Transform Your Business Growth: Financial Planning Tips You Must Know

John Harcar (00:01.809)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m so stoked. We’re going to be talking today with Mark Willis. and you know, we’re to be talking about not only his journey in business, but in the bio I read a little bit about, know, how, know, you could turn real estate investing into help paying for college and, you know, the retirement stuff. And, know, I’m curious because I’m in the, that age and that stage with my kids, being in college,

But before we get into all that, hey guys, remember, in Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business. And it’s really by providing tools and resources to grow that business and in turn live the life that you wanted to live. So Mark, hey man, welcome to our show.

Mark Willis, CFP® (00:46.572)
So glad to be here, John. Thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:48.369)
Yeah, man, I’m excited to talk about this stuff. We had a nice little chat before I got on. And, know, before we get into the weeds of, know, how can I best use my investments, my money for college retirement, all those things I talked about. Tell us about you, right? You know, tell us about your background in real estate or in business or how you got to today.

Mark Willis, CFP® (01:09.166)
Sure, yeah as a certified financial planner I certainly didn’t start that way. I was out of college in 2008 looking for work, great year to be unemployed. I guess I got a head start on the rest of the economy that way. And I had a, well it was a ministry degree and they held me back for grad school in a seminary. And so you know I jokingly say my favorite book of the Bible is the book of numbers.

John Harcar (01:19.271)
Yeah, of course, yeah. There we go. What did you study in school?

Mark Willis, CFP® (01:33.614)
because I ended up getting into finance. But I was looking for work. I was like working at the restaurants. My first job though was a property management company and I was working as a grunt worker and just paying the bills because we had, I jokingly say that I married two women in college, my beautiful wife and I married Sally May, the student loan provider. And yeah, so she wanted money, man. Yeah, she was looking for money every month.

John Harcar (01:53.853)
Sally Mae Fienchel. I know Sally Mae.

Mark Willis, CFP® (02:01.454)
My wife and I didn’t have marketable degrees. mean, who’s gonna hire somebody with our background? And I never really wanted to be like a pastor with a paycheck and that I always had that entrepreneurial bug, but I left the seminary thinking, all right, I’ll just start working at a business and just took a long time to find out what I was interested in. it was in 2009 and 10 as we were going through the bowels of the Great Recession.

John Harcar (02:22.215)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Willis, CFP® (02:29.39)
that I found working with a CPA at the time and interestingly, I was overhearing her phone calls. Now my job was basically to prep a bunch of tax returns but I was hearing her make the call, the call. You know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry Mr. Client, I know you’re 63 years old but the market just took a third of your life savings or half your life savings. Holy crap, yeah. Yeah, so I never wanted to be a part of that conversation.

John Harcar (02:51.165)
The rancher, yeah.

Mark Willis, CFP® (02:57.868)
I almost left the industry and it was only through some of my own pain and trying to pay off my own student loans that I stuck with this money thing at all. I’d never really even budgeted, was really not aware of finances, but it was through that process I became much more, not just aware of money, but as I found some financial strategies, I actually found it so compelling. felt like, I gotta do this professionally and tell the world about what I found.

John Harcar (03:23.795)
Hmm?

Mark Willis, CFP® (03:25.614)
And now I have the great privilege of working with folks all across the country. And I work with business owners, real estate investors who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They want more certainty, agency, control in their financial life. They don’t want to be just a gutter ball basically going down the gutter of their own life. They want to be swimming upstream. They want to be moving up upstream. That’s right.

John Harcar (03:46.065)
Right. Flourishing, prospering. Yeah. Yeah. when you started transitioning to doing this full time, like what type of struggles were you, you you’re getting into being an entrepreneur, right? Or starting this business. Like what type of things, did you struggle with, and maybe what type of mindset tools did you use?

Mark Willis, CFP® (04:09.218)
Well, it was that first job working for a property management company where they handed me a wet dry vac and told me to slide my body underneath this busted elevator and get into a flooded, like it was mucky, it was nasty. I don’t even want to talk about what I found, but it was a ego buster. Let’s just say it that way, you know, going from like, you know, highfalutin graduate degree, whatever to, you know, with the, with the wet dry vac, I’ll just keep it, leave it up to your listeners’ imaginations.

John Harcar (04:24.529)
No.

