How Real Builders Take Control of Their Time and Money

Freedom isn’t a destination—it’s a way we design our days.

In this episode, we get real about what freedom looks like when you’re raising kids, running a business, and choosing purpose over autopilot. Three years on the road taught us a surprising lesson: geographic freedom is great, but calendar freedom—owning when and how we work—changes everything. We share the beauty (Grand Canyon at a dog pit-stop), the grit (RV breakdowns, research fatigue), and the small signals that reveal a community’s character (shoutout to kind library staffs).

Then we shift to money with a builder’s lens. We unpack how overfunded whole life (the “and asset”) can act like a flexible, tax-advantaged cash reservoir for owners—without pretending it’s an “investment.” Real examples: buying equipment in days when a bank stalls, or grabbing a small mobile home park fast and letting cash flow repay the policy loan—all while your cash value keeps compounding. We contrast this with the classic “get to zero and stay there” mindset, and talk through where this strategy fits (and doesn’t) for small businesses, key employees, and families.

We close with the decision to move back to Omaha—not for scenery, but for community. Because for most of us, freedom grows where our roots are strong.

📌 Key Topics:
 ✅ Geographic vs. calendar freedom—and why the clock beats the map
 ✅ Practical RV truths: research, rhythm, and finding friendly towns
 ✅ The “and asset”: using cash value as your business’s opportunity fund
 ✅ When to borrow from a policy (and how to pay it back with discipline)
 ✅ Beyond Dave: why “debt = bad” isn’t a builder’s operating system
 ✅ Retaining key people with policies, plus right-sizing premiums for real life
 ✅ Choosing community over location; homeschooling as flexible formation

Take this with you: design one part of your week for real freedom—and build the money system that protects it.

00:00 Exploring Freedom on the Open Road

05:09 Favorite Destinations and Family Adventures

09:51 The RV Lifestyle: Challenges and Learning Curves

15:02 Transitioning from Nursing to Entrepreneurship

19:56 Understanding Cash Value Whole Life Policies

25:08 Leveraging Policies for Business Growth

36:49 The Educational Approach to Life Insurance

39:27 Personalized Insurance Strategies for Business Owners

42:17 Leveraging Life Insurance for Business Growth

46:08 Understanding the Safety of Life Insurance Investments

49:58 Misconceptions in the Life Insurance Industry

54:48 The Importance of Control Over Capital

58:05 The Challenge of Traditional Mindsets

01:03:19 Community and Relationships in Business

01:09:12 Building a Supportive Business Community

Transcript

Ryan Miller (00:00)

Drew, welcome. Appreciate you coming here. I want to start off with your version of freedom, if you will. You just got back from, just moved back to Omaha after three years driving around the United States, did a vacation to Hawaii, kind of culminate the end of it. But how has your view of freedom being on the open road for the last three years changed over that time with a wife and family? It's a good first question. I would say I would not have

⁓ Thought about geographical freedom as a type of style of freedom before that. Never considered it. We weren't ⁓ background, like I've never towed anything. I've never had a truck. Never knew people were doing that lifestyle. ⁓ So that's kind of like one of the cool things about our current, what would you call it? ⁓ Culture, right? We can now work from anywhere.

And so I think that's something that changes like, know, geographic freedom. And then for me, ⁓ while on the road, I would say another thing is that I realized it's like being able to control my time, you know, and when I work is another form of freedom for me. And so I'm someone who I enjoy what I do. I enjoy working. I don't think I'm ever going to just like retire and do nothing. And so for me then, you know,

⁓ So some people freedom might be, you know, doing nothing and, know, just having your whole day free. But mine is more like if I can control my schedule and I can work when I want to on something I enjoy and love, that's freedom to me. And so, you know, I would design my days around like, Hey, we're going to see, ⁓ you know, the Grand Canyon today. So we're going to do that all day. And then I might work later in the day, or maybe I take that day off and I worked extra the next day. And so being able to have that control.

And that flexibility of my schedule, since I work for myself, that would be freedom for me. I remember talking to you before and you said that you were working 30 hours, I remember what you said. then you would travel days, you might not work or whatever. It gives you the autonomy to move your schedule around and be super flexible in that and spend a lot of time with the family and traveling. Where was your favorite place you went? ⁓ man, you gotta ask. ⁓

If you're talking about a favorite place to just hang out and like be there like a month or two with the family, um, Petoskey, Michigan, actually, I don't know if I should say on the podcast. I don't want people to know about it, but, Northwest Michigan is beautiful. I had never even been to Michigan. So I had no idea. We went in the summer, you know, it's like seventies and you're right on Lake Michigan, um, Lake Michigan. mean, the water is just super clear. You can swim out of waste. You'll see down below your feet. Um, you know, and then.

beautiful things that we saw for me like Crater Lake in Oregon was like just like breathtaking and shocking and then you know this one is like probably on everybody's list but Grand Canyon was another one that like I I only accidentally saw it the kids were going in with my wife to the visitor center and we've been driving all day and so our dog you know she needs the bathroom so I took her over to the center to use the bathroom and I didn't realize I'd be seeing the Grand Canyon when I did it and so she's over there doing her business and I look up and I was like oh my

like freaking out. ⁓ that was amazing, you know, and then ⁓ I wouldn't say because of beauty that we loved Florida, but we loved like, we had a lot of friends that would visit there in the winter. And so that was always like a real special fun place for our family is like, there were tons of other families like us that would come down there for the winter. And I mean, you have campfires every week and do all sorts of fun together. So you go south in the summer or yeah.

South in the summer and south in the winter. Yeah. South in the winter. And then we kind of, know, some, had some RV issues along the way. So we had to, sometimes we had to be like in Indiana for some repairs, cause that's where they manufacture these things. And that's how we discovered Michigan actually. And we're like, Oh, Petoskey, Michigan. Who knew it was beautiful. So that was definitely one of our favorites and there people are friendly. The town, it's a small town. take good care of it. Um, Gulf shores, Alabama also very friendly.

So I feel the same way about Gulf Shores because I grew up going there. Okay. Yeah. And it was no one ever went there. Yeah. And now I talk to people in Omaha and they're like, Oh, I to go off shores. I was like, what the heck? This was like best kept secret. was a golf coast secret before. And now everybody's. Yeah. The funniest way that my, my wife determined with the kids, how to judge a place and if it would be like the community would be friendly is, know, my kids love to read. So she'd always go get a pass at the library.

And if the library treated us well, we usually found the city was also very friendly. So Gulf Shores had like the nicest people at the library and that held true for like the whole city. That's cool. Petoskey is the same thing. And it's not kind of became our thing. like, do people at the library treat us? Let's see if it matches the city. It almost always did. It's pretty interesting. you guys always on the go or were you, find a spot that you like, you stay there for a month or two. So there's some people like they love to just bop around and like just, you know, ⁓ we have friends like that. They'll move like every week or something, maybe every couple of weeks.

We like to like enjoy the place. So we'd like to get a feel for it. Cause when we initially started out, our goal was we're going to do this six to 12 months, find a new place to live. I was from here, from Omaha my whole life. And my wife was always interested in living somewhere else. And so it came up with the idea, this idea. And then we started to travel and we were like, you know, three months in and we're like, this is actually kind of fun. Like, let's just keep doing it. And so.

Well, so when we first started, we were like, yeah, let's go stay somewhere like three weeks, get a feel for the place. Cause we might want to live here. Check out the library. Check out the library. Yeah. right. Got to know if we'd like the library. And then we started to realize that actually that, and we heard some other people that had done this long-term and they were like, if you're going to do this for a while, you can't be moving all the time. It's exhausting. Um, and someone told me, I don't know this is true by the way, but it's like, some, like one of the top three most stressful things is, um, moving like, you know, living somewhere else.

