Ep. 310 – Arrival Syndrome at its Finest

“He said, I wish everybody could die for three days so that they can see what a mess they’ve left behind. Three days. Let’s just make it three years so they can see what a mess they’ve left behind. Because I’ve talked to people, many people, that they don’t have estates that close before a three-year period. Sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes two years because it’s such a mess. You have enough, how much is enough to you? Enough to pay bills? Enough to pay off all the expenses and then your family’s taken care of? Oh, they don’t need to mourn your death? That’s not a big deal. They’ll just get up and go to work tomorrow. Oh, you got little kids? Oh, yeah, no big deal. She can work, she can sell land, she can sell equipment, she can just fire sale everything that you work so hard for. Not a big deal. I’m being kind of snarky today, but these are annoying.”

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. Okay, today, let’s talk about arrival syndrome. John and I are gonna go through the book. We’re gonna keep going through the book. And in the process of us going through the book, you’re going to hear us talk about arrival syndrome. But we’re gonna address it today. So just a quick tip about arrival syndrome or quick explanation about arrival syndrome is that it’s somebody that thinks they know it all. They have done it all, they know it all. They don’t need to learn anymore.

So I actually got an email about this yesterday at the time of this recording. And then I had a comment on Facebook about it. And so let’s address it. The email I got said, Mary Jo, what are your suggestions about telling people that think that they won’t read the book? And some of the explanations that he gave were normal. One of them was, I’m gonna go over them. So you’re gonna hear them. However, one of them was like so stupid. It’s so ignorant that I wouldn’t even talk to these people anymore.

So what’s happening is y’all out there have read the book. You’re listening to the podcast and you’re saying, hey, this is a great concept. This is absolutely fantastic. Why don’t more people do it? And so then you’re wondering, well, I can see the benefit of this. This is great. So I wanna share it with the world. And you start sharing it with the world and they start telling you you’re an idiot. And they start giving you all these reasons as to why this isn’t going to work, but they’ve never read the book. They’ve never listened to a podcast. They don’t know absolutely anything about it.

And I guarantee you that you led with, hey, we should go buy a whole life insurance policy. You didn’t lead the conversation with, we should probably be our own bankers. Like, why do we keep giving interest to the bank? Why do we keep giving control to the bank? Why do we tie up our liquidity in 401(k)s and IRAs? Why doesn’t the bank want our 401(k) and IRA as collateral? It’s not very secure. Why are we putting our money at risk? We’re not leading with those things, right? We’re just saying, hey, let’s buy a whole life insurance policy. And then the arrival syndrome just hits the wall. And it’s just, all we do is bang our head against a wall.

And so a couple of things here that I want to address. One is what these people are saying. Two, and I’m going to get probably a little bit direct here. And some of you are not going to like that. Why do you care what anybody else says? If you are over the age of 18, you and, well, 16, but we can’t do this till you’re 18. So if you are 18 and older, you can own your own policy. You can do this yourself. Go get a job. Make your money. Start your own policy. It is crazy how many people I see that say, oh, I’m a kid and mom and dad don’t agree. So I can’t do this.

I saw someone on Facebook say, I’ve read the book. Mom and dad have read the book, but grandpa won’t. Who cares if grandpa doesn’t read the book? Doesn’t matter. Grandpa’s probably too old to be buying life insurance on him anyway. Does not matter. If he owns the farm, great, fantastic. Why are y’all not making plan B? Why are you not figuring out how you can put all the things into place so that while grandpa’s aging, we’re creating our own bank to build our own system so we can at least maybe have a down payment on a place. And maybe it’s not grandpa’s place. Maybe it’s somebody else’s place. I don’t know. But why are you stopping your life from going forward because somebody else said no?

That makes absolutely no sense to me. And I want you to think about it because you’re waiting for mom and dad to say okay. You’re waiting for grandpa and grandma to say okay. You’re waiting for Uncle John to say okay. And none of these people ever read the book. You’re going to wait for grandpa to die before you can start your own banking system and implement infinite banking. You don’t have any money today? Like none? Zero? Zilcho? You can’t beat Parkinson’s law. If you don’t know what Parkinson’s law is, then you need to listen to some other podcasts. You need to go back to Nelson’s book or my book. Look it up. Parkinson’s law. Not Parkinson’s disease. Somebody asked me that recently too. Well, Mary Jo, don’t you mean Parkinson’s disease? No, I mean Parkinson’s law. You know, there’s this thing called Google. Sometimes we just need to use it instead of commenting. I do that a lot. I quit commenting and then I go Google it. And then if I don’t understand it, then I can ask the question.

