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Wealth Management for Entrepreneurs with Caleb Guilliams, Founder and CEO of BetterWealth

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Wealth Management for Entrepreneurs: Mindset, Knowledge, and Purpose

Conversations around money and personal finance are often emotionally fraught.

The truth is that many people don’t have control over their money or don’t have a goal in mind. There’s tons of conflicting information out there and it’s hard to know what to do.

Even high-achieving entrepreneurs can struggle to know how to manage their finances well.

This is where Caleb Guilliams comes in. As the founder and CEO of BetterWealth, his goal is to help entrepreneurs control and keep more of their money.

We talked to Caleb about his company and mission on a recent episode of the Stride to Freedom podcast—here are some key takeaways.

The BetterWealth Story

Caleb founded his company at just 21 years old. This isn’t surprising though, because he was always an ambitious young person.

Growing up in Wisconsin as the oldest of six children, he took on the mantle of oldest child, highly responsible and determined. He learned from a young age that he had to work to change what was in his control and not worry about the rest.

He read two influential books as a teenager, “Richest Man in Babylon” and “Good to Great,” which inspired him to one day start a financial company to help people take control of their finances.

He started working as a bank teller before advising clients at just 19 years old. Through mentorship and support, Caleb grew his skills and knowledge to launch BetterWealth. Today, they operate100% remotely across the entire US.

BetterWealth is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs. They offer coaching services, investment management, cash planning, and retirement planning. On top of this, they have a strong education and content creation arm to help people learn and grow in their own financial knowledge.

Rethinking Life Insurance

There are a lot of financial gurus out there who tell people to steer clear of life insurance.

And, in Caleb’s opinion, often for good reason.

The life insurance field is littered with poorly managed contracts and greedy brokers, offering little value to the client.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. When handled correctly, life insurance is a powerful savings vehicle that lets you earn tax-free gains which can then be spent or transferred tax-free.

Now, life insurance isn’t an investment tool—it’s an additional tool to manage your cash flow and savings in the short and long term.

Life insurance is a big part of BetterWealth’s business; Caleb is passionate about the positive impact it can have on your life and finances. But, like anything, you need to evaluate each opportunity for yourself.

Caleb’s a big believer in getting clear on your “why.” What motivates you, and why? What are your life goals, and why? When you know your “why” you can ask questions to help make decisions:

  • Does this bring me closer to my goal?
  • If so, is it the best option to get there?

These are some of the mindset practices that Caleb and his team help clients through so they can make sound financial decisions.

Getting Out of Your Own Way

As the company has grown, Caleb’s had to re-evaluate his own role and purpose. At one time, he was doing everything and, like many entrepreneurs, it simply wasn’t sustainable.

So, he got clear on his three life-giving areas: creating a vision, creating content, and building relationships.

If he strays into other areas of the business, he’s actually bringing them down. Each person needs to work in their zone of genius to maximize efficiency and bring high levels of engagement and motivation.

But too many entrepreneurs get in their own way and try to do too much.

Focus in on your “why”—what are you trying to accomplish? From there you can home in on exactly the value you bring and why you’re uniquely positioned to do it.

We talked about so much more with Caleb—including his interesting take on content creation in the financial services industry. If you’re curious to know more, listen to his full interview on the Stride to Freedom podcast. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn or check out BetterWealth.

The Stride to Freedom podcast is hosted by Stride Services.  Contact us today to learn more about our back-office accounting and CFO services, including stable and efficient bookkeeping, cash flow management, and actionable analytics for growth. You’ll enjoy this Podcast episode with Caleb.

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We are fortunate to have Caleb available to spend time with us on this edition of Stride 2 Freedom. If there is a speaker you’d like us to interview, click here and let us know. Stay well. Stay safe. Stay healthy.

