Planet Amazon Podcast

Empowering Amazon Sellers Through Financial Freedom Strategies

• Adam Shaffer

Share episode

Unlock financial freedom with our latest episode featuring financial guru and best-selling author, Mark Willis. You won't want to miss Mark's fascinating transition from navigating the economic turbulence of 2008 to pioneering new financial strategies tailored for e-commerce entrepreneurs. From managing cash flow to inventory funding, Mark introduces the empowering concept of "bank on yourself," a method that liberates Amazon sellers from the limitations of traditional banking.

Listeners are in for a treat as we break down the differences between term life insurance and whole life insurance, likening it to the choice between renting and owning a home. Mark delves into how whole life insurance can serve as a self-controlled line of credit, offering both flexibility and security. This episode is packed with actionable insights that promise to help you maximize your financial benefits, featuring an inspiring story of a hot sauce entrepreneur who spiced up his profit margins using these innovative strategies.

As a new season approaches, discover how to become an Amazon Legend by leveraging unique financial tools that can transform your business. Mark shares highlights from his compelling book, "How to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire Your Banker," offering listeners the chance to gain control over their financial destinies. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to build a robust financial foundation and outpace the competition in the dynamic Amazon marketplace.

Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here

The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.

To watch all Planet Amazon Podcast episodes, visit our YouTube channel.
To learn more about Phelps United, visit our website.

Announcement:

Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam Shaffer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace.

Adam Shaffer:

Hello, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to Planet Amazon, where we talk about all things Amazon. Today on Planet Amazon, we're thrilled to welcome Mark Willis. He's a seasoned financial expert and three-time best-selling author with a unique approach to helping entrepreneurs secure financial freedom. Mark is the CEO of Lake Growth Financial Services and co-host of Not your Average Financial podcast, with a mission to empower Amazon sellers and other entrepreneurs to gain greater control over their finances. Mark advocates for strategies like bank on yourself to help businesses thrive without relying on traditional banks. He's also the co-author of the book how to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire your Banker. I need to read that one. Today, we're going to dive into his insights on alternative financing solutions, helping Amazon sellers manage cash flow, inventory funding and more.

Adam Shaffer:

Welcome to the show, mark Willis. Thanks, adam. Thanks for having me on. Oh, I'm excited. This is a great topic. In fact, we haven't really talked about this in the past on all our podcasts, but this is probably one of the most important topics to talk about funding your business and being able to fund your business. If you're selling on Amazon and you're buying and selling inventory and you're managing people and hiring people, the costs can grow rapidly and also tying up your cash in inventory is a strategy all amongst itself, and now, with interest rates so high, it's really hard to finance this stuff and not lose all the margin you're making just paying interest. So with that, first of all, we want to know a little bit more about you. Tell us about who you are, what you do in your Amazon and financial planning journey.

Mark Willis:

Absolutely, and thanks again for having me on. I was just hearing, as you were kind of laying up the ball there, a meeting I had yesterday with a business owner in the e-commerce space. She said, mark, as soon as I pay off the debt, I have to go buy more inventory. That gets me back into debt. And then I sell that inventory and I pay off the debt, only to fall back down that staircase again. So over and over and over again, there's this sick cycle where the only person making profit off the business is the banker, but the only person taking the risk in the business is you, the entrepreneur, unfortunately. So, as a certified financial planner, I've had the great privilege of working with people, especially in the e-commerce space, who are mostly interested in cash flow, financial freedom. They want agency and control in their life and they stumble into the business and whether they are just getting started or they're hitting seven or eight figures or more, you know it still can be a upward slog to get past the gatekeepers of true wealth, which are the bankers.

Adam Shaffer:

I mean so true, and you know we have a business and we're in the agency business, but we're also buying and selling inventory and tying up that cash with inventory and growing. If you want to grow, you got to buy more. So it's not just I buy it, I pay off the debt and I buy more. You got to buy even more if you're going to grow. So it's hard and and a bunch of the sellers on Amazon are small, you know, small mom and pop businesses or small medium businesses, and it's hard to fund all this. So people wind up plateauing out. But you have, like this secret sauce, this thing you call bank on yourself. Could you explain what that means? Because I don't know what it means? I'd love to know more.

