Chris Bay:

Welcome to the Life Success & Legacy Podcast. My name is Chris Bay and I’m joined today with the Founder of Life Success & Legacy, Mike Everett. Hey Mike, we’re excited today to talk a little bit on a topic that is foundational to Life Success & Legacy, and that is who is Life Success & Legacy? Because a lot of times people are like, “Okay, great. I’ve researched this Infinite Banking thing and I’m interested in learning more about it, but who are these people that are going to be teaching me, designing plans, working with us?” So, I was just wondering, tell us a little bit about how Life Success & Legacy has come together, what drives it, and we can dig into more details about that.

Mike Everett:

Well, Chris, it’s funny that we’re discussing that today. I remember a trip that you and I had made to Iowa.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

And on our way home, you started firing questions at me right and left about what my passions were, why I enjoyed Infinite Banking, what is it that we were trying to achieve? And I remember it to be not just an informational Q&A, but there was some pretty intense, emotional stuff that was going on too, to find out what this thing was all about and where were we going with it?

Chris Bay:

I remember that conversation. It was a good one.

Mike Everett:

It was. And then I remember by the time we had got done with our four and a half hour trip, you had given me a few things to think about. But then the question that arose was, why does Life Success & Legacy exist? And I think what culminated from that whole conversation that we had literally four and a half hours was to inspire financial hope and freedom by revealing little known truths about money while investing in trusting long-term relationships.

Chris Bay:

I remember that conversation well, like it was yesterday. I remember it was dark and I had my phone out and I still have in my notes the results of that conversation. Because as you were talking and I was asking you questions, for me as somebody who is new to the organization, I wanted to know more about what was this whole thing about. Why were we really doing it? To me, it’s got to be purpose driven and it’s got to be bigger than just helping people with their money. It’s got to be a broader scope, a broader purpose. And so yeah, you did a fantastic job of answering the questions that I was asking. And then we just put it together in this, I guess, purpose statement, we just call it why we exist. I want to break it down just a little bit. When you look at the different sections, there’s three different sections to that why we exist. Can you talk about those different sections?

Mike Everett:

Well, I’m going to start with the last line, investing in trusting long-term relationships. This is really about friendships, it’s about relationships. And when we turn around and we’re talking and teaching and educating people about Infinite Banking, and trying to get them to say, “Why would we invest our money with you? Or why would we trust you to handle this thing in our lives?” We realized that there must be a tremendous amount of trust in the relationship. We don’t want the relationship to happen for the next 12 to 18 months, we want the relationships to happen for the next 30, 40, 50 years.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

And so that is where I would start, number one. Number two is we’re giving people information. We are educating people in ways that 99.9% of all financial planners will not take the time or the energy to give them these kinds of truths about money. So trusting long-term relationships, little known truths about money, but yet where we’re all trying to go is we want financial hope and freedom.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

So there is a great big picture here that we are trying to create for our clients, but yet in the midst of all of this education, we are giving them the tools that no other financial institution or no other financial guru will take the time to give to them.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. The first part of why we exist to inspire financial hope and freedom actually goes, in my view, even beyond that. Because so many times there’s a barrier for people to really create the life that they want and that barrier is their finances.

Mike Everett:

Yep.

Chris Bay:

And so once we teach some of these truths about money and they apply the Infinite Banking concept in their financial world and they take control of that process, all of a sudden it opens up all kinds of possibilities for our clients to actually create the lives that they want. I mean, we’ve got quite a few people that have quit their jobs because they’ve been able to remove those barriers and they are actually now pursuing dreams that they’ve had for many, many years in their life. That to me is really rewarding and it’s motivating. And it’s one of the reasons that I love doing the work that we do.

So I want to touch on that second piece about teaching little known trues about money. Talk to us a little bit about the philosophy of Life Success & Legacy and educating people. Do people have to be qualified to work with Life Success Legacy? What does it cost to come to a bootcamp to learn? When we design plans as a team for our clients, what is involved in the cost and those kinds of things?

