“If You Can Fire Your Banker and Sit on the Right Side of the Banker’s Desk” - Mark Willis on Taking Control of Cash Flow

What if the biggest thing holding you back financially is not your income, your discipline, or your business, but the system you were handed without ever questioning it?

In this episode of Cut The Tie, Thomas Helfrich sits down with Mark Willis, a Certified Financial Planner who challenges the default American money playbook. Mark explains why banks quietly control most people’s financial lives, how debt and cash both keep you trapped, and what it actually means to fire your banker and become your own source of financing.

This conversation is especially relevant for entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners who are making good money but feel like they are still swimming upstream financially.

About Mark Willis:
Mark Willis is a Certified Financial Planner and the founder of Lake Growth Financial. He specializes in helping individuals and business owners grow wealth in ways that are safe, predictable, and efficient. Mark is known for teaching clients how to take control of cash flow, reduce reliance on banks, and implement strategies traditionally used by ultra high net worth individuals. He is the co host of Not Your Average Financial Podcast and co author of The Business Fortress.

In this episode, Thomas and Mark discuss:

• Why banks quietly hold people back
  Mark explains how debt, cash, and traditional financial products keep most people stuck on the wrong side of the banker’s desk.
• What it really means to fire your banker
  How becoming your own source of financing gives you control, certainty, and flexibility.
• The hidden cost of paying cash
  Why paying cash can be just as damaging as paying interest and how both steal from your future self.
• Thinking like a billionaire without being one
  Mark breaks down how the wealthy use asset based strategies like buy, borrow, die to legally minimize taxes and maximize control.
• Cash value life insurance explained clearly
  The role of properly designed whole life insurance in creating contractual wealth and predictable growth.
• Why some financial products quietly fail
  Mark explains why many indexed universal life policies lapse and why design and structure matter more than marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• There are two types of people
  Those who pay interest and those who get paid interest.
• Control matters more than returns
  Certainty and access to capital often beat chasing higher performance.
• Cash is not risk free
  Every dollar spent today has an opportunity cost tomorrow.
• Design beats products
  How something is engineered matters more than what it is called.
• Financial freedom starts with awareness
  You cannot win a game you do not know you are playing.

Connect with Mark Willis:

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklakegrowth/

🌐 Website: https://newbankingsolution.com

Connect with Thomas Helfrich:
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelfrich
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelfrich/
🌐 Website: https://www.cutthetie.com
📧 Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
🚀 Instantly Relevant: https://instantlyrelevant.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Defining Success And Meeting Mark
• 0:53 The Case Against Banks
• 3:35 Buy, Borrow, Die Explained
• 5:23 Whole Life vs IUL Mechanics
• 9:03 Becoming Your Own Banker
• 12:09 Success, Currencies, And Cutting Ties
• 14:18 Debt Story And Discovery
• 17:08 Costs, Liquidity, And Policy Efficiency
• 20:12 Key Man And Business Use Cases
• 23:49 Limits Of 401k And Control
• 25:20 Final Takeaways And How To Connect

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Thomas Helfrick, and on the mission to help you cut the tie. The metaphoric ones, of course, to whatever's holding you back from success. But you got to define that success yourself. Because if you don't, you're chasing someone else's dream. And today we're with Mark Willis. Mark, how are you? Thanks, Thomas, for having me on. I'm doing great. Looking forward to be on your show. I appreciate you being here as well. So start with who you are, where you're from, and what it is you do.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

I'm a certified financial planner. I work with people who want to grow their wealth in ways that are safe, predictable. And in particular, we help people fire their banker and become their own source of financing.

SPEAKER_01: 0:37

So you just hear that? You hooked you in.

