Schiralli
It’s my birthday. I bet you weren’t expecting me to say that. No, that’s not the name of my presentation. Today, September 24, is in fact my birthday. I get to spend it with my friends. So I’m going to be selfish. I’m going to make it all about me. That’s what everybody does. So everyone in the room please stand up. Everyone with a birthday from January through June please put your hands out and close them. Everyone else with a birthday from July through December please put your hands out and slightly open them. Now I want everyone to just make a big smile and pretend I just said something hilarious. I told all my friends at home I would post a picture on Facebook, so thanks for playing along.
Takeaways. Why are we all here today? For takeaways. The Top of the Table is the best of the best. But we’re here today to be better than our best. We’re here to make change. Because we all know that the same actions are going to produce the same results. But tiny differences can make huge differences.
My first Top of the Table was just two years ago. I was just excited to be here. And I can tell you one thing. The Branden two years ago had no clue I would be up here speaking to you today. So how did I get up here?
Takeaways. The Top of the Table takeaways for me from Naples and San Francisco have been game-changing. Now I’m the type of person when I have a takeaway that impacts me the way these have, I become a student of it. I want to learn more. So I research similar speakers like Tim Ferris and Tony Robbins, what they’ve done differently to achieve such a high level of success. These new concepts have increased my efficiency, my production, even created more time.
Time. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Lost time is never found.” We all want to maximize it, to do more, faster, so we can be more productive, so we can scratch off that last task that we’d love to on our list. Now my problem was I would be multitasking. I’d be writing an email. I’d be on the phone. I’d be talking to my assistant, all along having lunch at my desk to accomplish more faster. Now my problem was although I know I was working hard, at the end of my day sometimes I really didn’t even know what I got done.
What I decided to do is that, although I knew I was working hard, I knew what I actually had to accomplish because the necessary busy tasks to maintain my practice were day-to-day but there was nothing remarkable enough to make it move forward. Now we’re all hard workers in this room. We wouldn’t be here. But I discovered that working harder is not always working smarter.
Uncomfortable tasks. I want everyone to think of one thing that you’ve been meaning to do but for one reason or another you’ve been consistently procrastinating on. Now I have to ask, whatever popped into your mind, why are you actively avoiding something that’s so important to you? The answer I typically get is, “Branden, I’m too busy. I’ll get to that tomorrow.” So that tomorrow becomes next week. That next week can turn into next month.
The real reason is not that we are too busy, but that it makes us uncomfortable. And anything that makes us uncomfortable, we procrastinate on. What else is more important than that one thing I just made you think of? So what I started doing is making uncomfortable actions a priority. I started telling myself the following: What we do is more important than how well we do it and doing something well does not make it important.
That phrase made me realize just because I was good at those emails and phone calls and those reviews, did not make those things a priority. Yet I was making them one. I realized by staying busy I was just finding ways to avoid my uncomfortable actions. It was procrastination in hiding. And we all know that procrastination is just another word for laziness. So in theory, busyness is a form of laziness. Now you’re probably thinking, “Branden just called me lazy.” I’m not calling you lazy, but are you working smart? Are you doing the right work first?
I quickly realized that I have lots of uncomfortable actions. And if everything is important, nothing is most important. So I prioritize. Every day I write down the top three most uncomfortable actions. I ask myself two questions on each. First question: If I were to complete this one task today, would the rest of my day feel accomplished? The second question: If I completed this task today, would it make those other two tasks easier? Is it a force multiplier that with no distractions I work on this for two hours? Now, two hours is a long time, I know. But what else is more important than that one concept that just popped into your mind?
Now my initial experience with working harder and working smarter, was I was very uneasy. I wasn’t going in a million different directions anymore. But I realized that uneasiness was just created time. I didn’t know what to do with myself. This created time allows all of us to work on the most important actions first, delegate that busy work so we do what we’re best at. Generating income. Now you may not know what you did the rest of your day, but by completing that one uncomfortable action you will feel accomplished. This has propelled my practice as well as my personal life in a way I can’t begin to explain. I have more time. Increased productivity. And less stress. So work smarter not harder. Attack your uncomfortable actions and find your lost time.
Speaking of stress, I recently brought more clarity and stability to my life and lowered my stress through a practice called mindfulness. Now mindfulness is a form of meditation, but stay with me. It’s not this kind of meditation. Have you ever heard of “be where you are or be here now?” Yet we’re all guilty of this and not living in the moment and appreciating the people and the surroundings around us. We all can’t physically be present if we’re worried about something else somewhere else. So, through my research, I found that numerous successful business people, actors and even athletes were all incorporating one particular concept. Mindfulness.
What’s the one thing that separates professional athletes from the pack? It’s not just being big and strong. Not just the physical capabilities. It’s the mental aspect. It’s the mental game that separates the best from the rest. Think about it. Those of you who are football fans — you think Peyton Manning just won that Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos because he’s going to the gym every day? No. All the analysts talk about it: It’s the mental game. That’s what makes him great. And it’s no different for us.
So I figure if it worked for them, it could work for me. So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is simply the art of being still. To appreciate more. Complain less. Let go of the unchangeable and having total awareness of the present moment. If you’re listening to a Top of the Table speaker, be there. Don’t let your mind race off. Embracing the moment keeps us present and takes our focus off even those most uncomfortable actions that we can’t attack at this second. Now studies have shown that meditation can produce more endorphins and dopamine, increasing gamma wave activity. I have no idea what that means. But I do know by increasing those things can actually help with memory recall. It helps us process more information. It could even help us with sleep. Now, I’m not sure about you, but for me those things were pretty attractive. And now I can tell you through personal experience that the results are very real.
Whenever my mind feels like mush now during the day, I don’t work harder and push through anxiety. I sit still for five minutes. I focus on my breathing. I breath through my heart not my head. I recall the last time I was truly happy. You let go of anxiety. This has been like a refresh button on my brain. It’s kind of like sharpening an axe before you go cut down a tree. Yes, the dull axe will get the job done, but not as efficiently. So many of you are probably still thinking, “Branden, no, this isn’t for me.”
