Robert Annable [00:00:00] I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if I talk to most of your community, they're extremely confident about moving into a short-term rental because you've taken the time to educate them. Now, look, sex and money, right? I'm more likely to get somebody to sit across the table from me and talk to me about their girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever it is, good, bad, or ugly, before they will talk to me about money. That tells us that the insecurity around that conversation, because it is such a complicated industry, but also it's a very intimate conversation. People don't want to feel like they've ever done anything wrong. No, you've done as good as you could based on the information you knew to get where you are. Now let's figure out a way to optimize that.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:00:40] Hey there, I'm Madeleine and welcome to The Luxe and The Short of It podcast. I'm a military wife, mom, and entrepreneur that went from a stressed out nine-to-fiver to now a present-minded seven-figure business owner and investor, all through the power of short-term rentals. Here we believe the Luxe life means having the time and financial freedom to be present for the moments that matter most. And I'm here to teach you the exact mindset shifts, insider expertise, and business strategy to make that a reality for you today. So are you ready to actively create the life you want? I'm Madeleine and this is The Luxe and The Short of It podcast.

[00:01:26] Guys, welcome back to this episode of the Luxe and the Short of It. I recently got back from Scottsdale, Arizona and the main purpose of my trip was getting to know our guest today. His name is Robert Annable and he is the President and Wealth Advisor of Wealth Strategies Advisory Group. And their focus is to help clients identify and address their main financial goals and concerns and implement strategies that help. Add value to their overall plan and protect their legacy. Guys, I have been on the hunt to find a group that gets all of the experts in one table. The ultra wealthy have an idea and something called a family office, which gets all these experts into one room and is employed by the family to ultimately multiply their wealth. It used to only be accessible to the ultra wealthy and Rob's group has been able to bring this and make it more accessible to those of us who are on our way to building massive wealth for us and for our families. Guys, he explains the idea of a virtual office. He shares some things that short-term rental investors should be doing. And I share some fantastic news for our mentorship clients. And those who are part of our greater community. You guys don't want to miss this episode. There's so much gold. Without further ado, here is the episode with Robert. Guys, I just spent a couple of days out in Scottsdale hanging out with Robert and his entire team of folks. They are what they like to call not your average wealth manager. Is that what we're saying? Is that we're calling it?

Robert Annable [00:03:18] Not your traditional, not your average, not your contrarian...

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:03:22] I love all of these phrases. And it was just such an enlightening time because as my portfolio has grown and as our wealth has grown we have started to have different conversations and so my tax strategist introduced me to Robert and his team of folks and I said diversification is absolutely important because our goal is to not just have the wealth for us. It's to pass it down for generations to come and have this giant ripple effect. And so part of what I like to do is test all of these things out for you guys and have these conversations. And so, I spent a couple of days with Robert and his team. I wanted to bring some of these conversations back to you guys because as you grow your own portfolios, just having the awareness of these other things that are out there, things that you can do right now with your existing portfolios that are going to multiply what you're doing already as you're getting ready to level up to the next level of wealth, and what things you should be thinking about now to protect these things for your family. And at the end of the day, you just don't know what you don't now. So I started asking these questions and that's part of what Robert and I are going to talk about today on the episode. Is just what you should start to be thinking about at certain tiers. So one of the things that you and I were talking about was this concept of infinite banking and creating just the flow of money and cash flows. So essentially changing the order of how people have their money flow in order to build wealth within that. Can you explain to us a little bit about that concept, just high level.

Robert Annable [00:05:23] Yeah, sure. So it aligns completely with not your traditional, the contrarian way of thinking and the idea that understanding cash flow and the way money flows through your own financial system is just as important as where you're placing the dollars, what types of investments you're investing in, what you're doing with your retirement accounts, all those decisions are the ones that normal people are kind of talking about all the time. But the ones that they're not are, well, how are you funneling it through your system? We just all assume that, well, the status quo for the last 30, 40 years, everybody's just used bank accounts. So that's what you use. You use bank accounts, you use 401k retirement accounts, those traditional type structures. And the idea of leveraging a privatized banking strategy or an infinite banking strategy, there's a lot of different names out there that people use, but the whole idea is just inputting a non-traditional vehicle in order to continue down the same path. So it's not really changing or unwinding everything you're used to doing. It's just adjusting the tools you're using to do it. So the environment that we are all saving money in and moving cashflow through our systems now and trying to make really good sound financial decisions in all areas of our life, not just investing. We're still kind of using a lot of the outdated, antiquated tools. And so the idea of infinite banking or bank on yourself, privatized banking, is how can I start to take more control over that process? How can I have money working for me while I'm also still utilizing it, right? Tony Robbins said it best. The one of the biggest secrets to money is having money work for you while you sleep. Well, the same goes for having money work for two times when I use money, but also the initial vehicle that I saved it in. So that's kind of the overarching general concept behind infinite banking or privatized banking.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:07:12] So what kind of folks are using this? Is this something for people who are just getting started out there or truly the folks who we would consider middle, high middle class, or really just the top five 1% of folks?

