, if you're going to borrow money from your own policy system, you better set up a loan repayment schedule. But all that money is being recaptured, flown back to my own system, so I get to go back and use it again, plus what grew. So that means, could I increase those payments? Say yes. Could I decrease those payments? Say yes. Could I push pause and stop those payments altogether? Say yes. Who has total and absolute control? The McCarty family banking system, that's who. I have about five automatic debits and they're all strapped to my credit card so I don't even notice them. Nobody's getting inside my bank account and pulling money out. In fact, I keep very little money in my bank as it is in the actual bank, the commercial bank. So I have five automatic debts that could strap to my credit card and I get points for it. So look at that. It's pretty good. I already get let the cat out of the bag. Who has all the control now? The family bank or if you were implementing this process, it would be you. So who gets capitalized? Who gets all the money? The bank that should say the family bank. That's where the money's flowing to. It's flowing back to a company that we co own and we get to help increase the profits of that business and they are contractually bound to share profits with us. So you're flowing your money somewhere anyway. It has to flow to an institution. It may as well flow to a company that you co own and you actually get to participate in the growth and have some control over things. So I have a question for you. Is there anything preventing us from working with extended family, having a conversation and working together to talk about this process so we can all get free faster? Right. So I mentioned this earlier. Imagination is more important than knowledge. So just imagine that for a moment. Think about your own family. Just I call it my core four. My wife, myself and my two kids like all the payments we used to make. And as I started to implement this process, I started to think about my brother and sister in law. I have two brother in laws and two sister in laws. I started to think about them and I started to think about the payments that they were making. And I heard Jason say this one time, I'm like, man, I want all the debt, I want that debt within the family system. I want those payments coming back to the family system so that we can recycle that cash and we start to finance the cars and the trips and then the renovations and the investment opportunities moving forward as a family. So that's what I started to imagine. And you can think about this for a second. Do you think maybe it took a little bit of time before we got their attention? Is that okay? Yeah. I didn't just roll out of bed and start this in 2016 and go oh my gosh. Well of course I did start talking to my family but because I was so excited, you know how that gets them. But I said okay, you know What? Let me implement this process, let me start to build this, let me start to get a bit of a track record, let me start to learn how this works. And then I started to talk to clients about it and then I started talking to more of my family about it and slowly they started to get involved. And you know, some of them have their own policies now, which is great. But I had the desire. The only thing that is preventing you from implementing this process yourself or getting free or losing weight or whatever the objective it is that you want. It's just desire. That's what it comes down to. If you have the desire to achieve something, you're just not, you're going to remove all of the excuses. If you're just interested in things, you're going to allow excuses to knock you off course. That's just how it works. So it's all about having conversations. Think about the rich conversations that we have now as a family. In fact, there's anybody who has had a chance to watch the family debt series that I was so lucky to be a part of. But if you've seen that family debt series, you've met some of my family members that I'm currently working with. So thank you for watching. That's amazing. I hope you got some good value out of it. But that's what it's all about. Now you saw some of those conversations that we're having, right? And they were really normal and organic and yeah, we have a little bit more formal family banking meetings from time to time. But I mean, we just have rich conversations about like what matters to you, what is it that you're trying to achieve? Where do we want to get to? Because when you have a target, it's much easier to hit it. When you don't have a target, what are you going to hit? What are you shooting for? You don't even know. So we're talking as a family, what are the objectives we want to achieve? And then we think of ideas and how can we support each other and how can we double our efforts and we create agreements. We don't just willy nilly and we're learning, you know, do we make mistakes? Absolutely. Are you going to make mistakes? Yeah, that's just how it works. But that doesn't mean you're doing anything bad or wrong or you can't do it. Making mistakes is okay. That's how you learn. So we have family banking meetings, right? And we talk about this stuff all the time, but we have family banking meetings where we actually, you know, discuss how do we want to grow the system? What objectives do we want to achieve? Where are we at in the whole thing? And then we have, like I said, agreements and things like that that we put in place to make sure everybody's clear about what's actually happening. So but if you're new to this concept and you're learning and you're like, hey, I have questions, I want to get more content, I want to see if this is right for me. And that should be you. Text the word schedule to 780-809-4599.

Use your imagination. Just, you know, kind of thinking through this process. So not all of us, you know, at every point in time, you know, accumulators or we don't collect. Right. So some members of the family are always in the need of money at times and then the tide turns and they become depositors, they become savers. Right?

Yeah.

