You're listening to the REI marketing nerds podcast, the leading resource for real estate investors who want to dominate their market online. Dan Barrett is the founder of AdWords nerds, a high tech digital agency focusing exclusively on helping real estate investors like you get more leads and deals online, outsmart your competition and live a freer, more awesome life. And now, your host, Dan Barrett.
(0:39) Hey, guys, welcome back. You're listening to the second part of last week's episode. Let's jump back in.
(0:46) I can hear the objection, or maybe none objection. Let me let me phrase this a different way. Is this something you can only do if you already have a bunch of money in the bank, right? For somebody who is let's say, starting out, or even they've got a successful business, but that business doesn't necessarily, you know, pays their bills is doing really well. Good is great. But it's not like banking a ton of cash every month, or they've got hundreds of 1000s of dollars to squirrel away. I can imagine that person saying like, well, that sounds great. But like, I can't buy a carwash. Right. So how do you tell people to think about that, if they're relatively early in
(1:22) that process? Yeah, I can say I've been there done that. I understand. Because, you know, the one thing happened to me is in the recession, I got my butt kicked. So I went from financially independent and then the recession hit, especially as I started doing more flipping and things like that. I was trying to flip higher value homes, which got hit the hardest and the recession. I went from millionaire upside down millionaire. Yeah.
And meaning that was over a million dollars in debt. Or in other words, the homeless guy on the street had a million dollars more than I did, right. I had no money, no credit left, I avoided bankruptcy, not with without getting daily creditor calls and things like that. But But I get it, I had to start from nothing. And the best way to do that is active income. So if you're in your business, wherever the business that is, if you're doing this as a side hustle in the real estate game, great, do it if you're gonna be wholesaling.
Awesome. Do it make that your economic engine generate that income? Here's the mistake that I see real estate investors make? Well, I honestly real estate business owners make because Are there many business owners in the real estate space that are not investors? Right? I'm in a group called collective genius that has a lot of investors like that.
And and the problem is that many times they might make multi million dollars in their wholesaling or flipping business, but they have no passive income, like if their business gets shut down because the COVID for that little, you know, two months shut down or whatever it might be if something like that happens there host you know, and we saw this happen in 2022 been a really brutal year for a lot of people in the wholesaling business and flipping business.
Well, you gotta at least earmark some of that money some of those profits, I mean, great keep generating income, even you know, put your money into marketing and things like that actually helps build and grow your revenue inside your business. But take some of that home keep some of those profits, I would recommend reading the book Profit First by Mike McCalla wits, great book, he talks about creating separate buckets where you actually put profits into the problem that and this is not just real estate investors, this is business owners in general, right?
Business owners General will get caught in their own rat race, they will they will get to the point where they build up a seven figure eight figure plus business. And then they look they turn around, look around and realize I just created a really high paying job. Because they're still stuck in it. They can't leave it. They may have a great lifestyle. Everything on the outside looks good. But inside they realize if this business isn't here, if it stops paying me money right now. I'm just as broke as everybody else in America. Yep. And in that's the own rap.
That's that rat race happens when you constantly say I'm reinvesting quote unquote, in my business. The truth is you're just spending money in your business. Let's be honest, let's call it is you're spending money in your business. And yes, you want to get ROI. But if that money keeps going back in the business, sure, maybe that that revenue will keep generating. But if that doesn't come back home, that doesn't translate to bigger profits for you. It's all for naught. It's a waste of your freakin time. You just wasted your life away.
And so that's what I'm saying bring some those profits home use that to then start creating the passive income on the side to kind of really make your situation better have cash reserves, even heck, and so many companies flippers and wholesalers, we've been in business today had they actually kept cash reserves like we've been pounding that drum for years, because we're expecting this to happen.
All the stuff that you have seen happen from 2022 Till now, we thought was gonna happen from 2019 to 2020. If it weren't for COVID and all the money being pumped in it just created a bigger bubble, right? All the stuff we were preparing for trying to have more cash on the sidelines, just for this very reason what happened in 2022. For real estate investors, I would just say that it's like you got to you got to take care of yourself and your home first, create that security and that financial stability while you're also growing your business.
