Join Bronson and Nate for another great episode with Caleb Guilliams, CEO of Better Wealth and author of The AND Asset. Caleb shares his journey from gutting chickens for $1 each to taking over a bank’s investment department at 19, and founding Better Wealth at 21 to empower clients with financial clarity and efficiency. Discover the power of whole life insurance and infinite banking, not as an investment, but as a secure, tax-advantaged foundation for storing and leveraging capital (70-90% cash value in year one). Caleb explains its benefits—creditor protection, tax-free growth, and collateral use—while warning against poorly designed policies with high commissions.
Learn his value-leverage framework for investing in yourself, the pitfalls of life settlements, and how AI will revolutionize finance by reducing friction and enhancing efficiency.
Get my new book: https://bronsonequity.com/fireyourself
Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I’m your host, Bronson Hill. I am so excited to be here today.
I feel like our shows keep getting better and better, and this one is going to be awesome. Today, we have Caleb Guilliams, and I got introduced to Caleb through a number of different people. We have a number of different connections.
But somebody had read his book called The And Asset, and just said, like, this and your book, Bronson, Fire Yourself, these are on lists for my family library. They have to read it. And here at the family fortune, I was like, wow, this guy, I got to talk to this guy, Caleb.
He sounds pretty amazing. So he’s the CEO and founder of Better Wealth, a financial coaching firm dedicated to empowering people with clarity, control, and cash flow efficiency. He started reading investment books in his teens at 19.
He basically took over a bank. So he’s basically rethinking a lot in finance, talks a lot about whole life insurance. We’re going to talk about different insurance products as well, and why you would consider why you wouldn’t consider.
But before we bring him on, I have my amazing two-time best-selling co-host, Nate Hambrick in the house. Nate, I want to ask you, have you had any experience with whole life insurance?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah. So I actually sold insurance for about five, five and a half years. But specifically…
Bronson Hill: …you have all these things that like, yeah, I want a state bodybuilding contest. I was like, what are you talking about? Like, where’s the stuff coming from?
Yeah, I actually sold it. Okay. So you sold insurance for, okay.
That’s another past life.
Nate Hambrick: Yep. Still get the renewal checks every single month. I get probably 12 to 18 checks every single month.
And that was one of the first few. That was probably my second stream of passive income that I built. But yeah, on the infinite banking side.
I mean, infinite banking is incredible. And it’s one of those things that sounds fake the first time you hear it. And then the more wealthy people you meet, the more conversations you have, you realize, oh, wow, this is a really, really powerful tool, not just from an income generation standpoint, but also from a security standpoint and a liability standpoint as well.
So this is going to be an awesome chat.
Bronson Hill: I think what you said is true in finance and just in life, a lot of times things can sound too good to be true. And some things are too good to be true. You have to be cautious, but there are some things that sound too good to be true.
Like with taxes, I was paying over 25% per year, making $200K a year. And then I got down to paying 1%, right? I know people that make millions of dollars a year and pay zero taxes, right?
And there’s a legal way to do it. And so I just love when you’re in this world of finance, like you’ll find people that are doing all kinds of great stuff. So anyway, without further ado, let’s welcome to the show, Caleb Guilliams.
Welcome, brother. Good to have you. All the way from Nashville.
Got that amazing background. If you’re watching on the video. Good to see you, man.
How you doing?
Caleb Guilliams: It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.
Bronson Hill: Oh, man. I love it. I love it.
Well, you have done more by the time you are 20 years old than most people have done in their whole lives in finance. So why don’t you walk us through taking over a bank at 19 years old? That’s not like a thing most people do.
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, I was I was parent did well and just give kind of paint the story. I grew up in Wisconsin. My dad was a PhD molecular biologist.
And in eighth grade, I wanted to follow his footsteps. And then I took biology. I was like, you know what?
Not not in the car. It’s not not something that I enjoyed or really never really clicked. And so but it was always naturally into like business and money.
Got a job at a chicken farm where I got a chickens and made a dollar for every chicken I processed.
Bronson Hill: And you had a chicken literally take a knife and you’d get the you did put the head off first. Or did you? Did you buy the head first?
Caleb Guilliams: Chicken was dead. Deep plucked.
And then I could take up chicken with a head on it, the feet and have the whole thing in the tank in less than a minute. Okay, so that was not a way to…
Bronson Hill: Can we do that because I’m gonna I’m gonna send you a chicken. And we’re gonna have you do that on the next time we have you back.
Caleb Guilliams: I will blow you guys away. We could have like the whole like, let’s raise money. I like it would be yeah.
Bronson Hill: I should do it too. And without love to sign a waiver or something. So if somebody cuts their fingers off, they won’t be like so you got to be within a minute, you’re doing this. You ever see the movie Napoleon Dynamite where the guy starts talking and he’s like, this may be for I’ve never seen it.
Caleb Guilliams: But I know the quote because so many people have mentioned it. So I probably just watch it.
Nate Hambrick: It’s horrible even if you wonder why people keep putting it is horrible and incredible simultaneously.
Bronson Hill: It’s like if you want to go back to middle school and be that awkward like now that’s exactly how it feels for the untold the whole time. And then after you watch the first time, you’re like, this thing is just so ridiculous. I gotta watch it again.
So anyway, on that note, okay. So you were you were killing dead chicken. You were you’re getting chicken.
Caleb Guilliams: I was gutting dead chickens. I was gutting dead chickens, making a dollar for every chicken that I processed, and read two books, Richest Man in Babylon and Good to Great. Probably two books that we’ve all read, that have impacted us. And like, those two books were like, I was into leadership in business, and then the whole money space. And then from there, it became really clear that I wanted to do something in the money space.
