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Most Entrepreneurs Get This WRONG About Money (Ryan Lee Explains Why)
0 Playsin 21 minutes
Ryan Lee makes one of the boldest statements on today's podcast: "retiring in 10 years or less." Breaking free from the traditional bounds of work and how we use our money, he shares several ways on how he makes his money more productive: instilling financial literacy and control.
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Transcript
Introduction & Purpose of the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Taylor's Success Story: From Struggle to Triumph
00:00:10
Speaker
went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur you might ask? solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another podcast.
Introducing Ryan Lee: Wealth Expert
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm super excited for today's episode because we've got someone that's teaching us not only how to create wealth, but also how to keep it. One of the most important things we can do as business owners, sales reps, and entrepreneurs. So I'm excited to have the one, the only Mr. Ryan Lee on the podcast with us today. Thanks for coming on, Ryan.
00:01:03
Speaker
My man, you know, Taylor, it is a privilege. It is an honor to get connected with you. i just got, I just found out what you're doing and how how you're hustling and making things happen. And man, it's just such a privilege to be with people that are driven individuals. I love that about you, Taylor, how how driven you are as a person.
00:01:18
Speaker
Thank you. Appreciate that, brother. Was really excited that um our mutual friend Dan Anderson connected us and um have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing and really teaching people to build wealth things and keep it.
00:01:30
Speaker
Ryan, you're the ah you started the company Wealth Outside Wall Street. I know you've helped a lot of sales reps, lot of people in 1099 commission jobs like we do here over
Financial Discipline in Sales: Challenges & Solutions
00:01:40
Speaker
in solar. And ah yeah, we're I know we were just chopping it up yesterday and I was mentioning how a big problem in solar is people make these great commissions.
00:01:48
Speaker
But then the next day they spend it. You know, I even had a guy I saw he makes a twenty thousand dollar check. And then the next day he shows up to the office with a with a Rolex when he hadn't made that much money before. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? He's like, ah I just want to reward myself. I'm like, OK, well, maybe don't you think maybe you could have put it in some other things before going out and buying a Rolex? People do stuff like that.
00:02:09
Speaker
So ah but yeah, tell us about, you know, your background, your company, how you got started in the whole um helping people build financial freedom and doing what you're doing. Yeah, you know, no question. and And anyone listening to this, I think we've all had that experience before where, you know, we have a little bit of money and we blow it, right? We blow it. You know, the sad reality, honestly, Taylor, of of what I do, I work, I've worked with thousands of people over the years. And most of the people that I work with, they come to me and they're,
00:02:35
Speaker
you know, if they're in their 30s, that's phenomenal. But generally they're in their late 40s, early 50s. I just was helping with a guy just this morning, he's 63. And you know, the challenge with it is, you know, we look back over the course of their career and they've made great money, right? They've made great money. But now 20, 30, 40 years into having made great money, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, well, what do you got to show for it?
00:02:57
Speaker
And that's the biggest challenge is most people live in this consumer condition. They make money, they spend it, and they save what's left over. And very oftentimes what's left over is a little amount.
00:03:08
Speaker
And so then they take extraordinary risk trying to earn these outsized big returns to strike it big to make up for really the lack of of clarity of what money's actually meant to accomplish. And and let me invite you to consider this.
00:03:23
Speaker
I really believe money, if we and if we truly understand what money is, money's a tool, number one, but money is a symbol of what we trade, right? so For almost every single person out there, they gotta trade their time to get a little bit of money in their bank account.
00:03:38
Speaker
And if we don't, value that trade-off time for money, and we then turn around and spend money on things that we maybe or maybe can't afford, we end up trading too much time for too little to show show for it. And money's greatest intrinsic value is to buy our time back, to give us more options with
Achieving Financial Freedom: Ryan's Approach
00:03:55
Speaker
our life. And so that's really what I try to help people get clear on up front is, look, if you woke up to tomorrow and money wasn't the driver of the decisions that you make, like what different decisions would you make in life? And very rarely do people tell me, oh man, I would do exactly what I'm doing today. I would live in the same house, drive the same car, send my kids to the same school, work the same job. It's usually all the things they wish they would do if they had just been more disciplined with the money that they had and and built a system to create passive income. Hopefully that's a good intro to what we're going to discuss today. And I can for sure go down the rabbit hole of what we do and how I got into it if if you'd like to do that as well. Yeah, trying to study more more lately. And I know there's the different kind of like philosophies and stuff, financial guys, you got the whole Dave Ramsey talks about putting the money in the envelopes and systems like that for you is it's for your kind of systems, u take I'm sure we'll dive deeper in this. But do you give people kind of like a basis on what to do with their money? Are you more helping people like invest, invest in money? What's kind of like your main focus with your company?