(4:58) So how much money do you usually tell people to aim for in terms of okay, hey, I want to start investing in some passive income. Is that the kind of thing where you're like, Yeah, you really need X amount in order to get started. So just focus on that. First is it just depend on the situation to where you want to put your money? How do you think through like the if people are like, Okay, I know I want to do this, I know, I want to save the cash, I've got the active income, just sort of save it, what are they aiming for? In terms of that's the starting point, I'm going to start investing in somebody that's going to generate passive income. For me,
(5:29) that's great question. I mean, you can you can invest as little as 1000 bucks, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that. I mean, you could, but I would really recommend get at least 100,000 Plus, right? I mean, just to kind of open up your options a little bit more. But it really does depend, like you were saying, it's a it's case by case. So you know, for example, sometimes people are building up to that, you know, we might have to do like the infinite banking type strategy to help build up their savings and get it outside the banks kind of deep bank yourself, you know, because that's a big concern right now in our community is just,
Hey, do I even trust putting a bunch of money with his banks, right, when it happens, especially if it's a regional bank, what happens you know if it goes under, so there's ways to do things like infinite banking could do that. But, but yeah, I would try to get to at least 100,000 How much you save percentage wise, like from your business profits, whatever you can. If you've never saved a profit on your business before if you've always been quote unquote, reinvesting and you've driven your spouse nuts, because all you keep doing is putting money back in the business.
And you'll say, Don't worry, someday, we'll live that life of our dreams, right? You know, if you've been doing that, start with freaking 20 bucks a week being taken out automatically out of your bank account into a separate account, write something like that just anything. 100 bucks, I don't care, try something and then build up to that. Just get in the habit of moving money over you realize it's so freakin easy. You won't even miss the money when you move it over to your own profit bucket. Right? You know, your
(6:49) I have found for sure. And I probably don't save as much as I should like a lot of people, right. But it's like, I have found for sure that I didn't say that all until I just made it automatically debit on. And I just put it on the thing. And it just happened. And it's like, all my savings are now because I'm like, if I like if I was like, Oh, we're gonna put it in the calendar, and we'll make a thing. It's almost like having a kid right? There's never a time that feels like the right time. Like, we just moved or whatever. Like there's always an excuse not to do it. But when you do it automatically, you're exactly right. Like you don't feel it because you never knew you had. Right.
That's right. It was so I would love to transition. You mentioned infinite banking. I saw this on the website. I was doing research on you. And this was the thing that I highlighted. Because I have a friend that always talks about being his own bank. And it's always sounded really fascinating to me. And infinite banking is like I looked at the page. I was like I did I made a very serious face, you know, a stroke my beard. And I was like, Yes. And I gotta be honest, I have no idea what what it is. So I read it, but I don't get it. So I want you to explain it to me explain it to the listeners. What is infinite bank? This is something that you do you help people with. But let's back up with just what is the basic concept we're talking about
(8:03) here? Yeah, Infinite Being is a tax free, supercharged savings account, it's essentially a way to for you to be able to get your investment money to pay you twice. Now, here's how it works. Like you're basically the here. It's really just life insurance, right? Using whole life insurance specifically is the vehicle you use for your savings account. Okay, most of us, we take money into checking your savings, and we go and we invest it, right. And that's great. You make your return off your investment in one place. But wouldn't it be awesome if the money you're using from your bank account wouldn't be awesome if all sudden, you could still invest that money, but the money is still in the bank account earning interest right.
Now granted, banks they pay you point nothing percent, so they pay you crap, right? What if that bank was paying you say, say four or five 6%. And not to mention it's tax free? Oh, another mention is protected from lawsuits and creditors, in most states. 100% protected. So you have millions in here, someone Sue's you and wins and they can't touch it, they can get your savings accounts, they can get to most your investment accounts. They even get you a lien on your house, but they can't touch this money. It's protected for you. That's basically what you can do with infinite banking. Right?