And so to be doing that all the time, I mean, you're literally packing up, you know, setting up all the time is stressful and exhausting. So take to pack up and set up. We got good at it, you know, so we were quick, but I would still say like we would try to prep everything the night before and it'd still take us a good hour and a half, two hours to get everything prepped. And then even in the morning, it'd still be like another half hour. Cause it's like, well, we got to do breakfast. We to all these things. Dogs gotta go to the bathroom, you know, but we could set up in like 20 minutes. So setting up was quick. It's the.

tearing down that take forever. Just putting everything back in its place to travel. Yeah. And then you're like, okay, do I want to get the grill out on this stop? Is it worth it? You know, or now we're only here four days. And the one part that's tough is when you are in between where you want to be, you know, like you got to go to Michigan, but you're maybe down in Tennessee and there's these places in between that you're like, I don't really want to stop there, but I need to find a midway spot. And so, you know, so then you'd be like, I mean, you'd get there like three, like, I, this is like some podunk town in Indiana. And it's like,

we just have to hang out here because tomorrow we need to get the kids a break. know, so tomorrow we're going to travel and get the rest of the way. But so were you getting, did you do like a KOA membership or were you just finding spots wherever you went? Just fine. there, there, there are some hacks people do. We didn't really do them. We didn't, we kind of wanted to stay at places that I don't know, like we enjoyed, you know, and so there's a, there, kind of call it the, ⁓ time share of camping. It's called thousand trails. I'm not really a huge fan of it personally, but, ⁓

A lot of our friends would do it because you can buy this membership and camp really cheap at all their campgrounds. some of them are just, I mean, not great, even what you pay for. no, we just kind of like, we'd find, know, that's one of the things that gets exhausting is researching where you're going to stay and then finding a spot, especially if you're going south to Florida. And our first year there was a hurricane. so like half, you know, the lower half had like nothing available. And, and we'd only decided in September, like late September, we're going to do this. Like we took off. so.

It was tough to find spots there, but yeah, we just kind of research online. There's some apps and stuff that help. Yeah, we rented a 40 foot RV, a driveable last year and took the kids on road trip. My wife graduated from a course in California. And so we went out for a graduation and we stopped at Grand Canyon at the four corners, which it's ridiculously overpriced to go stand on a circle that has every state in it.

60 bucks just to get into it. But we love the whole experience. And I wish that we had taken the time to spend more time at each stop because we were just like, but we knew that the plan was we're going to stop at a bunch of places and know that next year we're going to go spend a month in one spot. ⁓ But that I agree, finding spots is so tough, especially with larger equipment. It's like not all of them. And people have this misconception that RV parks are like trailer parks.

But there's a lot that are luxurious, nice facilities, pools, saunas, there are resorts. ⁓ it's incredible. I've seen some with like in Texas where they've got like lazy rivers and stuff. It's all so cool. Yeah. So, but so where when you're doing the research, what I mean, using the apps and stuff, what are you guys looking for for for stops? man, there's a lot we're looking for. mean, you know, can we fit? Is it near things we want to see? You know, that's a big one.

We learned after a while to look to see how close it is to the interstate because it's like super loud, can't sleep, kids can't sleep, you know? ⁓ And then sometimes it was like, if we're going with friends, is this place can have, you know, can our friends get into, right? And so very different, but at least trying to be within 20 minutes of things that we wanted to see or experience or the cities, you know, that we you did a tow behind, so I'm assuming you just dropped the trailer and you can go drive around. Yeah, which is really nice. So, ⁓ and that was a whole,

learning curve. First few times I just, he was like, just give me a pull through. I don't want to back in. And then eventually I was like, actually, I like backing in more. But I had no experience at first. So it was a hot mess when I was backing in. The very first time I pulled in my driveway, a neighbor used to drive semi trucks and he's like, he saw me and he's like, can I just do it for you? I was like, no, but you can teach me. I'd love you to teach me. He's like, okay. You know, and that was like the best lesson ever.

It took me a while, but it was kind of embarrassing because I'd never told. So he could tell. kind of tricks did he give you? Well, so he had one. actually, I actually never used it, but it's like, basically you kind of want to go opposite of which way you think you need to go. Like if you think you need to go right and you'd be going left and something to do with a clock that I never really grasped it. It became a feel for me. I kind of started to understand like, okay, I want the camper to go left. I got to go right, you know, so forth and start chasing. Yeah. And the funny thing is like campgrounds want to like,

They have people that wanna spot you, but my wife and I got so good that I'd be like, I'm not gonna, I'm like, Kate, I'm not gonna listen to a word he says, I'm just gonna listen to you. And I'm like, if I could see it, I could nail it, but if I couldn't see it, needed Kate. And they would be like, just misguiding you all the time. It's so funny. But the best trick, and I used to do driver's training in the military, and then I have my CDL, I'm a trucking company now. But the best trick for backing up.

is you put your hand on six o'clock. And whichever direction you want the trailer to go, you turn it that way. Now, when you get more experience, you can just do it second nature. But starting at six o'clock, you want the trailer to go right, you just turn it this way. Because the steering wheel is turning left. and that trick, I still use all the time. That's what he was trying to teach me. That's the one that you're talking about. I didn't grasp it, obviously. That's funny. I mean, you can see, especially with semis and big rigs, you can see who's experienced and who's not.

because the ones that aren't experienced, they are constantly doing this, whereas the ones who know what they're doing, they just kind of slide it in. It's funny because not that I've backed up a ton of trailers, but sometimes, nail it. First time, looked like I've been doing it for a million years. Other times, like, I quit. Let's get in here. Some of the drivers too. mean, there's times, especially after driving 11 hours, and there's times where it could be a wide open parking lot and I just cannot get it in the spot.

than other times where you got no room and just, boom, slaps right It's like you got to focus. ⁓ It still feels good every time. I'll give you a best semi truck driver story I have on from the road. was our first day trying to leave here. You know, I'm still like barely know what I'm doing. Our landing gear wouldn't come up. One of our neighbors at the campground helped us get it up and going. It's raining. I knew I needed to get air in the tires, so I planned, I was like, I'm going to stop over at the truck stops in Council Bluffs.

And I go over there and none of their pumps are working. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I went to like three, you know, and I'm barely getting into these spots. It's so tight and I'm nervous, you know? And so the semi truck driver sees me struggling and cause I'm like, what do I do? mean, these tires are like, they're low. And so he's like, on. I was like, yeah. And so he says, he tells me, know, pull up next to me. He's like, you need air in your tires? was like, yeah. He's like, you can use my compressor on board. It's fine. He's like, I'll help you out. was like, really? He's like, yeah.

And so, know, he lets me use his compressor and then he starts asking me like, how long you notice? It's like, this is our first day. So he starts giving me all this advice and then he lets my kids get in the front and honk the horn. And he's like, give me all those tips. like, okay, you could tell he's really worried about me. He's like, you're safe out there, all right? You know, just keep an eye out. And he's like, tell me all these little tips. And we took pictures with him and it still pops up every year on my phone. And it was like one of the coolest experiences. Cause I had heard like all the semi-trucks drivers hate you. Like they're not gonna like you, not gonna be nice.

And even like in all the rules about like what to do with the gas station, you know, pulling up to the line, all of that. so like, you know, day one, it was like the perfect guy to meet. Cause then every time I went to a gas station, I knew exactly what to do. It was funny, but he was cool guy. awesome. So what afford you opportunity to do that? You say you work for yourself, gig economy, whatever, you know, remote work. What, what is it that you do? Yeah. So,

I used to be a nurse, used be a pediatric oncology nurse for 10 years. ⁓ I was always very entrepreneurial. Having debt, first of all, I had a lot of student loan debt. So that set a little bit of a fire under me to like, all right, I got to figure this out. ⁓ Got out on the debt, Dave Ramsey style, which I know we might talk about. And then got to zero, started having some questions about his strategy when I got to zero.

mutual funds and all that. didn't quite jive with me. Cause you know, he was doing his radio show, podcast, books, business, right? And I was like, hmm. So, you know, I started doing some research and I'll get into, I found my way into, you know, what I'm doing. My wife was working and we had kids, know, anybody who's married and they see their spouse have kids and have to return to work. Most people that's, for that wife, it is incredibly difficult. used to work with the nurses who

I would see that all the time. Their first shift, they'd be crying. So for me, that became like a real motivation. Like I gotta figure this out. Cause I could tell like she, she loved what she was doing, but she loves our kids more and she wanted to be with the kids, you know? And she never put that pressure on me, but it was just like, I gotta, you know, find a way. I could see it. Yeah. And, you know, and it broke her heart. And so, and she even was going to start a business here in Omaha that was a coworking space for moms that could work remotely.

returning to work. And this is before COVID, before remote work became a whole thing. And so she had investors and then basically they were going to provide a benefit, like companies would provide a benefit for their employee and say, hey, we'll buy you a spot at this desk for nine, 12 months. You can be near your baby, still see them, still feed them, still work and transition back more smoothly. obviously she's very, like really passionate about that. But I also knew like she wants to be with our kids.