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, man, I love this phenomenal question. and And here's what I would say, the envelope system, the Dave Ramsey's, you know, that's actually probably a pretty good system for someone. Well, I'm just going to pick on the dude who bought the Rolex, not because buying a Rolex is bad. You know, if you're not disciplined with your money and you find yourself in consumer debts and you end up trading a lot of your time and your production and your money to pay for things you already bought yesterday. Then Dave Ramsey is phenomenal, right? He'll yell and scream at you. You'll get soup. You'll experience a level of freedom that that poor consumer debt puts on your shoulders. And I love that. So once you've got that foundation in place, what we focus on is we focus on helping people take the money that they've now earned, the money that they have to show for their time trade off and convert it into passive income. And really our our metric for success is anyone that follows the system that we'll talk about on this on this show today is you can achieve complete financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:05:47
Speaker
That's not hyperbole. That's not marketing. That is a reality when you understand how money works and you can convert your active income into passive income. Yeah, it's like who wouldn't want to do that? And especially I think it's pretty intriguing for door to door people just because let's be honest, I don't think we want to be knocking doors when we're in our 60s and 70s. And so, um yeah, to hear to hear that, that's a good hook for people. And I'm sure you attract a lot of people, I would i would guess, in sales. Is that like your target? Do you have kind of like a target group that you that you help primarily or are you helping everybody? i don't know if you help a lot of sales or apps or that's been kind of your target audience.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, my my target audience are driven individuals, people who are winning in the game of life. Most of the people that I work with, you know they're they're producers, they make good money, whether it's professionally, whether they're sales, whether they own businesses.
00:06:37
Speaker
you know They're winning physically, they're they've got good resources. relationships generally, they're family people. They're winning in many many areas of their life, but the area that they cannot for the life of them figure out how to get real traction in and feel like they're really winning is in the game of money. And so that's who I work with. I work with driven individuals. And the way I kind of look at the game of money I believe there's two economies that are operating essentially in
Ownership vs Dependency Economies
00:07:01
Speaker
parallel, right? These economies are operating out there at all times and you have to choose which economy you're gonna operate in There's the dependency economy and in the dependency economy, you're dependent on just about everything, right? You're dependent on your employer, you're dependent on your source of income. When you do start saving for retirement, you hand your money over to some financial advisor, you're dependent on them, you're dependent on markets, you're dependent on taxes, inflation, you're just along for the ride. And that's a very challenging place for a producer to be in, right? Someone who's used to winning in their life. And when they're in the dependency economy, they feel trapped. And so I'm looking for people that don't just want to do traditional finance better. I'm looking for people who want to walk away from dependency and step into what we call the ownership economy. And in the ownership economy, number one, we own our money. We don't hand our money off without understanding what it's intended to do. We own our decisions, we own our results, and we own a system that produces cashflow. And so it's a whole different game of money. And people in the dependency economy, if they're not dissatisfied with it, that's where most people should stay. I mean, most people are just comfortable saying, hey, you know, my financial advisor told me put money in a 401k or the market's doing this or everyone else is doing that. So I'm going to do it, too, because in the dependency economy, when it doesn't work out, you can just, you know, vote for the next politician because you're dependent on the government now. And you can just vote for someone to try to justify ah the fact that you've lost the game of money. Yeah. A couple of books I read recently. i don't know if you follow that Ramit Sethi guy.
00:08:22
Speaker
He did like that Netflix show. i will teach you to be rich or something like that. And so he he talks a lot about, you know, just building up like the six month emergency fund and then like paying off the debts and then just kind of think kind of more traditional. Yeah, I guess just to give you a scenario, of a lot of reps I see on our teams is, ah you know, they've got so a little bit of money saved up. Maybe they've got an emergency fund. ones Maybe they've got like a car loan or whatever.
00:08:45
Speaker
um So if you were coaching sales rep like that in that situation, what would you say? Would you say, hey, pay off your loans or do some investments? What what would you, what coaching would you give someone like that in kind of a similar position? Yeah. Great question. um We have to start with the end in mind, right? I mean, this question, nobody asks this and it's it's kind of crazy, but what do you want your money to do for you, right? And if you're feeling the weight of being in, in you know over you know, overweighted consumer debt, yeah, you should probably pay it off, right? That's go go talk to Dave Ramsey, go follow Ramit, get a six month emergency place and you know plan in place. Those are all really, really important things. But when you get to the point that you say, I want to be able to own my life, I want financial freedom, that's where we step in.
00:09:27
Speaker
And step number one of this is really understanding that your best investment, and it drives me crazy when when people don't justify this, like when financial advisors try to diminish this, but your best investment is your ability to create value. It's your ability to make money, right? That's the best investment. And we want your attention, your effort, your energy focused on that. But in a long enough time horizon, it's not what you make, it's what you keep that's gonna make the difference. So step number one is our objective when we're working with someone is we get really, really clear on what winning the game of money looks like. How much income do you need or how much income do you want to cover the lifestyle today? We call that your strike. $10,000 a month just for simple math, then we need to build a system that will create $10,000 a month of spendable income and we need to do it in 10 years or less. The driver of that system is going to be you, right? Making money. Then your commitment has to be, I'm going to save 10 minimum, 10%, preferably of everything I make into a very curated ah and and focused system. That then then means the more money you can make, the more money you can then save if you're saving a percentage of your income. And if you're committed to doing that first, making money, saving, paying your future self, and then spending what's left over, then the entire game flips. Rather than spending money first and saving what's left over, you've now prioritized financial freedom.
00:10:41
Speaker
And in this prioritization, the first thing that we have to do is we have to acknowledge the greatest destroyer of wealth. And I guarantee you, every one of your guys have felt this, right? You know, when you have a great year and you make ah ah you know some good money, six figures, maybe 200,000, whatever it might be, what do most of those guys dread? And it's right around this time of year. Dax's, Uncle Sam's. Uncle Sam, right? There's this whole dread around, oh my gosh, how much money do I got to give to the government, right?