I got a job when I was 17 at a bank and try to learn everything I possibly could. I was homeschooled. So it allowed me to work all day, Monday and Friday.
So I got to get some great experience. Worked in our investment department when I was 18 years old. And then when I was 19, the person that was running the bank’s investment department left and took another job.
At 19 years old, literally when I looked like I was 14, I had I took over the corner office of the bank. And this is a couple of couple of takeaways is don’t trust banks with your money because what were they thinking? But then the second big takeaway is like people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
As cliche as that is, it’s cliche for a reason. There were people that just poured poured into me because they knew that as a kid, I wanted like I just finished reading seven habits, highly effective people and I’m like, I should have a mission statement. And I led with why thank you, Simon Sinek.
So, that was one of the things I think people just really knew that I wanted help, and I desired to learn. And one of the best things that I did was, I didn’t try to make a quick buck, but I played the long game when it came to learning. I learned a lot about life insurance, about taxes, investing. And at 21 years old, I realized that the bank was not going to be the ticket to where I wanted to go.
So I left the bank on good terms, but left the bank at 21 years old to start better wealth. And now I run betterwealth.com and we have clients in all 50 states and do lots of things, insurance, taxes, estate planning. But I think we’re going to be talking about the very exciting topic of life insurance on today.
So it’s a lot of fun, lots of stories, a lot of failures, but I’m grateful for it.
Bronson Hill: It’s just like de-gutting a chicken, right? You just got to figure out the most efficient way to do it. So Nate, I was going to ask you, I mean, besides de-gutting chickens, what’s the thing you’re most excited about this interview for?
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, I need to get some chickens, that’ll improve. Actually, in all seriousness, that is something my wife and I want to do at the next property we purchase. But yeah, I mean, there’s so much to learn.
And so actually, let me just ask you a couple of questions, Caleb. So, obviously a lot of wealthy people use infinite banking. Feel free to add to this.
But my understanding is, tax free income, which is awesome. It is the most heavily protected asset period. So if somebody sues you, they can’t touch it and that kind of stuff.
What are some of the bigger reasons that people get into infinite banking? Like what’s the what’s the sales pitch in a couple of points?
Caleb Guilliams: Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a step back and paint the like because I didn’t I didn’t start working at the bank to sell life insurance. So there was there was a journey up there. By the way, chickens are the gateway to every conspiracy.
So just so you know, like I’m pumped for you. The raising chickens is like a gateway to so many, so many things. I look forward to future combos there.
The when when it comes to infinite banking and life insurance, one of the biggest misconceptions period is that it’s an investment or it will be an alternative to other investments. Well, that for me is what I thought to be true. And so it was an immediate turn off and I was all like by term invested difference, wanted to do the whole hedge fund, real estate investing and all.
Then working at the bank. Banks are a very profitable side of the business and they the bank had life insurance. And then I learned that over three thousand two hundred banks in the United States have what’s called bank on life insurance. Most corporations, Fortune 500 corporations use life insurance to retain their key employees.
Then as I was learning from mentors, I realized that a lot of them had life insurance on their balance sheet and they had all one thing in common. None of the banks, corporations and the wealthy people that I was learning from weren’t using life insurance as the investment, but we’re using it as a place to store, protect their family and use throughout their life. And that was really interesting to me because I was like, OK, I looked at things very much like it could either do this or that.
It’s either doing this or that. And you want to maximize the rate of return compound interest. And and I think the big epiphany for me and this goes into infinite banking is it’s our money’s got to reside somewhere.
Our money is always flowing somewhere. So a lot of people are saving money into a savings account, getting some interest rate, taking that money out, investing it and getting the return and benefits of that investment. And the only difference in life insurance is life insurance is a place.
I would say a better long term place, but is a place that you can store your money. It protects your family. But you can also leverage it and use that capital to reinvest in things that are actually investments.
And what you essentially do is now you have two assets. You have the benefits of your life insurance and you have whatever the activity that you’re doing. And over time, the epiphany for me was, oh, I can get the benefits of compounding.
I can get the benefits of life insurance, which there’s a lot of. And I can get the benefits of me investing in myself, my business, real estate. You fill in the blank.
And over time, understanding life insurance and all the benefits that it gives you. That’s cool. But the trade off is I would never do all of that and not do what I’m doing now.
But if you’re telling me I can do both, that for me is the unlocks. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s infinite banking, but infinite banking is essentially saving your money, using it, treating yourself as the bank, which I think can be misleading in marketing. There’s a lot of scammy people out there that use infinite banking.
I would tell you, but it’s using life insurance at the foundation of that. And then one of the things that we do is not just try to create that message, but you have to make sure that the insurance is set up properly, that it’s early cash value, that it’s flexible. That’s easier said than done.
Most of the people out there that are talking about insurance will get the message right, but the insurance policy will be a little above average. And there’s so much so much dangers there. So I know I threw a lot at you, but that was like the epiphany.
That’s very much how I view life insurance as a better place to store, protect and use, not as an investment. It’s mainly as a foundation.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it’s interesting because there’s a lot of benefits to life insurance in the sense that I believe you can correct me if I’m wrong. But if you’re sued or you go through bankruptcy or whatever, your life insurance is still no one can touch it through a lawsuit. It’s very protected, kind of similar to a retirement account.
It’s very it can be used as also as collateral. So you can use it for different assets. And then one of the biggest benefits that you touched on, too, is a lot of the tax benefits.
You can basically have money in there that you’re growing. Basically tax free is inside an account. And it’s and it is exceptional.
Then I looked into this for myself. And again, I’ll just be completely frank here. You know, because I’m a real estate professional, I really pay hardly any taxes anyway, right, because I’ve got so much depreciation.
