We Wish Every Financial Advisor Could Watch This!

We got to be very, very careful in making sure that we're speaking the truth. We're not telling half truths, we're not trying to mislead people because that misleading can lead to very ill informed financial decisions. Let's have a conversation about being your own bank, be the bank. And to be your own bank, you have to buy an infinite banking policy so that you can be the bank. We talked about educating with clarity and that we can all be better at that. I'm the first person to step up and say early in my journ me as an IBC practitioner, I would sensationalize the message in the sense that I would get really excited about the illustrations. I get super excited about, you know, accumulating cash values in the policy and place a high degree of emphasis on that. Nelson said, here are the reasons why I think that's all simply unnecessary. And he said two things. He said, one, people need to develop a deep understanding that the infinite banking concept has absolutely nothing to do with life insurance. And, and secondly, the more you see infinite banking concepts, the more you'll see you didn't see. So that was a huge, huge coaching moment. But recently there's been like just this growing trend of social media marketing in North America where a lot of people who purport to know something about the concept are using this language, be the bank, buy your infinite banking policy, buy cars and grow rich. And like the list goes on and on and on. And not only are these statements misleading and inaccurate, but they really put the entire practitioner community in a very awkward position. Nelson encouraged us to remember that words matter, words have significant meaning and that we can easily misclassify things through the use of words. And Nelson didn't encourage people to become an institution like, be the bank. What does that even mean? Like, I'm a human being, you want me to become the bank. He encouraged us to become our own banker, which is one of the four characters in the financial play. And there's obviously again, catchy marketing. Let's market to it. Let's tell people to be the bank and beat the bank and hug the bank or whatever it is that the marketing messages are saying. The general public hears the words and may not necessarily understand the meaning behind what's being said and the fact that it's just inaccurate, plain and simple. And so I wrote this article for the upcoming banknotes just to weigh in on this topic, this hot topic, and try to bring some clarity to correctly classifying the language around the infinite banking concept.

Yeah, I think what comes up for me, obviously. I mean, you and I have had a number of conversations about this and you know, hey, I've, like I say, we, we, we've walked a path and in the path of walking it, you know what, you know, at a given time and you're always expanding and increasing your horizons. Yeah. So in the early days, I'm sure I said some things that were probably not as, certainly not as accurate as we really try to focus on making them today. And that had to do with my level of understanding at the time, not, not just with the process, you know, maybe not having enough thorough reads of Nelson's book. Of course, you, you go, you meet with Nelson, you talk to Nelson, you watch Nelson's dvd, which you can now still do. So those of you who don't didn't get a chance to talk to Nelson, like you still have an opportunity. There's lots of Nelson available. Oh, and a quick heads up, there's going to be even more of that coming out in the future. As you know, the Nelson Nash Institute is going to be producing some more archive footage of Nelson that will be available for the general public, which is a huge, huge blessing to anyone on planet Earth that gets a chance to have that experience. So as we grow and develop, we heighten our own level of understanding and we get clearer and tighter on all those things. And so I appreciate how we really take the core. I think of Nelson's message in the way that from our perspective, to the best of my ability anyway, I believe I can channel what Nelson taught me and move that forward into my clients and into the advisors that we work with and teach and coach and mentor, which is not just people with our organization. Any advisor who is coachable and actually wants to take this beautiful concept and begin to share and implement that with their clients. There's a path recommended to doing that with the Nelson Nash Institute, of course, being the core of it. But Nelson wrote the book becoming your own banker. It was published in the year 2000. He wrote his second book, building your warehouse of wealth, which the subtitle is A grassroots method of avoiding fractional reserve banking. Do you remember when Nelson was telling us about the book? It's like, oh, wait till you see my next book. Get this, the subtitle is Think, think about it. He was like, of all the stuff, the thing that he was most excited about was think about it. And you know, so I've got my copy of that book right here. And so this book was published in 2012.

Yep.

So that book hasn't even completed 11 years in production. So when I think about when we started this and when we came into the information, it was before this book was published.

Yeah.