SPEAKER_00: 0:38

Like, how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Though these shows don't actually focus tons on what you go do and why you're great. Tell me a little bit, you know, peel the onion of high level to tease somebody uh what that means exactly. And because that becomes like a unique identifier for you, I believe, as well. So tell me, tell me what that means.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

Yeah, in essence, um, you know, banks are the main culprit, in my opinion, my bold opinion here is that banks are the quintessential force that holds people back. And literally it is the tie that holds us down, whether it's our financial lives, but also our our BMI, our suicide rate, our divorce rate. I think banks are the biggest culprits in society. And that's because they hold all the cards. But if you can fire your banker and sit on the right side of the banker's desk, you can control your cash flow, take control of your future, have more certainty and agency in your life, feel like you're swimming upstream instead of like a tennis ball floating down the gutter of your own life. I mean, what would happen if just 10% of Americans fired their banker and became their own banker in essence, and uh instead? I mean, that would change everything.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43

How do you fire a banker? Like, and and I wasn't aware I hired one, so I think you could. Yeah, well, I want to peel that a bit because that's being selfish and I'm trying to learn.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

So yeah, it's uh it's something we kind of fall into. You know, we're handed the credit card, we're handed the 401k, we're handed the mortgage, we're we're just told this is the oh so average way to do the American financial life. Uh and so we hire our banker when we fall, you know, intentionally or not so intentionally into their trap, their honey trap, their uh honeypot trap. And so the average American, according to recent census data, spends 36% of their income servicing their debt payments. And even those people who have paid off all their debt are still in the banking business because they are operating and running off of cash, which is worse than being in debt. It's like financing it from your future self. Think of it this way: you either pay interest to a banker, like credit cards or mortgage interest, whatever, or you pay cash for your car or whatever you're buying, and you pass up the interest you could have earned on the money. In essence, you're financing it from your future self. Say it really directly. If you pent if you spent 50 grand on a car today, that might be 400 grand that you won't have by the time you die or by the time you retire.

SPEAKER_01: 3:02

But I mean, listen, I I'm a we we paid for cars 13 years ago that were used then and they're super used now. Um, and if I could get rid of a mortgage and downsize it this summer, I would. I would be like, let's sell it and not have a mortgage. Yeah. Let's say you do that. You're on the other side, because there's people who pay interest and those who get paid interest. That's the two types of people in the trail. Like there's those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't. And uh lost my train of thought doing my own joke.

SPEAKER_00: 3:27

Well, there's another, there's another one, uh two types of people, uh people who think there are two types of people and those who don't. There's there's also people, there's also there's also three types of people, right?

SPEAKER_01: 3:37

Those who can count and those who can't.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

Straight. Um those who didn't get the joke, you're a no-counter. Um, so all right, so here, okay, so do you do this through let's say buying an asset and having it pay you money back, like a house or a rental property or something that's like that? Is that is that the nature of Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:57

There was a recent uh there's a recent treasury data dump. A bunch of IRS data was dumped into the public a year or two ago uh from um ProPublica actually published it, and it was 25 billionaires' tax returns going back a decade plus. That included Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg, uh, you know, the the big ones, right? Uh Carl Ikahn, Mark Zuckerberg, all of them, all of them. And they all follow the same method called buy, borrow, die. That's the tax strategy where you buy assets, specifically assets that don't create a lot of income. That's key, uh, because we want to then borrow against that appreciating asset, like your Tesla stock or your Facebook stock if you're Zuckerberg. Uh, and then that loan is what you live on, which is tax-free, while your asset continues to grow without having to repay the loan. And then you pass away and you get a step up in basis to your heirs. You just went multiple generations without paying a penny in taxes. Again, certified financial planners generally are not talking about this stuff. I happen to be one that's not so average. That's the name of our show, not your average financial podcast. So we're gonna bring in not so average, counterintuitive approaches to help you think like a billionaire, even if you're living on way less than that.

