Interview with Mike Everett

Mike Everett Interview. Transcript

Chris Bay:

Welcome to the Life Success Legacy Podcast. My name is Chris Bay and I’m joined today with the founder of Life Success & Legacy, Mike Everett.

Chris Bay:

Thanks to our listeners for joining us today. This next set of podcasts are going to be a little bit different. What we want to do is we want to introduce you to the team members of Life Success & Legacy and our stories as to how we got introduced to the Infinite Banking Concept. How we learned about it, how long did we study and research it, how it’s impacted our lives, et cetera. So today what we want to do, and each of our stories is unique and diverse, and you may find that you connect with some of these different stories because we all have very different stories of how we were introduced to IBC. Today what we’re going to do is focus on Mike Everett, the founder of Life Success & Legacy and how he was introduced to the infinite banking concept. How it’s impacted his life and where he is today with his IBC strategy.

Chris Bay:

So, Mike, why don’t you start off with telling us, take us back to the day when you were introduced to the Infinite Banking Concept. How old were you? Where were you in life? With kids and that kind of thing.

Mike Everett:

Well, I had just turned 50 years old and I was a little bit disenfranchised with where I was in my career in the property-casualty business. And then I had gone into Applebee’s after church one day and all of a sudden this guy made a beeline over to our table and said, “Hey Mike-”

Chris Bay:

So you knew him?

Mike Everett:

I did.

Chris Bay:

Okay.

Mike Everett:

I did.

Chris Bay:

Okay.

Mike Everett:

Yeah. He basically asked, he says, “If I could show you and Linda a way to recover the entire cost of all the cars you purchase the rest of your life, would you be interested?” And I said, “Well, who wouldn’t?”

Mike Everett:

Long story short, he sent me the book. It came on that following Wednesday in a Manila envelope. So I opened this envelope, out comes a book, out comes a letter that tells you exactly how to read the book. And the book we’re talking about obviously is Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. And along with all of that, there was a bill for $22 there. And I literally hollered in at Linda. I go, “Honey.” I said, “He sent us a bill with the book.” This is a book he wanted me to read. So I was a little upset about it. So I just took the bill and I tore it up and I threw the trash. So literally I threw this book over by where I do all my reading and this was Wednesday. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday came along. Right after the news, the book somehow made it to the top of the pile.

Mike Everett:

And so I said to Linda, she was getting ready bed and I said, “I’m going to read this book.” I said, “I’m going to read it tonight.” Because it was only 92 pages. So I started in on it at 10:30 at night, began to read it and-

Chris Bay:

Oh, wait a second because that goes against everything we tell people.

Mike Everett:

It does.

Chris Bay:

Please do not read this book after eight or nine o’clock at night because it’ll mess with your sleep.

Mike Everett:

Well, let me just tell you, after my first reading, I was so excited. I did exactly what the letter said and I read it a second time and finished my second reading at 1:30 AM and immediately went in and woke my wife up and said, “Honey, I know what I’m going to do for a new career.”

Chris Bay:

So, you weren’t just thinking about how this could impact your financial life. You were looking at it in addition to because it was so powerful to you.

Mike Everett:

It was.

Chris Bay:

It just made sense to you.

Mike Everett:

It did. As many of the people who know me, I’m the guy who jumps off the high board and I don’t really check to see if there’s water in the pool. So literally I have decided at 1:30 AM that I was changing careers, just like that. But it wasn’t a giant shift in my career change. I went from property-casualty insurance to dividend paying whole life insurance. So it was all in the same family, just a little bit more specific, a little bit more focused.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. That makes sense.

Mike Everett:

I woke up at 7:00 AM and started calling this guy’s office at 8:00 in the morning only to find out that their office doesn’t open until 9:00. I left three voicemails between 8:00 and 9:00 AM in the morning, I was that amped up about it.

Chris Bay:

So you went to work with him?

Mike Everett:

I did.

Chris Bay:

Okay.

Mike Everett:

I did.

Chris Bay:

Tell me about just your personal IBC experience. When did you start your policies? How did you get started? Those kinds of things.

