Recap of the Wealth Hacker Conference

When you incorporate the strategic planning of IBC into your life, you're automatically enhancing the value proposition for a future known event. And that future known event is pretty simple. It's the day that you die. People will put in more energy into planning a family vacation than they will into planning for the known event of their own passing. And if we put in the equivalent amount of energy into the known event of your own passing, the probability that you'd have a lot more capital to also be able to fund family vacations coincidentally goes up in this quality time. I'm excited about chatting about a recent event that you were able to attend in Toronto. And this event was all about the, well Packer conference. I unfortunately wasn't able to attend, but I've been looking to, you know, I've seen some messages and some pictures and comments from people who were at the event, from our team. And of course you were there, you were live in person taking in all the ambiance of this incredible group of people. So what are some of the things that you took away from being at the event and some of the cool conversations you were able to have?

Yeah, thank you Richard for asking. And yeah, it's fantastic to be with a fantastic room of people. I think we have 700 audience. The reason is that we ordered 700 cans of peas to give each attendees, so that's why we received that number. But it's fantastic to see the, this many people and there are a lot of other sponsors at the events as well who are mortgage brokers, private lender groups, all kinds of real estate related organizations. It's just amazing to have all Irwin and Cherry, their own power team, I guess they invited there and all the like minded wealth hackers. A broad number of speakers at present at the event. It's just so fantastic to be with this many people.

Yeah, awesome. Well and of course you go down to an event like that and I would imagine you probably spent most of the time over at the Ascendant, you know, booth area. When I saw some great pictures of the booth, looks like it was, it was pretty busy there with people coming by and having conversations. So you know, you're attending, you're, you're obviously trying to listen in and hear what's going on as a bit of a participant. But ultimately you, you, you have another role when you're there. You're really working at the sponsor booth. So sometimes it's hard to, to hear everything and be really, truly immersed in all the, the content that's happening from the different speakers Was there anything that you maybe took away from the event from a particular speaker, someone that you were able to maybe listen to or tune into more throughout the day?

Yeah, I did. I actually was there for quite a couple of speakers. I know Erwin gave a great update on what current economic updates. I guess that's very good. So. So he did mention a little bit. And of course we all know what's happening with interest rate. We have recession coming in, so we have Irwin and also Daria who gave some mortgage advice as well. Give the audience a little bit update on what their advice are. In a difficult times like this, it's great to see there's leaders out there. Right. Because when people have a lot of unknowns or unpredictable futures happening, there are, you know, leaders in this area that stands out and then share their opinions, share their views, which is fantastic. And of course I really enjoy. There's the different variety of audience. We have Derek Foster talking about stock investing and we also have cryptocurrency from bitbuy as well. So yeah, it's interesting for me to hear some topics that I'm not personally familiar with. So it's just give me some, some, some more ideas. You know, that's the whole idea of a wealth hacker is not about enhancing what you know. But also find out some blind spots that maybe just have some more inspiration.

Oh, that's great. I like the way that you put that. That's fantastic. And, and of course on the, the docket of speakers was also Jason Lowe. How did you find that section went over. I don't know if you were able to tune in and like watch Jason's presentation or anything. What are some things that came out of, of that? And I know one thing that Jason likes to do as I do, is try to be fairly interactive with the group of people. So did you see some of that? I'm just kind of curious. Cause I don't know what he actually did and presented some. I'm looking forward to have you walk me through being a participant in the room to some degree.

