Leon Draisaitl’s $112M Deal with Edmonton Oilers Financial Advice

I'm excited about this upcoming episode. Jason and I were able to finally get together in person and record a few incredible discussions together for the first time in years. It was so much fun. We did have some technology issues along.

The way and we had some audio.

Blips here and there. So I hope you enjoy the content because we had a lot of fun making it. And now on to the episode.

So I want to have a little bit of a conversation around Edmonton Oiler star Leon Draisaitl for all of our viewers and listeners, the Edmonton Oilers NHL hockey team, which we just both happen to be fans of. And recently Leon signed a new deal which makes him the highest paid player in the National Hockey League. And that deal is an eight year deal. It's an average annual value of 14 million. And so congratulations to him. I mean, it amounts to $112 million deal.

It's a pretty big deal and you know, for the city of Edmonton, it's a pretty big deal for them to be able to securely on incredible, amazing talent. Of course, that's not what we're here to talk about. You can look at all kinds of other content, explains just how amazing Leon is. But what we are here to talk about is what exactly, you know, what kind of advice should Leon be seeking?

Well, given that he's kind of, he, you know, if he was seated right here outside of getting an autographed, you.

Know, shirt and most likely not in full hockey gear because he might be a little hot if he was sitting here with that in mind and if.

He were to ask the question, hey guys, you know, I've been tuning into your podcast. I've been reading your books now that I've about talked guy, you know, somewhere to the tune of 112 million in gross coming my way beginning after the end of next season. And his contract is lockout proof too, by the way, so he's probably going to get about a million bucks a year in salary for your team. And before the start of each season, he'll get a nice check for on average about 13 million bucks. So very, very good agent, very smart. The only thing that his agent hasn't done that's not so wise is contact us to say, what advice would you give Leon now that he's signed this new deal? So here are a few things that I would do. First and foremost, acknowledging that Leon's also engaged. And so that may also mean that there are works plans in the works to start a family.

Family. A couple little, little mini. Leon's on the way, maybe given that future hockey stars.

Yeah, given that he travels a lot with the team, so he's on airplanes. He's all over, you know, North America and international too, showcasing the game of hockey. The very first thing that we need to help Leon understand is the problem. Now, this problem is amplified considering the.

Amount of money, volume, capital. Yeah.

So he's paid a dollar, he's paying tax on that, and he's paid in US Funds. And so the very first thing that we need to help Leon understand is that all of his money is going to flow onto the books of someone else's bank. And it just happens to be a few more zeros than the average North American. Recognizing that that's a problem, we need to help Leon solve that problem. We want to keep as much money flowing into his hands and his future family's hands as possible. And he's also going to finance a few things in Jewry.

I would imagine if you had a few million dollars coming in on an annual basis, you know, you might want a slightly nicer car than the one that I drive potentially. You know, you might want to have a home that you look at and think, wow, as I'm building and growing my family, I could see us expanding into this property a little bit more.

Yeah.

You know, if you're traveling around North America as much as you are, you might want a home maybe in another area where you spend a little bit of time, say, during the All Star break, or he's not going to get a break during the All Star break anyway, but you know, during some of the off periods where you want to spend some of the time building memories with your family. So like, yeah, there's a. There's a common occurrence as your income rises, your expenses or your capital outlays tend to rise with it. And when you're a young individual, as Leon is, and you're dealing with large amounts of capital that you're not really trained how to deal with, you learn these things over time. You're gonna. If you're not careful with your behavior, there's a good chance that we could see a lot of that money flow start to disappear very quickly and go to locations that maybe you might not see it happen again, further to the fact and you identified the problem that really what primarily trying to solve, which is who's getting all of Leon's money? It should be Leon and his family. Is that because it is very fair to say he has a. A very high risk to his family, his fiance and future children if something were to happen to him, heaven forbid that would happen. You know, other people have a risk there, the team, the Edmonton Oilers. There's a number of people who are at risk if something were to happen to Leon. But in the event that, you know, heaven forbid, he's no longer with us, what is the financial impact remaining years of his working life that based on the multiple of his income, presently is going to be lost, is going to be forever gone to his spouse and his future children.

Here's exactly what I would do. First thing I would do is circle the wagons and circle the wagons, meaning that I would assemble all the right who's that can help get the hows done. What are the hows? We would need a very competent estate planner. We would need a very competent estate attorney, A very competent tax professional who knows how to properly mitigate tax.

So in other words, now and in the future.

And we would ensure that there is a very competent life licensed individual, ideally an authorized infinite banking practitioner with the Nelson Nash Institute. And we would put together a family office structure for Leon that would also include an expert who can advise us on philanthropic and charitable initiatives, establishing a.