Robert Annable [00:07:29] The first thing that we address is not looking at anything from a money standpoint. So we talked about this a little bit in our office. So the first thing we pay attention to and who we work with is what's their mindset? Are they open? Are they curious? That's probably one of the most important things in working with our group is are they open-minded to new ideas? Because if their idea of how to do things is my dad did it or my grandfather did it, or my boss told me to do it, or this rich guy I know down the street said to do, then they're going to be kind fragmented in their thinking. Our whole idea first is how do we open up your mindset to start considering other opportunities and solutions? But really anybody can use this. I've used it with clients that are using it for their kids to save for college, instead of using older different types of strategies like a 529. We've used with W2 earners that are just trying to figure out a better way to manage their cashflow before they pay the IRS, which we all know we're in business with every single year. And entrepreneurs, lots of real estate investors because of the similarities between this strategy and real estate, HELOCs, protection against the assets using LLCs, equity growth, all those concepts are similar using this type of a strategy. The ultra wealthy have lots of these. So when you think back to the Rockefellers, the Getty's, the founding members of this country, they manufactured wealth very differently from traditional American or retail American or everyday American today. They leveraged life insurance using this exact strategy first because their goal was to take all the wealth that they had created and figure out a way to help it transfer to ongoing generations. They were creating generational wealth and they understood that the value of leveraging life insurance and this bank on yourself concept and funneling money through that process allowed them to be able to pass more money on to that future generation and to continue the business or the family or the legacy.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:09:30] That makes perfect sense. And so you mentioned life insurance, but this is actually the first time that we've broached that subject. We said infinite banking, we called this, you know? Can you explain the idea of how this type of life insurance is used? Like between term and there are other types that is a whole life, as a-- all of the different things because a lot of people may have heard of those types of policies and how it can be structured differently based on the goals of the individual and what they're wanting to use it for.

Robert Annable [00:10:08] Yeah, I think the first thing is going back to let's unwind everything you know about life insurance. Let's start to think differently about what the strategy is intended to do. All those other types of life insurance, for the most part, are being sold as death insurance. They're really waiting for something to happen. And so a lot of times what people do is they relate it to every other type of insurance that they have to spend money on or that costs them money every month. You've got homeowner's insurance, health insurance, car insurance, all these assurances you're like I'm protecting against all these things and the people that should be evaluating this or the best time to evaluate it is obviously when you're younger because you're the youngest and healthiest you'll ever be that day and a lot of times those are the folks that go, well, I don't need life insurance because I'm not dying tomorrow so I'll wait until I have to get life insurance when I get married or I start to have kids or I started to make more money or I have more assets and then sometimes that happens a little bit later than they planned. Maybe their health changes, maybe their situation changes, and so now all of a sudden-- and I just had this happen with one of my clients, we've talked about this for a couple of years. They are extremely successful real estate investors, fix and flip here in Arizona. And they finally wrapped their head around, hey, I've been researching this and I think we're ready to pull the trigger. So we moved through the process. And right before she went to go take her exam to get approved, she found out she had cancer. And there's actually three clients of ours that because we moved them through the process of applying for life insurance, that we were actually able to save their lives because they found out about something that was detrimental to their health and they were actually able go get those healthcare services that they needed to start to address that. And luckily they're all still here today.

[00:11:49] But to answer your question, a lot of times people will not really understand how this concept is meant to function because they're thinking about the value of life insurance being when I pass away, a bunch of other people get rich or get this money to pass through to them and that's not my goal. What we really try to do is start back at the beginning. Let's reframe what we're thinking about here. I want to use life insurance to be used while you're living as a living benefit, not a death benefit. How do I optimize the result of the dollars that are going into these types of policies? And again, it's really one of the only assets in the world where you can use your money twice. Real estate, because I can put my money into the real estate. I can take a HELOC, I can do a cash-out refi, I can use that equity, a 401k, because you can put the money in your 401k and you can borrow from a 401K, and then life insurance. The major difference is that with life insurance, which you don't get with the others is uninterrupted compound growth. When I'm using the money that I've put through this new system, it doesn't stop growing for me when I actually use it. So I can put money into my policy, I could take money out of my policy. And I can go put it as a down payment on a short-term rental. I can use it to pay off my car. I could use it pay off student loans. So there's complete autonomy and flexibility, but what it gives you is control and optionality. As the owner of your own system, along with somebody trusted like us who helped you walk through and learn how to use it, et cetera, now all of a sudden you start to be empowered on how to this different structure. It's no different than the same thing we already do in a traditional bank, which is put money in, save money, spend money, invest money. Those are the three things we do with money at all times. Those are only three things that we can do. We're doing the same things. We're just including this new structure alongside of our traditional banks to be able to do that with. And again, a lot of people already do this using real estate. They just don't think of it as a private bank. They think I have my bank and then I have real estate, but when I want to go borrow money, where do I go borrow my money from? From the equity inside of that real estate and a lot folks because the market has been on such a huge run up, you've got other opportunities where you can actually leverage your equities, borrow money against them because they're never going to sell them. The reason Amazon and these large executives never pay taxes is because they just leverage against their equity portfolios on all the stock they own in their company. So it's just, again, understanding the concepts that work, understanding how to use them. That's the most important thing. Any tool can be either be used for good or used for bad and without real education it doesn't always end up the right way.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:14:22] That's what I really enjoyed about our conversation when I was in the office with you, is you took a ton of time to explain how that flow went. When you take a loan out of this policy from the cash that you've put in, that you're still earning interest on the total amount even though you've borrowed and pulled your money out of that. Can you explain that concept a little bit and how the term infinite banking came to be for folks because I think this might be new for quite a lot of people.