Awesome. No, Jason was the second last speaker. The very last speaker was a keynote speaker, Jesse Isler. And Jason, during the day we have lots of attendees coming to our booth and saying that actually they're very looking forward to hear Jason speak. So we're, we're kind of telling Jason that, hey, we have lots of people expecting, like really looking forward for your presentation. And of course Jason is a fantastic, very, very engaged speaker. Right. So he comes in, make it very fun and interactive. Ask Questions. I personally really, really love his presentation. Although Jason prepared a lot of content which is very, very, A lot of value to be added. Right. So he's kind of going very fast. And then I guess the idea is to give people who's not familiar with becoming own banker the infinite banking concept. Give them a chance to hear. Oh, what are some of the things? I want to find out more. Being a advisor practitioner myself, just hear Jason speaking in that kind of format and you know, very high level. But I mean it's amazing. Like I personally really, really, really enjoyed his presentation.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I didn't actually know that. I didn't realize that he was on towards the end of the day basically as the second last individual. And so prior to that you had, as you said, there was people coming to the booth. You guys had. We had a large presence of our team that was there and you know, you making the journey all the way from the west coast, all the way to Toronto coast to be there. What were some of the things that came up, I guess maybe prior to Jason going up on stage and the conversations, people coming to the booth to say hello, to check up and you know, ask questions. What were some of the things that, you know, the people you spoke came up in those conversations?

Yeah, surprisingly our booth was super busy. We had maybe six advisors present there and at some point we're all speaking to someone. It was fantastic. We have attendees of the Wellhacker events that never heard about this concept. So they will come in and say what does that mean by becoming your own banker? So it's great that we have a chance to introduce this book especially they have an opportunity to attend enhance your investing bootcamp coming on November 26th, which we offer to all the attendees. Right. So it's great to give people a little bit introductory about this concept and they're looking forward for the presentation in the evening. And the other group of attendees, they absolutely, some of them already have this book, becoming your own banker and they maybe have this for quite a while and then they get a little bit know about it but then, you know, things get in the way. They haven't really finish reading the book or they have idea, but this is opportunity for them to learn more. So for us being there and able to answer some of the questions or remind them that controlling the banking function in their own hand, how important it is, it's just fantastic to connect. And of course we have our existing clients who are so happy to come in and get autographs from Sarvolo From Jason. It's like there's a small events happening there as well, like, you know, taking selfies, taking pictures. It's just such heartwarming time to see that, you know, there are people appreciating and really get the message and then, and then how happy they are to see us there.

Oh, that's great. Yeah. Existing clients. I did I see a couple of pictures. I know Jason sent one of my clients. He was there at the event getting a picture taken with him saying that he says, hi. So, hey, Will, sorry I wasn't able to attend the event, but that, that's so cool to hear that taking place. And it reminds me of, you know, the live event that we did in Edmonton recently where we had our family banking summit and our whole team got to get together as well as many of our existing clients, of course, attended in the room. We had 170 people in the room, so not the 700 level size of room that Wealth Hacker was, but, you know, a fraction of that at 170, but a really good event nonetheless. People got a chance to network and get to know each other. We had a lot of people attending that were maybe fairly new or brand new to the concept, but also a lot of existing clients just getting a chance to be in the energy of the room and be with our team and our organization. So the fact that there was so many existing clients at the Wealth Hacker event who are able to come to the booth, meet with maybe their advisor for the first time, or just connect with our team is actually pretty amazing to hear. And that those conversations, like you say, you know, they turn into little selfie moments and know there's. There's probably some good hugs that went around and just like a lot of joy, there tends to be this like a bit of a liberation feeling. There's something really special when people start to embrace Nelson's concept and implement it in our life and they realize now that they're part of something almost a little bit bigger. They're part of a. A larger aggregate community of people who are taking this piece of financial control back into their life. It's. It's not like you, you know, a secret, but to some degree it's kind of like you're doing something that a lot of other people aren't. They just don't know what's out there. They're not familiar. So. So you automatically, you know, create a new, almost a bond, a bond or at least a bonding moment with people who are engaged in that same type of an environment being Able to get in a room, a live room with people that are doing it together. And that's really, really cool and really special. So for you to share that, I think is pretty awesome, and I'm glad you got to witness and see a lot of that taking place. So after Jason presented, obviously the. The keynote speaker was up right afterwards. A lot of people would have wanted to, you know, pay attention to the keynote, of course. So I'm sure I don't know if there was much of a break there where people could come to the booth. Probably just went right into the keynote. And so you didn't have as many people maybe stopping by the booth until the end of the event. And, you know, was there a difference between people that would come by the booth throughout the day versus at the end of the day after Jason had a chance to have this conversation? So anything particular you can think of that come up from that?

