EP 441 – Wealth Without Wall Street with Joey Mure & Russ Morgan

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This is the no Closers show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here today with you and really jacked up to have these two special guests. Joining us today, we've got Joy Merri and Russ Morgan from the Wealth Without Wall street podcast that I was honored to be a guest on. And I absolutely love what these guys are doing. I think they're going to rock your minds today, whether you're watching this live, watching recorded episode, or listening on itunes or any of the radio stations across the country. What is going on, fellas? How you guys doing today?

Good, man. What's up?

Thanks for having us on.

Hey, man, excited to have you guys on here, man. Why don't you guys take a quick second and introduce yourselves to notenation. And why don't we start. Russ, why don't we start first with you, buddy. Yeah.

So I appreciate you letting me go in first because I usually try to dominate the conversation on our podcast. Yeah, man, it's awesome to be on here to share some insight on what's happening outside of Wall Street. I guess that's what you do on a daily basis as well. Our group is based out of Birmingham. We have a podcast called Wealth Without Wall street and just looking forward to share.

Awesome, man. Joey, tell a little bit about your guy about you, man.

So I love the idea of what you're doing with note investing because my background is in mortgage, so I have seen the game from the bank's perspective. And I'll tell you to be in their seat. That's where you want to be. So I'm excited that we can share some different practical ways that people can take that seat back from the bank and get all the profits.

That's awesome and that's exciting. What's the beautiful thing is there's my girls gonna end up killing me because I say there's multiple ways to skin a cat. But there's. You guys are doing something really creative, investing out there, helping a lot of your clients really take advantage of stuff. So why don't you share? Joey, why don't we start back with you, talk a little bit about kind of what your Guys, focus is and how you're helping your clients out. Because if you're an investor listening, you're gonna wanna pull over, step off the treadmill, or however you're listening to this or watching this, and pull out a pen and paper and take some notes. Cause these guys are gonna blow your mind. So, Joey, go right ahead there, buddy.

I appreciate it. If you would, though, keep on the treadmill just for a few minutes and do a few reps for me. I have not been in a while. Russ will bust me on that later. But I think the easiest way to kind of intro wealth without Wall street. Most people just have this question, like, what does that even mean? I'm intrigued by it. Maybe I'm not a real big fan of Wall street, but what else is there? Those are kind of the typical questions that we're getting asked on a regular basis. We try to sum it up into really five pillars. The first would be cash flow. So if you have cash flow, obviously you guys know a little bit about that. In note investing, how do we maximize it? How do we have debt strategies to reduce the amount we're paying out to other people so. So we can keep more of it? And how do we use tax strategies under cash flow? So if you're paying 50, 75, 100,000 in taxes, what would you do with 30, 40, 50,000 of that back in your pocket? How many more notes could you buy if you were implementing some of these tax strategies? The second pillar would be life insurance. How we use life insurance as an asset type. The banks know all about this. We just are creating a way that we can do it at the you and me level. We use that called infinite banking, is one of the kind of primary baselines of that using life insurance. The third would be business. How do we use our business as a passive income asset? The fourth, real estate is another pillar. Whether that's flipping land, whether that's apartment investing, whether that's note investing, it's kind of a mutual real estate. And our fifth pillar, lending. So note investing kind of falls into both of those. And so that's why we're really passionate about what you're doing. Grateful to share your message with our clients and listeners as well. But those are kind of our baseline how we create wealth outside of Wall Street.

That's awesome. Russ, what do you want to add to that? Because that was a lot, but I see you there. I can see the years like I want to sweat. Dominate the conversation a little bit there.

I don't like to stay quiet. For too long. But when you said the treadmill, that really made me think of. And I know we've talked about this on our show, it made me think of the rat race that most people are in. Right. I mean, Kiyosaki has really coined that phrase of getting outside of the rat race. And that's just really being on that treadmill, that hamster wheel, whatever you want to call it. And so the people that we're trying to help are really trying to find ways to do that. And Joey kind of labeled the five areas that we focus on. But at the end of the day, we're telling you you're your best asset, your business is your best investment. And if it's not investing or if it's running a dental business, whatever it may be, Right. It's how do we maximize that? Turn those things from active to passive. So that way, literally, you can go enjoy my ties on the beach or enjoy playing with kids or whatever it is. And not having to go to work if you don't want to. Right. That's really what our objective is. And partnering with guys like you who are already providing outside tools is a huge benefit for our clients, for sure.

And you're no longer trading time for money. That's the constant theme we hear from people. They want a way out. They want a way to stop consistently having to trade their time for money.

That's the truth. Because you don't want to exchange one job for another job. Right. You don't want to bust your butt. And that's what we see a lot of entrepreneurs doing is they love the idea of being. Calling their own game. But when they get into it, they're not prepared. They have that same mindset. Hey, if I work 80 hours, I'll make 200 grand. Well, you can actually work less. And using some creative strategies out there. How would you guys kind of identify yourself? I wouldn't say you're the traditional financial advisor. I mean, you kind of follow a little bit of that. But how would you guys kind of wealth managers, wealth creators?