Robert Annable [00:14:57] Yeah, absolutely. So let's do easy comparison. If you have $100,000 in your bank and you want to go put a down payment on a rental property, you need $50,000. When you take that money out of a bank, you're really withdrawing your own money. And there's kind of a purpose behind the terminology we talked about that in our office. So now the bank balance that you have is $50 thousand, but you've also now got this other asset, which is the short term rental. When you take that withdrawal of your actual cash dollars out of the bank, that money's no longer earning anything for you. It is in an investment. It is something that could increase in value over time. It's in something that may have equity, but it's not earning you a rate of return. It's kind of a dead asset. Real estate equity is a dead asset. It's stuck there. You can't use it unless you either borrow against it using HELOC or you have to sell to unlock that equity. With a bank, same kind of thing. When you take the money out, it stops working for you. You only get your interest on whatever's left in the bank account. When use a infinite banking structure or a privatized banking structure, what the insurance company is doing is they're allowing you to borrow the money you've already given them, your money, from the insurance company, because it's 100% collateralized loan. You've already provided them; you've already funded that money to the insurance. A great way to say it is you've deposited it into your bank. So now when you go to the insurance company and say, I've given you $100,000, I want to borrow $50,000 out. They go, hey, this is great because it's the safest asset on their balance sheet as an insurance company is a hundred percent collateralized loan.

[00:16:36] And so the way that it works interest wise or crediting wise is when you borrow that money out. Just like if I borrow a HELOC or if I borrowed from my 401k or my brokerage account, I'm using that as collateral to take the loan, therefore, a technical term is the insurance company is a non-recognition insurance company. They do not recognize that you've taken that money out. And so in return, the dividend and the return you're getting on an annual basis is happening regardless of what your actual account value is. It's based on the total premiums that you paid in. So when I say you have 100,000 in, you've taking 50 out, that means after you take that loan, they're still giving you your full dividend at the end of that year on all 100. Even more important, let's fast forward five years. I've put in 100,000 for five years, I've taken out $300,000 and I bought three rental properties, guess what, my dividend in the sixth year is on all $500,000 that I've already given them, even though there's only $200,000 in the account. So that's really a easy way to understand the comparison between how a bank works with your withdrawing and how a privatized bank might work when you're borrowing against or leveraging that premium payment.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:17:53] That is so stinking powerful. And the reason why I bring this up, guys, is I have used this type of structure since I got started with short-term rentals and have been wanting to find somebody who I knew could educate, who I trusted, who really takes the time to get to know their clients and come up with a custom strategy, a very personalized approach to wealth management. And that's why I flew myself out to Scottsdale to meet with Robert and his team to find somebody who I could wholeheartedly recommend to, I use personally. And so that's why I'm so excited to have him as part of this conversation. I got an even more fun announcement for you guys, especially my mentorship community at the end of the episode. So Robert, this is not the only thing that you guys do as part of your firm. And I wanted to introduce people to the terminology of a family office, because I learned it several years ago hanging out with some like ultra wealthy friends. They mentioned their family office and I'm like, okay, well, what is this family office?

Robert Annable [00:19:08] What is that thing? You mean your family has an office?

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:19:10] Great. So does mine. We've got an office space. But can you walk people through the concept of what a family office is, what it means when somebody ultra wealthy like mentions us and how you have built a structure within your company of how to provide that for those of us who are on our way up, but not quite there yet.