I’m able to get it from other things. So I’ve seen less of the tax benefits side. But for a lot of people that are high earners are paying 30, 40, 50 percent in taxes, this can be an incredible way to move forward.
Another thing I couldn’t get around when I was looking at it, I spent had a call with probably three or four calls with a guy and I was trying to get down to like, well, what actually are the fees and what actually is the return and what are, you know, insurance is like they’re going to find a way to make money. So it’s OK. Well, what what does this actually look like?
And I couldn’t really and even the guy couldn’t really fully explain it to me in the way that made me feel comfortable. And so I got to where I was like, I like just why don’t you get in a little more what you’re saying about things to watch out for or like types of policies that people are pitching that are like, I mean, I think they were very high quality, was like a very large, well-financialized insurance company. Again, these guys…
Caleb Guilliams: Do you remember how much cash value you had immediately.
Bronson Hill: Oh, so I think that was another issue is that you’re basically the first couple of years, all the money was going to the commissions. OK. So like that’s pretty common.
That’s pretty common.
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, it’s common. It’s common. But it tells me right there a lot.
So let me break down. So you talk about credit protection. Every state’s a little bit different.
But you have I mean, Enron executives are still getting benefits from their insurance policies, total fraud. But in the state of Texas, really good for insurance and annuities. And that just tells you that every state’s a little bit different.
But yeah, some some of the best credit protections, depending on what state you’re in, tax tax is very, very similar to Roth’s. So you don’t get a deduction going in. But once in, it will grow tax-deferred.
So the day that you die, you can take out tax tax-free loans because a loan is not a considered income. And then the death benefit gets paid out income tax-free. And so have you heard the phrase like you borrow and then you die kind of deal and it’s like that we die.
It’s very similar to to that. And so you’re built on to a contract that’s essentially built in from day one. You can take a loan.
You don’t have to pay it back. They’re collateralizing your death benefit. So there’s there’s some aspects there when it comes to the pitch.
And I’ll just I’ll just say say this because I’m a very logical person when we’re thinking about this is number one, we have to when you’re putting your money into life insurance, you really what are you what are you comparing it to? If for you, you should compare it to a high yield saving account. So a high yield saving account gives you an interest rate long term and over time, because I’m going to use the last 30 years.
So right now, interest rates are four plus percent that you can get maybe three and a half, four and a half percent. But history, can we agree that it’s around two percent, maybe like two percent when you look at in the last last 30 years? Yeah, 30 years, give or take.
And so the you know, in a life insurance policy after all the fees and commissions and all, you look at what’s called internal rate return, internal rate return. It just looks at the actual cash on cash, it factors in the commissions, it factors in the death.
It factors in all the other costs. And you’re going to get anywhere from three and a half to four and a half percent internal rate return. Right now, with high interest rates, you could say five percent.
But again, we’ll just say we’ll just say for fun, four and a half percent, four and a half percent long term internal rate return. Now, in a high yield savings account, you have to pay ordinary income tax on the on the interest in a life insurance policy. You don’t.
So when you factor in tax rates, when you factor in, you know, you have a permanent death benefit, when you factor in all the other benefits of like chronic illness rider, critical illness rider, when you when you factor in the safety, when you factor in some of the other benefits, you could you could say that life insurance to a portfolio could give you anywhere from six to nine percent. Not that it’s getting you that it’s getting you only four or five percent. But when you factor in taxes and other benefits and by term and the best difference, well, you have to buy term, you already have a built in life insurance.
So when you when you look at that, you’re getting you’re getting a it’s not going to knock your socks off, but you’re getting a better return than maybe what you think. Now, also, the policies that we’re designing give you early cash value in the first year. A lot of times we’re seeing 70, 80, sometimes up to 90 percent first year liquidity, whereas most life insurance policies, as you know, take a couple of years to even see cash value.
Bronson Hill: So is that because the the commissions get paid to the agent over more years?
Caleb Guilliams: No, that’s because we just negotiate the lowest commissions possible. And and again, you might be like, wow, you’re such a saint. Well, we also have a lot of people coming to us because of what we do.
So it’s like, here’s a here’s a value prop, just do the right thing for the client, and then you’ll track really good people. So that’s that’s one of the things that we do. And I don’t want to throw shade.
A lot of times people are not trained that way, because, you know, if you’re making one 10th of what you could be making, who’s going to train that? But it’s like, well, if you do the right thing, then that’s why we have clients in all 50 states is because people come to us for that.
Nate Hambrick: So, so walk us through the journey of that. So early cash value 70 to 90%. So somebody puts in 50 grand or 100 grand or multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, then they take the cash out.
For a lot of the people that you work with, walk us through that journey. Do they take it out as quickly as possible? Do they let us sit there for a year and then pull it out?
What does that look like?
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, so the we have a few clients that will take it out immediately. And we we like when people wait at least 30 days, so it doesn’t trigger anti money laundering. Like what’s what’s happening?
It’s like really, you know, so but pretty much after 30 days, you have access to 95% of whatever your cash value is.
Bronson Hill: Wow. So let me just let me slow that down for a second for people. Like that’s really interesting, because if you have the cat, that’s been an issue too.
If you wait two, three years away, but if you can have almost all of their 95% of the cash value right away, and you can…
Caleb Guilliams: …yes, well, and Nate knows this, we do what’s called front loading. It’s a common strategy where if people are sitting on a bunch of money, like let’s say a million bucks or half a million bucks, they could like front load majority of that in the year one. And then every year after that pay very small premiums, and majority of their capital is liquid. Now they can now this this is what you have you have an you have a debt, you have a life insurance asset with all these benefits.