Yes. That's always the part that people are always like, what are you? Like a financial advisor, a financial planner. And Joey and I see those as bad words. Right. Those are the naughty words that we try to avoid. So we would use both.

Exactly.

For the average person, that's what they. They just say, oh, you deal with finance. Oh, you're a financial advisor. And by the way. So my background is coming from the financial advisory roles. I was an investment manager for a long time. A Certified financial planner. So I have all of that in our background, but I've tried my best to unlearn as much of that garbage as possible. We would. We would refer to ourselves more as coaches. Right? We. I know you're a big football guy and see the helmet in the background. We always would say, like, you're the quarterback. We the coach. And whether it's strategist or coach or consultant or whatever, something like that is what we tend to kind of fall into.

Well, at the end of the day, we don't want anybody that comes to us and says, hey, would you be my money babysitter?

Right.

We tend to frown on that. We don't want to be a manager of your money. We want to empower you to take control of it. Get out of the Wall street mindset is. Wall street mindset tells you, hey, give me your money. Cause I'm smarter than you and you take all the risk, but I'll get paid. In the meantime, I'm gonna churn and.

Burn commission, basically, and kind of go from there. Right, guys?

When you came from that background too, right. When we talked, you were working in an investment advisory role.

Yeah, exactly. Before I got in the mortgage company. Yeah. I was working for a couple years for Citibank and working with Smith Barney, if you know their companies and stuff like that. Before I went to work for JP Morgan Chase, the banker then as a mortgage broker professional as well, too. So you're right. You have to have people unlearn that brainwashing that they're out there teaching the average consumer out there, because that's really what it is.

Well, and it's. Yeah, you kind of have all of these common myths in that the only way to build wealth is I must buy mutual funds. I must buy stocks or invest in my 401k. And then they start finding, oh, wait a second, there's this real estate thing and, oh, there's 10 different ways I could do real estate note investing. Right. And how do I do that and create income streams? But, oh, once they do a deal with you and they realize, hey, that just returned a significant irr on my cash, and maybe not even my cash, somebody else's. Why would I ever take a dollar and go put it over here with this guy that can't touch for 30 years and hope that I get 6 to 10% back, right?

Mm, exactly. And you look at what kind of the market's doing, you know, cracking up, especially the flavor of last year, bitcoin. Oh, I'm going to Be a bitcoin millionaire. I'm going to take a line of credit out on my home.

Hey, bitcoin's making a run today, man. I don't know what you're up to. It's up almost 10% for the month now. That's still down 85% for a year.

Sounds like a lift stock, doesn't it?

Yeah, exactly. It's like driving one foot on the brake and gas at the same time.

So, as financial coaches, you guys want to talk a little bit about kind of the process of how you're helping. Are you working with just people there in your neck of the woods or working with people all across the country or what's kind of the makeup?

Our podcast is heard nationwide, and so we do business with people in almost every state that is out there. It's fun that whenever you're mediums like we are today, you can talk to people in a seat across the country where we sit here in Birmingham and 95% of our meetings happen online, just like this pop podcast is being done. But, yeah, it's seeking people who have those similar values, who are looking to get out of the rat race, who are challenged and don't feel like investing in other people's businesses. Meaning, like the investment advisors, they don't want to invest in their business, want to invest in ones that they own and control. And we kind of take a process, as Joey kind of laid out a little bit ago, of how do we seek out things that have been around forever? Businesses, real estate, lending. Right. Life insurance. And focusing on cash flow is a kind of a cool way to do it.

Now I got a text message, actually, from somebody who's watching this. Do you guys mind explaining, before we get too far down the road, kind of talk about a little bit what infinite banking is? Because it was like, I've heard it. People have heard of that. They don't know exactly the concept of it. So I'm gonna toss it up to you guys and let you guys choose who decides to answer that one.

This is gonna be hard for Russ to stay silent, so we may have to piggyback a little bit. But. So infinite banking at the base level is putting money in a place that will allow it to have uninterrupted compounding interest. I think that's something that everybody would agree that they would love to have. Like, if I said, hey, man, every dollar that you've made, if it continued to compound for the rest of your life, that's a pretty big number. That's a Pretty incredible number. But what we do, I would just say it starts with savings. Infinite banking is not comparing an investment with a savings vehicle. It's a savings vehicle with a savings vehicle, right? So I can save in a savings account. And I'm just gonna use an example of like I wanna invest in a note. Okay, I've stacked up cash, let's say I've stacked up $100,000 and I wanna get started. I know you probably don't need that much necessarily to get started, but, well, let's just use that as an easy round number. If that a hundred thousand could have been earning just 4% for the rest of my life. Okay, let's say that's 30 years or it's 50 years, depending on who you are, how old you are. If it could just be earning 4% over a 30 year span of time, it's a seven times multiple. So that 100,000, if it could continue to grow, is worth 700,000. All right? Now, by using life insurance in place of a savings account, I can continue to earn that money because the money continues to compound any insurance contract uninterrupted, even though I've used it to buy a note at the same time. If I compare that with a savings account, I've built up that money and 100,000 and then I trade it for the note. That's still a good transaction, right? I mean, I got 100,000 earning nothing. Or I can use it in this note and create passive income. That's fantastic. But what's even better is if I can get both at the same time. That's really at the very baseline what we're accomplishing with infinite banking. And I'm sure Russ has another analogy or something he wants to share. He's sweating over there.

