The #1 Reason Your Business Is Making Everyone Else Rich (And How to Stop It)

You're here with us. It's not by accident. You're smart enough to know that something about the way that money's flowing through your business just doesn't feel right. Maybe you're making really good income, you're generating really good revenue, but something in the business might still feel a little bit fragile. I'm going to talk about how business owners are really truly succeeding and quietly building financial systems that they control and why most strategies are just failing to protect your cash, let you don't grow it. Something just doesn't quite feel right and you can't put your finger on it, and that's all going to change today. You don't need to become an expert at what we're going to lead you through. You just need to be open to thinking differently. And so if you've ever found yourself thinking that there's a better way, you were right, and tonight Rich and I are going to show it to you. I always like to begin, especially with content that's really catered toward the entrepreneur, toward business owners. If you're here with us tonight, it's not by accident. And it's also probably because you don't need another webinar. You know, it's because I think as a fellow business owner, You've been told all along to follow that mainstream traditional financial advice, but deep down, you know that it wasn't made for entrepreneurs like you. And so, I always like to be just a little direct, a little blunt when we get going with a session like this that you've been building your business inside of a system that really was designed to benefit conventional banks and finance companies. And the government, not you. And that's all going to change today. I'm going to talk about how business owners are really truly succeeding and quietly building financial systems that they control and why most strategies are just failing to protect your cash, let alone grow it. And I think that's something you can agree with as a business owner, that something just doesn't quite feel right and you can't put your finger on it. And I'm going to lead you through a story of two business owners with the same income, the same business, the same industry, but two radically different futures. Which business owner are you? If you're an established business owner, so you have a business that's in profit, it's well-established, it's durable and growing. Number two would be scaling. So your business has surpassed being durable. And sustainable, and now you're in scaling mode. And then option 3 would be that you're a new startup, so your idea is literally just getting off the ground. Now, our late mentor, the late R. Nelson Nash, who wrote the book titled Becoming Your Own Banker— that book has sold more than 570,000+ copies now for a reason, and that's because the process, the Infinite Banking Concept, works extremely well. One of the things that he shared with us often and he reminded us of is that unless you understand the problem, the solution just won't matter to you. And so given that we have a mix of established entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who are scaling, entrepreneurs who are just getting their ventures off the ground, you've all got varying degrees of experience as it relates to handling money and developing your business. Now, there's a problem that really impacts business owners regardless of what stage that they're at. You get hit with corporate tax, personal tax, capital gains tax, limited access to your own capital, ongoing interest payments because you're accessing capital from someone else's system, assets that you really can't get to without losing momentum, meaning you have to reduce the asset's value or you're triggering some form of taxable event. Strategies that tend to work better for your accountant than they do for you, and a constant feeling that the system benefits everyone except the one who's building it. And you're dealing with established business owners here tonight in both Richard, myself, our teammates who are also here in attendance. And so there's no fluff or theory that we're going to lead you through. This is just a proven method, a proven process. That is definitely going to create amazing outcomes for you. And I'm definitely not overstating this when I tell you that if you continue to follow that mainstream financial path, then you're going to continue transferring all of the money away from you, all of the money away from your business, all of the money away from your heirs. So your legacy gets impacted, your ongoing business growth gets impacted, because inside your company You're handling capital, you're not making it. It's money that's moving through the books of your business and onto the books of someone else's bank, and that creates enormous missed opportunities. And if you're not structured optimally, you'll end up being in a position where you end up paying literally millions in avoidable taxes unnecessarily, and interest that you're paying to someone else's bank. I say that again, someone else's bank. But if you implement this process that we're going to lead you through here tonight, you're going to be in a position of total and absolute control. You'll be able to literally build a warehouse of wealth, one that works for you 24/7, 365, quietly, consistently in the background, and puts you in a position of control so that you can gain access to capital on demand, on your terms, without reducing the asset's value. And without triggering a taxable event. And I know the business owners that I'm blessed to serve and connect with on a daily basis, they're literally just sick of watching their money disappear to taxes and to bank profits. And they want to take control. They want to regain control of their capital. They want to regain control of their cash flow. And they want to not only build wealth, but they want to create a legacy. And they want that legacy to be transferred on a tax-free basis. They don't want and have never invited the IRS or Revenue Canada to be an heir to their legacy. And so this is— everything that we share is fully compliant with current tax laws. It's completely above board, it's completely legal, and has been utilized by thousands of our clients that we've been blessed to serve these past 17 years. But change begins with desire. That's where it all begins. And so if you want what you see on the screen, it all begins with the— with desire. And so is this what you desire? If it's not what you desire, you shouldn't stick around because you're not going to get value from what we talk about tonight. Okay, at any time during our talk this evening, you can scan this QR code where you can text the word retain. This is all about retaining your money. You can text the word retain to the number that you see on the screen, or you can scan the QR code and you can create a conversation with the right person on our team. It's a conversation that doesn't cost anything but time. It's just an investment of your time. And believe me, it's a conversation that you'll want to have. And so I want to dive in. I want to talk about and introduce you to a couple of business owners, one named James and the other named Alex. They're in the same industry, same revenue, same expenses, same number of employees. They're having the same year-end conversations with their accountants, but today they're living in two very different financial worlds. And the only distinct difference between James and Alex is that Alex made a decision He did it quietly, but he made a decision about how he would treat his money. And James also made a decision to continue following the mainstream financial advice that exists out there in the world. And so let's just see how the two of them made out. Now, James is a smart fellow, hardworking, responsible. He did everything that he was advised to do. He kept his earnings inside of his corporation. He made contributions to retirement savings plan. He paid off some debt. He built up corporate reserves inside of a holding company that really didn't do that much. He just wanted to keep his operating company purified. So he moved all that surplus capital to his holding company, and he's got some investment going on within the business, but it's not really doing a whole lot for him. Now, whenever he needs to expand his business, he would go to the bank. And when he went to the bank, he was going there not to eat some donuts and stand around the water cooler with the bank employees. He needed access to capital. And in order to gain that access, he had to apply and be approved for it. And every year, James ended up asking himself the very same question. He asked himself, why am I working this hard? And I still feel like I don't control my own money. That is a very common question that business owners are asking themselves year after year. Now, he wasn't doing anything wrong per se. He was just following a script financially that wasn't really written for entrepreneurs. It wasn't built for James. It was built for employees, W-2, T4 income-earning