So stop waiting for somebody else. I have a 19-year-old client. 19. His mom is a banker. His mom and dad don’t have policies. I don’t even think they really believe in the concept. It makes his mother nervous. She sat in the meetings. He now has a policy on himself, a large policy on himself, and he has a policy on his mom. He asked for permission. She said, yep, I’ll allow you to do a policy on me. Does she agree with it? I would say she’s okay with it, but very hesitant. Should have he waited and said, oh, well, I’m just going to wait until my mom and dad agree? No. No. Because what? He did all of his education. He listened to all the podcasts. He’s bought the books. He’s read the books. He has done his due diligence.

If you have done your due diligence and you’re waiting for permission, why? What are you going to wait for the government to say, oh, you can plant that crop. Okay. You can go buy cows. Why are we waiting? Why are you waiting to get the farm so that you have land to farm? Why don’t you just go rent some of your own land? Is it easy? No, I didn’t say it’s easy, but you can do it. It’s doable. People do it all the time. There are things out there you can do and ways you can do things to get ahead without sitting back and waiting for it to be handed to you. So you’re just going to wait for somebody to hand you the okay to buy a policy? I just don’t understand that logic.

I don’t even care that you’re not getting a policy from me. That’s not even why I’ve got this passion behind my voice today. It’s because you are putting off every day, building your banking system, even though you’ve read the book. You’re clearly not convicted enough about infinite banking if you’re waiting. If you’re allowing the arrival syndrome of somebody else to stop you, why? Why? Okay. That doesn’t happen. That’s happened once in my life. Somebody has stopped me from doing something. Once I allowed it, and it will not happen again. If you want to stop me from doing something, then you need to have some logic behind it and explain it logically to me. Because if you can’t explain it logically and you’ve not researched the subject, I am not talking to anybody that has any kind of expertise or information that I want to gather. I am not going to go to the Lowe’s garden and ask them how to farm. Why would I do that? That’s essentially what you’re doing. You’re going to somebody else and asking them for advice on the infinite banking concept and they choose not to read anything.

And here’s the excuses that you’re hearing. This guy covered them all. Like, he’s been talking to a lot of people. Nick, this is for you. I know you’re not all the way through the podcast yet, but when you get here, this one’s for you. He said, these are the examples of what he’s heard. It’s a scam. Why? If somebody says to me, it’s a scam, I’m going to say, why? What do they… how can they back that up? Because they’ve not read the book. You’ve got a lot of information between all these podcasts that I’ve ever done, and you’ve got a lot of information in the books to say, no, that’s not accurate. That’s not how that works. It’s a scam. I love it when people put that online. It’s a scam. That’s it. That’s all you got? No explanation as of to why? Okay. Okay. Ignorance? That’s, it’s a scam? I should reply, ignorant.

What is she going to make on commission? Do you ask the guy that sold you your vehicle what you’re going to make on commission? I mean, I’m happy to tell people. When they say, hey, Mary Jo, how much are you going to make on commission on that? I’ll tell you. Doesn’t matter to me. I work on commission. Yes, I get paid commission. In fact, I had someone the other day that said, so what if I don’t buy a policy? I said, then I don’t make any money. He’s like, so you’ve spent two and a half hours with me or three hours. I spent about three hours with the guy. He says, so you spent three hours with me and you don’t make any money. I’m like, no, not unless you buy a policy. So I don’t, like, I’m just over here talking to people. And if you buy a policy, I make some commission.

What people aren’t asking is how much commission do you make every year? How much commission does that financial advisor make? So this is interesting. Your financial advisor, most of them, not all of them, most of them get paid off of the size of their portfolio. Right? Every single year. So if you have $100,000 invested, they’re going to make 2% or whatever it is every single year for the life of the fact that you’ve got money there. I make money the first time. I get paid the first time that you pay premium. And then after that, I get paid a tiny little bit and it is not enough to buy me groceries. Okay? Not enough to buy. And it is not even worth speaking of. But I get paid up front to service you forever. Am I going to charge you to service you? Nope. Nope.

