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Steven founded Catalyst Advisory to take the experience he gained by working in a family office advisory firm and apply the best practices learned there to other families under an independent umbrella. Catalyst works with the best insurance professionals, wealth management firms, and trusted advisors to solve problems for their clients.
After spending the first decade of his career working with community and regional banks, helping them navigate statement compliance and distribution, and transitioning them to digital platforms, Steven followed his passion to help families and companies thrive by becoming an expert in all areas of life insurance and advanced planning.
In this episode, Steven shares the importance of being open-minded when it comes to financial advice and inviting different perspectives into your life – this way you can learn from their experiences while still maintaining control of your own journey.
Steven explains the advantages of premium finance life insurance, a revolutionary way to save on costs while still benefiting from financial security. He dives into its fundamentals and potential rewards – making it an attractive option for those wanting reliable coverage without breaking the bank!
Get ready to learn the secrets of creating a secure future with this episode! Hear Steven’s cutting-edge advice on how to use life insurance as an effective tool for building financial independence. Don’t miss out on his invaluable insights – tune in now!
In This Episode
- Steven’s background and what drove him to this destination.
- Top mistakes entrepreneurs are making.
- Steven’s life insurance techniques and the benefits.
- The process of setting up a life insurance policy.
- Steven’s ultimate piece of advice to protect your wealth.
Welcome to another episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today, we’re joined by Steven Bowles. Steven founded Catalyst Advisory to take the experience he gained by working in a family office advisory firm and apply the best practices learned there to other families under an independent umbrella. Catalyst works with the best insurance professionals, wealth management firms, and trusted advisers to solve problems for their clients. After spending the first decade of his career working with community and regional banks, helping them navigate statement compliance and distribution and transitioning them to digital platforms, Steven followed his passion for helping families and companies thrive by becoming an expert in all areas of life insurance and advanced planning.
Steven, I’m super excited to have you on the show today. You know, this goes to the core of what we’re all about: trying to create value for our listeners and our community. And, you know, this ultimately is a huge wealth strategy secret of the ultra-wealthy that many folks don’t understand. So, excited to have you on the show today, shed some light on some of the advanced planning solutions and things that you have for wealthy families, and how you’ve been able to deliver that. So, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me on. I enjoy your content. It’s on my short rotation of podcasts that I listen to, particularly when I’m driving places. So, I’m very appreciative of being a part of it and being able to contribute.
Excellent. So, why don’t we start, Steven, with you telling the audience a bit about your background and really how you got into this space? How did things all start for you?
My bio covers some of my background, so I don’t need to rehash that. But really, if I look back on my trajectory of how I got here, the early part of my career was in sales, working with other organizations, business-to-business, networking, and building other people’s businesses. I was very comfortable in that space. It was a space that I was very successful in, but ultimately, my takeaway was I was building that for somebody else.
When I transitioned over to the opportunity to work within the family office advisory group, I was able to transition a lot of that skill set from just knowing how to network and doing business with people that I enjoyed doing business with. That transitioned very nicely, but I was able to add another layer there of working with wealthy families, understanding exactly the way that they think and the best practices from the existing ones, and getting introduced to that and growing out of that position over seven years.
That brought me to a point where I said, “I’m looking at things differently now, very differently than I would have in the past, very differently than most W-2 employees do,” which is, “What am I learning from my clients?” So, I’m there as an adviser, as a part of a group—not a solo adviser—but part of a group and working on wealth transfer and asset protection and so on. However, I started to see a trend in working with these families and how they generated and grew wealth. And a lot of times, if I oversimplified it and distilled it down, it was through operating companies and real estate.
That was a mindset shift for me a few years ago as I started to come to that realization. And I said, okay, I can be doing things a little differently as well. The very mainstream view of kind of saving yourself for retirement is not the path to wealth; it’s not what wealthy families do. Working with a lot of first-generation wealth builders, it’s certainly not how they got there.
And so just starting to layer in how I look at real estate differently, starting to invest there, and how I look at operating companies a little differently, that’s where I discovered the world of syndications. After trying a few different things on the acquisition side, I realized that I had a nice deal flow on the syndication side, and that was a pathway toward layering that into my wealth strategy.
So that kind of took me to this point where, alright, I’ve changed my mindset. I’m investing differently. I’m doing it more like the wealthy clients that are around me, but I’m still an employee ultimately. I’m grateful for the experience that comes with that and so on. But there became an opportunity where there was an event within that organization that kicked off this opportunity for me to start my own thing.