Mark Willis:

Well, get ready for the deep dive. Get ready for grabbing the red pill. Whatever metaphor you want to use here, I want love to know more, sure. Well, get ready for the deep dive, get ready for grabbing the red pill whatever metaphor you want to use here, I want the red pill.

Adam Shaffer:

Give me the red pill man.

Mark Willis:

Yes, sir, yeah, this is not where I thought I'd see my business, all right. So when I got into financial planning, it was 2009 and 10, just the years right out and actually 2008,. I got started with a tax provider, tax CPA firm, and I was helping them with helping get their paperwork ready for those who had fallen way behind on their taxes. So my job was to kind of just prepare the paperwork for the CPA and I was getting the paperwork ready. But hearing the phone calls was just, it was heartbreaking. One these folks sometimes were in debt up to their eyeballs to the IRS, and that's not a group, that's a bank with a gun, basically. So you want to watch out for that. But second, those that weren't in debt with the IRS had plenty of assets in the stock market. And what do you remember about the stock market and the real estate market and the economy in 2008, 9, 10, and beyond? 2008 was not a good time, man, not a good time. So these phone calls I did not envy my CPA that I worked for because she was great at what she did, but she was making, unfortunately, these phone calls that were just heartbreaking. I'm sorry, mr 63-year-old client, but I just lost you a third of your life savings, or I lost you half your life savings or whatever it is. So that was kind of the start. I got in finance and I almost left the industry. As just a result, I was not interested in making those phone calls.

Mark Willis:

Fast forward a bit and I had my own student loan debt problem to pay off. It was student loan debt, not the IRS, thank God, but the student loan debt exceeded $100,000. And again, no jobs, really. Between my wife and I we had several part-time jobs and such, but it was just a hard push to pay off that debt and all we had ever been taught was the snowball method of being debt-free. Snowball method and that's made popular by some radio hosts and YouTube channels and such like Dave Ramsey where essentially you line up all your debts and then you start tackling all of them one at a time, one after the other, after the other, after the other.

Mark Willis:

And that was sort of what I guess was going to do until someone a mentor, a professor and college professor of mine came and visited us and looked at me square in the eyes at him, and said, mark, is it possible that Dave Ramsey could be wrong about something and my little mind exploded at that point. That was the red pill, if you will. You know, and I chose to listen to the rest of that conversation. I mean, what are you saying? Dave Ramsey doesn't have a corner on truth, you know. That was sort of what my closed mind was saying at that point. Well, what did he tell you? Well, he said well, is there something better than being debt-free? Which was all that I could focus on at that point. And for the rest of the conversation he explained bank on yourself to me. Now, he's not a financial professional, he's a college professor, but a great friend of mine, and I knew he had my best interest at heart. So while I was very skeptical, I kept pushing through. So let me explain, to answer your question now.

Mark Willis:

What is Bank On Yourself? Well, it's a little known variation of a financial asset that's existed for now several hundred years and in its entirety of existence it's grown in a guaranteed fashion every single year, no matter what the stock market's done, no matter what the real estate market has done. So every year it gets bigger and bigger and better results. It's, of all things, cash value, dividend paying, whole life insurance, life insurance Now, again, I didn't think that this was a part of the financial universe that deserved any of my attention. All of my focus as I became a CFP was mostly from my friend and from my exposure to financial infotainers. I had to get a little more grease under my wheels to figure out if this thing was real or not. So I'll pause there for a second. Any feedback thought? No, no, I'm really curious.

Adam Shaffer:

You're saying life insurance is something that increases in value every year, no matter how the market's doing or not. But is it? Well, tell us the story, because I'm going to say what kind of insurance? Because I have life insurance and all I know is, after X amount of years, they're going to kick me out and charge me a lot more for my next round, because I'm too old.

Mark Willis:

That's right. Yeah, you know, when I first heard the concept, I'm like well, how do you build up wealth in an insurance contract? It was sort of like saying saving money in your fire insurance or your auto insurance. It just didn't make sense, it didn't compute. And you're right.