No, that's good. We get that question all the time, Scott, of what is infinite banking? Somebody's read a book called becoming your own banker or bank on yourself or have heard sometimes we get confused with another group out there. I won't give them any publicity, but they advertise on the radio that's similar name, not nearly as cool, but close. And they ask that question, like what is this whole concept about? And at the end of the day, it's just using money to do two different jobs, right? And if you're a business owner, you know, you don't want an employee doing just one job. You want them doing as many jobs as possible. But most people have their money only doing one job. They got it safe for retirement. They got it Buying real estate. They got it helping their employee benefits. And so Joey and I are always looking for efficiencies. I mean, it seems crazy to think that 1 or 2% makes a difference, but Joey just threw out some numbers a second ago. I mean, it really does. If we think about the amount of time that we have money just sitting idle, whether it's until we find an opportunity or when that cash flow is coming back for us and we're still waiting for the next opportunity, what is it that we could be doing with that cash flow instead of putting it obviously at risk, how do we keep it protected from creditors, from taxes, so forth and so on. And so we found like one of the oldest, most boring tools out there and found a strategy to actually make it pretty cool and to help our investors do more with the dollar than just having it do one job at a time.

That's really smart on that aspect of there being able to using leverage and some other things to make it happen. Correct?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's what it's all about, right?

I think, Scott, one thing that we've talked about before is sometimes it's hard to really visualize what's going on within an insurance contract. And it helps to run your own scenario and to be able to apply it to yourself. That makes all the sense in the world. But one thing, just from a analogy, everybody nowadays has a rewards credit card, right? They've got money they could be spending directly for whatever they're purchasing, but what they've chosen to do is to run it through the means of this rewards credit card.

Why?

Because there's these added benefits, right? There's something that they get for nothing. There's something that's just kind of the cherry on top. And I think when you think about life insurance designed properly, again, it's not something that your grandfather had at State Farm set up or Northwestern Mutual for that matter. This is a very professionally designed contract that is for cash value first and death benefit second. And when it's done properly, you're getting the added benefit of tax free income in the future and a death benefit now and in the future that also passes tax free. Those are way bigger than the 3% cash back or 5% cash back on your Discover card or whatever. But so anyways, I hope that's helpful just as far as an analogy.

Well, but it also makes sense then too, versus like an estate tax, if you've, if somebody passes away and you've got all this cash then paying the taxes on that if you leave that to your loved one versus the insurance. Correct. The big difference. And now that gets taxed at the. When somebody passes away. Correct?

Yeah. I mean, there's lots of tax benefits. I mean, that's what really the wealthy is all about, right. Is trying to find ways to protect money, transfer it and grow it. The less somebody else's hands put on it, the better.

Right.

Question. So what are some of the biggest mistakes you see some of your clients that have made before, before they start getting coached up by you? I mean, or some of the knucklehead things that happen that maybe they just don't know about. What's the biggest myth that you, you see that people are running with and it's ill perceived or ill knowledge? I guess you could say anything.

Yeah.

Hot buttons for you guys.

Yeah, I mean, there's lots. I mean, I will say if I kept it specific to kind of the area that we're in, because there's a lot of people that have heard a little bit about this and as Joey said, maybe they go reach out to a friend who happens to sell life insurance and thinks that because they sell life insurance, they read a book or they watched the video, that maybe they can help them and they ultimately have a tool, but the tool is maybe not set up correctly. But more importantly, don't really have the process. What's the old redneck saying? That everybody holding the pole is fishing. I mean, that's kind of what is happening a lot out there, that people are not necessarily able to teach them the process because we're really about velocity. Right. I mean, we follow this concept of becoming your own banker. And if you think about the way a bank works, when you put a dollar in a bank, Scott, is that a liability or an asset for the bank?

It's an asset for them for the most part.

No, unfortunately it's not. It's a liability. Right. Because they owe that money back. And you inherently know that. Right. Because you're on the other side of the note part. Right. The way that they make it an asset is what do they do? They have to lend.

Exactly. Yeah.

They have to lend it. Right. So. And it's a trick question. Don't feel bad. 99.99% of everybody's not an accountant at a bank gets that one wrong. It's because that's the way our brain is taught to think. Right. We think we put money in the bank. Well, it's an asset for us. It's a liability for them because they owe it back. Right. Like you said, in order for them to turn that into an asset, they must lend it.

That's why they're glad to lend it at give you a return of 0.1% when they go out and charge 18% on credit cards. You know what I mean?

Right, exactly. But here's even a more important point than that. I'm going to use bank of America's stats here. All right? So bank of America, they go out and they give you, like you said, 0.1% on your money, and they go and lend it at 5.1%. What's the return for bank of America?