SPEAKER_01: 5:10

You know, I uh one thing I was exploring as a, you know, I own a company, you know, we uh everything's outsourced. I'm just after four years gonna set up my own W-2 so I don't have to borrow money from my company every year. Um because you you do need a W-2 for certain reasons, but whatever. It's like so but the minimal, because you know you're paying eight and a half points to pay yourself, which is dumb. But anyway, I'm not gonna go down that plan right now. But indexed universal universal life was is that one of the ones you look at where you're effectively I'm creating a cost on my C Corp to create a key man policy that allows me to save like a 401k that I get a benefit from, but later on, seven years, eight years from now, I can borrow against it or retire. And if I die, I just whatever's left is there.

SPEAKER_00: 5:55

Oh, Thomas, I'm so glad that you brought that up. So one of the asset classes we do look at is something called cash value life insurance. That's an asset that's been around for hundreds of years, whole life insurance in particular has been around for hundreds of years, and it's grown and builds asset value every year, guaranteed, against which you can borrow to pay for things like your cars, your business equipment, etc. The only gotcha here in what you just said so well, Thomas, it's really impressive. I mean, you know your stuff. The the tool that you said was index universal life insurance. Now, that's a lot of, there's a lot of people out there selling that these days, but as a certified financial planner, I've made the business decision. I don't want that liability on my books. And here's why. This book right here, it's called Lapsed, Lapsed, and it's about the universal life insurance whistleblower by Elon Moas. Not Musk, Moas. And he uh he studied over 20,000 indexed universal life policies. 90 is it, 98% of them will lapse before the death benefit is paid. Now that's a ticking time bomb of lawsuits. And actually, if folks want to look up where a law line, there's like a shortage to fund it. Yeah, there's an increasing cost component on IUL contracts in particular. So every year you keep it inside the contract, you'll have to read your contract to see this. And again, I've not, we, you know, I haven't seen your numbers in particular, but the increasing cost of the policy grows every year you're alive, and there's really not much one can do about it. So while I love the idea of contractual wealth and borrowing against that asset to create becoming your own, in essence, your own source of financing, you've got it, man. The trouble with is the underlying chassis with IUL contracts, they are destined to lapse. Whole life insurance designed the bank on yourself way, though, grows guaranteed. There's no internal increase in cost structure. You can borrow against the cash value. And crucially, and this is really cool, and we can move on when you're ready, but no, listen, it's my show do what a hell we can do. All right, all right, man, this is your show. So uh, when you borrow against a whole life policy that's non-direct recognition, I know it's a mouthful, but the idea is you borrow against the particular designed policy, the cash value will continue to compound and grow as if there was never a loan taken. This is different than the IUL. You can borrow against an IUL, but it stops the growth when you borrow against it. They wash it, they call a wash loan, they so they wash out the growth.

SPEAKER_01: 8:27

That's interesting. So it was explained to me that it does keep growing because it's still on the assets.

SPEAKER_00: 8:31

Right. Yeah. Yeah. What they end up doing is they put that part that you borrowed against into a fixed allocation and they might give you 3%, but then they charge you 5%, for example. Uh so there's a negative arbitrage there. Um, not exactly my, I mean, here's what I like about it. One, with both IUL and whole life, you're in control of repaying the loan to the policy you own. So in that way, you are in control, which again, to be your own source of financing, you to be your own banker, you got to be the one behind the driver's seat. You know, you part of the problem of many people's financial lives is they're under the hook, they're under the thumb of so many bankers and they have to get up early, stay at work late, you know, fight traffic, go to a job they hate because they're not their own banker. So you've you've found that with whether it's cash value life insurance whole life or IUL, you are now in control of the asset that you borrowed against, which is so good. I mean, that's even better than a home equity line of credit because a home equity line of credit, a bank still decides the terms, right? And there's no guarantee that the house will always grow. With whole life insurance, though, we've eliminated more of the risk and we've got some more uh benefits. Here's what I mean: the cost of borrowing is less and the guarantees of the cash value grow every year. Now, with IUL, all we know that grows guaranteed is the cost, the internal cost component of these policies. So while it's a really cool tool, as you can tell, and for those listening, as they can tell, there's some minutiae in how it's designed. You know, I could say, hey, cars are great, or hey, cars are, you know, worthless. The question wouldn't be, are all cars great or all caller cars worth it, worthless? What you'd want to find out is which car? How was it designed? What was it engineered? How was the chassis underneath? Is it a Ford Pinto or is it a Lamborghini Maserati, whatever? So the key is the design and the engineering. And did the engineer know what he or she was doing when he built it for you?

