Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everyone, to the annuity Straight Talk podcast, episode number 154. My name is Brian Anderson, founder and creator of annuitystraighttalk.com dot. Anyone who's been here from the beginning might recognize the man sitting next to me. Came to visit, thought it would be lovely. Co founder of the annuity Straight Talk podcast, Ashok Ramji. Hey, Ashok. Great to have you back.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Great to be back, my man.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I love being in this beautiful digs of yours. Oh, my gosh. It is breathtaking and beautiful. I made the trip out here on a beautiful October day. It's just gorgeous out here in Montana.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So he's traveling cross country, and he texted me a couple days ago, hey, wanna come say hi? I'm like, come stay with me. And then I had this topic today that I'm like, dude, this is right in your wheelhouse.
Kind of a lot of the stuff that we talked about at the beginning. But I want to let, before we get started, I want everybody to know you can schedule a phone call. Top right corner of annuitystraighttalk.com says, schedule a call, name, phone number, email, time zone, time.
Write a few notes about what you want to talk about. What we're going to talk about today is like, how to make that meeting more productive. Save your time and hours, and please, like, subscribe or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube. Ashok, you have been in the business working on this in different respects. And here we are looking to join up again. So you can give me a little help, right?
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Correct.
People are looking for more of these solutions that annuities help provide. And this is just a wonderful opportunity to keep collaborating and helping more people.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think a lot of people would notice like that. A show. Can I get along really well? And it was always, it was fun because we have a very different approach, demeanor, and a different way of doing things. I'm going to share my screen, and we're going to talk about this newsletter.
And it kind of goes back to one of the very first podcasts. It was episode three that Ashok and I did when we were over in Spokane, Washington. And we're going to give as a guideline for everyone as they come in. But for me, this is an old idea that it's a bigger part of what I'm going to request to people coming in. And I think you would understand.
I mean, think about that. When someone comes to you for advice, there's a certain amount of information you need. Correct?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: And the biggest one is goals. What are you trying to do? What I've seen is that, and we talk about this a lot, is aggressive sales are so prevalent in episode three, we talked about annuity sales and distributions and who is incentivized for those different things. I don't know. You want to talk about that just a little bit? We don't have to go too deep.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: But sure, I mean, if you're looking to buy an annuity, it must be from somebody who has the proper licensing. We are in the business, you and me, both as producers of being part of that distribution. But we also want to make sure that we're making the right recommendations. Why are you here? What problems are we trying to solve? And one of the things you and I have been loathed to do is when we're meeting with somebody right away, just project. This is the round peg and it will fit into this square hole. Instead, we want to know what brought you here. Why are you looking at annuities as a possible solution? And so this really touches on what you had written about before. Where we're talking about, are we really giving more advice rather than just trying to do annuity selling?
[00:03:40] Speaker A: So many people are coming because aggressive sales are prevalent in the business and a lot of people will get that aggressive sale push. Hey, it sounds too good to be true. They'll get defensive.
They'll grow their frustration because they come to, it goes to a seminar, right? I mean, the guys that do those seminars are, they're spending money to feed you a steak and they've got to monetize that and get the income. And they've got pressure from outside people saying sell this or sell that and they're going to jump right into just selling you an annuity. And they haven't really done their legwork first, which is what we do on the initial call, is to figure out kind of where you're at. I've told a lot of people, like, listen, I don't even think, you don't even need to be looking at this right. You're off base. So that kind of puts you, hangs you up on stuff. And in a lot of cases, it's only even a single product that he's going to sell. There's 30 people in the room and everybody, hey, look at this. You're going to do that. I've talked a lot about the bonuses and the crazy stuff, just the catchy things that get people to buy contracts. So that's kind of where we're looking is like, listen, we're going to give you an idea that's going to help you pull back and see, do you even want an annuity? Right.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Correct. And if you think about, for example, when someone's doing a presentation like that and it's a viable method for somebody to start the sale, but they usually will be talking about they have a product in mind, they have a recommendation in mind, and it's that solicitation to get started. Whereas the material here that we're doing on the podcast, a lot of your writings on the site, they're there to provide the initial round of information. But what we're talking about is how does this interaction start with annuity? Straight talk. And it's really more probing questions about what problems are you looking to solve rather than any sort of product recommendation?