Yeah, it was really busy after the event. We have people just flooding towards our booths. And it was so incredible. We have lots of people holding their phones like, okay, I got your text message and now what do I do? So is the people who actually on the spot. Because at the end of Jason's presentation, he also invited Irwin and Cherry up on stage because he was saying that everyone who attended the enhance your Investing Bootcamp on November 26th, we're going to donate $5 to Irwin Cherry's char to feed the hungry children. And then at that time, Jason also invited all of us, our ascendant team, up on the stage as well. So just during that short two minutes, I was on the stage, it was very fantastic to see a whole room of people, 700 people, and there's people standing at the back. I guess there's different vendors coming in at the very end as well. And it's just amazing to see that many people. And we're just receiving the text message registering for the webinar on the spot. So it was amazing. And afterward, we have lots of people coming in, ask more question or, you know, did want you to find out more about Nelson's message. And also, of course, getting the copy of this book. It's just was so busy. We're talking and we're giving out books. We don't have a single book left at the end. So we're the last booth packing up. It was just fantastic. I don't know, I can't describe. I was so busy talking to people, I don't even realize the time. Time.

I'm curious now. There was some other things that were brought in. What did every attendee get when they walked up to their chair? What was sitting on their chair?

They will see a jar of pee, a real jar of pee that you can get from the grocery store and of course have a nice QR sticker on it. And when they, when they get the can of pee, of course, you know, actually Jason did not go through the grocery store example that in the Nelson's teaching. But he just say, remind yourself that you have a can of pee and don't steal the pee. If you want to find out more about that, you have to come to the boot camp or you have to read Nelson's book. So that's a great reminder. But if you actually scan the QR code, you can register for the event on November 26th.

Oh, nice. That's great. And just the fact that, you know, you show up to, I mean, I, I can't think of any time like, yeah, I've been to lots of events where people leave stuff like on the chair and you know, part of your registration package or whatever, but I can't recall ever being there where someone left a can of, of peas on the chair. So I think that's kind of interesting because it really stands out. It's like a, it's definitely a, a large object. It's got a little bit of weight to it. And you know, people like imagine people walking like, what is this can of peas? I don't understand.

So I just think it's kind of funny that they did that and it's not like that's a small amount of effort. I mean, if you saw the picture of like the back of somebody's, you know, trunk or whatever and it's just like stacked up 700 cans a piece, that's an awful lot of weight in the back of a vehicle to bring in and to haul in as the team and then put on every chair. You know, it takes a tremendous amount of effort to do all that stuff. So thank you guys all for doing that as an organization and supporting, you know, Cherry and Irwin's event. Cherry and Irwin's charity to feed hungry children is also amazing. So for everyone that registered for the event that's coming up for that boot camp, that's fantastic. Again, money that's going to go to support feeding people at a time of need. And just to know that we were able to, I guess, have such an impact for the people in the room to be able to connect with so many people, both existing clients and people who are looking at exploring the Concept in their own life really brings joy to my heart, Jingen. So thank you for being a part of that and for going down to the session, having a ton of fun. Obviously. I can tell you're kind of beaming from the event a little bit because it was. It was only a couple of days ago. And I guess, you know, beyond that, you were also probably excited just to spend some time with our other teammates. And I would imagine you guys probably got a chance to go out and have, you know, a dinner to celebrate from the event. And as you guys were kind of debriefing after it was all said and done, what were some of the comments that the team had as far as the event itself and what were some of the, you know, emotions and things that they took away from being at the session?