Show Notes and Links From Episode:

Caleb Guilliams: LinkedIn

BetterWealth: Website/LinkedIn

Caleb Guilliams: Top 10 Takeaways

Caleb Guilliams: caleb@betterwealth.com

Episode Transcript:

Russell Benaroya: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Stride 2 Freedom podcast where we help business leaders get and stay in their genius zone.

What is your genius zone? Your genius zone is that thing that you do that feels effortless for you, where people acknowledge you for what you have built or created, and you wonder, “Huh, I didn’t really think it was all that but it’s just what I do.” The more time you can spend in that space, the more opportunity you have to make the kind of impact you desired when you started your business.

It’s such a privilege for me to host this show. My name is Russell Benaroya, the host of the Stride 2 Freedom podcast. I am also a partner and co-founder of our sponsor, Stride Services. Stride services is an outsourced bookkeeping, accounting, and fractional CFO services firm. Our genius zone is how we help business leaders use data to make better business decisions.

I have the distinct pleasure today of welcoming my new friend, Caleb Guilliams. Hi, Caleb.

Caleb Guilliams: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Russell Benaroya: Today is all about control, not in the domination sense of the word but in the sense of how you control decisions around managing your money, which, in this environment, may feel a bit more acute than ever. Caleb has risen in the marketplace as being a progressive voice around responsible investing, progressive thought, motivation, and discipline. We’re going to hear about his role as the founder and CEO of BetterWealth.

I was introduced to Caleb through a mutual friend, Elliott Neff, who’s the CEO and founder of a company called Chess4life. Elliott was on the show a few weeks back. Elliott, who is a national master in chess, thinks very precisely about his next moves. The fact that he made the next move to introduce me to Caleb maybe set the stage for what is to come.

Caleb, why don’t we go ahead and jump in?

Caleb Guilliams: I feel like the bar is set so high. My hope is to deliver massive value and have this conversation be insanely life-giving to the people listening. Thank you for having me on the show. I’m excited.

Russell Benaroya: It’s such a pleasure. Maybe start with a little bit of the BetterWealth story, your background, how you got interested in investing, and the kind of impact you endeavor to make through the company.

Caleb Guilliams: My story really begins in the center of Wisconsin. That’s the state that I grew up in. I’m the oldest of six kids. My dad’s a Ph.D. in molecular biology. He’s written multiple books on all of that science stuff. Then my mom stayed home and homeschooled us so I had a very unique upbringing.

I wanted to be a doctor until I took biology for the first time. I was like, I’m not going to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I’ve always been the typical oldest, where I was very responsible. I was also very self-aware of some of my downfalls. I was very short for my age, and I struggled with reading. Some people would call it dyslexia. Reading is not something that I’m very good at.

I had this moment when I was 12 or 13, and I realized that the things that I can’t control, like my height, I can’t put my identity in, but the things that I can control, like how I show up and do things like school and reading, I have to work harder than the average person. The other quote that I love is by Simon Sinek. He says, “The solutions that you find for your weaknesses become your greatest strength.”

My ability to communicate came out of my very poor ability to get through life by not communicating. It forced me to communicate just to get by. That became a strength of mine that I can lean on to this day.

One of my first jobs was working at a chicken farm. I processed chickens and I made money from that. I made $1 for every chicken that I gutted. I read two books that have made a tremendous impact on my outlook and what I’m doing now. I read Good to Great by Jim Collins, and I read The Richest Man in Babylon.

The Richest Man in Babylon is about how anyone, regardless of who you are, there are some principles that you can live by to become wealthy. Then Good to Great was this inspiration of, what does it take to be a great company? What does it take to be a level-five leader?

At 15 years old, I looked at the world and I was like, why is everyone broke? Why don’t people know this? I just wrote down on a notecard, “I want to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company to help people with money.” The rest is just the journey of walking that out.

I got a job at a bank when I was 17, I got to work as a teller. When I was 19 years old, I became one of the youngest people in the country to have the responsibility of taking over the investment department of that entire bank. At 19 years old, I started meeting with people, realizing real fast that the majority of people do not have their financial life figured out.