And the resources that were available at the time was Nelson's book and very little else available, very little online. There wasn't, if there was, we certainly didn't know about it. Anything available on like YouTube. There was no podcast. So there wasn't the level of accessible information available to the general public. And now because of the volume of accessible information, we also see a lot of the content or word choice related issues being created. And the issue is, I think primarily or for the most part is unintended. Unintentional. The law of unintended consequences.

Yeah.

So when you continually communicate to your clients, your client base or the general public in such a way that is misleading, even if it's unintentional, the result of that is people are misled and that misleading activity will eventually it rises to things like regulators.

Yeah.

Like the insurance company. Nelson New was aware that in order for us to use the functionality that is already provided by a beautiful system created by insurance companies for our own purposes and our own day to day life usage, we need to have those organizations effectively on our side, is what he would have said. Yeah. And the way that you do that is that you play in their sandbox. You abide by the rules and that sort of thing. And that's okay that they're meant to be there for a certain reason. It's just communicate effectively. Yeah.

It's just being unequivocal. When you purchase a dividend paying, participating whole life insurance policy, you're buying a financial product from a reputable life insurance company. That is not infinite banking. The infinite banking concept is ridiculously simple. It does not need to be sensationalized. And when Nelson said that people need to develop the understanding that the infinite banking concept has absolutely nothing to do with life insurance, he was crystal clear in the distinction between what a person was buying versus what they are implementing. When you purchase a dividend paying whole life insurance policy, you are the proud owner of a unilateral binding contract. That is what you purchased. What you are implementing is a process and the policy. It just so happens to be one element of the implementation of a process. It is not one in the same. And what we want to do is work really hard for the practitioner community, for the benefit of a growing community by shedding light on this very important issue. We've made mistakes as it related to the process. I think we've Always done a really remarkably accurate job of describing the attributes of a product because all that information was readily available and we were able to articulate that and communicate that very effectively. But as it relates to the process of becoming your own banker, Nelson was clear and he told us the message begins to be sensationalized is the moment we can turn something so wonderful into something that could really draw unnecessary attention for all the wrong reasons, intentional or otherwise. The moment you've got a marketplace conduct, a regulator, somebody stepping up and going, has anybody got the file on infinite banking policies? Can somebody bring us the file on that? What is that exactly? And somebody says, oh, it doesn't exist. So they start calling around to the insurance companies going, do you have one of these? Do you have one of these? Do you have one of these? No, no, no. And then it's not too long before an advisor gets that dreaded phone call to say, hey, we're just going to go ahead and put your business on hold until we can sort out exactly what you're communicating to the marketplace. So we got to be very, very careful in making sure that we're speaking the truth. We're not telling half truths. We're not trying to mislead people because that misleading can lead to very ill informed financial decisions.

And people will general public needs to know the client to know because they're the ones that are their own banker. The advisor isn't their banker, the insurance company isn't their banker. They are the banker. Their banker isn't their banker. They're the banker.

And, and thank you for again using the correct words banker. Not be the bank, beat the bank, become the bank. That's not what you're doing. You are becoming one of four characters in the financial play that Nelson so eloquently described in his book titled becoming your own banker. Unlock the infinite banking concept. There's no subtitle that reads buy infinite banking policies. They don't exist. People are drawn to work with the practitioners now who are just telling the truth. Let people decide for themselves. And we don't have to use these catchy marketing phrases to try and convince people that they need to go and buy something that doesn't even exist. And yeah, we get it. Anybody who's proficient would say, well that's not what I mean. Yeah, but the general public doesn't understand that nuance. They don't understand what you're saying. They need to be educated on it. So help them understand the problem so that when you present the solution, they know know exactly what to do well.

At the beginning of this year there was a large, well known carrier in the United States who released a internal memo, their licensed advisory force of which so anyone that's contracted women's licensed advisor that's able to connect business with them about the fact that they, you know, effectively did not support the infinite banking concept, shoot forward. There's all kinds of content now that's been created about advisors who teach or promote or recommend in some way, shape or form and however that they do that, that the concept and all of these clickbait type headlines. I'm like oh, this company no longer supports infinite banking concept. Well, well the company never supported it to begin with.

Right.