And that’s why it was sort of the inspiration behind the name. There was a catalyst event that said, “Oh, here is the time. I need to go and do this now. I need to build something from this experience and with the network that’s around me that I control if you will. I can do it the way that I think it should be done instead of the way other people think it should be done.”
And that was the start of Catalyst. I launched that in the last year, and we focus on three big areas, one of which we’ll talk mostly about today, which is the advanced planning side for high-net-worth families, best practices, and focusing on wealth preservation and transition once a client has already built their wealth. But we also have a strong focus on business protection, working with business owners. And then a passion project of mine is family protection.
Families need life insurance as a tool for protection. I see it day in and day out, and they need good advice around that, which is independent. So I do include that piece in the business as well.
That’s great. It’s interesting how everyone has some type of catalyst moment, and I like how you included that in the title of your business. Right? There’s always some kind of epiphany that takes people to action. And ideally, it’s a good one, right? It’s something that you’re motivated to do versus the contrary, right, which is you’re driven to take action based on fear or something that’s happened negatively. So, kudos to you for making that transition.
Now, why don’t we frame some of this discussion? I know listeners are anxious to say, “Wow, you’ve worked for some super-wealthy families.” We all want to learn from those experiences and such. So, what would be some of the top mistakes that families or entrepreneurs are making?
That’s a very interesting question. The top mistake I would say is siloing your advisers. What I saw a lot is that wealthy families have good advisers around them because they attract good advisers. Sometimes they have one or two that aren’t great advisers, right? So we can deal with those as we come along.
But ultimately, if the family is the one trying to coordinate all of that, their highest and best use of time and their strength in wealth creation is not that. It’s usually where they invest their businesses and other things. So there’s going to be a lot of leakage through just poor coordination.
What I mean by that is you’ll have a specialist, and the specialist will be good at implementing something that you directed them to do. But if they’re not stepping back and saying, “Where does that fit into this bigger picture?” then it may not be the right fit. You see people saying, “Oh, I’m doing this because my friend did it.” They think because of wealth and, you know, they’re at the same country club and they’re neighbors.
So, “I’m going to do it too. Whatever X is, I’m doing X because my neighbor did X, and it was great for them.” It’s like, okay, well, that’s not enough context to figure out if X was correct. You guys are not, I guarantee you, not as similar as you think.
In the world of actual advanced planning, you’ve got to look at how the assets are owned, what those assets are, and what your goals are. There’s a lot more to it than just saying, “Hey, my neighbor got a foundation. It sounds great. It’s working out well for them. I want a foundation now.” Maybe a foundation is a good idea, but that’s not how you pick it. And I saw that a lot. That was probably the number one thing.
And then what ends up happening is a little bit later when you come along and you’re asking questions, “Hey, why did you do X?” They don’t know. They don’t know where it fits into the overall plan, and that’s okay. But it comes from the fact that it wasn’t a coordinated effort.
It was kind of a sniper effort where we just did this thing because it sounded cool and it has these benefits. And they may only be seeing some of the benefits because it wasn’t correct for them.
Sure. And what do you think, in terms of if people were to start building a team, right? You talked about different advisers, and you know, most of us are familiar with having financial planners. That’s kind of the main adviser in the wealth-building space, right? And what conventional wisdom and Wall Street are saying. But for wealthy families, what kind of team is made up of those advisers?
Certainly, core trusted advisers are going to be a CPA and a trust and estates attorney. And then the broader financial advisor term has multiple buckets as well. So you have wealth advisers that manage assets—they should be a part of it. But you also need to make sure that you have financial advisers who understand alternative assets, that understand where operating companies, real estate, syndications, and other things that you’re likely going to be in, and how that works. Because otherwise, you’re not going to get that part of the perspective, and you do need that. You also need somebody who understands life insurance and understands it a lot more broadly than just the product itself.
What do you mean by that?
What I mean by that is there are a lot of people who can write a life insurance policy. The idea is, okay, well, where does that fit in? What problem is it solving? Because if you go to them with an order, they’re going to fill the order just like an attorney is going to fill an order when you ask for a certain trust. However, you need to have that strategic partner, just like a strategic attorney, who’s going to say, “Well, why are you asking for this? What is it solving? Let’s make sure that’s the right thing. Let’s take a minute, take a step back, and fit it all together.”
Those are some of the important players at the table, and they all need to work well together. So don’t keep them apart; introduce them. Let them have meetings without you. Those are things that are very important.
Just let them share their experience and their perspective on your world because that will actually help them serve you better.