There’s brokenness, there’s a lack of control, there’s a lack of understanding, and there’s a lack of knowing your numbers. I can’t tell you how many business owners would come in and have no clue what was going on. Then they were looking at investing in X, Y, or Z when their business was underutilized and undercapitalized. I remember taking a step back and saying there’s got to be a better way.

When you’re 19 and you look like you’re 15 or 14 — the beard is helping me out a little bit —I had people come out of the woodwork to help me and mentor me. I learned a lot about money that we can unpack if you’d like.

One of the key principles is I realized that efficiency matters. Efficiency is a function of two things: getting really clear on what you want and then eliminating any friction to get there. I realized that if you think about that concept, the majority of people don’t know what they want. They can’t articulate their true why. They can’t articulate a metric that’s not something financial. And if you don’t know where you want to go, to quote Alice in Wonderland, any road will get you there. Welcome to America.

So, a lack of understanding of your why and your core metric is a problem. But once you know the core metric, a lot of people are walking to their destination when there are things called airplanes.

So once we get clear and where we want to go, then it’s analyzing: can we do a better job creating cash flow? Can we do a better job of eliminating inefficiencies? Can we do a better job maximizing our investments? Those are the three areas that we could spend a lot of time talking about. Eliminating friction in those three areas can help someone keep more of their money, and as a result, take their desired result to make it happen faster and better.

At 21 years old, I have a mission statement, which is to help people see and reach their highest potential. We could have a whole episode on that. I’ve realized that the majority of people are not living to their God-given potential. It’s really sad to think that people are living their life not reaching that and not living that out, so if there’s anything that I can do.

Right now, I’m committed to helping people with money. If I can help people use money as a tool so that they can show up more powerfully in their life, that’s one of the greatest things that I can do. That’s why I do what I do.

We started BetterWealth when I was 21. Five years later, we have clients all over the country. We do everything virtually. I was laughed at and discouraged to start it when I was 21, and rightfully so. By God’s grace, we’re still in business.

We’ve grown and now a lot of industry professionals and associations are having me keynote their events because of our strategy, how we were able to do it at a young age, and some of the technology that we’ve been using to be able to help people keep more of their money, be more efficient, and live more intentionally.

Russell Benaroya: What is BetterWealth? Is BetterWealth a money management firm? Is it a content company and an education company or a little bit of both? Give me that story.

Caleb Guilliams: BetterWealth started as an LLC that helps people get educated about overfunding life insurance. We would teach people how to utilize life insurance and how to save your money and use it to invest in yourself, your business, or whatnot. That’s how it started. That’s when I met Elliot.

I wrote a book, The AND Asset. We met each other through our book-writing journey, which is interesting because I don’t like reading, but we wrote a book. That’s another interesting concept. From there, we do entrepreneurial coaching, tax planning, we have an IRA and do investing. We’re nationally known for our life insurance strategy. So we did that. Then we also do retirement planning for people that want a more entrepreneurial look at retirement and looking at that. We also have a coaching side to our business as well for entrepreneurs.

Russell Benaroya: To bring it down to like a fifth-grade level, if I’m listening to the show, and I run a business, or I’m a leader that’s trying to grow and invest in myself and realize my full human potential, you would say, “Consider calling BetterWealth when what? Reach out to us when…”

Caleb Guilliams: When you want to learn better ways to keep and control your money. It sounds like there’s a lot of synergy between what you do and what we do. That’s something I’m so grateful for, to be talking to people that are doing a lot of similar things and bringing on other guests that can enhance the output and the result. I’m so grateful, again, to be here.

Russell Benaroya: Do you find yourself having to educate a bit on where BetterWealth fits into the rubric of how people typically think about money management broadly? They think about certain institutions or maybe certain products or instruments. They might not immediately even know that a company with BetterWealth exists. Do you find yourself educating and evangelizing a bit?

