Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Tyrone Clark President and Founder of Brokers’ Choice of America Discussing Annuity Hero

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Tyrone Clark is a national speaker, an educator, a mentor, a teacher, a financial advisor, a sales and marketing consultant, an author, and a serial entrepreneur. Tyrone has had an amazing career that has touched thousands of lives.Tyrone has been on the advisory board of numerous insurance companies. He’s designed several insurance products, written many articles, and written and co-authored multiple books. Tyrone has appeared in numerous media sources.Tyrone’s heart and passion are part of the journey of the insurance agent because, as an agent, Tyrone rose through the ranks from being a successful salesperson to management to being a National FMO and company founder. His FMO is one of the oldest FMOs in the nation.For over 33 years as an FMO, Brokers Choice of America has been a nationally recognized leader in Annuity sales and ranked as a number one sales achiever for numerous insurance carriers.Tyrone has also assisted other FMOs in getting started and has been active with many Industry Trade groups. Tyrone has been called the agent’s agent, having trained more than 8,000 agents and conducted over 2,000 consumer seminars and workshops in 49 states.If you’re a licensed financial advisor, you’ve received or read the five national magazines that Tyrone is a co-founder of, and they have been a game changer in the industry. Undoubtedly, Tyrone has been an influencer, a disruptor, and a game-changer in the industry.Tyrone has also been a serial entrepreneur for numerous start-up companies outside the insurance industry. He has been a proud supporter of the Community and Chamber of Commerce. His most important gift is his faith, which he says overshadows anything he has accomplished.Learn More: https://brokerschoice.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-tyrone-clark-president-and-founder-of-brokers-choice-of-america-discussing-annuity-hero

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 this Tyrone Clark, who is the president and founder of Brokers Choice of America, and we'll be talking about his brand new program called Annuity Hero. Tyrone, welcome back to the program.

Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be back. Yeah, I've been enjoying our conversations in this series. And I'm excited to hear about this because it seems like when someone kind of gets to a point in their career that they say, you know, here's a trend that is not just a fad or a flash on the pan. There's a progression here that something is needed. And with your background in the annuity industry, you saw a need for creating this project. And so I want to start with asking, what is your background in the annuity industry?

And then why did you decide to launch the annuity hero project? Well, my background, Mike, is in the fixed annuity industry. And it goes back to the early 1980s. I'm one of the few people that have been heavily involved in the annuity fixed industry going back for almost four decades, believe it or not. And I fell in love with annuities. I'm 65, but I was probably 22 or 23 years old when I first learned about and fell in love with annuities. and I'll tell you why. Okay. Annuities are the backbone and pillar of retirement security in our country.

I can go very deep all the way to the congressional record of why the federal government granted tax benefits to these products, which is for economic security of Americans. I can go into the tax laws and so forth. But the bottom line is this. safety, liquidity, tax advantages, competitive returns without risk, probate avoidance, simplicity, exchangeability, and income you cannot outlive. That has held true during my entire career for millions of consumers. So all of the United States, these are to me critical, critical products. for consumers so that they have confidence and they can have peace of mind in their retirement years,

that's just a little glimpse of my passion and mission about these products, Mike. Well, it almost seems like there's misconceptions with anything. We know that, right? But back in the day, annuities used to have a black eye, and you used a great important term, which is fixed. And without getting into, again, details or anything, but I think that the annuity industry had part of that black eye because some of the variable annuities weren't as good as today.

But now today, when you have a fixed annuity and a fixed index, now all of those benefits you just rattled off become so powerful. And it becomes a gift that the advisor is able to give to their client, which is the gift of not having to open up their portfolio statement and almost have a heart attack when they, they see what the market did to their retirement portfolio, and maybe that's their only source of income. So being able to have a product where you're giving that peace of mind, guaranteed, can't lose money, guaranteed streams of income, all of those benefits, just as a gift that you're able to provide to your clients, is that some of the things you've heard from the advisors that you're serving? Well, Mike, when it comes to all these different types of financial products that are available out there.

I kind of look at it in an interesting way. Let's pretend, Mike, that you're an artist and you've got a canvas in front of you. What you want to do is you're going to paint this magnificent portrait of a happy retirement for an individual. But on your palette, you have a whole variety of different types of financial tools to accomplish that happy retirement. One paint that you can mix, of course, with the others is the annuity. Now, of course, there's so many other wonderful products. You know, the variable annuities, today they've got incredible features. You've got something called RILAs.