It's you can use this whole life insurance policy, not just buy it for the death benefit, which is what a lot of people teach about even in the infinite banking space. Right. But, and in fact, I'll tell you a story because when I first heard about it, I was actually I just quit being a financial advisor. And as I meet these real estate investors, kind of like what you were to heard, where all you got to try this infinite banking thing. Nelson Nash read his book, it's great.
And I read the book and I drank the Kool Aid. I said, Cool. How do I set it up? Now I had a life insurance license, but I had no clue about whole life because I I ripped on it as a financial visor. I was like, Oh, my whole life sucks. I never seen a whole life policy before. But that's what all the other financial advisors told me to tell everybody, right? They suck. Well, needless to say, I have a guy that was a real estate investor. He helped me set it up. And I remember saying, Man, these things are kind of expensive, upfront. He's like, Oh, they are upfront. But then over time, you'll have money in these things. You know, eventually when you pay for those insurance costs that are front loaded, you'll start having cash in year three and so on. Well A recession hit me pretty dang hard.
The 25,000 I paid into it was gone because it all went to costs. So pretty soon, I'm hosed. And I can't keep paying the premium. So I lost it. I was like, that was the most expensive term insurance I've ever bought. Because that's really what it was. I had no cash. I found out later that he lied to me. I even asked him upfront is like, is there a way I can over fund this and get cash from day one? He said, No, you'll get taxed if you do that. He was only partially truth. It was that white that that chicken poop with a speck in it. Right? Fame. That's Chris up in the call. Yeah. Yeah. Because the way he designed it, that was the case, but he could have designed it better.
I actually had a two hour debate with him, I showed him numbers because I ran my own life insurance numbers. I said, Look, I could have done it this way. And finally, after all excuses were gone. He just said, Chris, I just couldn't afford to cut my commissions. And I said, that is why I'll never send you another person or referral again. And I was pissed, and kind of became my mission. That was back in like 2008 2009, it became my mission to actually get better. The cool thing is, if you have them set up, right, the first year, instead of having zero cash in the first year, or even the first two years, you'd have about 85% of what you paid in by that second year, you would actually have cash from day one, even if you do it, right.
But if you do with a traditional insurance agent, they have no clue what you're talking about. They don't even know how to do it, or they'll screwed up or they work with like Northwestern Mutual, and those guys suck because you get rate for with all the insurance costs that come out of there actually showed a lady she's gonna put 22,000 a year a year, once you have 400 bucks. I said, Look, 20,000, this one, you'll have over almost 18,000 bucks, you want 400 or 18,000 bucks.
Like, wow, how is this much better, because I cut the Commission's and the cost back as much as they can go without breaking the bank, you know, breaking the tax rules. So Anyways, long story short, the reason it's awesome for real estate investors specifically or even for business owners in general, is that this is money you can have on hand to use to not just go and invest or go to put in your business. But the money's still there, you basically get a line of credit against it.
So the cash is there as collateral, right. And then the insurance company or a bank, either one will say cool, you've got this guaranteed cash in here, we'll give you a loan at a very low interest rate that you can go loan out in basically they give you that money, but your money still compounding tax free interest inside the account. So say you have 100,000 bucks in there. Well, if you borrow 50,000 bucks from the insurance company, they're gonna charge you interest. And yes, you will pay interest back to them don't believe the whole you pay yourself back crap.
That's another half truth. But instead you're paying interest to them. But the cool thing is, you're still earning all tax free interest on that full $100,000. You didn't touch that money at all, you're using their money, arbitraging it, using it to go and invest. So the cool thing is kind of like a double arbitrage or double dipping because you're still earning these tax free dividends, and you're still earning returns on the investment that you're doing to.
And that's that's why with real estate and business owners, it's like a no brainer, because it's one of those things that you know, even a passive investor, someone who's like a W two employee looking to buy a real estate property if they make a say a 10% cash on cash return, this will usually add at least a one to 3%. Net UK tax cash on cash return on top of that, so you end up netting a higher return with the same dollars out of pocket. So it's really just a way to replace the savings calendar.