If that’s the case, go ask Warren Buffett, Michael Phelps and Peyton Manning how mindfulness has worked out for them. If it’s worked for me, everyone it can work for you. All it takes is a little action to change.
Tony Robbins once said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Action changes things. We are either improving or we are not. There’s nothing in between. We’re here for takeaways. But everything I just spoke about and all the other speakers spoke about is a waste of your and my time if we’re not willing to change. There’s a million different excuses and I used them all. We’re too old. We’re too young. It’s not my identity. People disapprove of it. But typically it’s just because we’re inherently stubborn and we are unwilling to change.
I knew I wanted to return to Top of the Table. But I knew I had to make change. I had to get away from what I was good at, what got me here, so I’d become great and qualify again. Change is foreign. It’s even daunting and we all struggle at it first. People will think we’re bad because we struggle. But we’re not bad at it, you’re just not good at it yet. It takes 21 days to make change. You’ve got to ask yourself, are you better than last year? Last month? Last week? If not, then be excited to change. Know that this can and will improve your life and that’s worth a little sacrifice.
So, work smarter, not harder. Be mindful of your surroundings and embrace change to create a better quality of life. I strive to improve myself in some form every day. I just hope I’ll be able to instill my passion into your lives and maybe one of these takeaways will be your Top of the Table takeaway. Remember, what we know on the inside is meaningless. What we consistently practice is what defines us. And don’t forget the fourth takeaway. Thank you. I look forward to hearing your success stories next year. It’s been an honor.
Langford
Before I get started I want to tell you, if you are an introvert and you don’t speak regularly in front of hundreds of people, then this is a pretty dicey situation. And I’m telling you this because I promised these guys that if I locked up that I would shift into interpretative dance. They secretly may want to see a little bit of that, but I assure you none of us really does. But let’s see how it goes first.
In 2013, my brother-in-law, David, a financial advisor, called me and said, “Hey, do you think joining the Million Dollar Round Table is worth the money?” And my first and immediate response was, “What’s MDRT?” It’s absurd, I know now, but I had no idea. So I looked it up. Went to mdrt.org and realized that I qualified for Top of the Table largely due to our asset management business. I decided to find out if joining was worth the money for myself.
A few short months later I attended my first Top of the Table meeting in San Francisco. The greatest takeaway for me at that meeting leading to action, he spoke about that, was the idea that insurance is the only financial product that bestows dignity on people. If insurance does bestow dignity on people, then I was failing. That’s a tough one to swallow. I realized that, in my practice, while I provide plenty of recommendations, that clients were not implementing those recommendations because I was not motivated or convicted of the value of insurance. And I was definitely ignorant of the dignity created by insurance.
With my business partners, we’d already learned the lessons of making recommendations to get an estate plan, talk to your CPA, only to find out six months later that none of that ever happened. We began to bring in the CPAs, bring in those attorneys. The same thing was happening with our insurance recommendations. I’d make a recommendation, would refer them to myself, six months later nothing has happened.
Coming to the meeting, learning and remembering the dignity of insurance became my motivation to create a system to help clients purchase insurance, purchase additional insurance.
Now it seems weird to talk to the individuals in this room about accountability, however, accountability was the first step in the process I needed to create to encourage insurance discussions in my meetings. Very simply, I created two types of accountability. Internal and external. I have four financial advisors in my practice and internally we would begin to talk with each other on a weekly basis intentionally about insurance solutions for our clients. Very simply, we would look out at three or four weeks of upcoming meetings to see if there were solutions that fit into our clients’ financial plans. As we would complete a case review, we would also consider other clients with similar situations or resources and we would enter those into our tracker, which was just a simple spreadsheet.
Externally we have these partners in the business called wholesalers. And I’ve spent most of my career hiding from them, ignoring their phone calls, avoiding their emails. But as part of my recent conviction regarding the importance of insurance, I started to reach out to them. I called them to talk about products, solutions, other forms of support, specific cases.
It turns out that good external wholesalers want nothing more than to be an accountability partner. The entire infrastructure for most wholesalers is built to provide accountability to the advisors. So I decided to take advantage of their infrastructure. I had a dedicated meeting every three weeks with one of our primary insurance providers. We would alternate between face-to-face and phone meetings. He would bring new ideas to help my clients and prospects and, if I need him, he’ll participate in a meeting. Wholesalers will run as many insurance illustrations as you request. And if there is a limit to what a wholesaler will do for you, I have not yet found it.
In addition to accountability, I needed a system to track client cases. As I mentioned, many times the failure of clients to implement was my fault, not theirs. I made a recommendation to purchase insurance, I referred the client to myself. And then just like with the attorneys and CPAs, nothing would happen. So I built the simplest spreadsheet possible. It had a column for the date, the client name, case design like VUL, IUL, disability, long term care, just some notes. And the spreadsheet was indeed very simple, but it had a profound impact on our practice when I added one more piece of data. And that was that we began to track our stories.
You see, I had plenty of tracking spreadsheets before but the stories changed it. Accumulating and tracking stories used to present recommendations is hard to explain. And it would have been easier if I had known there was a book out there in the MDRT library called “Financial Stories for Planners” or something. It’s like 800 pages long. Took me a year to get 35. Anyway.
Tracking which story was used with each particular client was important. It allowed me to revisit the same story with the client if we incurred objections during the application process or if we needed to reinforce the purchase at contract delivery or later in a review meeting. What we needed to do was help the client remember the emotion that helped them make the purchase in the first place. So I added a tab to my spreadsheet and began accumulating stories.