00:11:10
Speaker
want you to consider this. The tax code, you know, let's let's just have a little bit of fun here really quick, Taylor. If you open up the tax code and read it like a book, right? Basically, the very first thing that the tax code says is everything you make is taxable. That's pretty much the first page. Hey, everything you make, it's taxable. But then there's 3,000 pages after that one statement. And then there's over 90,000 pages of addendums to the 3,000 pages. So there's a lot of pages behind that statement. And the way I look at that are those pages, the only reason they're there is they're there to tell you how to not pay taxes on
Tax Strategies for Financial Prosperity
00:11:42
Speaker
everything you make. And so step number one inside of a financial plan is we have to lower as as strategically as we can, lower the taxes that you pay on your active income.
00:11:50
Speaker
So that's where we focus, especially for 1099 reps. You should know going into the year exactly how much money you're going to pay in taxes because we've built a strategy, a forward-looking strategy to hit that target rather than getting to April and be like, oh my gosh, CPA, please save me. What do I got to do? I don't want to pay taxes. That's looking through the rearview mirror. We got to look through the windshield and look forward. So your strategy is number one on taxes. We're gonna pay taxes one time at the lowest possible tax rate. Then once we've paid taxes, that's where that 10 to 20% comes in. We're then gonna shift our savings into resources and assets that eliminate taxes forevermore.
00:12:26
Speaker
We will never pay taxes again. And this is where our strategy really starts to take shape. We do two things. Now, I guess before we get to those two things, any questions or thoughts on on the tax strategy concept before we move on to the two things? Yeah, no, that's good. Well, I was just going add, this happened to me multiple times where i get to the end of the year, i get to around this time a year, and then my tax guys surprised me with like, you know, $20,000 I wasn't expecting have to pay. I'm like, oh, shoot, so have to move around a bunch of money, and then money that I was planning on using towards any other investments, all the sudden I got to pay it too. Uncle Sam because I wasn't expecting it. So that's definitely different than I hear most people because I think it is kind of a surprise for a lot of people. So it's kind of always been for me. I'm like, OK, am I going to pay a lot this year and pay a little? day I know some of the tax stuff, but a lot of it is just kind of like guessing and they're not. So I guess one question I had is, would you say that's up to us is like the 1099 sales reps?
00:13:21
Speaker
Do we need to have more of the knowledge or is that more on getting a tax guy that, that knows what's going on? Is he thinking it's really important for us as sales reps to know a lot of the tax strategies and tax code and stuff like that? Here's what you need. You need a commitment to be free. You need a commitment to own your money. That's really what it is. Um, So here's here's the bottom line, what I'll tell people. You should never pay more than, if you're 1099, if you're W-2, it's very challenging to do what I'm about to tell you. But if you're 1099, if you're a business owner, entrepreneur of any kind, you should never pay more than 20% total of your income in taxes.
00:13:53
Speaker
So now you know, if you're gonna earn $100,000, target tax rate is 20,000 bucks, maximum, maximum. right? No more. If you're going to earn 200,000, your target tax rate is $40,000. Now we know exact, there should never be any surprises ever. And the tax code is written and the structure is there that with the right targets and the right structure, you can start taking deductions that are, that right now, most people are paying with an after-tax money. We can shift those to pre-tax money and reduce our taxable income. So now we're lowering our tax base and paying a 20% target rate. So there's a whole strategy that goes with this. And this is really, there's not usually, like most people think they just need to go to H&R Block or find the guy. And maybe that's true. Maybe there's a guy that can do that. But most CPAs, you know, here's the challenge with a CPA. Most CPAs, they look at what you've already done. They look back and say, hey, you've earned this much money. This is the way you're structured. So this is how much taxes you owe. There's
00:14:46
Speaker
No strategy, they're just you they're they're very black and white, right? It's structurally, this is how much you're gonna have to pay because of how you're structured and how you received income. So we want a good CPA, but what we want on the front end is we want a good tax strategy. Strategy is looking forward to say, how much am I gonna make? What's my target tax rate? How do I need to be structured? Meaning how does money need to ah flow to me out of my personal business?
00:15:09
Speaker
but even if it's just me, if it's just business of one person, how does money need to flow through me and what deductions can I inject into my business? And there's several easy ones, right? What what expenses that are already going through my life could I make ordinary and necessary to running my business, right? Your car, your apparel, dining, your house, home ah office, um you know gym memberships, all of those things with the right structure, we can make those ordinary and necessary to you running your business. Therefore, they're expenses that you already have, but we get to put them in and pay for them with pre pre-tax dollars. That lowers our taxable income. And then after we've lowered our taxable income with ordinary and necessary expenses, then we go into things like the Augusta rule, payroll for your kids, um you know, those type of strategies that structurally lower our tax rate. And then the objective is to go to the IRS and say, hey, gross. Yeah, made $200,000.
00:16:03
Speaker
But nets, after my ordinary necessary, after my expenses that I was able to deduct by the business structure that I have, only only made 80,000 bucks. So now I'm paying a total of 20% taxes on, you know, on um I made a bunch of money, but I kept a lot more of it based on the tax strategy that I have. Does that make sense?
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah. Well, and then how important it is, is it's because there's like bo ah bookkeeping, you know, I use like the QuickBooks and stuff like that. And I actually got audited a couple years back and I'm still paying off, ah you know, some IRS debt. Matter of fact, you know, what happened to me is I got hit with the ah the accountant I was using at the time, recommended me to get the ah COVID money that they're giving to businesses.