Mike Everett:

Well, one of the things that we have discussed at length is we shouldn’t get paid until we add value to somebody. So when we put together a plan or an illustration or an educational seminar, or a bootcamp, or a one-on-one conversation, we don’t charge anybody anything. The only cost that someone might have is the cost of Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker. The cost to them is $20. If they’re standing in front of us, everybody’s got a $20 bill in their pocket. So we charge $20 because we want people to have a little bit of skin in the game before we move forward. And usually, if people will buy the book, they’ll take time to read it. But once again, we have these educational bootcamps and we have educational online bootcamps, and we don’t charge anybody anything to attend any of those things because we would like people to investigate and spend some time investing in themselves, time, energy, a little bit of money, in order to find out if Infinite Banking is really for them.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. I tell people back in my education days, the 22 years I spent in education, I spent a lot of time designing strategies and plans for kids to try and help them be motivated to be in school, and some of them just really did not want to be there. And so I made a promise to myself in working with clients, I’m not designing behavior plans for the clients. I’m only working with the people who want to learn about this concept. So in my mind, if people are willing to come halfway, I’ll meet them halfway and I will teach them as long as they want to learn about this concept, until they decide they want to move forward, or they say, “Chris, I just don’t think this is for us.”

Tell me a little bit about the team. Because when you first started, we joke about this all the time as you being a rugged individualist out there, moving along solo, but now there’s a team with Life Success & Legacy. Talk a little bit about that team, how the pieces fit together, and how people have come to join the team.

Mike Everett:

Well, let’s touch on the rugged individualist for just a second. You and I, we literally kid back and forth on this. When I first got started in this, I told you within a couple of months of you coming on board was that you were probably going to be out on your own in the next 18 to 24 months. But in the midst of all of that, there were some pieces that were missing in Life Success & Legacy that you brought to the table. So, you were the first piece, or the first edition, the first team member, along with myself, that brought Life Success & Legacy to where it is today.

I am a shoot from the hip kind of guy, there’s not much organization, let’s get done what needs to be done right now. But you brought this organizational thought process and this let’s get some things done that would make sense for the organization, not just in the next two to three weeks or two to three months, but for the next four, five, six, 10, 15 years from now. And that’s really what we’re doing with Infinite Banking, we’re making people think long-term, and I never did that personally. So me to say that I’m thankful for Chris Bay is pretty incredible. And then all of a sudden it was just like, now we were at a place where it made sense that maybe we should build a small organization.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

I remember when we got started, I was calling people and having people do website stuff, I was designing brochures and I was doing all this on my computer. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but then all of a sudden I got introduced to a guy by the name of Mike Crawford.

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

And this guy is just a wiz with social media, with our website, with some of the internet stuff and how we’re even creating these podcasts. So him to come on board as part of a team too, now that’s our Lawrence team, and now what we’ve started to do is we’ve started to build out from that. We have Chris Garret’s out in Pennsylvania, we’ve got Clint Bradfield down-

Chris Bay:

Wichita.

Mike Everett:

…in Wichita. And then we’ve got Joe Frazier out in Western, Nebraska.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. Matt Zimmer up in North Dakota.

Mike Everett:

I’m telling you. So this thing is continuing to build, and we’re still adding pieces to this puzzle, which is very, very exciting.

Chris Bay:

The thing that I’ve really enjoyed as this organization has grown is that each person who joins, and we’re pretty selective in who we add to the-

Mike Everett:

Very.

Chris Bay:

Integrity has got to be a huge piece of it. But we know whether they have integrity because every single person who’s joined our team has been a client.

Mike Everett:

That’s right.

Chris Bay:

There’s nobody who has come in and they’re already an IBC coach or a life insurance agent, or somebody out there doing this work. These are people like myself, like you, like Crawford, and others who were in other professions. And they experienced IBC personally, and what it can bring to their life. And they were so impassioned by it that they chose to join on, to teach other people about this.

Well, I love the organization that we are. I feel like we’re doing things the right way. I think some of the common values go back to that, why does Life Success Legacy exist? And it is, it goes back to inspiring financial hope and freedom, it’s about educating people about money in a different way, and it’s about long-term trusting relationships. How many of our clients now are our friends?