Mark Willis:

Most life insurance sold today is term life insurance. Term means it's temporary. Think of it almost like renting an apartment. You agree to a certain amount of time 10 years or 20 years and then the landlord can kick you out or they can jack up the rates on you, right? If you're not healthy enough, they won't even renew it and you just kick you out and there's no equity being built up while you're renting that apartment. The same is true with term insurance. You're building no wealth or savings in the contract and the landlord, the insurance company, can kick you out or raise the rent on you when the time is up. Whole life insurance actually is altogether different. It's a lot more like owning a house and this will all come back to e-commerce here in just a minute. So I promise this has a lot to do with your e-commerce business.

Adam Shaffer:

I know I only have seven more years to live before I'm going to lose my insurance, so I'm curious. Keep on going.

Mark Willis:

Okay. So in this case, a whole life contract and I'm going to talk about it in terms of bank on yourself designed whole life, because there's a lot of poorly designed whole life out there, but there's some good ones out there too. And here it is in four hopefully simple sentences. Number one the cash value, which is the stuff you can use while you're still alive. There is a death benefit, but the cash value of your policy will increase in value, guaranteed, every single year, and there's really nothing we can do to stop it. There's no market that can take it away from you. So that's the first thing. It's guaranteed to grow.

Mark Willis:

Second, this is a liquid bucket of money that you have access to for any purpose. It could be for your business needs, it could be for your personal needs. You could send your child to college with it, you could fix up your kitchen or you could buy a bunch of inventory with your cash value. It's liquid cash and there's no penalties, restrictions or taxes to get the money out. That's a big deal. Third, it is life insurance, so we're solving for that family need there too. Replacing your income, replacing your business's income. If you die, I'm guessing your business would not have a happy day. So we need to replace your ability to generate income for the business. So that's great for your business or for your family as you need it. So that's a solve right there. And then the last sentence here is you can use the policy like a bank. It's almost like a line of credit you set up for yourself that never gets taken away from you self. That never gets taken away from you. So you can borrow against the cash in your policy and, interestingly, you are in control, complete control of the repayment plan to that policy. So you could borrow 40 grand, let's say, or a hundred grand, let's say, or 500 grand.

Mark Willis:

A gentleman just recently from my one of my clients, just borrowed $500,000. No questions asked except how much do you want? Where do you want us to send it? And he used it for his case to buy some real estate. Now it could be just as easily used for your Amazon business, and a lot of our clients use it for that.

Mark Willis:

You see how this allows him then to have control over repaying that loan. This allows him then to have control over repaying that loan. In fact, another client of ours just used it for his Q4. We're recording this in the middle of Q4 here. So he pulled a bunch of money from his policy as a loan bought the inventory he needs for his e-commerce business in Q4 on Amazon. He sells a lot of really great stuff and because he has no pressure to repay that loan, he can sell it at the higher price. He's not under the gun of the credit card or the Amazon payables or Amazon, the lending companies that charge loan shark rates. He's going to have a much higher margin than the gal or the guy that is doing the financing the old fashioned way.

Adam Shaffer:

When you repay the loan that you take from your whole life insurance, is there interest?

Mark Willis:

There is an interest that's charged on your policy when you borrow yes.

Mark Willis:

So is that a good deal? Let's do the math on that really quick. Generally speaking, it's way below market rates that you might find out there on a home equity line of credit, or certainly less than a credit card. Over six months to one year time span, your APR might be 2%, roughly speaking, depends on which company it's with, of course, but that's typical. Now some people say well, mark, why should I pay interest on my own money? Why wouldn't I just pay cash for the inventory? And here's where things get really interesting. So, adam, when you access the cash in your savings account let's say you had 50,000 bucks in your savings account and you withdraw that money to go buy inventory how much interest are you earning in the bank?

Adam Shaffer:

It's gone. Nothing it's gone.

Mark Willis:

Yeah, yeah. Of course, when you access the policy vis-a-vis the policy loan, when you grab 50 grand from your policy as a loan, the cash value in your policy will continue to grow and earn interest as if you had not touched a dime of the money.

Adam Shaffer:

So you're earning on the balance of the policy.

Mark Willis:

Correct. Yeah, if you had 50 grand in there, borrow out 50, it's still earning on the full 50, like you had not touched the money, and your money's in your inventory being sold online. So this is where your money can do two things at once. So I'm an insurance.