A lot. 5,000, something like that?

Yeah, it's 2,600%. Yeah, yeah, you're right on line. Because, see, so you knew that math because you knew what when you borrow money and you go put it at work, it's not the spread between the difference. It's because that's not your money. So you do exactly that. That's the way banks work. They work on velocity. They think in terms of using leverage in order to do it. So they don't, you know, yeah, sure, they'd love to charge you 18%, but more importantly, they want to do it as many times as they can. So as we look at what people do with money, one of the biggest mistakes people make is that they may buy this great tool, right? They got a Ferrari, but they drive it like a Yugo because they don't have anybody who can teach them how to use it. They're not figuring out velocity is what's most important. They get so caught up in interest rates. That's a huge problem. I see you're 100% right there.

Everybody loves to brag about their interest rate on a mortgage or something like that, but depending on if I get a negative AM or pick a pay loan, it's not something you should be bragging about. You're losing interest every month, right?

Yeah.

You're bringing up a blast from the past there, Scott, with the pick a pay and the negative am. Man, those. Those are some oldies but goodies, you.

Know, they are starting to reappear.

Are they really? Wow.

Yeah. Somebody else has talked, sent me a pricing guide because I'll have a couple of mortgage bankers that I work with that reach out to me. I mean, subprime has already been back for a couple years. They got really creative. They call it non prime now, you know, but you're starting to see some that, you know, arms are back five once everyone, arms are back and they're starting to get creative with it. Because people in California can't afford the dirt that they're living on, so they want to try to finance that stuff. But when I was a mortgage banker, it was a coach, kind of a mortgage coach. There are products that are good for some people, but for the majority of people, they need to stay away from some of those crazier products. If they're not, do it and run with it long term. You know what I mean? And I'm sure you guys are advising people in and out of things like, what are you thinking here? This doesn't make sense for what you want to accomplish. Right?

It's a tool. I mean, all these financial instruments are tools. Like, sometimes people will say, oh, man, I've heard about whole life insurance, that stuff that Joey and I call him the stallion, by the way, the things that stallion was talking about. And by the way, if you're watching this, you're like, why are you calling the Stallion? It looks more like a Shetland pony, but seriously, it's the Italian background. But, like, why would you guys use this tool? Why would you use a whole life? Why would you not use something that could go a lot faster? Or when you guys were in the mortgage industry, like interest only notes, negative, and all those different. They were just tools. Were there people that used those and used those and made lots of money doing it? Absolutely. Were there people that lost their shirts? They were buying way too much house, all of that. It's just their tools. And it goes. You know, I watched in a video before we jumped on here, there was a golfer that just hold it from the water. I mean, literally was sitting off the green, hit his ball in there, off the drive, went in there, took his shirt off. You can go Google it right now. Knocks it in, hits an eagle in par four, right? Well, I watched Joey try that same thing for about 10 shots. It didn't work out. So it's not the golf club. Right. It's the user of that tool that actually makes that shot work out.

Dude, how are you gonna bring that up? Like, I mean, that's old news. That's water under the bridge. No pun intended.

Water under the bridge, under the club. Well, Russ is over there fishing. He's just got his hand on a pole, letting everybody else. Heavy lifting for him. The analogies that we're hearing here for you guys, definitely living in Alabama with. I've never heard that. Yeah, everybody's handing the polls fishing. That's a good one, dude.

Russ. If you stick around Russ long enough, he's got a one liner that is more country than you've ever heard in your life. Undoubtedly every time or a movie quote that's nobody's ever heard of.

There you go. All right. We had a couple of those from National Lampoons before we got started here, you know, which is good. So this stuff, you guys have been doing this for a while. This stuff isn't just the flavor of the month, the stuff that you're working through, stuff that's been around for quite a while though, correct, guys?

That's right. The process of infinite banking has existed for a long, long time. This actually goes to one of the biggest objections we hear is why aren't more people doing this? Like, so good, sounds too good to be true, so on and so forth. The issue is, is that Nelson Nash, the guy that actually discovered this in the 80s personally, he was upside down in real estate debt and trying to find a way out and realized he had cash in these policies that he could leverage to pay off these real estate debts. So it kind of just started out of desperation for him. He starts going around and teaching this. He's like the solo guy, right? For a long time. And then he writes the book in 2000. It's called Become your own banker. I'm here holding it up here. That's what it looks like. And so here's the thing. It's been around 18, 19 years. This is still on the front edge, the cusp of people learning that it exists. And honestly, it's unlearning the financial entertainers, if you will, that just throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, oh yeah, life insurance is the worst investment of all time. Well, if we're talking about savings, there's no comparison. We're talking about investment. Sure, you could try to hold something else up to it, but that's not the point. That's not even comparison wise. So anyway, point being it's been around for a long, long time. But if you haven't heard of it, it's not uncommon because there's just a small army of us out there really teaching this and it's growing, but it's definitely on the front cusp.

