Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Renee’ Kennedy President of AAA Life Solutions Discussing The “Black Swans” of Life

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Renée Kennedy brings over 25 years of industry experience to the table. Their priority is always our clients and their financial stability, which is why we listen to their objectives and design innovative, personalized strategies that meet their unique needs.Their focus is on customizing employee benefits plans for businesses to reduce or eliminate costs while offering tax savings. They also specialize in life insurance strategies, 401(k) rollovers, and more to help individuals and businesses build tax-free retirements, secure long-term care and death benefits, and more.At AAA Life Solutions, they always put clients first, with excellent customer service and up-to-date insurance strategies tailored to their individual needs. They do our due diligence to ensure that they make the right decisions for their clients, knowing that their choices will affect them for a lifetime.They provide peaceful solutions in uncertain times.Learn More:https://aaalifesolutions.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-renee-kennedy-president-of-aaa-life-solutions-discussing-the-black-swans-of-life

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us, Renee Kennedy, who's the president of AAA Life Solutions and we'll be talking about the Black Swans of Life. Renee, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Mike. Glad to be here. You know, I always love talking with you because you've just got a really fresh and unique perspective on all things,

life, personal, professional, financial, all of that. So I'm excited to learn about the Black Swans of Life. I guess the first question is, what exactly really does that mean? Well, I think we've all heard about Black Swans, but it's really taken, most of it is taken from a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. And he wrote a book entitled The Black Swan. And in it, what he discusses is that Black Swan means events which happen, which can't be predicted or planned for. So, for instance, 9-11, you know, what a terrible crisis, or the nuclear accident that happened in Fukushima, Japan, or the financial crisis of 2008. And so those are things that happen.

And I think the people in our country are feeling this angst or this feeling like something is about to happen. And they just don't know. We have so many different Black Swan opportunities is probably not the best word. But we have these things that are happening around the world that we have no control over. Well, it's funny you say opportunity because I remember going through so many, trainings and sales trainings and all these things over the years. And I remember going to a training once where this trainer was talking about customer service in the hotel industry. And he was giving the example that when you have the irate guests coming up with some issue, you know, the tendency

is to try to refute that right there. But what they do is they taught them to grab the phone and call up to the manager and say, hello, sir, we have an opportunity here at the front desk. Can you please come down. Meaning it's, yeah, it's a problem, but it's an opportunity to diffuse and to give extra value. And I think what you're going at there is with 9-11, with COVID, with fill in the blank. Yes, those things happen, but it is an opportunity for us to bob and weave and learn and get stronger and grow and figure out how to persevere. And those are wonderful opportunities because they do make it stronger. I agree. I totally agree. And sometimes in hindsight, when we look back, and we say, what did our country learn from 9-11?

Or what have we learned about, you know, going through COVID? And, you know, the interesting part was there were a lot of businesses that did well during COVID, you know, we've seen the negative side, which is we've lost loved ones, we've experienced it ourselves or people close to us have. And yet, COVID is actually not classified as a black swan. It actually is classified as a white swan. And the interesting point that Mr. Talib makes is that, you know, white swans are things that can be predicted, but there's a low probability of.

And there's even a gray swan, but we won't get into that. But basically, a gray swan is you don't know what you don't know and you don't know how to plan for what you don't know. And that's really getting into the unknown quite a bit. When I started looking at it, I'm like, now, say that three times backwards fast. And then try to follow the logic. But in reality, it really is.

I like that whole sequence. I know it's called something and I always forget what it is. But it's kind of like, you know, you know what you don't know, meaning I realize that I should know some things. But I also know that I don't know them yet. But then it's it's the point of you don't know what you don't know. And what that is is you take that step of faith. And you're taking that step every day going, you know what? What comes against me today?

day. I'm going to persevere. I'm going to solve. I'm going to figure out. And like you said about what can we learn from them, I would even venture to say that some people, you know, most people don't take that approach and say, what can I learn from this? But even the people that do might initially go, I don't know what I could learn. And then you kind of have to have that voice in your head or someone maybe that you've got an accountability, mastermind kind of a relationship with where they would go, okay, I understand that. But if you did know what you would learn from that, what would that be? And it almost makes you take that pause and go, well, and just think a little deeper. And I think that that's just, that's the, the true definition of resiliency in life.