It’s such a great point. As part of our wealth strategy, we talk about really building a team and learning. Having that team around you that can see things in a comprehensive nature, I think, is key to being successful. And often, I think it’s part of our culture and also part of Wall Street. Everything is very productized, right? So you might be looking at a particular product to solve a problem, whereas you need to be thinking about the overall strategy and how you can plug in these specific solutions to get there.
Absolutely.
Steven, given that backdrop, how has that shaped your personal wealth strategy for you? And how are you positioning yourself to be successful?
I alluded to it a little bit already, but it completely shifted my mindset on a lot of things. Think about all the little shifts that you have to go through, Dave, where it’s like when you’re in the W-2 mindset, saving for retirement, and that’s your pathway. Even the way you buy cars is different. The way you buy houses is different. It’s just different. Now, my shift in mindset is, well, every dollar that I spend that doesn’t earn me money, I have a hard time parting with that dollar. I have an easy time parting with dollars that I think are going to generate revenue.
It’s really funny because I often find myself reluctant to spend money on relatively low-ticket items, yet I’m very willing to wire funds to invest in opportunities that I see as cash flow-positive. That’s a significant shift for me over the last few years: caring less about things that can’t earn me more money and focusing more on what can help me grow. It creates this snowball effect.
I’ve also started looking at opportunities opportunistically and building a community around me with people who think similarly—not an echo chamber, but individuals who recognize that there are good opportunities out there, even if they aren’t presented by big banks or firms. Let’s share those opportunities, share our experiences, and learn how to evaluate deals.
One of our mutual friends once told me that while underwriting a deal can be challenging, you’re often underwriting the sponsor and the partner. That resonated with me because if you’ve never worked with self-storage before, for example, you can still ask questions to understand the entry and exit strategies. Ultimately, the success of an investment will depend on the partner and sponsor involved, so that’s a key focus in my strategy.
Additionally, I’m now taking ownership of my future by building a firm designed for scalability. I’m introducing technology and looking for the right people to join my team—not as an advertisement, but I genuinely need the right specialists who can help free up my time for the highest and best use of it.
That’s a big difference, too. I focus on owning businesses, real estate, and various opportunities that can generate cash flow while being cautious with my dollars for things that don’t produce returns. Until I reach a point where I’m super comfortable, I prefer to be frugal.
That’s a substantial mindset shift. Sometimes, I find myself explaining this to my kids. They might think I’m being cheap when I hesitate to spend money on tangible items, but I’m often the first one to send a wire to invest in assets. It’s all about the mindset of viewing spending as an investment.
Even when I take my family out to dinner, I see it as an investment. We’re deepening our relationships and spending quality time together, which is what it’s all about. So, in that sense, it’s an investment for me, rather than just spending money on things that are merely “stuff.”
Exactly, especially coming off the holiday season, when there’s so much emphasis on tangible gifts. It’s really interesting. Regardless of your net worth, that mindset shift to viewing expenditures as investments is significant. You also made some great points about betting on the jockey and not just the horse; that’s a key strategy, right? This is a team sport, especially when you enter this world. Surrounding yourself with the right people is crucial.
That being said, can you share some of your advanced planning techniques and life insurance strategies that you’re using for ultra-wealthy clients?
Absolutely. I appreciate that the conversation up to this point has emphasized the importance of a holistic approach. When someone comes to me seeking a specific strategy, I always take a step back to look at the broader picture. It’s essential to ensure that any strategy is the right fit, designed correctly, and owned appropriately.
One of the strategies that has been effectively utilized for high-net-worth families for the past 40 to 50 years is premium finance life insurance. I’ll explain this conceptually at a high level for those who might be driving and don’t have a whiteboard handy.
For ultra-affluent families—those with a net worth above $25 million, particularly married couples—it’s crucial to consider efficient wealth transfer methods. There are only so many options for removing dollars from your estate, and ideally, you don’t want to gift assets dollar-for-dollar. For instance, if I’m gifting assets to my irrevocable trust, which is designed to be outside the purview of estate taxes, I could write a check for $25 million. However, that would use up my gift exemption dollar-for-dollar.
There are better ways to accomplish this, such as using limited partnership (LP) interests to achieve discounted values. As you delve deeper into advanced planning, you may find that even this isn’t sufficient, particularly if you’re looking to preserve wealth for other asset classes.
This is where premium financing comes into play. In a premium finance scenario, your trust can receive loans directly from banks to purchase life insurance on the grantor.