Adam Shaffer:

idiot, then, because why am I buying term? I pay whatever month I pay. I hate it, but I do it and I know it's going to eventually end and I'm going to get jacked up because I'm going to be a lot older. How do you buy whole life insurance? Is it the same broker that you go to? Is it the same companies?

Mark Willis:

And what's the cost? That's actually one of the biggest risks of this whole thing. So you're exactly right. You're doing what we're all told to do. I mean, I bought my term insurance just like a good little soldier was supposed to do. I listened to every word Dave Ramsey would say from his radio show. Nothing against him, he's just trying his best. His greatest sponsor is a term life insurance company. So go figure, 98% of term insurance never pays a claim. So that's a very expensive product right there, when you know that only 2% of your customers are ever going to reap a benefit. The rest are just free income to the insurance companies.

Mark Willis:

The process is the same. You have a meeting with a financial professional, an insurance agent. You go through a medical exam. You get your policy. That's typical how you get a whole life policy as well. Here's where the risk is. Most insurance agents have no idea how to design these things properly. In fact, I looked it up a while back there were roughly 400,000 life insurance agents in the United States. 400,000. That's about one for every 800 Americans or so. If there were 400,000 heart surgeons, would you feel comfortable going to just any of them?

Adam Shaffer:

No, but I'd probably get an appointment. It takes forever to get an appointment, but no, I get you, man, I get it.

Mark Willis:

So you want to make sure whoever you work with was certified and authorized to do these things properly. It's kind of like I'm about to take a flight here pretty soon, next week. I want to make sure my plane was engineered properly. I want to make sure the pilots know how to run that machine properly. All I care about is getting on my seat, finding my seat, you know, and just chilling out for a few hours while I fly safely to my destination.

Mark Willis:

However, somebody had to do a lot of thinking to design the thing properly and has to keep an eye on things to get me from point A to point B. It's kind of like that with bank on yourself. If it's not a bank on yourself, professional, who's running the show, who's building that thing for you, the policy could lose a lot of ground in terms of growth. You could actually lose the cash value. It could become a taxable endowment. You could pay a lot of fees or even see the policy lapse if you don't see this thing through from start to finish with someone who's been authorized to design this thing properly.

Adam Shaffer:

So there are certified bank on yourself, agents or financial professionals.

Mark Willis:

Yeah, that's right. It's the only authorization and certification program in this little niche in the industry. So I'm a certified financial planner. That took me three years to get that. It took me another three years to really become a certified bank on yourself professional with similar, you know, focus and acumen and ability to do it. I'm not tooting my own horn, but that's the idea. You want to work with someone who's been able to do go through those rigors and is someone else's kind of looking over their shoulder to make sure they're designing the thing right for you. That's the biggest risk in this whole project.

Adam Shaffer:

And we talked about term.

Mark Willis:

There's a term it ends. Does the whole life end, or it doesn't? It's right in the name.

Adam Shaffer:

It's for your whole life, the whole life.

Mark Willis:

Yeah, so it's meant to go for your entire life, and here's what's kind of cool about that you don't have to pay for it for the rest of your life. We have folks that fund it for just a couple of years, one year, even possibly five, 10 years. Whenever you're done funding it, it's a conversation with your advisor and then a simple sheet of paper to the insurance company that says please pay up my policy. Your cash values still grows guaranteed for the rest of your life. And for a lot of our clients they begin to take spoonfuls of that money out as a retirement income stream. Now I just met with a couple yesterday and they're able to pull $101,000 a year income tax-free out of their life insurance from age 65 to age 95. That's a six-figure tax-free stream of income out of something as boring and as misunderstood as whole life insurance, on something as boring and as misunderstood as whole life insurance. You know, I don't know too many 401ks that can do that.

Adam Shaffer:

What are you paying in? Like I guess you know I want a million dollar policy. What do you have to pay?

