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Episode 485 — Leadership Powered by Common Sense with Doug Thorpe | Guest: Mark Willis, CFP®
Introduction
Well, hey, everybody, Doug Thorpe here. Do you have your financial house in order?
If you are looking at making your corporate gig a long term career, or if you own and run a business, the way you plan and think about your own wealth and financial freedom is an important consideration. And today, my guest is going to help us get into that. His name is Mark Willis. Mark, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks, Doug, for having me on.
Meet the Guest: Mark Willis, CFP®
You bet. Give us a little backstory, Mark. I always like to ask my guest to explain a little bit of their journey that got them into the game they’re in right now.
Sure. It’s been a great privilege and honor to work with clients in all 50 states. We work with business owners, real estate investors, even some Super Bowl champions. But most people I work with, Doug, are just looking for more certainty and agency and predictability in their financial part of their life because the rest of the world, their business, their family life, it could be very tumultuous, could have a lot of volatility in the economy.
And I don’t think whenever you’re watching this or listening to this, I’m betting I don’t know what the market’s going to be doing when you’re listening. Is it an up day a down day. What I can promise is that volatility will still be a thing whenever you’re consuming today’s episode.
Starting From Zero: A Story of Grit During the Great Recession
So, you know, part of my backstory is just that I started work in the Great Recession, actually I graduated — we were just talking — from my alma mater there in Abilene, Texas, and it was in 2008, a great time to be looking for work. Doug, if you can remember back to those days, and certainly I graduated with six figures in student loan debt.
So let’s think about that. Just, you know, as a microcosm for what many people have to deal with. I had all of the guarantees stacked against me. I had a guaranteed payment to another entity. Her name was Sallie Mae. In fact, my wife and I jokingly say that I married two women in college — my beautiful wife and Sallie Mae, the student loan company.
And she wanted her alimony. So we wanted to get rid of that one as fast as possible. And that was the guarantee. The only guarantee in my life was that I must make that payment. Everything else was subject to chance and risk, or a little bit we had in the stock market was subject to chance and risk getting beat up. We had certainly no guarantee of a job.
In fact, I had 4 or 5 part time jobs to try to make ends meet during those days, including one that was a real ego buster. Which we can talk about, but it involved getting under, you know, old broken elevators and cleaning out the muck underneath old elevators. Talk about. Yeah. After that wonderful graduate degree, getting your ego busted a little bit. Good thing for every young adult to do. I think at some point, Doug.
But then fast forward a few years, I was working for a CPA firm, and I was listening to her make the call, listening to the accountant make the call.
The Phone Call That Changed Everything
She had did some money management as well, and she would say to the client, I’m sorry, Mr. Client, I know you’re 63. I know you’re 64 years old. I know you’re about to retire, but I just lost you a third of your life savings in the world financial crisis, and I just couldn’t handle that.
I honestly, Doug thought maybe this is just not my industry. I don’t want to be, you know, on that side of that phone call, ever. I felt like that was a devastating thing to have to do to a person. I mean, how can you undo that kind of a damaged financial portfolio when you’re that close to retirement?
And as I come to find out and even now, today, the median retirement account balance, you know, you think for folks aged 55 to 64, this is crazy, Doug. But even now, today, after the longest bull market run in all of modern human history, the median retirement account balance is — are you ready — 136,000 bucks? That sounds like a lot of money.
Some people might say that’s a lot, but what do you think, Doug, is that — I mean, is that going to just give us the lifestyle of our —
Dreams, depending on whatever lifestyle you’ve got, that’s a little over maybe 18 months, if you’re lucky, more like nine months if you’re still paying on a home loan and things of that sort.
You bet. Yeah. In fact, I saw a cartoon the other day. It was a financial advisor talking to his client, and he said, good news, Mr. Client. I’ve got it all set. If you retire this Friday, you can live for about two weeks.
Yeah.
You know, good news. Good news. Oh, wow. Not exactly good news.