John Harcar (04:32.85)
Yeah.

John Harcar (04:37.843)
Mmm, yeah.

Mark Willis, CFP® (04:38.702)
It was you know, not a good fun day but it was an important day for me because it reminded me that I’m never above service and never above getting my hands filthy to make my the people I’m serving as happy as possible as far as like It was it totally was I think every young kid and I still count college graduates as young kids I think every young kid should have a couple of jobs where they’re

John Harcar (04:55.015)
Sounds like it was humbling, that’s for sure.

Mark Willis, CFP® (05:05.878)
on the bathroom floor with a toothbrush, if you know what I mean. It sure does, man. And then the real estate piece, really taught me a lot about, my dad and I had done a bunch of work on our house expansion projects and things like that, a little bit of stick gum and toilet paper rolls and whatever we could to kind of keep the house together. But we did from the foundation, laying the cement up to the roof and chimney work and.

John Harcar (05:08.945)
Makes you more appreciative of some things, that’s for sure.

John Harcar (05:32.667)
wow.

Mark Willis, CFP® (05:32.794)
It was a lot of fun getting to do that as a teenage kid with my dad. now working with financial planning and the purposes there, I get to work with a lot of real estate investors who are everything from just fixing up their first fix and flip to one guy’s got 200 plus doors in his portfolio. Other people have got a private lending business. Other people are managing syndication funds. And our clients are just, they span the gamut like I know your mastermind does as well.

John Harcar (05:35.901)
That’s awesome.

John Harcar (05:53.811)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (06:00.603)
Right. Okay. So, you know, tell me about some, like, you know, some of your wealth strategies that you teach. mean, or actually maybe back up a little bit. What does your actual business look like today? Like, do you have a team? Are you, do you have a course? Do you teach people what kind of fill us in on all that?

Mark Willis, CFP® (06:16.472)
Sure, yeah, so we do have just under 2,000 clients that are in all 50 states. So I do have, thankfully, a team of people who are associates and colleagues of mine that all get to serve those advisors. We’ve got a staff of people that help serve as well. And we work with, again, business owners and real estate investors and just any family who wants to have more certainty in their life. So these are people who are building their business or getting their kids ready to go to college or.

without going broke in the process. Just helped a lady yesterday. She didn’t have a lot to her name financially speaking, but we’re helping her four kids get through college without her taking out a loan at all. And then she’ll actually be her own source of financing, be her own Sallie Mae to herself, you might say, to help her get ready for retirement as we go.

John Harcar (07:03.005)
Mm-hmm.

How does that work? Is that type of like, kind of like the infinite funding, infinite banking type of thing?

Mark Willis, CFP® (07:11.95)
Sure, yeah, there’s a strategy out there that uses a little known variation of dividend paying whole life insurance. So, whole life insurance is a little different than I know, you had a recent episode talking about something called indexed universal life, and there’s a big difference between these two concepts. For the listening audience, you might be already aware of this, but there is a big categorical difference between the two topics. But, whole life insurance, if it’s properly structured, can function like a bank.

can be like a bank and you can borrow against your own, you might say equity or your own line of credit for yourself. A lot of people have seen their HELOCs go up to eight, nine, 10 % plus and of course that’s a nightmare because you gotta keep kissing the ring of the banker to keep that line of credit open. And they can certainly adjust that or term it out or whatever and it’s not even tax deductible anymore.

John Harcar (07:57.29)
Yep

Mark Willis, CFP® (08:04.856)
But you could use your policy, your life insurance policy like a guaranteed to grow. That’s right, it grows on a guaranteed basis every single year, regardless of the market. And you can continually access against that line of credit. So you’ve got a bigger and larger line of credit that you can borrow from, from yourself. And last time I checked, I’m not gonna repossess my own car. And wouldn’t really change the garage, even if I tried.

John Harcar (08:27.313)
Yeah, Send Baba out against yourself.

Mark Willis, CFP® (08:31.542)
Yeah, exactly man. Where’s Uncle Guido showing up at my door? So, know, having a guaranteed to increase bucket of money that I’m in control of, that I can liquidate and access anytime I want, or even borrow like it’s a line of credit to myself, just provides a certain peace of mind against my financially uncertain future. We all don’t know the future. So it’s what a lot of clients use.

