Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with James Johnson President & Owner of All Mark Insurance Services – Discussing Retirement Malpractice

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

James has been a business owner, a mentor, and an entrepreneur for over 28 years.As an ex-Marine and black belt in Judo, James does nothing in life he isn’t passionate about. His continual interest in provoking thought and conversation led him to the financial industry. “Being able to help hundreds of individuals, families, and business owners achieve their goals in life not only financially, but spiritually,” James states, “is a very powerful thing.”James has aligned himself with hundreds of his clients who are willing to learn and take control of their future. His core belief is that only when they are learning and growing.James is consistently top in his field, staying educated and staying on the cutting edge of laws, regulations, and industry news. He is a proud member of Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), and was a Master Elite Advisor for Ed Slott (America’s IRA Expert) for 9 years.With this vast knowledge of the financial industry, he was chosen as an expert on the “Ask the Expert” program series on AM radio in the Inland Empire.Learn More: https://www.yoursafemoneypeople.comInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-james-johnson-president-owner-of-all-mark-insurance-services-discussing-retirement-malpractice

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 with us James Johnson, who's the president and owner of Allmark Insurance Services, and we'll be talking about his brand new book, Retirement Malpractice. James, welcome to the program.

Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. How are you doing today? Hey, doing awesome. And I always love when we hear, you know, shocking titles like Retirement Malpractice. That sounds pretty interesting. So I want to hear all about retirement malpractice. What was the first thing that crossed your mind when you decided, you know what? There's an issue in the industry and I need to write a book about it.

Well, in the book, I talk about how you walk into the first time into a doctor's office. And as you walk through the door, the first thing they do is hand you a pill. Would you eat it? And the answer to the first of all that's malpractice. That's called prescribing without diagnosing. And Mike, this goes on every single day throughout the world and finances and whatever the case would be. But particularly in the financing industry, they're telling you should buy this stock, this bond, this mutual fund, this gold, the silver, the cryptocurrency, this life insurance, this annuity. And yet, no one's doing a diagnosis.

And so I, you know, call it a whistleblower, call it what you want, but I wrote a book about it. And I wrote a book about how you really need to have a good diagnosis when it comes to your retirement before making any decisions. Well, isn't it very similar to the concept of measure twice, cut once? You know, like, don't just, you know, ready, ready fire aim. You know, you need to aim. then you need to probably aim again and then probably aim another time and then take your shot. So I think that's just a really wise advice. Yeah, I tell people I say, look, you know, people lie.

You know, what a big surprise, right? But math doesn't. And so the key to sitting down and doing this, as you say, measured twice cut once, is that the key to doing this is really sitting down and finding out where are you, where are you going? And is your plan really going to get you there? And if you haven't done that, then you're just kind of throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. And you're praying to God the market doesn't drop at the wrong time.

You know, there's so much better ways to do it than following that generalized advice that's out there. Yeah. So in your book, you argue that most retirement advice fails before it even starts. What's the biggest mistake that you're finding people make when they, believe they've got a plan. Well, Mike, you're playing a game. Okay. Whether you believe it or not, it's a two-part game. And the game that everybody's been playing for a year after year after year is the

accumulation game. And in that game, the market's going up and down and up and down. And it's really no big deal. And the reason why it's no big deal is because you don't have to touch your money. But when you move over to this retirement and to the preservation and distribution stage your life, this game is played differently. And if you don't play it differently, good luck, because sequence of returns can take you out. The worst possible time to lose money is the five years before you retire and the five years after you retire. So this is about a repositioning. This is

about securing income. This is about playing the game differently because you see, now you have to date money out of the account. And if you have to take it out while the market's going down, that's not a good thing. And you got to know that before you go heading off into Law, Law Land. So let's dive into just a touch deeper on that one point you framed up there, sequence of returns. And the most vital point to really consider that is five years before and five

years after retirement. So you're forced to take money out at some point, like, you know, required minimum distributions. But then also when you retire, you've decided, I need this much money per month. So you start taking it out then as well. Talk a little bit about those withdrawals and then how that ties into sequence of returns, what that really means.