So I started trying things, you know, I did day trading for a while and then how that worked out You know, it actually went well when I was also working as a nurse and I had income but I tried a couple times to not be a nurse and then or work maybe once in a while and and then I would do just day trading and that pressure was like my gosh you have now went from being like this hobby to I have to make money at this and so

I would lose my way on the things that were working, staying to the fundamentals and the process, because I started thinking about outcomes instead of sticking to the process. Well, that's actually part of the journey for me was like, ⁓ I started listening to podcasts and I heard this guy one day and he's like, he would coach day traders and he said, ⁓ every successful day trader I know also has another source of revenue, source of income. And a lot of them is like real estate or businesses, which I'm sure you guys talk about.

So I was like, all right, well, you know, real estate, me dive into that a little bit. Well, so many different options on real estate. It's tough to pick one randomly through some podcasts. This guy was doing mobile home note investing. I thought it was like, that's pretty interesting. So I started doing mobile home note investing and that went really well. ⁓ And then, but what I realized is I was buying myself like a 50 hour a week job. I was thinking passive income, I'm going to day trade.

And here I am now working weekends, being threatened by a contractor with my son in the back seat, you know, and I'm meeting him at a Hy-Vee parking lot on my daughter's birthday. I have to be the realtor. have to be the contractor, or at least I got to be the project manager over the contractor. You know, I've got to put out the signs. I eventually had people putting out signs and so I noticed like nobody in this program has figured a way to scale this and also back out of it, you know.

And so I was looking for people and it's like, no, everybody pretty much just worked in that. so I just sold off my last note last year on this. So along the way, get back to your original question. I started reading this book called Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. First time I heard of it, was kind of like, sounds like a scam, word becoming your own banker. ⁓ But then just was like, I'm pretty like, I'm a questioner by nature. So listen to the podcast anyway. And I was like,

That's pretty interesting. You know, so I read the book. ⁓ I'd always helped nurses with their money because they knew I got out of debt very quickly. And so I did have kind of this thing of like, really enjoyed that. I liked helping people, you know, get out of debt or help them with their money. But I was like, I don't really want to be a financial advisor personally. So I'm reading this book and I mean, I'm like over halfway and I closed it and I turned to my wife and I was like, I want to do this with our money. ⁓ But I also want to help other people do this.

⁓ And so it, you know, answer your question, it's, it is around cash value whole life policies. And ⁓ I was a Dave guy, so knew there was a stigma about whole life, but I didn't realize how much. And so let's just dive into that. mean,

Dave's argument is it's a horrible investment. My counter argument to that is it is not an investment. It is a low interest, higher interest savings account, if you will, that you can redeploy funds into or out of.

But when I hear Dave talk about it, he never looks at it from that lens. He always looks at it from an investment lens. But if I can get, say 4 % in this, and then I could take that out and reinvest in something that's 8%, I'm doing better than the stock market, potentially. You could do notes or you could do something that's pretty easy, that's not as volatile. I guess let you unpack that, it's kind of broad question.

I think it's like it has to do with his audience, right? So like I never quite totally answered the question to be honest. So I helped business owners set up these cash value whole life policies that with the intention of lending it to the business to grow, to invest if they need equipment, you know, it's another, it's another, and it's a tax advantage strategy that we can, you know, unpack later as well if we want. And so, you know, the business owner mindset is an investor mindset is going to be different than the people he's speaking to the nine to fiver.

you know, who's going to be like, yeah, let me dump it all in the 401k. I want to retire at 65. I want to live the typical American lifestyle right now. I'm going to be loyal to my employer, mutual funds, you know? And so they're not going to, they look at money one way, right? Where the business owner is thinking about leverage, using debt, Dave's very anti-debt, you know? And so I think it has to do more with, don't, don't, I, cause I can't say I know is like, ⁓

motivations, you but I've definitely seen things where I'm like, I mean, you it's kind of disingenuous, like, or, I don't believe he's naive because he knows so much about the financial industry. ⁓ And so I, but I think also, you know, I learned this in my, like, as I was doing this, it's like, I don't know, I know, I used to think this was like for everybody. And while I think everybody can take advantage and use it, I think it requires the right mindset. And so

To me, I'm no longer like, yeah, hey, the nine to five person, let's help you get this set up, show you how to use it to finance a car, which they could do, but they just don't have that risk mindset, right? And so I think that's kind of one of the things is like, that's his audience. His audience, it's like, they're looking for this specific thing. And he's, don't know if he's never considered it for business or for investing or looked at it, because I feel like if he gave it an honest look, it'd be like, yeah, you know, and he does have some other connections to, you know, other insurance companies that

Art Williams came up with the buy term, invest the rest. so he was, he's what I've been told or what I've read is connected to that company and they do a lot of term. So I don't know. I don't know his motivations behind that. ⁓ But if you look at it and you can leverage this savings vehicle, like you said, ⁓ some businesses get like banks or it's like, we're not gonna lend you any more money. Like we've lent you as much as we can. can lend from this, go buy equipment, right?

Money keeps growing and compounding in there. So there's a huge benefit to them. Plus a lot of business owners, The business is their retirement plan typically, or their investment strategy or their passive income. Well, this has just come alongside and saying, hey, if you use this for the next 10 years, 20 years, you'll also have another retirement revenue stream, plus you have capital that you could use for your business, right? So ⁓ I can't say I know his motivations, but I feel like maybe it's just he's playing to a specific audience instead of.

business owner, investor, you know, I don't think that's who he speaks to. think Dave Ramsey, I highly recommend to anyone who's financially irresponsible. Yeah. And he is very good at getting from negative to zero, but I don't see the long-term benefit of sticking on the plan past zero. Yeah. And, and I think that he, his brand is directed at those people that are financially irresponsible. And so if he was to

say all debt is bad, well some debt is okay, then it's off brand and then he's not gonna cater as well to those people that need to believe that debt is bad. And so I think Dave Ramsey is well aware of some of the benefits. I I'm sure that he does not have zero debt across his entire portfolio. I don't believe it. I just watched something and he said, he was talking about his campus where all his stuff is, he said it's a billion dollar real estate value.

He said, I own zero on this or any of my stuff. He's straight up said, I owe zero. Yeah. I could be wrong. Dave, when you watch this, you can call us out. I will say, like, I, cause I will sometimes, like I used to really like kind of dog him on podcasts and stuff. But one thing I will say, like you said, I'm grateful to him for is he did kickstart like my whole financial journey. And so for me, the same way. It's like, learned to, you know,

budget and to get out of debt. And then that did lead me to, okay, well now I'm at zero, right? So because of him, I was able to get to zero. And then I had questions and it was like, okay, wait a second. So I think you're right. It does help you start that journey. And I wouldn't have been thinking about helping nurses with their money and then thinking, like, hey, these cash value policies, business owners and everything. And so I can see how that progression led me to this. So I'm grateful for that.

I do. just think there's like a cutoff point. Like if you get to a certain point and you're like, okay, I'm at zero. It's time to be like, okay, now what are people who are building wealth doing? And that's what I was asking myself was like, you know, I've got a brother that owns some businesses, you know, I knew people in real estate and I was like, what are they doing? Why are they doing that? You know, and so, you know, as long as they curious, I think it'd be good. So, so how does the high level process work? Cause I've, I've gone down the rabbit hole. I've talked to a bunch of different agents and the big thing

the way that I think about it is if I give you $100,000 and I can borrow 80,000 of it, and they say, well, no, you can't give 100,000, you can give 5,000 a month or whatever it is. And so I never pulled the trigger on it, but I think there's still a gap in my understanding of how it works. Yeah, and there's a lot. And like, it can be confusing if you go on YouTube or if you talk to multiple people, because some people are dealing in like IULs, indexed universal life, and variable universal life.

