IAM2663 – Financial Strategist Helps Business Owners with Financial Planning and Legacy Building

Transcription:

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Shona Bell Teaser 00:00
Did you know that if there's a… cash balance, a permanent type of policy where you can fund different things in your life. And that's what we talked about with whether it's real estate or franchise that you may be sitting on the funding that you need to start this kind of like wealth generational thing.

If you're thinking a franchise might be for me or a real piece of real estate might be for me, you might be sitting on an asset that you can use where you don't have to go to a bank.

Intro 00:32
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 00:58
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the CEO Chat Podcast, and I have an awesome guest back on the show today. I have Shona Bell. Shona, excited to have you back on the show.

Shona Bell 01:07
Good to be back.

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Gresham Harkless Jr. 01:08
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm super excited to have you on. I had you on our I AM CEO podcast. And one of the really exciting things I have with the podcast, the daily podcast was actually have people back on the show to do a deep dive on like specific topics.

So this has definitely been a long time in the making. We had a phenomenal conversation, but I guess we're obviously going to have the links and information shown us for the previous show.

But for people that might just be listening to this, can you tell us a little bit more about you, what you've been working on and how you're making an impact that you are in the world?

Shona Bell 01:35
Yeah, so it's great to be back. Things have changed a little bit, but I'll keep it short and sweet. I am a certified public accountant and I have joined the entrepreneurial game almost nine years ago. It'll be nine years in March of next year.

Well, I did that because I just wanted to more freedom. I wanted my hard work, at least financially to just, I just wanted to have more, more freedom, more income to set my life up with my husband and children in a way that I can run it the way I'd like.

And because I'm a certified public accountant, I started that journey doing CFO services and partnered with people to do tax work. And then that evolved to me creating a job for myself where I was working more in the business than I was actually spending with that lovely family I was trying to gain freedom for.

So then I just got, learned the entrepreneurial game a little better, partnered more systems, and most recently I've added, well, the tax, I've transitioned to tax strategy, not just CFO work, just because business owners, so many people start businesses or just have these dreams of, you know, making a lot of money.

And being a business owner, not realizing unless you do it the right way, unless you set things up the right way and just strategically just keep taxes on your mind because you can easily make good money and pay half that in taxes and nobody wants to do that. But in addition to that tax strategy normally goes well with financial planning.

So in the past six months I've been qualified to talk about it. I've talked about it for years, but now I have license and I'm actually helping people expand their entrepreneurial dream, expand their life goals dream about, you know, like what does it actually mean to create legacy and generational wealth and real financial freedom?

Like how can the fruits of my labor translate into, having freedom, not just now, but you know, like, I mean, not just in the future, but actually now. So it's been a lot of fun bringing that into my sphere of what I talk about, what I teach, what I help clients do.

And basically, how do you use all of those tools to fund life now versus just, you know, like later. So yeah, that's, that's all of it in a nutshell.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 04:09
Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much and sharing that. And so I would love to hear more a little bit, you know, I know you touched on a little bit on how you're having these conversations, how you're working with, how you're serving those clients, because I think so many times We don't know what we don't know.

And I think that's where these conversations like this are so powerful, because you start to become more aware, like, that isn't just for them. That might be available to me, too, if I know exactly how to do that. So how are you having those conversations?

Shona Bell 04:40
Yeah, so traditionally, a lot of people come to me because they need tax help, you know, I, you know, and that's fine. That's great. However, of course, I have those conversations. But that conversation now always leads to Do you have a financial planner?

And a lot of people, and I meet a lot of people, they're like, no, or they're like, yeah, but I haven't talked to so-and-so. Or, you know, if they left corporate, they just remember, sometimes they remember where their 401k or where their stuff was.

And they remember talking to someone associated with that when they were employed, but they hadn't talked to someone about it in a long time, whatever. So then that opens the conversation of, okay, well, let's have the tax talk and let's have this talk.

And then it goes down a series of questions like, did you know, you know, do you know the difference between term insurance and permanent insurance? Did you know that, you know, if you have a bunch of 401ks sitting around like little I was like, little babies, you wouldn't leave the babies laying around. I mean, they are your babies. You made that money.

You worked hard for it. And then a lot of times people leave them in different places. If that money is dispersed, it's growing. It's not growing as strong as it could if you brought it all together under one place.

Did you know, like if you were some people is fortunate, some unfortunate. It's just perspective was caught up in being let go from the federal government. And some of those people are start using it as an opportunity to start jobs or to find second careers.

But I mean, I would move my money as soon as I possibly can out of those places because it's like, you're not in control.

Whatever you can be in control of, you should. Just get control and just take the blinders off and just get the right advisors around you to move stuff so that you can be prepared for life changes.

Did you know that if there's a cash balance, a permanent type of policy where you can fund different things in your life. And that's what we talked about with whether it's real estate or franchise that you may be sitting on the funding that you need to start this kind of like wealth generational thing.

If you're thinking a franchise might be for me or a real piece of real estate might be for me. You might be sitting on an asset that you can use where you don't have to go to a bank and pay interest on the money, you can create your own bank and fund these things and then rinse and repeat and do it over and over again.

And all the while creating a, like growing an asset that will be there well beyond you. If you start to educate your family around, we're a family and this is what we do when someone's born, when someone's a baby, we do this and then we do it again and again and again.

So I think A lot of people that I meet, the people that know, they know. But there's a lot of people that don't know. And they're just so surprised. They're like, what?

That sounds too good to be true. I'm like, it's true. And that's what they're doing over there. So then a lot of people are like, no, I want to do that too.

So yeah. just expanded the conversation to all those different things and people that are just like in a place where they're ready. And a lot of times when they get to me, they're ready to make a change. They're ready to do something better.