Because I think sometimes people have heard that phrase, but they don't really know how it impacts them. Well, so let me give you an example. Let's say for the sake of argument that you have a million dollars in your IRA, okay, 401K, 403B, 447, define minimum of a plan, whatever it is, right? You have a million dollars. First thing I'm going to tell you in that book is I'm going to tell you you don't really have a million dollars. You have a business partner.

His name is Uncle Sam. He's going to get his portion of that money. But let's just stick with the million dollars for a second. When you're in that accumulation stage of your life and the market's going up and down, you just wait. It always comes back. It might take three to five years for it to come back, but it always comes back. When you get to this preservation distribution stage, you've got to have a paycheck. And your paycheck is going to come from some known sources.

Those would be social security, pension if you're lucky enough to have one. We could argue that rental properties are a known source of income, but they're not a guaranteed source of income. So we would have to factor that in. And then we have to get all of our other assets, our stocks, bonds, mutual funds, gold, silver, cryptocurrency, 401ks, etc. to create that paycheck. So back to the million dollars.

So we've got a million dollars. and we have to take out $60,000 a year. It's not a choice. We have to do it because we want to live the lifestyle we've become accustomed to, adjusted for taxes and inflation, out beyond ours and our spouse's life expectancy, and then pass our money on in the most tax favor of it possible. So if we've got to take $60,000 out, if we're making 6%, everything's cool because 6% of a million dollars is $60,000, we're good to go.

But in one year, just one, the market loses 20%. Well, if you had a million dollars and you lost 20%, how much do you have left? And everybody says, well, you have 800,000 left. Not true. Because you still have to take the $60,000. So now you're at $740,000. It doesn't matter what you make in the next year, because in the next year, you can't make enough to get you back to that million dollars when you have to to continue to take the 60 every year. Does that make sense? Okay. So, so when that's happening,

all right, you now get on this downhill slide. So the way to solve this problem is you secure your income first and then you can go take risk with your assets going forward. Kind of like, you know, get your, get your house in order before you move to the next step or don't get married until you have a job, all in due time, you know, have the, you know, have the right sequence of things so that things are falling into place the best way. That's correct. So one of the strongest themes that you talk about in the book is people moving from guessing to knowing.

What do you say a proper financial diagnosis actually involves that most advisors don't cover? Well, first of, they don't ask the right questions. So you got to remember that, you know, I hate the word. financial planner, I just despise that word. And the reason why I despise that word is because most, and don't get me wrong, they're not all this way, but most financial planners are nothing more than glorified stockbrokers. That's really what they are. Okay. You know, your fidelity Schwab, Fisher investments, whatever the case would be. And their goal is to sell whatever it is they sell. Well, is that the right diagnosis for this particular person? Maybe they need real estate.

Maybe they need annuities, maybe they need life insurance, maybe they need cryptocurrency, maybe they need gold, maybe they need silver. Maybe they need all that stuff. But what all they're doing is they're looking at it and going, hey, you know, you've got quite a bit of money there. I know how we can make some money on this. And now so I have literally like not ever, not once in all of the hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of people that I've talked to, I have yet to find a single person

who knew exactly where they were financially, and I would bet you wouldn't be one either, okay? And most people cannot answer the most basic of all questions, and that is, what does it cost you to live per month? Now, I didn't say what does it cost you to pay your bills? I said, what does it cost you to live for a month? And living is everything. It's your rent or your mortgage payment, and it's your taxes, and it's your insurance and it's vacations and it's gifts and it's food. and it's all that stuff. And a new roof on your house and whatever the case may be, that's living.

Most people can't answer that question. So you first have to discover where you are. You have to know where you are before you start heading off to where you want to go or you're just never going to get there. Picture you get in your car and you tell it you want to go to the mall. Well, what's the first thing it figures out? It figures out where you're at. Yeah, well, this is no different in finances.