00:16:45
Speaker
And then, um you know, a lot of fraud with that. And it turns out I wasn't supposed to. I actually didn't qualify for it. So then that triggered like a whole audit. And, you know, I've told the story. IRS actually knocked on my door and um they were sending me letters, but I didn't think it was real because I'm like, there was like handwritten letters and stuff. But then they came and knocked on my door. So I like had no idea that it could get to that extreme where they literally will come knock on your door. So, yeah, I learned a lesson that's, you know, it's important to have guys that know what they're doing.
00:17:13
Speaker
And, you know, you know I think I would say it's important to have at least kind of a basic understanding because that's what happened to me. I had zero understanding of what my tax guy was doing and I just fully relied on him fully trust anything he's saying. It came back to came back to bite me. That's a problem. But yeah, would you say it's pretty important to have like book here? I don't know. Is it based on if you're making over a certain amount, you should get like a bookkeeper, put it on all like a business credit card or Business or credit card is the easiest. I mean, if you've got payroll and you've got employees, that's where a bookkeeper makes a little bit more sense. But what, you know, with the right structure inside of that one structure, you should have one business card and all of your business expenses for the most part go on that card. You'll have a business bank account associated with it. But the bookkeeping and accounting is really pretty easy with the right structure and the right segregation personal from business expenses to where a bookkeeper is not necessary. Okay. Here's what I'll tell you is absolutely necessary. Tax strategy, that's number one. You need a tax strategist, someone who's looking forward and building a playbook for you. And a tax strategist with a good CPA, it's the best combination you can have because the CPA, their whole job is to sign their name on your tax return. We want that person signing their name on our tax return. We want that person to come back and say, hey, that's a little bit too aggressive. That's...
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, you can take the Augusta Rule, but you can't deduct $10,000 every time you rent your house to your business. You know, the adjusted money that you should take in the Augusta Rule is $2,500. We want a really good CPA, and the CPA is meant to, you know, fill in the boxes, check it off to say when we submit our our income statement to the IRS, it's gonna pass their guidelines. And if it doesn't pass their guidelines, if they do come back and knock on our door, You shouldn't be afraid of the IRS if they're going to come to an audit, if you've got the right structure and the right CPA in place, because all they're looking for is they're like, hey, you took this deduction. Let me prove it to me.
00:18:59
Speaker
Show me that you actually rented your house to your business. You them the documentation, you show them how it was filed, how you came to the deduction, and they let it go. And if they don't, they say, hey, yeah, you didn't do that right. So we're going to we're going to not allow that deduction. and And like in your example, then you're going to have to pay the taxes that you would have had to pay because that deduction wasn't allowed. But with the right strategy, the right structure, sure and then the right documentation behind it, you can justify i mean, nothing that we're doing is nefarious. It has to be, we're using the tax code as the playbook and the framework to take the deductions that we're taking. Yeah, and I was even surprised and when I got audited,
00:19:32
Speaker
I don't know if they're all this extreme, but she was asking me, she's like, hey, I see you wrote off this mill as an expense. Can you tell me what was how did it relate to business? What been business conversations were you having on this day at this time that you wrote off? I'm like, well, shu I have no idea. That was like six months ago. I can't even remember what I ate yesterday. What are you talking to me about six months ago? Yeah. So I'm like, man.
00:19:55
Speaker
So yeah I mean, they do some, at least this one I had, know she was picking, she was a she was drilling me a lot on a lot. And I think it could have been a lot worse. You know, I ended up having to pay money back and of course pay back what I got for the yeah COVID money I'd received. But But yeah, no, it's important. and So um yeah, after the tax strategy, so I know that's important. um I think you were talking a little bit about the wealth from there, you know, putting aside 10% or whatever. And so once you start putting aside that money, what's the next step from there? What's the taxes? And then what are you doing with that 10% that you're putting aside to invest? Great question. So i want to I want to put myself in a position where I get wealthier every single year.
00:20:35
Speaker
and I never go backwards. And I'm not gonna say this to brag, I'm just gonna say this, this is the result of the system that I've operated personally now for 16 years.
Safe Savings Growth with Vaults
00:20:43
Speaker
So for the last 16 years, I have never lost money. Now, that's only the result of the system that I use, because before that, I lost a lot of money. I was up and down, things worked, they didn't, I never knew how how to control it, that's the that's the dependency economy we talked about earlier.
00:20:59
Speaker
But step number one for me is I take all of my after tax savings and I put it in what I call a vault. Now this isn't a vault that you have in your house with a code and a combination, but what this vault is, it's say it's an account that you can put your money where all of the money that you put into it is is growing at a guaranteed rate of return backed up by companies who've paid and met their guarantees for 150 plus.
00:21:25
Speaker
not only are you getting a guaranteed return, you're getting a dividend. So you're you're actually part of a private company who distributes private profits to you in the form of a dividend. Again, over 150 year track record. So think back, I mean, none of us are gonna live for 150 years, but what if you'd been earning a consistent rate of return for 150 years straight? That's pretty powerful. So guaranteed return dividend, it's a contract where you can put your money where your money is 100% safe. It's a private contract, Taylor, between you, a private individual, and a private company.