And you have hundreds of thousands of dollars that now you can use to reinvest. So here’s, here’s the pros and cons to that, because I think we all need to know the pros and cons. The major con is you don’t have all the money that you put in in a high yield savings account, you have all the money that you put in.
In a life insurance policy, it takes about year four or five to have more money than what you put in. And you still have majority of it, but you don’t have all of it. That’s con number one.
Con number two is not everyone qualifies health wise. If you can get between those two cons, and there’s ways around that if you don’t qualify, then you can get a business partner, your spouse, your kid. So there’s, there’s ways around that, but not everyone qualifies health wise.
So then why do the life insurance for via the high yield savings account is you do the life insurance because life insurance in the short term, but more medium and long term give you way more benefits than funneling your money through a high yield savings account. Hence why I would even recommend in your situation, if you had a properly designed life insurance policy, if you could get past the first five years of it being a little bit behind the high yield savings account, I think over time you would be like all these benefits to a life insurance policy. And the fact after your five or six, you actually have more money than what you would have in a high yield savings account.
And it gives you all those benefits and you get to reinvest. So that that’s, that’s how I would, I would pitch it from a standpoint of where it would make sense. But, but it’s not a get rich quick thing.
And a lot of people sell it as an investment. And I think that’s a huge mistake.
Bronson Hill: Right. No, it’s more of a structure. Nate, I know you are the bestselling author of the 18 Laws of Leverage. How are you leveraging?
How would you say people can leverage this in their portfolio that they’re not thinking about?
Nate Hambrick: I mean, there’s lots of opportunities. I don’t, I don’t think I’ll be able to give any earth shattering revelations that Caleb won’t, but ultimately the thing that really sold me on this concept long term is that, I am earning interest free money that I’m able to pull out and use elsewhere. The other thing that we haven’t really talked about is kind of in a way and I’ll oversimplify it, but the interest you’re making on your money that’s in the policy that you also have a loan on is also paying your life insurance.
And so, when I get older, life insurance isn’t that expensive right now. So it’s not a huge deal. When I’m old, it’s going to be a huge deal.
Right. That stuff is expensive. And so that’s a great form of leverage.
You know, law 17 is don’t own anything on paper. And so from a litigation standpoint, it is like the, the best guarded money that you can have. So there’s lots of opportunities for leverage.
And Caleb, let me know if you’ve heard of this, but one of the strategies that some of my in-laws do is they specifically don’t have life insurance on anyone until they’re a senior citizen, then they’ll take out a $10 million policy. Then every couple of years, all the family members get it split up. So they’re paying significantly less than 10 million per person.
And every couple of years, my in-laws will get a nice little check. So I don’t know if you’ve heard of those.
Caleb Guilliams: Are you talking like they’re investing? Is it like life settlements or are they investing in their own family?
Nate Hambrick: So my understanding is, is the individual do it for themselves, but they won’t have life insurance until they turn like 55 or 60. Then they’ll buy like a super expensive term life insurance.
Caleb Guilliams: And then when they die, the death benefit pays out. Yeah. I mean, that’s Warren Buffett, if you want a non-correlated asset by their people’s life insurance, and when they mature or die, then the death benefit will get paid to you.
And it’s like, if you want a market rate or a turn that’s not correlated to the market, that’s a common investment, which tells you one thing, the death benefit is an asset. It is an asset. You may not get super in love with it because it’s predicated on you dying, but that’s like, what are the two guarantees, death and taxes?
Well, if I have an insurance that’s literally leveraging my death, if you’re creative, you can leverage that while you’re alive. And that’s an example of people doing that. I’ll say this, I’m maximizing life insurance on my family, but the moment I have a first world problem of needing more to save more money, where I’m going to go next is my dad.
I’m going to fund life insurance on my dad. I’m going to own the cash value. So I’m going to still be able to use that 80 to 90% immediate cash value to be able to reinvest.
But when my dad dies, most likely he will die before me. When he dies, that death benefit will get paid income tax free to the beneficiary, which will be myself. And so while that’s like, people are hearing that and they’re like, oh, I want to do that before I insure myself.
I still believe the greatest person to insure and protect is your family first and foremost. But this is a strategy that the Rockefellers use with trust and many, many other families, like every generation, if they have life insurance, no matter how successful or unsuccessful you are, life insurance is like the great equalizer and saying, okay, when you’re done, we’re going to make sure the death penalty gets paid back into the trust or to the family. And if every kid got life insurance when they’re born, do you, every family would get wealthier every day.
Nate Hambrick: That was going to be my follow up question. How do you think about this for your kids?
Caleb Guilliams: I mean, my parents have life insurance. I, my wife and I have a lot of life insurance and my daughter has a life insurance policy. We got it on her two months after she was born.
And, and like, she’s where I’m going to teach her how to create a family bank. And so I’m pro Ross as well. I’m not anti Ross or, you know, even with five 29 plans, I think with the new laws, there’s plays, there’s a, an area where you could maybe be a little bit more liberal of what’s education is.
Cause do I believe my kids are going to go to college? No, uh, with how fast things are going, but, um, life insurance essentially allows her to have her own family bank and we’re going to teach her how to start businesses and, you know, future cars, like she’s going to purchase things, but that bank ultimately is going to be allowing her to get really cheap access to money for her to be able to use money throughout her life.
Bronson Hill: I love it. I have an experience share around that you were going to talk about life settlements, which for people don’t understand, I’ll share kind of a war story here. So life settlements is an investment where, anybody you laugh, cause you probably know where I’m going with this.