SPEAKER_01: 10:32

Yeah. And so it's, I mean, listen, and I'm looking into them this year. So I'll definitely follow up with you. Just establish creds. Give me a little bit on your journey then. Sure. Uh, and maybe some of the things you you you've had these, obviously you have an opinion on planning. Uh, so that there was some kind of like maybe metaphoric tie to cut in that moment to say, I'm not going to do it that way. But before you begin, start with what is success to you, though.

SPEAKER_00: 10:52

Oh, yeah. Well, to me, it's the idea at the end saying it was all spent well. And I don't just mean money, I mean time, energy, and attention. Those are the four um currencies that I follow in my life. And it spells team, the money currencies of time, energy, attention, and money. Also meat, to be clear. Ah, yeah, I like that. Uh so you know, and that that actually tastes a lot better. So um homemade. Yeah, that's right. Uh so mate, yeah. So is it spent well? At the beginning of your life, the word potential is a good word. At the end of your life, potential is a horrible, scary word. You know, on on your gravestone, you don't want the words he had such potential.

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

Right. Well, what is uh haven't had? Yeah. It's a one one's a bag of regrets, one's a bag of hope, right?

SPEAKER_00: 11:46

Bag of hope, yeah. Yeah, I'd rather the latter there. So that that's what I mean when when when you ask like what is what is success, it's it's being able to say we spent the rocket fuel well.

SPEAKER_01: 11:56

Nice. Tell me about your journey. How'd you get into this?

SPEAKER_00: 11:58

It was getting out of debt, first of all, for me. Uh I graduated in uh after graduate school in 2008, which is Thomas, a terrible time to be looking for work, let me just tell you, worldwide recessions and all that. And I graduated with$120,000 of student loan debt, which was bad. So, you know, I jokingly say I married two women in college, um, my beautiful wife and Sally May. And we wanted the second wife out as fast as possible. Uh, so we went through the process of the Dave Ramsey method of putting money at at the debt and the debt snowball method and all that. And then I realized that that terrifying reality that you finance everything you buy. Again, as I said earlier, either you're paying interest to the banker or you're paying cash for something and throwing away the interest you could have earned on that money, effectively stealing from your future self. Right. So I realized that that's true with a car or ice cream cones, but it's also true with my debt payments. And so someone graciously kind of showed me this strategy we now call Bank on Yourself, which uses dividend paying whole life insurance, the way we've been describing. And it became one of the central piece tools in my financial firm as I became a certified financial planner. I really pushed hard on this, three and a half years of study to see is this thing legit? Is it just a bunch of marketing gimmicks? And the more I pushed into it, the more I said, wow, this thing is the legitimate tool that could be the foundation of not all, but many people's financial lives. Did you have to uh leave a certain firm to be able to take that position? Yeah, cutting the tie for sure. There's a couple of um connections there. One, the employee mindset. I I was an employee at a uh tax strategy firm and an accounting firm. I also had several other jobs to try to make the bills while I was paying off Sally Mae and all her cronies. Uh, but I had to cut the tie. And I remember the day I was uh desperately looking for an extra little bit of income as I was approaching the holidays and thinking, man, this trading time for money thing is the pits. So had to cut that tie. Also, you know, had to leave the dependency of the W-2 salary mindset when it came to working for an employee as an employee for the tax firm. I was listening to an accountant make those phone calls and say, I'm sorry, Mr. Client. I'm sorry, Mrs. Client. I know you're 63 years old, but the market just took a third of your life savings. And I was ready to cut that tie too. So the Wall Street Casino, the employee mindset, I was ready for something brand new. And so I literally cutting the tie off of my suit and tie and saying, all right, I'm gonna try something that's a little bit more counterintuitive, employee to employer mindset, to go to the entrepreneurial side of the cash flow quadrant, as uh Robert Kiyosaki would say. And I've never looked back, man. I had to have the courage from my wife to get fixed me out of the door and uh get me doing it, but it's been a lot of fun ever since.

