
The Burn Podcast by Ben Newman
Join Ben Newman, highly regarded Performance Coach, International Keynote Speaker and 2x WSJ Best-Seller, as he takes you into the minds of some of the highest performers in sports and business to tell their full story. The "Burn" is something we all have, but rarely do people uncover and connect to it. Ben helps people from all walks of life reach their true maximum potential.
Ben has worked with coaches and players from the last 6 Super Bowl Champion teams and currently serves as the Performance Coach for the Big 12 Champion Kansas State football team in his 9th season (3 National Championships at North Dakota State) with Head Coach Chris Klieman. Ben served 5 years as the Mental Conditioning Coach for the 18x National Champion Alabama Crimson Tide football team. Lastly, Ben also has served at his alma mater as a Performance Coach for Michigan State University’s football and basketball programs.
For the last two decades, Ben has been serving as the Peak Performance Coach for the top 1% of financial advisors globally and for Fortune 500 business executives.
Ben’s clients have included: Microsoft, United States Army, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Quicken Loans, MARS Snackfoods, AstraZeneca, Northwestern Mutual, AFA Singapore, Mass Financial Group, Frontier Companies, Wells Fargo Advisors, Great West Life Canada, Boston Medical Center, Boys & Girls Club of America, New York Life as well as thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, athletes and sales teams from around the globe.
Millions of people and some of the top performers in the world have been empowered by Ben through his books, educational content, coaching programs, podcast, and live events.
The Burn Podcast by Ben Newman
The Best Kept Secret in Personal Finance with Tom Wall Ph.D.
In this weeks episode we're talking about The Best Kept Secret in Personal Finance with Tom Wall. After spending 20 years in the life insurance industry as an advisor, wholesaler, product expert, and home office leader, Tom Wall took a significant leap to champion the whole life insurance industry on his own terms. Misinformation and competing ideologies have stood in the way of people adopting this amazing, centuries-old financial product. Tom Wall has studied and achieved a Ph.D. under many of the most intelligent people in financial services academia, spoken to thousands of advisors in his travels, and worked behind the scenes with the actuaries and engineers of these amazing vehicles. He can tell you with honesty and integrity that participating whole life insurance from the right companies, particularly in 2023 and beyond, is the best kept secret in financial planning.
For individuals, Tom Wall has just published his first book, “Permission to Spend”, with approachable concepts that can be used with or without an advisor.
GET $1000 OFF NEW YEARLY MEMBERSHIP TO WHOLE LIFE MASTERMINDS- CLICK HERE
Get Your Copy of Tom’s Book, Permission to Spend, Maximize Your Retirement with the Best-Kept Secret in Personal Finance.- CLICK HERE https://amzn.to/3XiSWAL
Follow Tom on Social for personal finance content @tomwalltalks
https://www.bennewmancoaching.com
************************************
Learn about our Upcoming events and programs:
https://www.workwithbnc.com
Let’s work TOGETHER https://www.bennewmancoaching.com
Let's work together to write YOUR next book- BNC Publishing
Send us a message
Order my latest book The STANDARD: Winning at YOUR Highest Level: https://amzn.to/3DE1clY
1st Phorm | The Foundation of High Performance Nutrition
1stPhorm.com/bnewman
Connect with me everywhere else:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/continuedfight
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Continuedfight/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ContinuedFight
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-newman-b0b693
Advisors don't know this. You actually, when you design policies correctly, can overfund policies at a very high level, just like a bank, to then be able to pour a lot of money into these policies to get these great rates of return favorable for taxes. And you, essentially, are doing the same planning as the big banks that everybody complained about. They're making all the money. Welcome back to another episode of the Burn. I am Ben Newman and you know how we do this. Every single week we're going to bring you a story of an athlete, a celebrity, an entertainer, somebody from the business world who's recognized that why and purpose is not enough. You have to understand the underlying burn that ignites your why and purpose. That then causes you to be disciplined in the daily action, that causes you to win, not just on the days that you don't want to do it, but especially after you win. Now, one thing you're going to recognize about this episode I promise. Not too long ago we were going to bring you a double episode with my friend, dr Tom Wall. So Dr Wall is back with us today, so we're not going to go through everything that we went through. You can go back to that first episode Today. We're going to get very specific on a topic that's very important to both of us, but I want to give you a little bit of background on why it's so important to me. Life insurance put me through college. Many of you know my burn is my mother losing her life to amyloidosis 11 days before my eighth birthday. It was a huge blessing that my mother understood the importance of planning. My mother a single mom fightin' to makin's meat, divorced from my father at six months old, who was diagnosed with amyloidosis, a disease there's still no cure for, ended up buying life insurance when she was still healthy. A lot of people don't realize once you get sick you can't buy life insurance. So if you have your health, you better go to your financial advisor and have the right, tough conversations. Don't be scared to talk about life insurance. You have to talk about and do the planning. It was a blessing that my mom bought $100,000 of life insurance that ended up funding my brothers and my college education. She was a teacher, so her greatest goal in her mind's eye was for her two boys to have a fully funded college education. So my education at Michigan State University, go Green, was fully funded because of $100,000 of term insurance, and my brother's education was as well Out of state tuitions. We're St Louis Missouri kids.