The company doesn't have a product on their shelf. You're misleading again just with the clickbait title like there is no support because it's not necessary. The concept has nothing to do with the insurance carrier. The insurance carrier sells a whole life product that any consumer can go and find an advisor with two feet in a heartbeat and request that they get them a product whether it's set up appropriately or is up to that person to determine and then they could begin using it as a policy owner in their life. As a banker who creates and manages the rules of how they dictate that within their own personal economy.

Yeah.

Which is completely separate of anything to do with the insurance companies realm. This is internal personal economics transactional activity which has good savings mechanisms in place about paying yourself more than you would a third party because you and your family are worth it. Once you take a policy loan, the only component is the activity of maybe taking a policy loan and making loan repayments. But those are independent transactional items that are determined and decided and implemented through a process by the policy owner.

Yep. And Nelson always referred to a participating dividend paying whole life insurance contract as the entity. And from that place you can implement the process of becoming your own banker. But they're in no way connected. Where the process is somehow connected to the life insurance company, it has nothing to do with, with life insurance. It's an exercise in logic, reasoning, imagination and prophecy. That's it. And when a person really grasps the distinction between a product and a process, it opens your eyes to far more than you ever saw before. With the infinite banking concept and within the life insurance advisor community, what we're seeing is a growing trend of if I hold myself out there as an infinite banking concept expert, I'm going to sell more life insurance policies. And so I've got to develop this really gimmicky catchy marketing to get people compelled to do something. When you're acting in the capacity of a life license advisor, you're fulfilling a duty of care to a prospective client to make sure that whatever it is you're planning to sell them, that there's a need for it and that the death benefit has merit. That is part of our internal compliance process. Not a single file goes from interest to application without going through that filter. And there's a reason that we instituted that, because we're not beginning to implement a process until we have a policy owner. And to get from interested to policy owner, you have to fulfill that duty of care as a life licensed advisor. And then once the policy owner has the entity and it's from that place, they can begin to implement a process where all the additional coaching, mentoring, you know, comes into play. To preserve our professional standing, speaking to all of our esteemed colleagues who might be viewing and watching that, to preserve our professional standing in the industry and to have those companies on our side, we need to make sure that we are telling the truth and that we are drawing a very clear distinction between a process and a product because otherwise the consequences can be ill fated. We do not want to be going down that path because it would. It's far more difficult to try and climb out of that than it would be to make sure we're shining a light on this issue and educating the life carriers on concept, which we are, as you know, rich at the institute level. We're in active dialogue with companies to say, let us make sure that we help you develop an understanding straight from the source, along with an understanding of the marketplace conduct that we support and the marketplace conduct that we will never support.

A couple of great locations where people can dig deeper into the source. Obviously the book Become youe Own Banker. In the description below you'll find a link where you could purchase a copy of that book. But we absolutely always recommend that people watch Nelson's documentary film. You can go to Nelson Nash film.com and then additionally we have two other incredible resources over and above that that are available for consumers. You can go to learn from nelson.com and then additionally we have a tribute project, dayofnelson.com you can listen in on interviews and additional archive clips of Nelson himself teaching interspersed throughout that whole segment where you get to learn and meet with people who actually spend a great deal of time with Nelson talking through this concept, bringing it into their own life, and then learning a way that they could take Nelson's message and Share it outwardly into the world. And those are learning opportunities that we all have available. You know. And Nelson's book, this to me and the title I think Nelson has here was really something he was very proud of because at the end of the day you need a place to store your wealth. It's got to reside somewhere. Yeah, what better place to have it reside? What he was talking about is the unilaterally binding contract of dividend paying whole life insurance put together, actuarially designed by a quality insurance company.

Yeah.

That is a warehouse where capital accumulates capital not being direct money but cash value as a form of capital. And your ability to tap into that reservoir isn't you taking your own money and paying interest to your own money or any of those things. Other misleading statements that are out there. You're never accessing your money. You are accessing the insurance company's money from the general fund. That is what a policy loan is. It's an asset on the books of the insurance company. You co own that company as a participating owner. So that co ownership means that hey, that that money is put together in a custodial fashion to be looked after for all participating members. So if Jason and his family are doing business with the company and I'm my, my family and you know, we've got 10,000 clients out there all doing business with that company and we're all taking loans and we're all putting money back in as loan repayments that those a source of cash flow and earnings for a company that we all share the profits in and they have to distribute those profits with us.