But, so it’s basically an investment where people have their insured and it was, it was all universal life insurance policies, which are the highest premiums, but there’s no, like, there is some cash value, but usually no cash value, but they have to keep paying them. And as people get in their eighties, some of these get really expensive. I mean, someone’s like a million dollars a year or so they’re paying a lot, but these people are going to die at some point.
So there’s these huge benefits. A lot of CEOs would get them or other people that eventually they wouldn’t need them anymore. And so these people can afford the policy.
So they’d sell them. So we did a pool of maybe 14 or 15 of these raised a bunch of movies. I think, actually, sorry, I didn’t raise money.
I just kind of invested personally, but all these people like lived way longer than expected. It was like living years longer. And so the fun kind of had to be rescued.
It looks like, you know, the money may come back, but it’s kind of been this just, you know, they say, oh, we can totally predict how long someone’s going to live. We’ve got all the medical reports, but like, you never know. And so, have you had experience investing in this asset called life settlements?
Caleb Guilliams: I have, and I, I’ll just say I, I don’t have any comment. I’ll, I’ll just say this insurance companies don’t love life settlements, as you could probably imagine. And so have I known people that have invested in them?
Yes. Have some of them had the similar experience of you? Yes.
Have some of them had better returns in the market? Yes. I think I also know people on the other side that are brokers.
So if you’re listening to this or watching this and have a big life insurance policy that you’re like thinking about canceling, you should always talk to a broker to see like, okay, if the insurance company will give you this, is there a world, is there a person that will give you more than that? And there’s, so there’s two sides of the coin. And, and I will just say that, yeah, I mean, I’m glad that these people are living longer.
There is, there could be some ethical dilemma as well as like you’re literally investing in death, but then on the flip side, the person that’s getting the money is actually getting a better deal. So it is awkward because it’s like for you to get a better return, that means people are dying faster. But it’s a, from an ethical standpoint, it’s very interesting.
Bronson Hill: Well, it’s interesting. And I love that you have a conversation about this for a minute because how we got around or how I thought about it was, well, basically these are all being listed on a public exchange, a broker, or these are people that like no one wants to sell them, but they would sell, if somebody had five years left to live potentially, let’s say they’re 85 years old, they’ve got diabetes, they’ve got, COPD, whatever the things are, you’d know all those things. They’d say, okay, well, the premiums are going to cost, quite a bit more.
So you kind of calculate it and okay, what’s, what’s this actually gonna be worth? And you bid on it kind of very similar to a real estate transaction.
Then the family gets money now with the certainty that, hey, we’re going to get some money out of it now, whether it’s the third or 40% or whatever it is. And then somebody else will basically make the policy thing. But it does kind of bring up some weird things that like, when that information came out, it was the fund manager had that information, but nobody else had that information.
But like, somebody still some like you hear some shady stuff happening in the insurance policies and stuff and all that.
Caleb Guilliams: But he definitely wouldn’t want your name to be shared on that list or it’s like, you know, I’m with you. I think everyone wins because it’s the example of like if Bob Smith has a life insurance policy and he could maybe cash it out and he’ll get 50 grand when he goes to the marketplace and the marketplace will give him 200 grand. But what that tells you is that situation, everyone wins in that scenario, because the investor hopefully gets a non-correlated return.
Bob, instead of getting 50 gets 200 doesn’t have to continue to pay for that policy. And then, I guess the only person that loses in that scenario in that scenario would be the insurance company. Hence why insurance companies don’t love the fact that these things happen, but it’s good. It keeps them in check.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. So obviously no pitch for this. I think for me, you know, being a real estate professional, we probably have a lot of real estate professionals that are going to be listening and watching this.
You know, I guess if I pay no taxes anyway, or if I’m pretty much down to zero or almost zero because of my depreciation, other things, is there still a reason to do this? And if there is like no financial advice, but for someone like me who makes money, but it’s long term, like, like what percentage of someone’s money do they put into something like that?
Caleb Guilliams: Well, let me ask you this. You may or may not do Roth IRAs.
Bronson Hill: I have a Roth, I have like 20 K and a Roth from a long time. I don’t think I qualify for a Roth.
Caleb Guilliams: If you could qualify for a Roth, would you put, would you put money into a Roth if you could qualify and have control over it?
Bronson Hill: Sure. I mean, the challenge with Roth, though, sometimes is that it’s hard to find, can you get a, can you get a fully self-directed Roth? I guess you can.
Caleb Guilliams: Well, you’re just selling my point more for me, but think about it. Like just from a rapper standpoint, you pay almost no taxes now because of a real estate. Okay.
So that’s great. Your money’s got to go somewhere. So it’s either can be parked in a high yield savings account.
It can be parked in other investments and hopefully you can offset those taxes anyways. So my question to you would be, okay, your money’s got to reside somewhere. And so we would just do person A is going to put their money in a high yield savings account and then invest person B, Bronson is going to put their money into a life insurance policy and then reinvest.
We’re going to see the difference. What you would find is person A would be ahead for the first eight years, they would be ahead on paper. Now, person B would have more protection, more credit protection, better foundations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And at a certain point would get a greater internal rate of return. Then, then person A, person A would have a maybe an opportunity cost plus because they may have a little bit more money that they could invest. I don’t know if you’re someone that likes to invest every single penny. I like to have margin.
Bronson Hill: I over invest. I like invest to the point where I guess for just put it all in.
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, so we’re different. I very much, and I think Nate’s more like you. I’m more like, hey, I prefer to have like a year’s buffer and blah, blah, blah.
So for me, it’s not going to matter either way. But for some people, like the crypto people or maybe yourself, like you’re going to want every penny. Then there’s a true difference because in the first five, six years, you may have a little less money in in scenario B.