So my background, Scott, I got in the financial industry in 04. I had heard about this in 04, but I didn't pick up on it for a while because I was still being a financial expert. Right. That rising market made me really a smart guy in the industry. It took that rising market to turn around to make me a dummy very quickly. Return to Reality. Right. And that's really. Since 09 is when we really picked this up, has become what we focused on. And Joey and I have been doing this now about 10 years personally. And Joey was in the mortgage industry for a long, long time. And once he realized that he needed to start helping people get out of debt instead of putting them in debt, he got. He moved over the different side of the table and started helping me do it.

Just like you, Scott. I mean, you said, man, forget working for the bank, I want to be the bank.

Exactly. So that's the thing, is people so kind of a big thing. You got your policies, you're working through that you're able to borrow against those policies. Correct. To go out and use that money without losing your death benefit and using that money to be able to go out and leverage it with other things. Correct. It's kind of the basic.

Yeah, the basics. If you want to say, hey, how does this work? Right. I have this whole life insurance contract. I've built up cash values. And just so you know, like, sometimes people are like, well, man, I've had one of those since I was a kid. What could I do? It's got six grand in it. It always goes back to what you put in. It's what you're going to get out. Right. So, I mean, we've got clients putting in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in these things every single year. Joey and I use these personally. I have 17 of these policies. The goal is one is to have it as a place that you put your cash flow. So once my cash is there, when I find a deal, so, you know, I'm sitting down, you show me how to go buy a note. Right. Take money from somewhere. I borrow money against the insurance company's cash and I go use that in order to go buy the property or buy the note. Well, then if I get it performing, I get that cash flow coming back to me. All I'm going to do is use that cash to reduce the lien that the insurance company put against my cash values. Because the goal is I don't want to ever stop compounding interest on my money. I want to make sure that money's growing 3, 4, 5% over the long haul. But if I can borrow against it from time to time, replenish it as cash flow comes in. Now I'm getting the best of both worlds. I've got one asset over here, this note. My accountant tells me that I actually can write off some of the interest insurance company charged me as investment Interest, expense. And so I got some benefit there. I got two assets at work. I try to do this as much as I can. And you know, sometimes people say, Russell, you got 17 insurance policies. Can you figure that out the first time and just got one big one. Well, yes, if I would have been smarter, you know, my Auburn education prevents me from doing that. Even though we're in the Final Four.

Auburn is just not a football school. It's now a basketball school in the fall.

Basketball school heading.

They've got a really great department on veterinarian. I understand too, as well there for you.

They do veterinarian business school. I mean, you name it. I mean, when I was there, it was a decent party school, which, you know, set me back a few years, but put that off to the side. But yeah, the objective is how do we make that money, do a couple of different jobs. And if the insurance company is lending me money against mine, I got it out there at work. There's a lot of little moving parts and we've got some things we'll share, maybe. Joey did a great series on this. You want to go check that out? It's passiveincome.wealthwithoutwallstreet.com and there you can see, like actually him using this multiple different ways. One, buying real estate. Right. And you can kind of see how that process works. But yeah, it's pretty cool. It's nothing magical, it's nothing fancy. It's something that's been around for many, many years, but just hasn't been very publicized.

Yeah. So the website you mentioned was passiveincome.wealthwithoutwallstreet.com correct?

Yes.

It's four really short videos. It's about 25 minutes total. Now, one of the things that will not answer, and I just want to kind of throw this in, one of the objections as well, it takes me too long to build cash in these things. Like, how long will it take? I mean, we have clients, like even right now. I just was speaking with a client. He actively does a lot of real estate investing. He's going to be able to put in 220,000 the very first year and 195 of it is available right away. So we're not talking about it taking seven years for him to get his money back or 15 years, like you probably have heard in the past 20 years. He's immediately within 30 days, going to be accessing it for the next real estate deal. So this is the design of it, how we put it together for you. It's all based on your needs and your use of the money. But anyways, I just thought I'd throw that in. Some people have questions about that.

So is he taking that money post tax after tax is already paid and dumping it in there? So that's right. Okay. That's okay. Great. One big thing here. You can't use self directed IRA funds. Self directed IRA funds? I don't think you can use that to invest in that at all. That's the one thing. So. But cash income, stuff like that can go on to purchase these assets, correct?

Yeah. I mean, do we have people who have cashed out IRAs, whether they're pre or post 59 and a half and even some pre 59 and a half. I sat down with the girl today that took a job right out of college, did a great job putting a bunch of money away, now wants to go back and be a doctor. Right. So she didn't like the degree that she had pursued and wanted to kind of add to it. So for the next like 24 months, basically she's going to have zero income. Her parents have been doing this and bought all sorts of policies on her and her siblings and themselves and been using this within the family and buying businesses and then taking over debts and other things. And she's like, I want to do that. Right. So we looked at it and said, well, if you do this right now, your income, literally you're at 12%. I mean in that lowest bracket you're going to pay any dollar up to 77,000 at 12% and the government's going to hit you over the head with another 10% penalty if you take it out. But then she's like, well, as soon as I get out of school in two years at a minimum, my income is going to put me in the 22 to 24% bracket. And she knows it's ratcheting up from there. And she's like, wouldn't that be a penalty if I didn't do it now, like not taking it out? So not everybody should do that for sure. And I'm not an advocate of using IRA money to fund these. But what we are thinking of, there's a lot of people out there that think maybe putting money into qualified assets is a good idea. And when we point to the 20 something trillion dollars in debt our government sits in right now, we go, are we going to be in a lower rate when we get out to retirement? Are we going to be in a higher rate? And it's not because of how much money we're going to spend or not spend, it's how much money is our government spending, they're going to have to tax us. So from that standpoint, we're big fans of paying the tax today and not having to pay it down the road.