00:21:58
Speaker
The next thing is, it's one of only three places you can put your money where your money is growing tax-free. All of the growth that you're getting, you don't have to report it to the IRS. They're never gonna come knocking on your door saying, hey, you didn't pay taxes on that dividend and on that guaranteed return.
00:22:14
Speaker
It's a private account that earns a tax-free rate of return, and here's the biggest advantage of it, okay? um All of the cash that you have in this account, because it's the guaranteed return, because it's consistent, you know, compounding every single year, your money's gonna compound for the rest of your life.
00:22:31
Speaker
But unlike other accounts where you just have to sit back and wait for 50 years for the thing to compound, you can actually use the value of this account, so if you have $100,000, $1 million, $5,000, it doesn't matter, you can use the value of this account as a private line of credit. And so what this allows you to do for the first time ever, the difference between the dependency economy and the ownership economy, the only way to become financially free in 10 years or less is we now have the opportunity to use leverage. My money has to be more productive, period.
00:23:04
Speaker
So if I could have my money growing and compounding and nothing's going to stop that, but I could leverage the value of that capital to accomplish a short-term goal, then this becomes step number one. I've put as i put everything, as much money as I can get into this account, I want my money in that account. And then I'm gonna leverage the value of that account to go buy a very specific type of asset. Now, before I tell you about the third part, the asset, let me tell you what this account is. Because man, when I learned about this, Taylor, was crazy. I got out of college.
00:23:34
Speaker
I was climbing the corporate ladder. you know I was doing everything that I thought was right. I was doing everything traditional. I was putting money in my 401k. I was getting a company sponsored match. you know I had a brokerage account. I was putting everything in the markets.
00:23:46
Speaker
And I'll never forget, you know in 2008, it was the first time I realized, A, I had no idea what I was doing, and B, I had no control over what I was doing. In 2008, I watched my net worth, which wasn't much, right? I was only about four years out of college, but I had over $100,000 net worth, and by the end of 2008, I had $28,000 in net worth.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I kept thinking to myself, dude, what? That's crazy, because I thought I did something wrong, but I was looking at people that were 20, 30 years ahead of me in my career, and I was looking at these people, and they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. they were There were people crying. They were never gonna be able to retire. And I realized, man, that's me. That's a window to my future. I got to figure this game out because I'll be 50 or 60 and I'll be crying when I lose money then. And I'm not going to trade my life for something I don't control. And so that was the first time I realized Wall Street doesn't work. And so I started looking outside of wall street I started looking at alternative investing.
00:24:41
Speaker
And after a couple of books that I read, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I read Creating Wealth. I read some really good books that helped get me going in the game of real estate, which I'll talk about in just a moment. But I'll never forget when I read a book by an author named Nelson Nash. He's now since passed away.
00:24:55
Speaker
But his book was called Becoming Your Own Bank. I was like, that sounds really weird. What the heck is that? And I read it, I opened that book up and he talked about this account that I just mentioned where you never lose money. It's overfunded whole life insurance. And man, honestly Taylor, when I looked at that, I'm like, dude, this is the exact opposite of everything I've been told.
00:25:17
Speaker
I mean, everyone tells me buy term and invest the difference. I've been doing that and my 401k just dropped like a rock. Here this guy is telling me you could put a bunch of money in these very uniquely designed life insurance policies. You could buy a policy that's not focused on death benefit, death benefit but focused on cash and building wealth. and your wealth could just compound tax-free and you could leverage it. You could essentially become your own bank. And I remember I was reading that and at the time I was going to night school, getting my master's degree in finance and I have the audacity one day to ask one of my professors about this concept and he's like, oh, that's hogwash. You need to max fund your 401k. I'm like, dude, I just lost all my money in my four hundred one k
00:25:56
Speaker
And I just realized at that point, people who see the world as as um in the traditional sense of finance, they're just gonna keep handing their money off to Wall Street, they're gonna cross their fingers, they're gonna hope it works out.
00:26:07
Speaker
But people who learn how to take control over their money, they need they need accounts, they need vehicles, they need tools where they can exert that control and use that control to do something with it. So that's step number one, is I'm gonna take all of my after-tax money, once I pay taxes on it once,
00:26:22
Speaker
put it into an overfunded whole life insurance policy, build up as much cash as I can, know that I'll never lose it. It'll always compound. It's tax-free, but I can leverage that cash to do some other things as well. Does that make sense?
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. That's no that's definitely interesting. the yeah that Like you said, that goes against... What a lot of we've been told is, you know, doing the Roth IRA 401k because yeah that's what's in most of these books and everything. So that's interesting. So the whole life, because I know I've got life insurance, is that the one that you can like basically take out loans to yourself and everything?
00:26:57
Speaker
Yep. Okay. I think I have that one. i Now it has to be built very, very specifically. So, and here's how I'll tell you how you know if you have that one or not. Most of the people who buy, who sell life insurance, guess how they get paid?
00:27:09
Speaker
They get paid by selling you life insurance. And their objective is to give you the most life insurance that they possibly can. If you're going to build one of these accounts, you do it the exact opposite. I want you to imagine going into an insurance agent and saying, okay, insurance agent, I want to pay you, not you, but the insurance company. i want to give the insurance company as much money as I can.