I realized that providing dignity is rarely an accident and is more emotional than logical even when we’re doing financial planning and math. Clients don’t enjoy future value calculations, what I’m calling the “logic.” But they do love and want to provide for their family, which is the emotional aspect that we need to understand, engage when helping our clients. Helping clients use their emotion, and I don’t mean taking advantage of their emotion, could only be accomplished on purpose. So I created stories from my own experiences, stole stories from others. I rehearsed them. I animated them. And we began to track them.
The result was that I made and implemented more insurance recommendations in each of the last three years then my entire team in the previous 13 years combined. Now I do want to share three of the concepts. I guess, like I said, we have about 35 and there’s 800 waiting in the book out there. These are simple concepts. They can go many directions, but this is just some of what we used.
One of the first things to engage client emotion is the concept of the “bottom of the pile money.” All clients have money that they will use. More clients have money that they might use. The concept that this is best for is for clients who have money that they won’t use themselves. The concept can lead several directions, but most commonly we simply discuss repurposing a little or a lot of the money that clients will not likely use.
One reason to repurpose can include leveraging 1 percent or 2 percent of the portfolio for life insurance premiums to reimburse the family for money that will be lost to taxes. Whether it’s estate tax or tax paid due to income in respect of a decedent, my favorite phrase to say because it’s so hard.
Another version of the conversation can include capital transfer which is repurposing larger amounts from the bottom of the pile. The policy is owned by the client that they intend to give to their children or grandchildren, but they want to maintain control of the assets just in case. Because they’re not quite convinced they won’t use all that money themselves.
The second concept I want to share is the tax triangle. In the United States at least, I don’t know anything about anyone anywhere else, a typical client will have most of their money in the “tax later” status. It’s in their 401(k)s. It’s in their IRAs. They’ll have a little bit in this “tax now” status, the nonqualified “tax as you go” area. And then they will have little to nothing in this “tax never” status, or tax free. The conversation could go many ways, but a common discussion again involves talking about future tax rates. We simply ask the client what direction they think taxes are going to go and the answer is always up.
“So, Mr. and Mrs. Client, if taxes are going to go up, do you want to pay more or less taxes in the future?” The answer is always less. So typically I show the clients how they’re personally positioned with dollar amounts and I can show them the impact of future taxes. And I say, “Mr. and Mrs. Client, do you want to change that scenario?” When they say yes, we begin the discussion of Roth IRA’s, Roth conversions, cash value, life insurance. I know some advisors will put municipal bonds up here in the tax-free status, but we don’t because they’ll incur capital gains from active money management.
Assuming it is right for the client, I explain in more detail how cash value life insurance can help diversify future taxation on portfolio withdrawals compared to a portfolio without the life insurance. In the end it’s pretty simple. Less tax should equal more money. And more money in retirement can mean an improved lifestyle and therefore a greater level of dignity.
The final example is the extended healthcare conversation. Once we’ve established with the client that affording the type of healthcare they want in the future, which directly relates to personal dignity for most people, is a risk and a cost that they can defer to someone, we discuss how to fund extended care events. The language of funding extended healthcare rather than just buying long term care insurance resonates with clients and motivates them to deal with something that they’re in denial about. That they think will never happen to them.
So, even more than with other financial recommendations, I present multiple solutions for the client to choose from. Client choice is vital in this process. And that could be a definition of dignity. Client choice is all we present once we get to this point and the client has decided that they do want to fund their extended care.
From left to right, I educate them on traditional life insurance. We talk about a couple of different hybrid life and long term care products. We can discuss annuity benefits with guaranteed withdrawal benefits. The perspective here is that I’m not selling a product, in fact the client is exercising their own dignity in choosing how to care for themselves at a later date.
With my attendance in San Francisco in 2014, I became driven by the idea that helping clients purchase more insurance was more than just a good idea. Through death benefits, daily benefits, long term care, disability benefits, insurance creates piles of money where none existed before. And I also think that insurance creates, or at a minimum reinforces, dignity where none may have existed before.
So I was able to tell my brother-in-law that joining MDRT was worth the money.
Lewis
Do any of you ever wish you listened to your wife? So right about now that I’m wishing I had listened to my wife all the time she tried to teach me yoga. For me, yoga was just foreplay. Now I realize there is really something to the breathing techniques because I am like, “I could really do that breathing.” So bear with me for a second, I’m going to do my best standing tree pose. Do you feel that? Feels good. Honey, how am I doing?
Thanks for having me here today. Looking forward to sharing what I learned in San Francisco. We had a gentleman who took the Main Platform in San Francisco and talked about your personal why. I don’t know if you remember him, but he was talking about establishing your why versus what is your vocation, what do you do. And it really resonated for me. There were two other gentlemen who joined us. Scott Harrison came in for San Francisco. He started Charity Water. I was just enthralled with his story. And he actually just released a video recently if you saw it. It’s 20 minutes long and well worth watching. Scott is providing fresh water all over the world to developing countries.
Adam came in last year in Naples. And admittedly I didn’t get to a lot of the sessions last year, I was dealing with a lot of stressful situations and it was Naples and I’m from Nova Scotia. So hot sun and a pool just seemed to call to me. But I had met Adam and I chatted with him and I actually talked to his staff. And Sara and I engaged with them and we decided after her birthday, which is December 29, got that right too. Right? So we said, let’s fly down to Guatemala and tour the country and let’s see Adam and his team and really get a feel for what they’re doing.
We spent some time in the country. Went around the facilities. What they’re building is amazing. They’re building a school now every 90 hours. I don’t know if you knew that or not. And I believe that number is actually not even up to speed. Having said that, there was something that was missing for Sara and I and it wasn’t that we weren’t really impressed with the sophistication of Adam and his team and what they’re doing, but Sara and I have started our own foundation in 2010 and have done a lot of volunteerism. Sara is a freelance journalist in Africa. I’ve traveled a lot. I have schools in Peru I support already.