Yeah, because if you grow your income and grow your wealth, taking the hit right now makes a lot more sense than it does in the long term.

Absolutely. Most people don't know and I guess I didn't even mention this. I kind of, sometimes I assume it because I do it all the time. But Scott, I mean these insurance contracts, we access the money income tax free. There's a huge win there. Whether it be in the form of taking out what we've put in or taking it out in the form of a loan, which as you know, is not taxable. We literally are able to use these tax benefits in our favor down the road when we're trying to create passive income streams just from the insurance contract. For instance.

Joe, you had something you wanted just.

In light of that. I'll just share this. Speaking with a couple yesterday, we added up what they're going to put into a contract over the next. I think it was 25 years, so don't hold me to that. Exactly. But it was about $350,000 and just steadily over the course of the next 25 years. Then we said, well, if you start taking the income out tax free over the next 20 years after that, so 70 to 90, it just gave them a timeframe. They're going to pull out 880,000 over that timeframe. So the input is 350, the output is 880, and there's still almost a half a million dollars of tax free death benefit that they'll leave to the next generation. That is the power. That's like quantifying that rewards credit card. I was telling you that we're able to utilize the policy for, not to mention the 350 as it's been growing the whole time, as they've been putting money in, they could be leveraging for building other passive income streams like note investing, like real estate, like their business they happen to own, travel agency and they're like, dude, it's growing so fast we got to put more money into it. This is their capital fund. They can do both. So anyway, I just thought I'd share that.

Who's kind of an ideal client for you? Or actually, before we get into that, what's kind of the process if you're sitting down with somebody as you're going, you kind of open the kimono for you or in the Italian Stallion thing, open up a boxing.

That's right.

We take people, we tell it, you know, hey, look, if this is something you're interested in, we have a website, it's free. Call wealthwithoutwallstreet.com and we take 15 minutes and we literally ask them like, hey, what are your goals? How close are you to get in there? What's gonna keep you from getting there and what happens if you don't? Right. So it's a 15 minute call that we do with every single person that comes to us off our website or YouTube or podcast or whatever it is. And in that timeframe, Scott, it's literally finding out the basics. Because at the end of the day, I don't wanna know what's underneath the kimono. If your goals and my ability to help you achieve those goals are way off. Okay, this is fun. I mean, now I will say, you know, you remember when you first started with Smith Barney and when I started this business in 04, if somebody could find a mirror, it's like, this is the best person for me to be talking to at this point. Now, though, it's seriously, who's trying actively to get out of the rat race and is at a point in life where this is now moved from just not just important, but to urgent. And if we can help them step on the gas to get there, that's the kind of person we're looking for. It's not necessarily how much money, you know, guy called me today. Hey, I got a referral for you. They only have about $500,000 in assets. They're doing this and that is that. I don't go by that because the reality is is that maybe 500,000 could be a lot. It could be a little. What are they trying to accomplish and where are we at? Can Joey and I, and what we're trying to do? Because we're not trying to be financial planners. I have no interest in managing somebody's money. Our goal is literally, can we help you get closer to financial independence? And as Kiyosaki uses that wording, we use that same formula as do we have more passive income than we have monthly expenses? And we're trying to find ways to partner with guys like you that can help us create those passive income streams. And we're just using cash values to do it.

And so, Scott, once we have a 15 minute call, we both kind of agree that this is going to be a good fit. We move into a 60 minute webinar style meeting like this and where we then answer all the questions because people have been listening to our podcast, they're like, okay, I get this infinite banking thing, but help me understand this. How do loans work? There's a number of frequently asked questions. We spend that 60 minutes outlining those things, making sure those things make sense. And then our third meeting is all about application. How do we apply this concept to your situation? So we're using your numbers. Then and only then are we even asking about any numbers. Cause we don't care until it actually applies to you. And then from there, if it's a fit, we then move forward from there, applying with insurance companies and so on. But that's the baseline. If you start with savings, you know, you gotta get a better savings vehicle than your savings account. Then from there we can invest in the things that we know and understand. And in your case, hopefully that's note investing. That they've been educated properly and they.

Know what they're doing smart there. And then it's a follow up. Basically just follow up everybody, once a month, once a quarter, once a year, as they're making some changes or they're looking through things. How's that kind of work, guys?