I agree. I agree. And, you know, when the Spanish blue hit around 1918-ish in that area, you know, they thought it was the black plague and the world was ending. And I think that some of us have had that mentality of, you know, COVID has been that when really is just a, blip in time that history repeats itself. And so the next time in 100 years, it won't be COVID. It'll be called something else. And it might not be 100. It might be 50 years out. But that's the part of it being not completely a Black Swan because, you know, it's like those 100-year storms, you know, the 100-year flood, the 100-year earthquake. You know, the big earthquake that happened in Missouri along the New Madrid fault in the 1800s, well, we're about due for one. You know, that's not going to be

a black swan, you know, because that will be something that is mathematically predicted. We don't know when, but we know mathematically it's a possibility. So, you know, that's the thing that I think people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. Like, I'm in my happy life. Don't mess me up because I can't handle it. And that's the part that I worry about people is their mental. health and saying, you know what, there are things you can do to plan for some of these events, whether they're a black swan or a white swan. And if you're prepared, you don't have to fear. And you can let your faith take over and you can say, okay, Lord, I've done everything I can do. Now, I'm just trusting you that I've done enough. And whatever I haven't, you'll make up the

difference, you know? And we have to use our faith no matter how you believe or what you believe in. that's where faith comes in. And so, you know, but the practicality of it is, you know, God helps those that help themselves, too, right? Yeah. I mean, faith without works is dead. And there's a lot of applications to that statement. It's not, you know, faith unto salvation. But the point is faith without works, meaning you've got to, you can have all the positive mental attitude out there that you can have.

But you got to go out there and do something. So you've got to, you know, recognize and go, okay, if this. kind of thing could happen to me personally or professionally or financially or whatever. Let me put some things into place. Let me be working toward these things. And you have to actually go and do those things because if you said, you know what? There's inflation, recession, uncertainty in the financial world. So I'm going to go ahead and make these plans to whatever that it is, save more money,

pay down debt. But then if you never did those things, well, then what good was recognizing what could happen. You've got to take action. That's right. That's right. And I think an important part, too, of being prepared is looking at the things that we know are a possibility, high probability. You know, we have a lot of people that, you know, they go through their life and they buy car insurance and they buy home insurance. And the reality is they have about a, you know, a little bit more chance of having a home, a fire in their home versus being.

struck by lightning, but yet they're so, they're so, you know, ingrained in, oh, you've got to have home insurance. And I believe that. You do. You should. But if you have a higher probability of needing something like long-term care in the future, then if you have a 70% chance of needing long-term care, wouldn't you want to have a plan in place? But I don't want people to buy long-term care. I want them to just plan for it. And there's a big difference in that, you know. 100%. You know, I think we were talking about COVID in the whole world shut down and dealt with COVID.

But you've had a major black swan in your life recently. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah, it was quite unexpected. And so I consider it a black swan in that event because my husband got sick in one day. and we found out about a year later that he had Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain fever. Well, in our area, the CDC doesn't classify our area as, you know, a Lyme area or Rocky Mountain area. And so when we were going and getting test done, they didn't even test him for those things. So we went through basically 11 months of a medical merry-go-round, which was truly hell.