For example, let’s say you want to fund a $1 million premium into a trust over ten years to obtain a paid-up policy. Instead of gifting $1 million annually, which would consume a total of $10 million of your exemption, the bank funds that $1 million. In this setup, you, as the grantor, are the insured life and also the guarantor for any gap collateral.
Typically, with a $1 million premium in a properly positioned policy, you might see around $750,000 in cash value as a collateral position on the loan. The additional $250,000 needs to be pledged as collateral. If you don’t have trust assets to pledge, the grantor will provide those.
Once the loan is established, the interest on that loan can be gifted to the trust. While interest rates are currently high, the annual interest on a $1 million loan amounts to tens of thousands of dollars rather than the full $1 million.
Each year, you service the interest, the bank pays the premium, and the cash value grows. Eventually, when these policies are designed and funded correctly, you’ll reach a point where the cash value in the policy is sufficient to pay off the loan. At that point, the policy can become “paid up,” meaning there are no further service requirements or interest drags, and no additional premiums need to be deposited into the policy.
You can establish a paid-up whole-life policy or a permanent policy. While it’s possible to do this with Indexed Universal Life (IUL) insurance, I prefer whole life. A paid-up whole-life policy, when placed in a trust, creates liquidity at the moment your family needs it most.
This concept really gained traction back in the 1980s when the exemption was quite low, prompting families to seek ways to transfer assets from their trusts without incurring significant gift or estate taxes. That’s when they started to recognize the advantages of having a well-rounded team. Banks began to realize the potential as well.
Now, we’ve reached a point where banks have entire divisions dedicated to underwriting these types of loans, understanding them deeply, and lending at favorable rates. Most private banks offer these services, and there are additional banks that focus specifically on this lending.
At a high level, that’s the overview. I’d like to touch on another point, but I’ll pause for a moment.
It’s amazing. I hope everyone caught that strategy because essentially what you’re saying is that with the right bank and properly structured policies, the bank is funding your premium, right? That’s pretty magical.
Exactly. They appreciate doing it because it’s a fully collateralized loan from their perspective. If you’re already a private bank client and your bank offers this type of lending, we can structure it in a highly efficient way.
Now, as we record this in January 2022, we’re seeing relatively high interest rates—around 6%—which has raised questions. Advisors who know I specialize in this area have asked me whether this strategy is still effective in a high-interest-rate environment.
Historically, the strategy has involved having a policy that credits dividends, while you borrow against that policy. There’s an arbitrage opportunity that adds efficiency. However, we’re currently experiencing unprecedented interest rate increases in a short period, which we haven’t seen for a long time, if ever.
Regarding that question: the fundamentals of the strategy still work in terms of efficiency. You shouldn’t pursue premium financing solely as an arbitrage play, although it can enhance efficiency. Over a funding period of about 15 years, which is typically the duration for funding and exiting the bank, things will realign, and efficiency will return at different points. Dividends may increase if high interest rates persist, or rates could drop, allowing us to regain the arbitrage benefits.
What I want people to understand is the efficiency gained from borrowing and managing interest. That’s what creates the arbitrage opportunity. There are design strategies available that can help keep some debt off the policy initially, allowing the cash value to grow more quickly in the early years. I wanted to highlight this because it reflects the reality of our current high-interest-rate environment, which hasn’t been seen in quite some time.
Good point! Just as a side note, we’re recording this in January 2023.
Yes, January 2023. The interest rates are relevant to the context we’re discussing.
Can you also elaborate on what is necessary to set up one of these policies? Is there a specific net worth requirement, like $25 million? I’ve heard varying numbers, such as $10 million or $15 million. What’s the benchmark for qualifying to implement this strategy?
If you Google “premium finance,” you might not find the right information because there are programs out there that, in my opinion, aren’t suitable for this purpose. Many people are starting to realize that these programs are not primarily designed for wealth transfer; instead, they aim to leverage bank financing to boost retirement income.
So, I’m advising you not to rely on Google for this. Premium financing is truly meant for high-net-worth individuals, a subjective term I’ll define as those with at least $10 million in net worth. There are some caveats to consider. If you’re a young professional with $10 million in net worth, especially if you’re single, this could still be a fit. However, it’s generally best suited for those with $20 million or more in net worth—individuals who likely have a private banking relationship.
It’s important to have some liquidity due to the collateral requirements, but this strategy is particularly popular among people with operating companies and real estate holdings. They often have illiquid assets that they want to retain in their estate to benefit from a step-up in basis later on. The idea is to avoid liquidating those assets for planning purposes while not wanting to write large checks, especially if they’re still in the process of building their businesses. This approach effectively creates liquidity at the right time for the trust to swap assets.