Yep.

A very beautiful and simple system all administered at no cost to us by the insurance carrier. We have the makings of the mechanics of a system that we can then implement the process of utilizing that system at the you and me level. And that's really what Nelson was getting at.

We emphasize this because we've been sharing.

This quite a bit lately.

That quite shocking, you know, in talking to, I talk to advisors all the time and so few understand that cash value isn't actually money. Cash value is the equity that's accumulating in the policy that opens the doorway to ready access capital on demand, on your terms. When Nelson said, hey, you know, it's fundamentally true that your money must reside somewhere. Well when you're paying premium into the insurance company's money pool, the insurance company is putting that capital to work. Your cash value is the net present value of the future payment of a death benefit and that cash value is A doorway to capital, to real money that you get to deploy and control how you finance all the things that you'll need throughout your lifetime.

Which you're going to finance anyway.

Yeah. And again it's just really understanding what's going on so that you'll know exactly what you need to do. Credit to people for wanting to get the message out there and to get people excited about the concept. Don't ever lose that get the message out there. But do it in a way that leaves no room for misinterpretation and leaves no room for the general public being misled to. To believe that they're purchasing an infinite banking policy or they're getting rich by buying cars or whatever other catchy things that are being said out there.

That you brought something else up that I made me think of this. So a little plug for Cash Follows a Leader. You can get a copy by going to Cash follows dot com. One of the reasons we wrote this book has to do with to some degree, some, you know, I don't think the intention was that at the time. But I realize now in retrospect that that's fundamentally what's transpired. Yeah. Is to help people understand the general public. But certainly advisors could take some heat of this as well. Is what actually causes cash value to grow to accumulate. And it's a very simple thing. We have a death benefit and there's a contract that says the cash has got to grow to equal the death benefit. Is that simple. And so every time that you increase the death benefit you're creating an automated guaranteed future increasing outcome of cash value.

Which has nothing to do with infinite banking.

Nothing. It's, it's not how the policy works.

Whatsoever to do with the infinite banking concept. It's an entity. You put money into the company that provided you with the entity. The company is contractually bound to ensure that the cash value equals the total death benefit by age 100 of the life that is insured. No infinite banking anything is required to own that entity. Regaining control of the banking function and reclaiming that from outsiders and becoming your own banker and controlling the process of how you finance the things that you need in life. That is a process, not a product, never has been, never will be. The best entity to get the job of implementing the process done is a dividend paying participating whole life insurance contract, ideally with a mutual company and ideally a system of policies that you put into place gradually and incrementally over a period of time. Respecting the fact that in order to trigger purchase of that entity, it has to have merit. So there's a duty of care that the advisor has to the prospective client to make sure that the size of that entity is appropriate long before any process is even implemented. So we just want to make sure that there's just a crystal clear distinction there so that when you see this content on your social media news feeds all across North America and you're hearing some of these language where you're like, is that even possible? Versus I know what the truth is and I understand the problem. I've developed a reason why I want to implement this process so I don't lose sight of that while never forgetting what I purchased from somebody. Purchasing something and implementing a process are two completely different things. That's what we really want to shed a light on. And I just hope that this serves as even just a small dose of inspiration to take that sensationalizing out of the equation and watch what happens to the results of your business. It will skyrocket.

If you don't understand the problem or what's going on, then the details don't matter.

The solution just won't matter.

But if you understand what's going on, the details also don't matter because you get it right. So it doesn't mean that you don't need to have a good meeting with an advisor and confirm important details around what product you're going to get. That's getting at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're recognizing that you can control the method, the way the ongoing aspect of how you go about purchasing all the things that you're going to buy in your life, which includes things like your income at retirement and other components of life. Money's got to go flow from one part to another in a short period of time. That's what the banking transactions are all about. That the method of you controlling that flow is where the process comes in. So you can be your own banker. Nelson taught us how and he can teach you how. Just go and get this book and you can begin implementing it.

The concept isn't meant to be shared in terms of knowledge and education and awareness through argument. It's just shed a light on the problem so that when you recommend the solution, your prospective client knows exactly what to do. That's what matters most, is what's best for the prospective client.