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(13:41) There's always a risk associated with everything right? So what are the risks associated with doing the Infinite Banking thing? Right? If you're even if you're you take the world's most boring you know, quote unquote safest thing you could possibly do. I just put it in a savings account on my local bank or whatever, as you mentioned, like that stole risk, right, that bank could explode like what app right there's always a risk. So what are the risks associated with this one? And how do you teach people to kind of think about mitigating those?
(14:07) Yeah, actually, that's why a lot of my real estate friends are leaving the banks right now there and banking as is becoming the term right now. And they're actually pulling it out and moving over here. The cool thing is life insurance companies actually can't do what banks do where they over leverage and so they actually go out of business a lot less so we tend to go there instead of keeping the bank even for my own money my wife requires that keep $300,000 that we don't touch I said I told her I'm like I'm not gonna keep that the bank at point nothing percent that's just not cool. And I get taxed on that point. I think percent Yeah.
So I told her I'm gonna keep 250,000 inside of here 50,000 side the bank right? And that way now I'm earning like 5% tax free on that money. Well, cool. Now I just made 12,500 instead of maybe 1500 bucks on that same quarter million. That would have been with the bank, you know, after taxes and everything. Yeah. Now downside here is one if it's not designed the right way, you'll end up buying a piece of crap like I did in the beginning, right and 99 point 89% of insurance agents don't know how to do it, right.
Like I said, I wouldn't be doing this if people did it right in the first place. That's why we even exist. That's why we designed them ourselves. But other other risks too. Like if you're in bad health, not as good if you're a smoker, not as good if your paycheck to paycheck, if you're literally like, you're not able to save anything, don't do the strategy, I would just have you buy the convertible, Cheap term life insurance policy that you can convert later on when you do have cash flow.
So you gotta, you gotta at least have some commitment. There's not like you just do a one time dumping he could, but it kills you in fees. If you do it that way. You're better off to pay it, you know, emphasis over the next five or 10 years, right, like paying into that policy is a much better way to go and kind of breaking that up annually. That's kind of that's that's some of the warnings that we give there.
(15:47) Yeah, the health thing is a problem because you want to be in it for a certain amount of time in order to capitalize on the the sort of accumulating interest. Is that the idea?
(15:54) Well, the insurance costs are more expensive, right? So whenever you're putting money in Costco up, depending on your age, and your health rating, so obviously, usually, I mean, take kids out of the picture, right? But generally, the younger you are, and the healthier you are, the cheaper the costs, which means your ROI goes up in the way we design these. So yeah, it's definitely a very big effect there. I did have one guy who was a dentist, he weighed like 350 pounds, you know, and he was big time investor. And he's like, I want to dump money in this. But let's be honest, I'm in my 50s, I'm a little overweight, I'm not gonna get a good rating, if I even get a rating at all.
And I said, No, you won't. He's like, Well, how about my wife? She's a few years younger than me. She's in perfect health. Can we do it on her instead? I said, Yeah, we could. And so we started putting in like, over $100,000 A year into his wife's policy instead that he controls, he still invest with it. He actually does a lot of stuff now outside of real estate. Now he does stuff with like, oil and gas technology and stuff, right? Yeah, do that. Because he just use his wife. I have another guy that's a veterinarian in the Midwest that he got on policy on not just on the self, but even got on two of his kids.
And he's putting money into those and then pulling their money together to go buy real estate. And then using the cash flow and everything from that to be able to help that generate bigger returns. He's kind of using that to replace the 529 plan, which sucks if the stock market goes down like it did last year, right before your kid goes to college, right? We could you imagine have $100,000 You saved up for your kid like that's 25,000 a year for four years I got in here, I got it figured out. Then also the market drops 20% down to 80. You start to pull out the 25 for tuition. So now you're down to like, 55,000 You're never gonna recover. You're pretty much gonna have three years in college if you're lucky.
(17:33) Yeah, we did. We talked about the timing earlier. Right. I mean, it's it's the thing that always freaks me out. Now, you, you kind of talked about this, in a roundabout way. But I want to bring this up. Because every every time I talk to somebody who deals with money, right? So much of it is really about psychology and working with people and understanding how they think and how they how they feel and what drives their actions, right? We talked about automating the savings, because I would I would never do it. Even if it's in my calendar. I just never did it. Right.