employees. It wasn't built for the business owner. Alex, on the other hand, He saw something much different. Without control, growth is not freedom. You can have a fast-growing, valuable business, but if you're not in a position of control, you're not free. You don't truly have freedom. And the entrepreneurs that we serve day in and day out, they're, they're building their enterprise because they desire more freedom. Maybe it's more freedom of time, more freedom of purpose, more freedom of relationships, more freedom of money.. But the operative word is freedom. And in the absence of control, you don't have that freedom. So, what Alex began doing is he began redirecting money, corporate money, into high cash value dividend-paying life insurance policies, insuring himself, the key people inside of his business. These are people that have been with him from the very beginning, have helped him grow the company. And he did that because he wanted to create an asset that grows daily uninterrupted, that provides him with readily accessible capital on demand on his terms without reducing the asset's value, without triggering a taxable event. All of those boxes were checked for Alex, and he just immediately went into action mode. That is typically the makeup of an entrepreneur. Once they have enough information, they immediately go into action mode. And that's what Alex did, because he saw something different. And he also realized, by attending what you're learning tonight, he realized that the asset couldn't be touched. It couldn't be touched by market risk or passive investment income tax rules. That was very relieving to him, and nobody told him this. Everybody was feeding him the very same mainstream financial advice, just like James is getting. So I want to focus on the business growth phase and look at two different strategies. So James, his reality is that someone else's bank owns all of his cash flow. That is not a position of total control. And 5 years into his business, he decided that he wanted to expand. He needed access to $500,000 in capital. To scale his operations. His accountant advised him to use some of the retained earnings that piled up in the holding company to take a business loan at 8% interest from his bank. Now, James did the math and he said, okay, that's going to cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars over the next 10 years. But he figured, hey, you know what, that's just how business works. That's how I get access to capital. He's completely dependent on the bank for expansion, just like he was when he bought the equipment, when he financed his inventory, when he managed all those gaps in cash flow. He's paying interest to someone else's bank, and the bank controls the repayment schedule and the terms of his financing. So while he was able to achieve the objective, which was to get access to $500,000 in capital to grow, he's borrowing the capital from someone else's system on their terms, not his. And every single dollar that he is repaying is someone else's passive income. I want you to think about that for a moment. Every dollar of debt that you service is someone else's passive income. James did not know that. Nobody told him. Whereas Alex, on the other hand, he has ready access capital on demand on his terms. At year 5, he also needed $500,000 for expansion. But instead of asking the bank for permission, filling out a lengthy, nosy credit application, putting up personal guarantees, having his income verified, supplying 327 years of tax returns and corporate documents, All that Alex did was make a phone call. He contacted the life insurance company and requested a policy loan for $500,000. The life insurance company asked Alex two questions: would you like us to mail you a check or wire the money directly into your corporate account? No income check, no verification, no personal guarantees. No headaches, no stress. The policy loan is not reported to TransUnion or to Equifax. It's a private loan. Alex, given that he's the business owner, he controls the repayment schedule of that loan. The only reason why that's possible is because when the insurance company lent the money to Alex's corporation The insurance company put a lien on the death benefit of the insurance for the loan balance, not on the equipment that Alex purchased to grow his business. So all of Alex's capital never leaves his control. It continues growing on a daily basis uninterrupted, and it attracts no tax. Zero. Alex was a remarkably happy camper when he went through the policy loan process and realized there was no credit application, no personal guarantees, no stress, no repayment schedule that someone else dictated, and Alex's cash value continued growing. I cannot repeat that enough. That is ridiculous simplicity, very stress-free, peaceful existence for Alex. James, on the other hand, is continuing to experience the stress unnecessarily because he is unaware of what Alex knows and what Alex is doing. So over 10 years, Alex repays the loan on his terms, recaptures the interest that he would have otherwise paid to someone else's system. He gets to reuse every dollar of capital that he repaid because the cash value in the policy— so he repays a dollar, He gets access to the very same dollar plus more. He can borrow even more because his cash value continued rising daily, uninterrupted by that loan balance. So every time he goes back to the trough, the capital trough, there's more capital available to him. So that puts him in a position where instead of losing $200,000 in interest to a traditional lender and giving up all the interest that that $200,000 could have otherwise earned for the rest of his lifetime and those who come after him, Alex's capital never leaves his control. That is a peaceful, stress-free way of life financially. He's got enough to worry about running a business. And let me know if you agree, as a fellow business owner, running a business is difficult enough with capital let alone without. Okay, now we're going to jump into the mid-career phase. So we're going to talk about how the tax system is working against James, but it's working for Alex. This is significant. So James is fighting. He's just fighting against the taxman. Whomever has the gold makes all the rules. He doesn't know what the calculation of tax is going to be 10 years from now. You don't know. I don't know. His accountant doesn't know. His business has done well, but he's facing a problem. He's facing passive investment income tax rules, and by year 15, he's accumulated a significant amount of retained earnings in the form of corporate savings. But the issue is the government doesn't like businesses hoarding cash and doesn't like businesses deploying capital in passive investments. So his accountant warns him and says, listen, Once your passive investment income exceeds $50K a year, your small business tax deductibility is going to shrink and you're going to end up paying a lot more tax than you would have paid otherwise at the corporate level. So James is really irritated by that, and he knows that because his accountant explained it to him. Listen, your only options are you can withdraw the money and get crushed by personal tax. You can invest it in traditional vehicles and keep losing capital to taxes. But either way, he's at the mercy of tax laws. And when do tax laws change? They change when the government needs more revenue. So rather than be in that posture financially, Alex changed where his capital resides. James has the money flowing into a holding company and he's deploying it. Alex has capital flowing into high cash value dividend-paying life insurance contracts. Now, he's piled up the same $2 million, but instead of that money sitting in taxable investments, it's been piling up in the form of cash value inside of the policies. Now, given that the cash value grows on a daily basis, Alex is attracting zero tax on that buildup. Zero. And cash value cannot go backward. It's not subjected to the volatility of markets. It's not subjected to what's going on in terms of economic turmoil or political strife. Cash value rises daily uninterrupted. These policies are unilateral binding contracts. The insurance company itself is contractually guaranteeing that that cash value will rise daily no matter what. That makes Alex feel relieved. Imagine how you would feel being in the same position of Alex. And if you're watching this on YouTube, just type it into the comments. Let, let me know how it would make you feel. He knows daily growth on a tax-free basis. There are simply no disadvantages to that. Alex is well aware of it. And he's fully exempt from tax. And so he feels really good knowing that his capital must reside somewhere, and he recognizes that there's no better place to have it reside than here, because from this place he can do some of the things that James is doing. If James says, hey, I've got a really great opportunity where we can deploy some capital in the form of an investment, maybe we can joint venture in our companies Well, Alex can do that.