Mike Everett:

I immediately did two applications the first time I met with him within that first week. I decided to do a policy on myself and a policy on my wife. But then all of a sudden it dawned on me, I didn’t have any money. So I had to figure out how to go get money. So literally I went down to the bank and one of the loan officers-

Chris Bay:

This is going to be exhibit two of what not to do, right?

Mike Everett:

It is.

Chris Bay:

Are there future exhibits?

Mike Everett:

Well, I’ll just tell you. I went about it a different way, let’s put it that way. But there’s a really great ending to this story.

Chris Bay:

Absolutely.

Mike Everett:

I went down and borrowed money to do policies for my wife and I. Number one, I tell people don’t do that unless you have equity in a place that you can use. I had no equity. So I borrowed money, started my first policies and then off we go.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. So at that point, tell me where you were in life with family. And what was your thought process in terms of how is this going to benefit you or family or who’s going to benefit from this?

Mike Everett:

I think my daughter was a sophomore or junior in high school and my son was already out of college. So this was a pretty big shift for us because I had started to then think about infinite banking in a completely different way.

Mike Everett:

First off, when you buy life insurance, normally you buy life insurance because you love someone. It is that simple. You’re actually not buying it for yourself, you’re buying it for the people that you love and care about. So when I was buying my policies for Linda and I just knew deep down that these were not for me, they were for the next generation.

Chris Bay:

So you didn’t see how this IBC thing was really going to benefit you in the meantime?

Mike Everett:

No.

Chris Bay:

Okay.

Mike Everett:

But let’s just go back to Nelson’s number one principle, think long-term. So I knew when I was purchasing the policies that somewhere down the way my family was going to benefit.

Chris Bay:

Right. So talk to me about implementation of your IBC strategy. How did that go in the early years?

Mike Everett:

Well, there were about 25 to 35 of us. Some real small number where we literally, we were learning this thing as fast as we could. We were going around wherever Nelson was, we’d go. We’ve needed information because literally it felt like something so new and so different. But yet it was so exciting because we just needed information. So literally we were doing three, four, five seminars a year and going to places wherever Nelson was, or having him come to Lawrence, Kansas and learning about IBC. It was pretty darn exciting because nobody had ever taught me about something like this that can set people so free in their financial life.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. So fast forward for me now, how long has it been since you started your first policies?

Mike Everett:

Well, I just paid my 13th premium, so 13 policy years. But I’ve only been in this for a little more than 12 years and this is all part of the learning that we help with clients learn. But, so I started out with two policies. I think in the first year I had five policies. I borrowed all the money to do this, which I was telling you, I was an idiot. But…

Chris Bay:

How’s that played out for you now?

Mike Everett:

Well, now it’s played out unbelievably because what happened was, as life grew and things changed quickly, so did a number of things in my life that made it easier to purchase additional policies. Now we have 16 life insurance policies. They’re not all on me. I’ve got some on me, some on Linda, some on Kurt, some on Karen, some on the grandkids. So-

Chris Bay:

I know at one point Nelson had 49 life insurance policies and now you’re up to 16 policies.

Mike Everett:

16.

Chris Bay:

That’s right. Yeah. Have you learned a few things from the time you started that you might put in the category of wisdom that you can share with your clients-

Mike Everett:

Let’s put it this way, let’s go back to day one when I went to the bank and borrowed money. Now, because of the way we’ve assembled our team and the learning curve that I’ve gone through and the things that were misfortunes to me, can greatly benefit the clients that we work with. We can see a little bit further down the road to where we can help somebody avoid the mistakes that I made.

Chris Bay:

Absolutely. Mike, thanks for sharing your story. When we do our live boot camps, when you do share your story, it always has the room just rolling. And at first, just honestly, it used to freak me out because you just messed it all up so bad. But the beauty of it is, even as bad as you messed it up in the beginning-

Mike Everett:

It still works.

Chris Bay:

… it still works.

Mike Everett:

It does.

Chris Bay:

That is what’s amazing to me. So thanks for sharing your story-

Mike Everett:

You bet Chris.

Chris Bay:

… appreciate that. To the listeners, our next podcasts are going to be you getting a chance to know the rest of the team of Life Success & Legacy and how we got introduced to this crazy thing called the infinite banking concept. Check out our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. And if you have not read Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, we cannot encourage you strongly enough to do that. Thanks for joining us.