But are you asking your John Deere dealer, how much commission are you making on that tractor? Are you asking your Case IH dealer how much money they’re making on commission? Do you ask your seed guy? How about your chemical guy? But you’re worried that I’m selling you something for commission. Absolutely moronic. People get paid commission all the time. Did you ask your P&C agent how much commission they made off of your farm and auto insurance? No? No, you didn’t think to ask that? You just figured that was a service too? Oh, so life insurance is just treated differently? Hmm. Okay. Just repeating what we heard. Not actually thinking. Got it.

I already got a 401(k) or a Roth IRA. This isn’t an investment. It’s a life insurance policy. So is your 401(k) guaranteed? Is your IRA guaranteed by contract that it’s going to grow every single year? Is it going to pay dividends? Are the dividends income tax free? Do you have a death benefit attached? Okay. Missing the point because we don’t know what we’re talking about over here because we’ve not read the book.

Already have life insurance. Don’t need more. Oh, how much do you have? Half a million dollars? Million dollars? It’s very, very rare that I run into somebody with more than a million dollars of life insurance. Very rare. Insurance company says if you’re under 40, you should have 30 times your gross income. If you’re 40 to 50, you should have 20 times your gross income. If you’re 20, or I’m sorry, if you’re 50 to 60, if you’re 51 to 60, you should have 15 times your gross income. And over that, it’s 10 times your gross income. Gross income. I bet you don’t have enough life insurance. I would want, my goal is to have my max life insurance on my life so that I can leave my heirs without concern.

I heard this today from somebody. Some, I don’t know who he is. Some guy said, and I thought it was great. He said, I wish everybody could die for three days so that they can see what a mess they’ve left behind. Three days. I wish people could die. Let’s just make it three years so they can see what a mess they’ve left behind. Because I’ve talked to people, many people, that they don’t have estates that close before a three-year period. Sometimes it takes a year. Sometimes it takes two years because it’s such a mess. So you want, you have enough? How much is enough to you? Enough to pay bills? Enough to pay off all the expenses and then your family’s taken care of? Oh, they don’t need to mourn your death? That’s not a big deal. They’ll just get up and go to work tomorrow. Oh, you got little kids? Oh, yeah. No big deal. She can work. She can sell land. She can sell equipment. She can just fire sale everything that you work so hard for. Not a big deal. I’m being kind of snarky today. But these are annoying. Okay. These are all the things you guys are getting asked. That is equally annoying to you as it is to me. Okay. Let’s keep going.

This is a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme? What? How? Please explain how this is a pyramid scheme. Oh, my God. I work directly with a life insurance company. How is that a pyramid scheme? It is no different than your P&C agent buying home and auto insurance on you. Oh, that guy sells you life insurance too. Is the term insurance industry a pyramid scheme? Because that’s the same industry. Oh, for the love of Pete. This guy is surrounding himself with a lot of winners.

Already making 15% plus in the markets. That is awesome. If you are making a 15% rate of return, that’s fantastic. This isn’t about a rate of return. However, your money never leaves the account. So you continue to make uninterrupted compound interest. So why not put your money in here, then borrow against it and put it in the market? So maybe you’re making 18 to 19. You don’t want to make more? Hmm.

And then he said, oh, this is associated with Scientology. Oh, my God. For stupid. That is what I’ve never heard before. So I want to say I’ve heard them all. But I can guarantee you something dumber will come along. And yes, I’m being harsh on these people today. I am calling people names today because this is absolutely the arrival syndrome at its finest. Scientology? If you read Becoming Your Own Banker, there are quotes from the Bible all over. If anybody does any research at all, they will understand that Nelson’s number one thing in life was to spread Christianity and to bring people to Jesus. That was what he lived for. Number two was to get rid of the banking system and fractional reserve banking and Austrian economics. Nelson was not a Scientologist. He was a Christian. That stupid comment just proves that people are not doing their due diligence and they are talking out of their you-know-what.

And you are continuing to bang your head against a wall. This is why very few people get the infinite banking concept. Because they’re going to listen to all these other people. And they’re going to say, oh, it must be wrong. I had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight excuses. That’s just what he said. He said, I’m sure I’m missing others. Kudos to you, Nick, for continuing to stick your neck out there and get whacked on the head. Oh, I… dude, I am telling you. Seriously, I’ve talked to a lot of people and I appreciate that. But until they read the book, there is no point.