Finding Tools That Have Nothing to Do With the Market
So anyway, that sort of got me on the journey to finding strategies and financial tools that had nothing to do with this market that I couldn’t trust. And fast forward a few years, we’ve had a couple of great years in the market. We’ve had a couple of very interesting years, 2020 being one of them, flash crashes, high frequency trading, then 2022 where inflation reared its ugly head again.
And we had bonds and stocks drop in the same year. That’s not supposed to happen, Doug. We’re supposed to be able to rely on modern portfolio theory, which just says stick with stocks and bonds and don’t look at it when it’s hurting you. And it sounds like an abusive boyfriend. How we talk about the stock market. You know it’s your fault when it’s acting this way. Don’t look at it when it’s hurting you. Just wait. It’ll always come back.
That doesn’t sound like a healthy relationship, in my opinion. So I looked for ways as a certified financial planner, how can we do this in a way that’s sane? Sanity should be a part of your portfolio. Asset allocation, sanity, liquidity, predictability. I want guarantees in my financial life not leaving my financial life again.
The only guarantees most Americans and myself included, back in the day had was the guarantee of monthly mortgage payments and student loan payments. That’s an annuity payment to somebody else besides you, and it’s leaving your financial life.
So are there tools and strategies that can bring those guarantees and predictability back into your financial life to bring you sanity? That’s what we’re all about at Lake Growth Financial Services.
Don’t Work for Money — Make Your Money Work for You
Makes total sense. And yes, I remember the 2008 time frame vividly and, Kudos to you for graduating from school at that time and then figuring out a path forward.
Well, it was either that or act like a victim, and I just didn’t have that in my DNA.
Yeah, yeah I did. Good point. And I certainly experienced that with a lot of the folks I worked with at that time. But, so let’s, one of the prevailing thoughts, as you were describing everything. It came to me the principle of don’t work for money, but make your money work for you. And how does that factor into some of these strategies you’re talking about?
And treat your money like soldiers? You know, every dollar should be given a job to do, otherwise it’ll be unemployed. And what do unemployed people do? They go work for somebody else.
Right. So if you don’t give your dollars a job, you are in control of this process. It’s as simple as doing a budget — that terrible, you know, B word that no one likes to talk about. And this is true both in the personal life and the business life.
I know it sounds sort of beneath most business owners, but you need to know where your money is going. Every single dollar. This doesn’t mean penny pinching, and it doesn’t mean spending every dollar either. It just means giving every dollar a job to do. Give every dollar a job, and they’ll always work harder for you than you imagine. You’ll feel like you gave yourself a raise.
Now, beyond the kind of like the normal budgeting, conversation around like, pay your bills budget for, you know, your expenses. There should also be jobs to do. Such as, you know, investing and cash flow, investment management and passive income and multiple streams of income, multiple streams of related income.
If you’re a business owner, these are things that I think can give you the sense that you have way more employees at your business. Every dollar should feel like an employee. Again, if you don’t give that dollar a job to do, it’s going to go work for somebody else.
The Entrepreneur’s Reality: Trading a 40-Hour Job for an 80-Hour One
Yeah. When we were in the green room, I was talking about the focus on people that might be contemplating leaving a corporate environment. They’ve been there eight, ten, 15 years. And the glamour and excitement of owning your own business to control your own destiny might be looming out there. And I don’t want to be facetious about it, but as any of us who have actually done that know, the glamour fades really fast and the grind kicks in.
I think it was Lori Raniere on Shark Tank. That said, an entrepreneur is the only person that’ll trade a 40 hour job for an 80 hour job and truer words probably never spoken. But the caveat is that with proper planning and certain levels of discipline about what you’re doing, all of that can be absolutely true.
Well said. Yeah, and there’s rewards on the other side. Absolutely. But, you know, there’s a certain glamour and excitement to it of owning your own business. And then there’s the muck of getting under the proverbial elevator to draw out whatever stuff has to come out from underneath that thing to get the thing to work again. To use that analogy.