Robert Annable [00:19:37] Sure, absolutely. So I think this goes back to the barriers to entry of what traditional high net worth, ultra-high net worth, the massive affluent. There's this barrier there where they think, well, I don't have the same amount of money that some celebrity does or that a family office does or your ultra wealthy friends do. So those types of concepts aren't appropriate for me. So I'm going to keep using the same things I've been using. I'm going to piece it all together myself. The idea behind what we've done is to try to help people get there faster. So a lot of people say, well, I don't have that kind of wealth that most of your clients have. And I say, right, but your best chance of ever getting there is working with us. And it's not because we invest better or because we have a special sauce that nobody else has. There are other people that understand this concept, but what we did was we made it available to everybody else. So the biggest barrier to entry is access and almost everything. Think about going to buy a Ferrari. If you don't own nine other Ferraris, they don't invite you to buy the next one off the line. I'm a big car guy. So in order to get a GT3 Touring, for those of you that are car people will know exactly what I'm saying, you have to have already had a ledger with Porsche for new cars to be able to even get on the list to wait for the next to be made so that you can spend over premium price to be able buy the car. But it's going to the clubs when we were younger. It's getting into that exclusive party on New Year's Eve. It's getting onto the yacht. Our world is built around wanting to be part of the exclusive networks. This is no different. But what we did was we said you don't have to have 10 million, 20 million, 50 million dollars to be able to access the same structure. We can teach you how to utilize this, but we're actually going to build it for you. But what don't do is charge the barriers to entry from a cost perspective and say, well, you can only use us. You have to use all of our services. What does all this mean? Is it's really the total coordination of every single living library, every single expert that you could need to make a financial decision. You're part of that family office. So when someone I'm talking to says I want to mitigate my tax problem. I'm interested in real estate. What are the ways I could do that? Hey, have you ever thought about a long-term rental, a commercial property, a short-term rent? Well, yeah, I've thought about a short term rental, but I don't know how to do that. It seems complicated. It seems like a lot of work. Where do I buy? They do not underwrite the deal, they need the education, they need the resource. And I say, hey, we have the expert in that space that can jump on and it's a turnkey program for you. All you have to do is get the access. Well, we the access.

[00:22:13] Alternative investments, the privatized banking, it's not in the normal conversation with traditional advisors. And so the access provides them to all of us. And sometimes I spend my time having conversations with clients about things that I have nothing to do with. I bring in the mortgage expert. I bring in the insurance expert. I bring them the attorneys. I bring in the M&A guys. I bring opportunities and people that can give sound advice around all the things that that client's trying to do so that when we're giving investment or tax or wealth management advice, it aligns with their legal advice, their tax advice, their business advice, their other aspirations that they may have or other ideas that they may be putting in place. And so a family office is, again, what the Zuckerbergs do. LeBron James, not a fan, don't really like using his name. But because I say it everybody knows what I'm talking about. He has his own family office. What a family office really is at its core is it's hiring you, me, the best CPA in the world, the best attorney in the word, the best insurance, the best real estate person, all these different experts on that individual's payroll. That group works in coordination as a team, just like all the employees of our company do for that one family. That's what a family office is. Most of our clients do not have the wealth to pay all of our payroll. So by creating this virtual family office structure, what it allows these clients to do is go through a full comprehensive analysis with us. We call it the design plan.

[00:23:47] We do discovery. We understand the full picture they're trying to build. And then we put together the design plan. Once we identify the framework of the home, the design of the home they're trying to build, now, as the general contractor, I go bring in all the subcontractors. I bring in all the people that need to sit around the table and analyze their situation so that when we sit down with the client, we are giving them the best one, two, and three scenarios for them to choose from. The way people are doing it today is absurd. It's craziness. I mean, look how busy you and I are. When we first sat down and chatted, you had a CPA, you had a tax advisor, you had an insurance guy, you had a mortgage guy, you had a wealth guy. And I asked you how many times have they all sat down across the table from each other to help you make better decisions? And the answer was rarely or not. So our whole goal is how do we help do all the heavy lifting for you, put all those people around the table for you and then bring you nothing but options to choose from so you don't have to go piecemeal this type of an approach together yourself. People are too busy today. Especially young people making money, trying to figure out ways to create wealth, trying to figure ways to reduce their tax obligation, trying to raise a family. My wife's a business owner. I'm a business owner. We barely get to see each other. If we had to also figure out ways, like, what are we going to do with our finances, when would we ever even sit down and talk about that? So it's really just the creation of a turnkey process, similar to what you've done in the short-term rental coaching world. But this is just expanding on that model with all of the other resources that would be beneficial to anyone executing that plan.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:25:21] What I'm so excited about guys is I have been looking for the more holistic picture for myself, but because I know I've been looking for it I know so many of you guys have as well, which is why I'm so excited for me to be part of this family office, but also to give you guys access as part of our mentorships to this office as well. Which means you get all of the team of experts sitting at the same table communicating with each other, Robert's team in our Slack channels answering these larger questions so that we're not just siloed in the space of short-term rentals. Like that is huge because they're going to be partnering with us. I'm partnering with them. We are all going to be part of this larger picture working together which only accelerates the amount of wealth that we are all going to be able to build together.

Robert Annable [00:26:24] Absolutely. Yeah. Exciting.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:26:26] That is exciting. It's so exciting. It's such big news because we just feel so strongly that diversification is important. Robert and I both align on a personalized approach. You guys know quality over quantity has been in the core ethos of my business for so long, which is why everyone gets that personalized approach when they work with me and my team. And that's how it is with Robert. And the entire family office. It's figuring out where you are, where you want to be, and then a very clear action step process to get to where you want to go. And his entire philosophy is knowing what every dollar is meant for and the why behind it.