Caleb Guilliams: There are a couple of things that we do. We have a virtual family office that we do for the people that can’t afford a typical virtual family office.

A virtual family office is if you’re worth a ton of money, you can spend a couple of $100,000 if not $1 million a year to have all your financial professionals on the same page. You get your investment person, your risk management person, your bookkeeper, and your CFO, and everybody on the same page. That creates efficiency to allow you to make sure your money is optimized. For people that have a lot of money, the $1 million that it costs them to run each year is a drop in the bucket for the value that they’re getting.

We looked at that system and said, “Man, that is a superior way to maximize your situation. What if we could do a version of that for people that aren’t worth $500 million but worth $2 to $5 million?”

Because there are entrepreneurs who are running like chickens with their heads cut off, and they have no clue where their money is going. They’re not investing in assets that are aligned with what they want to do, or why they started the business, to begin with. They’re diversifying their ability to have an impact, and they don’t even know where to begin.

So, think of us as a virtual family office for entrepreneurs that are in the $2, $5, to $10 million range. Some people are working their way up to $2 million. Some people are on $10 million of assets and asking the question, “Okay, I have more money than I know what to do with. I want to be a good steward of that.”

A big portion of the virtual family office is our understanding of life insurance, and how to use that, not as an investment, but as a safe core asset that people can save their money and utilize it throughout their life. That specialty is the reason why people tend to work with us.

Yes, we have a virtual family office, and we can coach and do all those things. But our understanding of how to utilize life insurance as not an investment — I keep saying that because a lot of times it’s sold as an investment alternative — it’s just a better long-term place to store and use your capital. If people understood that, they would maybe want to redirect some of their savings into this asset for the long-term benefits, and then the short-term access that they could get through that.

That is why people choose to work with us. It’s the last thing I’ll say is I believe your greatest investment, especially as an entrepreneur, is you. What I find is a lot of people are not properly diversified when it comes to their priorities and they’re diversifying too fast. As a result, they’re shortchanging their ability to create more cash flow.

So, we try as a company to highlight what’s really important. Even though we have an IRA and we can do asset management and whatnot, we tend to tell entrepreneurs to not diversify too fast and make sure that their business is fully capitalized so that they can take their business and their life to the next level.

Russell Benaroya: That’s super interesting. Life insurance is a bit of a secret sauce component of what you do. What is misunderstood by most people about life insurance?

Caleb Guilliams: There are two sides to the coin. The side that you’ll probably see if you Google is, you’ll see someone like Dave Ramsey, or Suze Orman, and a lot of gurus out there that will say, “Life insurance is horrible. You’ll get screwed if you put your money into it. It’s a horrible place, so don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.”

I have a ton of empathy for what they’re saying because the majority of life insurance is sold as an investment. It takes forever to break even. It is not flexible, has horrible growth, and yet pays a person like us a lot of money for setting them up. But we’re essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater to just say all life insurance is bad.

Some of the things that I learned is that life insurance can be extremely flexible. It can be incredible growth. It can pay a fraction of what the “commission” which ultimately makes it better for the consumer. Most importantly, it’s never meant to compete with an investment. I mean, we’re looking at long-term rates of return of 3.5% to 5.5%, which shouldn’t get anybody excited, other than the fact that if you compare it to a savings account, there’s no other safe asset that can give you access and control like a savings account with the kind of growth and future benefits like life insurance.

So, while it’s not an investment, if people understand that it’s an “AND asset,” and it can give your dollars, long-term benefits that are truly incredible. It also can give you the ability to utilize that capital to invest in the market, invest in your business, and invest in your education as an emergency fund.

So, now when you’re starting to do the mental brain work of saying, “I can take $1 that can literally protect me, can be amazing for the future, give me options and all that, and can give me the ability to still access that dollar throughout my life. And I don’t have to eliminate the future value. That’s where people like Elliot say, “This is a really interesting concept. You’re making me think twice about how I think about my money.”