I’d say that, you know, the most important thing to remember is that no one’s coming to rescue you. And that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Usually, people who rescue you come with strings attached. I’m thinking about your employer. You know, if you have one at a corporate job, there’s a lot of safety in that paycheck. But there’s also a cage that you find yourself in. The government might be another one.
So, you know, think of the entrepreneurial life as the one that’s truly free. It’s the cowboy. You know, it’s the astronaut. It’s the one that can truly be free.
But you also — you’re kind of out there — if you’re not careful, you can hang yourself, you might say with some of your own tactics and strategies as a business owner. So finding out exactly. All right. What are the things that I need to do to really survive in this current environment?
Makes the business owner some of my favorite people to work with, and my one on one consultations and financial coaching sessions with clients as a certified financial planner. Most CFPs like myself really don’t know what to do with the entrepreneur. You know, we would gladly tell him or her to put all your money in an asset portfolio mix that we can manage for you.
Yes, give us all of your money. That’s basically what the financial planner would tell him — put, and we’ll put it in some index funds and track the broadly diversified stock index. And we’ll pay, you know, you’ll pay us a fee for it, thank you very much. And you’ll get the the ride of a lifetime and for good and ill.
Why Entrepreneurs Hate Conventional Financial Advice
But my question is, how does that actually help your business when you’re putting money that’s, you know, your energy. You might say your time, your energy, your attention converts into money at the end of the month when your business finally is profitable and the financial planner says, hey, take all that converted energy dollars money stuff and go put it in somebody else’s business stock in Apple, for example, or an index fund, for example.
Get it out of your control. Get it out of where you can reach it. Don’t put it in your business. And many entrepreneurs think to themselves, well, why in the world would I do this? I have more control. The reason why I left my day job was to have more control over my life. My business gives me that.
Why would I put all my profits, my hard earned profits into this thing that I can’t see, access, touch or control and that’ll tax me when I finally have profits in the future?
And so for a lot of our entrepreneur clients, they look to us and they say, well, Mark, are there any ways that we can keep control of the profit we’ve made but use it when we need to for our business, while not leaving it languishing in a checking account where most businesses keep it.
So most business owners are thinking to themselves, all right, I can’t see a lot of growth in my checking account, but I want to keep a lot of my money in checking cash, savings, etc. so I can use it for expanding my business.
The one asset in my portfolio that I can control is my business, they say. So part of our work and what we specialize in at Lake Growth Financial Services, is helping people find assets that still keep their money liquid, while keeping their money growing way better than a savings account, or a high yield savings, or a checking or something like that. And give them again what they’re looking for — more control, certainty and peace of mind in their business.
Key Discussion Point: The Barbell Strategy — Balancing Risk in Your Business Portfolio
Yeah, well, all of that logic makes absolute sense. And, you know, as you were describing that, I was thinking about dozens of clients I’ve worked with over the years that basically tell that same story. So you’re telling us there are options like that so you don’t have to go to the open stock market or the bond market to get those returns.
That’s right. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. Just keep in mind what you’re doing. You’re effectively taking your hard earned profits, putting it into somebody else’s business, and hoping that they do a good job.
Now, again, most entrepreneurs would say, hey, I feel like I can control my business better than I can control my measly shares in Disney or Apple or Microsoft or whatever stock you chose. So a lot of business owners just choose to reinvest all their profit back into their business, and rightfully so. Oftentimes that’s the best ROI, but it’s also a very highly volatile, high risk portfolio when you have all your — as if if someone came to me with, you know, 99% of their net worth in one crypto stock, I would say, yeah, that’s kind of a risky portfolio.
Though many businesses are as risky as that crypto stock. They just maybe entrepreneurs don’t like to admit that, you know. And so we have to find ways that are balancing that barbell, you know, and this is the barbell strategy that we talk about in our business.