Mark Willis:

It depends on your age and your health and actually the way you ask that question is focused. It's a great question and I'd have to run a calculator to find out for sure. Adam, for each person your age is going to be different. But that's actually the other side of the seesaw. The death benefit at a million bucks, that's fine, that's going to be. But I would more importantly ask how much do you feel comfortable saving without it being a burden, and where can we reposition your existing savings or brokerage accounts or other existing assets? Could we pour those dollars in?

Mark Willis:

And this is the important part how can I squeeze down the size of your death benefit to be as small as possible? Rather than giving you an expensive $1 million death benefit, could we find a way to bring your death benefit down to 400 grand or something, so that you have that much more cash value? Eight to 40 times is typical. Eight to 40 times more cash. To design the policies this way. If we shrink your death benefit down, it's like a seesaw. Either we're going to have a small death benefit, big cash value, or the old fashioned way is to have a big death benefit and almost no cash value at all. Remember, for those listening and just learning the cash value. It's the juice, it's the stuff you're able to enjoy and spend and use like a bank while you're alive, which is, in my opinion, the most fun time to spend money is while.

Adam Shaffer:

I'm alive. It's harder when you're dead, sure, but are you paying this thing monthly?

Mark Willis:

Great question. You may pay monthly. You may pay monthly, you may pay annually, you can pay once a year, whenever you're ready, and, as I mentioned earlier, you might even just have a large lump sum to just drop that in and that's it. And then that's it, yep.

Adam Shaffer:

Okay, yep, so now, if I'm an Amazon seller, I'm a small business. Walk me through it. So the bank on yourself. So this is obviously for anybody in business or for anybody anywhere, but I'm an Amazon seller. I need to fund inventory, I need to fund payroll, I need to grow my business. So walk me through the steps. Hey, mark, I'm an Amazon seller. I need some money. I'm going to the bank. It's not that easy to get the interest rate's really high. What do I do? Tell me about this bank on yourself.

Mark Willis:

Yeah Well, first thing we do is just learn more about what the individual is trying to do and where they're at today financially. When I meet with most folks, we'll have a one-on-one advisory consultation before we jump to bank on yourself or any other conclusions. I just want to hear what they're trying to do. Sometimes bank on yourself is great, sometimes it's not. We are a full financial firm, so we'll look at that soup to nuts following the CFP process first.

Mark Willis:

Oftentimes people are sitting on 401k money, a brokerage account. Their brother got them into crypto, they got a couple of extra, whatever savings accounts. So first and foremost, we say, all right, is the money you have doing what you want it to do? And most of the time they say no or I don't know. And so we really have a conversation around what do you want your money doing for you?

Mark Willis:

A 401k, just for sake of example, is not liquid. You can't access it until you're 60, 59 and a half. It's not guaranteed. There are no guarantees on a 401k. The only guarantee is that the government's going to get theirs and that the advisor who is managing that 401k is going to get his or hers their fee. That is. So the 401k, I think fails the test of any entrepreneur just right there. So the 401k, I think, fails the test of any entrepreneur just right there. Plus, there's no ability to use the money like a bank right, and banks are notoriously the most profitable businesses in town. So back to your question.

Mark Willis:

Once we've had that initial conversation and it's determined, yeah, bank on yourself would be great for this situation, then we put some numbers together and once I've shown the numbers again, maybe it's 500 bucks a month or maybe it's 500 grand a year, and both of those are policies that we've done for clients in the last six months. You can design policies at any size, really to spec. You want them custom designed, and then we go through an application process. That application process is really simple, it's free. You go through an application process. That application process is really simple, it's free. You go through a medical exam.

Mark Willis:

They make sure that it's a good fit for you and also the insurance company. The insurance company needs to feel good about bringing you on board as one of their liabilities. You might see it that way. Once they've said yes to you, then you can start your policy. And, just briefly, once you start the policy, you fund it and usually within about two weeks, you have liquid, accessible cash value. You can log into online and see it, you can request a loan from it and, literally again, it probably takes you two to four minutes to click on this button, click on that button and have that money. Begin the process of coming back to your bank account, and that process hitting your bank account might only be three to five business days. So usually folks see this as a souped-up, supercharged savings account with a death benefit to boot.

Adam Shaffer:

And so I would fund it. To say, I funded a $400,000 policy, but I funded it initially with $50,000, or say $100,000. The $100,000 would be available to me, or more.