You got guaranteed yearly income annuities. You have such a huge variety to paint an incredible picture today that we never had before. So I don't like pigeonhole fix annuities in just one part to look at the whole thing. But the thing that I strive and I hope is that advisors have an open mind to looking at the entire picture. And then the goal is that that canvas, that painting that you paint with using the different paints as a different financial product tools, what I strive for is that that is a painting of what's in the client's very best interest. Now, that being said, imagine if you're missing on your palate, maybe the most important paint that, And that makes that canvas look incomplete.

So it is very important, in my opinion, that all advisors, CPA, accountant, tax preparer, enrolled agents, securities advisor, insurance advisor, every different type of advisor. If you work in a bank, okay, that you need to know and become educated from an unbiased. position on the power of these products. I've got to say this, okay? Right now, if you look at the entire United States population, there's a large segment of America's population of consumers. I'm talking about millions of people. And according to Dave Machia, who I'm a big fan of, he calls this segment of our population as financially constrained, meaning they may not have adequate funds to retire. And based on Nobel Prize winning experts in economics that have touched upon some of the areas of the constrained investor, as Dave Mackey calls them, the only solution for the constrained

folks is a lifetime guarantee income based on longevity. You cannot use some of the other instruments and other paints, so to speak, that will complete that guaranteed lifetime income for those folks. So in that case, the constrained investor, as Dave calls it, it's imperative that all advisors understand that, but it's sad that a lot of advisors are not even licensed to be able to provide that product. And when all of us should be looked out for the best interest of that client, but let me just make a comment here. Here's why I think any advisor would love, hopefully, you know, annuity hero. My goal is to launch that, to provide that platform of education.

for all advisors. But one product in particular, of course, is the phenomenon of the index annuity, the fix index. Now, of course, you have something just called RILAs, which is tremendous. But I want you all to think about this. I'm able to provide a consumer safe and secured compounding growth, guaranteed, and on a tax advantage basis, with the ability to capture a significant portion of index returns,

such as the NASDAQ, the Dow, the Russell, without having to risk my principle, nor risk my prior gains. Being able to provide that for a consumer is essential and it's imperative. And now you have the innovation of these products today where you can have minimum guarantees for life like today for 4% compounded and get 75 or up to 90% of the growth of the S&P based on the period of time. That is simply a breakthrough. That's a paradigm shift. Yeah, 100%. And I love your analogy about those artists.

If you had 10 artists and said, paint me a house, you would get 10 different versions of a house. One would use one structure. One would use a different color. One would use a different type of paint. So we know that everyone should not have 100% of their retirement portfolio into one product. But when you're entertaining the benefits of an annuity, some of those benefits that you're explaining here and some of these now new, you know, wonderful products like you just explained. I think now it comes to the point where maybe an advisor is not as proficient in your knowledge. Like you wrote the book literally on the history of annuities.

And now they have a place to come to, which is a national membership network so that these agents and financial advisors that want to learn more and become proficient in annuity sales have a place to come to. So talk a little bit about what the annuity hero project is and what that's going to provide for the advisor. You bet. So now you mentioned that 10 different artists having different pictures. All those 10 must still paint the picture of the house, like in this case the financial house. They all must have a foundation under that house, regardless of the different types of houses. But annuity hero, the idea is that it's a membership for advisors just to join to have access.

But it's my goal is to have a nationwide network of advisors of all. type sources, backgrounds, education, licenses to appreciate the power of the annuity, which I call, you know, the annuity hero. And but let me just, I hope everybody's paying attention and want to key in on what I'm trying to accomplish. I want to provide for an advisor to go to one source and say, look, here's all the annuity software programs. Here's the annuity events. Here's the amazing annuity facts that I can research. Here's the annuity press announcements. Here's the history of annuities of annuity articles, annuity marketing, annuity newsletter, annuity social media, annuity educational videos, annuity consumer classes, seminars, workshops, annuity social media,

annuity sales tools, annuity books, annuity lead programs, annuities in the news, annuity interest rate reports, the annuity learning center, who are some of the rock stars, the superstars in the annuity market, annuities in relation to the IRS, annuities in relation to the government, annuities in relation to compliance, even annuity merchandise swag. So I want one source finally where an advisor can go to and access all of that stuff that I've that's been out there. And it's it's not about, you know, the idea is not about pigeonholing annuities in a certain area, whatever. It's just like saying, hey, there's good and bad and everything, but where does this really fit? Where does it not fit? But to not even know about it is actually

not a good thing. So that's kind of the idea. I know I kind of explain quite a bit there, but that's That's the idea here. Well, it's obvious you put a minute or two worth of thought into this to have that kind of bullet point. You know what I'm saying? Like if someone is, and, you know, scripture teaches that there's nothing new under the sun. Well, there's nothing new about you having a learning center and having some articles, but when you have cultivated that into one spot.