I guess we were all super pumped. Nobody's feeling tired. I mean, that a lot of us coming from the west side of the country, but. But we're just so excited. It's just amazing. You knowing what we are doing have a big impact on people's life, right? Especially for real estate investors as well. And I think our team really take pride of what we do, right. We all come in as one group, we talk to people and we're handing in books. For me myself to look at my colleagues, emotion is fantastic as well. I guess. Always see you guys on Zoom, but when I see Vern talking to the prospect clients talking to someone is asking questions. When I see Roman explain to people on a very high level, what does becoming your own banker mean? It's. For me, that's amazing, right? To see. It's like all those little Zoom calls happening on one booth. And at the same time, it's amazing. And also there's a lot of opportunities, right? Because when people are focusing on the rate of return and I record that because I. I used to come to a lot of events like this as attendee, as a real estate investor. Some of the question, I smile at it because I said, yeah, I asked that exact question like three years ago or something like that. Like, I know where your thoughts process is, but remember, rethink what you're thinking. And that's exactly what Jason started by his presentation. He had a lot of time. He spent quite a few minutes at the beginning of his very short time of his presentation about thinking, right? Are you ready to rethink your thinking? Are you ready to really think? Right? So I think he bring up a very, very important point. And then I think for people who's willing to have an Open heart and thinking heart is amazing because IBC and real estate is just a great combination. It's really not just about the rate of return. There's so much more to it. Not also just to solve for the text you issue at the end for real estate investors, but they're just so much into it. And then we just feel like there's a lot of opportunities for the attendees to find out more about this. And we are super pumped for the Bootcamp leader.

Oh, that's great. And it reminds me, as you're sharing that something that Jason's fond of saying, the best rate of return is the one that pays the most when you need it the most.

Exactly.