Mike Everett:

It’s pretty incredible. In fact, how many texts a week? How many phone calls a week? How many emails a week do we get from clients just saying, “Hey, thank you,” or, “Hey, I’ve got a question about this,” or “How do I implement that?” So it’s very exciting stuff.

Chris Bay:

That’s right. Well, thanks for sharing with that, Mike. Our next podcast that we’re going to talk about is, well, okay, so we’ve learned a little bit about Infinite Banking, we’ve learned a little bit about who Life Success & Legacy is, how do people get started? How do you take those first steps getting started? So we’ll look forward to that conversation next. Thanks for joining us.

Chris Bay:Welcome to the Life Success Legacy podcast. My name is Chris Bay and I’m joined today with the founder of Life Success & Legacy, Mike Everett. Hey Mike, we’ve been talking about the four areas that Infinite Banking can address for people. First was eliminating debt rapidly, typically in 3 to 8 years, by turning the wind current. Our last podcast we did, we talked about how to finance everything in your life and applying economic value added or EVA, or as Nelson says, “Don’t steal the peas.”

Chris Bay:

In this next conversation, what I’d like to talk about that I think is going to be really interesting to people, and that is how to get tax-free retirement. Most of us have come up during a time period where we have been told to put our money into certain kinds of tax qualified plans or markets or things like that. So what I’d like for you to do is kind of describe the landscape of what most people know about. Most of the noise that we hear out there about retirement. Let’s talk about that first. And then what we want to do is transition to what are alternatives for that.

Mike Everett:

Okay. So here’s the way I did things before I learned about the Infinite Banking concept. I got taught to put my money aside into a 401(k), an IRA, a mutual fund, and I was going to do this systematically over a time period.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

You start out when you’re 25 to 35 years old and you start putting your money aside. Now, you’re supposed to do it systematically, and you’re going to do it tax-free right now, is that correct?

Chris Bay:

That is correct.

Mike Everett:

Okay. So you’re going to think through this thing with a customer or a client and help them understand why these things do or do not work. So one of the questions that I ask right off the bat is, are income tax is going to go up or down?

Chris Bay:

And if you look historically, the answer is yes.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

It’s going to go up.

Mike Everett:

The second question I would ask somebody is, number two, the money that you have in your checking account or under your mattress, is it worth more today or is it worth more tomorrow?

Chris Bay:

Today due to inflation.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct. Well, they keep cranking out dollars in the basement of the White House. And so the dollars are going down. Well, number three, when thinking of income taxes, you want to pay on the seed, the little amount, or do you want to pay on the harvest, the big amount?

Chris Bay:

I’d rather pay on the little amount.

Mike Everett:

But yet everything that we’ve been taught to do with our money, we take money, we set it aside income tax-free into a retirement plan, an IRA, a mutual fund, and it grows income tax-free. And then 20 or 30 years from now is when we start pulling money out. And you and I both agree that income taxes are going to go up and the value of the dollars are going to go down. So the dollars that we’d have access to 20 or 30 years from now are worth less or worthless, whichever you like.

Chris Bay:

So we’re paying higher taxes with dollars that are worth less. And all those tax qualified plans are assuming that that money is going to increase. But I remember a conversation with a teacher back in 2007, 2008, who came in and announced in the fall that she was getting ready to retire. And we celebrated. And yet in the spring, she came back into my office and said, “I’m not going to be able to retire.” And the reason was, what happened in 2007, 2008?

Mike Everett:

We had our fallout [crosstalk 00:03:42] financially.

Chris Bay:

That’s right. So the market crashed. So her money that was sitting in one of those tax qualified plans, they lost a great amount of it.

Mike Everett:

I guess. So the question is, was there money guaranteed?

Chris Bay:

No.

Mike Everett:

There you go.

Chris Bay:

So I filed that away in my head. That was before I knew about Infinite Banking. When I started learning about Infinite Banking and that my money was in some, in a vehicle that was safe, not only safe, but guaranteed by contract to grow, that gave me security. I love that. Okay. So we’ve talked a little bit about how people have been told to put their money into something, [crosstalk 00:04:17] those tax qualified plans. So now I’ve never heard about IBC, let’s pretend, and I want to learn about an alternative. And I’m curious about retirement. Talk to me about what IBC can do for retirement.