And so people, yeah, you can Google all kinds of things. But if you have all of this in one place and it's a one-stop shop to learn. and hone their skills. I think that's spectacular. And I want to zero in on one thing you mentioned that I think that I feel like was one of the biggest benefits here is if you can now hear some of these superstars that are going, look, I'm an advisor just like you. I'm selling annuities.

And here's what I'm doing to get new leads or to close the leads or to explain it better or to serve our clients better. Talk a little bit about the benefit of having some of these people that are in the trenches right now selling annuities that are like the superstars, that you're able to tap into their mindset and learn from? Well, that's a good question, Mike. I want to give you a real quick, a close example. I was talking to a financial advisor

who has never recommended or sold an annuity, but who is a brilliant investment advisor, a gentleman who goes through tremendous due diligence, for each of his clients, somebody I really like and respect. And I love his background, which is very deep in the investment community. Now, that individual, when I started to teach him about the indexing accounting process, the way to examine a life insurance company's foundation of safety, the amazing index strategies that are all over the place today from all of the major Wall Street firms.

Somebody like that who was like a kid all over again in a candy store saying, I never realized how these. products really worked. I never realized the things that you can do with these products. Nobody's really ever taught me this or showed me this. He says, I got a whole new world now that I can add to my clients and everything they're doing. That's what to me was really exciting. But the thing is, where does somebody go to learn all that? I'll just give an example. How about annuities and trusts? How about annuities? How do you name the beneficiary properly in relation to annuities?

How do you use annuities in relation to income and attach that with maybe income from a reverse mortgage? There's so many things. The goal is to have the world of annuities for everyone with annuity hero. I love it. And I think that having that collaborative mastermind approach where there's industry leaders like yourself leading conversations. And then there's advisors out there selling every day to people explaining what the wording is that they're using. And then having some of the protections like you were mentioning about compliance or Department of Labor and all of the things that come up.

If you have your finger to the pulse of what advisors are going to be experiencing and faced, they don't need to worry about let me go find it from some other source. It's that total resource connection for advisors to. fully understand the power of annuities and and how to bring it to light for their clients. So I think that is just such a spectacular vision and passion that you put together here. And an annuity hero is something that is not out of reach for people and not some high price program. It's just a membership site. But the value that you're going to get out of that to collaborate with people all across

the country doing the same thing that you're doing, I think is just a spectacular undertaking. Well, I just want to mention this along with the whole thing about annuity hero is when it comes to the consumer, the goal, hopefully, for all the advisors, is to empower them with education. education is enlightenment and it's empowerment for the consumer so the goal is that if you have an advisor that is very well versed in the good the bad the ugly oh so they know the whole spectrum not just one-sided so that they can make an objective a good decision about the companies, the products, where they fit, where they don't fit, where the shortcomings are. You know, for example, many agents don't ask for the history of interest rates on a product. Many agents don't ask for a specimen contract and actually read a contract.

My goal is to empower through education, all those different things. I can't do all of that myself. I have other experts that I will have, participate and give their information, even experts that design the products so that we could have the most educated professional annuity advisor that is out there today. That's some of the goals there of annuity hero. Well, and I love your tagline, and we'll wrap up with this, which is, you say, annuities are America's powerhouse of retirement security. And so when that foundation is laid and you've got a one-stop shop resource to educate

and guide advisors and bringing this to their clients, it's just as a win all the way around. So I would say, Tyrone, what is the best place that someone listening to this might learn more and reach out and connect with you. Well, they certainly want to just go to annuityhero.com. And from there, they certainly could contact me. If they ever want to call my cell phone or even text at 720560-1201280,

or they can send me at t-Clark at brokerschoice.com, or just go to annuityhero.com. Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it. I enjoy it as usual. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time as well, my friend. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders.

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