Family foundation, things that he's already shown a proclivity to do, by the way, especially tag team with the Oilers organization and Connor McDade. They've already demonstrated a lot in freight, volunteer type work, philanthropic type of activities. So kudos to those gentlemen.

Absolutely. And then I would encourage Leon to share with as much specificity as possible, you know, what specific objectives he has financially that are presently on his mind. Of course, you know, engaging his fiance as well and really involving them both in that discussion to talk about what their bigger future looks like financially. Taking a portion of Leon's salary and immediately purchasing on both himself and his fiance a very large amount of dividend paying, whole life insurance. And structuring these policies in such a way where we are maximizing the accumulation of cash value so that we can begin to implement the infinite banking concept just at a much higher level in relation to everything that the dry Seidel family would love to finance throughout the course of their lifetime, which can be cars, investment opportunities, real estate, all the things that these professional athletes tend to deploy capital into.

And part of that is including a plan, a discussion again around what's going to happen when he's no longer playing hockey.

Right.

What is that? What is. And not to distract him, of course, from his current objective of winning a Stanley Cup. We certainly want to want to do that. Yeah. But let's start planting some seeds about what does that future look like the day that you're not lacing up the skates anymore and with the structure in place that allows for that future event, you're going to be well capitalized to be in a position where maybe he wants to start a business or invest in a business that's already existing and cash flowing. That's in his zone of genius. Maybe it's in the hockey world, maybe it's around coaching, who knows? But you mentioned for him and his family, but I want to extend that. We're not talking about him and his family, the children he doesn't even yet have. We're talking about the children of the children of the children that he doesn't yet have.

That's right.

So we got to start really thinking deep, deep, deep down the future of the multiple generations of the Draisaitl family. He's going to be the patriarch of that family and with a team, an assembled team of professionals who are all in alignment around what him and his fiance's vision of their future is. Right. You know, too often people operate in these little financial silos of I've got my CPA over here and I've got my attorney over here and I've got this person over here and there ends up being like sometimes an overlap, but also sometimes a mismatch, a huge mismatch of alignment between what this person is doing, what this person is doing. And it creates an unnecessary financial challenge that didn't need to exist. And being that he's got this, he's.

Created a perfect storm.

Eight year planning window. A lot can happen in eight years to be able to set up something so profound that can be with their family for a multitude of generations. And it's only through that continued conversation and good thinking and tweaking and tweaking a little bit along the way, they're going to create that, that probable outcome.

Absolutely. And when, you know, Leon is in a position of total control over how he finances the things that he needs throughout his lifetime, it's going to be remarkably different than just the advice that he would otherwise get. So, for example, if he wants to purchase multiple pieces of real estate so that he can enjoy the fruits of his labor and travel in the off season and really just live life to the fullest, he'll be rightfully advised to finance these pieces of real estate rather than buy them outright. It wouldn't make any sense for him. And I know this sounds a little bit unusual to hear. Well, gosh, you know, if you were bringing in 14 million gross in US dollars a year, you could probably stroke a check for a few pieces of real estate, but that would be irresponsible. And anybody who's giving him advice should be explaining that to him, that he should be utilizing someone else's capital to finance it so that he maintains control over more of his own cash. Well, as we know, through the implementation of the infinite banking concept, Leon would be able to borrow against the ever increasing accumulation in his policies to finance those pieces of real estate or business investment opportunities without ever interrupting the daily growth. So every day that he's playing hockey, every day that he's aging, every day that his fiance is aging, his net worth continues to rise even when he's deploying capital to achieve all these objectives that he has for his bigger financial future.

Well, in any of those pieces of real estate that he might buy, if they have growth and accumulation, as they likely would, they might be subject to varying degrees of taxation depending on the jurisdiction that they're located in. And so we can't change that impact, but what we can change is if we get the income flowing into the policy machine first, we're amplifying tax free benefit for him and his family before we're redirecting capital to go and disappear to something that won't create a tax free exit, such as the real estate. So, you know, that just creates an optimization effect to everything that he's doing financially.