But scenario B is I believe way, way better, like has a stronger foundation and is getting their dollars a lot more jobs on the life insurance side and still gets their access to use money. But they’re a little bit. They’re a little bit slower out of the gate.
Now, traditional life insurance is a lot, lot, lot, lot slower. The fact that we’re breaking even in year four or five, the fact that in year two, you’re putting in money and your policies increasing by more than what you’re putting in like it is a little bit slower off the gate. But the way that we’re designing it, we’re taking a huge L that a lot of people, a lot of people have to sell life insurance with you having zeros in the first couple of years, which is incredibly difficult, but they can still sell it to some people because life insurance long term is really, really valuable.
So if you can still give someone like your family all the benefits, long term to life insurance and give them 80, 90% immediate cash value to do what they want to do. For me, that that tends that message tends to resonate with a lot of people that are real estate investors or entrepreneurs.
Bronson Hill: I like the liquidity standpoint. I want you enough jump into it a little bit Nate too. But for liquidity, so what I’ve done, this is what I’ve done, whether it’s right or wrong, I bought a bunch about five years ago, I bought a bunch of physical precious metals and you store them third party, you can borrow against the value of it about 10, like a helix, you can borrow against it.
Caleb Guilliams: How much can you borrow against?
Bronson Hill: 75% setting for the good value?
Caleb Guilliams: It’s pretty good.
Bronson Hill: And it’s about a 10%. Just for the days you have it, there’s no additional fees. So if I need to close the deal, I can use it and put it back. But I guess one question could I instead of had bought that, when I bought it is, is fund a policy, then go buy some of that.
Have kind of the same thing with the, does the, does the returns cover the borrowing costs? So again, if you’re getting 2, 3, 4, 5, 8% when you borrow, typically, does that cover the amount of like loan costs that it actually costs?
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, the, the loans right now vary because we represent many different companies anywhere from 5% to 8% right now, 8% on the high end. And the range of what’s yeah, 5% on the low end. We love to, we would recommend at least paying the interest.
But I mean, if you’re sophisticated investor, you don’t have to pay the interest. It’s just like, it’s just one of those things where we that’s like disclaimer, not giving investment advice, insurance advice. But if you’re going to use a loan, like the fact that someone can at least maintain the interest.
But yeah, what you’re saying is, could I fund life insurance? Could I protect my family, get all the benefits? Then could I put my money in precious metals and then borrow, get the answer is yes, you could do that.
Yeah, you could do that. And they use more leverage. I’m not saying it is more leverage and the precious metals.
It’s not free money because you’re getting the benefit of precious metals, but you’re also getting a control cost of 10%. So would I do that? No, but you could easily do that.
And you could get a dollar that’s now in precious metals and life insurance and in real estate. And you could accomplish that if you wanted.
Bronson Hill: Right. So you got to be able to multiple things. I think the reason I like precious metals is just the hedge from inflation and heavy.
And instead of storing cash, obviously store cash somewhere you can put an insurance policy, but having set up a money bank account having money available that way. Why don’t you jump in your brother? I know you’ve got some stuff to share.
Nate Hambrick: I wanted to hit you with the contrarian question of the day. What do you believe about money that most people would disagree with?
And I can give you a second to think about that. And the reason I’m asking you is because you see..
Bronson Hill: …he’s like filming at the mouth over there. He’s so ready to answer. He’s like, we did across them.
Caleb Guilliams: How long do we have?
Nate Hambrick: We’ve got time. So let me just hit hit you with it. What do you believe about money that most people don’t
Caleb Guilliams: Well, I number one believe that you are your greatest asset and majority of people devalue their ability and they themselves is that an asset and it shows up everywhere in their balance sheet and how they make their money and how they view their money. And so I very much, when I work with people, efficiency is one of my favorite words efficient. The definition of my definition of efficiency is removing any friction to get to a desired result.
So number one, get really clear in what you want. And then number two, be really good at highlighting all the friction points to be able to get there. And so for me, whether it comes to money, whether it comes to business, really, really when it comes to investing, whatever that is, it’s like, what is, what is the outcome?
What are we, what is the goal? And then what are all the friction points that are getting in the way? What I find is a lot of people are compounding their money and they’re doing all these kinds of things, but they’re, they’re almost taking, putting compound interest before themselves.
And as a result, there’s that lack of clarity shows up in a lot of different areas and it allows them to not show up powerfully. And so I’m a really big fan of like, underlying like you are your greatest asset. Make sure that you’re not doing anything to like dismantle that or, or put a shadow on that.
And then make sure that your money is aligned with you living intentionally. Like I have this one life sign as a reminder that we have one life. I don’t want to do anything that, that tarnishes or cuts corners or takes me away from living my one life well.
So I don’t know if that’s like contrarian, but I see like a lot of advice does not even reference anything about you living your one life well. It’s all about like first principles of compounding your money and risk management. All things are important, but they should come secondary to figuring out what you want.
And I’m a fan of like sometimes doing the exact opposite of maybe what you should do on paper. So I don’t know that I don’t know if that.
Nate Hambrick: I love it. It actually reminds me of something that both Grant Cardone and Alex for Mosey are saying a lot on social media, which is something to the effect of, you know, if you make under a hundred grand, the asset you want to invest in is you, right? So whatever that looks like buying courses, reading books, Bronson and I read a lot of books. Bronson might be beating me this year.
Bronson Hill: I got a 59, 59 this year. I did a bunch in Alaska. So I’m working on it.
Nate Hambrick: Yeah, let’s go. And it’s kind of funny cause I had a friend asked me about these different books. He asked me about like eight or nine books and I’d read every single one of them.