You guys ever heard of interbank lending? So this is what it's going to become. Eventually the system is going to become an interbank lending, you know, where one part of the families, you know, it's in the saving mode and the other part of the family is in the spending mode. Right. Or financing mode. So it's just quid pro code. Right. So I think that's a great. Diversify the family banking system and to have all the captive customers, you know, within the family.

Precisely. And with that said, does any of that show up on a policy design illustration?

I've never seen a lot of it.

Right. So that's why we talk to people about using your imagination and thinking about what's possible. Yeah, we're going to show you the policy design. Yeah, we're going to show you how the numbers grow and how good it looks. But what does that actually do? What is that going to make available for you and your family? Right. How can you use the system to improve your situation? That's what it all comes down to.

The best thing about family bank is no family member is ever going to lose again. Everybody is a winner when they're practicing family banking. But if the family is practicing banking with commercial banks and everybody is a loser, you know, you know, client meetings, why would my family member pay back, you know, seems like all it's for them is to pay back the loan. While if you present it like that, then that's exactly how they're going to feel. But if you present it in a way that everybody benefits by practicing in the process, that they're not going to feel in an obligation. Hey, I'M just, it seems like I'm just paying back the money, like what's in for me. We'll create a situation where everybody wins.

And one of the things that we.

Do in a family is when families, extended families come shop for money. Money is inventory. It's inventory for the bank, it's inventory for the family bank. When extended families come shop for money in a family banking system, I would put a promissory note, let's just say they bought a $50,000 for buying a car. I would put a promissory note on my debt. 50k of my death benefit will go to this person. So as they're repaying the loan back, even the loan is repaid.50k of that loan, the principal that they borrowed is allocated as a benefit to them when I die or benefit to the next family if I live past them. So if you put back all the money to the family banking system and then I die and you get all the money back, what did you lose? Can you do the same thing with the bank? If you give all the money to the bank and you die, does the bank give you back all the money? You just have to create a situation and a vision that everybody wins together at the family bank. And then once you get to that stage, then it's a no brainer for extended family to participate in this.

What are some of the pitfalls that you had while you were building this family banking system?

Luckily, you know, so far my family and I have really good communication. We get along really well, we give each other grace, we recognize we're human beings, none of us are perfect, all that stuff. You know, there's possible pitfalls that could happen that way with communication and whatnot. That's why, you know, I joked with the teammates earlier. I said, look, my brother is in a rough situation today in his life. You know, do you think I'm lending him money? No. Do you think banks are lending him money? No. So some people say that they go, oh man, you know, my brother can't hold down a job, he doesn't repay his loans. Like, gosh, I would never do family banking with that guy. I go, well, yeah, neither with the bank. So why, like, why would you. So it's not going to be for everybody, right? It's not going to be for every family member. In fact, even Nelson said not all his family members participate in the family banking process because guess what else? Some people think they're smarter than you. Maybe they are. They, they don't need this because they've Already got it all figured out. No problem. There's no sense trying to convince somebody that the Earth is round if they think that it's flat. Personally, I've never seen it. I'm pretty sure it's round. But I'm just saying, if they think it's flat, there's no sense trying to convince them that it's round because they already know. They know it's flat. Right. So potential pitfalls, though, what I did, and I'll tell you this straight, I bit off way more than I could chew, you know, in terms of even policies and premium. I wasn't keeping enough capital surplus reserve within my system. I was, you know, borrowing more out of the policies. Yeah, I was achieving objectives and stuff like that. But then I found what happened was, all of a sudden, I turn around and another opportunity or a problem shows up. And guess what? I got no capital in my system. And now I'm no better off than anybody else. I have that problem. Right. So going through the journey, I'm kind of learning that. And so, you know, part of what I do is I systematically set money aside for minimum capital surplus reserve. That's in addition to set money aside for taxes and things like that. Like, I'm setting money aside all the time. That isn't meant to be used necessarily right now. It's meant to be used for specific things. Right. So that's one of the. I would say one of the pitfalls is you might get a little bit overzealous and get really excited and maybe, you know, try to do too much and you'll learn. It's totally fine. The good news is, the entire time while I was doing all that, what was happening to the value of my policies? It's going up. Here's the good news. Who's the only person that can break your system?

The person who's the banker.

Yeah, that's right. So if this doesn't work out, you could take a look at the mirror.

Everybody's familiar with the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. There's a quote in there that he says, I look around at us.

You know what I see? Losers today. It's given us something. It has given us a chance.

To do what? To do something good, something bad, and a little bit of both. And the way that I see it is that everybody's a loser because we're putting all our money into the bank until we start slowly funneling our money into this system. And it's giving us an opportunity now to become winners.