You want to have a high risk asset on one side of your barbell equalized by a risk free asset on the other side of your barbell. When you lift a barbell that’s only got a weight on one side, you’re going to get very imbalanced results, let’s say.
So you cannot have a business that doesn’t have a risk free asset to keep you safe and to help you improve your performance on both sides.
Key Discussion Point: The 200-Year-Old Secret — Dividend Paying Whole Life Insurance
So one of my favorite tools that we found, and this is a very strange right turn, Doug, but I found a little known variation of a 200 year old asset called dividend paying whole life insurance. If it’s modernized with as little commissions as possible and little expenses as possible, can be an incredible cash machine, cash, cash asset on the balance sheet of the business that can be used then to help your business thrive.
You can use the liquid money in the policy as cash, basically a savings alternative to help your business grow. Use it for payroll, use it for business equipment, use it to, you know, even exit your business someday.
It can be an incredible, dynamic kind of Swiss Army knife, if you will, for your business while keeping that money tax advantaged and liquid and accessible and growing on a guaranteed basis right alongside your very risky, you know, entrepreneurial venture.
Timing Your Cash: The Seasonal Nature of Business Investment
Yeah, well, one thing that came to mind as you were describing all this, I think there in terms of how do you deploy the hard earned, return or profits of the business? I think it’s seasonal, and I don’t mean based on a calendar year. I think it — I think of that in terms of the life of the company. There’s seasons in any company where they are trying to grow or expand or scale up, but then they’re also seasons where you just want to make hay while the sun is shining, we say, and you don’t want to disrupt with a lot of change or a lot of initiatives. You just want to operate and go to market and leverage what you have created in the way of success and profitability for the business.
And I think that ebbs and flows depending on what might be going on. And anyone who’s been around or in business for a while knows that the very market you think you might have conquered will shift on you, and whether it shifts because of new entries into that market, new alternatives that your customers can choose to turn to or technologies are changing, you know, skills and abilities are changing. And it’s a very dynamic proposition deciding on where you need to steer that company once you’ve got it going.
So, to do all that takes cash and. Yeah. You know, self-funding your own capital improvements and growth initiatives is a wonderful thing, because the only other alternative is to get leveraged and go out and either borrow the money or bring in investors, which dilutes your ownership percentage. So, you know, which one are you going to do?
That’s so true. And many people espouse and really laud the idea of OPM or other people’s money. And they love the idea of leverage, because it sounds so sexy and so cool.
The Truth About Leverage — and Why Banks Want Their Umbrella Back
But what I found from business owners, you know, from California to New York and everywhere in between. Leverage is wonderful when it’s working for you. But funny thing about leverage, it can also go the other way, too. And funny thing about banks, when they lend you money, they oftentimes want it back. That’s weird about banks that they want the money back.
And so, you know, usually they want it back harder just when you cannot pay them. You know, there’s a funny quote by Mark Twain. He says, A banker is a fellow who will lend you his umbrella when the sun shines. But once and back, as soon as it starts to rain.
Now that’s true. And fine for the umbrella guy. Salesman. But think carefully about what that means for your business, you know. Let’s imagine two business owners going through the same economic world. Let’s say it’s a major recession. Nobody’s buying whatever it is you do in your business.
And who’s going to win? Is it going to be the guy who’s got five different lines of credit with five different bankers, all of whom are closing up shop and restricting lines of credit and forcing term turning up that loan business? Or is it the guy or gal who’s got a massive six figures of liquid cash that they use as a line of credit to themselves?
Think about this.
Becoming Your Own Banker
This is not just using a savings account. This is like becoming your own banker for your business. It’s like becoming your own line of credit for your business. It’s better than any line of credit at an outside institution.
It’s in housing the banking function so that your business can become the bank for itself, or at least lend yourself. Lend your business your money, rather than having to depend on outside sources.