Robert Annable [00:27:16] The purpose of your money.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:27:16] Yeah, the purpose of your money. Otherwise, there's no point. Are you trying to leave a nine to five? Are you trying to leave behind generational wealth? All of the above. What is the fastest way to get there? And so, yeah, there are really big things coming ahead. But for those of you who are already part of our coaching, our mentorship program, you don't have to do a thing. Robert's team's already joining in. You're getting them in office hours; you're getting them in your Slack channels. Like they're already here bought in from what you guys have already committed to. It's just that added value. So, Robert, let's share with them a little bit how you guys are getting involved. You're going to be coming to our in-person events in the Slack channels, office hours. Let's chat through some of the things that you guys can help with as part of what you guys do.

Robert Annable [00:28:09] Yeah, every way possible. So we've got a huge team. We've got about 13 different advisors all over the country. All of them have a little bit of different area of expertise. Some of them have experience and knowledge around short-term rentals, real estate, 1031s, cost segregation, things of that nature. Other advisors are more traditional advisors that understand more of that asset center management, money management type of approach or need. My area of specialty is courting back in the whole thing. Like I'm the designer, I'm the architect, I put everything in place. I underwrite all the different types of opportunities, different models, different tax strategies to make sure that they're appropriate not only for our firm but also for the clients that we're going to be working with. We go through an extensive due diligence process on anyone that we are going to work with, similar to what you did to determine whether or not they're really a good fit. When we go through this process, it's to make not only what we're recommending are appropriate for the clients, but they're also not going to put clients in a bad position. It's not going to us in a position. Everything we do is based on value and relationship. And at the end of the day, the reason very few people are going to know who we are is that's kind of intentional. But we've created our own barrier by being limited just because of how busy we are and the coordinated effort of all these different professionals are constantly bringing new opportunities to us. And so being available in the Slack channels, being available in the office hours, just being available in general is going to be hopefully very valuable to you and your community and everything that you're working towards and really support everything you're already coaching and teaching within the short-term rental world. But now how much expansion do we need to layer in?

[00:29:49] I think sometimes a lot of the things that we do can feel complex. They can feel a little bit intangible. Real estate's tangible. They can talk to you. They can go see a short-term rental. A lot of things that we do kind of take that tangibility away from them. And it's not intentional, but it's just the way the world works. Your 401k is not tangible other than you can log in and see it, but you don't own it. You don't have any control over it. You can't control what the decision-making of those companies are doing or what's going to happen in the market today. But real estate's a real tangible asset. We're big believers in that. Ultimately, just being able to be there to educate people on things that we have found over the past, for me, 25 years. My dad's been in this for 45 years, so 10,000 knee-to-knee meetings. You don't have to go bang your head against the wall or talk to 30 people or go chat GPT and try to figure it out yourself. We talked a little bit about that with you and Kristen and the idea that you have so much information readily at your fingertips today that you would think these things would be easier. Why do we need a group like Rob's? Why do we need a Madeleine? Well, because there's a difference between finding the information and actually knowing how to use the information, how to implement the information. How to make sure that when implementing different strategies or ideas, you're not creating your own conflict. I mean, simple things like setting up your own LLC. Some people will say, well, I don't want to pay for that. I can go do that on my own. It's really easy. And they try to do it on their own and they didn't do it correctly. It's not filed correctly as an S corp. You're at the end of the year now all of a sudden you can't-- It's just easier when you have a team of people that you can lean on, ask questions from and get advice from. So, our goal is take all the information that we have and all the research that we've done over the past 25 years in a lot of different areas and just make that readily available to the whole community.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:31:32] I absolutely love that. And that was a perfect example right there with the LLC piece because we have grown so extensively as a community. We have people in all 50 states at this point. And so the complex nature of well I live in this state and I host in this state, where should the LLC where the trust-- like all of these more complex business structure. I'm not a CPA, I'm an attorney, I am not a financial advisor, I like to stay in my lane as a short-term rental expert, but it doesn't mean these parts aren't important. And that's what we have forged here is Robert's team knows how I like do things in the short- term rental space, and we now have their entire team leverage to give guys even more personalized support which is just so exciting because when things are personalized for the individual, that's when it becomes really, really powerful. Generalized information, that's where people get stuck.