John Harcar (08:34.515)
Yeah, but…

John Harcar (08:46.803)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:53.395)
Yeah, no, 100%. 100%. Talk about some other strategies that you teach. mean, I know some of it said, pay for college without going broke. I think he kind of touched on that. And Phil, listen on some more stuff.

Mark Willis, CFP® (08:58.926)
Mm-hmm, sure.

Yep, sure, yep. Yeah, I’ll give you two more and then we can just go any direction you wanna go. Let’s use the, let’s talk about a guaranteed income that you cannot outlive. What’s the best part about rental properties? It’s the income that you can count on, right? What’s the worst part? It’s all the things that have to go into getting that income.

John Harcar (09:08.423)
Yeah, cool.

John Harcar (09:22.599)
The three T’s is called the tenants, the toilets and the termites. Sure, sure. Taxes. Yeah, true.

Mark Willis, CFP® (09:26.626)
Can I give you two more T’s? So I know five T’s. Taxes, yeah and trash, right? So trash, taxes, termites, toilets and tenants. And the big one is tenants, because there’s nothing less guaranteed than a tenant, in my opinion. But what if you could have a guaranteed rental income that you could never outlive, even if you had lived to 120 years old? And by the way, I just worked with a guy, he’s in the northern suburbs here of Chicago. He had a couple of rental properties, but he’s selling them. He’s in his late 70s now.

John Harcar (09:56.167)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Willis, CFP® (09:56.364)
And he said to me, Mark, I don’t want to be a landlord anymore. I don’t want to chase these guys down for rent. And I don’t want to pay some property manager to do it for me, cutting into my profits. So what we did, he’s doing it systematically, but he’s selling his properties one by one. And he’s dumping that money into a indexed annuity. And annuities are essentially a 2300 year old financial instrument, over 2300 years old, where you dump money into them.

And then if they’re designed properly, you still have access to that money. That’s a key difference than old fashioned annuities, but they’ll provide for you a lifetime income that you can never outlive. Even if you live to 100 or 120 or whatever, even if you pass away, it could be paid to your spouse until your spouse passes away. So that to me spells financial certainty. You lay that next to a couple of real estate properties and you’re starting to really build a nice diversified portfolio.

John Harcar (10:44.775)
Sure.

John Harcar (10:50.619)
Is there a limit to the amount you could put into those or no, that’s awesome.

Mark Willis, CFP® (10:55.31)
Whatever the insurance company will approve you for of course it is issued by a good solid annuity or insurance company You don’t want to just pick any annuity and believe me guys. I mean there are thousands of annuity products out there I would not recommend 95 % of them So you want to it’s sort of like buying a car you want to pick the right one for you There’s not all cars are bad. You know some people think one guy in particular is a famous radio and TV

John Harcar (11:16.573)
Yeah.

Mark Willis, CFP® (11:24.6)
personality who I will not name, who hates annuities, like with the passion of a thousand suns, he says, I’d rather die and go to hell and burn in hell than sell an annuity to somebody. And I thought to myself, well, that’s a very severe thing to say. So I started looking at how this guy gets paid. And wouldn’t you know, he gets paid as most financial advisors do through what’s called assets under management. Now, are you familiar with what that means, John? And I’m sure your listeners, I’ll just explain quickly. Basically,

John Harcar (11:28.179)
Yeah

John Harcar (11:41.043)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (11:51.399)
Yes, yeah, I was gonna say if you explain that type of stuff just for people that don’t.

Mark Willis, CFP® (11:54.51)
Yeah, just so you know, when you have an investment advisor, typical financial, so average financial planner, they’ll charge you a fee for the assets they hold under their management. It’s your assets under their management. This already doesn’t sound too good to me. It doesn’t sound like I’m in control. It sounds like the investment advisor’s in control. Okay, so the basic way this works is you’ve got a pile of money and they’ll charge you a fee.

John Harcar (12:15.433)
Right.

Mark Willis, CFP® (12:23.874)
for that annuity.

All right, that, excuse me, my screen’s blocked out there. Okay, so they’ll charge you a fee for that pile of money that they’ve got under their management. Now, that fee is guaranteed to the advisor, okay? It’s guaranteed every year. Now, wait a minute. That sounds a lot like an annuity to me. You know, if I’m paying my investment advisor 10 grand a year or whatever my investment portfolio is worth, he’s getting paid a guaranteed lifetime income, 10,000 bucks a year is my fee to him.