Speaker 1:I then go into many years later being an advisor, having the opportunity to impact people's lives with life insurance. I don't say this to impress anybody, but to impress upon the point. I went on as an advisor to sell millions of dollars of life insurance because there was an underlying passion that I wanted to write my story for others, and so there's been a natural connection for me, even though this is how my world of speaking and writing and coaching started. As a financial advisor, I get off to this fast start. You sell millions. People wanted me to speak, so then I leave. People thought I was crazy, but now I always say because all of the coaching work that I do in the financial advising space, I sell way more insurance today than I ever did. I don't have licenses to sell insurance anymore, it's through other people, and that's one of the things that drives this amazing connection that Tom Wall and I have over all these years and over 20 years of experience for Tom in the industry is that there's this passion for people to understand what life insurance really does.
Speaker 1:So this episode is really for the financial advisor who maybe is looking at things through the wrong lens in terms of their opportunity to make an impact, or they forget there's little boys and girls like me who need you to ask mom and dad the tough questions, not because you want to make a lot of money, but because mom and dad need the education to understand what and how they need to buy insurance in order to do their planning the right way. But this episode is also for the individuals who don't understand insurance. They're worried that they've had poor experiences with an advisor. The stuff that you Google on the internet has become the horror stories that's caused them to say I don't even want to mess with this, when you really don't have a choice but to establish a relationship with somebody who can help you do these things the right way. So I do want to preface this.
Speaker 1:You're not receiving any financial advice from Tom and I today. Neither of us sell financial products. This is more of education because of a life that he and I have dedicated to this industry. And yes, you guys see I do so much work in sports. But it all started for me. I really cut my teeth professionally with financial advisors. It's why I still work with so many advisors today. It's why the Financial Advisors Academy is an integral part of the whole life masterminds group. It's one of the most sought after masterminds in the world today for advisors that we talked about in our first episode. It's why Tom wrote the book Permission to Spend because of his passion and experience in the industry. So now that you have a little more of a connection to why I love the insurance industry so much Tom's 20 years of experience, which you learned, why he left a very comfortable corporate job with one of the largest life insurance companies in the world to now commit to coaching advisors and consult.
Speaker 1:Now, today we speak to the advisors. We speak to those individuals who need to understand life insurance better. Welcome back to the burn, tom Wall. Thanks for having me. Ben, great to be here with you again. Well, tom, let's dive in differently than last time. I almost want to almost like a case study. Okay, so you came to St Louis to go and speak to a Fortune 100 financial firm? Yeah, what are you talking to those advisors about most specifically when you're addressing whole life insurance? And I'd love for you to answer this two ways to both audiences that I reference. We're speaking to that advisor, but also the individual who needs to buy life insurance. But really, because of all the wrong information that's out there that you Google just doesn't understand it the right way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a lot of misinformation out there. This is really what I've built my career around. There's a misinformation within the advisor community too. It's most specifically about dividend paying, participating whole life insurance. So there's term insurance, which is what you rent. It's basically it's dirt cheap. You can get millions of dollars of it for you know a couple hundred bucks a month or less if you're healthy enough. So that's kind of what you have to own. And then there's the what you often want to own, which is permanent life insurance, which pays out when you die versus if you die. So that's really what my specialty is and is this dividend paying participating whole life insurance from some of the biggest, oldest Institutions in the world.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of misinformation about that. It's a misunderstood product because it operates very differently than everything else out there. So my speaking when I go to travel the country is really about giving advisors, young advisors and even very experienced advisors I mean, I have 30 year veterans in my program talking to them about the confidence and conviction that goes into. Basically, you know, selling that and positioning it to a client. What I mean by that is the confidence to handle any objection that a client may have, or a confidence to answer some of the questions that are generated by these talking heads online, but also the conviction. A lot of my talk, and really where my academics came from, was trying to Academically prove that this stuff makes a lot of sense, so that advisors can have the conviction almost that religious Feeling it within them that this is what the client should be doing with their money, because they know scientifically that it works.