Mark Willis:

Great question, you know again, depending on age, and health and and do you plan to ever add more to it? Ever again?

Adam Shaffer:

Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to pay, but I started it with a hundred.

Mark Willis:

Sure, then you might have some. You'll have less than a hundred thousand because you bought that $400,000 policy, but if we designed it right, you might have somewhere between 60% and 95% of your cash value liquid right away.

Adam Shaffer:

And if I want to buy inventory with it, is it hard to get the money out?

Mark Willis:

No, literally you can go online and again within a minute or two be clicking some buttons, say hey, yes, I want this money you can wire money from the account like a bank account Exactly, it's direct deposit right into your bank account.

Mark Willis:

You can buy your money from the account like a bank account Exactly, it's direct deposit right into your bank account. It's not as liquid as a savings account, though I don't treat this like a debit. You don't get a debit card with it. You can't use it at Home Depot to swipe for your lumber.

Adam Shaffer:

It's about three to five business days to get the money direct deposited into your bank account. So the benefits of this compared to me getting a bank line. Well, first of all, it's my own money, so if you don't have any money to put in, how do you do it?

Mark Willis:

That's right, you can't you really have to be thinking about this as your own money. So start where you can. A lot of folks start with hey, Mark, I can't replace my inventory purchase, I can't replace my typical line of credit that I use for inventory this Christmas season. But I'm going to start my policy now at whatever 400 bucks a month, or a thousand bucks a month or whatever they can afford this year. And they feather the clutch, to use an old car metaphor.

Mark Willis:

Right, you can kind of slowly move your way into this. So over time you're no longer feeding off of the trough of the banks which is notoriously ready to give you money when you don't need it and then take away that line of credit just when you need it the most. So, slowly and surely, move away from that banking system. Sometimes it's overnight. If you got some money in a savings account, we can get it done right away, meaning instantly. Or sometimes it takes a few years, but either way, it took my wife and I four years to pay off our student loans, but we were so glad to do it. Rather than paying it off the old-fashioned way, we used our policy borrowed against our cash value, cleared our debts one at a time bought back our debt from the bankers and Sally Mae and all those crooks and we now paid ourselves back to get those loans paid off to ourselves.

Adam Shaffer:

So where's the snag when?

Mark Willis:

can you go wrong? Well, again, if you're on the wrong airplane or if your pilot is a clown, that's going to be a problem. That's the biggest risk.

Adam Shaffer:

But outside of the inexperienced folks, they're dealing with a real, certified professional. What could go wrong?

Mark Willis:

Yeah, if you fully funded your policy and you're being an honest banker with yourself, it's very hard to wreck this car. If you don't fully fund your policy, meaning if you're just avoiding our calls and you're not fully funding your policy, if you're running your gas on empty all the time, and if you're pulling money out of the policy as a loan and you don't repay yourself, if you're stealing from your own bank, that will ultimately lapse the policy. Now what does that mean? It just means the death benefit is gone and your loan is also gone is gone and your loan is also gone. So no loan to have to repay. Right, you could face some tax consequences. If there are gains, we try to suppress that on purpose in the first few years to get you up and running. Now one more thing, and then I'll hush and get your thoughts.

Mark Willis:

Let's say that you have a terrible year in business. Everything's just lights out man, personal emergencies, business emergencies. Let's say you've been honest with yourself and you paid back your loans. Let's say you've got $75,000 of cash value at this point, for example, and let's say you could not pay your premium. Let's say the premium was 10 grand a year, for example, and you had 75 grand of cash value and you had no inflows. You had no income at all. Adam, where could we possibly pull some money? $75,000 cash value. We need 10 grand to pay the premium and maybe another 30 grand to cover our groceries for the year or whatever. Couldn't we pull from the policy to cover our expenses, even the premium?

Adam Shaffer:

You bet, so you could pay the premium by borrowing. To pay the premium you can? Oh, okay.

Mark Willis:

I didn't get that, okay yeah, which isn't that cool because, while it's not something you want to make a habit of doing, when you do this, your policy remember is still earning interest and growing as if you had not touched the money. So, when you pay yourself back and pay the loan off, your policy has been growing as if you hadn't skipped a beat toward your retirement future.