Robert Annable [00:32:39] Paralysis by analysis all the time. and there's so much information now you don't know what is or is not. And even Chat GPT I've tested general questions related to some of the things that we do, some of the thing that we know, some of things we talk to clients about and the output is not just-- number one, even if it is 100% accurate which isn't always the case, it's still okay now how do I actually do this? Well and then what do they say? Consult an attorney. Consult a CPA consult. They send you right back to the professionals. And then, so now you have at least a little bit of information. I think for anyone that is doing that level of research, what you're doing is you're doing what the professionals that you have clearly outgrown are also doing, which is you're being proactive and they're not. These are the types of conversations that we have with every client on the very onset of our engagement with them. What are you doing? What structures do you have? What is in place? What's not in place. Let's identify the gaps. Let's identity the holes in your boat first so that we can fill those so the boat actually floats. We don't want to be trying to get across the river with a boat that doesn't fully float. So it's really just the idea of starting at the beginning. A lot of people, again, can feel like a lot of the things we do are complex. They're overwhelming. It's an industry we don't really understand. That's not the goal. The goal is that you build trust through knowledge, access and education. And then understanding that in coordination with other folks, you can then validate and verify if you want. Go search, does this work? Does it not work? And by the way, you can find a positive and a negative article about any decision you're ever going to make. Short-term rentals, long-term rental, which one's better?

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:34:15] Airbnb boss.

Robert Annable [00:34:15] Pay your student loans off, pay the credit cards off, pay off the heat, like do or don't. Like who knows what you need is someone who understands every single tool that's available, understands how it all works together and can give you optionality and help you understand the results of each one so you can make the most sound decision. Because through a vacuum it's really easy to make bad decisions. And so being methodical, being slower in our process, being intentional about the way that we engage with our clients, I think really just helps build that foundational framework of trust, which when things go south, it's a lot easier to say, hey, remember why we made that decision to start with? Because it aligned with X, Y, and Z's goals, right? We can always tie it back to the purpose. And the purpose of your money, the purpose of your decision, the purpose of what you're doing, your why every day, is just absolutely the most paramount thing that any advisor you're working with, no matter what their industry is, should be asking you. Because without that information, they're selling you something. They're not really advising you. They're just trying to get you to get into the product or go down the path that they think is best based on their intellectual knowledge. And without always tying it back to the person that we're working, I tell my team all the time don't forget we're in the people business. We just happen to really understand tax and wealth a lot. We enjoy doing that. We're actually in the people business. I spend time in therapy with my clients. I jokingly say we're really therapists that do math.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:35:43] Hope that we do, too.

Robert Annable [00:35:45] Yeah, see? It's getting to know those people to where you become their advocate. You become that trusted resource where they can call and say, "Rob, Madeleine, your team, my team, I'm going through this. I need the help. What do I do? How do I navigate this challenge?" Because when things are going easy, it's really easy to make good decisions and bad decisions. And bad decisions don't shine or highlight themselves quite as much when things are going well. But when things aren't going well, who can you lean on as that support piece to really give you good guides.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:36:15] Absolutely. I think one of the most tangible examples-- because, guys, I travel most places with Abby. She's been on so many episodes. You guys know and love her by director of sales and marketing, but Abby came out with me to Scottsdale and sat in these meetings.

Robert Annable [00:36:34] She's great.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:36:34] But Abby's a bit younger than us in her first big girl job where she's making pretty decent money for her age. And we were having that conversation about, all right, she knows that she's making good money. What does she do with it? And we were having the conversation about like, okay, what did you do? And somebody introduced her to a friend who was getting into one of the dudes whether it was Edward Jones, Charles Schwab, you know one of old men names out there.

Robert Annable [00:37:08] He sponsored a golf tournament somewhere.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:37:10] Exactly. And so, then Robert asked her, he's like, okay, so you met with this guy, then what happened? And she said, "Well, I immediately called my dad." And I just thought your response to that was so powerful. If you can walk people through how you walked her through that because you said you've heard it so many times from people and how that just won't work going into the next iteration of wealth moving forward.

Robert Annable [00:37:45] Yeah, I think it goes to think about how many times you've worked with people, how many personal pieces of real estate you've bought, owned, sold, managed. It's that experience, right? And now how many people have you helped, which you've probably also learned from their own situations, which is translated through your team to all of the community that you now have. Having done this for 25 years, which it's crazy to think as young as I am, not as young as Abby. When I think about how many of those meetings I've had, I knew what she was going to say. And that's not meant by any way to say sound arrogant. It's just I know the industry. I know the status quo. I know what 90% of other financial advisors are out there selling. I'm in a networking community. Very business to business only, no B2C nonsense like bullshit bring some security and solar panels and air condition. This is business to business. How do we help you grow? And the guy who started this whole organization, it's tremendous. They've got like over 400 people, 500 people now across the country. His most hated profession is me. I don't want to say I'm his favorite person. I sponsor his event as the premier title sponsor every single year. And he jokingly says like my most hated and loved is Rob. And I love working with him and he's the complete opposite of me, but it's true. This industry has created a framework that if you don't have any money, you don't belong. You shouldn't seek out advice until you have money for me to actually spend time and help you with because it's not worth my time. If you're not going to buy something, it's no worth my time. And so the industry is built in a way that they're looking for their in to try to sell you something that may or may not actually be appropriate. I'm not saying that those things are never appropriate, but you're not taking the time to help the client walk themselves into understanding, number one, what is the tool? What is the purpose of that tool given what I've told you my purpose is? How do those two things align? And how do I use the tool? I don't know if this is PC or not, but if you give somebody a gun with a bullet in it and you don't teach them how to use it, that gun could create good or it could create bad. But there's a greater chance that something is going to go wrong than something going right if they've not been trained how to us the tool. And that goes for anything, right? It's like trying to build a house with a hammer and a shovel. It's probably going to be rather difficult. And in our industry, that's really the industry that we live in now. So in my discussion with her, just quickly asking what did they do? What did they say? And I let her answer. I didn't tell her. And I said, so let me guess, they wanted to talk to you about a life insurance policy. She said, oh yeah, that was the first thing they want to talk to me about.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:40:31] Term.