He's not—

none of his options are being taken away from him. But when he participates in the same investment opportunity, he's using the life insurance company's money. His capital continues growing uninterrupted every single day. The difference here is that whenever Alex is borrowing against the cash value of the policies, the proceeds are not taxable. Because it's a loan, not taxable income. He is not on the government's radar. These contracts are private, they're binding, they're unilateral. He's not on the government's radar. James is all over the radar because he files a tax return every year and discloses all of his registered tax-qualified plans The government knows exactly what he's got deployed and where. Alex prefers privacy, and this is what these contracts provide to him. And in addition to that, he's got a system that allows him access to capital on demand, on his terms, an exemption from the passive investment income tax rules, and he controls an asset that bolsters his balance sheet. It's legally protected and it's tax efficient. Now let's talk about this phase, the retirement phase. Two very different futures here. James is now at a point where he's in asset decumulation and tax bombs. He's triggering them left, right, and center. He realizes that he's asset rich, but he's cash poor., and he doesn't like being in that position. He starts drawing down, systematically drawing down investments. He's triggering taxable events every single time he does that. His options are he can pay sizable tax on the withdrawals. He can keep his investments essentially tied up and he can live on a modest budget. He can sell his business and give a chunk of the proceeds to the government. He spent decades building wealth only to watch taxes take a massive bite out of it. How do you think that makes James feel? And he's already got enough on his mind running the business and now being at a stage where he needs to divest, and he wants to do that without lining the pockets of Uncle Sam or Revenue Canada. Alex, on the other hand, he's got tax-free cash flow. And he preserves the asset, he's going to continue in retirement. He's going to continue living his lifestyle, enjoying and reaping the rewards of everything that he worked so hard to build. The difference between him and James is that Alex is going to do it without triggering a taxable event, and he doesn't have to sell assets. He doesn't have to drain investment accounts, doesn't have to trigger tax bombs. What he does is he continues borrowing against those policies, and he does that so that he has access to retirement funds. He's not interrupting any of the ongoing daily growth of his cash value inside of those policies. The cash value will continue rising for as long as Alex and all the lives that he's insured are still living. Now, at some point, they're all going to die., and the likelihood of that happening simultaneously is much less than one person predeceasing the other and so on. And when that happens, there's going to be a windfall of tax-free death benefit proceeds. And that basically puts Alex in a position where he gets to pass along wealth and a legacy on a non-taxable basis. And he leaves a business with a self-funding financial system. That benefits future generations. If the business is continuing to operate, the business is going to always need the use of capital, and that capital must come from a supply source. It must come from somewhere. The business is going to continue to need the use of equipment and to take advantage of high-caliber expansion opportunities. The business is now fortified financially and in a position where it has access to capital on demand. The company is in total control over the repayment schedule of its loans. Talk about all the advantages and then some. And Alex never stops growing his wealth even when he's in retirement. So the takeaway here is that James followed the traditional path, right? He ended up fighting against taxes, banks, and he had no control at every turn. Whereas Alex Alex changed the process and he achieved all of his desired outcomes from a position of total and absolute control. Seems logical to me that you would feel closer to Alex, given that you indicated that that's what you desire. And so recognize— I'm going to turn things over to Rich— but recognize this isn't, um, it isn't just about money. It's about freedom. It's about control. It's about securing your legacy. And so, as I mentioned, at any time during tonight's talk, if you find yourself thinking, okay, this is a better way, I need to investigate how this can be an advantage for me and understand it, scan the QR code, text the word RETAIN to that number, either or, and just create a time to meet with someone on my team. They are world-class world-class in this space, and you will be treated amazingly well. And don't bring any money to that meeting or anything like that. We're the ones that make the buying decision, not the other way around. And so if we can establish a basis to serve you and to guide you, then we'll certainly let you know. And if you feel the same way, then we can proceed from there. But the initial conversation is just that. It's not a presentation, it's not a transaction, it's a conversation. And we want to get real clear on all the advantages that this represents for you, regardless of what stage of business you're in. And so with that, I'm going to turn things over to Mr. Richard Canfield.