There's a relevance to time, and I like the odd spreadsheet. Gingin, you've seen some of my spreadsheets, and I'm not a master at them, like maybe a Sarbolo or a Tron or even Roman on our team is. But the problem with a spreadsheet is that it's very static. You can plug lots of numbers in, but then, you know, unless you go and change it or manipulate or update the variables as something changes in a live moment, you don't really have an updated version of things. So we often, when we look at, say, an illustration for an insurance contract or, or a spreadsheet, it's a very boom. It's a. It's either a projection of values or whatever, and it's. It's as of that moment in time. And so as we go through time, life changes dramatically. And right now, especially in, you know, for the real estate investors, I'm sure these things came up in conversation. Maybe not in the ones we were having at the booth, but people that were in attendance at the event, because there would have been a large contingent of real estate investors for sure, at that event. Knowing many people who are existing clients of ours that also attend, many of, you know, Irwin and Cherry's, you know, wonderful sessions that they do and, you know, with the changing environment, and especially again, in the Ontario real estate marketplace, you know, really across the board in Canada, there's changes going because of the affordability adjustments, with the interest rates rising, etc. Time is really relevant to what's going on when it comes to rate of return. And you could have the best portfolio of real estate and it could have been growing really, really well. And now you might have accumulated a huge amount of equity, let's say over the last five years, but all of a sudden that equity that was there on paper has now come down, let's say 20% on some portfolios, maybe even more than that on some portfolios. And so you might still be at a good quote unquote rate of return because of when you started. But how much possible return or opportunity cost did we just lose because we didn't sell at that peak market? And nobody has a crystal ball. No one's going to be able to predict those things with accuracy. Or be in a market where you can just, you know, push an eject button and say, I want to eject with all my profits out of the real estate market right now. And then, and then hold on and wait for the next, you know, the next market cycle that I want to jump back in on. I mean, that doesn't really exist. That would be pretty cool if we could create, you know, the perfect market cycle, each button so you could, you know, harvest all your profits. But in the same environment, you have people that have a market that's, that's gone up and now it's backsliding. But what were to happen if someone all of a sudden passed away? Now if you passed away, if the market was up, hey, someone can sell all those properties. The problem is that's not going to happen overnight. You know, the spouse of the main, you know, usually in most households there's one spouse who's kind of the driver of the real estate portfolio or the stock portfolio. You know, the person that's kind of taking on the learning. And some houses, it's very even handed. But in my experience with most families that I meet with, there's usually one spouse who's kind of the driver of all that activity. And the other spouse is focused on whether it's the kids or a different career path or another business model. And so they've divert the efforts of their financial life as growing through time. And so as soon as one of those events happens, we lose one of those spouses. Now if it's the person that's driving the real estate, you know, game, or this, or the stock portfolios, well, now everything's shifting and changing in the marketplace, but you need to now have the time and the mindset to be able to go and sell assets and harvest those profits and doing those things. And so you're creating an issue where the timing may not work. You might be in that position where you have to do that, but the timing is in the exact wrong spot where the market is in a rapid decline. And now you're in a position where either you can't sell some of those things so here's now you have Nelson's principles being incorporated by a family and they have a huge amount or a large, well structured volume of insurance that comes in tax free when it's needed the most, even if the market is in a bad position, which gives you the capital liquidity that you need now as a family or as a business to say, hey, we don't have to be in a position to sell these properties. We can hold on, we can wait, we can, you know, we could pay off a couple mortgages and harvest cash flow. Like, you're just in a much better financial position and emotional position because you're not being set up to make rash decisions that a market is dictating the terms to you on. Instead you get to dictate the terms by how you want to proceed when you have incorporated the type of strategic planning that the process of becoming your own banker, you know, creates for you. So I think it's interesting, again, you're talking about hearing those questions in those comments. Again, they go back to the idea of rate of return because they look at, from an initial vantage point, it's a financial strategy. And because it's a financial strategy, our brain says, oh, look, financial strategy, let's find out what the rate of return is. But it, it's not relevant because your life is far too dynamic. And it's all relevant to what's going on over a certain set of variables over a certain period of time. But you can't deny the variable of sooner or later someone's going to kick the bucket. And when that happens, a whole bunch of levers got to be pulled. And one of those levers is your assets need to be sold, a tax bill has to be paid, and often none of those things happen when you expect it, which means a bunch of money is going to be dissipated out of the family's life plan or the generational wealth track because we had poor planning. Whereas when you incorporate the strategic planning of IBC into your life, you're automatically enhancing the value proposition for a future known event. And that future known event is pretty simple. It's the day that you die. And, you know, we don't need to be grim about it. We can just all agree that it's going to happen. You know, people will put in more energy into planning a family vacation than they will into planning for the known event of their own passing. And if we put in the equivalent amount of energy into the known event of your own passing, the probability that you'd have a lot more capital to also be able to fund family vacations coincidentally goes up, you know, when you incorporate Nelson's principles into your life. So anyhow, I just really appreciate you sharing some of those conversations that you heard, some of the questions that came up because it speaks to where people are at in certain stages of their journey, including your, your own stage. And it's hard sometimes to reflect back because I've been doing this now coming up on like 14 years and so I'm trying to go back to that point in time in my life and, and yeah, I'm sure these were questions that I had a lot in my brain and my brain wasn't there. I wasn't ready to truly understand things. But as you go deeper and deeper down the path of discovery, as you continually reflect on rethinking your thinking, it's amazing how many more methods, more ways that IBC begins to solve certain problems on the road of life for you. They become elevated. It's kind of like when you buy a new car and then all of a sudden you're driving off the the lot or from whether it's a private sale, the car dealer, you're driving away and then all of a sudden you start seeing the exact same car in the same color on the road every day. But before you had that vehicle, you didn't see those things, right? They didn't stand out for you. As you begin to incorporate the IBC model into your life, things start to pop out into focus in a way that they just didn't pop into focus before.

That's right. Your eyes only see and your ear only hear where your brain is going for. Right? So that's, that's fantastic. And I like how you shared about the exit strategy because a lot of real estate investors would understand their why. Why do they want to build wealth? You know, in events like this we will have expert in the area telling us we. When you go into a deal, think about the exit strategy, right? You have to think of multiple access strategy in events or time like this where maybe you can reassign that pre sale condo and things like that. I think it's great to bring up those kind of topics on events like this because I would definitely appreciate and like you said, maybe at some point in my journey I wouldn't appreciate it doesn't kick in. But the message is here for the audience who's have an open and learning mindset.