And to him, I’ve read every single book ever, which is not true, but I have read many hundreds, maybe a thousand, but to go off that point and you know, I’ll just kind of throw it out there. How do, what is investing in yourself look like today? Like obviously you’re really, really successful.
You got a lot of cool stuff going on. What is investing in your family and yourself look like for you?
Caleb Guilliams: Nate, you’re going to love this. You ready for this?
Nate Hambrick: I’m ready.
Caleb Guilliams: It’s called the value leverage framework.
So the first thing is if you’re not really clear about the value prop that you bring to the table, number one thing that you should invest in, you have an input, you create an output. We’re not, we’re not paid for our input or create, we’re paid for our results and outcomes. So first and foremost, it’s getting really clear about your value prop.
Who are you serving? Are you working for somebody? Well, they’re the person that you’re serving.
Are you working for the market? Which is, entrepreneurship, who you serving, what problem do they have? How do you over deliver on that problem?
And I think first and foremost, a lot of young people need to really figure out value proposition. I wish they taught this in college before you’re going to decide on what you’re going to do. Like let’s figure out value prop and figure out not all problems are created equal.
They salute like you could work at a hospital, you could be a janitor, you could be a heart surgeon. One is going to get paid a lot more than the other. It’s not that one’s more valuable in the eyes of God, but one’s more valuable in the eyes of the marketplace.
And so it’s figuring out why and what they’re doing. Once you figure out your value prop, then the next thing is leverage and amplification. How do I get a greater outcome or have less input for the same outcome?
And that’s forms of leverage. Big, big fan of involved. Just one of my favorite books of all time is the Almanac of Nivall, which doesn’t shock me that you have that right there.
And so it’s like the, it’s so for me, when I’m in, and when I’m choosing to invest either in businesses, in myself in investments, I’m figuring out, number one, if I can’t determine the value prop and whatever the thing is, I will not invest money. I’ve made way too many mistakes being like, everyone’s doing this. It sounds amazing, but if I can’t, I’m a decently intelligent human.
If I can’t on a really simple figure out how they’re making money, I’m not investing and I’m okay missing a home run or two, if that’s the case. But then the second thing is once I figure out that value prop, how can we invest in leverage? And right now there’s no greater lever than AI and understanding AI.
So if you look at me right now, it’s figuring out, okay, how do I invest in technology that can take our value props and our business has a lot of different value props. How do we amplify that and serve people either faster, cheaper, or better. But for us, it’s like, how do we, how do we cut out more friction going back to efficiency?
How do we cut out more friction to get to those outcomes? And so for me, that is value leveraging is the framework of investing yourself. Because I always like when people are like investing yourself, that’s always fluffy to me.
So it’s like, figure out how you provide value and figure out the best way that you can provide value as a human. Once you figure that out, then figure out all the different lever pieces that can amplify or allow you to put less input to provide the same value. And you hit that, I believe that is like the best way to invest in yourself.
And then when you’re like, I’m at a solid place, that’s when you start diversifying and reinvesting in other things.
Bronson Hill: Well, I think this is a huge point. I think most people miss. And I think as a passive investor or as an active investor, this like changed my life because I heard this quote by Jim Rohn, who’s a motivation motivational speaker, and as a paraphrase, he says, “Make yourself valuable to valuable people”.
And what I realized is like, if you just simply find who you’re finding value from, and I, you probably get this from time to time, Caleb, you get people come, hey, let me, you know, mentor me or hey, working with, they’re always asking for stuff or how can I help you, you know, or something? It’s like, well, I don’t know. What do you do?
I don’t know what’s going on here. Like, and so, but like, what happened? I heard that quote.
It was actually at a high paid mastermind event on a cruise. And I basically said, make yourself valuable to valuable people. Here’s this guy who’s a syndicator and I’ve got a lot of value from his stuff.
Maybe I can try to figure out in his business, he would teach people to raise money for real estate. But I was like, I wonder how it’s going for him actually raising money in his own business. So I said, Hey, can we talk about your business?
He kind of blew me off initially, but then we got together to my martini bar at 3:30 p.m. the last day. And I said, Hey, how’s it going in this area of your business? Are you like, how are you growing?
Whatever they were, they were having struggles there. So I said, well, can I or someone else can be a part of helping find a solution here and then the lead of this partnership. And I went from raising $100,000 for one deal to raising $15 million together.
I probably made a million dollars off of that one conversation, right? It totally catapulted me into the so to me, it just seems like figuring out your area of value, but really going to people that are valuable people and finding a way to help solve them, solve that problem. Let me ask you kind of in relation to that, what’s so you saw you help people solve problems in finance, right?
That’s kind of what you do. You provide education, you provide different resources. What’s, what’s it like an emerging problem that you’re seeing that maybe you guys aren’t doing something in yet, or you’re kind of looking at in the future, particularly with AI, today with shifts of, like you said, going to college is going to change.
Like, where do you see things going when it comes to finance and where people are going to need help in those areas?
Caleb Guilliams: That’s a great a question that I’m thinking a lot about right now. And so we love serving entrepreneurs, like if you, the one, our big avatar is the entrepreneur. And so they are overpaying on taxes, they’re co-mingling their funds, they’re not really, they’re outside of their business.
They don’t really have an investment frameworks that they’re confident in, they’re lacking systems, and they’re not tracking their money. Those are just some of the many things that entrepreneurs are struggling with. And so I believe that accountability and community are two things that are really, really key.
So I want to invest in those two things. And then how can I get AI to solve the rest? So for example, you could invest in things, but I’m like, could AI replace this?
Could AI replace community? It’s hard. It’s hard for my mind to figure out where it would.