[00:05:33] Speaker A: No, that is absolutely true. The sales first approach has created problems and prevented thousands and thousands of people that I've talked to over 16 years. Doing this online has prevented them from creating an optimal retirement plan. Every one of you has several different issues you got to settle when you go into retirement. That's what we're here to figure out. So you can take those one at a time. An advisor that wants to put a high pressure sale on you may not be considering all of those things and it's going to get you out of order, but you've got to put your primary concern first and handle one issue at a time.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: And that's exactly what we had, the matching philosophy. The idea of doing this, and that's exactly why we started this, is because it's like, hey, we just want to do the right thing. We can access the products. We know how they work. Tell us what your goals are so that we can get you there and let you know if that is even the area you should be looking at. Right?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Money drives everything, right? There's guys are greedy, guys are looking for stuff, right? And there's also third party people who have an incentive for you to buy an annuity. Those guys are not involved in the situation. They're in the background.
But those guys can influence an agent heavily. And so you don't. It's not a bad thing, but you need to understand that it exists so you can realize there's a conflict of interest.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: There might be some people behind the curtain that are pushing for certain ways for that interaction to go.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: If a third party system, a distributor, has to make a breakpoint with a certain company to get a bonus, then they're going to tell their agents to sell that product. Like bottom line, that's a straight talk no bullshit, right? It's like, hey, we got to get to 100 million, and we need 5 million more. Everybody sell this product, no matter what. And that's. We don't buy into that. We never have, and that's not how we do it. And that's the point of talking to you about this simple idea. Okay, so you ready for my idea? And we've talked about this.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: I'm ready.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: We talk about it. So, this funny is like, we have this conversation before we start. So it's like saying the same thing over again. And I go back to the first time I did this with a couple in Florida, and I asked the husband and wife to sit on separate sides of the room, each with a piece of paper, write down your top five retirement concerns, like, in order of importance, what's most important to you. Okay? Now, these could be annuities. We're talking guaranteed income. It could be volatility. I just want to protect money. Roth conversion, legacy, long term care, all the different things that you could do. Selling real estate, renting real estate, whatever your idea is. Downsizing a home. I've met a lot of people. Like, some people just say, we're not doing anything until we sell our house and move into the condo in Florida. But write them down in order. So, this first time, I did it with these. This couple, right? The husband and wife came back with their top five things, and they were wildly different.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Was there one that they had in common, or.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: I think number three and four were close. Like, one. It was kind of. I mean, and it's not that big a deal, but that's the number one thing is, like, when with your spouse, significant other, anyone else you're planning on planning with, get on the same page with them first, because we don't want to get in the middle of a discussion. And I've had this. I don't know if you've seen it happen where you sell a guaranteed income product to one person, and then when the second person's involved. No, that's not at all what we need. Right. That's kind of like the idea there. But now it may not. It's good thing to do with your spouse, maybe not necessary. And you might have a list of five things. You might have two, you might have ten. Whatever it is with number one first. Okay. I mean, ashok, you've done more rounded planning. Not necessarily. I focus in retirement planning. You've done a lot of different stuff. So you're trained to see what people need financially. And it never, almost never leads with an annuity. Correct, correct.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: It's really based on if they're looking for guaranteed income, if they're looking to keep money safe from market risk, then we'd say, look at an annuity. There are alternatives as well. But for example, one of our listeners called me up and said, I want to give a shout out, by the way, to t in Virginia. She called me up and said, I had seen you on one of the podcast episodes with Brian. But her number one concern had to do with long term care. And so we are focused like a laser. And I'm pleased to tell you, Brian, we use the same methodology of first, who are you? What are you looking to solve? Let's collaborate on this together, look at different alternatives. We have no idea what the end recommendation is going to be because that's the whole purpose of a dialogue.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Yeah, no, exactly. And it's like if someone comes in before you've tried to figure out what your goals are and started to sell you an annuity, then, like, you gotta back off and do some of that more holistic approach to say, what are you trying to solve here? So deal with number one first. Then you deal with number two. Take them one at a time. You might find that the annuity is not the right solution. Right.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Correct. So we spoke about, too, whenever there have been different methods. I think there was one called the ivy Lee method, where someone was looking.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: For something different or some other, like.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Charles Schwab, I think you had said before.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Well, I'm not saying everything was accurate. I learned in business school, but that's where I heard it.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Something along those lines. But the idea was, how do you take one day at a time? How do you build a skyscraper? You take one day at a time. And I think, I'm going to give credit, I heard this from Earl Nightingale's lead the field, but he was talking about how just take a yellow sheet of paper, list and order the five most important things to do that day. Focus on number one, then go to number two and so forth. And what we're talking about here is this is more like long term retirement planning. And how are you going to solve that over a period of days unless you have clarity on a list and you can prioritize? And this also reminds me, you were saying earlier about the couples, it's like, was that show the newlywed game or something where.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the old eighties, nineties stuff.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're on different, they're singing from different sheets of music. So it's just better all around everybody is on the same sheet of music, and we all understand what is number one, what are we all trying to solve? And then you get fewer surprises. There is no problems around expectations. It just leads to more harmonious results.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And here's an example of a guy I talked to last week or two weeks ago. We had the first call.