Russell Benaroya: Is the construction of that life insurance vehicle something that BetterWealth helps the architect? Or is it something that’s available and people just need to know what to ask and where to find it? Or do you bring certain pieces to the puzzle that make it whole?

Caleb Guilliams: One of the things I would love to do during my lifetime is make it so that people could buy life insurance without a broker. That would be amazing. That would create even more efficiency.

Russell Benaroya: Less friction.

Caleb Guilliams: Right now, you have to buy life insurance through a licensed professional. That’s essentially the middleman between you and the insurance company. There are two things that need to be checked. You need the right insurance company, which we recommend having a solid mutual company, meaning that you’re a part owner when you enter into that agreement. And then the contract needs to be optimally and maximumly designed for cash.

There are a lot of people that represent great companies, but very few people that know how to optimally design policies where you’re getting a ton of cash value in the first year, and break even at year four or five. For that, you’d want to work with someone like us or someone who really knows what they’re doing.

Unfortunately, I know this sounds salesy for me saying, there are very few people around the country that do this well. The downside to doing it is you don’t get paid a lot. So, the only people that can afford to do this are the ones that live off of volume.

Well, we have clients in all 50 states and that’s our model. As you can imagine, it can be a little bit threatening to the industry itself when we’re putting out information like this. Because typically, people have a few clients a year that they’re setting up life insurance for. It would be hard to make a living if you only have that model to do the type of life insurance we do.

Russell Benaroya: How would I self-assess whether or not this is a good decision for me right now? What are the considerations?

Caleb Guilliams: The big question and this is something we won’t be able to accomplish through the podcast, but the question that you should ask whatever decision you’re making financially or not, is, does this thing help me get closer to what I currently want? If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t do it. If the answer is yes, then you should ask, is this the best thing that will help me accomplish what I need to accomplish?

That’s my two cents as relates to life insurance. Would this asset as a part of your portfolio help you get closer? With all that said, if you don’t have $10,000 a year to save, then I would say that permanent life insurance is probably not going to be the best for you. You would be better off putting your time and energy into figuring out how you can save at least $10,000 a year.

If you’re someone that can have the means to save at least $10,000 a year and maybe are sitting on a lump sum of money in addition to that, then life insurance could enhance what you’re currently doing by, again, not taking away where you’re investing, but routing that money into that foundational asset or a portion of that, and then showing you how you can use that asset in addition to investing in real estate, invest in your business and whatnot.

I just spoke to a real estate investor today, and we looked at: should you use your savings account to put down payments for a house, or should you run it through life insurance? In the first couple of years, a savings account is more efficient. At about year eight and every year after that, life insurance is more efficient.

Thanks to compounding, it gets more and more efficient every year. So, it’s not a get-rich-quick. This is a no-brainer. People have to decide, that eight-year difference in this scenario, what do I want to do?

That’s what we help people decide. But if you ask me, What are the downfalls to using life insurance as a savings vehicle? Number one, you’re going to have less money in the first couple of years than what you put in. For some people, that’s a turnoff. They can’t get over that and I respect that. Then there is a time where that’s not the case and you have more money than what you put in. It surpasses a savings account. That’s usually years five to seven.

The second thing is not everyone qualifies. Because it is life insurance, you need to insure your life. There are some people in this situation that aren’t able to qualify. Now, there are ways around that. You can get creative, but you personally might not be able to qualify for life insurance. So, not everyone can do this strategy in their own life.

Russell Benaroya: Are there any regulations that are on the docket, or changing or evolving that are making this product or instrument more accessible, more available, more enticing, and intriguing because of legislation that’s making it so?