Speaker 1:So I want to go back to the one of the reasons why it works, outside of some of the science of how a policies design, but most specifically the importance of the habits and disciplines of saving money which people lack in this country. Sure, I think it's important for people to understand some history of this. I was buying permanent life insurance before I sold permanent life insurance. So I remember I was one month out of college. I was a paper broker selling newsprint commercial print paper in Chicago, had the blessing of Kathy quality Contacting me, who was my advisor, and I started putting away a hundred and twelve dollars a month when I was 23 years old 22 years old, into a permanent life insurance. Possibly was the heck are you buying insurance for when you're a young kid? Well, when your mom dies of a rare muscle disease, I was able to lock in my Insurability, because that's not guaranteed, sure? And she said it'll create a habit, discipline to save money. So here I am.
Speaker 1:I look back now as a 44 year old man. That's the only place I've saved at least a hundred and twelve dollars a month over the last 22 years, every single month, because you can't make an Excuse and I pay, you continue to pay. That was very valuable. Then I come into the industry you know, started to really accumulate more money into insurance because not only you're selling it but you learn more about it. But then now I put in well over six figures a year Into permanent life insurance, which I've made major increase that since I left the business Right.
Speaker 1:So now, if you could speak to the individuals who maybe don't understand, before we get into more of the science of it again, how important is just the habits and the disciplines and understanding that you can accumulate money that can then be leveraged. I've been able to leverage it to grow my business. I've been able to leverage it to do other things financially. I have clients who I Now advise them, not even selling insurance anymore, accumulate money inside of insurance because it can be leveraged to get even more capital for your businesses, to grow your businesses, which I've always believed somebody's business is their greatest rate of return. So speak specifically now to the individual who's maybe never understood it, on how you can accumulate wealth which then you can give yourself permission to spend because the death benefit you get, but the ability to accumulate cash inside of insurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what most people are used to is just basic investment planning, and usually that happens it's retirement accounts, so they're just blindly throwing money into retirement accounts. But the problem with that is that money isn't tied up until 59 and a half or you're gonna pay significant taxes and penalties, money coming out ahead of time. You can take loans against 401ks, but there's a lot of strings attached to that, usually not. It's not a great idea. And then when you get to retirement, if you don't need it, they're gonna. You're gonna have to be required minimum distributions Forcing you to take the money out. So there's a lot of strings attached to traditional investment planning specifically for retirement.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing about whole Permanent life insurance in general, but specifically a whole life insurance, is that it is a fixed premium. You got to pay that. You got to pay that bill every month, every year, however, you want to do it. So it builds that discipline. But it's also accessible along the way, so it does a number of different jobs. So I think about myself.
Speaker 2:I bought my first policy when I was Quite young. I think my oldest policy right now it's 17 years old that I own right now and along the way, along that period of time I've owned three different homes, I have two children, I've started a business and along the way, I've been able to tap into that, that policy, to fund those things. So it's been my cash reserve. I think about my policy. Right now I think it's growing at over 5% per year net. So it's actually growing at over 5% per year, totally accessible. Along the way. There's some strings attached to that, but because of that I don't even have a savings account. Well, I do, but there's no money in it, because why would I? If I've got money growing at over 5% tax-free, why would I do that? So, as a business owner like yourself, you know, when you have those kind of accessible cash values that you can use at a moment's notice to Fund an opportunity or, to you know, make an investment when markets go down, it provides a lot of a lot of upside and potential.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of times, I think people they get frustrated at least I did. I want to talk about another way that it can be used. They get frustrated with how the government chooses to tax you on your dollars. It goes in and cut and so a lot of times when people really understand permanent life insurance, they understand the ways that you can actually have a faster rate of return in growth Because of the limited nature of the taxation on the dollars as it grows. Yeah, then there's also different ways where people save money. Let's say, for college 529 plans. A lot of people love a 529 plan.