And when it comes to accountability, can AI keep you accountable? Yes, I do feel like there’s a difference when it comes to human accountability versus AI. I don’t believe that AI will pretty much be able to do everything else.
And so for me, I’m almost figuring out, does this increase community and connection? Is this increase accountability and implementation? Those are the two things that I’m trying to focus on humans, everything else, and I mean everything else from like portfolio management to I believe, sooner rather than later, most people in the industry disagree with the statement that I’m about to make.
I believe people will be able to buy life insurance through AI in three to five years or have an option to be able to do that. I believe that’s going to be a thing. And I believe people for the most part are going to get served better because most people in our space are not doing well and they’re getting way overpaid for the job that they’re doing.
And so if a company is like, hey, by the way, let’s cut out the middleman, pass it along to and make a product better. I’m a fan of that. I know a lot of people are like, how dare you say that, Caleb?
I’m just a fan of like cutting out anything unnecessary friction to give people better offers. And so I believe most people are going to turn into life coaches in just a lot of different spaces because whether it’s an attorney or whether it’s like portfolio management or designing a life insurance policy, I do believe soon those things will be done better by AI versus I, I don’t need to tell you guys, like you guys have all interacted with people that have given you a worse outcome as a human for potentially selling your product.
And all, if you could just go to a place and say, I want the best, most efficient policy period. It’s like, it doesn’t take 101 questions to get to that outcome. I want the best insurance policy period.
That’s for cash. And boom, every company analyzed and it gives you the best policy that those are, those are the things that are coming sooner rather than later. And most of the people in our industry disagree with that statement, but they will be wrong.
Nate Hambrick: So the level of mediocrity and just general life is astounding at some points. And, so whenever I meet people like you, Caleb, who, you improve half a 1% or 1% every single day, the compounding effect of that is AI probably can’t replace you very quickly, but it can replace a lot of people.
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah, I’m like, it’s very peaceful for me. Like AI will destroy us all. And so it’s like, I do not, I’m not on my high horse on anything, which keeps me very motivated to be like, I want to be relevant in five years.
Like that’s my goal. It’s not, how can I be relevant in five years?
Bronson Hill: I love it. Well, Caleb, I really appreciate you, man. I feel like with the And Asset and and talking with you, there’s so much more we could talk about.
So we’ll have to have you back for Caleb and part two. So, um, man, just so appreciate you, your heart, your faith, your, uh, just really desire to help people and, and just, I just really love what you’re doing, man. How can people connect with you, follow what you’re doing, reach out and hear about what’s the latest from you?
Caleb Guilliams: Yeah. So if you’re, if you’re listening to this or watching this and you’re like, I want to learn more about life insurance, I’ll say this. If you email me at [email protected], we will literally get your physical address from you and send you a copy totally on us.
And so if you email me at Caleb at betterwealth.com, any, any of your listeners, I’m more than happy to send them a copy of the, of the and asset book and any other resources, because I do believe it’s not for everybody, but for the person that really wants to be more efficient with how they save and use and protect their family.
I do believe that when set up and use properly, it’s one of the greatest strategies out there. And so that is probably the best way where obviously we’re on YouTube on Better Wealth and go to our website, betterwealth.com, but emailing me and just letting me know that you’ve come from the show, we’ll take care of your, of you and your audience. And so it’s an honor to be here. And I would love to do part two. We could talk, could talk about a lot of different things.
And we did scratch. We, I feel like we scratched the surface on life insurance. There’s a lot more in the weeds, questions that maybe if there’s, if there’s some of your community at once, like, Hey, why don’t you talk about this?
Let’s, let’s compile that. And maybe we’ll do like a part two where it’s like, I love it. Life insurance agencies, one on one questions.
Bronson Hill: We’ll talk about all the weeds and how do you get to get a chicken in less than a minute.
So we’ll get that going. Awesome.
Hey, Caleb Williams, thanks for being here, brother. Appreciate you. We’ll look forward to catching up with you soon.
Awesome. Well, I just love that interview. I feel like Caleb just so much great energy of just how do we really maximize what we have?
And I’ve actually thought of a new way for me, especially with those types of cash value, 95% cash value. That was news to me. So amazing.
When you talk to people like Caleb, you just learn something new about an asset that maybe you even gave up on before. But what were your thoughts?
Nate Hambrick: So I’ve got two big takeaways from that. Number one, his definition of efficiency is removing the friction points between you and your end goal. I thought that was a really, really helpful way of thinking about it.
And he’s right. If you think through every single day, if you think through what are my biggest one or two friction points, and then you find ways of removing those, it’s amazing what you can accomplish. It really is.
And then the second thing is he really sold me on, not sold me on, but I need to start building my children’s banks, right? I need to start investing in their whole life insurance, because when they graduate, it’ll be an asset that they can use to buy real estate, to buy whatever the asset classes that they want to go into. So really, really, really terrific stuff there.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, I even thought about it too. I mean, it’s just, there’s so much we talk about in the wealth form about really helping, our kids to, like, it’s like a conversation that comes up all the time of how do I help my kids to not be a spoiled kid? Or how do I help them to inherit wealth or grow wealth?
How do I teach them about money? And what a great way to start a kid is weeks old and they started insurance policy so they can kind of teach and that’s just what a great way. So with my daughter, I may end up doing that just to try to help her to learn as well.
So Nate, appreciate you. Thanks for being here to our audience. Really appreciate you guys being here.
That was a great conversation. You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with Nate and I, as well as Caleb Guilliams. Hope you reach out to him and connect with us on wherever you can connect.
But thanks for taking the time to educate yourself. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money show.
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