I mean, in some ways, our medical system is so broken. You know, it's diagnosed, prescribed. Diagnosed, prescribed. When if they spent more time on the testing aspects, it could have saved us a whole year of my husband's suffering. But after, you know, he was disabled in one day. And you've got to think about, here's this guy, big strong guy, you know, six foot tall, you know, 250, always been, you know, the happiest. guy in the room running a multi-million dollar business with lots of friends and family and he gets sick in one day and it was debilitating not only physically to him but emotionally and had we not

had things in place you know spiritually and financially it could have destroyed us and i see so many families that are dealing with mental health issues and serious chronic illness that they can't find answers to and they don't have resources for that I worry about them. But after we went and had these intravenous IV treatments out at a place in Arizona that specializes in Lyme and cancer treatments, we got rid of the Lyme. Well, it left him with Parkinson's symptoms. And so the doctors don't differentiate between, you know, lime induced. Parkinson's versus environmental-induced Parkinson's. But Parkinson's and Lyme are two of the fastest growing diseases in our country.

And we just had no idea. We had no point of experience. We didn't know anybody that had ever been through this. Of course, we've heard of, you know, celebrities and people like that that have had Lyme disease, some for years before they knew what it was. but we decided we found out also during the testing process that my husband had a genetic issue where he has a reaction to every medication they tried and I have a box of medication of about 230 prescriptions that they gave us in the period of about a year and a half two years and I just

was I was just dumbfounded by the amount of prescriptions that they were writing for us and it was like, okay, he would take one for a day or two. It wouldn't work. He'd stop taking it. Well, then we found out about DBS, which is deep brain stimulation, which some people use for seizures and that kind of thing. But we thought, well, he can't take the Parkinson's medicine, so let's try this. Well, we tried it, and it was successful for about a month. And then he started having these terrible side effects. And we realized after 10 months, again, 10 months, that, you know, they put it. it in the wrong place. And we found out because we went to Vanderbilt and they had an expert in Germany look at it and that's how they knew. So they completely redid that back in November.

So along the way, I'm working running my business and his business, my son and my niece are helping me with his. I'm working on my business and it's growing faster than I can keep up with some days. And I'm grateful, but there's so many people that need protection and help. You know, we just do this on a daily basis. And so after that, I said, okay, well, along the way, I filed a short-term disability claim with one of our Affleck policies. And, you know, I didn't think that much about it, but it ended up paying about $40,000 for, you know, a year of him not being able to work. And of course, that's not anywhere near what he makes, but it was something that offset some medical deductibles and things like that. And so then I realized that we had set up something about seven years ago

that we didn't pay for long-term care. But in essence, you know, I wrote in my book about this and how it works and other people have too. It's not a secret. And so we're going to be able to file a disability claim on that policy. And we're going to be able to take out, you know, about $115,000 a year until he can go back to work. And if he can't, he can't. But I guess, and it's tax-free. And so the thing I want people to understand is there are things you can do now to mitigate

risk in the future. And that's what we're really all about is we want to do the work. We want to have a happy life. but when something happens, you know, how much peace of mind it gave me to know, how awful would it have been for me to be in the financial services business and not have a plan in place, you know, because I thought I was going to have, you know, he's going to work another 15 years and so am I. So I guess the whole point is, you know, you can't wait until you need it to ask for it. And a lot of people do that. And you have a 70% chance of needing long-term care before you die. And that is, it goes up, in fact, if you're a married couple because they usually live,

at least one of the partners lives to be in their 90s. So, you know, not having enough money and knowing that you do, there's a huge difference in that as far as what your choices are. You know, you hear so many times online, you know, are you going to have enough money to retire. And that statement typically means the the age you retire compared to the age you think you might not be around anymore is X number of years. Will you have enough money there? But what goes into that is what you've been talking about here. What if? What if and what if? What if there's that black swan? What if there is long-term care needs? What if there's

dimensioning? All of those things that punch holes in the bucket that extend out that time frame. because, you know, we're taking better care of ourselves and living longer these days into our 80s and 90s. So that that gap is big anyway, but then you throw in something like you just described. And it just makes that much more important. So where do you start? If someone is thinking, if someone kind of the back of their mind was thinking, yeah, I probably ought to, you know, think about that. But now they're thinking, okay, I let's take action. Where do you start if you're at the beginning part of that process?