Speaker 1:I don't like when the government puts restrictions on where I have to use my money and my kids, who are both really smart, like their mom, go and get college scholarships. Well, all of a sudden I'm taxed, which a lot of people don't ask those questions. You know, 10, 15, 20 years down the road, you're taxed on all that money if you don't use it for college, or mom and dad have to go get higher education, I'm not going back to school, and so then you're taxed on all that money. So I started putting money into life insurance for our kids all these years ago and now, each of our kids have over six figures of cash values, and they're 15 and 13 years old, and that money will be used for college education. So what are some of the misconceptions that people don't understand about, not just for kids, but even for their businesses? On how you're actually limiting the exposure to taxes when money grows inside of life insurance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good point. So taxes are huge and, generally speaking, if you're gonna get tax advantages, like in a retirement account or in a 529 plan or anything like that, the government puts some pretty strict regulations on how much money can go in, how it grows and when and how it comes out With whole life insurance. The interesting thing is there's really no limitations on the tax advantages. Your money goes in after tax. It'll grow tax deferred. But because the death benefit always pays out income tax free at the end of your life and because you can borrow against those cash values and use them while you're alive on a tax advantage basis, you could hypothetically multiply your money by many times over the course of your life and never owe the IRS a dime. The advantages of that are absolutely enormous and that's really where we find a lot of business owners, wealthy individuals, but really people are from all walks of life using it, and it's flexible. There's none of those strings attached. So not only are you getting those tax advantages without limitations, you also can access it along the way whenever you want. However, you want the same way I've done about four or five different times during those life changing events that I've had.
Speaker 2:But I think when you think bigger picture, at the end of the day it is life insurance. At the end of the day it is a permanent death benefit that will pay out. So if you have people that you love in your life, which is most people I have two boys that I'm absolutely going to be leaving a legacy to down the road, I know that that life insurance policy is going to deliver them a tax free legacy, free from the IRS, on a guaranteed basis. The only question is how big is that policy going to get and what that does. Hence I wrote the book. It'll give me and my retirement permission to spend, annuitize, draw down all those other assets that I've accumulated for me for my retirement, because my obligation to my loved ones is taken care of. And that's the planning hack that I think a lot of people have not really gotten their mind around, including very high end advisors.
Speaker 1:See, this brings up a great point, because I say this to advisors all the time when I'm brought in to speak, to consult or to coach a lot of these high level advisors I work with, I always say here's a perspective, so we're the marketplace. Now right, I don't sell. I'm not licensed to sell insurance anymore I let the license lapse.
Speaker 1:So there was never any blurring of the lines of what my intention is in conversations like this. Right, I'm the marketplace now, and so I have $18 million of life insurance. What do you have? That $18 million of life insurance gives me permission to spend every dollar of everything we have ever accumulated anywhere, knowing that if we blew through every dollar of all of our money, there's $18 million that then passes. That's gonna go to charitable donations and honor my mom, to Isaac, to Kennedy, to future grandchildren.
Speaker 1:There's so much that you can do that people don't think about, and I've always looked at it as buying wealth. I mean, if you really look at the ability to buy wealth, I wanna buy as much as the life insurance company will issue on my life If it gives me permission to spend and you'll let me create wealth, because if you think about it, the dollars I spend to create that $18 million, you can't get that rate of return anywhere. So not only do I have the peace of mind to spend, but you have the peace of mind that you've generated wealth for legacy that a lot of people don't think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can tell you, one of the things that I came across early in my career was this puzzle that I really wanted to solve. So we share that. You know my mother died young too. She died when I was 25 years old, in her early fifties. And you know, my father worked very hard. He traveled a lot, he made a good income, but we didn't have a whole lot. We were comfortable. But he had just kind of made it to the point in his career where he was able to travel the world and actually enjoy the fruits of all that labor. And then, right after that started, my mom passed it. My mom's diagnosed with, you know, stage four lung cancer. You know, passes away and man, just Rob. So that was early, that was an earlier death than usual.