I had somebody email me yesterday and say, my dad wants to sit in on the meeting because he has questions. Is that okay? He’s not read the book, but he has questions. And I said, that’s okay for him to sit in on the meeting. But no, he’s not allowed. I’m not going to answer questions for him that were in the book. If he chooses to read the book, I’m more than happy to have him sit in on the meeting. So that we can talk about this intelligently. And I can answer good questions. I don’t have you guys read the book because I want to sell a book. I have you read the book so you can educate yourself prior to the meeting. And we can make very good use of our hour and a half in the meeting.

It’s about helping you in that hour and a half. We’re looking at how we’re going to, I’m looking at and giving you strategies of how we’re going to apply this to what you’re doing. If you want to have two or three meetings with me and sit there for six hours, I’m not doing it. I used to do it that way. And guess what? I was selling you something. No, I’m not selling you anything. I’m teaching you how to use a life insurance policy. If you choose to buy a policy, I will sell you the policy and then I will continue to teach you that. But we’re going to have an hour and a half of teaching. Me figuring out what you got going on. John figuring out what you got going on. John and I have our meetings exactly the same. So if you don’t want to wait for me, schedule with John.

Anyway, back to arrival syndrome. So if you are finding that you are constantly hitting your head, you can choose to say, okay, this really is a scam. This lady is a scammer. Or you can logically think about it and go, but they’ve never actually read the book. Like I can sit down with Mary Jo and I can get all these questions answered. I can sit down with John and get all these questions answered. So if it was a scam, then why go to your state insurance department website? Ours in North Dakota has questions about cash value on there. Frequently asked questions. And some of those questions are buying or using cash value from your life insurance.

I have to do continuing education every two years to keep my license. My continuing education is due at the end of the month. And guess what? I’ve waited until now. I just signed up to take a course on how to understand how to utilize life insurance cash value. I want to see what continuing education has to say about it. It’s a whole course for us life insurance agents. How to use the cash value from life insurance. If this is a scam, why is the insurance department talking about it? If this is a scam, why is it 150 to 200 years old process? It’s only a scam because they’re repeating what they heard. They’re not actually doing their due diligence. And you are believing that after you’ve done your due diligence.

I’ve said this before. You are now the expert. If you’ve read the book, if you’ve listened to the podcast, if you’ve listened to other people’s podcasts, if you’ve read Nelson’s book, you are now the expert. By and large from anybody in your community. Because the people within your community are these people. And I did a podcast not that long ago on the three percenters. Based on this conversation, this dude doesn’t have anybody around him that may be a ten percenter. Right? He is surrounded by small thinkers. And again, Nick, you are going to go far and wide. But you are not going to go far and wide if you continue to surround yourself with those thinkers. Because we are the five people that we surround ourselves with. The five people we surround ourselves with. Those are the five people influencing us the most. Find people that think bigger.

And Nelson says it in his book. You should be surrounded by people doing the infinite banking concept. Because the more of those people you are surrounding yourself with, the more you will think like a banker. I do Coffee with MJ for my clients. Clients only. So all my clients can sit in together. And they can listen. I record them. They’re webinars that go out to clients only. Those are done every other Thursday once a month. We’re kind of tossing it around. See what’s working the best right now. I think in the summertime once a month is going to be key. In the wintertime, we’ll do them every other week. Because we can come together as a group and talk. I do client-only summits. We are only surrounding ourselves with like-minded people. Clients love them. Because they are surrounded by a bunch of people using the infinite banking concept. And they don’t have to listen to this stuff.

Nick asked me, what do I do? I said, quit talking to these people. Quit banging your head against a wall. There is a reason I will not speak to people that don’t read the book. I am banging my head against a wall. I lost a client last year because I got very ornery in a meeting. The wife kept asking questions that were answered in the book. Read the book. Educate yourself. You don’t get to come in here for me to convince you of something. And you guys need to take that same stance. I’m glad that you’re sharing it. Don’t get discouraged in the sharing process. Because there are people in your neighborhood that have most likely read the book.