SPEAKER_01: 14:56

It's uh it's funny too, because at some point you'll also realize that the security of the W-2 job is actually a falsity in itself. Well said. Uh it is definitely it was a thing in the 60s and 40s, and very you know, the way to get people back to work after a giant recession and for life, and and then it was. It was the mentality of stay here, there was some loyalty, you know. It does not exist today. You are you are a cog in a wheel, and if we don't need that wheel anymore, you're gone, or we don't need that. It's it's not that it is there's there's obviously there's some people who are very secure within this and that, and I'm not smashing corporations for sure, but don't believe that it's safe at all. Um let me ask you, uh explain something on what you're selling. Uh and I think this comes up a lot where you know it's so great, it's front-loaded though, with all your kinds of fees. So there has to be a commitment. And I think what a lot of people struggle with, I know I have too in the past, is what if I can't make the payment into it? So it's setting up the the fundamentals of it so you can sustain it in good or bad. Is that a fair way to kind of look at it?

SPEAKER_00: 15:58

Thomas, I'm glad you brought that up. I don't I don't want to at all come off as saying this is the one and only all trick pony that everyone should do. Uh certainly not. It's a tool in the toolbox that should be handled alongside the rest. You know, I think it's it's I think it's a multi-use, like a Swiss Army knife type tool, but it it has its limitations. Uh obviously there's an upfront insurance cost in the first year. If you put 10 grand into a savings account, you'll have$10,000 and two cents, right? For the interest that they paid you. If you put it into the stock market, you might have$12,000 or you might have$6,000. We just don't know. You know, when you put money into a life insurance policy, even if it's bank on yourself designed, we cut the commissions by about 70 to 80% over against ordinary life insurance. So we're cutting the commissions, we're cutting the death benefit where all the expenses go. But there's still going to be an upfront expense. So in the first year, you put in 10 grand, you might have something like seven grand, 7,500 in liquid cash in the first year. Where did the rest of the money go? It went to cover the death benefit. It might be, depending on your age and health, maybe two, three, four hundred grand. Try to make it as small as we can. The following years, though, the cash gets more and more efficient. I just spoke to a guy. He's he and I have uh been working together for a few years. He's got a policy from 2018. And every dollar he puts into his policy this year, he has a dollar and 30 cents in the same month. So as he puts the money in, he now has a 30% cash on cash this year of return. And next year, it gets to be 35 cents and then 50 cents,$1.50 and$1.75. So it's more like, I'd say it's the difference between a sports car that can drive you from here to the grocery store. That would be a stock, and an and a um, you know, multinational jet airplane that can take you around the world. The the least efficient mile of an airplane is the first mile. And every year you fly that airplane, it gets more, every mile you fly, it gets more and more efficient. Similar to a whole life policy. Every year you fund your policy gets more and more efficient, growing faster and faster. So it's slowed up, right?

SPEAKER_01: 18:04

The first pizza is 10,000. That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 18:07

That's right. That's a really good example.