00:27:27
Speaker
but If I have $100,000 in my bank account right now and I can save $20,000 a year, I wanna put in $100,000 and I wanna save $20,000 a year. I wanna do as much as I possibly can in return for me putting all this money in, I want you to give me the least amount of death benefit necessary. Your insurance agent's probably gonna scratch your head and say, what the heck are you talking about, right? But that's how these accounts have to be structured. You wanna structure them to where the cost of the policy is life insurance. We only wanna get just enough life insurance to satisfy the IRS requirements to keep it qualified as life insurance. And what this means is in year one,
00:28:01
Speaker
When you put money into your policy, you should have anywhere on the low end to about 80% of what you put in immediately available in cash value to on the high end around 93
Innovative Wealth Growth Methods
00:28:11
Speaker
to 94%. So if I put in $100,000, I better see $95,000 in that account compounding, growing, and ready to be leveraged outside of my policy. That's how you know if you have the right type of policy that's focused on wealth, not insurance ah insurance agent commissions. Does that kind of answer that question? Yeah, yeah, i think so. And so your whole thing is basically forget about the 401k, forget about the Roth IRA stuff. It's just take this money. if you're going to do 10%, take it and put it all into that. is that is that right? 100%. And let me give you a different frame to look at this under. um Number one, you know the the objective of what we help people do is retire in 10 years or less. So what this means is wherever I put my money, i need to be able to take income from that account within 10 years. Yeah. If I put my money in a 401k or a Roth IRA, now, how old are you, Taylor, if you don't mind me asking? 32. 32. So 10 years from now, you're 42, right?
00:29:04
Speaker
Let's say under some stretch of the imagination, you put money into a 401k and you had enough money 10 years from now that you could theoretically start taking money out of that account to retire. Could you actually take money out of your account at age 42? Of the life insurance one?
00:29:19
Speaker
No, out of the four one game Oh, no, no, no. It doesn't have to sit for like 25 years or something before you can take it out. Isn't that crazy? You're not allowed to touch your own money. You can't take money out of a 401k until you're 59 and a half. You can't take money out of a Roth IRA until you're 59 and a half. And so those accounts were never designed to help you retire early or especially in 10 years or less.
00:29:41
Speaker
And the second thing to this, the second you put your money in those accounts, what do you now give up? You give up all control, right? Now your money's just associated with the markets, and I don't know about you, but Donald Trump, when he gets up and says something stupid, or war or who's the other guy, Joe Biden, or ah whatever. Like there's so many things that influence the stock market. The stock market is based on public opinion. I have no control over that. And will you end up with more money than you put in in the stock market? Yeah. but you'll never be free. The objective is, yeah, let's focus our efforts and focus our finances on something we control. That would be this vault, an overfunded whole life insurance policy. And here's where the game gets crazy, okay? If I can have my money growing and compounding and I can borrow against that policy, in essence, what I'm doing is I'm turning $1 that I traded my time, effort, and energy for into two working dollars. $1 will compound in the vault. I'm then gonna leverage the value of the vault and I'm gonna buy ah real estate. And there's lots of different ways to do real estate, but I'll just tell you, and we can go as deep on this as you want. I've done a lot of those different types of real estate. What I had to learn in the game of real estate is real estate, it requires for most people time, effort, and attention, right? If you're going to go out and do real estate, you've got to find property, you've got a rehab it, you've got to deal with tenants, you've got to deal with you know evictions. That's not financial freedom. That's a part-time job. And that's how I got into real estate is I had a part-time job in real estate and man, I hated it. So I I don't like dealing with tenants. I don't like fixing stuff. That's not what I, I thought I was getting into real estate to be free. And so I had to find a way to do real estate, but do it passively. I want to own the assets, but I want someone else to do the majority of the work. And so the way I do real estate now, I do what's called turnkey real estate. I buy assets that are already rehabbed, they're already renovated, they're in in a great area, which means I can live in California, but own assets in Tennessee or Florida or Indianapolis, where the numbers make a little bit more sense. I want someone else to manage the property, and then I want to own the property. And I'm gonna be the CEO, and I'm gonna manage that property to outcomes that are specific to my game plan.
00:31:42
Speaker
This allowed me to go from being stuck with a part-time job in real estate to scaling well past 50 properties, only spending about three to five hours a month managing a system. And here's the beautiful part about real estate, okay?
00:31:53
Speaker
I want you to consider this. The second I decide to put my money in real estates, I now get to turn the dollar that I leveraged from my vault, I get to turn it into five working dollars. Here's why. All I have to do is put a 20% down payment on a piece of property and the bank will bring the other $4 or the other 80% to the table for me to own and control that property. Which means I trade my time for $1. I work really hard knocking doors or you know, running a business or, you know, working in a hospital, or whatever my, you know, my career or my profession is. I'm going to take that dollar. I'm going to put it in a vault while I'll never lose it. I'm then going leverage that vault going buy turnkey real estate that's done passively. And just in that one simple process, I've turned $1 into five working dollars. I take the profits from the real estate. I repay that that vault line of credit that I took out and I just start building a system. I take the profits from that. I pay back the line of credit and I buy the next assets. The next asset that I buy, I have two assets now generating a stream of income. I can pay back the line of credit twice as fast. I then do it again a third time, a fourth time, a fifth time, a sixth time, a seventh time. Before I know it, I have a snowball that's working harder than I can work myself to create wealth. That's how the system works to retire in 10 years or less.
