Escape Debt & Grow Wealth: The Infinite Banking Blueprint

Foreign. Welcome back to wealth on Main Street. And today's guest is someone who doesn't just talk about financial transformation. He's actually lived it. And joining us today is Brandon Neely. He's an entrepreneur, profit first professional. He's also a co host of his own financial podcast named Wealth Wisdom Financial podcast with his wife Amanda. And what's interesting, so we always love to talk to entrepreneurs, business owners. They ran overflow coffee bar for a full decade, an entire decade. A business and a marriage that survived that much caffeine is definitely worth talking about. But here's the kicker. That's really good. You know, after brewing up community and connection in the Chicago area, they turned their entrepreneurial grind into a mission to help individuals and couples and, and business owners actually profit on purpose. And so Brandon's here. We're looking forward to having a really, really great conversation. And if you've ever felt like budgeting was like eating broccoli, I guess Brandon's here to add the cheese sauce.

And so Brandon, you free of dairy free cheese sauce? Yeah.

So you and Amanda. So you ran a community based business for 10 years. I mean a coffee bar. That's what I interpret to be. And, and then you transitioned into financial strategy, which is not really the typical career progression from, you know, coffee bar to financial strategy. And so what was, I'm, I'm genuinely curious, like what was the moment where you said, okay, there's a better way to help people and it's not just through cups of coffee.

Yeah. Well, thanks guys for having me first off. And I, I've been what you guys do and how you serve people there and way up in Canada, I'm not going to say anything about 50 first states or anything like that, but way up there, I love that. But here's what we did. We were in doing this thing overflow, we wanted to change the world. Our business was overflow. And the reason was where we called it that is because it was about changing our, ourselves, the community and the world. And there's a feedback loop, you know, Jesus and God is in center and then it just flows. Right. That was our idea. Okay. And so we had this idea. We had no rich relatives, no nobody that helped us along the way. We just took out credit cards and, and, and hustle to, to make this happen. Which not the best move if there's other ways to go. I learned other ways other time later, I guess we're going through this. We watched this documentary called Banking with Life and learned about this concept called infinite banking. And said, oh, well, we've done all this, right? We've done the coffee shop, but something needs to change on our finances until we. We immediately talked to our friend and started our policies. Now. Now, why am I here as opposed to doing something else? Well, here's what happened five, six years into the business. And I. I would say we were almost at 10 years, probably more like 8 of the business. So what. What happened was we're at the gym, We're. We're trying to work out. We're trying to do all the things to be healthy. And there was a. They were doing some. Some work on the roof. So the roof was not on the building, mind you. And then there was a storm, and it rained a lot. And so I got called from my staff saying, you need to come in. I was like, well, I'll be there later. Like, it's no big deal. And they said, no, you come in right now. The store is falling apart. I was like, oh, okay. And they had called my wife, too, at this time. And we see. I'm like, prove it. You know, you guys are just. Seriously, this is not that big a deal. And you see the store literally falling apart. And we run to the store, and we're in water. We're running. I mean, it was bad. And it was because of my policies that I was able to overcome the flood and sell the business.

Oh, wow.

Because I had access to capital because I was saving in that. Because my biggest risk was me. My biggest investment was me. And you just happened to see your biggest risk, your biggest investment, your business underwater almost. And it was like, when people say there's black swan events happening, this was a hyper local hurricane to just my store, nobody else. And that was one of those things that I'm like, all right, now we're gonna sell. And then my friends, like, I had a job posting. I applied. I didn't know my wife was pregnant at the time. And when we were having this. This flood, and we're like. She's like, go get a job. I was like, I'm not employable. I wasn't. And then he had a position, and he's like, yeah, I don't think you're good. You're too entrepreneurial. But I have an idea. How about you and your wife start your own agency, and I'll train you. I had no idea about the financial industry that Dave Ramsey loves to hate on us or any of that stuff. I just knew this system was able. I was able to sell my business, not close it, because of my policies.

Wow.

Right? That's what I knew. And so I was like, well, I can sell that. Then I get into this, and you learn that all this other crap that you're like, wait, what? Seriously, this is stupid. It was just experience that. That led me into this. And then I go into it, and we've been doing this for seven, eight years, almost seven, because my son is seven and loving it. Helping people, using our policies, buying more policies, and buying offices with our policies. And people tell you, you can't do that. And I can say, well, yes, you can. And they say, well, no, you can't. I'm like, well, I did. So you can. Anyway, these happen, you know, these conversations you have.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%.

That's why I'm here and still trying to help more people, because we need to. We need to take control of our finances, and most people are sleepwalking. So that's why I do it.

It's interesting. It sounds like, you know, the experience of your coffee shop literally being underwater, being in a position where you're able to make that change, you are already saving using policy premiums. You'd learned that along the way because of the documentary you'd watched. So you were implementing for your own purposes. I'm curious, at what point did profit first come along? Because running a business, sometimes it's hard to recognize you have to set your profits aside first to pay yourself first. But to a degree, you had been doing that with policies already. So I'm curious if you kind of fell into the profit first model after the fact. And when did you incorporate those. That. That training and that. That leverage in your business to help entrepreneurs understand how they can change the equation of who gets paid first in their business?

I think it was all an evolution. Like, for us, the policies came before profit first, as you noticed, right? And we were like, oh, well, we need to save. We need to make sure we're good. But we were not paying ourselves. We were living off of tips from the tip jar, and the staff makes more. And that's why at one point we said, business, I can eat ramen all day long, but when you have a kid coming, like, I don't know if I'm gonna do that. And so we started to make sure we're paid first, and we would. Then that was like, I think four or five years. We listened to a podcast. This is in 2017, when we started ours. You remember back in the day when people didn't, like, didn't know what podcasts were. We listened to a podcast from Mike Michalowicz and they were given out free books. And I was like, man, I can write a review and get a free book.

That's right. In our price range.

Yeah. I was like, shoot, I'll do that.

We can put it on our credit card.

So I wrote it, wrote a review, got it, and wrapped it and put it under the tree and gave it to my wife. And that was the best present ever for her. She loved it. And I was like, man. And it was free. Amazing. And that was really where we started saying, okay, we need to start doing the systems. And then if you understand profit first, which, by the way, Mike Kalowitz does like infinite banking.

Oh, yeah, we know. We know him.

He's at it. He is a very big fan. He won't say it, you know, because Dave Ramsey and all the other stuff, marketing wise, whatever, only die on too many, you know, whatever we learned making sure we do those buckets, we just happened to put one. Our tax hold account in a policy. So it's a really amazing system. When you understand profit first and you understand infinite banking and you understand cash flow, it's awesome.

And so when you. When you look back at overflow coffee, so what do you wish. What do you wish you had known about money that you now teach clients every day?

A couple of things that I would say that in. In running that business is Uncle Sam. And your credit card companies, they never show up to work ever. And they always want money. And you're like, holy crap, how much am I paying in processing fees and all these taxes? And I'm like, I'm not getting anything. And so learning the financial system, this is why I'm a. I'm still a person of. Of. I want to change the world. I want to make a difference. Why I went from coffee ethical economics to money is because I still think there's ethical economics that we should be going after. And so our. Our mantra with Overflow was about the ethical economics and community building. What do we do here? We build a community of people that are making a difference with their finances, and it's being ethical with our money and not just giving it to some crazy person on Wall Street. That's really. They're just told, hey, you're not here to serve people. You're here to make money. And I'm like, maybe there's a different way. So that's kind of why I'm here. And it's still a altruistic. I didn't know you could make this much money in money in this world. I just did it to change lives.