SPEAKER_01: 18:09

Yeah, that's exactly that's a really good example. Gotta think a lot more pizzas, guys, because writing is uh the uh the thing I think I think it's interesting with these, and I think uh where I like it for entrepreneurship, where setting up 401k is the whole this is you now you're in the the kind of corporate, you're setting up your own corporate trap to yourself. Uh unfortunately, this world does work on W-2s for qualifying for you when to buy homes and mortgages. Um so you hence why sometimes you need to do that, and there's all other reasons too. But um on the financial engineering side, though, whole life is when it's set up what's called a key man policy, right? Yeah, it creates an expense, either be a C Corp, S Corp, election, LLC, whatever it is. Uh, and I'm not a legal person, but so but I'm pretty sure these are correct. They create an expense that you can deduct, which means you don't have taxable corporate income, but then you have a benefit of without getting taxed as well, as the individual key man. And what you're doing effectively is setting up a 401k for free that you can borrow against. Now, if you need money next year, take the 10,000 you would have put in it, keep it. If you're like, I think I could put 10 in this year, maybe next year I'll put in 50. And because I obviously or if you have a good year, a good quarter, you can always dump more into it. Correct. That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 19:18

That's right. Yeah. In fact, uh, we did a whole book on this exact topic. It's called The Business Fortress. It just came out last week.

SPEAKER_01: 19:26

Yeah, I'll get it uh uh let's talk off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, yeah. Sounds like we just go to Amazon and support all.

SPEAKER_00: 19:34

I'll get you a copy, man. No, that's totally fine. I got a couple extra here. We're trying to get off our hands. So it's uh the David Barnett and myself wrote this book, The Business Fortress How to Grow, Protect, and Exit Your Business with Confidence. We go deep into some of the topics you and I are discussing right now, including the key man policies, but also the executive bonus strategies. Imagine if this type of tool was there in the hands of your employees. Wouldn't you attract better people, retain better? People. And as you said so well, if you, as the business owner, have this on the balance sheet of your business, that allows you to take more risk in your business. You can expand your business. We had a gentleman, he he put 800 grand from one of his policies into several big pieces of farm equipment. Uh, and another gentleman who recently sold his business, walked away from his business with the sale, and included in the negotiations of the sale of the business a seven-figure cash value policy that he walked away with. So it was part of his golden parachute. Uh so it's an incredibly versatile tool for business owners as well.

SPEAKER_01: 20:35

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm looking at it from that same thing and evaluating whole life versus IUL. So I'll follow up with you with it because I'm sure I'm a slow buyer. All right. All right. That one uh I it listen, I I think when you're you're listening, and people here are listening to our typical entrepreneurs, I think this is super important from a strategy of, you know, you you make good money in a year, and all of a sudden you're facing either taking the money and salary and paying whatever tax 30% is gonna be for that for state and federal, or you could take that 30%, that money, and create zero expense on one side and put it to your benefit. Um where if you had absolute cash crunch, you could still get it. You're gonna it's gonna hurt a little bit, but you could still get it. Um but you probably, you know, if you're paying yourself anyway, it it wouldn't matter. So I I love this as a thing, it's something that's new to me and learn about uh a bunch with. So uh this show's different, and I'm okay with that because I which means yours is probably gonna get listened to more often. Uh now I do I asked two main questions. I do want to do it as conscious of time, but I I want to know if you could go back in time, uh, when would you go back? What would you do differently?

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

In my own personal life or as far back as human history takes us.

SPEAKER_01: 21:42

Um you got a book you only can control yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 21:44

Okay, all right, all right. Yeah, I was thinking way back. Yeah, you know, there's some there's some really important milestones. One one little memory, I'll be brief. This might go into like childhood therapy stuff, but I remember being in one of those corn, uh it was like a hay maze, if you know what I mean. Little kids, like six years old, crawling on your hands and knees in the dark in these little hay bales. And I remember some little kids, I loved mazes at the time, right? I loved them. And I couldn't wait to go into a human-sized maze. How cool. But little kids somehow, you know, convinced me that it was a dud maze, that there was a dead end, that it didn't work. It was a broken maze, whatever. So I listened to them and I didn't follow through and I didn't go through the maze. Now, if I was talking to my six-year-old self, I would say, don't listen to the crowd. Don't listen to the crowd. Follow through, find your own dead ends. Sure, listen to wisdom, people, whatever. But listen to your gut and say, what's it gonna hurt to just explore this cave here, this beautiful maze? I coulda, shoulda, woulda, right? You don't want to shoot all over yourself, as they say, Thomas, right? Um, but that's what I would do if I could go back in time. I'd tell that little kid to keep going. Because that maze did work, and we saw little kids leaving the exits on the other side.