I think the first part is you, you know, we talked about black swans and white swans. I think we have a lot of ostriches in our country, you know. They're scared to think about something. Yeah, so they just put their head in the sand and they're like, I don't want to think about that. I can't deal with that. But I promise you that you'd rather think about it now than it be an issue like it was for my husband and I. And I took care of my parents for 10 years. So when they got sick, I didn't know that, you know, Medicare wasn't going to help pay once they got past that 100 days in rehab.

I had no idea. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Now they got to pay X amount of dollars per day to stay in rehab. And there was no plan in place to take care of them at home. All of my siblings and I were working. We were able to put some things in place. But I think the place where people start is, number one, they're probably taking care of people in their lives, either parents or children or

grandchildren. And I think they need to take a real life assessment and ask themselves the question, what would I do if I lost my job? You know, what would I do if I got sick? What would I do if? And just start making a list of the questions you have answers to and the questions you don't. And then they can do research. I mean, there's so many. things on YouTube. We have lots of things on our website that they can look at. If they want to send me an email, I'll be happy to help them, walk them through the process of where to go and how to start. And we do these educational events all the time. We do seminars. We do webinars. Um, you know, maybe them getting on more of those types of things. Instead of just watching their favorite show,

just start watching some educational things. There's so much. many good things that they could check out. That would be the first thing. Yeah, I think I think that's, you know, like someday I'll, you know, someday I'll handle that or and someday comes. You know, it's like that you don't think it'll ever happen to you until it does. So you mentioned, you know, getting a little bit of a runway ahead of things like let's let's just start the planning process. What if someone's already there? What if someone hadn't done much or any planning and that black swan hits? What are some options that way? Well, the thing that Steve and I did was, you know, we, we had four children. And so a lot of our money while we were raising kids went into the business and it went in, you know, to the kids, raising the kids. And so we wake up and, you know, we're 50 years old and we're like, oh my gosh, we haven't done anything for, you know, permanent life insurance or some tax-free retirement.

options, you know. And so we looked at all of that and we were like, okay, we got to play catch up. So if you're already there, you can play catch up. If you're working and you've got money, stop putting it in the 401ks and the IRAs because that's just a blank check to the IRS in the future. You know, Uncle Sam is your biggest partner in qualified accounts. And so they could take the money out of those, keep the match if they wanted to or not. But, But take the money, pay the taxes, and then you've got more options. So you have to kind of reallocate your assets into different places for the future. Most people feel like and know that taxes are going up.

And taxes are on sale right now. So now's the time to be doing those Roth conversions and things like that that people can do to have some more tax-free options in the future. But the main thing is they just need to start. And if they don't know where to start, that's where we come into play. And we're a little different. You know, we are unique. We are a boutique firm, one of the best in the country. We have a lot of people that we have taken care of over the years.

But, you know, I love what I do. I love protecting people and helping them with their money. And it's never been about money for me. It's just been, who can I protect from Wall Street? because I know the myths that are surrounding Wall Street are just that. They're like smoke and mirrors, and the average investor has no clue that they should not still be in Wall Street when they're 55, 65 years old. They need to start, you know, siphoning that money down from accumulation into some

guaranteed products that have, you know, uncapped potential, but give them a floor. So they're never going to lose 20, 30, 40 percent again. They can stop that right now. So that's something they can do also. 100%. Well, I tell you, Renee, as always, is always neat to hear your perspectives and your stories. So I think this has been so enlightening to hear about Black Swans, what you can do with it. So if someone is interested in learning more and getting started, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you, what's your website or what are some resources there?

The best thing they can do is send an email to Renee, R-E-N-E-E-A-A-A-A-A-Lif Solutions.com that goes directly to me. And just put in the response, put help with a question mark. And that way I can filter through and I can make it a priority to see where they are. And maybe from some of my life experience, I can give them some direction that would help them in their families. And that's really what we want to do. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you again today, Renee. Thanks, Mike. We appreciate you too. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders.

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