So it's like some of those, like you can't borrow for a long time. I stick straight to, you know, simplified version overfunded ⁓ whole life cash value. You overfund it for a certain period. You can use it right away. But I'll give you like a, an easy example, right? So I have a business owner. I won't say the bank in town, but the bank in town, ⁓ every time he needs another loan ⁓ asks for more financials. He's been in business for 12 years, paid back every single loan, right?

So needed a piece of equipment. ⁓ They wanted to see more financials from the previous few months and they weren't gonna lend him money. Now you could argue he should have more bank relationships, which I did tell him that, instead of just one. But what does that bank want? Well, that other bank wants his deposits as well, because they need deposits to be able to lend, right? So ⁓ he did have like 100 grand in the, just about 100 grand in the cash value policy. He only needed 40. So he's telling me he's wanting to.

And the reason that he had a hundred and didn't immediately use it for the equipment is he's gonna have a fifth location. So he's thinking down payment for that. So I said, you do have a hundred K in here, right? When you get a loan from the bank, you play by their terms immediately. mean, you gotta make payments whether you're profitable or not, know, and especially people flipping, right? Sometimes they're flipping something they don't want, they maybe won't make interest only for a little bit. So you gotta play by their terms. If you don't pay, they come after assets, right?

So with this, you have a pool of capital that you can borrow against. It's very flexible. It was liquid, right? So he had it within just two to three days, lent it to the business for the piece of equipment. And then, it's up to him on those repayment terms. again, could, would tell you, you have to pay X over X years. I tell people do the same, like treat your money the same. But if you need that flexibility of six months, ⁓ then so it was $40,000 that he took out for the piece of equipment.

So he's now got the equipment. He's going to make more money with that piece of equipment. So he uses the company money to pay that loan back to himself. So that's kind of the part one. I don't feel we get deeper than that, but you know, the 40, the couple mechanics to know the 40 grand is going to keep compounding because the insurance company gave you that money. All you always just simple interest 4 % at the of the year if you don't repay the loan. But does that interest go to the insurance company or just go back into the policy insurance company? So, and that's where like, you know, maybe you try yourself like 8%, right?

And if it's an LLC, you can have tax deduction going back just like any regular loan, you know, I'm not CPA. So so so your CPA. So the 100 grand is earning uninterrupted compound interest and the 40,000 you're paying whatever 4 % interest to to the insurance company. And then you said paying if you were to pay yourself or the business would pay you 8%. Does that 8 % become

your earned income or does that go back into the policy? goes back into that policy. But the 4 % simple will come out of there. Not to get two in the weeds on you. So every payment you make back on these policies goes to principal first. So it actually drops that down even further. They recalculate daily. So it's principal first. But let's say you just type a tag, we took out 40 grand at start of our policy year. Next policy year comes back and we haven't made any payments to it.

All the insurance companies are to say is, okay, premium next year's due plus this 4 % simple that you didn't pay. Most business owners that I've, I mean, every business owner that I've worked with can beat 4 % simple on whatever they're doing. Typically they're being strategic and buying equipment that's going to increase revenue, right? Or they're doing an investment that's also going to bring in cashflow. that 4 % simple is, mean, they were going to do a bank loan anyways and make payments. So, and then the strategy comes in, it's like, okay, I coach people on, hey,

I would start even a small payment back just so you get in the habit, like right away, treat it like a bank. Some people don't take my advice on that, you know, and then up it as cash flow improves. Some people say, no, I'm, you know, I'm responsible and that's not my job to tell them, you know, ⁓ and in, in six months, I'll start that payment back. And so, you know, I have an office manager, we just make a note, okay, six months from now, let's reach out and make sure that see if they want to start. So, but you know, you get, so you got compounding interests, you know, people take it, I think lightly, but it,

Over time, it really builds. then, you you can, you could shut it off at year 10, year 15, and you're still going to have a passive revenue stream coming in from this. And you had capital that was flexible for whatever equipment, real estate, investment, you know, nobody knows what they're going to use it for right away, right? Things change over time. So, so the overfunded part, that's the policy, the life insurance policy might cost 500 bucks a month. And if you're putting a thousand dollars into the, then 500 is going to.

add up your cash value. Is that right? So what we're doing with overfunding, like whole life is not a product that is and this is why Dave says like it's not a great investment. If I just sat down across from you and I said and I was a typical life insurance guy, first of all, I'd be like, Tanner, let's talk about like the value of your life and let's get you in the most death benefit possible. So I'm the opposite. I'm like, hey, let's talk about how much cash you're looking to put in this. That'll tell us a death benefit. Some people care. Most people is like the death of it's just like a bonus.

I'm dead anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah, right. Now I did hear a guy say once, do you think my wife wants all my real estate and all my businesses or do think she wants my like 10 million tax-free death benefit that just comes there? And I was like, oh, that's a point. Because this is going be a lot more to deal with. But so let's say we sit down. So what we're going to do is design it for the most cash. But the traditional whole life setup is not much cash value early on. And so that's why you do want to work with someone that can set it up that works.

we're trying to build it to get your cash value built up quickly versus a traditional one. There's not going to be much there. And that's what Dave rails on. Dave doesn't actually ever talk about this kind of blended policy that we do. And so Dave talks about the product that has like almost no cash value in the first couple of years. That's not how it's designed ⁓ when I worked with business owners on it. And so, so what we're doing is about a four year period of like ramping this up and then it starts to compound and do even better for you. the premium is for the death benefit.

but you're what you're borrowing against is the cash value. Right. So you pay a premium that has a cash value and as an in the premium, yes, it determines what your death benefit is. You got it. So I can give you one more example. Maybe make it clear for people. Is that helpful? So like another another client has like 500,000 of cash value in there. He's you know, he's built this for a while. ⁓ And so he had a he already had mobile home parks. ⁓ Like that's just

kind of one of the side things he does. And so a manager of his mobile home park said, hey, would you be interested in buying, it's just a four unit, a four unit mobile home park, but a cash flows well, because the manager already runs his and knows. And so he's like the guy, I don't know why, but he needs cash quick and he wants out of the deal. And so the client was like, yeah, what does he want? So the negotiation came out, he wanted 180, or that wasn't his initial price, that's what they landed on. So once 180.

⁓ Cash, he wants it within a week. So this guy did a policy loan, which me and my team handle for him. It's, you know, it's three day wire. He paid the wire fee. ⁓ That guy, so he ends up, instead of going through a bank and doing it, which he could have, probably would have been fine, but he's gonna slow it down. So he took the 180K from the policy to buy the park. The park, he said, cash is gonna cash on cash about 20%. So he's gonna take all the cashflow, put it back in the policy, pay it back.

wait for the next opportunity, but that 180K is still growing. Basically the whole 500K that was there is still growing at 4%, guaranteed plus dividends. And so then he was able to borrow it, simple interest only, and have that deal knocked out quick. So that's another example of how people do it. And so he's built his up to now, when he's putting in a dollar each year when he pays that premium, his cash value is like $1.50. So you think 100 grand, it's 150.

So it's increasing, but we had to start, you don't start first in it, you gotta build it up. So, hope that helps explain that. Yeah, so, I mean, if someone's getting started with a policy and they're gonna put, like they're sitting on 50 grand, they're obviously not gonna get 50 grand in cash value immediately. where's that kind of threshold? Yeah, so that's gonna be like an age health rating thing, which is like why I gotta get like people.

go through the process and we get a percentage. So year one's the slowest, I always tell people. You can get about 60 to 70 % of what you put in in year one and that's like always the hardest pill for anybody to swallow. I joke like people would have been following me around the country to do this if it wasn't for year one. But most business owners like, you know, with their business, it's not always profitable day one, you have to build it. It's the same with this, you're building it. Year two, three and four, you're much closer dollar for dollar. Then you're about four to six or four to five actually is when.

you start putting a dollar, you get more, and then it leverages for the rest of your life. it's not a start first product. By year seven is where you start. Year seven is when you could actually, well, I don't want to get way lost on people, but you could technically end it and keep all the tax advantages if you wanted. So, but we could, know, if people want to learn about that, I could share it with them later. But that's where it starts really starting to come out. Yeah. So in that year, that year four period, depending on their health,

And five is when you start to see they're putting in a dollar and they will always get more than what they put in every year for the rest of their life. And Nelson's Nash's book, he talks about basically running your whole life through there. Yeah. Talks about going to the grocery store and, you know, spend a hundred dollars at the grocery store. You taking the money out of your basically using it as a sweep account. And is that what you recommend or is that way? You can probably tell by the way I had told that. Yeah.