Richard, come on in. Right on, Jayson Lowe. That was fantastic. Absolutely loved it. I'm excited that we're going to get into a variety of interesting things here. I'm going to do a couple of examples, walk through a bit of a lifespan example for a business owner. What have you needed money for in your business? So big ticket item, small item, what's been something that's been a really critical component for you to have the use and the need of money for to make sure that your businesses operate? So really good dynamic there. I'm seeing a lot of kind of a gamut all across, like supplies, Employees, so having staff, you know, have anyone noticed that in the last number of years we've had a lot of issues with many companies being able to keep and retain staff, finding good staff, or you even a company that you do business with. These are challenges that every business face and these things go through different cycles and it's something that isn't unique maybe to your business. Maybe it's unique from a specialization standpoint. Maybe there's not enough trained, skilled people, but there's also a lot of people who just aren't ready or interested to work, or they're going to greener pastures. So if you have enough capital or liquidity available, you're able to incentivize people, maybe hire a headhunter, maybe you're paying bonuses to keep people, or you're increasing your benefit plan. Like, human capital is a big component. We talk about capital, we're talking about capital in your business as far as dollars and cents. But what about the human capital that is what helps bring the dollars and cents in? It keeps the revenue flowing. So that's a really important thing. So I want you to think about that as we talk about your partner in business is what we're going to get into. What prompted you to get into business? Was there a problem that you wanted to solve? Did you have— did you have a vision about what you wanted to do? Life of freedom, not trading hard. Yeah, not trading hours for dollars. I love that. That's what really appealed to me as well. I resonate with that. Cash flow freedom. These are common elements for people. So the end result is you would have had some kind of a vision. You would have had something that you wanted to get accomplished. You didn't just do it because, you know, you probably knew it was going to be hard. You didn't— you knew that it wasn't going to be always sunshine and rainbows, but you had something bigger, more important to you that was drawing you down that direction. Okay. Now, in the early days of business, you may have had some days where you just felt like this. You were living the dream. Everything was going, you know, absolutely amazing. Either that or you just hopefully felt like this was what was going to take place when you started your business. The reality is while you started running your business, you might have felt like this, like rapid-fire, super-fast baseballs were flying right at your head. I know I have certainly had this happen for me a number of times. I think I still have the bruises. Hopefully you can't see them on the camera, but this is the life of running a business. It's like this often. Okay, so I want you guys to give me on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm going to bring up some words and I want you to let me know on a scale of 1 to 10, How important are these words to you? Okay, so 10 is, oh my God, this is like really important. This matters a lot to me in my business. And a 1 is like, meh, I could do without it. Okay, that's the dynamics. So the first one is going to be cash confidence. So no business is surviving without cash confidence. All right, great. So the next one on the list is going to be control. You're the business owner, you're running the business, control on the operation, the people you hire. Your banking terms, like your payment schedule, all those things. All right. How about stability? And I'll give you an example of that. We have employees, staff, people that you need to keep around. It's one thing for you to have stability. You might take on a little bit more risk than the average bear. After all, you got into business, but you want to make sure the people around you are stable and your family's stable. That's what I'm talking about. How about liquidity? What's the measure of liquidity? What's the importance of that to you and your business? How about constant growth? Now, what I mean by that is, as an example, the business is always growing and producing. It's generating more. It's not stagnant. And more importantly, you're not impacted by market risks. What do I mean by that? Well, right now in the news, there's this big thing about tariffs going on. Now, depending on what side of the border you're on or depending on what type of business you're in, if you're in softwood lumber, if you're in the auto industry, if you're in auto parts, who knows? You might be drastically impacted by some of that discussion. Those are the market factors that can impact your constant growth. Everything on this list is very important. I think there was one 9.9 in there somewhere. The rest of it was pretty much 10s across the board. Next question I have for you then is what is the most important thing on your balance sheet? Every year your accountant has to produce your financials. By the time you see them, it's usually been 4 or 5 months later and you finally look at them. Meanwhile, you're working on new projects. So all of those tie to a monetary value. But let me ask you this. If everyone here is in business, how much of a business are you going to have if you're not in it? What happens if you're gone and you got taken out by, you know, a City of Vancouver or City of Toronto bus? Are you going to have much of a business left if that's the case? So everyone says you won't have much of a business left. So where are you shown on the balance sheet if you're the business owner? If you are the most important cog in the machine, shouldn't you be represented on the balance sheet of the business? I think you should. The way that we do that is with insurance, okay? And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go. So what we want to do, our objective is to help you understand how you can build a financial system that your business will fund. So your business pays for it, you control it as the business owner, your family benefits from it, so does the business by the way, And you can pay less tax by playing within the rules. So what would happen to your business if you never stored any of your profits? Let's say you're in business for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and over that entire time frame, you just spent all the profits and you never had anything left. What would happen to your business? Would it, uh, go bankrupt? Maybe. Would it barely limp along? Like, what would happen to you? Would you be— would you have sustainability? Would you have a retirement account? Business might go under, right? Like, there's a lot of issues that could happen there. So if you spend every dollar and you depended on third parties to save you, like a business operating line of credit, and that's how you were operating all the time, we might have to have a lot more conversations about what's going on with your business than just how we're going to get a partner for it. You know, there's, there's some fundamental issues there we might consider. But those are things that come down to human behavior, okay? And your behavior has a direct impact on how the business works. Not just for what your people, your staff, and your employees see, but also how the money is treated as it rolls through your business. Now, Par Whole Life. I want to introduce Par Whole Life as your business partner. Now, why? First of all, it never sleeps. So like my good friend Mr. Bean here, it's eyes wide open all the time. And Par Whole Life is a partner that's a silent partner in your business. But as a silent partner, it never argues with you. Not like these two dogs who are, you know, going after this ball here. Really, it's more like this third dog that shows up and is the peacekeeper. It's there to support you with what you need. It's always ready to invest in the relationship. Okay. It's going to wrap your business and your family in protection, just like this bubble wrap. It's going to make sure that everything's got this measure of safety and security around it. And we can all use that. When you have some safety and security around you, stability that I mentioned earlier was in the top— the list of things that you guys ranked as a 10. If you had a wrapper of protection around your business, would it give you that feeling and that confidence? So we're going to walk through our case studies here. And again, I'm going to go through this pretty quickly, but I want to, I want to highlight a couple of things. So we're going to look at someone in the age 35 zone. They're more in that startup phase. Again, the ages change. People start up businesses all the time, and there's businesses that are scaling at all kinds of different ages. In fact, on my TV show earlier today, I had a guy who was 40 years old who was on his 9th business. And at 23, he had 4 different businesses going, including a, a restaurant, a nightclub, a real estate business, and a vodka line that he was creating. So not all of those worked out, by the way, but he learned an awful lot in about a 3-year timeframe. So you can be startup at any stage of life. Now, in this example, we're looking at someone, they're getting started. They, they've got that vision. They're gonna double down. They want all those things you guys identified, the same reasons you said you wanted to be in business. Be able to demand their own time, control their hours, have freedom. They had that same dream that you did.