Speaker 2:But you think about retirees. They spend their entire life saving, right. If they're doing their job right. For most people it's live below your means. Save, save, save, accumulate whatever you can accumulate so that one day you reach the promised land and then you're at retirement and then you can spend freely, right, and the biggest problem with the business is okay. So let's say you do that, let's say you accumulate your million dollars or two or four, whatever your number is.
Speaker 2:You get to retirement and you show up and say I did it, here's my money. I did it. How much can I spend? How much can I spend? Well, tell me how long you're gonna live. Are you going to have a very expensive long-term medical claim? Is the market going to crash again? Is the Great Depression gonna happen again? Is hyperinflation gonna take over? I don't know. So why don't we live below our means? Keep some of that money in reserve, just in case, and if you live a while into retirement, then we'll unlock some of that value.
Speaker 2:That's pathetic. That is not financial planning. That is a travesty. Basically, they spent their whole life living below their means so they could finally retire. And now you're saying live below your means.
Speaker 2:So why I got passionate about this is I learned early in my career that there was actually a hack for this. There actually was a way around this, and it involved the unsexy actuarial science things called life insurance and annuities. I mean, no one's at cocktail parties saying these words and feeling cool, but this is the stuff that unlocks the value of everything else that they've been able to accumulate. And so, really, what it is is it's. It pushes all of those dollars that you would feel comfortable spending in your 80s, into your 60s or the early part of your retirement, at the point in your life when you're healthiest and most willing to. You know travel the world. You know play golf, drive the nice cars, eat out and do all those things in those earliest years. So that's, that's the retirement planning puzzle, and that's it. That's where I think this fits so well and why I wrote a whole book about it.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned something earlier. I want to go there to wrap things up. You mentioned, like large amounts of money that can be put away, which is, as soon as you said that, what? What I thought about and a lot of people don't realize this that for a bank, banks have what's called tier one capital. Tier one capital has to be some of the safest assets on the books of the bank, so that the money that you put into the bank it's protected. The largest percentage of that tier one capital is actually inside of permanent life insurance, and that's called Boli bank owned life insurance. And then there's corporations that do the same thing with their dollar Koli Corporate owned life insurance.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I loved about insurance when I learned about it the right way for having great Mentors who taught me how to sell it appropriately and design correctly and a lot of people don't know this some advisors this would look advisors don't know this. Right. You actually, when you design policies correctly, can overfund policies at a very high level, just like a bank, just like a corporation, in order to create that leverage, which I now do. Yeah, to then be able to pour a lot of money into these policies To get these great rates of return favorable for taxes, and you, essentially, are doing the same planning as the big banks that everybody Complain about. They're making all the money.
Speaker 1:So that's one of the things that I think back to our two audiences today. You have some of the financial advisors because they're so greedy, right, and I'm being direct, I know that upsets some of you, but those advisors that I coach, who have had this massive growth, the ones that are in whole life masterminds. When we teach you to move away from I want to make this next sale to educate people on how to you, you will make more Money than you're making and make more sales. Trust me I know because I sold millions of dollars. I'm just saying so when you come to doing this and you do it the right way and you educate people, people don't even advisors don't know that you can do it that way. Clients don't know that you can do it that way. How important is that piece to understand how to design it and to ask the right questions when you're with your advisor?
Speaker 2:That's extremely important. I mean there's people say what's the best design. There's no answer. I mean every every case is gonna be different. Everyone's goals are gonna be different. You know, I I joke around. I named my consulting company best kept secret consulting.
Speaker 2:And it's not because I'm the best kept secret, it's because I'm talking about the best kept secret and personal finance, I think, and why it's. The best kept secret is is you talked about the overfunding of it or using it for cash value purposes? At the end Of the day, is life insurance first and foremost. That's why it has all the tax advantages because of the social good that it does. But you can build it in a real, in very creative ways and really the when you, when you understand how it works and why I focus on a whole life specifically, versus some of the other flavors of permanent life insurance out there is. You're.