Mike Everett:

Well, we talk about this all the time. Really what we’re doing is we’re re-engineering a life insurance policy, so people can have access to their money in an income tax-free environment. So one of the things that Nelson says is people want access to those dollars. Well, they have access to those dollars in an income tax-free environment, because we’re going to show them how to borrow those dollars out of there without actually making the system or the contract null and void.

Chris Bay:

Right.

Mike Everett:

So what we’re trying to do is… I chuckle about this. I say, “How big a check can you write from your checking account?” Well, how much have you put in? The same is true with either your retirement through a 401(k) or with your life insurance policy, the cash values are the equity that you have, how much have you put in? So the more you put in, the greater value you have, that means that the dollars that you have access to will have greater value as well. This isn’t rocket science what we’re doing.

Chris Bay:

Right. So as we’re putting those dollars in, and I like to think of my premiums, my life insurance premiums, rather than thinking of them as bills, I think of them as deposits. And I want to put in as big a deposits as I can so that I have money to take out and finance my life. But also I’m thinking ahead to, let’s say, I want retirement, or as Nelson calls it, passive income, that’s money that comes to us and we don’t have to do anything to earn it. So if I want to be able to pull money from my life insurance policy as retirement money and live on that, how does that work and how does it impact my overall policy?

Mike Everett:

Well, a great example would be in the Equipment Financing section in Nelson’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker. By the way, you can get that on our website at lifesuccesslegacy.com. In this particular section of Nelson’s book, it goes into a great detail about a guy who has a policy. He creates his own policy. And then in the very first section, it talks about him just putting the money in there and never using it.

Chris Bay:

Just leaving it as life insurance, [crosstalk 00:06:50] he really doesn’t understand IBC.

Mike Everett:

He absolutely doesn’t. And so what he does is he makes his premium payments and he leaves all of the money on deposit with the life insurance company. Now, the great thing about it is after he does that, after he gets to retirement age, he has access to $92,000 a year in retirement income. Now, if you knew somebody who got $92,000 a year, you’d be excited, but then Nelson goes into detail in a number of different ways. And we’re just going to move right to the end of the Equipment Financing section, where the more he used it to finance all of the stuff in his life, trucks and equipment, et cetera, et cetera.

Mike Everett:

He had access to more dollars because he utilized the policy and he implemented economic value added. And he made all of those payments back to himself over a time period. So instead of taking $92,000 out a year, he had access to $225,000 a year. The question I always ask then is, did it have anything to do with the insurance company? It had absolutely nothing to do with the insurance company. It had to do with how he functioned with his own dollars.

Chris Bay:

I love that because what it does is it puts the onus, it puts the control on me. And when people say, “Well, what with Infinite Banking can go wrong? What’s the risk.” We always say, “We are the risk.”

Mike Everett:

You are.

Chris Bay:

If we don’t treat the system right. If we don’t apply economic value added, and we don’t put the peas back on the shelf, we are the ones who can mess it up, but it’s not at the risk of the market or anybody else. Well, so then I know in that case of the Equipment Financing in the book that Nelson wrote, I notice that the cash value continues to grow even though he’s pulling out $225,000 a year, how does that happen?

Mike Everett:

Well, by the time you get down the road, the dividends are so large inside these things what’s happening is it’s continuing to buy paid up additions, which adds to the base of the policy, which turned around, increases the death benefit in these things. It’s not magic, but it seems like it’s magic.

Chris Bay:

So he’s pulling out $225,000 a year, right? And his cash value is still continuing to grow, which for a lot of people, one of their main concerns is am I going to run out of money in my retirement? And when you capitalize a policy like this and you let the system grow, the beautiful thing is you’ll never have to worry about running out of money. And oh, by the way, in that Equipment Financing, how much death benefit did he pass on?