That's great. I mean that's kind of one of the things I feel like we've tried to work on. I won't say that we hit nail on the head when we first started doing this. We thought, man, we teach you, you read these books, you watch these videos. We meet five, six times early on and man, pat them on the back, off to the races and go get another one, right? I mean that's kind of the way we, we did it for a long time and we realized that was a failure. So when we meet people who have been out there who maybe heard about this before, a lot of them have that experience, maybe bought a policy, maybe it was a really good one. And maybe they were taught early on some things, but they haven't had any support thereafter. And so what we've made some serious changes over the last, I don't know, 18, 24 months. Is building a community to help support these guys. I know that you have a community that helps support note investors. And we've built that same thing with our infinite banking people. We call it our Wealth Council. It's something that is a private group just for our clients. It gives them access to the other people all across the country who are doing this. It gives them access to other specialists that are whether they're tax people, real estate people, note people. I mean, it's amazing how many people in this group have all these different expertise and they can come in and ask questions and Joey and I get to chime in and help. But also we've built like an internal coaching program that allows them to be coached as they are growing through this process. And not just the old insurance way where somebody buys an insurance policy to call them once a year and just say, hey, by the way, you need any more? That's not the model that we're working on. It's constantly trying to improve it and grow. Because as you have needs, that's when we really need to be talking. Right? You need to treat your advisor. So I think we're using a lot of we in this, and we're so abundant in this that we want to give your community, like, as many helpful tips. If you're learning about this and you got a local person in your area and you'd rather use them than us, like, man, that's awesome. As long as they know it, we all in support of that. But one of the things is definitely having the ability to grow with that person, making sure that you're going to have somebody that's going to help you along the way. And it's not just going to be when a year goes by, I get a call and ask, can I put some more into this thing? It's more like, hey, I want to call this person when I need help. How do I use this to go buy more notes or more real estate or invest in my business or whatever? And that person is built in a way to help them do that.

I love that now. And that's a big thing, is the we. It's not just us as coaches. It's we as the. Our students, as our clients, you know, helping everybody grow. I think it's the big thing, you know, they hear stuff from me and my students hear stuff from me. But it's also nice when they're, you know, they hear that from other people, they see other success stories because you and I, you guys and I can sit here and talk all day. It's when those individual clients stop and say, hey, no, I did this, or I was able to do this from what Russ and Joey taught me, you know, and take that to the next level. It gives a whole. And I think it's a lot more comfort level because they're just not hearing the Pied Piper singing. It's all. Everybody behind it is singing to the same tune as well, right, yeah.

If they go out and they try something and it doesn't work, it's like that old turtle. What was the game we used to play as kids, like at the arcade with whack a mole kind of thing? They go out and try something and they get whacked, and eventually they put their head back inside the shell. They want to go out. But if they have a place that they can communicate that with other people trying to accomplish the same goals. Here's the thing. And you know this. Like, how many of your people, you know, learn about note investing and went out and told, like, two friends about it, and those five friends have never done note investing and don't know anything about it. They go, oh, that's stupid. Why are you doing that? They're like, well, is it stupid? Is this, like, a bad thing for me to do? You know, they start questioning it. But if they have a community to come back to and say, hey, I went out and I tried this. I talked to these people, and they got 150 other people, 500 people to chime in and say, hey, I went out and told to my friends and they said this. But then I went back and I told them this. They have some confidence. Right. They feel a support. And that's one of the things that, you know, sometimes is a positive, but sometimes a negative is as human beings, we have this, like, intuitive nature to want to be in a tribe. Sometimes we end up joining up with the wrong people. People that don't want to be out of the rat race, who are satisfied with their W2 jobs and working 8 to 5. Remember when we were talking, you kind of shared some of those analogies, and that's not what most of us want. And so we need to find other people are similar in nature.

Yeah, that's what I say is people will go out and ask advice of their friends and family, which their friends and family have no bearing, have no knowledge on it. You know, advice is like, assholes. Everybody's got one. What you want to do is go out and seek counsel from those that are doing what you're trying to get to. Like, when I went, who's a note investor? I didn't go ask my realtor, who'd never done it. I went and talked to the guy that closed a thousand deals and learned from him. And when I wanted to learn more about buying the distressed debt, I went out and talked to the people that were dealing with that aspect. You got to seek counsel. People that's been there before who are Doing it. Not somebody who's sitting on the sidelines watching, watching the NCAA tournament in their underwear, not doing anything at all. You know what I mean?

There's nothing wrong with that.

Armchair quarterbacks that like to say, oh.

You shouldn't do that.

You can't do that. That's legal. You know, I had, I was, I had a student one time is a funny story here. And I'll shut up for a second, but I was talking to a client. Came, student, came to the class, loved it. We were at, out later. Oh, a couple days later, I ended up going to the restaurant and they were. He was there with his wife and he sat down and I guess he hadn't really shared much was going on. And we got to talking and she stood up and pointed my fingers. You're the devil. You are the devil. I'm like, what are you talking about? I mean, Scott's a five letter word. It doesn't mean Satan. But she's like, you're. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. I don't know what he told you or what you're thinking, but I am not like that at all. That's not at all. You got to realize that there's a lot of misconceived notions, as you said, myths out there in the finance industry that people think they know, but they haven't really sat down and talked to the experts to do it. And so I encourage anybody who's listening here or listening this episode, take the time, schedule a call, jump on and watch what was the website again for the three videos again there?