SPEAKER_01: 22:57

Except the answer is also crypto.

SPEAKER_00: 22:59

Yes. Uh yeah, yeah, crypto, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:02

1990 by Chris. That's right. That's right. Whatever you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Pets.com, Enron, and all that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:07

If there was a question I should have asked you today and I didn't, what would that question have been?

SPEAKER_00: 23:11

No, no, you did a great job. I think, you know, the, you know, if you could tell me, Mark, where the stock market's headed over the next 30 years or 30 minutes, uh, we could also make some bets there, too. That would that would be a good one. I wouldn't have an answer for you, but it'd be a great question.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

How would you answer it though? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

Well, nobody knows, and that's the problem, right? Because we're all putting our our hopes and prayers on things that we have no control over. What if we had a financial strategy where we knew the outcome before we even started?

SPEAKER_01: 23:38

Yeah. And listen, I and I think what you're describing too is uh in the 401k game, you're limited by how much you can put in each year. Uh and it is a slow drip. And it to me it makes no sense, but but why it's limited because it's clearly designed to keep you in place.

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

That's right.

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

That's right. And that's the only method why is like why would financial engineering behind why can't I put as much as I want into that? Because if you could, it would be a great tool. It'd be a great vehicle. Avoid tax, but then there's no way to get it. But you could take a penalty anyway. There's all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_00: 24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:07

And so what you're describing here is definitely been set up by those who play the game. Because there's a method that no one talks about that ultra wealthy people do, yeah. Because it ultimately benefits those who created the rules of the game. Because no one's true. So you have to have enough to put it in there, but it but it's also not if you had$10,000 a year, you can make it work, right? That's right. Yeah, even a couple hundred bucks a month.$20,000 into 401k, you probably could put$24,500 into this or whatever. That's right. That's right. And I don't think I think what I love about that in your middle age, you still have strategy and plan as you start making money in your business does well, where you're starting to avoid 25, 30% tax potentially put it in there, which then you get a gain, you get a net gain of 40%, because you might gain 10% or 8% on that. And then you can borrow against it, and then you don't pay tax on that again, which gives you another 30% gain. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_00: 24:56

There's a uh a financial trail that we can't stop.

SPEAKER_01: 24:59

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So you're gonna get me certified. I'm selling this shit. That's let's do it, man. Oh, thank you, by the way. Uh shameless plug time for you. Who should get a hold of you? What's give them one link?

SPEAKER_00: 25:10

Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. The best the book is the business fortress, and the way to get it, you can certainly get it on Amazon, but go to newbankingsolution.com. That's new bankingsolution.com. And we can have a 15-minute phone strategy session. We've baked in so many great extras and goodies into that website, six webinars, a bunch of reading. You can hear extra podcasts we've done on the topic. But the book is called The Business Fortress, and you can get it anywhere on Amazon online or newbankingsolution.com.

SPEAKER_01: 25:42

Thank you, by the way, so much for coming in today, Mark. Appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it, Thomas. And listen, anyone who's building the show, you got some great advice today. And I hope your head is spinning full of ideas of what you could do next. Uh, but you know, get out there. If that's a tie that you've been holding on to of how do I save? What do I do? I'm paying taxes and playing the game like I'm supposed to. Uh maybe go cut that one and learn what you could do differently. But get out there, make it happen. Don't wait. Thanks for listening.