We wanted something more. We wanted to get our hands dirty. And we wanted to engage in relationships. We wanted to insert ourselves. And so with that we decided, “OK. Let’s look at some other options.” So we had already reached out to Dr. Martin, who is a man we heard of through our church. He had a school down there. We went and saw Dr. Martin and right away it resonated for us. We were like, “OK. There’s something to this. We can actually spend some time with these guys and we can get our hands dirty.” We have five kids now that we support at that school. One of them lost his entire family recently and I’ve been pen-palling with him. It’s what we were looking for. It fed our souls.
Before I go any further, what I’d like you to do as I’m talking, is to engage with you guys. I want you to think about what’s your personal why. I’m going to take you back to San Francisco. Think about that as I go. It’s personal. It’s something that you’re passionate about and for every one of us that’s different.
My why was galvanized in 1991. June 23, 1991. Whether I was ready for it or not. It was a beautiful sunny day in Nova Scotia, a place called Sandy Cove that I know very well. And my father and I went scuba diving. We were spearfishing flounder and he drowned. I was barely 15 and I was thrust into adulthood whether I was ready for it or not. With the loss of my father, the combined lack of planning for such an event, my family was plunged into a new reality. We were living below the poverty line in a very short period of time and I was not rescued, not unlike a lot of the kids that Kevin talked about on Thursday morning. So that resonated for me.
So for me, my why was being solidified with each day, month, year, whether I was ready for it or not. I’d lost leadership that only a father can provide a young man. And in and of itself, the challenge for anyone who’s gone through the loss of a parent, it’s difficult. I’m sure all of you have lost loved ones. But I was dealing with the trauma of the actual event because I in the water with him and I watched him take his last breath. I was there when the paramedics pulled him onto the beach and another diver went and helped me retrieve him. I found myself struggling to get through high school as a result of this. At one point I was living out of my car, working two jobs and battling the anger and frustration that my family and I were experiencing, my sisters, my mom and I.
I had lost faith and I was a ship without a rudder. And it’s time like these, as we heard from Kevin, that so many kids lose their way and are lost to society. And I was deftly slipping off that slope.
Thankfully, that’s not how my story went. My sisters and I all managed to get scholarships. We got through university without any debt. We had to work hard, there was no doubt about it, because there was no money. And I had some amazing mentors that entered my life. And that’s true to this day. Amazing men and women who influenced my life powerfully. And although I felt I was a ship without a rudder, or at times without a ship at all, my story started to improve. I rediscovered my faith. I definitely found my hope in a future.
Since then, my personal mandate has been laser focused. When we engage with people, whether it’s friends, family, work, our philanthropic time, our money, Sara and I are clear on what our purpose is. It’s a deep sense of compassion for at-risk youth, because I was one of them. I ask myself, how does this fit with my personal values, with my faith? How does it fit in terms of trying to help the Jonathan’s of the world and my sisters?
Let me give you an example of my why taking shape. The Teen Challenge organization is a worldwide organization that I’m sure some of you have heard of. I know there are already 26 facilities just in Canada, but they’re all over the world. And they help young men and women who struggle with addictions. Given my teen years in the wake of my father’s death and the resulting emotional fallout, I only now realize how much at-risk I actually was. What I mean by this is, these kids who are in these storms of life, as we learned from Kevin, don’t realize the gravity of the choices that they’re making while they’re in the midst of storm. They’re desperate for hope. I see it in their eyes. They want mentorship, leadership, guidance, someone to tell them they’re worth something, someone to tell them that they’re just loved, that they have value. I have more in common, ironically, with these young men when I meet with them. Even to this day, I find it hard to connect with people at a function like this. Is that crazy? But when I’m there, I feel like I’m at home.
I’ve gotten through the storm, so I can reach out to them and I can encourage them. I let them know, “Hey guys, there are better waters ahead. This doesn’t define you. The past is a place of reference, not a place to dwell.” They have that in the Teen Challenge Center where I spend time with these guys.
My life could have gone in many directions and although I spent time living out of my car and even out of a tent, at one point I managed to get my scholarships to university. I completed my degree. Did a double major in finance and accounting. I ended up in the Canadian Armed Forces as an officer and was actually one of the youngest guys to make captain with Whiskey Battery in Gagetown.
Because I so easily could have ended up being one of these kids and being in their shoes, and one might argue I did, somehow I managed to find my way. I do believe it was with the mentors who helped me. As I mentioned, I had some amazing mentors, which remains true to this day. I’ve increasingly realized as I spend time with young men at Teen Challenge cooking them dinners, listening to their stories, connecting with them, the true importance of mentorship. By letting them know that they’re loved and have value just like me, these young men just take back their lives. It’s awesome to see. They grow and find strength in spirit. They step up as men. And before, these men found themselves screaming inside at life’s pressures and feeling completely alone and inadequate. I can relate to them so much because I don’t have to see myself in their eyes. I feel their pain. I know what they’re going through. And one might argue I was one of them.
Because of this, compassion for them comes easy for me. And I don’t have to work to see things through their eyes at all. I have a passion for each of them and that is my why. It’s increasingly clear each day. As I said, my why is compassion for these guys whether they’re in a third world country or they’re right in Nova Scotia.
So, with that I know my why is reflected in my interaction with my clients, my employees, my friends and my family. I’m constantly challenging people with deep personal questions and I’m always prepared to be vulnerable first. I really appreciated that about Daymond this morning, when he talked about his kids. I love that, that willingness to be vulnerable. I wish we did it more.
My what, like all of you, is simply to help my clients plan for their retirement. The risk management. Planning for their future. Their kids. But my why is to impact them by challenging them to think beyond that. To stretch their philanthropic wings. To ignite something in them they didn’t know was there and in so doing feed their soul. I’d like to thank you today for having me here and letting me share my story. As I depart, I’d like to encourage you to break down these three questions. What do you care about? What are you passionate about? What makes you tick? That thing that gets you excited in the morning. What’s your why? Thanks for sharing. Thanks for letting me share with you.