John Harcar (12:45.608)
Yeah.

Mark Willis, CFP® (12:56.492)
I know why some investment advisors hate annuities. It’s because you, client, are their annuity.

John Harcar (12:59.763)
Mm.

John Harcar (13:03.731)
That’s true.

So let’s talk about real estate investors, right? How do you help real estate investors? Let’s say I’m a guy listening to this call or this podcast and they’re like, man, that guy makes a lot of sense and I need to learn more about that. And I’m gonna call you, right? What kind of process do you walk them through?

Mark Willis, CFP® (13:26.85)
First of all, I don’t jump to any conclusions. I know I’ve already shared some particular products and tools, but I don’t jump to any tool first. I keep the toolbox over here on the side and I just listen to you about what you’re trying to accomplish. And then we start making a wish list. What do you need your money doing for you? We have a financial analysis meeting where we sit down and review where you’re financially at today. What are your goals? What are your concerns? What do you hate about that old Roth IRA you have? What do you love about that rental property or hate about that old

you know, raw land deal you did six years ago or whatever. And we just do the whole listening session to get a sense of where you’re at. If I cannot help you as a fiduciary, I’m obligated to say so. I have to only work with you if you’re, if I’m in your best interest, if working with you is in your best interest. So in that sense, that’s our first step. We just do a learning and listening session and that’s totally free for folks to have that meeting. And it’s a good deep dive. A lot of folks say they go to that meeting.

even before I set up an accounts or set up a proposals or anything like that for them, they already love it because they’re able to see, like we have some software tools that allow them to see their financial map laid out in one place. Spouses that are not as engaged as one spouse, they say, Mark, this is the first time I’ve seen it all in one spot. It’s so refreshing to know where this is and that is and where we’re going. And that sort of thing is huge.

John Harcar (14:38.194)
Right.

John Harcar (14:49.735)
Before we go any further into kind of other stuff that you help, what are some of the mistakes that you’re seeing people that when they come to you make? And I want one in particular, right? want a couple, but I want one is like the biggest mistake I’ve ever heard is this guy is doing this, I can’t believe it.

Mark Willis, CFP® (15:06.35)
Well, give me bit more context because I can go almost a hundred directions there.

John Harcar (15:09.543)
Well, whatever. Let’s say any real estate investment company that you’ve talked to, don’t know names, right? We’re just going to say this guy, know, someone was doing this, right? And then other, other just like kind of normal mistakes people make because we’re not educated.

Mark Willis, CFP® (15:25.718)
Well, you know, I think the first is just like, you know, I’ll just commingle all my personal and business funds. I think that’s a big one that is just a no brainer. We all know it, but then it’s so easy to pull out the wrong debit card or credit card at the gas station or whatever.

John Harcar (15:39.197)
Or I’ll transfer a little money from here to there real fast. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Willis, CFP® (15:41.922)
That’s right, yeah. And I’d say the biggest one, the one that just absolutely destroys people is the allure of quick leverage cash. Banks are great at lending you money when you don’t need it, and they are quick to take it away from you when you desperately need it. Mark Twain says, a banker is a fellow who will lend you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back as soon as it starts raining. Yeah.

John Harcar (15:56.871)
Right. We do need it.

John Harcar (16:05.523)
I love that.

Mark Willis, CFP® (16:08.866)
So, you I know so many guys and gals, business owners, real estate investors who dip into the highly leveraged, you know, the bridge loan or the private lending loan or, you know, the high business line of credit. Sometimes it’s 30, 80, 120 % per year. Of course, everyone says, well, I won’t have that balance forever, but then they end up having it. You know, they become addicted to it that’s ultimately what sucks the business dry and puts them out of business.

John Harcar (16:35.613)
Got it. Where do you see your growth going with your business? What kind of growth path do you have?

Mark Willis, CFP® (16:41.25)
Well, there’s been plenty of volatility. not through the woods just yet, and I’m not sure when this episode will air, but I’m guessing that we’re not gonna be done with volatility by the time this airs. Okay, well I’m guessing that we’re still gonna be going through, world is still gonna be spinning, so we’re always gonna have uncertainty in the world, no matter who’s sitting in the Oval Office or whatever, doesn’t matter. know, volatility’s just part of the deal. And so, you know, I honestly have found great comfort in telling people.