Caleb Guilliams: That’s a great question. The short answer is no. It’s one of those asset classes that doesn’t have a lot of attention. One of the reasons why it’s such an amazing asset is when structured and utilized properly, after your money goes in, it grows tax-free, can be used tax-free, and gets passed on income-tax-free to the next generation.

All of those have been rock solid. That’s why life insurance as a chassis is really important. The more advanced answer to your question is, yes, there is some legislation that has happened that allows the insurance companies in a low-interest rate environment to be a little bit more flexible. But we’re getting into the weeds. It’s more from a product design. There’s more flexibility in how we can design it. It doesn’t really address the end consumer and how they can have access to this.

Russell Benaroya: You’re obviously an entrepreneur and you’re building a business. Talk a little bit about how you have built BetterWealth, the organizational design, and I can tell that you like talking about the availability in all 50 states. It’s core to your value. You’re 100% remote and all of those things. So, maybe talk about org structure.

Caleb Guilliams: One of the things I’m most proud of is I am the pretty face, or non-pretty face, depending on your opinion, BetterWealth. I had a mentor of mine early on say, “Caleb, if you want to build the business the way that you’re saying” —because I wanted to be a one-stop-shop for every financial decision — “if you really want to do that, you’re still meeting with a bunch of people and you love meeting with people, but you’re saying one thing and your actions are doing the exact opposite.”

So, two and a half years ago, I stepped down from meeting with people and the day-to-day, and I found the right whos. I’m a big fan of Dan Sullivan, Who Not How. So, I asked the question, “Who?” And this is very much Jim Collins’ ask as well, “Who needs to be on the bus, who needs to be on the team to make sure that our company and the bus is not just going to where we think it can go but can go in directions that we don’t even know it’s possible?”

So, what I’m most proud of is every single business that is under BetterWealth. BetterWealth, at its simplest, is a brand and an education company that brings in entrepreneurs and our goal is to help them be more efficient with their resources. Each brand and company has a who that is responsible for the ins and outs of the revenue and making sure that the operations are designed.

I am overseeing that but I got really clear of three things that I need to be doing. That is life-giving: I love creating and vision, I love creating content, and believe that’s one of the greatest value leverage things that I can do. And relationships and creating deals, that’s one thing that I love to do. I’m uniquely gifted at it and so I want to do more of that.

If there’s something that falls outside of those three things, the company gets hurt if I insert myself in there. One of the biggest things that I had to realize is I’m not a very good manager. I’m not very good at leading meetings. I had to really put my ego at the altar and say, “Okay, I’m not good at this.” So, is the company going to suffer because I need to be in charge of certain things, or manage people? The moment I got out of the way in some of those areas, we took off because we had amazing people that were handcuffed due to my lack of leadership.

Russell Benaroya: It sounds very logical when you lay it out. If there’s nothing more that people gain from listening to this podcast other than learning more about life insurance, learning more about acknowledging where your genius zone is, where it isn’t, and taking the actions to spend more time in it.

Again, in hindsight, Caleb, yes, that makes a lot of sense. But oftentimes, when you’re in the milieu of it, it’s hard to see it yourself. I’m wondering, did anybody hold up the mirror to you to help you catalyze toward that acknowledgement and ultimate shift around where you are best contributing?

Caleb Guilliams: Twofold. If you ask me what I’m most proud of, it’s the people that I do business with day in and day out. There are people on our leadership team that will say things to me that you’d be like, “Oh, boy.” And I don’t just lean into it, I thank them. It takes a ton of courage to share, especially things that I can improve. It’s hard across the board, especially if you’re talking to someone that might be a leader in the organization in that way.

So, we have an atmosphere where we encourage that. Then also, embodying the concept of extreme ownership makes you a way happier person. Extreme ownership is essentially saying, “Any problem that I faced in my life is my fault. I am not going to point fingers at anybody in the organization other than me. It’s not my wife’s fault. It’s not our leadership team’S fault. It’s my fault because I’m the leader of this team.”