He's got a divorce he's got to deal with. He's got to pay a few things for that. He's trying to sell his business. Somebody said, oh, go get this annuity to solve all your problems. Right?
And so he had a lot of balls in the air. And I was trying to like, just tell him, like, listen, make a list of the top, your top concerns, order of importance of what needs to take care of. So his was like, divorce, is there business, then guaranteed income. Right? So that was the start of his list. And then the rest of the stuff you got to talk about between our first meeting and second meeting is when he made that list. And he came back to the second meeting with that list and the sale of his business fell through, blew the entire thing up. And the fact that he would have had more time to focus on that if someone would have told him to take problems one at a time. But before any of that was settled, somebody threw in a bonus product, an income product, a deferral deal. He didn't understand it. Never seen an annuity. I don't get it. And then it's on top of all the other issues he's got. Get this stuff out of the way. I just closed a deal with a couple that I met with earlier this year. They were selling their home, downsizing and moving. And they said, we're not doing anything until the homes closed and we're moved. So they moved, got everything, moved in, organized everything. And this is what we're talking. We're talking about being organized and eliminating stress from your life. So that guy would have been easier to forget about the annuity. And I told them after the business fell apart, I said, I don't know where an annuity fits. I mean, sure, you could buy guaranteed income, but now you're going to run your business for longer. You'll sell it eventually. It's going to just change things. So make a list. It's going to make it easier. Right.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: I also want to point out that example shows that the list can also change. He came in with that list. It was predicated on the sale of the business that didn't pan out. Right. So all of a sudden, he may now go back and revise the list. How many times have you and I have a couple of clients who died suddenly? They died sooner than expected, and all of a sudden we have to relook at the plan. So I'm just saying that the list can change over time. So it's important, though, when you sit down with us and say, this is the list, the plan we'll develop will be flexible. That can accommodate any change in that list, hopefully.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. This is your Ivy League method or whatever we talked about, right?
Your five things and three or seven. I don't care what the number is. You take care of the first one. Now it's a list of four. You take care of the second one. Now it's a list of three. It eliminates burdens from your life. And I tell people this all the time. You do this and you get a couple of those out of the way. Believe you me, your life is going to feel easier and you're going to have less stress once you have that cleared off your plate. I mean, it just makes sense. And it's the same thing on a day to day basis. We make our list of things to do, knock them off one by one. I like to have mine done by two. Then I can do the want to do from three to five. Two to five, right. I can return phone calls, I can do emails, that kind of thing. But it's the same way we conduct our normal lives. Do you agree to.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: I agree, and I think you're also kind of alluding to these small wins, right? You just have a series of small wins and it just makes you feel like you're truly being more productive because you are.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So an annuity may be the first thing you do in retirement. A lot of times when we get that list, it's like, yeah, I sure, I do want guaranteed income. Or a concern would be market volatility. I'd like to diversify and add a myga. I'd like to have something guaranteed and safe. Or I like the opportunity in indexed annuity. Whatever the deal is, take them off one at a time. So the point of doing this is that time is the most valuable commodity, and making this list will save you our time and yours, and we can get right to it and make sure efficient use of that time. And that's kind of why Ashok and I've wanted this from the beginning. So it's been over three years since we started this podcast, and it's going to be good to have you back consistently. But he's going to be here for anyone. I always thought we get along really well. We see eye to eye on a lot of things. We approach things the same way. That's the same deal with John Ballmer. But anybody who feels like they would mesh more with Ashok is going to have a more refined approach. I'm kind of like the no B's, right? Here's the deal. This is it. Got it. And Ashok's got more finesse to it. And that's fine. It's going to suit different people. Hey, good to have you back and looking forward to it.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Thank you for having me back. This has been a pleasure.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: So, guys, that's going to do it for today. For episode 154, make a list of your top retirement concerns. It's going to make everything a whole lot easier. You can relax. You don't have to worry about a sales pitch. Get a hold of us and we will take care of the whole thing and tell you all the reasons why you should do it and prove it to you from every angle possible. We're not trying to cut corners here or give anybody disservice. We're just going to try to make it as efficient and as easy as possible. So you want to make an appointment, go to the top right corner of any page on annuitystraighttalk.com dot. Share this with your friends. This has been episode 154. Go ahead.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I just had one last point. It's just this allows us also to serve our clients best interest by knowing what the different points of priority are in their lives.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: That's that everybody wants to. Hey, are you a fiduciary? The only fiduciary is you. And we can certainly help you get there. Appreciate that, Ashok. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you guys next week for episode 155. You have a great day. Okay, bye.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: You have been listening to annuity stray talk.
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