Speaker 2:Essentially, the performance of the policy is based on the underlying general investment account of these big old Mutuals that have been around since pre-civil war times. I mean these. They're managing war chests of hundreds of billions of dollars. They're going to be around a hundred years from now, just like they were a hundred years ago, and there's guarantees in place. They will guarantee that your money grows every single year.
Speaker 2:So the structure of these contracts guarantees that your money goes up, not flat up. It actually guarantees growth and then they'll enhance that growth Via non-guaranteed dividend performance, which is essentially the cash flow they're getting off their general investment account. So if you think about it, you're kind of Well, through the life insurance contract you're getting the performance of their general investment account, professionally managed money, net of the mortality charges that come off for the life insurance piece, but none of the risk Because of that life insurance contract they've guaranteed away all potential risk. So you're getting bond-like returns over time but with none of the risk potentially. And that's really where it fits, I think, for a lot of investors and for a lot of savers as an alternative to some of the traditional cash and bond holdings.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things I think about when you say that is you know, because we've been saving and understood this over a long period of time, you know we have well over seven figures inside of permanent life insurance cash values. That's a lot of money we've saved and we're still young and still pumping a lot of money into permanent life insurance, knowing that we get those guarantees Right. This is what I used to say to clients, but now it's even more powerful. For me, as a client right to our advisors, is that I have never gone to bed and woke up the next day with less cash values than I had the night before.
Speaker 1:Because, to your point, those guarantees, the money cannot go backwards in a whole life insurance policy. It's impossible. So you have all these investments. You get terrified COVID happens. The market goes from 38,000 to 18,000, you're losing all this money. Now I lost money in those investments as well. We lost money in our traditional investment accounts, but in our whole life it was going up every single day. And that's the piece that a lot of people who they just want to go and sell investments because it's easy. But if you're one of those clients where your advisor hasn't had the conversation with you I'm just being direct because I care that much they're not really advising you on a holistic financial plan until you talk about these things that provide those guarantees.
Speaker 2:And I think the important distinction here is too and this is what I get really irritated when I see these people on TikTok and Instagram and putting all these videos out on YouTube online is they gloss over the aspect that financial planning requires that you have a variety of assets.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you invest properly in equities in the stock market or you start your own business or you invest in real estate that can create life changing wealth, you should be invested in all those. It's never life insurance versus those things. It's life insurance and life insurance the whole life insurance is a stable asset that's accessible, and any prudent financial plan needs a portion of that portfolio to be safe, conservative, reliable, accessible, so that when there's corrections or when bad things happen, you know that you're okay. It really gives you permission to stay fully invested and shoot for the stars on those other opportunities. So I never want people to think we're talking about life insurance as this really cool asset and that's where all my money should go. That's dumb too. That's not diversification. Really. What it does is it unlocks the value of everything else and gives you optionality and flexibility and choices to generate wealth with those other ventures. Such a great point.
Speaker 1:Those are the types of points where, being specific and I do want to talk about this because a lot of advisors know most If you're watching this episode you probably know, but if you don't know is that your creation of the whole life masterminds group essentially has become one of the most sought after platforms and masterminds for advisors to actually understand the right way and to receive the education that we're talking about on a very deep level through an unbelievable educational platform where you're providing coaching every single month, there's webinars and there's events throughout the years.
Speaker 1:One seed I want to plant because we're having this conversation. It might be a good thing. Maybe we need to do an event that invites not only advisors but they invite their clients, like we do an event that says because it's been a blessing that Tom and our partnership has invited me and our financial advisors academy to be part of whole life masterminds, which has been so exciting to be able to grow and impact together. Maybe we do that for the clients. But just talk to us again. Even though it was in the first episode whole life masterminds why did you start it and why is it so important that people advisors keep top of mind doing this, planning the right way, so whole life masterminds was built as a niche.
