Heroes in Business - Carter Wilcoxson Founder of CSI Financial Group. csifg.com

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Listen as David Cogan interviews Carter Wilcoxson, the Founder of CSI Financial Group, Laser focused on Client Acquisition, Client Retention, and Advisor Support. csifg.com

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. That's right. And thank you so much, too. We've got so much, as always, I say, and I know every week and stuff, every time we've got so much going on. It really means a lot to me for the continuing comments and emails we get when I interviewed the co-founder of LinkedIn. So please make sure that you go to alliances.com. You can click on the radio portion, or you can go to eliancer.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-R.com.

And that'll take you to the segments. So with that, let's go ahead and get started today. By the way, I've got, he's a friend of mine and boy, is he knowledgeable in what's on all of our minds. So with that, welcome to the show. That's right. Welcome to the show. Carter Wilcoxon. He is the founder of CSI Financial Group. You can reach him at csifg.com. Now you may be wondering what is CS csi financial group carter why don't you go ahead and explain i'm pretty knowledgeable of it uh also too as a disclosure i'm a client of his too so letting you all know and um yeah so carter would you go ahead and go into some of the details of it because you you guys really do a lot yeah you know we we do and that's by design we do a lot. Yeah, we do, and that's by design. We do a lot, right? Whenever I launched

the company, in fact, this summer will be 10 years, so pretty big anniversary coming up. CSI Financial Group was really born from the missing pieces that are out there when it comes to the goals and objectives of a financial advisor to help them grow their practice. So I've trained personally and our team has trained combined probably over 12,000 different financial advisors, estate planning professionals out there in the retail space, if you will, that work with Mr. and Mrs. Jones when it comes to all areas of what we call tax mitigation or risk mitigation and estate planning. But the program that we've put together, the systems we put in place, the infrastructure that is all here was really born from almost a decade in the industry myself. And whenever I went out there in the retail side, I recognized pieces that were missing that I wish

I had myself to be a successful advisor. So I decided, you know what, it's not built. I'm just going to build it myself. And then I surround myself with very inventive and innovative staff members that help us to help advisors grow their practice on a national basis. And I know that's a very esoteric and 30,000 foot view and everything, but that's what CSI Financial Group is. We're here locally in Phoenix, Arizona, and I was lucky enough to become an Alliances member. Talk to us about the missing parts though that you said. Can you list some of those for us? Yeah, you know, for an advisor, you advisor, things that they need is they need infrastructure. They need a collaborative team that they do not look like they're the sole proprietor of their

own business. So what we do is we actually surround them with a team of specialists, estate planning attorneys, tax planning specialists, risk mitigation specialists that become essentially part of their team that help them overnight become bigger than they are in all these different legal and financial areas that if they had to go it alone and do it by themselves, they really couldn't put this type of a team together. So we just become that multidisciplinary team approach provider for them to help them ultimately win what I call the relationship war. So as you may know, David, there are 10 to 12, upwards of 14,000 baby boomers a day. I'm going to repeat that. Baby boomers a

day that are retiring for the next 12 to 15 years. Well, that is a lot of opportunities for financial advisors in this industry. And because we have focused primarily on the foundation of estate planning, which again is a misnomer or people don't really understand what that means, we lead with that, that ultimately helps those households get their affairs in order that then leads to that opportunity to form a relationship with these financial advisors that we help to train and educate them throughout the nation so that they can drive a wedge maybe between their current provider or provide extra services that their current provider are not. or not absolutely and again you're watching listen to me David Kogan host of the alliances hero show make sure that you go to alliances.com that's e-l-i-a-n-c-s.com the only place where entrepreneurs align and we're speaking with Carter Wilcoxon founder of CSI financial group you can go and C-S-I-F-G, C-I-F, sorry, C-S-I-F-G.com. That's C-S-I-F-G.com. All right.

So Carter, what's the word though, and this is important, legacy. What does legacy mean to you? So, you know, legacy means different things for different people when they hear it, especially when we're educating, you know, an audience of people, because we train our advisors

on giving our entire estate planning educational event throughout the country. When we say legacy, what happened was about five or six years ago, I was introduced to a company called Legacy Stories. And Legacy Stories, and I just put an email out about this not too long ago, I mean, almost without exception, the audience that comes to these events, they're boomers, right? 55 plus almost exclusively. And I'll say to them, or we'll train our advisors to say to them, everybody in that room is all but two generations away from total obscurity without what I call legacy stories. And legacy stories is a platform that we purchased that is part of our estate planning procedure that enables Mr. and Mrs. Jones, if you will,

right? You don't have to be a celebrity to be able to have stories to tell and values to share to your family for generations to come. So whenever I'm saying legacy, I'm specifically talking about legacy stories. And it's a platform that takes away all of the overwhelmness of how do you take everything that's in your head and in your heart and document it before you're gone, right? And if you were to give a task, you know, to 72 year old Mr. and Mrs. Jones and say, hey, I need you to start documenting everything about your life and all the values that you hold dearly so that generations that come after you understand maybe how this money was created, how the wealth was created, whatever that wealth might be, right? That could be 500,000, it could be 500 million and anything in between. So what we do is we systematically help these

households put together without feeling overwhelmed their entire story of their life from infancy to cradle to grave, if you will, right from the beginning to the end. So when I say legacy, I'm specifically talking about a way to take all of those values. And it's important to be able to know how to pass on your valuables. And that's how you use estate planning and financial planning. But how do you pass on your values to the next generation so that in two generations, you're not in total obscurity? And that's everybody that is out there right now that's listening. Oh, great advice. I think this is important too, that's on people's mind is, and sure this is, how critical is the support from your significant other to determine really your level of success?