Okay.

They're not thinking about an exit. They just want growth right now at this stage of the game. We're going to quickly look at as we— we're going to go over the 35-year-old in some pretty good detail and then we're just going to expand and say, hey, what if the 45-year-old did something similar? And then we're going to look at a 55-year-old as well. Now, in this case, though, our 45-year-old is scaling. They've got a little bit more capital. They've been consistent with profits. They're really thinking about 10x-ing the business. They want to ramp up even more. And they've built, they built a team around them. So they're creating scale through human power and technology and they're starting to plan like maybe there's an exit strategy down the road here for me. Okay, then we're going to assess quickly a 55-year-old who's been around doing this for a while. They're established, they're running a self-managed company. That's something we learn about at Strategic Coach. Shout out to Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach. They've got time for ongoing business coaching. They're involved in a lot of groups and organizations because they're trying to sharpen the saw. You guys ever heard that expression, sharpen the saw? We want to make sure that we're always working on ourselves and on the business versus in the business. They're already teeing up transition things and they really want to focus on building their net worth in other areas. So here's the examples we're going to use. The first one for a 35-year-old, we're going to spend the bulk of our time on that. And then I'm just going to show you the summaries for the other two. So we're going to, we're going to dig into this one and then we're going to go into these two other ones. Yeah, highly— Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Right on, guys. You guys are, you guys are with me. So I want you to think of a key employee in your business, someone that is instrumental, that really your business would suffer drastically if you lost this person. Well, that's what your partner in this business is going to be. This par whole life that we're utilizing, we're funding it in the same way. And the difference is key employees get sick, they leave, they take vacation. And also, I mean, things happen. They could no longer be with you for any number of reasons. This partner, this key employee is going to be like Forrest Gump. It's going to be going 24/7. It's just never going to stop running. Okay. Now, the idea of put me on your payroll. So imagine an employee that does this. They work 24/7, 365. They don't get sick and they don't take holidays. That's really what we're talking about here. It's always there in the background supporting you with all of your decisions, your most important decisions around finance, around money, and around growing your business the way that you want to do it. Now, one of my teammates, I found an article here as Jayson was talking. I got inspired. A recent article that was redone. It's called Life Insurance as an Asset Class. And they updated this here for 2025 by one of the mutual insurance companies in Canada. It's a really good article. Talks about the importance and the value of why this asset class is so drastically important. Who here has ever looked at their tax return? I would imagine if you've ever done that and you saw the, you know, several hundred pages or whatever they have in there, you might kind of look like this. You might have this feeling of like, what's going on here? What are all these numbers? Line this, line that. It's pretty confusing unless you're a CPA or a tax professional. I don't know too many people that spend a lot of time looking at their tax return. Now imagine you were staring at your tax return and it was easy for you to get confused by all those numbers. Well, I'm going to go over some numbers. What I don't want is for you to be focusing on those numbers. The numbers aren't what's important. What's important is the, the impact of what's taking place. So we're thinking behind the numbers. So if I see anybody counting with their fingers as I go about doing this, probability is you're in the wrong room. All right, so I'm going to keep it at a very high level here today. Now, on our age 35, I'm going to summarize some of these components. First off, we're going to look at— they're putting $50,000 a year. That's what they're putting into this insurance contract, this policy that they own and control. That's what they're paying the key employee, okay, in air quotes. And we're going to do that each and every year for 10 years. And then we're going to see what does that look like if they stopped there. Then I'm going to show you what is the impact of their decision-making process if they decided to put one more year, they paid that employee for one more year, the employee worked there for 11 years. Okay, then we're going to look at it over 20 years. Again, I'm going to summarize that really quickly and then we're going to talk about a passive income potential that's available. And I'm going to review it on all three of the examples. So the 35-year-old, the 45, and the 55-year-old. So here we go. Here's age 35. We're looking at a quick summary of the first 3 years. So you can see premium going in. Premium is $50,000. Again, just imagine you're paying for someone. If you're in the States, it's W-2. If you're in Canada, it's T4. You've got them on a T4 salary, their benefit package, you know, everything that you're paying for is $50,000 a year. And they're, they're there in your business that first year. You got to train them. You got some sunk cost. You have some sunk costs while you build that person up, but the goal is to have them be profitable year in, year out. Well, at the end of the first year, there's cash value on your balance sheet. So your accountant's going to do your balance sheet and they're going to, they're going to have to report this asset on there. Now, if you're the insured individual as the business owner, now we've placed you on the balance sheet and there's an asset value attached to it, but there's also a death benefit attached. Really, really important. Okay. Now, year 2, We fund another $50,000. You can see the asset climbs, but the death benefit climbs as well. This is a tax-free bubble wrap protection around your business. If something happens to you, really, really important. Year 3, we put in another $50,000. You can see we got $143,000 on the balance sheet. We're not all the way to where we need to be, but man, look at how much we've increased that death benefit supporting your business. This is where things get really cool. Notice how the increase in that cash value, the increase in the asset, the balance sheet increase year over year, went to $52,000. So we put $50,000 in, but now it's growing at, at $52,000 a year. So we've reached this milestone in the business, the business of the insurance contract, where it's now growing greater than every dollar you put into it. That's a really key metric. So let's expand on that a little bit further. We're going to go a couple more years down the line. Year 4, we've now put in $200,000. 