So have you won any Sort of like awards like mathematics competitions? Or have you written, like, your exam to be a CPA or anything like that?

Because you've managed to turn your net.

Worth around by in excess of a million dollars? I think in a matter of what is about seven or eight years. Do you need to be something like that to do this? I use my head for a hammer for about the first 22 years of my life. Man, if I could figure this out, literally anybody can. But, yeah, no, not. Not at all. That, that's the beauty of it. Like, this process is so ridiculously. Literally, anybody can do it. In fact, what's funny is, you'll notice it's almost like the younger a person is that as you learn and as you get more experience, I run into people, I joke all the time. I go, this guy's just too smart. He's too smart for this, you know, because some people just. It doesn't even matter. I've even had people agree with me go, yeah, that totally makes sense. But, yeah, I don't think it's for me, like, okay, but my, My. My daughter, she's like 14 years old, and she, like, got this when she was 9 because she didn't have all that programming and all that unlearning and relearning that had to be done. All those habitual mistakes and all that, all that training and all that convincing and all that indoctrination that we've gotten from the system. I was wondering if you could speak to the statement that in order to avoid biting off more than you can chew, the importance of expanding in relation.

To your needs, in relation to your ability to.

To, for example, recapture obligations, reclaiming the.

Banking function and the fact that it's done gradually, because we do get that.

Question quite a bit, the first thing that you got to do is you got to get a really good coach, right? That is. I mean, you know, obviously get yourself educated and all that, but you got to get yourself a really good coach. Because, you know, I'm lucky because I'm surrounded by amazing coaches, but, I mean, you know, sometimes I'm my own worst enemy, right? So I'm in here on myself, running my system, and, you know, I've got a license. I could decide to write up a new policy tomorrow if I wanted to write. But get yourself a really good coach. They're going to make sure you have clarity on the process, and they're going to make sure that, you know, you get really clear about what your specific objectives are and understand how you're Structured financially, what's your financial DNA? And then they're going to help you build a program that is manageable and sustainable for you and it has flexibility so that when things are really good, you can jam a lot more cash in there. And when maybe things get tightened up or slow down or whatever, or if you're a contractor, maybe you earn most of your revenue during the winter, maybe you earn most of your revenue during the summer, and maybe your expenses stay the same all year long. This process can help you kind of smooth all that out. But you don't necessarily have to build these big massive policies. If people get that wrong idea, especially out there in the marketplace, they hear the word whole life and they think expensive. Whole life is not expensive. Just want to follow up on some of the examples you talked about with your older clients, like the guys in their mid-60s and that. So when you're talking to them about them implementing a family banking system, is it more efficient for them to take policies out on themselves or do they take them out on younger family members? You know, what do you recommend for that? Have to know what the family situation is to make any kind of recommendation. So I'm going to speak in a little bit of general terms. Let's say my client is that 65 year old that you're talking about. Maybe he has some objectives, he wants to pass on his wealth or wants to create this family banking system. I talked to a guy today, amazing guy, and he's talking about, you know, putting policies on his grandkids. And literally he's like, hey, I want to get together with my grandkids and I want to talk to them about this process. I want to teach them, I want them to understand it. And I thought, oh man, that's amazing. Because yeah, you're going to leave them in policy behind, but the real legacy is the knowledge that he's leaving behind, right? But here's the deal. If he goes, how is the family going to continue to build and sustain the system? Where's the money going to come from? Right? So everybody should be insured. I talk to tons of parents and they get the kind of the wrong idea. They go, hey, you know, wouldn't it be more efficient if I put the policies on my kids? I want to put all the money into policies on my kids. And I go, okay, yes, you want to build this up? And I go, hey, what happens if you get smacked by a bus? How are the kids going to pay the premium? And he goes, oh, yeah, that's a good point. If you and I both took 10,000 bucks and we just both put it into a policy, now you're a little bit wiser than me in life, aren't you? A little bit, yep. You've been around a little longer, right? Yeah, I'd say. Yeah. So if you put 10,000 bucks into a policy and I put 10,000 bucks into a policy, who is likely to have a larger starting death benefit, me or you? You. The contractual guarantee is that the total cash value has to match the death benefit by age 100, although your death benefit might be a bit lower for the same premium than mine. Your policy is actually going to be tremendously efficient because the insurance company has a much shorter time horizon to get all that cash in the policy to make sure it matches by age 100. So likely your policy is going to grow more every day than mine. And the way that we structured, we probably both have similar access to cash immediately. So it works just fine for, you know, people who are 60, 70, and it works just as well for someone who's 20 or 30. It's just that when you're 20 or 30, you have more time for the capital to grow and maybe you have less money in life when you're 20 versus when you're 50. So when you're 20, you know, you can put 2,500 bucks a year into a policy, and that's a great place to start if you could do more. Fantastic.