Is that way overboard? I do not recommend that. You can't use it like a checking account. So you can use like a savings lending vehicle. Nelson's grocery store example was more about ⁓ people. the concept and like not paying themselves back and robbing from themselves basically by not doing that. But he did say the goal is like, yeah, your long term goal should be like run everything, finance everything through here. ⁓ But I, you know.

I can't say necessarily. I love Nelson, so I'm not going to like dog him, but like, it's tough to get to. think really he was saying like, that'd be the goal is like have so much of this built up over your lifetime that you could finance everything in your life. For me, that was the one like, this just seems like a full-time job. way he made it seem. So on that, kind of talk about what you do that's different. Because you alluded to your team, you alluded to...

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helping people out, following up in six months, hey, are you paying this? That's not typical of what you see or hear of a...

life insurance salesman. So yeah, sorry. I'm to be nice with this. I'm not offended. So we talked about this earlier. I would say I'm much different from that. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak to it. So most life insurance guys, they're going to set you up with a policy and you're not going to really hear from them again, unless you have like a, you know, a death or something, unfortunately. And they're trying to get ahold of somebody to pay it out. So I take a very educational approach. try to teach people the concept.

try to help them understand this so they have a good understanding when they get into it. But that's also what I'm here for is like once they get set up, ⁓ I tell people it's like that's really when our relationship starts is like, cause I'm planning to be there longterm. told you guys I love what I'm doing. I can control my schedule. And so if they have coaching or questions, one, I always just tell me, yeah, my number you can call me. You don't have to be so formal and schedule. But if you want to schedule and sit down and do something, I can draw it out.

And a lot of times because I'm working with business owners, they're busy. So I'll just say, I'll call them and say, you know, give me the info I need here. Okay. And then I'll make a video and send it to them. Here's a video on exactly. had a guy that day said, I want to buy a truck. How would you structure this? You know, cause he's going to do the whole tax write off with this truck. Right. And so he's like, how would you set this up if you were me? And so I just went over like, here's exactly what I do it. And you know, all those details. And then, you know, I do, I do annual, biannual, some people don't want biannual. So I do annual reviews with people.

We serve, provide a white glove service for everybody because like the last thing a business owner wants is like, I need 50 grand. Let me call up the insurance company, sit on hold. I mean, the same reason no one to do that with a bank, right? And so we make it very simple on people. It's like they can text email. I also have a secret page on my website that they can use to put a service request in. And so we handle it all same day. It's just a white glove service to any clients. And so I obviously get paid from the insurance company if I earn their business, but my clients don't

you know, pay me. ⁓ And so I feel very aligned with them because if they have success with this, while people do multiple policies, they refer their friends, you know, and so that's my whole business model is like, educate and then service them really well and just be there for them. So on a multiple policy aspect, is it better for me to have multiple policies or have one on me have one of my wife have one of my kids or doesn't matter? That's going to depend on like your family and

and your goals and like is your wife working, right? ⁓ Or, you even if she's not, it's like, like my wife stays at home, right? So I would still say she has a, like she has a huge benefit to our family if she passes away, you know? And so it's one of those kinds of things where it's individualized, you know? A lot of times I'm dealing with guys running a business. So we start on them. If they're unhealthy or a much higher age, like beyond 60.

then and maybe their wife's younger, we might look at their wife. If they have a key employee, ⁓ you know, or a business partner, we might look at the business partner. And so that's another, like, I didn't get into a layered strategy, but like, also help businesses retain their key or top talent with these policies, because you can ensure that person, you can have a bonus that doesn't pay out for 10 years, you know, but that person's like, I get 150 grand at the end of 10 years, I'm going to stick it out with this company. You also split the death benefit.

with the spouse and with the employee. So again, if something happens to them, you're covered. And then it becomes a nice retirement thing for them where after 10 years, you can say, here's a policy as retirement. So I got off track back to your original question. It's very personalized. So a lot of times it starts with the business owner and we insure them. But I have a lot now where they're like, know, I got this key employee in there. They're 35, you know, let's go, let's go set them up. And Walmart, just kind of funny side story, used to ensure like,

do these to, because it's called COLE, corporate owned life insurance. And they just do policies like on tons of employees and government came in and said, okay, you can't insure everybody. Like the door greeter, you can't insure the door greeter, right? Like, so it had to be someone that's like key, you know. And banks do the same. ⁓ They have, it's called BOLI, bank owned life insurance. And they use it for executives.

I've heard that before that the reason why and we're just talking about this last episode why there's vice presidents everywhere and everyone seems to be a vice president is for that reason is because you can only ensure your executives so if every you have more executives and so what they these companies were doing was putting whole life policies on all their executives and then borrowing against it for operations yes yeah because you have to have an insurable interest on them at the time they insure them but after that let's say they leave the company they get fired you still in the policy on

And so, know, banks maximize these corporations, maximize them, then, you know, wealthy families. so does it work for small business too? Or do you think it? Yeah. So that's what I'm trying to do, right? It's like, take that that these people have been using. It feels a little bit hidden and trying to help small businesses be like, hey, this works on your level too. That's what people are rail against the rich and be like, the rich does the rich that I'm like, why don't you do what the rich does? Yeah.

Like if it works for them, why don't you take their playbook and be like, hey, this dude's making millions of dollars a year. Maybe I don't need millions of dollars, but maybe I can use a couple hundred thousand. I'll just use it as a smaller scale. I wish more people would. That's kind of like what I say when I get, well, you get the haters in the comments on LinkedIn and I'm like, that's fine. But literally every bank you've heard of, every corporation you've heard of and every wealthy family you've heard of is doing this. There might be something.

there to research a little bit and find out. And if not, at least you learn something, but to just say, hate it because someone told me it's no good or whatever, I mean, it's a silly argument. that's what I've been talking to people. was like, I'm trying to take this thing that people have known is there for hundreds of years. Politicians use them right. And any time they change the rules, they make them better. So it's like people are using them. ⁓ And it's not an investment. That's why you have the business. You have the investments that you do.

It just comes alongside of it. So some people call it, you know, the and asset because it goes alongside of it. yeah. What do you use Emeritus? Is that the main one you use or do you? That's what I, I, I can partner with anybody. yeah. Talk to, I mean, they've been around to your point. They've been around for years, like mass mutual been around for 150 years or 200 years. don't know how long it's been, but like these insurance companies aren't going anywhere. So it's fairly.

I said, it's not an investment, also air quotes safe investment. Like kind of, guess, talk to that aspect of it and how, how other, how the money is used and how, how you make money off from it. Yeah. So, um, I'll kind of sidetrack, not really sidetracked, but banks, right? So like a lot of people are becoming more knowledgeable about how banks work, but we'll assume not everybody does. So, um, the FDIC has 1 % of all deposits.

on hand that they insure, that's all they have in there. So 99 % of the money that they're supposed to have insured, don't have, right? So there's run on the bank when I get that. Right. So they can do fractional reserve banking. put a deposit in, they can lend that out seven to 10 times and just create money. You have Thomas Sowell, I won't, you know. So ⁓ that's how banks work, right? Insurance companies, if you have a policy and you die tomorrow, you know,

they have to pay your wife out. So they have to have this capital available. So a couple of the insurance companies I work with, I'll give you one of them in particular without saying specifically who they are, they have, if everybody died, they could pay out all the death benefits. ⁓ So everybody just dies tomorrow and then have 11.2 % left in reserve, right? So they have extra on hand.