Adam Shaffer:

That's amazing. So you could borrow to pay the next payment. That's amazing.

Mark Willis:

Yeah, yeah. So how can we mess this up Again the advisor, if he or she doesn't know what he's doing, building it incorrectly or with the wrong insurance company? I've met too many people who said, oh yeah, my advisor said he could do this for me, no problem, and then I get a statement of what they've gotten. I'm like jaw dropped. This is a nightmare. So that's a problem, and we can be our own worst enemy If we don't have a strategy for repaying. This is why it's really important for our clients at Lake Growth. We do regular onboarding meetings, training meetings. We do regular six-month review financial planning sessions with our clients. We want to make sure that they go all the way from when I meet them, all the way to dead and past dead, so that they can have a great rest of their excuse the pun, but the rest of their whole life.

Adam Shaffer:

So this could work for anybody. I see this as a mass market kind of thing. But why Amazon sellers? Why e-commerce? Why do you feel like and why are you getting so much demand from that particular area?

Mark Willis:

Like and why are you getting so much demand from that particular area? Well, you know we did write the book how to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire your Banker with Danny Stock, who's a dear friend and client, and I think the tool of whole life insurance fits like a lock and key to the e-commerce space. You probably can think of even more applications than I can. You know, like when would it help? How might it help any e-commerce business owner the most to have guaranteed liquid capital for any reason? How might that help their business?

Mark Willis:

I could probably think of a few reasons. You might be able to think of a few, yeah, so could we become more profitable? Could we become more competitive? Might we be creating, essentially a golden parachute for every business entrepreneur that sets this up? I don't know about you, but when I started my business and most e-commerce businesses, I think, are the same we're not just handed a retirement account us are so preparing for that final moment when we have to cash in our chips. Work-wise, having a giant pile of cash value in your policy could be the golden parachute that most entrepreneurs wish they had tell us about it.

Adam Shaffer:

It's how to be an Amazon legend and fire your banker. I love the title, but what was the impetus, what was the reason you wrote that book? And it was really. It's an Amazon-focused book. Give us some takeaways.

Mark Willis:

Sure, I mean, it certainly could be used with Walmartcom or eBay or anything else. Of course, any kind of e-commerce business that you might have could be even not product. It could be a service-based online business. But we wrote the book because I felt like folks need and it's a simple enough book. You could probably read it on a short airplane flight maybe 45 minutes to an hour is all it might take to read through it and I'd be happy to give it out as a copy to anyone who reaches out to me, and we'll give you a website at the end. It's kickstartwithmarkcom. If you want to go check that out and get a copy of that book, kickstartwithmarkcom.

Mark Willis:

But we wrote the book because we really wanted to make sure e-commerce business owners which, honestly, entrepreneurs, I believe are really the fuse in this country. I think it's what could light up a bright and beautiful future, or it could be the disaster that undoes the country that I love so much. So I love working with business owners. I love working with entrepreneurs. The majority of our clients are real estate investors and business owners.

Mark Willis:

Most CFPs, like myself, are going to point their clients toward things that they understand the stock market, for the most part because they can charge a fee on that investment account, but understand the stock market for the most part because they can charge a fee on that investment account. But I believe the stock market takes energy and power away from the entrepreneur. Think about it when you're buying Apple stock, you're buying someone else's dream and helping their future. When you have a whole life policy that you're borrowing against to pour into your business, you're investing in your own future, and that, to me, just gets me out of bed in the morning. I love the idea of helping businesses reach their goals and dreams without taking a bunch of unnecessary risk. So that's why we wrote the book and why we wrote it for the e-commerce crowd why we wrote it for the e-commerce crowd.

Adam Shaffer:

And is it hard? Are you finding it's hard for the people you meet to get their heads around this, like they're like, okay, that's great, but they just say I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing, or is it an easy sell?