Joey?

I had it up on my theme, but then my email reset there.

It's passiveincome.wealthwithoutwallstreet.com and it's free call.wealthwithoutwallstreet.com right? Yeah. If you've already thought about this and said, man, I've just been looking for the right people to partner with, maybe see if these guys are a good fit. No obligation, no cost. That's how you get to us, to our calendar. And we have other advisors we're adding all the time. So it's gonna be on our team that you'll talk to. So yeah, that's how you get 15 minute call.

You know, one of the things we love about this, like what you're doing, and this is kind of one of the passions we have. We started a podcast about 18 months ago with the objective of having a weekly conversation with our clients. It never was intended to reach 65 countries and 50 states and everything that's happening on a monthly basis right now, which is always surprising. Like, what's that guy in Sri Lanka thinking of? My accident, My accent accident.

That was an accident, right?

Seriously, like, why is the person in Nairobi, you know, like, listening to the wealth without Wall street show? But they are. I'm thankful. Thank you for listening.

We can start getting emails from people. Hello, I'm stuck in Nairobi. I need $100,000 from account. Get out of jail.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, like, you know, I used to get those letters from the princes over there, but they quit. They quit asking me to help them with their accounts. I don't know what happened, but yeah, I mean, our podcast, I would just Shameless Plug. Just go to wealthwithoutstreet.com or go to itunes, wherever you're listening to podcasts, and pick the one with the coolest logo. There was a guy that started a podcast, Wealthwith Wall street, did like three episodes. Now, you'll quickly notice that that's not ours because the logo's not nearly as cool, but pick the one with the faceless man. And it is a profile of myself, not Joey. And we literally get on there. We beat each other up just like this. We talk about not only business subjects, real estate subjects, life insurance subjects, ways that we can improve and create passive income. And it's just fun, man. I just appreciate you having us on this show. I know we've kind of jumped around the person's listening, like in the middle of a ping pong shows, like, back and forth. But this is fun. This is what we do on a weekly basis. We love it.

Exactly. It's definitely a fun thing and sharing knowledge nuggets. And like I said, this is not meant to be an education aspect of it, but it's an opportunity for you guys that are listening out there watching this to go check out, learn some stuff. That's one of the biggest things that separates the wealthy from those that are struggling. It buys knowledge. I mean, five years from now, the only thing will be different about you. The books that you read and the people that you meet. You definitely want to go read a couple books, you know, become an infinite banker. Joey showed up there earlier for you or. Or reach out to these guys and learn some stuff, because that's what you want to do. It's all about building relationships and leveraging your relationships to help you get to where you don't need. I mean, I am not the note guy because I knew everything as a note investor, as a Mortgage broker. I didn't know. It's all about leveraging relationships and help me get to the next place. And that's why I love having you guys on here, because you've dropped some great knowledge bombs, nuggets for people to take a look at. We got a pretty educated crowd that follows us for the most part. I guarantee not many of them know all the ins and outs about finances. And that's why I would love to have you guys on because it's a nugget when it helps people build up their wealth so they can do more things without having to say no. They can say yes to more projects. They just know how to structure it properly from the get go. Right, guys?

Yeah, we appreciate you, man. Just continue teaching people, feeding people. This is what it's all about. Abundance is in information and networks and you can never have too much knowledge. Once somebody feels like they've arrived in knowledge, when they become the dumbest person in the room.

That is the truth. That is the truth. Well, guys, I want to say thank you again. Once again, what's the best website for them to reach out to you? Wealthwithwallstreet.com Is that correct?

Yep.

You can access the passive income series there. You can check our podcast out or you can schedule a free call right there on wealthwithoutwallstreet.com and emails is joey.

And russealthwithoutwallstreet.com to their guys. So, yeah, once again, man, thanks so much. You guys have a great afternoon down there in Alabama.

Yeah, hopefully when Hoover you're listening to this, you're also noticing Auburn, Alabama is a national champion in basketball, too.

Wow, he's a prophet now.

He's a prophet. There you go. Who are they playing in the quarterfinals? Is it Texas Tech? No, Texas. Texas playing Virginia.

Yeah. So we play. Yeah, we play Virginia in the semifinals on Saturday. And then the winner of Texas Tech, Michigan State. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You don't think Texas Tech is beat Michigan State is what you just said there?

No, actually I do think they're going to beat him. I think that would be a fun matchup, Auburn versus Texas Tech. That'd be really cool. So, yeah, root those guys on. We need all the help we can get.

Go War Eagle, huh?

That's right. Go Tigers.

You guys be safe. We'll talk to you guys later. All right?

All right. Thank you, brother.

Thanks, man. All right, guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Closers show. Check them out. Wealthwithoutwallstreet.com the podcast or the website and take them up on their opportunity for a free consultation to kind of see, hey, where you're at and where you want to go and see if these guys can help put you along. Other than that, go out, make something happen, everybody. We'll see you all at the top.

Bye.

It.