That makes sense. Steven, could you also explain the split-dollar strategy and how it works?
Technically, premium financing is a type of split-dollar arrangement—specifically, a commercial split-dollar agreement. A split dollar means sharing the benefits of the policy between two parties. In this case, it’s split between the bank and the trust that funds it, and eventually, the bank’s involvement ends.
If we broaden our perspective, split-dollar arrangements can be utilized in various contexts. Businesses use them to fund key person insurance or buy-sell coverage and to retain employees. For highly compensated employees, it can serve as a way to provide benefits beyond standard offerings, often with vesting provisions and a “golden handcuff” effect.
There are also applications outside of business. For families that have reached their lifetime gift exemption limits and are looking to move more assets into trusts while minimizing estate tax implications, privately funding a policy through split dollars can be a viable strategy.
That’s an interesting approach. Before we wrap up, I know many people may not currently have $25 million in net worth. Some are working towards that goal. I’ve been a strong advocate for using whole life insurance as part of a comprehensive strategy to achieve multiple financial objectives. Given your expertise, can you share your insights on whether this strategy is beneficial, who it’s intended for, and what types of benefits people typically see?
Using whole life insurance as a maximum-funded opportunity to create a bank of money is a great strategy. First, for those who might not be very familiar with how life insurance works, especially permanent policies, think of a whole life policy as a chassis. When you take a whole life policy, you can design it in different ways for the same person. When we discuss premium financing, it aligns with maximizing funding to create a bank of money, focusing on max-funded policies. This means we’re putting as much cash into the policy as we can relative to the death benefit while still keeping it classified as a life insurance policy.
For example, you can’t put $100,000 in and expect to have $100,000 of cash without it becoming a Modified Endowment Contract (MEC). The goal is to maintain the benefits of it being a life insurance contract, which allows you to access funds tax-free through withdrawals of basis and loans.
The policy must be designed properly because it’s essentially just a chassis that needs to be in the hands of the right person. I’ve seen the same carrier and product designed incorrectly, which can lead to issues. I often get asked to review portfolios, so I want to clarify how it works, when it doesn’t, and what to watch out for.
For those unsure about where they fit in, knowing there’s a category to consider for a review can be helpful. When you take a policy and max-fund it, you have as much cash in there as legally permitted, which allows the policy to continue growing. You receive dividends each year.
The beauty of Whole Life and mutual companies is that they’re owned by policyholders, so they aren’t beholden to stockholders. Whole-life products typically have a consistent dividend rate. In the current market turmoil, we’re not seeing drastic differences in returns. Most whole-life carriers maintained their dividend rates for 2023, and when they do make adjustments, it’s usually just a change of 10, 15, or 25 basis points within a year. This stability is beneficial for those who want to avoid volatility in this aspect of their financial life.
Once you max-fund the policy, you can access that cash through policy loans. Importantly, while you have outstanding loans, your cash value in the policy can still earn crediting. This means you can deploy capital elsewhere while having access to cash in the policy.
If done correctly, you can have money working in two asset classes simultaneously. You might take a loan from the policy, invest elsewhere, and later pay back that loan, allowing your capital to work for you in two places at once.
Now, I can design these policies all day long and recognize well-structured ones, but I don’t do it alone. I have a partner—the same person who introduced us. The reason I collaborate with them is that in my experience reviewing portfolios containing whole-life policies intended for infinite banking, I’ve noticed that client dissatisfaction often stems from a lack of upfront education and inadequate support or advice after purchasing the policy.
Many clients are sold a policy for a specific purpose, yet they don’t receive the necessary resources or ongoing guidance to achieve their goals. This is a common issue I’ve seen, and it’s precisely why I prefer to partner with someone who can provide that comprehensive support.
When I have an opportunity like that, I bring in my partner at Producers Wealth, who has extensive education on this topic. They help clients understand exactly how to access their policies, ensuring that they don’t end up with a policy they don’t remember the purpose of.
Six months to a year later, clients might find themselves in that situation because all the education was front-loaded just to get them to buy the product in the first place, and then there’s silence afterward. I’ve seen that happen a lot, and it cannot be emphasized enough how important ongoing education and support is. I don’t see it often enough, and I’m not willing to build that system myself. That’s why I rely heavily on a specialist I know, trust, and who excels at providing this support.
That’s such a good point. Using the infinite banking strategy is a process. People often think of it as just a product, like, “Okay, I bought the product and set it in place.” But if you understand that it’s a process and learn how it works, you can leverage it in many ways.