4 years, $50,000. We're almost at $200,000, but we're not quite there. It's growing greater. Year 5, we put in $50,000 5 times. We now have a balance sheet that's over $250,000. So, we've recouped all of the capital flowing into this key employee of yours, this partner in business. And we've got a death benefit that's growing, and we're growing at about $58,000 a year. So let me expand on this. I'm just going to jump all the way down to year 10. So here we are, 10 years. We've put in $500,000. On the balance sheet of the business, though, it shows that we have $608,000. This is a pretty powerful asset class. Meanwhile, the business's protection has increased that whole time frame, and it's growing at $80,000 a year. Well, in my example, remember I said I was only going to fund it for 10 years. This key employee is only working for you for 10 years. I don't know, man. If it was me and I had this key employee, I would want to retain it. If you had this key employee, who here would want to keep this employee on in the business? So you would keep funding that $50,000 to keep that employee there. In this case, I'm showing we haven't done that. But even though we didn't put anything in, it's returning still an extra $30,000 a year of enterprise value back into the business that you can work with because of that increase. Very, very powerful. I don't know too many key employees that are going to leave your business and still produce $30,000+ every single year after they leave. That is the real impact of what we're talking about here. Okay. I really want you to let that sink in. Now, I just want to summarize for a second. Take a look at this balance sheet. So this is the asset. Now, if you had this asset, think of it as, you know, you had cash on hand essentially on the balance sheet. In the bank account of the corporation. If we went to year 5 here and there's $255,000 there, what if you could borrow against that $255,000 without depleting it? So you're not withdrawing it, you're not taking it out and paying cash for a piece of equipment or paying cash for supplies or paying cash for your next rental property. Instead, you're going to borrow against this asset and you can access 90% of it and you can go and do the thing that you need to do in your business. With no questions asked, just like Jayson indicated. That's the power of the policy loan. Your partner in profit, the participating policy— we're going to use a lot of alliteration today— partner in profit, the participating policy, and the power of the policy loan all taking place in one. Say that 10 times fast. Okay, that's really what's available here for you. So while you have this wrapper of protection in the death benefit, we're building up this asset base that gives you total autonomy and control over all of your decision-making. You guys said that control was on a scale of 1 to 10, was a 10. This is where you get that control. You said liquidity on a scale of 1 to 10 was a 10. This is where you create that liquidity. It's providing all those things you told me that you valued. Okay, now, no tax on the buildup of all this growth.

Really important.

So let's take this a little bit further. We only funded for 10 years. Let's extend that all the way down in 10-year increments to now to 95. So we only put 10 years in, which is $500 grand, and you can see how that asset continued to grow. Now, if you're 95 years old, what's the chance that you still have your business? Is it low, medium, or high? Probability is you've gotten rid of the business or you've exited the business. I agree with you guys. We're on the same page. So if you've exited the business but you still have this asset, didn't the business create a whole separate asset like another business while you owned it? Isn't that effectively what's taking place? So you can use this in the business to help it grow, but it's independent of the business. That's really, really powerful. Okay, so let's take this one step further. Now we're going to say, what would happen if you kept that employee with you for one extra year? Just one extra year. They stayed for year 11. You paid their wage one more time. So instead of premium of $500,000, We've got a premium of $550K. We'll notice the difference on the balance sheet when we get to age 55. $996,000 versus $1,078,000. There's an $82,000 difference. So you funded year 11, but the impact of funding year 11 created a much larger asset base, and the increase year over year has increased as well. Very, very important. Let's extend that. What if we go to 65? Well, now the gap has widened to $141,000. We go to 75, we're at $240,000. We go down to 95 and we've created a gap in value of increased value for you of $600,000. You put in an extra $50,000 in year 11. You've, you, you kept the employee, you retained the employee for one extra year. And the result of that is an extra $600,000 of value created in your life. Okay. Truly, truly powerful what's available here when we do that. So this all comes down to behavior. It's not based on what an insurance company does. It's based on what you as the business owner does the same way that your business operates. And I like the Big Lebowski and I like the Dude, and that's how I think he would feel about it if he had this for his business. Okay. Opportunity. What is opportunity cost really all about? It's, it's what is the, what is the value that you're missing out on because you didn't seize the opportunity? In this case, not continuing to fund that premium, not continuing to keep that employee in your business. That was the opportunity cost that we, that we isolated. Who here would make that trade? They would put the extra $50,000 in in year 11 to create that $600,000 asset that they knew would be there. So I call this the behavior tax. Effectively, that behavior tax is on you and your behavior. Now, your partner or your key employee, by funding it for one extra year, you create that differential that we can see. Well, if, if we were going to fund it for one extra year, why on earth wouldn't you just keep funding it for 20 years? Why would you ever stop putting the money in if you're still running your business, if you're still growing or you still have other assets, you're still generating an income. Why wouldn't you just keep it going? Even if you sold the business and you exited and you have a pot of money sitting there, wouldn't it make sense to keep this other machine going? I think it would. And the proof is in the pudding here. The 10-year model versus the 20-year model. Look at the difference at age 95. We're at almost $4.7 million worth of impact. That's a pretty big impact for a machine that just keeps running. So if you had a machine in your business and every single time you turn that machine on, it just produced nonstop revenue for you. You would want to maintenance and continue putting that machine in motion. You would want it working as often as possible in your business. Every once in a while, you might have to take it down for maintenance, but you would want to get that maintenance done. You want to hire professionals to maintain it so you could get it back into operation as soon as humanly possible. That's