Robert Annable [00:40:31] Term insurance policy, which does nothing for you. Absolutely nothing. You're in the process of buying or wanting to buy a second piece of real estate. I say, "Does buying a life insurance policy for term help you buy a real estate property. Are you married? Are you worried about dying? Or do you have somebody to leave the money to?" No, no, no. So while yes, conceptually, she's younger, buying a life insurance policy might make sense because she's locking in her health and her age and it's the cheapest it'll ever be, but you just leased an apartment for the cheapest rent that you could knowing you're on your way out to a house, right? So where do I want to reposition these dollars in a way that are going to help you achieve your goal and also meet that requirement or have that additional benefit? So, look, traditional advisors, they're great. If your goal is try to make as much money as I came to the stock market, continue to work, right? Defer, defer, defer. And I think it's just, again, I go back to the architect design work. A lot of other financial advisors, traditional, are out there selling granite countertops and wood floors and really nice furniture and design work inside the house, but they don't know how to build the house. They don't understand all the tools that need to be in place. And if you go ask a financial advisor or a CPA or an attorney, any of these other questions that are not in their field, they say, I'm not a CPA. I can't give tax advice. I'm not an advisor. You're going to have to go talk to your advisor. And they're all saying, go back to the other person. And now once again, you're stuck in the middle of trying to decipher all of these foreign concepts, trying to know who's selling, who's not, what's right, what's not. And then you go online at night while you're tired after a long day missing time with your spouse, searching and Googling and Chat GBT, do I do this? Do I not do this, whatever it is. So it's paralysis by analysis. It's an overwhelming flood of information. I would not want to have to go talk to one of me ever because it's a lot of information, but I'm passionate. I'm convicted. I love what we do because I know it makes a difference. And I think just being that non-traditional type wealth advisor and focusing on more of the process with clients to understand the decisions they're making, why and how, will be a much easier process in figuring out, okay, now that I know the framework, now how do I actually start putting it to work?

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:42:53] And having the rest of the people at the table to have the conversation, so you're not pinballing back and forth with different experts, you being the middle man trying to play a game of telephone. Well, they said this, and I'm not really explaining it as well as they did, but this is why they want us to-- it just gets to be too complicated. So at the end of the day, simple scales and complicated fails, and this is just the more simple approach to creating long-lasting wealth with one team who understands your why and your goals.

Robert Annable [00:43:28] And with confidence.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:43:29] And that's what we're just exciting.

Robert Annable [00:43:30] You need to be able to have the empowerment and the confidence to know that when you choose to make a decision, you can sleep well at night. You're not up worrying about what's going to happen, what's not going to happen. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if I talk to most of your community, they're extremely confident about moving into a short-term rental with lenders, purchasing, furnishing, managing, all the different aspects of moving into that asset class with confidence because you've taken the time to educate them. Now, look, sex and money, right? I'm more likely to get somebody to sit across the table from me and talk to me about their girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever it is, good, bad, or ugly, before they will talk to me about money. That tells us that the insecurity around that conversation, there's a lack of confidence there, number one, because it is such a complicated industry, but also it's a very intimate conversation. People don't want to feel like they've ever done anything wrong. No, you've done as good as you could based on the information you knew to get where you are. Now let's figure out a way to optimize that. And I think it's just really understanding who we're working with as people and understanding that we're all still people and no suits and ties and whiteboards and 75 page presentations with a bunch of financial algorithms that nobody understands anyways. It's just let's sit down and start drawing it out with crayon on paper and help. Let's see if this aligns with you. Does this make sense, right? Does the green go here? Does the blue go here? And if you tell me no, then let's go figure out what color does.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:44:58] Love it.

Robert Annable [00:44:59] Should be easy.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:45:00] Should be easy. So, let's see, I usually ask people all of the same question at the end of an episode. So I'll ask you this question. It's an easy question.

Robert Annable [00:45:12] An easy one? Okay. Am I coming back? I hope so. That's up to you.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:45:16] Yes, you get to come back. You absolutely get to come back

Robert Annable [00:45:19] Alright.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:45:19] Next time we'll do it in the podcast studio in Scottsdale, that's Robert's building. So we'll do it person. But the last question that we have, what is a time in your life where change has brought an unexpected opportunity?