As a result, what would a great leader do in this case? It doesn’t mean there’s no accountability. There’s tons of accountability, but because everything is my fault, when we have a problem, my default is, obviously, it starts with me. As a result, I need to communicate and have the humility to say, “Okay, it starts with me, but what do we need to do to solve this?” Because I don’t want to have any ego.

I think as a leader, if you’re like, “People aren’t being honest with me,” a lot of times it is your fault because you’re not creating an atmosphere where that can happen. I would say I create an atmosphere where people feel very comfortable calling me out, and I truly want to be the best I can. So, I try to create action behind it and make sure that there’s no hypocrisy to say you’re saying one thing and you’re not changing at all.

I don’t know if any of that resonated, but those are some of the things that we actively are working on. We try to make sure that our company culture embodies that.

Russell Benaroya: Because of that, it created the space for you to be more self-reflective around the impact that you could make and where and where you needed to spend time or wanted to spend time in order to do that.

Caleb Guilliams: Right. The majority of people in our space can’t get out of their own way. When I realized that I was actually getting in the way of helping more people, that was the epiphany for me. We’ve had rocky (times), but at the end of the day, I look back and I’m so grateful for that mind expansion because I got it at 23. A lot of people are 45, 55 and just realizing, “Oh, I gotta get out of the business.”

Russell Benaroya: Couldn’t agree with you more. You mentioned creation of content as being an area of genius for you. I don’t want to move too far askew from BetterWealth, but I think it’s an important observation in your role as a leader that being a producer or creator of content is a vehicle for awareness, education, and ultimately, customer acquisition. Can you talk a little bit about your content strategies and what’s been effective for you?

Caleb Guilliams: If you’re okay, I’m going to take a step back and insert my framework of value and leverage. I believe the one-two punch in any business is that you have to create value through a service or product. Not all services and products are created equal. So, as an owner, and as a leader, we need to be obsessive about the actual product or service that we produce to the marketplace.

Then let’s assume that you’ve done all the work that you need, and your product and services lights out. The next part is what are the levers that can amplify our ability to serve more people through our product or service? The levers could be capital. It could be relationships. It could be the ability to create content. It could be the ability to publish that content. It could be the ability to create code and all that.

That’s how I think you provide value and then you amplify that value. Then the world, no longer is it just money. If you look at 100-200 years ago, the wealthiest people were the ones that leveraged capital and people. Those are the people that made the wealth. Now, if you take a step back, money and people are part of the equation, but there are other levers that can help you take your service or product to the next level.

Content, for me, if I think back on me dying and the things that would be the most meaningful, the thought of being able to create a video that ultimately can live on past me, and that more than one eyeballs can watch and hopefully get impacted by, but it only cost me one input, makes me obsessive.

I realized that if I have a message that needs to be shared, one of the most valuable things that I can do is create content that’s valuable, with the ultimate leverage effect that it’s put on certain platforms and it’s valuable enough.

So content is not just used in our business strategy as a lever, but the content itself very much aligns with one of the most important things that I can be doing. The thought of, again, going back and creating pieces of content that can live on, there are not a lot of things like that. With that, I’ve become pretty obsessed with trying to figure it out.

With all that said. I’m still working. I’m a fraction of where we need to be, but it’s something that I’m committed to in the future.

Russell Benaroya: I think about it the same way. One input to an evergreen journey makes so much sense if you feel like you have a message that can support, like you said, a lights-out value. I’m curious, what social media platform have you found to be most effective for a BetterWealth message?

Caleb Guilliams: YouTube via LongShot is the platform that we have made the most money on. Because, again, people will search, they’ll watch videos, and they’ll reach out to us. So, YouTube is by far the platform that has been the most beneficial for us.

My money is on Google. I would encourage anyone, if you’re doing content, to figure that out. Then I’ve had a podcast for over five years. The second part of that is we get 300 to 500 downloads a day on our podcast. That also translates into great activity and compounds when you think about that on a daily basis and some of the people that reach out through that.