It’s my birthday. I bet you weren’t expecting me to say that. No, that’s not the name of my presentation. Today, September 24, is in fact my birthday. I get to spend it with my friends. So I’m going to be selfish. I’m going to make it all about me. That’s what everybody does. So everyone in the room please stand up. Everyone with a birthday from January through June please put your hands out and close them. Everyone else with a birthday from July through December please put your hands out and slightly open them. Now I want everyone to just make a big smile and pretend I just said something hilarious. I told all my friends at home I would post a picture on Facebook, so thanks for playing along.
Takeaways. Why are we all here today? For takeaways. The Top of the Table is the best of the best. But we’re here today to be better than our best. We’re here to make change. Because we all know that the same actions are going to produce the same results. But tiny differences can make huge differences.
My first Top of the Table was just two years ago. I was just excited to be here. And I can tell you one thing. The Branden two years ago had no clue I would be up here speaking to you today. So how did I get up here?
Takeaways. The Top of the Table takeaways for me from Naples and San Francisco have been game-changing. Now I’m the type of person when I have a takeaway that impacts me the way these have, I become a student of it. I want to learn more. So I research similar speakers like Tim Ferris and Tony Robbins, what they’ve done differently to achieve such a high level of success. These new concepts have increased my efficiency, my production, even created more time.
Time. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Lost time is never found.” We all want to maximize it, to do more, faster, so we can be more productive, so we can scratch off that last task that we’d love to on our list. Now my problem was I would be multitasking. I’d be writing an email. I’d be on the phone. I’d be talking to my assistant, all along having lunch at my desk to accomplish more faster. Now my problem was although I know I was working hard, at the end of my day sometimes I really didn’t even know what I got done.
What I decided to do is that, although I knew I was working hard, I knew what I actually had to accomplish because the necessary busy tasks to maintain my practice were day-to-day but there was nothing remarkable enough to make it move forward. Now we’re all hard workers in this room. We wouldn’t be here. But I discovered that working harder is not always working smarter.
Uncomfortable tasks. I want everyone to think of one thing that you’ve been meaning to do but for one reason or another you’ve been consistently procrastinating on. Now I have to ask, whatever popped into your mind, why are you actively avoiding something that’s so important to you? The answer I typically get is, “Branden, I’m too busy. I’ll get to that tomorrow.” So that tomorrow becomes next week. That next week can turn into next month.
The real reason is not that we are too busy, but that it makes us uncomfortable. And anything that makes us uncomfortable, we procrastinate on. What else is more important than that one thing I just made you think of? So what I started doing is making uncomfortable actions a priority. I started telling myself the following: What we do is more important than how well we do it and doing something well does not make it important.
That phrase made me realize just because I was good at those emails and phone calls and those reviews, did not make those things a priority. Yet I was making them one. I realized by staying busy I was just finding ways to avoid my uncomfortable actions. It was procrastination in hiding. And we all know that procrastination is just another word for laziness. So in theory, busyness is a form of laziness. Now you’re probably thinking, “Branden just called me lazy.” I’m not calling you lazy, but are you working smart? Are you doing the right work first?
I quickly realized that I have lots of uncomfortable actions. And if everything is important, nothing is most important. So I prioritize. Every day I write down the top three most uncomfortable actions. I ask myself two questions on each. First question: If I were to complete this one task today, would the rest of my day feel accomplished? The second question: If I completed this task today, would it make those other two tasks easier? Is it a force multiplier that with no distractions I work on this for two hours? Now, two hours is a long time, I know. But what else is more important than that one concept that just popped into your mind?
Now my initial experience with working harder and working smarter, was I was very uneasy. I wasn’t going in a million different directions anymore. But I realized that uneasiness was just created time. I didn’t know what to do with myself. This created time allows all of us to work on the most important actions first, delegate that busy work so we do what we’re best at. Generating income. Now you may not know what you did the rest of your day, but by completing that one uncomfortable action you will feel accomplished. This has propelled my practice as well as my personal life in a way I can’t begin to explain. I have more time. Increased productivity. And less stress. So work smarter not harder. Attack your uncomfortable actions and find your lost time.
Speaking of stress, I recently brought more clarity and stability to my life and lowered my stress through a practice called mindfulness. Now mindfulness is a form of meditation, but stay with me. It’s not this kind of meditation. Have you ever heard of “be where you are or be here now?” Yet we’re all guilty of this and not living in the moment and appreciating the people and the surroundings around us. We all can’t physically be present if we’re worried about something else somewhere else. So, through my research, I found that numerous successful business people, actors and even athletes were all incorporating one particular concept. Mindfulness.
What’s the one thing that separates professional athletes from the pack? It’s not just being big and strong. Not just the physical capabilities. It’s the mental aspect. It’s the mental game that separates the best from the rest. Think about it. Those of you who are football fans — you think Peyton Manning just won that Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos because he’s going to the gym every day? No. All the analysts talk about it: It’s the mental game. That’s what makes him great. And it’s no different for us.
So I figure if it worked for them, it could work for me. So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is simply the art of being still. To appreciate more. Complain less. Let go of the unchangeable and having total awareness of the present moment. If you’re listening to a Top of the Table speaker, be there. Don’t let your mind race off. Embracing the moment keeps us present and takes our focus off even those most uncomfortable actions that we can’t attack at this second. Now studies have shown that meditation can produce more endorphins and dopamine, increasing gamma wave activity. I have no idea what that means. But I do know by increasing those things can actually help with memory recall. It helps us process more information. It could even help us with sleep. Now, I’m not sure about you, but for me those things were pretty attractive. And now I can tell you through personal experience that the results are very real.
Whenever my mind feels like mush now during the day, I don’t work harder and push through anxiety. I sit still for five minutes. I focus on my breathing. I breath through my heart not my head. I recall the last time I was truly happy. You let go of anxiety. This has been like a refresh button on my brain. It’s kind of like sharpening an axe before you go cut down a tree. Yes, the dull axe will get the job done, but not as efficiently. So many of you are probably still thinking, “Branden, no, this isn’t for me.”