One of the questions I always ask is, and this will be a personal question, right? So one of my problems and I invest, and I do adults are automated stuff. But it's not particularly sophisticated, right? As systems kind of doing stuff to do it. And one of the things I always run into is this mindset, which I know is irrational, I absolutely understand logically that it is an irrational mindset. But when I get into like investing, I'm always like, hey, I really should have done that 20 years ago. And then I like, it's kind of too late. And I'm like, I'm 43 I'm not like 100 years old, right? But there's this sense of like, well, if I had done it when I was 20, I'd be like a billionaire.
And I didn't so I'm like, Yeah, that was stupid. And then I just kind of don't do it. And like the irrational part is like, of course, every day that goes by the better day to do it would have been the day before. But I find it like hard to wrap my head around this and like in like a, an emotional way. So does this come up for you? Like why when you're in your clients, like how do you deal with this?
(19:04) Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the whole loss opportunity cost, right, and procrastination. And everyone has different reasons for it. I always challenge people to go back often to your childhood, right? Like where you really were shaped, you know, or things that maybe you were taught by your parents. Like I had one client from Idaho for example, where she was completely against a lot of strategies, not because it wouldn't work and she was even against her husband being a business owner.
But the reason she was against this because she watched her own father claimed bankruptcy twice is really a watch opener, not as much an entrepreneur so she saw the bad you know, the bad effects of a really have a dad that couldn't provide for his family. They didn't have security she lost on her childhood in the sense that you know, they would have to leave and pack up and go go live in their grandparents basement, you know, while he's trying to figure this crap out. There's there's a lot of times there's things that might influence that belief. Yeah, if you find the the root of that just like a weed he can pull out from the route. That's a big deal. Now, sometimes usually what I see, at least with us, and this can be different based on what you're describing here, right with is procrastination, sometimes just dealing with not having the confidence.
Either one, you don't trust yourself or two, you just don't know enough about what you're what you're looking at doing right. Now, if you already learned enough, and you're still not acting, then the real question is, is it I don't trust that investment, or I don't trust like even in marketing, right? It's like, do I not trust these marketing guys? Or is it really me that I don't trust, right? Because usually, it comes down to that. It's like, usually, I don't trust me or my decision making skills. And so if that's the case, start small, you know, if that that really kind of situation, I would say, we'll look back at your wins. Look back at what you did look back, you know, 1020 years ago, and you said, You know what, that would have been a good idea. If I did, that was 20,
I would have been a billionaire. And, and you might almost have to forecast yourself in the future saying, Okay, now I'm 53. What do I tell my 43 year old self today, right now looking at this situation? What does my 53 year old self gonna say about this? They say, You know what, you dodged the bullet there. It's good. You didn't pull the trigger on that, because I was emotional rash decision, or, you know what, I wish I did that when I was 43. You might want to might want to reconsider, right? I mean, really just kind of talking to yourself. I mean, everything's about mindset. Like you said, you know, you've mentioned scarcity. I mean, scarcity is, you know, fear and other emotions, and not just fear, even greed is an emotion of scarcity.
And that can cause bad results. You know, my opinion is that when faith leads over fear, you know, when there's no limits, versus putting limits on yourself, you know, we're really that, understand that there's more than enough resources for you, and then to spare, right, more than enough for everybody. If you really get into that abundant place, you start to see opportunities that you wouldn't have seen normally.
(21:47) Yeah, I definitely think that's true. I think if you are operating from a place where you are constantly worrying about losing what you have, you're gonna lose it you net a really terrible Yeah. And you you end up losing it right? Because you don't capitalize on what you could have. And, you know, things atrophy, this isn't an entropic universe, right? Things will degrade over time if you don't constantly focus on growth.