What is it that we do different in the coaching and all that stuff, all the back end stuff that we provide versus Because I know personally, I started my policies with somebody else and I'm here now for a reason, and it's because of the coaching and just to help people understand what it is that they're getting if they decide to work with us.

Kwan, let me put that back on you like you started with somebody else. What was it that attracted you to Ascended Financial? What made you decide to become a client?

When I was searching for this, I had to look because I wanted to get the right source. And I went to the Nelson Nash Institute to find a practitioner. There were the law around. I did my due diligence, but obviously it wasn't good enough. And I started with a different coach because at the time my mind was limited. I thought, because that's what most people think. This was before COVID I needed to talk to somebody in my city, right? Just like I need to talk to. I gotta find somebody in Saskatoon or. Or the closest place was Edmonton. And so I was like, okay, maybe I Gotta find somebody in Edmonton so I can sit down and talk. Because that's the old way of thinking, right? Realized now that I realize you don't need that. That's why our team is all across Canada and we can help people regardless of location. And so he helped me. But what he did was he built a policy. There was minimal coaching. He couldn't explain the stuff that I really wanted to understand the policy better and to understand how to use my policy better. And I made a big mistake. My big mistake was I sold the rental property, made $100,000 off of it, and instead of using it to build my policy, I went and I paid off my truck and doing these other things. Now the hundred thousand dollars has left my family forever. Yeah, it can never grow for my generation and my son's generation. And once I realized that I had bad coaching and even reading the book, like Nelson's book, there's lots of things I have to read lots of times to really understand it. But it's the coaching that would have helped me understand that a little more. That's why I'm on this team.

What I say to my clients, Kwan, is I go, look, I'm literally building my system, my whole team. We're all standing with you, shoulder to shoulder. I just imagine we're all linked arms and we're just walking the length of a football field. It's just super wide. We've all linked arms and we're all walking together, shoulder to shoulder, building our system together. So we're coaching our clients. You know, Sarblo keeps getting better, everybody's getting better, and we bring that value to the clients. Right. And so to your point, yeah, it's where what separates us is that strategy is that coaching and the guidance that we give our clients. And yeah, we have 2,000 hours of content on YouTube and we have an amazing podcast, and we have great leadership, and we have a client coaching portal that you get access to, and we have amazing strategic relationships with the life insurance companies. And not only did you start getting coaching and guidance, you actually had the confidence to say, wow, I'm getting so much value here that I think that you guys could actually coach me on how to become a part of your team and coach other people to implement this process. So I want to do that.

So what happens during our weekly brainstorming and mastermind sessions, you know, where we new advisors learn so many things, strategies, you know, from senior advisors, and then we implement that in our own system first, and that gives us the conviction to then Go talk to clients, to prospects. Right. That this thing works. And we've been kind of coached and you know, we've implemented. So that's the best part of this job. We preach what we do ourselves in our own family systems. I think that. So the brainstorming sessions are a great resource for us to get educated. You know, as I said, implement in our own systems and then go out and share with others.

That's a really good point, Satish, because I'm not taking a shot at any of our industry colleagues. But I was in this industry for many years before I learned about the process of becoming your own banker and before I joined the Ascendant financial team. And you know, that's one of the things that perpetuates out there. People are always trying to find a way to sell another product to generate more business. And they might be selling a product or an idea or a solution because it might be an easy sell or they might have a really good pitch or whatever. And it doesn't mean it's necessarily all bad. But are they doing that now? Don't get me wrong, I'm going to run into the odd client that is in a much different situation in life than I am. But Jason always says it says that too. When you come up with a solution, you need to sell yourself on that idea first. You need to make sure, like if I were in that person's shoes, no one would I know about them. Would this be a good solution for me before I ever presented to a client? You know, so you're exactly right, Satish. We're actually practicing what we teach other people. So that's awesome. So make sure you text the word schedule to 1-808-094599 to schedule a call. 15 minute, you know, no obligation, introductory call to get connected with one of our teammates to help you gain some clarity and determine the next step. How to use IBC for buying a new house or condo by setting up new policies. Anything that you can use money in banking or borrowing for, like buying a condo or a house, you can use this process for. Like we're all talking about warehousing capital and having the desire you just, you have to capitalize your policy system and build that system, whether it's one policy or a system of policies and build it up over time so that you have more access to cash to achieve more objective.