And is it that important? I mean, it is. I can speak for me personally, and I've interviewed plenty of advisors. As you know, I've got my own podcast, right? The Helping Me Podcast Show. In fact, actually, too, you can listen to him by going to Eliancer.com and click on Carter Wilcoxon. Phenomenal wealth of information there. Make sure you go there, Eliancer.com, and click on Carter Wilcoxon. Phenomenal wealth of information there. Make sure you go there,

eliancer.com and click on it. You'll see all of his podcasts that are distributed to over 50 outlets. Go ahead. Yeah, so as I was saying, I've interviewed a lot of advisors and it's one of the questions I asked them. Like how important was it?

Because you don't typically grow up and you're like, hey, I'm going to graduate high school. Then I'm going to go to college and then I'm going to be a financial advisor, right? People are growing up. I'm going to be a fireman or a policeman or, you know, a doctor, lawyer, things like that. So when you become a financial advisor, you know, you, it's one of those eat what you kill scenarios, right? It's not like the stable, I have a nice safety blanket and I've got plenty of income. I've got a base and then I get a subset potential and everything. A lot of those financial advisors, they are out there on faith that they're going to succeed. And the critical piece of success there all too often in almost every circumstance is your significant other.

Right. This goes for female advisors that turn into advisors, male advisors. So your spouse. And again, speaking from my own experience, I could not be where I'm at today without that ongoing support that you have, because you do feel like you're out there, you know, going it alone a lot of times. So it is critical. It is vital that the support system at home, and obviously if you can include your kids, if they're older, which again, I'm speaking from experience here, it is critical, but the level of success is typically determined and dictated by the level of support you get from the home front. Excellent. And again, make sure you go to see Carter Wilcoxon, founder of CSI Financial. You can go to csifg.com.

Once again, this has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show. In regards to CSI Financial Group and what it means about money, how to keep it, how to make it, how to make it last. All right, so now let's get further deeper, Carter, in regards to some of these things, because, you know, you talked about, you know, the number of baby boomers that are aging in that. How do people make their money last, though? I mean, how do you budget appropriately? You don't know exactly when you're going to die. You don't know when your spouse is going to die. You know, all of these things, if your children are going to need, you know, additional funds, something happens to them. children are going to need, you know, additional funds, something happens to them. How does one like plan and manage? Yeah, I mean, that's such a great question, David. And, and here's the reality of the situation, our industry, you know, the what we call the IMO or the FMO industry, you know,

we work with these financial advisors who are, without exception, insurance license, and there are two different product solutions that, you know, the largest financial institutions in the world that everybody listening right now, they've heard of or they've seen commercials, you know, Pacific Life or Allianz, Athene, North American carriers that build out these products, of which we're a distributor of, that you have annuities to buffer or mitigate living too long, and you have life insurance if you don't exceed that expectation of life, right? So passing on that generational wealth, there's just no substitute. And I mean this with every bit of my soul. There is no substitute for

a properly diversified portfolio. Of course, you can have risk in your portfolio, nothing wrong with that, but there's got to be a portion. Every properly designed portfolio that any of our advisors utilize is incorporating either a life insurance solution or an annuity solution for at least a strong portion of some of those assets that people, to your question, they want to make sure that they can never outlive their money. In fact, statistically speaking, and you can look this up, people are more afraid of outliving their money than they actually are dying, right? So the last thing they could even think about is being destitute. And I've talked to plenty of clients who have, you know, one and a half, two and a half, three and a half million dollars that they are deathly afraid of running out of money. And a lot of times what they end up doing is they put money on the sidelines when there are solutions that you don't

need to put money on the sidelines because of the designs, but you need to make sure you're talking to financial advisors who understand the devil in the details of these things, but a properly designed portfolio without exception. And I mean, this is going to have a portion of those assets that are going to be in some sort of an annuity or life insurance solution. What do you see on the horizon? Are there new products that you hear about that are coming out to help with that and assist with it? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the future is all about technology, right? The future is innovation, and we are living in a world right now where innovation, it feels like, I mean, especially like with AI, I mean, it's crazy how fast the