Mike Everett:

Well, in the early stages, it was $1.3 million. But as he moved down the road, it was three, four, $5 million. So the numbers just get bigger the more you use it.

Chris Bay:

And that policy was designed for cash value, banking purposes, not death benefit.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

So isn’t that amazing that we can use it now, but then still be able to pass on assets to our beneficiaries in the future?

Mike Everett:

It’s opposite of everything we learned about money.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. That’s good. Mike, thanks for talking through us a little bit about retirement and passive income and the use of Infinite Banking. Again, we encourage our folks to go to our website lifesuccesslegacy.com. If you haven’t downloaded our eBook, Financial Planning Has Failed by Kim Butler, good friend of ours, we encourage you to do that, that’s free. And also you can access order a book by Nelson Nash, Becoming Your Own Banker. Our next podcast we’re going to talk about is thinking long-term, which is Nelson’s number one principle, and that is, how do you pass on assets tax-free to your future generations? Join us for that. Hey Mike. Thanks a lot.

Mike Everett:

Thanks, Chris.

Chris Bay:

Welcome to the Life Success & Legacy Podcast. My name is Chris Bay and I’m joined today with the founder of Life Success & Legacy, Mike Everett. Hey Mike. On our last podcast, we talked about the four things that Infinite Banking can do for somebody. The first thing we talked about is how it can eliminate debt rapidly. Which for most of our clients, that happens in about three to eight years in general, for some it’s sooner. For some it’s actually the first month, which sounds crazy. For us, for my family, it took us 26 months. But in general, for most people, it takes somewhere in the range of three to eight years. And we talk about that, being able to do that by turning our headwind into a tailwind. And we’ll talk more about that today. The second thing it does is it teaches us how to finance everything in our life.

The third thing that Infinite Banking can do for folks is it can give us tax-free retirement. And then the last thing, the fourth thing, is tax-free wealth transfer. And that’s passing on our assets to our future generations or other philanthropic organizations that we care about, churches, organizations and such. So on this podcast, what I’d like to do is really dig into that first thing. And that is, how do we eliminate debt rapidly using Infinite Banking? And we talk a lot about shifting the headwind of interest through financing and shifting it to a tailwind. For those listeners, I’m a runner, and at my age, when I’ve got a headwind that I’m facing, when I’m out running on the lobby, instead of feeling about 47 years old, now I feel about 67 years old. But man, when that wind changes and it comes around behind me, all of a sudden I’m feeling 37 again. So that wind makes a huge difference. Can you explain a little bit about shifting that headwind that people are facing and financing to a tailwind?

Mike Everett:

Well, when people come to us, usually their debt load is pretty heavy. Let’s just talk about some of the things that they’re spending their money on. They’ve got mortgages, they’ve got car loans, they’ve got credit card debt, usually multiple credit cards. They’ve also got some student loans and even business owners have business loans, equipment, vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. So, changing the headwind into a tailwind is kind of a big deal, because if you think about all the things that we’re sending money out on, we’ve got all these things that we’re … we get paid on Friday, what do we do? We send our house, our car, our credit card, our student loan payments. How much is left over for us? Not very much. So imagine if there was a way to shift the wind current to where all of a sudden you weren’t making those payments to somebody else, but you were making those payments to yourself. What kind of freedom would that create?

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

It’s pretty incredible.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. Nelson Nash, in the book, Becoming Your Own Banker, which we always recommend people get a copy from our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com and read that book. Nelson talks about the wind current in the context of airplanes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Mike Everett:

Well, if you think about it, you were just talking about it as a runner. A perfect example is, imagine if you had a plane and you were flying into a 345 mile an hour wind.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

Your efficiency of your plane wouldn’t be very good. But if all of a sudden you wait for the winds to shift and all of a sudden you’ve got that 345 mile an hour wind behind you, how fast are you going to get there?

Chris Bay:

Pretty fast.

Mike Everett:

Pretty quick. It’s amazing when you get to explain that to a customer when it comes to their finances.

Chris Bay:

And I remember when I was first learning about all this, we didn’t have a huge headwind because we were really a save up and then pay cash for things.

Mike Everett:

Right.