John Harcar (16:48.391)
Within the next two weeks. Yeah, or earlier.

Mark Willis, CFP® (17:08.046)
Every time I meet with them, because I deal in contractual wealth, I’m not having to worry about what the market did yesterday. I can say with certainty, your accounts with me are going to be worth more today than they were last year. And next year, they’ll be worth even more than they are today. And that’s a great feeling of peace after having gone through the great recession of 2008, nine, and so on. I’ve never had to give bad news. And that’s a great feeling, ultimately and overall.

John Harcar (17:20.691)
Got it.

John Harcar (17:31.857)
Yeah, it is. What are, or what would you attribute your keys to success?

Mark Willis, CFP® (17:38.338)
You know, honestly, meeting with great folks like yourself and just continually saying, Hey, you know, I don’t know who has the right next step for the future. need to know who the best business partners are. Who am I going to play in the sandbox with next? You know, it’s been a great privilege coming on your show and I treat podcast guesting like this to sort of be like being invited into one’s living room. So I want to keep my shoes clean and, know, not kick up too much dirt. Exactly, man. So, you know, I think that’s been a big part of it is just never.

John Harcar (17:57.8)
Yeah man.

No shoes on the carpet.

Mark Willis, CFP® (18:06.946)
walling myself into some corner thinking I got it all figured out and waiting around for people to show up. You know, you got to go to where the people are and continue to share your message.

John Harcar (18:16.243)
call it the power of proximity. know, when you’re around the people, you know, my two favorite sayings, the power of proximity. And we talked about this earlier, you know, I love it. I love what I do so much. You guys, it’s like, I get paid to eat ice cream. Ponder on that one. Ponder on that one a little bit. Mark, if folks want to reach out, they want to talk, they want to do business. How do they connect with you?

Mark Willis, CFP® (18:18.19)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mark Willis, CFP® (18:28.984)
Right, yeah, that’s right. Yep, it’s great.

Mark Willis, CFP® (18:38.156)
The strategies we’ve mentioned has piqued your curiosity and you just wanted to learn a little more about it. I don’t bite. you know, I’m happy to speak and just learn and listen with you. So, the best way you can connect is to go to our website, which is kickstart with mark.com that’s kickstart with mark with a K.com. You’ll find my podcast there, which is not your average financial podcast. got 400 plus episodes in the shoot. we are.

John Harcar (18:46.269)
Hmm

John Harcar (19:04.754)
Wow.

Mark Willis, CFP® (19:05.548)
the top whatever one and half percent I guess a lot of our team members have helped make that happen which is a great privilege and then well you know I’m just trying to keep up with you man so yeah we’re having fun you can see our books that we’ve written and all the other things that we got going on on our YouTube channel but it’s all at Kickstart with Mark.com one last thing there’s a little link to our calendar where you can meet with either me or one of my team members for 15-20 minutes just to get your quick can

John Harcar (19:11.005)
So do I got a podcast star on my hands here?

Ayyyy

Mark Willis, CFP® (19:34.552)
questions answered and see if our working together would be a good fit.

John Harcar (19:38.225)
Guys, take advantage of it, man. And Mark will put all that stuff in the show notes. But I mean, really reach out if it’s a free consultation. I mean, I tell people all the time people think, well, it’s a free consultation. They’re going to try to sell me something. Hey, look, they’re trying to help you. If they can help you. Is it worth it? Probably.

Mark Willis, CFP® (19:54.85)
And we can’t sell anything that’s not gonna put you in a better place from a legal perspective. I don’t wanna lose my credentials as a CFP, so it’s on our shoulders to make sure we’re only offering things that actually improve your life and not just sell you something. I don’t need that.

John Harcar (20:01.596)
Yeah.

John Harcar (20:08.307)
Yeah, see it’s even better because you’re protected anyways, uh mark so i’m so grateful you came on man Thank you for sharing what you did. I know If none of our audience got good information, man, it’s this is incredible. I got some good notes I hope everybody enjoyed it and we will see you guys on the next one. Cheers