Agreed. And I would also encourage him to take a portion of his annual earnings and utilize it to purchase it. Now again, this is being conservative in the sense that if he puts money into the stock market, he's exposing capital to the volatility. Right, Those ups and downs, which for someone like Leon, he would be perfectly comfortable doing that at his age, given that he's got many decades of life ahead of him. But one of the things that he should do, even if it's with a conservative amount of his salary, is that for very specific companies that he, where he's utilizing those goods and services, he can purchase preferred stock directly from these companies. I'm talking about publicly traded companies, you can buy preferred shares from these companies, you get basically a cap on the value of the shares, but you get a preferred return. Right? So let's assume Conservatively, you're getting 5% to 8% and you're getting that before the common shareholders receive any dividends. And so there's a number of different things that he can do. Acknowledging that he probably has a much higher tolerance for risk or he may want to achieve additional wealth by pursuing a little bit more aggressively. It would be really financially responsible to say, look, he. Even if we just allocated 20% of your annual earnings and we set that aside and we deployed it into instruments like dividend paying, whole life insurance, preferred stock, where you are in a position now, regardless of what happens down the road, you have a financial lifeboat. Regardless of what happens. You know, you think about Bruce Ellerington who wrote the book See the People, if you're in the financial services space to read that book. And he described how the Titanic was initially built with great B steel to save money and that there weren't enough based on the British naval standard. Right. There weren't. There were only enough lifeboats to meet that standard, not enough lifeboats to take care of everybody on board. And sadly, many lives were lost when the Titanic sank. And so the analogy that we utilize is that we want you to have that financial lifeboat given anything could happen. He can be injured, he could not be in the game for as long as he aspires to be. He's dealing with a much larger sum of money. That doesn't discount the fact that the problem is the same. It doesn't matter how much money you're dealing with, the problem is the same. You're doing all the work. Everyone else is getting it. Leon can solve that problem just like any other hard working North America.

It is a situation, the amount of people getting it is maybe even a little bit different than the average bear because there's also a volume of people who are going to be actively seeking it.

Absolutely.

Which is maybe a little bit different than the average bear when you have a degree of wealth and a known contract. Unfortunately for Leon, he's a very public figure, certainly at least in Canada, in Edmonton, in Alberta as a province. Anyone in the NHL would certainly know who he is. And because of that, you know, his contract is public knowledge. It's what, what he's earning is literally publicly available information, which is not the case with most individuals. And so that's going to produce a degree of people who are going to vie for his attention. Yeah. And you know, hopefully he's getting some great advice around how to set up some appropriate guardrails, you know, around the advisors and people that are coming around him and recognizing that he wants autonomy of his own decisions. He wants advice that is not so much advice, so much more so than coaching where it's like, look, let's pull out of you what it is you most want to do with some of this capital.

And he would be a great client because he's coaching for you.

And you talked about tolerance for risk and relative to his age. And so it's common to think, okay, well, you're younger so you have more time to see some market cycles appear. But you know, you kind of think about risk. I'm like, well, I've seen him go digging for the puck in the board, sit down in the corner when he's being aggressive and he wants the puck because he wants to get it in the back of the net. Yeah. And you know, some people might take that as a high degree of risk because you've seen some of the players in the NHL and you know, once you're in the boards, they're not going to be nice and friendly to you when you get down there. So what we would be suggesting for Leon is maybe take a different track on your financial path than how aggressively you might play the game that you're so good at, where your skill set lies and recognizing that the skill set of playing that game and your incredible talent, that niche that you have, the mindset can apply to other areas of your life. But you can't necessarily take that direct skill and apply it over here in the same way. That's why you need to have be surrounded, just like in professional sports, the Edmonton Oilers being a phenomenal team. Of course, that's my opinion. I think a lot of people would agree that they are certainly, according to their most recent record and their Stanley cup run, being in a position where you need to be surrounded by high quality teammates, high quality coaches. You need a good trainer, you know, you need to have a good equipment around you for the purpose of training and so on and so forth. The same things that you take in the game of hockey. You would want to be applying those principles that are making you presently successful, including your work ethic and now applying that into your financial realm, given this eight year contract.

And so, Leon, if you have occasion to watch this video, once you understand the problem, the solution will become clear and you'll know exactly what to do. And given that you're on Track to earn $112 million gross over your next eight year deal, I think that it would be really wise to examine things financially from just a bit different perspective, recognizing that you're doing all the work and everyone else is going to get all of your money. And there's a solution to that. And that solution includes the implementation of the infinite banking concept.

It's not the only component, but it's certainly going to be appropriate component added.

To the scenario hands down. And whether it's our team connecting with the right person on our team or having your financial professionals who are giving you guidance to get connected with the right person on our team, I think it would definitely be a worthwhile investment of their time or his time. And to anyone watching or listening, this doesn't just apply to someone who's just signed $112 million deal. It doesn't matter how much you earn per hour or how much you earn in salary, you're faced with the very same money problem. And once you understand that problem, the solution, the infinite banking concept, will matter to you. And so what we would encourage you to do outside of connecting with the right person on the team, you're going to see another video that's popped up. Credit to our amazing editing team. And that video is there for you to continue your journey of learning. Because we wholeheartedly believe that there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. And so we appreciate you tuning in. Continue that journey of learning and make the rest of your week outstanding.