Chris Bay:

So we really didn’t have a wind going at all, either a headwind or a tailwind. But our problem was, let’s say our airplane’s traveling 100 miles an hour, we’re trying to figure out how to make it go 105 miles an hour by, let’s not go out to eat quite as often or let’s cut our cable bill, those kinds of things. That’s pretty hard to get excited about when you’re going from 100 to 105 miles an hour. When reality is, if we can turn that headwind completely into a tailwind, we can really get going.

Mike Everett:

You change the tailwind quickly if you can control the cash flow. But most of the financial industry does not ever explain it that way. You said something about getting the airplane to go 105 miles an hour. That’s just like the financial professional trying to tell you, oh, by the way, we can give you three to 5% more on your investments. When in fact, all you’re doing is, you’re stopping the headwind from 345 miles an hour into 340. You see, it still doesn’t change the wind current that much and so you’re still fighting it

Chris Bay:

Just to clarify for the listeners, you’re using 345 miles an hour of a headwind or a tailwind, where does that come from?

Mike Everett:

That comes from the interest rate that Nelson says the average family is paying towards debt. It’s just house, cars, credit cards, student loans, et cetera. Add them together and you usually have an average of about 34 and a half percent that people are spending on interest alone after they pay their income taxes.

Chris Bay:

When I first read about that, I found that fascinating. So when I think about every dollar that passes through my hand, right off the bat, 20, 25, 28% goes to taxes.

Mike Everett:

Correct.

Chris Bay:

I never even see it. Right?

Mike Everett:

Yep.

Chris Bay:

Then on top of that, let’s add 34 and a half percent that’s going to interest. So you’re adding that up in your head?

Mike Everett:

Yeah.

Chris Bay:

Then let’s say I’m trying to send money to my company, 401k or IRA, which by the way, is not guaranteed to grow and I don’t have control of it. And they’re using it-

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

… while it’s sitting over there. So I am now trying to live on the remaining amount.

Mike Everett:

Which isn’t very much.

Chris Bay:

Whereas, if I can turn the wind current and I can add that 34 and a half percent of interest going my direction, it’s dramatically changing our cashflow.

Mike Everett:

Let’s just pretend that you only have access to not the 34 and a half percent, but let’s say you have access to 10 to 15% of that.

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

It’s gigantic.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. Okay. So we talk about how we design plans for people and that we can eliminate debt and build capital at the same time, without changing their cashflow. How is it possible? Explain a little bit about, how is it when we do plans for people that we’re able to eliminate debt rapidly without changing their cashflow, we’re just changing where it’s flowing.

Mike Everett:

Well, part of that comes from having assets or what we call an activator. If you have an activator or an asset that’s sitting there doing nothing for you and we’re able to access that to be able to eliminate a car or a credit card or a student loan debt, then all of a sudden you have the payment that you were making to somebody else, but now you have the availability of making that payment to yourself. So the bottom line is, what we’ve done is, we’ve changed the wind current of those one, two or three items that you were sending money out the door. Now you’re getting the opportunity to send the money in the door.

Chris Bay:

Wow.

Mike Everett:

Changes things pretty dramatically.

Chris Bay:

I was just working on a plan the other day for a client, where we were able to eliminate all of their debt, including their mortgage, in four years and one month, without changing their cashflow and recoup everything tax-free within the fifth year. So not only are they debt free, but they have all the equity in their home and everything else within five years. I mean, when we get to share that with people, it really inspires possibilities for them.

Mike Everett:

A lot of times you’ll get calls like we did just a little bit ago, where people are having trouble sleeping.

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

Because they’re looking at these things and they’re going, I can’t believe that you can do this for us, but we do.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. Well, as always, we want to encourage our listeners to go to our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. If you don’t have a copy of Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, we again really encourage you to purchase one of those. Also, we have a free downloadable e-book called Financial Planning Has Failed. And the next podcast that we’re going to tackle is the second element of Infinite Banking. And that is, how do you finance everything in your life? So if you’re debt free, then what do you do? Please join us for our next podcast. Thanks.

Mike Everett:

Thanks Chris.