You can look up what they invest in. all have different ratings, but they keep it very safe. They have, you know, bonds, they have real estate. That's very, you know, someone told me once there was a deal. ⁓ I don't know which insurance company it was, but they can look it up. I'm sure. But it was like in New York and one of the top insurance companies was on the list is like the owner, right? And so, ⁓ so they keep it, you know, very liquid. ⁓ They are very wise and smart with their money. And then to your point, like they've been around for hundreds of of years and not failed.

If you go Google right now, like bank failures, I don't know what has happened this year, but I know like last year, I remember hearing about like five alone, you know, it was like SVB or whatever was the big one. Yeah, it was a big one. of a couple of fill after that. Yeah. So you see that all the time. I mean, they fail almost yearly. I can, I won't say to this year because I haven't looked it up, but so they're failing all the time. Right. And so for me, this is a safer place, a liquid place as well to store capital. It's off IRS crater to radar.

which is nice as well. Yeah, I see a lot of insurance life insurance companies doing mortgage backed securities and they're doing lending now. I mean, I've gotten pretty good quotes for anything eight figures and up where, but they want that money parked for 10 years. You have the heavy prepayment penalties and, but they're good terms. And we did, we did one with an insurance company that was

It was like a nine month process to get the loan approved. But it's 10 year interest only for, I think it was like 6 % or something like that. Yeah, was a phenomenal deal. And we pulled cash out of the deal. They worked out, it was a like. Took a while to do. Oh my gosh, was a nightmare. Yeah. About four banks a year fail on average. Yeah, that's about why I thought about four or five. So last two years it was two each year, but. Okay. Yeah. Research, the biggest we were looking. Yeah. That was impressive. What are the.

biggest misconceptions around the life insurance industry, not just with the salespeople, but the industry as a whole. Yeah. Oh man, that's a good one. So you touched on one of them, that it's an investment. I would say I don't view it as an investment. Like I've used mine for investing. I look at it, if I have, I'm putting $50,000 away in savings, liquidity savings, not like an investment.

and I'm earning next to nothing and that all I'm doing is doing the same thing. Yes, does it hurt me in the near term, the first couple years? Yes. But if I'm looking year five plus, where am I at? And so that's kind of as far as... Well, it's the same as like a HELOC on your house. You take a HELOC out, that's not an investment itself, but you take those funds and redeploy them. That's how I got started. And that's exactly, that's what a lot of times when I'm going through that teaching process with people, that's what I compare it to.

is like if you compare this to a HELOC, it functions very much the same. You get a death benefit, right? But your family gets your house if you pass. Sorry, but go No, I appreciate it. ⁓ You can do my job for me. doing a good job. The other thing I'd say, ⁓ it's unfortunate, is the commission thing that comes up. ⁓ So I can only speak to how I behave, right? ⁓ And so I've had situations ⁓ where people, I had a guy in particular wanted to do far more than I thought he could do.

⁓ And you know, it's, easy to be like commission eyes, commission breath. And like, my gosh, I could, know, ⁓ and I, I was trying to talk him down because for me personally, I'd rather have a client long-term that succeeds at this and then he can grow it and do the next big one. Right. He got very excited and, you know, and, and he could have probably gotten approved for, for that amount that he wanted. ⁓ and I was like, we can definitely.

see we can check and see when you say it was more than he could handle. Do mean like the monthly payment was higher than annual? So, ⁓ well, just, I can give you numbers without saying much. So he wanted to do 1 million of cash value a year in there. I thought he should do 300,000 and, ⁓ he only recently started making 3 million a year, but was just really excited. It was like, and kind of those people that, ⁓ if people were providing opportunities for passive deals, he was just like, let me put a little there. put that little there.

Um, and so, you know, when you get to that level, you have to provide financials to the insurance company because they're not going to be like, yeah, there's some risk here on them too. So for me, uh, just only seeing him recently went from X amount on then boom to 3 million over a few years, that was kind of like a red flag for me. Um, and so, you know, I wanted him to do less. so I, you know, other, I, I personally feel like other insurance guys may have been like, yeah.

Let's do it. Let's get the one year commission. Cause you get paid on the front side. So you get paid on the front. Yeah. of what you get paid is on the front. Yeah. And so it's like, let me get, let me just, you know, get that. And so for me, I prefer a long-term model. Cause I told you, I love doing this. So I'm like, let's just make sure you have success with this. And so let's get you started at a reasonable number. And you know, his income ended up did drop like by half, like the next year. So it was good. did it that way, you know,

And I've had other things like that where people will say like, I want to start on this max high number, you know, and I obviously I'm not a financial advisor, so I do have to be careful. I can't be giving financial advice, but I might say, you know, well, I want people to do 10 to 20 % of income, not 40 to 50%. You know, maybe that's so I can't speak to other agents. I know other agents would be, you know, maybe really excited about that. Where's the risk on the insurance company that you say that?

If they don't pay their annual premium, then they're just going to get dropped, right? Yeah, the risk is like, mean, insuring him for as much as you've been insured for, right? So if it's a, it was like $20 million policy and he dies within a few days, I mean, they got to pay that out. Right. So, or he dies in under a year. I mean, they're on the hook as soon as he starts making that premium. So they have to make sure he's actually insurable for that amount. Like does he have enough assets, enough income to validate that, least the work trying for.

It's not like he, so he pays the first year upfront. That's not like a year one in one day that if he doesn't pay it, he's dropped. So it's got a basically a two year hook. Yeah. And on a whole life, you know, um, that's not their biggest moneymaker. um, from my reading and understanding and talking with, uh, people in insurance companies, they make, they make money on that about like year 18. It's a longterm play for them. Uh, term, I mean, 99 point something percent of those don't pay out. So they're cheaper, but they, they make a lot of that cause everybody's like,

you know, by upterm, right? ⁓ I, you, well, they outlived the policy. Yeah. I, you, well, as V, well, as those are also like big money makers, but the whole life is, is the steady guy. It will make money for them. But so, so, I mean, you know, he pays a premium. They are already on the hook for X amount and until they kind of, they have to put that money to work. And so, yeah, that's the risk. So the, on the commission structure, the whole life policy payout on the front end is, is the term like

what do call it, perpetuity, like ongoing payments or how that work? Yeah, you get some residuals. I'm not going to lie, I'm not the best at knowing the percentages and everything because I just kind of keep my head down and focus on just keep building my client base. So they're not huge. know, like I can't like retire tomorrow off residuals, but you do get them for like about 10 years. ⁓ And so but I'm going to be honest, don't even know. no, I'm curious.

curious to know the motivation behind the people that call all the time. yeah, no, they're trying to the year one. That the year one is where is where they're going to get the so and then the other part of like, you know, again, like last time earlier, and I don't know that this might be boring for people. But so if you need to cut it, know, but the typical insurance guy, if he's going to put you in a whole life policy, he's going to get you the max death benefit. And so like, by design, if I'm designing it for more cash, I'm actually lowering

my commission on that. But again, I have different goals from that guy, right? So like, he might just want to get you in one policy, maybe once taught to get your kid a term when they graduate, whatever, you my goal is to help business owners succeed with this, they do more policies. And so by design, when you're designing for cash, you're decreasing the amount of whole life that that person would have, because you're trying to get the smallest amount of insurance, and the most cash value. you're also talking to higher net worth people.

doing higher policies. You don't want to sell as many as someone that's selling a term policy to a college kid. Yeah, exactly. So, and I'm not doing annuities and IULs and VULs and trying to get, just sticking with that. And see, I don't mind the lower death benefit because like when I was in the military, we had the 400,000 that it was like six bucks a month or something like that. And I got an additional policy for a million and looking at my net worth statement, I'm like, I'm worth so much more dead than I am alive. Yeah.