So then they're very receptive to having more of a conversation around those things.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 08:19
Yeah. And that's such a huge thing. And do you feel like a lot of times people don't realize or do you kind of even maybe let people know that wealth building is not something you do after you become wealthy. It's something you do to get wealthy.

It's something you do along the journey. Do you, do you have that conversation a lot?

Shona Bell 08:39
Yeah. A lot of people are waiting for something or a lot of people are just like, they don't feel ready or they want to get, you're perfectly, you're spot on. Like they want to, get to a certain point and then feel like, oh, I have enough or here's the, here's the major misconception that it takes so much to start. And that's not true.

It does not take so much to start someone. This week I had a conversation with someone and she said that she said, how do you address the apprehension or the objection that it costs so much to start permanent policies? I'm like, no, it doesn't. Like, it's what you want, what do you have?

Like, what do you want? What is your goal? And there's so many people that don't, that they, and this was for me too. It's like, I thought I had forever to retire.

I thought I had forever to get to, you know, 65. You don't, you got 65 years. And by the time you're thinking about it, you shouldn't be thinking about it. You're probably 30, 40.

And then really, but if you were 20, thinking about it, oh my goodness, you would be so set. It doesn't take that much and it just takes intention and it just takes Even if, and I know this to be true too, people have money trauma, people have bad relationships and they feel ways about it and they tell themselves.

This is something I'm not good at, or they've made so many mistakes and they just feel like it's just this mountain that they need to climb. A lot of times with taxes, they haven't filed their taxes in years.

It's like, okay, okay, you're not the only one. But if you let those years go by with no intention to make it right or no intention just to start somewhere, you'll be 65 and there'll be nothing there for you versus just making a decision to say, I'm just going to explore and start today. It doesn't take as much effort or as much money as I think people think.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 10:45
Yeah, absolutely. What advice would you give for people that maybe do say that, hey, I do want to start a franchise. Maybe I don't have the funds and maybe I don't at this time, but I want to come back to be able to do that.

What advice would you give for people going or at that step on things that they could do and ways that they could potentially leverage that?

Shona Bell 11:03
So if it's in your spirit or, cause everyone has a purpose. And then, you know, your purpose is what's gnawing at you to do, like you need to do something, but you just haven't done it yet. So if it's gnawing at you, like, I want to be a franchise owner. I want to own something and not start from zero, which is, there's so many advantages to that, right?

And then it's like, okay, where am I going to find the money? Do I go get what, you know, there's so many, loan opportunities and all that kind of stuff, so many funding resources. And if you have good credit, if you put yourself out there, if you get open a business account, they're going to come at you and they're going to come quick.

They're going to come at you. And I would say before they're not all bad, but checking the terms is so important. Like it's so, so important to check the terms of the repayment of the interest of What happens if you don't pay it back by the time? Because if you're not knowledgeable of that, you can get caught real bad.

So before you go that funding route, look at what you already have. Now I've mentioned the family bank. And this really is popularized by the Rockefellers. And that's a book to check out if this topic is gnawing at you.

What would the Rockefellers do? What they did for their family is they created their own bank. Establish a permanent policy first, because then you can borrow against that $100,000. Use that as your bank to do the franchise, because guess what?

That $100,000 will still grow while you're borrowing against it. That money, that cash value, all of that will still grow while you loan money to yourself from it to go and do the franchise. And then, The cool thing about your own bank, you have your own terms.

I would suggest you pay it back unless you're in like the later latter part of life and you may not have time to use it again or whatever.

But if you want to use it again, you say, okay, I'm going to get my franchise cash flowing and then I'm going to pay myself back. and put $1,000, or put $2,000, or put $3,000 back, however many, over a certain period of time. Be a good steward over the process, because that's what the wealthy do. They're good stewards, and they're disciplined over the process, because they know what compound interest is.

They know what the time value of money is. They know what I do today is going to add up to big movements later. So you put the money back. And now you have a franchise that's cash flowing.

And then guess what? You can do it again. You can go and borrow that money back. You don't pay taxes on it.

You establish the interest that you want to pay back on it. And then because it's insurance, there's death benefit. So like, while you're doing this, the cool thing is if your legacy, if you're wealth-building-minded, of course, you're not establishing this thinking about your death. And I've been like, I used to hate death.

I used to like, I don't want to talk about that. I didn't think about it until I lost like three huge people in my life over like within three years of each other. Right. And then I was like in death a lot.

And then what, what upset me even more is that there was no planning. There was no real planning in place. So that if it's like, for me, it's like, I don't want my kids and my family to go through this. No matter, whenever the Lord takes me, I don't want to put anybody through this.

So then it's like, I like talking about that. Cause it's getting deep, right? We all going, we're all going on at some point. And it's like, you got to think about the stress of what you're going to leave behind.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 15:00
Yeah, I love that. And what I want to do now is just kind of pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you did want to let us know. Of course, we're going to have your links and information in the show notes as well, too. But how can people get a hold of you?

How can they connect, have these conversations? And especially like, did you have any closing, closing, closing nuggets for us?

Shona Bell 15:19
For so many, I know so many people or I've even done this for a lot of years where it's like something is inside you telling you to do something. But it's so easy to make excuses. And being a mom, and the kids are an excuse, but they're a delay. They can delay you.

But I would just encourage anyone to say, if there's something in there, Seasons of life will be seasons. Looking further into creating wealth-generating tools, just go find out. Just don't make excuses about time or money, because you just don't know until you know. You don't know until it's a not now, because I feel like if something's in there, it's not a no, it's just a not now.

That would just be what I would encourage people. You guys can contact me on the ways that Gresham's going to share.

Gresham Harkless Jr. 16:16
Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate you so much. And of course, we'll make it even easier by having that information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Shona Bell 16:24
It's been amazing. Thank you so much.

Outro 16:26
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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