Mark Willis:

Well, it's sorry to keep using the matrix metaphor, but once folks really get this, they can't un-get it. You know it's hard for them to unsee or unhear this idea. Why would I continue to pay cash for my cars, even If I know that I could use my policy to buy my cars? Why would I continue to pay cash for my tax bill or my kid's college tuition or any other major, my kitchen remodel, any other major expense? Once it's heard, it's hard to unhear. So I have very few people who just say, eh, I'm good or it doesn't really. There's a very fierce dividing line. Now some people would say, well, mark, I could get a better rate of return if I chase the latest meme stock. I'll just put my hope and prayers on the latest, you know, gamestop or whatever the latest one is, and I wish them the very best. You know this is whole life insurance is not an investment.

Mark Willis:

Yeah, you're right, that's a form of gambling or speculation, and certainly the stock market could give you a higher rate of return some years, but most people realize that markets come down too. So for the most part, I'd say it's not that hard to really explore this option with folks. In fact, most people get it that, yeah, somehow the banks have been doing this to me for years, mark, I wondered how they did it. This is a simple way that I can do what banks have done to me, but now I can profit from it without having to be an FDIC insured bank charter with $100 million in the bank or whatever. They can be their own source of financing and for them, that's all it takes to wrap their head around this. It's not that complicated. It's just learning to think differently and to use our financial tools at our disposal in a way that may not have been told to us by financial infotainers.

Adam Shaffer:

So it's a good time of year to start planning, right. You have the new year coming and you have the fourth quarter, the holiday season right now so we're all kind of loading up on inventory and we'll have to pay it in 30 or 60 days and so that payment could be due and you want to start your off strong. So I mean, I think everybody listening and beyond should take a look at this. This is a really interesting option that I never, ever even knew existed until we just spoke about it. Now I better read your book, man. This is really good stuff. I do appreciate it. What are we not talking about? What other tidbits you want to give to the team?

Mark Willis:

Oh sure, well, so to your point. Yeah, you're right, it's Q4 as we're recording this and as it's being played. But there's a guy, he's a client of mine. He sells hot sauce online. That's his business and he's got a private label and everything. So he was using credit cards and other things that would have to be paid off relatively quickly and he would sell most of his product right now Christmas presents and that sort of thing. When he set up his policy, he could only set aside a couple thousand bucks a year. That's what he could do at first, but he started using the policy to buy his inventory and over the next three to four years he completely replaced his line of credit and because of that he was able to have his profit margins triple over what he was doing and that allowed him to pour more money into new policies.

Mark Willis:

So now he has several bank on your self-designed policies on himself and his wife and his adult children who work in the business with him and, what's even more interesting, he's become the banker for his competitors. So he's kind of in the world with other guys and gals that sell online and they're like and he mentions to them oh yeah, I'm using my own money to lend and lend myself, and they're like oh, wait a minute, can I borrow some money? So now he's lending money to his friendly competitors and they're paying him a cashflow. That's a stream of income from who was once, maybe, his competitor. So don't forget if you can bank on yourself, other people might be able to bank on you as well. Just do your due diligence. Don't lend to folks who have no right to pay you back, but that's a thing that I think more and more e-commerce business owners should find out. We're already in the banking business. We're just sitting on the wrong side of the banker's desk, that's for sure.

Adam Shaffer:

Amen to that, so final words to the audience.

Mark Willis:

Oh, just keep listening. Leave this Amazon. I mean just this. This podcast is awesome. Please leave the planet Amazon a five-star review. They do a great job and getting set up for the show has been a lot of fun. So thanks again, Adam, for having me on. And again, how do people reach you.

Mark Willis:

You can go to kickstartwithmarkcom. Kickstartwithmark with dot com, kickstart with Mark with a K dot com, you'll get a free copy of the book how to Be an Amazon Legend and Fire your Banker. Just mention Planet Amazon in the agenda of the 15-minute phone strategy session that we'll set up for you. That's kickstartwithmarkcom. We'll go over any questions you've had about this episode and help you learn more about how to bank on yourself.

Adam Shaffer:

That is awesome. Well, thank you for joining. This is just a great topic. We're going to have you back on, so thank you very much.

Mark Willis:

My pleasure, thank you.

Announcement:

Thank you for watching another episode of the Planet Amazon podcast, where we talk all things Amazon. If you want to learn about how to accelerate your sales on Amazon, visit Phelps United's website at phelpsunitedcom.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Adam Shaffer

Host