financial services arena is really moving. So you have to understand what types of products are already out there. But you also have to understand how like Wall Street works. You have to understand how risk works and everything. You have to understand how, you know, risk works and everything. So the types of products that are being created is really, especially in my space, they're being designed so that there are abilities to if you have a long term care event or if you have, you know, you don't ever want to outlive your money, as I mentioned earlier. All of these different products have different features and benefits that are being designed on a regular basis. The thing that separates CSI Financial Group from maybe some of our competitors is that we daily are reading, you know, again, the devil in the details, as I mentioned, on how the infrastructure and how the inner workings actually are beneficial to the end user consumers that are out there. But those types of products, they really haven't honestly changed that much since I got into the business. And even before that, back in the mid nineties, the fixed index annuity, which I'm going

to date myself here, used to be called an equity index annuity. The markets didn't like using the word equity. So the industry had to change it to saying fixed index annuity. the markets didn't like using the word equity so they so the industry had to change it to saying fixed index annuity it is a product that really has been around since the mid 90s that now you have large financial institutions that are taking these things on on Wall Street you know um that that forever didn't you know I mean Merrill Lynch is a perfect example of that that they are actually embracing the hedging strategies that go into these products that are being designed all with the intention of giving up that potential, eliminating principal risk, never outliving your money and giving access to the funds on a, you know, up to a 10% amount. So, you know, the, of 72, doubling your money, you know, in 7.2 years, the rule of 72.

And then also the ability to, you know, never outlive your money. Those products are just going to continually be enhanced with different like indices that are very innovative. It's not going to be just like your traditional, you know, as you're watching the ticker at home, right? Whatever news channel you're watching, you know, you're going to see NASDAQ, you're going to see the S&P 500, you're going to see the Dow, right? But there's a lot of very innovative indices that are going into this to make the pricing structure more beneficial for the end user to give that upside potential to be even greater with even less risk. Great. We had a couple of people email in when they found out that you were going to be even greater with even less risk great we had a couple people email in when they were found out that you were going to be on with some questions one of those questions is the

following is is is it okay and or should i share the information of my wealth to my children man you know that is uh that's a very subjective question and it's it's a great question um Man, that's a very subjective question, and it's a great question. I think inherently, even though it's a great question, from the experience that I've had with working with households all over the country, they hold that very tight to the vest, very close to the vest, because they don't want any perception that you're going to have some sort of great inheritance or whatever. So there's a slippery slope on answering that question. Should you? Maybe you could have a meeting with your beneficiaries, your children, everything, and generalize. I don't know how specific you really want to get with that would be my suggestion, or at least in my experience, on most people and most successful family succession plans typically are putting things together on behalf of their children and not necessarily telling them exactly what's going to happen at the end but they are generalizing at least given some

sort of a a blueprint on expectations for when they're no longer here. Here's another one. I don't know if you can answer this one. What age is the appropriate one to retire? Well, you know what? Another great question, right? I guess I'll answer it with this. It depends, right? I mean, it honestly depends on understanding where you were as far as how you know, how close are you to social security? You know, how much money do you have willing to invest as opposed to risk? You know, what, what is your cashflow look like? I mean, there's so many things to take into consideration, you know, the traditional normals, you know, somewhere around 62, 65, full retirement age is social security calls, you know, like 66, I think is what it is right now. But that is such a great question. And ultimately it comes down to the individual situation,

which is why it's critical to meet with someone who understands all the different specifics of planning strategies, right? Estate planning, or what we call family succession planning, tax mitigation. What do your taxes look like in the future, potentially how we're managing that and mitigating that, and then what type of risk are you willing to take on versus reward? Okay. And we've got time for one more question. What research should I be doing when looking to hire a financial advisor? You know, that's another great question. Well, let me just say this, a financial advisor, that phrase, I sort of, you know, I'm kind of loose with it, right? Because a financial advisor is typically just someone that they're

going to find a way to manage my money, they're going to charge a certain fee, they're going to have certain credentials and everything. but careful with the credentials, right? I mean, even whenever you think back to, you know, NASDAQ and you think to, you know, Bernie, who used to be the president of NASDAQ, right? He had all the credentials in the world. It's really, you should at least get a sense. I mean, and most people have their spidey senses up. You want to interview someone and you want to ask, you know, certain questions that are important to you, right? And what capabilities do those certain advisors, whether they be financial advisors, estate

planning professionals, whatever the case may be, you know, what type of a team do they have? That would be what I would be more, you know, if you're going to look at, you know, asking a specific financial advisor, I would ask what type of team, what type of succession planning that they have in place to help you better understand how they might be able to manage your situation going forward and in the future. Excellent. Wall cart. Cool thing out there that you bring education to others to help understand make sure you reach out to carter wilcoxon founder of csi financial group you can reach him at c

s i f g dot com this has been david cogan with the alliances hero show make sure that you go to the alliance or dot com e l I A N C E R.com. And a secret for you is click on Carter Wilcox in there, and you can listen to many of his past episodes. Thank you again, Carter for being on the alliances hero show. Absolutely. My pleasure,

buddy. Thank you so much. Bye.