If that’s the case, go ask Warren Buffett, Michael Phelps and Peyton Manning how mindfulness has worked out for them. If it’s worked for me, everyone it can work for you. All it takes is a little action to change.
Tony Robbins once said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Action changes things. We are either improving or we are not. There’s nothing in between. We’re here for takeaways. But everything I just spoke about and all the other speakers spoke about is a waste of your and my time if we’re not willing to change. There’s a million different excuses and I used them all. We’re too old. We’re too young. It’s not my identity. People disapprove of it. But typically it’s just because we’re inherently stubborn and we are unwilling to change.
I knew I wanted to return to Top of the Table. But I knew I had to make change. I had to get away from what I was good at, what got me here, so I’d become great and qualify again. Change is foreign. It’s even daunting and we all struggle at it first. People will think we’re bad because we struggle. But we’re not bad at it, you’re just not good at it yet. It takes 21 days to make change. You’ve got to ask yourself, are you better than last year? Last month? Last week? If not, then be excited to change. Know that this can and will improve your life and that’s worth a little sacrifice.
So, work smarter, not harder. Be mindful of your surroundings and embrace change to create a better quality of life. I strive to improve myself in some form every day. I just hope I’ll be able to instill my passion into your lives and maybe one of these takeaways will be your Top of the Table takeaway. Remember, what we know on the inside is meaningless. What we consistently practice is what defines us. And don’t forget the fourth takeaway. Thank you. I look forward to hearing your success stories next year. It’s been an honor.
Langford
Before I get started I want to tell you, if you are an introvert and you don’t speak regularly in front of hundreds of people, then this is a pretty dicey situation. And I’m telling you this because I promised these guys that if I locked up that I would shift into interpretative dance. They secretly may want to see a little bit of that, but I assure you none of us really does. But let’s see how it goes first.
In 2013, my brother-in-law, David, a financial advisor, called me and said, “Hey, do you think joining the Million Dollar Round Table is worth the money?” And my first and immediate response was, “What’s MDRT?” It’s absurd, I know now, but I had no idea. So I looked it up. Went to mdrt.org and realized that I qualified for Top of the Table largely due to our asset management business. I decided to find out if joining was worth the money for myself.
A few short months later I attended my first Top of the Table meeting in San Francisco. The greatest takeaway for me at that meeting leading to action, he spoke about that, was the idea that insurance is the only financial product that bestows dignity on people. If insurance does bestow dignity on people, then I was failing. That’s a tough one to swallow. I realized that, in my practice, while I provide plenty of recommendations, that clients were not implementing those recommendations because I was not motivated or convicted of the value of insurance. And I was definitely ignorant of the dignity created by insurance.
With my business partners, we’d already learned the lessons of making recommendations to get an estate plan, talk to your CPA, only to find out six months later that none of that ever happened. We began to bring in the CPAs, bring in those attorneys. The same thing was happening with our insurance recommendations. I’d make a recommendation, would refer them to myself, six months later nothing has happened.
Coming to the meeting, learning and remembering the dignity of insurance became my motivation to create a system to help clients purchase insurance, purchase additional insurance.
Now it seems weird to talk to the individuals in this room about accountability, however, accountability was the first step in the process I needed to create to encourage insurance discussions in my meetings. Very simply, I created two types of accountability. Internal and external. I have four financial advisors in my practice and internally we would begin to talk with each other on a weekly basis intentionally about insurance solutions for our clients. Very simply, we would look out at three or four weeks of upcoming meetings to see if there were solutions that fit into our clients’ financial plans. As we would complete a case review, we would also consider other clients with similar situations or resources and we would enter those into our tracker, which was just a simple spreadsheet.
Externally we have these partners in the business called wholesalers. And I’ve spent most of my career hiding from them, ignoring their phone calls, avoiding their emails. But as part of my recent conviction regarding the importance of insurance, I started to reach out to them. I called them to talk about products, solutions, other forms of support, specific cases.
It turns out that good external wholesalers want nothing more than to be an accountability partner. The entire infrastructure for most wholesalers is built to provide accountability to the advisors. So I decided to take advantage of their infrastructure. I had a dedicated meeting every three weeks with one of our primary insurance providers. We would alternate between face-to-face and phone meetings. He would bring new ideas to help my clients and prospects and, if I need him, he’ll participate in a meeting. Wholesalers will run as many insurance illustrations as you request. And if there is a limit to what a wholesaler will do for you, I have not yet found it.
In addition to accountability, I needed a system to track client cases. As I mentioned, many times the failure of clients to implement was my fault, not theirs. I made a recommendation to purchase insurance, I referred the client to myself. And then just like with the attorneys and CPAs, nothing would happen. So I built the simplest spreadsheet possible. It had a column for the date, the client name, case design like VUL, IUL, disability, long term care, just some notes. And the spreadsheet was indeed very simple, but it had a profound impact on our practice when I added one more piece of data. And that was that we began to track our stories.
You see, I had plenty of tracking spreadsheets before but the stories changed it. Accumulating and tracking stories used to present recommendations is hard to explain. And it would have been easier if I had known there was a book out there in the MDRT library called “Financial Stories for Planners” or something. It’s like 800 pages long. Took me a year to get 35. Anyway.
Tracking which story was used with each particular client was important. It allowed me to revisit the same story with the client if we incurred objections during the application process or if we needed to reinforce the purchase at contract delivery or later in a review meeting. What we needed to do was help the client remember the emotion that helped them make the purchase in the first place. So I added a tab to my spreadsheet and began accumulating stories.