There are certain things that it’s okay to outsource. You know, I certainly don’t need to do every last thing around my house, outside in the lawn to make it look the way I want it to look. But when it comes to banking, that’s a core critical function that I think we as entrepreneurs have outsourced to our own demise. And it’s part of the reason. It’s a major reason why many businesses go bankrupt, unfortunately.
Behind the Scenes: The Six-Year-Old Who Understood Banking Better Than Most Adults
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Along that line, as you were describing that, especially the Mark Twain quote, I had a moment in my life and I was in banking in my early career, and my daughter was growing up six years old.
She’s at the dinner table. Something came up about banks, and she goes, daddy, what’s a bank? And I told her, I said, well, you know, we give money to people who need money and then we pay it back with a little bit extra. And she — I could see her wheels turning a minute. Her face got scrunched up and she said, well, if they didn’t have money in the first place, how are they going to pay it back?
Yeah, kids are so smart.
And I went, you know, my dear, you just described, you know, credit management.
I feel like some adults could probably figure that out. Could listen to her. You know, that’s that’s a genius.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Mark, what do you say to a business owner who shows up on your doorstep and says, hey, Mark, my business is starting to generate a little cash. You know what? What should I start with? And what can I do to be sure this money is working for me the way I want it to?
Practical Advice: What to Do When Your Business Starts Making Money
Well, first of all, congrats to them. That would be one of the rare ones, you know, and many businesses don’t make it off the ground. And so if you find yourself generating cash that you don’t have to immediately pour into just keeping the thing alive. First of all, good for you.
Most of our business owners that come to us have gone past that initial stage. The solopreneur stage is in their past. Now they’ve got 5 to 50 different employees, and they’re trying to manage 7 to 8 figures in annual revenue. And so that’s where they usually come to us and say, well, wait a minute, where can I — where can I start drawing — putting some strategies together that makes sense.
And that’s really where again, we start by listening. We have several different hour long conversations really discussing where they’re at, what their goals are. Again, we were joking in the green room before we hit record Doug, that there’s no 401 that just falls out of the sky when you start your business.
However, we all have birthdays and we all get older and we all have this thing called retirement that might be, for many Americans, forced upon us.
You know, it’s not a common statistic, but over 60% of people retire before they’re ready to, and they’re oftentimes forced into it. Maybe the entrepreneur, maybe the business fired them or the business went out of business. Maybe they had a health emergency or their family member did.
And oftentimes retirement comes whether you’re ready or not. And so having that conversation with the entrepreneur, hey, what are we going to do for the Doug of today? Today Doug and also future Doug, how are we going to prepare for those moments when the ability to continue working is just not there for us anymore. Like it will come for all of us.
Stop Thinking in Nouns — Think in Verbs and Adjectives
So we have those discussions and they tell me what their needs and goals and concerns are. They’re what they’re frustrated about in their current financial portfolio and what we can possibly do to improve that.
And, you know, I found one of the best conversations to have, Doug, is to start with verbs and adjectives like, let’s take nouns out of the conversation, meaning the names we call our money should be set aside for a few minutes, whether that’s checking account brokerage account 401 credit card.
Set all those nouns aside and let’s just talk about function and adjectives. So what are the verbs? Well. And adjectives. Here’s a few. And just paint with me with a magic brush. The perfect financial tools that you want to have. Again, name set aside.
How about access to it? How about tax free? How about great rate of return? How about private? You know, out of the courts and out of ability to be sued or go through bankruptcy and have it taken away from you? How about the use for multiple generations?
How about — I mean, we can keep going, right? The ability to use it as collateral. You know, we want to be able to use this dynamic money, this thing called money in the way we want to use it, not the way we’re told to use it.
I think many people get that 401 just because they’re told to do it and to have a financial plan because you were told to do it is a very dangerous way to start and to live your financial life.
The 401(k) Tax Question Nobody’s Asking
You know, it’s common that many people put money into a SEP IRA in their business or a 401 in their business. And then I’ll ask them, hey, what’s your understanding of the taxation of this 401 or this SEP IRA?