what business is all about. So what if your partner could also pay you a passive income? Who here would like your partner to do that? I've seen a lot of partnerships. I've seen some fail. I've seen some be very successful, but I had never seen the partner after the business was over produce a passive income for the other person. This par whole life will be able to do that for you. So let's take a look at that. We're going to examine it and then we're going to start bringing in our 45-year-old and our 55-year-old as well. So here, if we just— we all agreed that we should keep funding for 20 years. I'm showing the 20 years here. We did our annual funding of $50,000 for 20 years is $1,000,000. Well, if you want to start early and take a passive income early, this individual for 40 years starting at age 56 could take an income of about $57,000 a year. That's a pretty darn good income. Well, for 40 years at least it is for consistent 40 years. What if you wanted to wait a little bit and you wanted to start at 66 and you did it for 30 years? Hey, no problem. It's $105,000. The end result is this is what you were able to use while you were alive. And then you have a tax-free death benefit at the end. Now, when I say— notice that the word net is there. Net meaning, like Jayson Lowe was talking about, we actually are taking loans, whether it's policy loans or collateral loans against this asset that you've built up for the business., and then you're using that as a source of income or a source of capital cash flow that you can use to buy groceries and go on vacation. Maybe you want to go golfing every day, whatever it is you want to do. So this is what you use while you're alive. This is what you're able to leave behind tax-free after we extinguish the loan, in this case at age 95. We're going to kill everyone off at 95 for the purpose of our call today. All right, hoping you're all going to live longer than that, but For the math, we're going to use age 95. Now, let's jump down to our 45-year-old and our 45-year-old. Well, they agreed with everything that you agreed. They were at a different stage of business. They were trying to scale and grow. And so they put more capital in, both because they were starting later and because they had more capital available. So both of those things were true. But if they agree with everything you guys agreed with in the chat box, they're going to fund it for 20 years too. Why wouldn't they? They're going to do $200,000 a year. So they put in $4 million over that 20-year time frame. Now, if they want to take 30 years of income, they can take a $260,000 income. They put in $4 million, they use $7.8 million while they're alive, and they still leave behind $6.4 million tax-free to the people they care about. That is a powerful business partner, if you ask me. You know, the business partner did the same thing. They just were able to put a little bit more in. Okay, well, let's shoot forward to our established business owner, the 55-year-old. They've been around the block for a while. They've got consistent profits. Things are going well. They got a great team in place. And I just want to isolate that behavior tax again. So we're going to look at them funding it for 10 years versus funding it for 11 years. Now, everyone agreed that you would want to keep funding it. We would encourage you to keep that mindset. We agree that everyone should do that. And if all of these numbers that we're looking at, if you kept going,, then all of your numbers improve. It's very simple. But the only thing that determines whether you keep going or not is this right here. Are you going to make that decision and are you going to be diligent, focused on your education, focused on growing you so that you can grow your business partner, which just so happens to be a policy all along those stages of life? I would encourage you to do that. Okay. Keep that in your mind's eye. So now here we've got our 55-year-old. They did 10 years. That's $500,000 a year. So they put in $5 million. They're taking out a $220,000 income for 30 years. So they put in $5 million. The business did that, by the way. Business funded it. The business owner used it. This is what the business did. This is what the business owner got. So you use $6.6 million of the— and you still leave behind $5 million after you're gone. That's pretty impressive, especially when it's tax-free. This is the kicker, though. If you just funded one extra year, we put in an extra $500,000, we increase the annual income by $30,000 a year. Well, what is the impact of that over a 30-year timeframe? We'll wait one extra year to get started. But man, it's a big difference. There's a $900,000 difference there over that timeframe. Really, really impressive. And there's an increase to the tax-free output as well. So again, what you do and how you think about intersecting with your business and the tools in your business. We all use different tools to help grow whatever our business is. Maybe that tool is people around you in the business. It's strategic partners. Maybe it's the calculator. Maybe it's Excel if you're the real estate investor, or maybe it's actual tools that you use. It's a forklift for supplies in the warehouse. Who knows? These tools all do different things. We have to make sure that we are intersecting with the tool to use it to its maximum capacity. And your behavior is part of what does that. Now let's put them all together and put them on one list. I really want to focus on what you used while you were alive. This is really, really important, but we can't forget how much you're going to leave behind tax-free for the people you love and care about. Everyone on this call loves and cares about somebody. I don't know what your family structure is, but I'm positive because I've been meeting with clients nonstop, day in and day out for the last 16 years, and I have yet to meet someone who doesn't care about someone else. So you got someone you care about and this is part of that legacy. Okay. So you add these two together, you get the total benefit. Pretty, pretty impressive. If you look at right here, the inputs from the business were $5.5 million, but the output, the benefit is $13 million. That is a powerful, powerful asset and a partner for you in your business. Now, everyone knows about the taxman. The taxman looks at this milk and it thinks it's your assets., and it wants to chop it in half and take half of it at different stages of life. Well, one of those stages is death. At some point in time, we're going to be talking about you and about me in the past tense. Well, when that happens, the taxman wants to show up and it wants to get their hands on half of what you've got. So we want to see now, how can our partner in business help us maintain keeping some distance from the taxman around our assets? Let me introduce you. Now, this is very Canadian specific. Of course, our, our, our colleagues down in the States, you guys have some great benefits down there. But I just want to speak to the Canadians for a moment on this. We have this powerful thing called the capital dividend account. Now, this is created when we're dealing with a corporate