The amount of people that I serve around the country is crazy. I would have never thought in a million years I would be all over the country. Never. 48 states? Never. Here I am. There are people out there. But it’s 1%. If we really stretch it, maybe 3%. But 1% of people think. And it doesn’t matter what area of life we’re in. I don’t care. It’s 1% overall. It’s 1% of farmers. It’s 1% of construction workers. It’s 1% of lawyers and doctors. It’s 1%. Just think about doctors. It’s 1% of doctors that truly care to do continuing education and be the best in their field. 1%. 1% of financial advisors want to be the best in their field with continuing education and always learning. 1% of life insurance agents want to learn the infinite banking concept.

It doesn’t matter what industry we’re in. People as a whole don’t want to think. Instead, they want to watch the next reality show and complain about why they’re not getting ahead. So we can be complainers or we can be somebody that does our due diligence and we think. And you’re thinking, which is disrupting everybody around you. Because you’re making them think. And they don’t want to. They don’t want to read a book. They don’t want to be better. Because if they did, they would be saying, hey, where’s that book? Let me see it. I’d love to read it. Man, I want to talk to that lady. I want to talk to John. But that’s not what they’re doing.

It’s no different than when I did my podcast on sell-buy marketing. And somebody in that class said, but isn’t everybody going to do this? No. No, 1%. 1% will do sell-buy marketing. And the rest of everybody will say, oh, you can’t make money buying and selling cattle. You can’t make money in the cattle industry. It’s just impossible because they’re going to do what they’ve always done. And they stopped learning the day they graduated. And I’d like to blame our school system for that. Because they made us read the most boring books in the world in school. But I think it’s deep. I think there’s just something in you that says, hey, I want to learn. And the people around us don’t want to.

So find new people is the moral of the story. Quit talking to the ones that have given you the excuses. There’s just no point. Fine. Keep talking to people. But as soon as they bring up a stupid excuse, go, oh, okay. Seems you’ve arrived. I’m just going to move on. It depends how ornery you want to be. If you’re a very nice person, then okay. I mean, I’ll tell people. I’ll just tell them, oh, you’ve got a little bit of the arrival syndrome. Okay. Good to know. But we’re always taking everybody’s advice around us. And yet they haven’t done any due diligence. I mean, really think about that. Really think about that. You are not going to take advice from somebody that has no idea how to plant a crop or feed a cow or raise a cow. You are not going to Lowe’s garden and go, oh, let… can you tell me how to put my crop in? What spray do I need for my 5,000 acres? No, you’re not doing that. You’re going to people that understand. And you’re getting advice from those people.

So, it’s a bit of a rant. I didn’t expect that today. But these things, they’re not, they don’t even make me mad. They’re annoying. Because it’s people that just don’t have any clue what they’re talking about. And you guys are wondering, well, what do I say to them? Because you want to combat it to prove it’s right. You don’t say anything. You hand over a book. And if they choose not to read it, you know where you stand. If they don’t want, if they’re going to take the cliff notes, I do a lot of cliff noting to my husband. Okay, he’s not a big reader. I do a lot of cliff notes. But if he does not agree and have the same level of curiosity and the excitement that I do, it doesn’t go well, you guys. It does not go well. Because I’m like, you don’t, you can’t have an opinion if you haven’t read it all. You can listen to me, but you cannot have an opinion if you’re not genuinely curious, then just don’t. And there’s some stuff that I just don’t share with him. And I don’t share stuff with other people in my life. There’s a lot of people in my life that I do not share stuff with because they do not share the same level of curiosity that I do. And so why? I’m not going to waste my breath.

Oh my gosh, I could go on forever. Okay, you guys, if you’ve not gotten the book, if you need more books because you have these people in your life and you need to give them, I wouldn’t give them a book. I’d make them pay for the book, by the way. If you need to share a book with them, go to farmingwithoutthebank.com. Grab another book. Grab your first book. Get Nelson’s book. Nelson’s book has a lot of answers in it. We are, John and I are doing a book study on that. So get that book so that you can understand what he’s trying to say. And then you have the answers behind this. And if you’ve not scheduled your appointment, schedule your appointment, either with myself or with John. And we’re happy to visit with you so we can make some commission. Oh my God. Oh, Lordy. Okay, you guys have a fantastic rest of your day.

Thanks for listening to the Farming Without the Bank podcast. We hope today’s episode has inspired you to take control of your finances in new ways. Don’t forget to check out our website, farmingwithoutthebank.com, and engage with us on our Facebook page, Farming Without the Bank. Join us next week as we smash more financial myths and empower you to accomplish your financial goals.