As I grow my business, like, you my wife has a vested interest in keeping me alive, you know. My buddy that has quite a few of these policies now, he was my original mentor in industry. ⁓ He says he has so much debt benefit that his wife's gonna have to pretend to look sad at his funeral. That's good. That's messed up. I know it is. So you talked about control and ⁓ owning your own capital, being your own bank, if you will, instead of

handing it to banks, Wall Street, other people. We kind of talked about this a little bit, but why do you think so many people stay stuck in the traditional, what they know, they just got those blinders on and they don't venture out into something like this? Or at least look at it. They don't read Nelson's book or talk to somebody like you. Yeah. I think it, not everybody has that questioning nature. Like, I mean, you know, for you guys, like,

What led you to start doing real estate, start doing the trucking company, right? Like, cause you guys could be doing nine to fives, but I mean, just, I'll answer it, but I'm just curious for you guys. What is it that led you that way? Glutton for punishment. Yeah. Sometimes I think that a nine to five would pay better, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could go down a whole rabbit hole, but I, I don't think that working is two things. I don't think it's biblical and I don't think that

working in our modern construct and it's only been around for about 150 years since the industrial revolution. So that's kind of my throw a hand grenade and walk away. I can't say can we dive more into the biblical thing because I'm curious. Well, so if you read the Bible, there's only two jobs in the Bible. There's soldiers and then there's like the government or slaves, know, like the government workers type thing, you know, Matthew is a tax collector soldiers, but everybody else owned a business.

They were fishermen, they were carpenters, they were tent makers, were farmers, ranchers. Like they own their own thing. So this harmonic concept of what work is, is in my view, unbiblical. That's interesting. I've actually never heard anybody have that take. That's interesting. Yeah. So hot take there. There was a first job.

I was naming all the animals. I was a chore, not a job. Well, to answer your question, do think my theory, I mean, it's just theory, like school doesn't teach about money, right? We're kind of taught to focus on getting good grades, graduate. You don't really, there's not a lot of like asking questions about, know, I mean, this is what you say.

the answer is, but maybe there's a different answer or maybe I can arrive at it a different way. And so I think it's like, it's kind of a, you grow up just like, hey, this is what you do. This is what everybody does around me. And you just kind of follow that path. And so when something different comes along, it's just easier to do what everybody else is doing to stay in that herd instead of, you know, ⁓ stop being a sheep, you know? And so one of my mentors as well is like, nothing happens. Nothing good happens in the herd, you know, sheep get slaughtered.

And so, but I think that's kind of, you know, that's the ⁓ little bit of American mindset. I mean, I'm guilty of falling in that in certain ways in different paths as well. so I just think it's like, we're not really raised in a culture that is asked questions, ask, you I mean, you're telling me that's true. Why can I ask a couple questions about that? Right. You know, it's like, no, we just accept that. Well, the teacher said that was in the book. That's true. You know, and so that's that's kind of my theory is and

And to be honest, one the reasons I pivoted my business. used to think this was for everybody. And I started being like, business owners get this really quick and it serves them really well. And they can use it for retirement and they can use it for key employees. Why am I banging my head against the wall trying to teach someone who's just gonna follow the same path? Maybe they'll free themselves someday, but that's a person to work with. You gotta spend a lot of time educating versus someone who's already had that epiphany themselves of like, yeah, I wanna work for myself and...

And that's going to be the way I'm to build wealth. So is there a threshold where this doesn't make sense? Like for a small business owner, if they're, I'm assuming you can't just say I've made 50 grand this month. Can I put the whole 50 grand into a whole life to get it going? It has to be, you know, keeping up with the annual premiums. But if you're doing a $10,000 policy, it's not worth the juice. Isn't worth it. Yeah. So 10,000 is like,

The minimum I tell people, you could go, I mean, I'm not, and I don't mean to be just like, you can go down to five. I just tell people like 10 is probably where you can get some bang for your buck. Like I have a landscaping guy, he doesn't have a huge landscaping business yet. And he did 10 this year, you so he's gonna use it to buy a mower. That's gonna be like his first thing. And then he was, he's hoping to grow the landscape. Where he can borrow six grand against it. buy six grand, buy a mower. That's, mean, he hasn't done that. That's what his plan was when he started it. And so.

⁓ You know, so that's that's like again size of business is gonna matter in that discussion, too So if he's ten grand and running a trucking company I mean, I feel like that might be tough to find a use for ten grand, right? ⁓ And so a new tire. Yeah, exactly Right. So the size of the business will matter in that discussion, but for him he's like I want to build this, ⁓ know He's kind of guy. He's not like just mowing lawns. He's got a unique like backyard landscapes thing plant business model So he's like he has a business partner. He's like I want to

the concept to him first so then we can like in the next few years do a bigger one. But so it is possible to adjust it. It's not once it's 10 grand, it's 10 grand a year. We do another policy. Oh, so there are set numbers. There's a there's actually a floor and a ceiling. It's not as rigid as some people think. There's a floor and a ceiling of each policy and there's a range. The first year is most important. You want to fully fund it because then that allows you flexibility beyond it. But you know, again, size of business. So yeah, like if it's a big business and they're like, I'm going to do 10 grand, I'd be like

that's probably not worth your time. But for him, if he can buy a mower this year and make more money, sure, that works for him. Interesting. I would say it's very each person situation. ⁓ We've been talking, so say you can only pull, we'll use your 10 grand. Say you can only pull 70 % out first year. So he pulls 60 % out, buys a six grand mower.

I would think, I'm just trying to do quick math in my head, but even in that situation, he would be benefiting year one because he could save on interest. He's reinvesting the money into the business ⁓ and he's compounding off from the whole 10 grand, correct? So he's compounding off from the 10 grand.

He's commenting on the cash value, which is like about 70. So he'd only be 70. So I don't want to mislead. Yeah. Okay. So I'm just kind of thinking out loud and trying to do the math in my head as we're speaking. But so it might not be as beneficial because it's only 70 % or I'm just making up numbers. And he's got, so he also has no death benefit and he's, his wife's staying home with the kids. So, you know, he does have some coverage for that if something were to happen. And then for him, I like,

What I know of his business, I'm still beginning to work with him, but he does already have some bank loans. So he was kind of like, they may lend me that, I don't know, but I'd rather just be the source of financing for this moving forward and start to build that capital. that's the main idea. We just got a bank loan a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago for a new truck. Now we just had another one transmission crapped out. So we're looking at another truck right now. So yeah, just stuff like that. And so the bank could be pulling money.

or not the bank, the business could be pulling money from me personally and paying me back instead of paying the bank 7 % or whoever were paying them. Right. And so for him, right, he's paying 4 % simple at the end of the year if he doesn't pay it back versus 7 % to the bank. And he's got to start those payments right away versus getting this new mower. I don't know. I'm going to guess he needs some more staff to expand. So he might need time for that. But he can wait six months. Yeah, he can wait six months and then say, now I know I have someone who's doing this.

making more money with this, now I'll pay it back. Yeah. Flexibility. Exactly. So what's the one thing you wish you'd have known starting out? In my business or in life? I was talking about the business. I think I wish I had known more about who this is a fit for. But I think that's good that I went.

I never regret any of my journeys because they all lead me to where I'm at. I knew because like I said, I was a Dave guy, I knew there was some stigma around whole life. Sometimes I wish I knew how much. I wanted to ask that earlier. You mentioned LinkedIn comments. Yeah. Unpack that. What do you get in there? I think LinkedIn is pretty PG. Yeah. If I went to Twitter, it'd be worse. I'd get hammered.

One post, I was a slat and I'm gonna link to as much as I should, but I was on there today and this one post and this dude was getting tore up pretty good in there. what do you see? Just that it's a scam? Yeah, I'll just, know, people rip on it. It's the same arguments over and over typically and yeah, a scam or a terrible investment, you know, or yeah, that's kind of the main ones. know, don't know, sometimes I get some real harsh ones in there. Like it might be like, oh yeah, you're just trying to make a commission, whatever, you know, and so.

Everybody's like, everybody's everybody makes money. I don't know. So ⁓ yeah, but I used to get like, so like, it just bugged me, you know, and then I think about like 30 minutes, I'm like, why am I giving some random dude, like 30 minutes of my day, who probably made the comment and hasn't even thought about the comment since he made it just took off, know, he's not here talking about you. thinking about me, you know, and so I was like, why am I? Why? You know, like, and so it just came dumped on me and then left. And so now I'll just like,

I'll either put maybe a thoughtful response or I'll just be like, it's not worth the time block. If you want to have an actual discussion, then I will totally have that with the person. if it's rude, I'm like, yeah. But LinkedIn is pretty overall. I think most people just don't say anything if they disagree. I that's kind of why I'm on LinkedIn. I don't really rip on people. But if I'm on Twitter, might. Twitter doesn't care. Or X, I'm sorry. Same difference.