Chris, this is all awesome, dude. Now, I've mentioned this at the top of the show, the website is money. ripples.com money ripples.com. You can go check this out. You also have a podcast, right? The money ripples podcast, you just tell people if they want to look that up. What's the kind of stuff you're talking about on the podcast? How does that
(22:24) work? Yeah, it's, I mean, everything financial, right. We talk a lot about term investment investments. You know why financial advice, the traditional stuff sucks. You know, Wall Street sucks, that kind of thing. I mean, we have over 700 episodes, you know, whether you go on YouTube, or you go on Whoa,
22:38 Devin 200 do, I thought I was big time, but like, I had like 400 episodes or something. And I was like, that's a lot. Episode. 700 is a lot. That is a
(22:48) list and they're not all that great. I mean, you go back to those early episodes, if you go back to like blog talk radio.com/money rebels you can find like the very first one they did that. So audio only right. But no, I mean, it's yeah, we're in our ninth season right now. We're we're very, very proud of that. We just passed our ninth anniversary and and that's yeah, it's it's been it's been great. Because we cover a variety topics. We even have some guests from time to time as well. And so it's twice a week. So there's we like to keep them short. So they're usually like 2025 minutes type of episodes. Cool, man.
(23:15) Yeah, for definitely people should go check that out. Wherever you get your podcast, right Is there anywhere, it specifically should download it or just wherever, just wherever you get your podcasts, it's everywhere. Anywhere find podcasts are sold as I like to save money. ripples.com is the website now you have a whole bunch of stuff on the website, really encourage people to go check it out. It's very cool.
There's like calculators and stuff on there's like a ton of content, you can go check it out. But if people are more curious in that they really want to work with you in some way. I know you've got online courses, I know you work with people directly. So can you kind of break down? Like how do you work with people? What are the different kinds of ways that people can actually get your advice and wisdom on their specific situation?
(23:57) Yeah, if you want to get more specific versus like just the online courses and things like that. I mean, there is the wealth accelerator academy that I do show up once a month as a group call, but it's a small intimate group. So people kind of feel like it is personal coaching. Even in that case, we do have one on one consulting that we do with our team and whatnot. I mean, if you just do the passive income calculator, we can pretty accurately tell how much passive income you can create in the next 12 months.
And that will kind of determine whether you might be a good candidate or fit to work with us either on the infinite banking side, I mean, you just reach out contact us there's We don't charge a fee or anything for infinite banking, but even if you've been looking at it, heck, we'll even uh, you know, give you apples to apples and see like, Hey, could you you know, is that good? What they just showed you that other agent showed you could you do better you know, we've got all kinds of stuff we could do there too.
(24:40) That's awesome. Okay, cool. So definitely go check out again money ripples.com You see right up at the top of the menu there they've got the calculator thing you can go check out how much passive income you could generate which is totally rad. The money ripples podcast, all my courses consulting all this amazing stuff. Are you big like social media person you got anywhere else that you want people to follow Unison Sara Lee
(25:00) yeah yeah we always love I mean, we're building our YouTube channel we have the money ripples channel and the money ripples podcast channel so we actually separated them, but great videos on both that we put out pretty much daily. Yeah, we also have pretty much any platform Instagram Tik Tok, Facebook, whatever it's always LinkedIn it's all at at money ripples.
(25:17) All right, cool. Money ripples.com Once again, Chris miles, the anti financial advisor. Thank you so much, man. This was really fascinating. I didn't know what Infinite Banking even was. Now I got something I gotta go Google. I actually just go to money ripples.com And look it up. Even have a playlist on YouTube called Infinite Banking. So make it easy for you.
(25:38) Yeah, this is a fog. Machine swear. Oh, swear my old bike. So the family podcast Damn. Go on YouTube. Check it out money. ripples.com and Chris miles. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate having you on the show. Thank you. That is it. That's it for our interview this week. As always, if you are looking to get more leads and deals for your real estate investing business online, maybe get some of that profit in the bank that Chris was talking about, you can go over to AdWords nerds.com.
That is AdWords nerds.com. To request a free call with my team. We will help you put together a marketing strategy for your market. As always good. Check out our guest money ripples.com You can find him on all the socials and we will be back next week as in every week, bringing you all sorts of cool interviews and strategies and content about real estate investing and online marketing. I hope you're having an awesome week. Thank you so much for being here. I will talk to you very soon. Cheers.
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