And they’ll say, well, Mark, I guess it’s going to be taxed in the future. Yeah, it’ll be taxed in the future when I’m retired.
And then I just asked them, well, what do you believe about where taxes are headed in your lifetime? Mark, I think they’re going to go up in my lifetime. And I kind of scratch my head and I say, okay, you’re putting money into a financial tool that you know is going to be taxed higher when you need it the most. Do you want to pay those taxes?
And they say, well, no. And then we began the discussion about how we can build a plan that actually serves them, rather than serves a government or a financial advisor that maybe doesn’t have their best interest at heart.
Can You Still Pivot at 65, 68, or 70?
Yeah, I love it. And I think all those things are absolutely true. And you are correct, more often than not, people are pushed into retirement before they’re really ready and, and wanting to go. And you know that runway gets, gets thin because if you start burning it and it’s not earning or replacing it at a greater rate, you’re going to get to zero pretty quickly. And that’s —
True.
That’s true. Such a big challenge.
Well and not to put too fine a point on that. But back in 2008, boomers were in their 40s, you know, and maybe early 50s, and they had to wait 14 years for the market to get back to where they were pre — when you account for inflation — pre 2008. Now if we have another event like we had in 2008, today boomers don’t have another 14 years.
You know many of them are already drawing on their 401 in retirement. And when you’re drawing down an asset that’s also getting pummeled by market downturns, that’s called double pain.
And if folks want to look this up and further research this — look up sequence of returns risk. It’s the number one risk in your portfolio that no financial advisor I’m aware of is really shouting from the rooftops about. But it can be the difference between success and failure.
If you have the wrong order of returns in the market and you’re about to retire, or you just did, it can spell devastation. Even if you’re drawing a conservative withdrawal out of your 401 IRA or something similar.
So for someone that may be committed to the more conventional planning strategies, which is often, like you said, index funds and general equity market players, how can they pivot if they’re already 65, 68, 70? Can they pivot out of those without getting hammered by the tax consequence and set up some of these alternative tools?
Yes, sir. Yeah. There’s an incredible basket of tools that we use at our firm that have nothing to do with the stock market per se, directly investing in it anyway or bond markets, but stay in that IRA environment so they’re not going to get pummeled by taxes and they’re able to protect their money immediately.
A Real Client Story: Protecting $2.25 Million Before Retirement
I’ll give you a quick story. There was a lady who had quite a substantial amount. Her and her husband had a little over three quarters of $1 million in one account, and about a million and a half in another account.
And they were concerned about market volatility as they were getting ready to retire. So we decided to do an IRA rollover from their old account into something that would never go down if the market tanked, but would grow modestly. But I think productively when the index was positive.
So it was tracking an market index, but it was not directly invested in that index. And more to the point, it would guarantee them a lifetime of income. This IRA contract would give them a lifetime of income that even if the account balance went to $0, it would continue to pay them for as long as either spouse was alive.
So this was for them, like a private pension to themselves. It gave them the market protection that they were desperately looking for as they prepared for retirement. They didn’t have to pay a cent in taxes to make their IRA transfer happen.
And they had that lifetime guarantee that they would never run out of income, even if their account balance ran out of money.
Closing Thoughts: Your Mindset Is Your Most Valuable Asset
Very interesting. Well, I’m sure you’re going to get some calls on that one. Quite an interesting opportunity there. Anything else we haven’t touched on, Mark?
Doug. You know, I think once again, it comes down to mindset. And first and foremost, the worldview that you bring and the interpretation you make. I think settles everything for where you’re going to go in life. And that’s true for me. That’s true for all of us.
Our lens of interpretation is our most important asset in our portfolio. How you view what’s happening in the world and what you’re going to do about it is so important. You know, it’s sort of like walking into a movie 45 minutes too late. Doug, have you ever done this?