Speaker 2:It's called whole life masterminds on purpose, not life insurance mastermind. This meant to be unapologetically focused on the sale of whole life insurance and the reason for that is there's tons of misinformation out there and I can recall when I was a new rep 20 years ago I believed in it. I had mentors that told me it was good. I believed them. They even gave me the language to say to clients to inspire them to buy it. But I never really knew in my heart if that was true or not. I'm 99% sure it was, but I wasn't totally sure, which is why I embarked on a 20 year career of investigating and getting advanced degrees and trying to ask question after question and basically prove myself wrong that this actually may not be the best thing and I could never do it. So my entire career trying to figure out if this was just a bunch of BS, that I was fed it out and I'm conveniently pushing that out to advisors, or if this really was one of the best kept secrets out there, and at the end of that journey got to a point where I just said, wow, this is amazing stuff and nobody knows how to talk about it that well, even 40 year veterans I find sometimes taking notes during my talks because they just aren't quite sure how to articulate to a client why it makes so much sense. So the mastermind group is really, it's a collection of the top 1%, of 1% advisors Even my network, some of networked into, there's thought leaders, there's academics, there's some of the most prolific authors in the space have been on the program, some of my mentors. There's also some mindset and motivation that we bring in as well, because how you show up every day matters.
Speaker 2:I think the ingredients of a successful whole life practice revolve around activity, attitude and acumen. Activity not so much picking up the phone. Successful advisors do that, but it's not missing opportunities. It's really understanding your market and where it can have an impact. The other one, you know, with attitude. That's super important. Showing up for yourself every day, but also sitting across from a client and making them feel good that this actually is something you believe in strongly. That's really important, I think.
Speaker 2:And then the acumen piece is really where I come in and it's my mind. Network is where we do very deep dives into all the minutiae clients going to ask about, all the objections they're going to throw at you. So you know this stuff cold. I never had that early on. I think a lot of advisors come and go out of this business never having that. Some firms are good at giving that to their advisors and some firms are frankly terrible or don't do anything at all. So I wanted to have a mastermind full of advisors in the industry, no specific company fighting against each other, just advisors in this space sharing ideas, being exposed to the top minds in this space on really a daily basis, with access to me and my network, and I'm pinching myself how well it's been going since we started just a little over a year ago.
Speaker 1:The impact really has been incredible and I, to end today's episode and I hope you've enjoyed a different aspect of the burn today a little bit of education, going into a topic that many people don't understand. Tom has a very special offer for financial advisors regarding the whole life masterminds group. But I'm going to make a joke, but it's really not a joke. If you're one of those individuals who's enjoyed learning about this type of planning and you didn't know enough about it, make sure to tell your advisor about the offer that Tom's about to make, because maybe they should join us and the whole life masterminds group so that they can provide the right educational process for you, so that you can complete your planning the right way with whole life insurance. Tom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the group is. The group is members only. We do live events that we open up to the public just to invite them into our world and just deliver value regardless. But if you go to wholelifemastermindscom you can check out the offering, you can see the caliber of the people that we've had on there. If you go and if you look at the show notes of this episode, there's going to be a special link. It's a whole life masterminds. If you follow that link it'll give you $1,000 off an annual subscription and it's dirt cheap, I mean relative to the value that you'll get. You'll make 10 times back that investment by being part of the program, just from the scripts and the language and the tactics that you'll come across from advisors who have been doing this for decades.
Speaker 1:Well, tom, thank you for coming back on the burn.
Speaker 1:I appreciate our friendship, I appreciate the opportunity to impact together through whole life masterminds and I appreciate every single one of you who goes on this journey with us every single week.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that we're going to start to do is some more of these educational type episodes. I think there's too many areas where people forget to get inside the details of how they can get better in different aspects of their life. So such an honor that we could have Dr Wall be here with us again today to really dive into something that is so important when it comes to your planning in your life and so many people, their burn is that fuel to leave a legacy. Their burn is to do something significant for their children and when this type of planning, you can do it that much bigger. And for those advisors that watch, make sure you're having these conversations because it'll multiply the impact your clients have on that burn. That is very important to them to leave a legacy. So thank you so much for paying attention once again, deep pay it, paying attention to this episode of the burn and check out those notes from today's show for more on whole life masterminds and how you can become a part of the community.