Robert Annable [00:45:35] My first marriage. So I got married and divorced in 45 days. That's the second podcast, right? We're definitely coming back.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:45:44] We're coming back for that.

Robert Annable [00:45:45] I'm going to need to pour a glass of whiskey for that one. No, look, I was at the height of my career at a private equity firm in New York. I was making more money than I could ever even imagine. She was in the same business, but I was young. I was gunning. I was focused on only one thing and that was success. I had for all intents and purposes achieved it. My former mentor and very, very close friend, he passed away from that business. Actually, he ended up getting colon cancer about four years after I left that firm. But, so I met her at the firm. We got married after three years. So we were best friends. We thought it was right. It was everything, right? So this was supposed to be. And I left and right before we got married, something happened. She decided she didn't want to be married anymore. And it was a blessing in disguise. But what happened was, more importantly, I had left the firm to go back and work with my dad. And when that divorce happened, it created so much turmoil and this cloudiness and this lack of clarity, not just mentally, like emotionally, physically, couldn't get off the ground, didn't want to go out, like depressed.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:46:54] Yeah, depressed.

Robert Annable [00:46:55] Drinking too much, like, oh, let's go out to the bar every night till three because then I won't have to think about it. It wasn't very good for me. And I made the decision at that point. I used that as an excuse to leave working with my dad at that time and start my own firm because I wanted to know I could do it on my own. I needed my own identity and working with my father behind his name and his shadow and all those kinds of things at that time without ever having really done that myself, felt like I was still living someone else's life for them, not for me. So I left, I started over, built the firm. And this is going to answer your question twice, by the way. So I had a very successful firm, moved to Dallas, opened an office in Dallas, had the office in Scottsdale. I was on all cylinders and March of 2020 hit. Another very difficult situation for all of us, and really draws a lot of clarity around the importance of some of the things we're talking about today, right? The control, the ability to make changes when things unexpected happen. Anyways, that happened. I finally went back to Arizona to quarantine with my family, and that was the first time in 10 years that my dad and I had enough time because we were both running 120 miles an hour in two completely different directions to finally sit down and say, hey, what does the future look like? What do you want to do? What do I want to do? What do I need? And I said, look, I've worked for you before and I'll never do it again. I'll work with you. We can build this. We can grow it, which we've done successfully. It's amazing. But I made a choice to move back and work with him. There was a lot of uncertainty around COVID in general, right? Like, is it going to be three months or three years? And some parts went too long and some parts didn't last long enough, right.

[00:48:36] But, again what it created was, because I moved back, I met my current wife with our two little girls that I was able to step in and become a good stepfather with and be around and take care of. So it's sometimes the worst things that happen. COVID was not a very good time for a lot of people. For me, I look back and go, man, if it wasn't for COVID, I wouldn't be where I am financially or in the business because I would have been kept going. I probably would have done fine, but I wouldn't have the family I have. And I don't think without them, which is my purpose-- and my old business mentor said, you are one of the best in the industry. He said, but the only thing you're missing is your purpose. When you find your person, this world better watch out because you're coming. And I promise you the minute I met her at night for dinner, I went home and I deleted all my social media dating apps. At that night, text my friend said, I found her. The night I met her. And she's still like, you're not kidding. I knew it. I could feel she was scared. She had just gotten a divorce. All these things. But again, it opened up that opportunity. So, two similar situations, marriage, two completely different outcomes, but both from really hard times that created just really focusing on what's important. So let me tell you the one thing we end this, never you do anything for the money. Don't do or make any decision for the financial outcome. Make decisions that align with your personal, your tax, your wealth, your family, all the things you really want to accomplish. Align your goals and your decisions with a purpose that is important to you. The math will work itself out every time.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:50:16] If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life and the money will flow because you are just lit up inside over it. And you know, guys, that's what I look for. And I told Robert this when we were out there. I said, life is too short to do business with people who you don't like and who you do not have fun with. And that's why I flew out to Scottsdale to see if do we really get along? I think I like you, but can we have fun? And can we really move forward with purpose and passion to help our clients out? And that's what it came down to.

Robert Annable [00:50:54] Absolutely. The answer is yes.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:50:54] So we're stoked to go into 2026 with big goals, big dreams and in support of you guys.

Robert Annable [00:51:05] Absolutely.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:51:06] Robert, thank you so much for being here.

Robert Annable [00:51:07] No, thank you. I'm looking forward to meeting the whole community. Thanks, everybody.

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:51:11] Coming to a Slack channel near you.

Robert Annable [00:51:13] There we go!

Madeleine Raiford-Holland [00:51:19] Hey y'all, if you're loving the show, be sure to hit the follow button or the plus sign on your podcast app to subscribe. This will ensure you don't miss a single episode and I'll see you next week.