I definitely have, and you just don’t know who the characters are. You don’t know who’s the bad guy? Who’s the good guy? Why is that person kissing that girl over there? You know, they just don’t understand the plot.
Really. And I feel like many people, myself included as a young adult, just didn’t get the script for money. We didn’t get the user’s manual, you might say. Or if we were told it was told by somebody. Like it was like asking a barber if you need a haircut, you know — you ask a financial advisor, hey, should I put money in your management? And they’ll say, yes.
But there was never a moment where we said, well, let me just learn about this thing called money. Take the nouns and improper incentives out of the conversation. Just understand it.
So most important thing we can do is generate a perspective and an interpretation of what’s going on. It’s the old Shakespeare quote, you know — the world is a stage and we’re all just players thereon, right?
Who are we? What are the characters in the play? How do we involve ourselves in this play in such a way that we benefit rather than, you know, the other people — the other people being everyone from the government to the financial advisors to folks like, you know, Gucci bags and the Porsche that you want to buy and everyone.
I guess the the bottom line, I would just say, and I’ll wrap up with this, Doug, everyone else has a financial plan for your money.
Everyone else. That’s again the government, the corporations, the banks, the financial advisor who tells you to invest with him or her. They all have a financial plan for your money. Will you have a financial plan for your own money, or are you going to let them take over that role for you?
I would hope, and the clients that work with me are ready to take a front seat to their financial future, and we’re just there to help them make the right decisions and work with them for years to come.
How to Reach Mark Willis
I love it. Well, Marc, thank you so much for sitting in. Tell people the best way to get in touch with you.
Doug, thanks. So it’s been a pleasure to be on your show and keep up the great work. My connection website is Kick Start with Mark. So if anything here has sparked your interest and you’d like to dig further into it. We have 3 fifteen-minute phone strategy sessions with anybody. And just let us know that you heard about us on this podcast.
Again, the website is kickstartwithmark.com.
Wonderful. We will definitely have that link in the show notes as always, folks. And this is the part of the show I’d like to remind you. We do have a video version of this same episode over on YouTube channel by the same name, leadership powered by Common Sense. Check out our archives. Give us some comments. Thumbs up, thumbs down, whatever you see and feel. And would love to hear from you if you’ve got any ideas and recommendations.
I want to remind everybody I’ve got a new book out or coming out May 15th called Study the Leadership Framework. It’s a result of about eight years and over a thousand interviews with business leaders that I’ve had the privilege of coaching. And I often ask the question, what kind of leader do you really want to be? And people start listing attributes and characteristics. I’ve taken all that data and compiled it into the top 12 choices people make. It’s in the book Study the Leadership Framework. It’s available on Amazon and other booksellers, so we’d love to have you grab a copy.
But for now, we’re going to sign off, say goodbye. Go out there, make it a great day.
Meet Our Guest
Mark Willis, CFP® is a man on a mission to help people think differently about their money, their economy, and their future. Mark is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM, a three-time #1 Best Selling Author and the owner of Lake Growth Financial Services, a financial firm located in Chicago, that helps people to take control of their financial futures.
After graduating college with six figures of student loan debt, Mark discovered a way to turn his debt into real
wealth. As he watched everybody lose their retirement savings and home equity in 2008, he knew that he needed
to find a more predictable way to meet his financial objectives and those of his clients. Over the years, he has
helped hundreds of clients take back control of their financial future and build their businesses with proven,
tax-efficient financial solutions. He specializes in building custom-tailored financial strategies that are unknown to
typical stock-jockeys, attorneys, or other financial gurus.
As host of the Not Your Average Financial PodcastTM, he shares some of his strategies for working with real estate, paying for college without going broke, and creating an income in retirement you will not outlive. Mark works with people who want to grow their wealth in ways that are safe and predictable, to become their own source of financing, and create tax-free income in retirement.
Mark’s Website: https://lakegrowth.com
Mark’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklakegrowth
Connect with Doug Thorpe