I realized that providing dignity is rarely an accident and is more emotional than logical even when we’re doing financial planning and math. Clients don’t enjoy future value calculations, what I’m calling the “logic.” But they do love and want to provide for their family, which is the emotional aspect that we need to understand, engage when helping our clients. Helping clients use their emotion, and I don’t mean taking advantage of their emotion, could only be accomplished on purpose. So I created stories from my own experiences, stole stories from others. I rehearsed them. I animated them. And we began to track them.
The result was that I made and implemented more insurance recommendations in each of the last three years then my entire team in the previous 13 years combined. Now I do want to share three of the concepts. I guess, like I said, we have about 35 and there’s 800 waiting in the book out there. These are simple concepts. They can go many directions, but this is just some of what we used.
One of the first things to engage client emotion is the concept of the “bottom of the pile money.” All clients have money that they will use. More clients have money that they might use. The concept that this is best for is for clients who have money that they won’t use themselves. The concept can lead several directions, but most commonly we simply discuss repurposing a little or a lot of the money that clients will not likely use.
One reason to repurpose can include leveraging 1 percent or 2 percent of the portfolio for life insurance premiums to reimburse the family for money that will be lost to taxes. Whether it’s estate tax or tax paid due to income in respect of a decedent, my favorite phrase to say because it’s so hard.
Another version of the conversation can include capital transfer which is repurposing larger amounts from the bottom of the pile. The policy is owned by the client that they intend to give to their children or grandchildren, but they want to maintain control of the assets just in case. Because they’re not quite convinced they won’t use all that money themselves.
The second concept I want to share is the tax triangle. In the United States at least, I don’t know anything about anyone anywhere else, a typical client will have most of their money in the “tax later” status. It’s in their 401(k)s. It’s in their IRAs. They’ll have a little bit in this “tax now” status, the nonqualified “tax as you go” area. And then they will have little to nothing in this “tax never” status, or tax free. The conversation could go many ways, but a common discussion again involves talking about future tax rates. We simply ask the client what direction they think taxes are going to go and the answer is always up.
“So, Mr. and Mrs. Client, if taxes are going to go up, do you want to pay more or less taxes in the future?” The answer is always less. So typically I show the clients how they’re personally positioned with dollar amounts and I can show them the impact of future taxes. And I say, “Mr. and Mrs. Client, do you want to change that scenario?” When they say yes, we begin the discussion of Roth IRA’s, Roth conversions, cash value, life insurance. I know some advisors will put municipal bonds up here in the tax-free status, but we don’t because they’ll incur capital gains from active money management.
Assuming it is right for the client, I explain in more detail how cash value life insurance can help diversify future taxation on portfolio withdrawals compared to a portfolio without the life insurance. In the end it’s pretty simple. Less tax should equal more money. And more money in retirement can mean an improved lifestyle and therefore a greater level of dignity.
The final example is the extended healthcare conversation. Once we’ve established with the client that affording the type of healthcare they want in the future, which directly relates to personal dignity for most people, is a risk and a cost that they can defer to someone, we discuss how to fund extended care events. The language of funding extended healthcare rather than just buying long term care insurance resonates with clients and motivates them to deal with something that they’re in denial about. That they think will never happen to them.
So, even more than with other financial recommendations, I present multiple solutions for the client to choose from. Client choice is vital in this process. And that could be a definition of dignity. Client choice is all we present once we get to this point and the client has decided that they do want to fund their extended care.
From left to right, I educate them on traditional life insurance. We talk about a couple of different hybrid life and long term care products. We can discuss annuity benefits with guaranteed withdrawal benefits. The perspective here is that I’m not selling a product, in fact the client is exercising their own dignity in choosing how to care for themselves at a later date.
With my attendance in San Francisco in 2014, I became driven by the idea that helping clients purchase more insurance was more than just a good idea. Through death benefits, daily benefits, long term care, disability benefits, insurance creates piles of money where none existed before. And I also think that insurance creates, or at a minimum reinforces, dignity where none may have existed before.
So I was able to tell my brother-in-law that joining MDRT was worth the money.
Lewis
Do any of you ever wish you listened to your wife? So right about now that I’m wishing I had listened to my wife all the time she tried to teach me yoga. For me, yoga was just foreplay. Now I realize there is really something to the breathing techniques because I am like, “I could really do that breathing.” So bear with me for a second, I’m going to do my best standing tree pose. Do you feel that? Feels good. Honey, how am I doing?
Thanks for having me here today. Looking forward to sharing what I learned in San Francisco. We had a gentleman who took the Main Platform in San Francisco and talked about your personal why. I don’t know if you remember him, but he was talking about establishing your why versus what is your vocation, what do you do. And it really resonated for me. There were two other gentlemen who joined us. Scott Harrison came in for San Francisco. He started Charity Water. I was just enthralled with his story. And he actually just released a video recently if you saw it. It’s 20 minutes long and well worth watching. Scott is providing fresh water all over the world to developing countries.
Adam came in last year in Naples. And admittedly I didn’t get to a lot of the sessions last year, I was dealing with a lot of stressful situations and it was Naples and I’m from Nova Scotia. So hot sun and a pool just seemed to call to me. But I had met Adam and I chatted with him and I actually talked to his staff. And Sara and I engaged with them and we decided after her birthday, which is December 29, got that right too. Right? So we said, let’s fly down to Guatemala and tour the country and let’s see Adam and his team and really get a feel for what they’re doing.
We spent some time in the country. Went around the facilities. What they’re building is amazing. They’re building a school now every 90 hours. I don’t know if you knew that or not. And I believe that number is actually not even up to speed. Having said that, there was something that was missing for Sara and I and it wasn’t that we weren’t really impressed with the sophistication of Adam and his team and what they’re doing, but Sara and I have started our own foundation in 2010 and have done a lot of volunteerism. Sara is a freelance journalist in Africa. I’ve traveled a lot. I have schools in Peru I support already.