Well, and you know something else that came up for me here, if you don't mind me sharing, Jingen, is that there's a, an individual who, you know, I was speaking to recently, great real estate investor. They've done a great job of, you know, buying properties. They got about eight units, eight doors, they're mostly single family houses and holding onto these properties and has been blessed, you know, check a nice box that they've had very little tenant issues. Great long term tenants. That's something that we, most people want in real estate business. So, so she hasn't had the vacancy turnover that maybe other real estate investors have had to deal with, which is great. However, there's a counterpoint to that which is because of the rent control that exists in the Ontario system, she hasn't been able to raise rents to market. And so, so good news is long term tenants, low turnover, low vacancy rate. Bad news is rapidly increasing properties, which is not a bad news. I mean that's good, good news except that that increases property taxes. It's also there's insurance rates, property insurance rates have gone up because of a lot of natural disasters in Eastern Canada, Western Canada, etc has increased property insurance. So there's been all these increasing costs. But she hasn't been able to increase rent up to the market level. So that's been squeezing cash flow, squeezing cash flow and now with variable rates spiking on these, on these properties, that's put it in tremendous pressure on cash flow. So now there's negative cash flow on several properties. Well, the difference in market rent that she's missing out on on average for the eight properties is like $800 a month per unit.

Wow.

That's the opportunity cost on what the market rent would bear versus what she's currently able to charge because of the limitation of the rent controls. So although there's a squeeze on cash flow now because of increasing, you know, interest rates plus the other inflationary pressures of the increased property taxes increase this. So again, there's not really a lot of positive cash flow left on the portfolio. What I think is even a bigger issue if you had, you know, at eight properties, at 800amonth, so the opportunity cost on revenue is like $76,000 before we even look at the other items. And that capital, if that was on average over about, let's say a four or five year period of time because that's how long she's had most of the properties. So times 12 months, times four years, that's almost $307,000 worth of revenue potential that's missing. That could have gone into paying down mortgages, could have gone into buying new properties, could have gone into a whole bunch of things. And so coulda, woulda, shoulda. The end result is it's not there. But that's the, that's part of the opportunity cost of again, one of the restrictive factors in a given marketplace. Now, not all marketplaces have rent controls. And the end result is she does have huge amount of equity that's accumulated because of good market timing, buying at the right time. And realistically she's, there's probably around $350,000 of additional equity in each one of those properties that's been created. So she has that value, but that value is trapped in the property. She can only realize that value if she sells the units and she can't raise rents because of good quality tenants. Well, she doesn't want to kick out the good quality tenant, you know, so you're kind of like always looking at these different variables and you're, there's little restrictions placed on these variables. Whereas if you counterbalance that to having the infinite banking system set up, you would have been able to have access to a huge amount of capital to do that. Imagine you could have increased those what the market would bear and you could have flown that into a system that you have more control over building equity inside of insurance contracts. And then you could have been buying back the mortgage debt if you wanted to to reduce your dependency on that variable rate increase. So again, it's all a what if scenario, but it's about changing the way that we're thinking about the same given variables. Once you're incorporating the process of infinite banking into your life, the way that you start to think through the different possibilities, the different potential on any given set of circumstances changes because you simply have more, more options on how you can choose to deal with those variables than you did before. And that's really what it boils down to. Nelson was really fond of a quote by a guy named Bill Lenderman. And Nelson would say, does having readily available access to capital take away any of your opportunities? It doesn't. It can only enhance your opportunities. And that's really the focus on what the principles of becoming your own banker is all about. It's building and enhancing your readily available access to capital so that you can take advantage of opportunities. Now, whether that opportunity presents itself because the real estate market changed or a presidential election comes up, or the stock market makes a shift or whatever, or the interest rate changes, any number of these factors creates an opportunity. It just is a matter of whether you are knowledgeable about the subject matter and you have the capital access to take advantage of that opportunity and our hope is that through you know watching our content, continually investing in your your own financial knowledge base, working with good coaches, engaging in our regular quarterly coaching segments, these kinds of things, you're always positioning yourself for the best possible outcome and the way that you do that is through a combination of capital access, liquidity and knowledge base. Without you know if you can have good capital access but no knowledge base you're probably not going to see the highest caliber of opportunities. But when you marry those two things together because you're always growing, you're always developing your own knowledge, your own systems, your own thinking, you are in a much better position than your peers because of it.

Love it. Thank you so much. That time, money and knowledge right that's.

Your key, the trifecta of financial success. Anyhow Jinjin, this was awesome. Thanks for spending some time with me.

Bye everyone.

Cheers.