00:33:02
Speaker
That's that's crazy. I mean, yeah, it sounds I mean, it sounds pretty, pretty simple. It's a lot for the first time, but this sounds kind of simple at the same time. It's just take the 10%, put it in the life and life insurance stuff, take it out, invest in properties. so that's pretty much the whole system. Just three steps, essentially.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yep, lower taxes, then eliminate taxes, then leverage your vaults, then buy an asset, put the profits back in the vaults, repeat the process. Do you have any examples? I know i know where' um you're short on time here. You got some other podcasts coming up, but before we wrap up, do you have any, I don't know, like coaching stories of people that have done this and now they've got this whole machine running and I don't know how much they make in pass fleet per month.
00:33:43
Speaker
What's like a, don't know, what's like a cool success story that you've seen of people that have gone through your system? Yeah, thousands, of man, thousands. And um first and foremost, the success story is me. I didn't start this because um because I wanted to teach other people this. you know i got out of college. um I took my first professional job.
00:34:03
Speaker
And you know I was making decent money, but not great money. And before I knew it, I was stuck in a cubicle. I was reporting to my boss, Rob. I didn't like Rob. i was working more hours, i was dealing with more stress, and I realized, man, I don't want this. i I don't want this to be my life. And I felt trapped in that life. I felt completely trapped. I had to work, I had to provide.
00:34:23
Speaker
have a wife now, I have a kid, another kid on the way. i felt trapped. And I remember I set a goal very early on in my life to say I'm gonna retire early. That was my goal. I didn't know what that meant, but I started working really hard. I started saving a lot of money. I started max funding my 401k. I opened up a brokerage account. was doing everything I could following the traditional system.
00:34:43
Speaker
2008, like I told you, my 401Ks, my IRA, my brokerage account, everything dropped. i ended up with less than, i had just over $100,000 and i ended up with less than 28. And what I realized was without any control, i can't plan on retiring early. I can't impact it, I'm just along for a ride.
00:34:59
Speaker
And so this opened up the doorway to say, if I really do want to learn how to retire early, I've gotta raise my financial intelligence. The first book that I read was Robert Kiyosaki. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. And when I read that book, it was like a confirmation that everything that I had been feeling about my financial plan, he totally gave me the words for it. I couldn't save my way to financial freedom. I didn't know how the game of money was working. Net worth wasn't a scoreboard, it was cash flow. Like everything in that book confirmed that if I wanted to do so something extraordinary, I had to do the opposites. Then I read a couple of other books, you know, the Infinite a Banking book, the, you know, a book by Robert Allen about how to buy real
Stories of Financial Success: Real Client Examples
00:35:34
Speaker
estate. But before I knew it, I was running this little system and it started working it started generating momentum and it started compounding on it on itself. And I'll never forget, man, four years after running this system, you know, my boss, Rob, walked into my office one day and, you know, Rob never shows up unless, you know, there's something wrong. And this is four years after 2008 and companies are still kind of tightening their belts after this. And so I thought I was gonna get fired. I thought I was gonna get let go, right? And he came in and he sat me down and he told me he'd fired two other managers and I was about to take over their territory. And I thought to myself, that's the last thing I wanna do is go take over three more states. And he was sitting there telling me about this new promotion, this new opportunity. And Taylor, in the back of my head, it was crazy. i was adding up my numbers. And i'm like, that house pays for my car. These houses pay for my mortgage. Those houses put food on the table. And over and over and over again, in the back of my head, I'm adding up my numbers. And I realized I wasn't financially free in the sense that I could go fly to Europe anytime I wanted, but I could cover my basic expenses. And I remember when Rob said, Ryan, are you ready to take this promotion? I kind of looked up and I snapped out of it i said, I quit.
00:36:33
Speaker
I quit. And like, dude, the second I said that, man, I'll be honest with you, I wanted to reach into the air, grab those words and stuff them back in my mouth. I didn't mean to quit. yeah But like, as soon as I did that, I felt like there was a weight off my shoulders. Like for the first time in and five years out of college, I felt free. And, you know, I walked away from that job. I didn't know what I was walking away to, but most people thought I was crazy, right? But there were a few people that said,
00:36:55
Speaker
how did you do it and can you show me too? And so I started helping people just one off and find out a way to do it. actually This is how I did it. This, maybe you could do the same. This is what I would do in that situation. And they started getting results and they started getting results. And then they'd send their friends and their were friends would start getting results. And before I knew it, I had a company on my hands. We've now been doing this 12 years. We've helped over 3000 people.
00:37:14
Speaker
We just published a book called Retire in 10 Years or Less. going to send you a copy, Taylor. And here's the cool thing. It was forwarded and co-authored by my mentors, Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen. These are the guys who helped me get that Once they saw what we were doing, they're like, holy cow, yeah, we're gonna come help you expand this message. But we've helped people in their 20s, we've helped people in their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their take control over their money, get into the ah into the ownership economy, and create six figures or more of the of tax-free income for life using this system. And you know I'll give you just the most recent example, okay? There are two people from Florida. They've been running this system for about six years, and um we just i just had a game plan refresh, an update with them.
00:37:57
Speaker
And they they run a dental office and they're just exhausted. She's 52, he's 51. And over the last six years, they've shifted everything into this system, everything, right? They went from 401ks, IRAs, traditional stuff to everything's in life insurance, everything's in real estate. And they they've been kind of, we you know, we we help people run and implement these game plans.
00:38:18
Speaker
And so they've been kind of watching their game plan and they're like, I think... I think we have enough to retire. Like, Ryan, can you sit down and help me do it? And so like I sat down and I was kind of helping them organize their assets a little bit and see what it's gonna produce. And not only do they have enough money to retire, because their original goal was they wanted about $12,000 a month.