We wanted something more. We wanted to get our hands dirty. And we wanted to engage in relationships. We wanted to insert ourselves. And so with that we decided, “OK. Let’s look at some other options.” So we had already reached out to Dr. Martin, who is a man we heard of through our church. He had a school down there. We went and saw Dr. Martin and right away it resonated for us. We were like, “OK. There’s something to this. We can actually spend some time with these guys and we can get our hands dirty.” We have five kids now that we support at that school. One of them lost his entire family recently and I’ve been pen-palling with him. It’s what we were looking for. It fed our souls.
Before I go any further, what I’d like you to do as I’m talking, is to engage with you guys. I want you to think about what’s your personal why. I’m going to take you back to San Francisco. Think about that as I go. It’s personal. It’s something that you’re passionate about and for every one of us that’s different.
My why was galvanized in 1991. June 23, 1991. Whether I was ready for it or not. It was a beautiful sunny day in Nova Scotia, a place called Sandy Cove that I know very well. And my father and I went scuba diving. We were spearfishing flounder and he drowned. I was barely 15 and I was thrust into adulthood whether I was ready for it or not. With the loss of my father, the combined lack of planning for such an event, my family was plunged into a new reality. We were living below the poverty line in a very short period of time and I was not rescued, not unlike a lot of the kids that Kevin talked about on Thursday morning. So that resonated for me.
So for me, my why was being solidified with each day, month, year, whether I was ready for it or not. I’d lost leadership that only a father can provide a young man. And in and of itself, the challenge for anyone who’s gone through the loss of a parent, it’s difficult. I’m sure all of you have lost loved ones. But I was dealing with the trauma of the actual event because I in the water with him and I watched him take his last breath. I was there when the paramedics pulled him onto the beach and another diver went and helped me retrieve him. I found myself struggling to get through high school as a result of this. At one point I was living out of my car, working two jobs and battling the anger and frustration that my family and I were experiencing, my sisters, my mom and I.
I had lost faith and I was a ship without a rudder. And it’s time like these, as we heard from Kevin, that so many kids lose their way and are lost to society. And I was deftly slipping off that slope.
Thankfully, that’s not how my story went. My sisters and I all managed to get scholarships. We got through university without any debt. We had to work hard, there was no doubt about it, because there was no money. And I had some amazing mentors that entered my life. And that’s true to this day. Amazing men and women who influenced my life powerfully. And although I felt I was a ship without a rudder, or at times without a ship at all, my story started to improve. I rediscovered my faith. I definitely found my hope in a future.
Since then, my personal mandate has been laser focused. When we engage with people, whether it’s friends, family, work, our philanthropic time, our money, Sara and I are clear on what our purpose is. It’s a deep sense of compassion for at-risk youth, because I was one of them. I ask myself, how does this fit with my personal values, with my faith? How does it fit in terms of trying to help the Jonathan’s of the world and my sisters?
Let me give you an example of my why taking shape. The Teen Challenge organization is a worldwide organization that I’m sure some of you have heard of. I know there are already 26 facilities just in Canada, but they’re all over the world. And they help young men and women who struggle with addictions. Given my teen years in the wake of my father’s death and the resulting emotional fallout, I only now realize how much at-risk I actually was. What I mean by this is, these kids who are in these storms of life, as we learned from Kevin, don’t realize the gravity of the choices that they’re making while they’re in the midst of storm. They’re desperate for hope. I see it in their eyes. They want mentorship, leadership, guidance, someone to tell them they’re worth something, someone to tell them that they’re just loved, that they have value. I have more in common, ironically, with these young men when I meet with them. Even to this day, I find it hard to connect with people at a function like this. Is that crazy? But when I’m there, I feel like I’m at home.
I’ve gotten through the storm, so I can reach out to them and I can encourage them. I let them know, “Hey guys, there are better waters ahead. This doesn’t define you. The past is a place of reference, not a place to dwell.” They have that in the Teen Challenge Center where I spend time with these guys.
My life could have gone in many directions and although I spent time living out of my car and even out of a tent, at one point I managed to get my scholarships to university. I completed my degree. Did a double major in finance and accounting. I ended up in the Canadian Armed Forces as an officer and was actually one of the youngest guys to make captain with Whiskey Battery in Gagetown.
Because I so easily could have ended up being one of these kids and being in their shoes, and one might argue I did, somehow I managed to find my way. I do believe it was with the mentors who helped me. As I mentioned, I had some amazing mentors, which remains true to this day. I’ve increasingly realized as I spend time with young men at Teen Challenge cooking them dinners, listening to their stories, connecting with them, the true importance of mentorship. By letting them know that they’re loved and have value just like me, these young men just take back their lives. It’s awesome to see. They grow and find strength in spirit. They step up as men. And before, these men found themselves screaming inside at life’s pressures and feeling completely alone and inadequate. I can relate to them so much because I don’t have to see myself in their eyes. I feel their pain. I know what they’re going through. And one might argue I was one of them.
Because of this, compassion for them comes easy for me. And I don’t have to work to see things through their eyes at all. I have a passion for each of them and that is my why. It’s increasingly clear each day. As I said, my why is compassion for these guys whether they’re in a third world country or they’re right in Nova Scotia.
So, with that I know my why is reflected in my interaction with my clients, my employees, my friends and my family. I’m constantly challenging people with deep personal questions and I’m always prepared to be vulnerable first. I really appreciated that about Daymond this morning, when he talked about his kids. I love that, that willingness to be vulnerable. I wish we did it more.
My what, like all of you, is simply to help my clients plan for their retirement. The risk management. Planning for their future. Their kids. But my why is to impact them by challenging them to think beyond that. To stretch their philanthropic wings. To ignite something in them they didn’t know was there and in so doing feed their soul. I’d like to thank you today for having me here and letting me share my story. As I depart, I’d like to encourage you to break down these three questions. What do you care about? What are you passionate about? What makes you tick? That thing that gets you excited in the morning. What’s your why? Thanks for sharing. Thanks for letting me share with you.