There are so many possibilities with it, and I’m sure you have some great stories and use cases as well. It’s amazing what people can accomplish with it. Going back to your original point, when you’re looking at how this fits into your overall strategy—considering wealth transfer, tax efficiency, liquidity, and other factors—it becomes exponential.
Absolutely. Even how you own those policies can make a significant difference in how they fit into your strategy. You can own these policies without necessarily needing to focus on wealth transfer. Some individuals can benefit greatly from these policies even if they’re not considered high-net-worth based on our earlier discussion.
These individuals may be in a building phase, and there are many advantages to putting cash into these policies and using them as vehicles for growth. I’ve seen it used effectively as a way to educate the next generation on financial management. For instance, the first generation can put policies in place for themselves while also securing policies for their children.
Once those kids graduate from college and step into adulthood, they can be shown how to access capital for needs that they would have previously gone to a bank for. It’s a way of kick-starting their financial education. This approach helps them learn how to manage debt correctly.
Some families take this a step further and create a dynastic strategy. Because they started early, they’re able to utilize those policies in the future to fund successive generations. In three generations, someone might look back and think, “I can’t believe a family member had the foresight to do this. Thank goodness I have this capital and these opportunities to pursue my passions without being tied to a paycheck.” This kind of planning allows them to explore what they truly want to do because someone made an impactful decision long ago, and it has continued to build over time.
For the best advice on wealth, keep your advisors well informed before making a decision.
That’s a great segue into your third point about family and the importance of a family constitution. You mentioned it as one of your key pillars and passions. Can you share your perspective on your work in that space?
There are a couple of aspects to consider. I previously mentioned family protection, which is incredibly important. I’ve seen situations where families, faced with tragedy, are suddenly focused on understanding their insurance options. That’s often the first question that arises when something unfortunate happens.
It’s very important to have that message out there, especially when it comes to families passing on a legacy. It’s crucial to recognize that a legacy isn’t just about finances. In general financial services, it’s easy to think of everything in strictly financial terms. However, when families reflect on their lives and consider what they are passing on to their children, finances are only part of the equation.
We need to ask ourselves, “What does our family stand for?” What values and beliefs do we want to intentionally pass on to our children that go beyond just financial matters? And how do we ensure that these non-financial legacies are communicated effectively?
Encouraging families to think about these aspects while engaging in financial legacy planning can also help free up their time. This allows them to focus on investing in their grandchildren and creating lasting memories and lessons, which can reap huge rewards in their lives. It’s essential to be intentional about this and to make sure we’re not just pigeonholed into the financial side of things.
I love that. It’s such a core component of what a family office stands for in terms of creating those values. Regardless of your net worth today, listeners can take action by starting to establish those values in their family right now. They can create a family constitution and develop habits to pass on those values.
I once saw a chart showing the amount of time we spend with our parents. After leaving home at 18, that time drops significantly—maybe only for holidays or vacations. This continues to dwindle over time. So, it’s vital to instill those important lessons and values at an early age to make a lasting impact.
Steven, if you could give listeners just one piece of advice about how to accelerate, multiply, and protect their wealth, what would it be?
This might sound a bit general, but I would say to be open to alternative paths. It’s essential to move away from the W-2 mindset and the idea of simply 401(k)-ing your way to retirement. Look at what others are doing and why they are successful. Spend some time exploring those options; it’s a worthwhile investment of your time.
The key component is that there is so much education available today. The challenge isn’t finding education; it’s sorting through what is good versus bad. That’s why it’s important to connect with a trusted network and learn from them before making any moves. You can take your time to become comfortable with these new ideas.
Realize that investing in alternative assets isn’t reserved for a select few; anyone can start while still in a W-2 job.
Education is key to making significant progress. Being a lifelong learner, asking questions, and making informed decisions are crucial. If you don’t open your mind to new ideas, you may never move off the dime.
Exactly.
Steven, I can’t thank you enough for your time today. It’s been so insightful. Every time we discuss, I always learn something new. I hope this inspires many listeners to consider alternative strategies within their wealth portfolios. If folks would like to learn more about you or what you’re doing at Catalyst, what’s the best way for them to connect?
My email is [email protected], and my website is catalystadvisory.io. I’ll also have links to some resources we’re creating. I want that site to serve as a hub for quality education. We’re intentionally building it out over the next few months.
Awesome! Thanks again for joining the show today, Steven. I’m grateful for the opportunity.
Thanks, Dave.