00:38:37
Speaker
um with a couple of tweaks of their system, I showed them how to create $180,000 of tax-free income with the exact system that they had and they could retire immediately. And you know they're young, they're young. They're 50, I mean, 52, 51. They've been running the game for six years.
00:38:54
Speaker
And um I remember I told them, I'm like, guys, you're 100% financial free. And not only that, you're gonna get $50,000 more of income than you thought possible just with these simple moves. And they I'll never forget their face. They were just sitting there like,
00:39:09
Speaker
You know, their mouth was open and I'm like, did that resonate with you? They're like, I can't believe it. Like, are you serious? we were We're free. I'm like, yeah, you're free. You got it, man. It was so funny. and They were just like, they were awestruck. So yeah, I mean, people, whether they're young, whether they're old, you know i've been helping my brother. You guys know Aaron. I've been helping Aaron for years now and he's completely financially free too. So um yeah, man, we have so many people that we've helped to use this system.
00:39:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. how um Do you have an estimate of how many people you've helped retire to this point? Yeah, we do. We actually know exactly because we help people do those vaults. And so we have these contracts, you know, that that we help them use these contracts every single year. So we know exactly how many. We're we're just over 3,800 people now that we've helped over those 12 years. Wow, that's incredible. That's awesome, man. Well, yeah, I love it. And congrats on your success. And um that's incredible that, you know, just abundance mindset that you do it for yourself and then now helping other people do it. So, that so cool.
00:40:11
Speaker
um But yeah, before we wrap up here, I know, I know you got another few podcasts today, Ryan, but um just people want to get your book and then possibly work with you getting, learn more about what
Resources & Upcoming Events
00:40:22
Speaker
you're doing. What's the best way to get in touch with you?
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, man, i appreciate that. um you know i think the book is the best thing I could possibly give someone. it is I wrote it like a playbook, it's a manual. It'll show you exactly how the dependency economy works. It'll show you exactly how the ownership economy works. It'll show you why you feel stuck with money and how to get yourself unstuck. and it'll help open you up to exactly how to create tax-free income for the rest of your life. It's a playbook. So if you want that book, go to retirein10years.com. Retire in 10, the number, years.com. If you want to do a little bit more research on me, go to Wealth Outside Wall Street. Go to my YouTube channel, Wealth Outside Wall Street. um I'm very transparent. I share everything. um And you know once you get the book, I actually recorded with Robert Kiyosaki and Robert Allen. It's a 15 hour course. I mean, if you want like if you want to raise your financial intelligence and take and take control of money, it's a free it's free with the book.
00:41:19
Speaker
um There's audio book, there's written book, however you want to do it. But man, if you get that book and you want a game plan, that will show you exactly how to build a game plan and start executing this to build cash flow that equals freedom. so Taylor, I'm super passionate about what I do. And my my primary objective is to empower people with money so they can use money as a tool to build and live a life that matters, a purpose-driven life.
00:41:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's so cool. So yeah, um hopefully all our listeners today can go grab a a copy of the book. Check out more what Ryan's got going on. I know you're on on Instagram and everything. And last thing, Ryan, i know you got an event coming up in the St. George, Utah, I think end of April, if I remember right. Do you want to tell people about about that real quick before we wrap up here?
00:42:03
Speaker
I tell you what, man, um if you want the greatest form of leverage of all, get in the room with people who have done what you want to do We've got 300 people coming together at the pristine location called Black Desert Golf Resort in St. George, Utah.
00:42:17
Speaker
And here's just a little secret about this. Our community, our investors, those 3,000 people, they own that resort. Those are the type of assets that we help people acquire that deliver cash flow. The PGA Tournament has been hosted there. It's a brand new resort. It's it's super pretty.
00:42:32
Speaker
Two-day event, we're going to help you build a game plan. You get to meet with Robert Kiyosaki's personal real estate investor, Ken McElroy. You'll just get to be with the people that are actually doing it.
00:42:43
Speaker
So you can see how to do it as well. And so that's April 30th, May 1st, May 2nd. It's called Rise Up Live. And, you know, like if you go to the if you go to the YouTube channel, the book, anything like that, you'll get all the information on how the event goes. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on and being so abundant minded and sharing with our audience here today.
00:43:00
Speaker
So important to have a game plan for what's going on with the money and not just go spend it on Rolexes and all the stuff we can. We can drop all the money on So um thank you again so much, Ryan. And hopefully we can do a follow-up episode here in the future. But I appreciate you coming on today, brother.
00:43:17
Speaker
Likewise, Taylor, appreciate you having me today. Thank you for ah for the opportunity to talk to your audience. I love your audience. I mean, everyone that's listening to this audience, you're driven, you're goal-oriented, you're doing the probably the hardest work that you can do. What if your life over the next 10 years, what if you can convert you know income from doors into income by owning doors? Consider that, be financially free, work hard, grind hard, but live an abundant life. And that's that's that was fun to talk to you guys about today. 100%. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ryan. We'll talk to you soon. So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego. And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
00:43:58
Speaker
But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage. Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout. But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
00:44:21
Speaker
It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show. you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:44:36
Speaker
So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:44:49
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. Hey, solopreneurs, quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
00:45:03
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:46:01
Speaker
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