So that's what you've been doing the last three years while traveling. But now you're living back in Omaha. It's amazing. I mean, to go all across the country, see all these beautiful places to find a place to live and you land on Omaha. back here. I guess to Tanner's point, why come back? Is it just family or? Yeah. So I've been getting a lot of flack from friends because they're like, so you go out and you see the whole country, you drive around, see 30 something states and you move five minutes from.

And I'll be honest, like when we left, I would say Omaha had a 0 % chance that we were coming back. That was why I would have told you then. And even a year later, I would have said zero. We kept coming back. We'd come six weeks at a time. We do have family. I have family here. My wife, Kate, her parents lived here and then they moved after we left. But it became this thing when we were traveling, like we found community on the road and we would have quit a lot sooner if we hadn't, like it can be too lonely.

I mean, it's like you and your family, which we love, but you need other humans around you. So that having friends was huge for us. And so we debated like we loved Patosky, could we stay here? We really like homeschool. I don't know that we'll do it forever, but we really like it for now. so- Make it through middle school. Yeah, I think maybe that might be what we do. At least through middle school, that's the worst. Yeah, I know. That's my daughter is just, she's sixth grade. She's our oldest.

⁓ But the kids really enjoy it, they thrive. ⁓ But we kind of had this, a couple of realizations on the road, which is like, one is like, we can be happy anywhere. I mean, we can be happy at like, we sometimes like just stumbled into the jankest of campgrounds and it's like, we still found a way to have a good time, right? So we're like, we can be happy anywhere we live. ⁓ Somewhere new, we'll obviously have to rebuild community and we're open to doing that and put in the work. But one of our epiphanies on the road was like,

Man, I think sometimes we were too passive in relationships when we were here in Omaha. And so like, what if we go back and reinvest in those relationships and we take more ownership and we're more like, hey, come on over. like, you know, I mean, it's just some of the stuff like you have, like insecurities keeping up with the Joneses is like, well, mine at my house isn't as nice as Dave's. So I don't know if I should invite Dave over, you know, and his family. Well, when you're at a campground, you have campfires. Nobody cares, you know, about your social status and nobody even asks what you do at the campfire.

You just have campfires and you invite people over and no one goes in your camper, but if you want to invite them and show them around, you can. And so we realized it's like, you know, kind of talking about like sometimes you get stuck in those mindsets and you don't think about it. It's like, we sometimes just, we didn't invite people over. We were like waiting to be invited or whatever. And so we said, why don't we just go back and reinvest in the community we had. Omaha, you know, I know this might be people outside Omaha, but it's a special place. The people here, you can't beat them. I mean, like we were comparing.

We're thinking about how people were treating us compared to how they would in Omaha. ⁓ And so for us, then I have, ⁓ I never want to put this on them that they were like the main reason we came back, because it wasn't, but I have my parents here in their seventies. My favorite grandpa was the first grandpa to go when I was 12. And so my kids, one of the things we, we already knew that they have a special relationship with my parents, but ⁓ we saw how special when we come back and visit and how much they really love them and they love their cousins.

⁓ I said to Kate, I was like, you and me can live anywhere in about 10 years that we want or maybe 12 years, whatever. ⁓ But they will never get this time back with their grandparents. I hope we see them in heaven, but it's like on earth here, they'll never get that back. So if I can give them that gift of being there, I can go and reinvest in friendships and family. Why not? So the short answer to the very long answer I just gave you was for us, it became community greater than location.

And so we were like, let's go, let's go try again. You know, talking about ourselves. What did you find that worked well for the homeschooling? Cause we, we homeschooled our second oldest through middle school. It's just social problems and stuff, but she's back in high school and public school just need needed that community. And we tried, I mean, every kind of online program, which is hard to find one that really worked. Yeah. So if you ask my wife that question, ⁓ she, cause she has really taken the ownership on that.

Did you start like a community or something like that? also did a podcast while we're on the road and a community of other ⁓ RV women. So like they were in these there's Marco Polo app and they'd be in these little pods and get to know each other. And then some of them would end up traveling together. And so she actually just sold that. But she's tried and experimented a lot of things. And it's kind of been like that. Like it's like trying to figure out what fits, you know. ⁓ think we did Khan Academy. They've done we've done Khan. We've tried.

know, Beast Academy for math and it's been a mix and match. Now she's found her way to something called Gather Around and they really like that. But you know, they're each different too, which is one of the things that I kind of like about it is like in school, it's like you're all just getting the same education even though you might learn differently. And my son definitely learns differently from my daughter. But what I love is like they can, they have so much time to pursue interests and things they're passionate about.

⁓ And so like my little guy is eight and I think he started piano in January and he was playing some parts of the Caribbean song yesterday, you know, because he's doing a like a class online. They just follows my daughter ⁓ loves to debate and we found a great outlet for her. was like, I'd to try debate class. I was like, yes, debate them. And so she's doing debate class. think actually this afternoon is when she has her debate classes. And so it's been cool to see like they have things they want to pursue and try and they get to try it. But I don't know if we'll do it forever, but we like it.

Very nice. Yeah. She talked about community education, mentorship. Now you're starting a local meetup for business owners. Yeah. I unpack that what's, cause that just part of all the same thing that you've kind of preached today. Yeah. It's, you know, I thought about it and it's like, ⁓ maybe a little bit selfish, right? Like sometimes business ownership, entrepreneurship can be lonely. And so I was thinking like, I,

Most networking groups you see are, ⁓ hey, I want you to refer me business. And that's fine. I'm not saying, but I'd like it to be more like, hey, how do we just support each other? So it's not lonely. Maybe you're going through something similar to me with marketing. I don't know. Or maybe you're going through something similar with Tanner. ⁓ And so that's kind what it grew out of. I was just like, I'd like to know more business owners in Omaha ⁓ to support each other and get to know each other. And so I've been doing.

since I've been back a lot of one-on-one coffees, just getting to know people. I've had, I have kind of had some analysis paralysis thinking about how I want that to look. Do I want to have people come in and speak? Where are we going to have it? But yeah, that's kind of the goal was like, I'd like to have a community of business owners that could just kind of like let their hair down a little bit. And, and you know, I'd like to be like, Hey, let's go over like what we're grateful for and also any problems, you know, that we can help each other with. So, yeah. What's going well is.

and what we need help with. It's hard sometimes to remember what's going well. Cause we want to, we want guys, we want to fix problems. So we focus on the problems, right? So yeah. Well, what, what do you have, I guess, kind of leave us on or whatever, like how do people get ahold of you if they are interested in this? I know you mentioned your website, your hidden links. Yeah, no, that's for clients. No upside down wealth.com.

How'd you come up with that? It was very good profile. So Barry, yeah, very random. was bored one day on LinkedIn. Maybe I should have been doing some outreach instead of doing this. But I flipped my photo upside down just to kind of be different and funny. And when I did it, it just kind of like hit me. was like, ⁓ I'm kind of I'm like upside down from the traditional financial world. And when I teach is totally upside down about whole life insurance and all of that. And so ⁓

It just kind of stuck and then I went out on my own and just like, yeah, I'll run with it. So that's how I came up with it. It just kind of random accident. So anyhow, back to your website, upside down wealth.com. If they want to book a call, there's a button. If they want to check out my newsletter that has case studies, there's a button there too. So I do 20 minute calls just to kind of get to know people. If they want to learn more, I offer to share and learn more. And if they don't, then we move on. Awesome. Tanner, you always got 18 questions.

I mean, I'm still doing the math of it. is a tough concept to wrap your head around. I've been trying for years. then this stick with the key lock. That's easiest way. about a key lock and it's pretty simple from there. Perfect. Awesome. I appreciate your time. Thank you asking me on guys. I appreciate it.