So, the podcast and YouTube would be the most beneficial financially. Then we get views on other platforms that might look more impressive, but they just don’t translate as much into revenue. I don’t know how to best answer that, but if I had to stay on one platform, it would be YouTube.

Russell Benaroya: I think people are sometimes surprised to hear that YouTube is the second most popular search engine.

Caleb Guilliams: The first one is Google and Google owns YouTube.

Russell Benaroya: It’s pretty astounding. Let me ask a couple of closing questions here. Caleb, it’s been great having you on. What I love about this podcast is we may come in with a particular set of questions or content around what you do. I really love getting to the why you do it, and also the architecting of the business that you’re trying to build.

So, it’s this great symbiotic set of questions and corresponding content, which I appreciate. If I’m listening to this episode and there’s some action that I could take getting off of this call today, what are some actions or recommendations you might put forth to a listener?

Caleb Guilliams: The best thing that we can do for your audience is to do a BetterWealth X-ray. A BetterWealth X-ray is very much like the word X-ray. It’s highlighting where you’re currently at. It’s showing you exactly the inefficiencies that we’re highlighting.

Some of the inefficiencies that might be highlighted, you can choose to address them or not. But the BetterWealth X-ray is the best way for us to take someone who’s like, “Hey, I’m interested in learning more.” And instead of looking at a strategy, which I’m really anti, it’s like, “Let’s look at where you’re at, let’s highlight the inefficiencies, and from there, we’ll have a better understanding of what we should address and what to pursue next.”

That would be one. If someone is just interested in life insurance, and they’re like, “Hey, what you said sounds really interesting,” we have a resource that’s free that gives you all the content that you need to know to learn more about that.

For both the X-ray and the vault, I can either share where to go, or we can have links down below. For your audience, I want to figure out a way to get them to create access to the X-ray if that’s what they want to do. We’ll figure out either a coupon code or a special link that they can go to do that.

Russell Benaroya: Perfect. We’ll definitely put that in the show notes. But if somebody wanted to just hop on right now and learn more, they can just go to betterwealth.com.

Caleb Guilliams: Just go to betterwealth.com. You can learn more about The And Asset and an x-ray from there. Just don’t buy the X-ray until you check out… We’ll have some type of coupon or link for you.

Russell Benaroya: Terrific. Is there anything that people don’t typically ask you on these types of shows that you wish they did?

Caleb Guilliams: What you asked is one of my favorite questions. The question I would ask people is, if you were on your deathbed and you were looking back on your life, what would be the most sacred things? What would you say to the people that you love the most?

I would encourage you to do two things. Number one, I would encourage you to write that down and do a video on it. I think that having a video in itself will change you the moment you make it. Then, hopefully, if it’s preserved, it’ll be one of the most meaningful digital assets of your entire life. It will also help clarify why you do what you do.

What I find is that I’m focused on things that don’t matter. It would be a shame to live our entire life chasing things that really don’t matter. Usually, when we think about the end of our life, there’s a beautiful clarification that highlights what’s really important and All the vanity metrics that are not important.

Russell Benaroya: Thank you for sharing that. I want to go make that video. Caleb, thank you so much for spending time with us today. You have these wonderful pearls that I will be highlighting. I’m sure you know that you have some takeaways that people can internalize and act on.

The way that I receive you is that it is what makes you particularly magnetic and effective in sending a message that you believe is important and that people take action on and realize the benefits themselves. Thank you for giving me and the Stride 2 Freedom podcast the opportunity to share your story.

Caleb Guilliams: It’s a true honor. I’m so grateful for your ability to listen and have a conversation. You’re gifted and I’m grateful that you’re in my life. I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

Russell Benaroya: Caleb, thank you again. Thank you, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Stride 2 Freedom podcast. Have a great day. We will see you on our future shows. Thanks again, Caleb

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