policy, a Canadian-controlled corporation. Every one of these has a capital dividend account and there's certain events that trigger it. One of those events is the payout of a death benefit from a life insurance contract. This is a very, very powerful tool. Now I want to just isolate one. I'll just pick the one in the middle here, uh, our 45-year-old. So they used a bunch of the money, then they, they have to— a net death benefit of $6.4 million, but the death benefit, the actual death benefit, is way, way higher than that. The reason it's net is because we have to pay off a giant loan. You've been taking out $260,000 a year for 30 years. You're going to get a pretty big loan, especially some interest that accumulates. So that has to be repaid with that death benefit. The remaining amount of money in this example is $6.4 million. But there's a capital dividend account that's going to be created, which is a separate line item that's going to allow any remaining shareholder to extract value tax-free without any taxation at all. Very, very powerful. Has to be issued as a capital dividend by your accountant. And it's a really, really powerful tool. So we talked about what you want to create, what your vision was for your business, the freedom you were looking for. Nobody mentioned legacy at the beginning of the call, but I would imagine you probably do care about the legacy you leave. It's more than the family name. Legacy isn't just the dollars that you leave or the business that you leave behind. It's the mindset that you're teaching the people that you love and care about and what you want them to carry on with. What's the value system, the things that matter to you so that they can try to duplicate that and carry it forward in their own life. Fundamentally, the insurance itself won't do that. Your partner won't do that. But the way that you use it and you teach other people as you go about this and you get practice and get proficiency, you're going to be able to do that. So you're going to take a legacy that has math and numbers behind it and you're going to apply human behavior and the things that really matter to you, and you're going to couple them together, and that's going to make something truly powerful. Okay, so I want to walk through this, this example of capital dividend account real quick just to give you the visual. So here we go. We've got our loan. We've been taking annual loans here. I'll— let me actually draw on this with a pen. Perfect. Okay, so we're taking an annual loan and we're doing that and we're doing that all the way along and we're using that money and we're going and spending it. Okay. There's interest that's going to accumulate on these loans if you're not paying it back. And this is a passive income for it. Just builds up and it builds up and it builds up. And then eventually we reach a point where you're no longer with us. Well, when that happens, this death benefit, it's got to pay off this loan. So we're going to blow that loan out. And this remaining value out here is the tax-free amount that's going to go to the people that you love and care about. In the case of the corporation, it's going to go to the corporation and then the remaining shareholders, you know, spouse, the kids, whoever you've got, they're going to be able to issue a capital dividend to withdraw that, that net estate value, that tax death benefit, the remaining death benefit tax-free. And if there's other assets, I saw someone mention real estate. Maybe you got a big real estate portfolio, maybe you've got Bitcoin, maybe you've got a stock portfolio. Now you can slowly sell those things off and you can continue withdrawing that tax-free up to that capital dividend account value. Very, very powerful. So going back to the example of the 45-year-old, we had a net tax-free death benefit of $6.4 million, but the total death benefit was $2.9 million. So the capital dividend account at that stage of life was also $2.9 million. So all of this is an extraction value of additional assets that you can pull out tax-free. Now, our partner in business was able to do an awful lot for us here. Our partner was able to, uh, protect us with bubble wrap along the experience of running the business, give us safety, security, stability, peace of mind. Our partner was there to produce liquidity, to give us the ability to do things on demand, at our discretion, on our terms, for any growth initiative you can think of for your business. I don't care what the grossness of it is, it's going to require capital in both time, energy, and dollars. That capital is going to come from your partner, your partner in business. It doesn't sleep. It works 24/7. It doesn't take vacation. When you sell the business or exit the business, it's still going to be there with you and it's going to now work towards producing a passive income that you can activate if you choose to, or to leverage it further to create other assets outside of the business that will produce the passive income you desire. That is the power of having Par Whole Life as your partner in business.

I just want to share, uh, real quickly with, uh, with everyone in attendance. So I just want to bring this full circle, right? So you've seen and heard everything that Richard shared. You've seen, uh, you know, the path that James took. You've seen the path that Alex took. Two business owners, same revenue, same work ethic, two completely different outcomes. And When you really take a moment to think about that, this isn't— we're describing a tool. So we've talked about dividend-paying high cash value life insurance as a tool. It's not about some trendy idea. This is all about who is controlling your financial future. Is it you or is it someone else? And right now, you're standing at that decision point If you keep doing what you've always done, then you already know how that story ends. I already stepped through that earlier. But if you take that next step and you open the door to something that's completely different, something that's permanent, not a temporary solution, it's a process. It's a process that works now and later and especially when you need it the most. And so the next logical step is to get that call scheduled with the right person on our team. We'll talk, we'll talk one-to-one. Our teammate will map it out with you. If it's not a fit, we'll let you know that. But if it is, it could be the financial turning point that you've been waiting for. And the truth, 'cause we always, that's one of our values as a team, is that all progress begins with telling the truth, is that As a business owner, you've done the hard part, right? You've built the income, you've built the business. Now it's time to keep it. And so, uh, the system's here, the process is proven, uh, the next move is all yours. Compounding dividends is like a runaway train, and once it gets going, it's the key to building wealth. And that's one of the reasons why I have so many policies as well. I don't invest capital in anything that I don't know. I don't care how appealing the investment opportunity is. If I'm unfamiliar with it, I don't invest in it. Keep reinvesting those dividends into more stocks.