People, you need to know where you're at so that once you know where you are, and then you say, well, I'm going to go here. Now you can actually look at the numbers. And, you know, it's shocking for most people. Matter of fact, just about every person I've ever talked to. The most shocking thing for them is that they've been told their entire life that they should be putting money in a tax deferred account because they're going to grow up otherwise paid in taxes.

And at the end, they're going to be a lot of money. lower tax bracket, so they're going to have more money. Well, the reality for most people is that's simply not true. And if they're married, it's almost 100% not true because one of them is going to die. And when that one dies, now they have to file single. And the only thing that's going away is 85% of the lowest sole security. So suddenly they jumped to a higher tax bracket. And this is a shocking moment for most of them.

And I mean, I could talk here for days to say, what do you want to talk? about next. Well, I think let's go in a little bit deeper on this one point, which is knowing where you start, okay, which is, okay, here's what I've got now money wise. Where do you want to be in retirement? This is what it looks like. So I'm going to need X number of dollars per month. But what you brought up there is a, it goes an extra step beyond just closing the gap. Typically people would say, oh, you've got this much now. You need this much for down the road to accomplish these goals. So let's now close that gap. But what you just described there was something that sometimes people don't calculate.

Like, ooh, what if one of the spouses passes away first? Now you've got less income coming in. You didn't plan on that. You didn't plan on death. Oh, what about the extra taxes for that person's account? So talk a little bit about those contingencies in, you know, really closing that gap. So it's not, and here's the thing. It's not just about closing that gap.

Most people are reactive, all right? And it's fair that they're reactive because they're talking to reactive people, particularly their accountant. Accountants do rearview planning, all right? I mean, after all, when is the last time your accountant came to you in August, September, October, November, December, and said, hey, Mike, I've got an idea on how to save on taxes this year. Ever heard those words? Never. No, it doesn't happen. And if you do, that's a unicorn.

You better hang on to it. You better covet it. Okay. So the other thing that goes on here is it's not just about creating that income. Because remember, we want to live the lifestyle we've become accustomed to, adjusted for taxes and inflation, out beyond ours and our spouse's life expectancy. So in other words, don't plan just to make it to your life expectancy. See, what if you live longer? What if you make it to 100? What do you make it 105? And then we want to pass our money on in the most tax advantage way possible. If you're don't do planning, if you don't do planning around taxes, you're not going to get there. And I'll give you an example that happens all the time. Couples will come in and they'll be in their 60s, right? And they both retired and they're just so ecstatic. They didn't have to file a tax return the year before.

And they're jumping up and down. They're like, this is the coolest thing ever. And I go, wow, did you screw up? And they go, what are you talking about? Well, see, you have a standard deduction, right? And depending upon your age, if you're over 65, that's like $40,000. And so if you didn't have any income, right, which is why you didn't have to file a tax return because you were living off of cash in your bank account, you screwed up because your standard

deduction didn't get used up. You could have used $20,000, $30,000 of that to get your money out of your IRAs or qualified accounts over to Roth IRAs, tax. tax-free. And then you could have gone, then you could have gone to the 22% tax bracket, probably 12% tax bracket, because here's the reality when they look at their numbers and they see down the road when they're required minimum distributions kick in, suddenly they're at a 22 or 24% tax bracket. You remember I told you that million dollars didn't belong to you? Yeah. That portion that doesn't belong to you. When do you want to pay your partner off? When do you want to get rid of your partner? As soon as possible. Well, no, actually the answer is when the taxes are the lowest. Well, yeah. See, everybody says as soon as possible, but that's not necessarily the truth. Well, it's probably not even possible, right?

You could probably never get away from that scenario. Well, actually it is. You can, if you go about eating your elephant. I always say, well, how to eat an elephant? The answer is you eat it one bite at a time, but you know what the first step is to eating an elephant? Stop feeding it. Okay. Ah, because he's smaller.

So frequently, they're putting money in these 401ks when, in fact, they had an option to go to a 401 Roth and they weren't using that option. This is a very common thing. And it's merely around the fact that they're listening to generalized advice and they're not doing the math. If they were doing the math, if they had done a diagnosis and they had sat down and they looked at their overall picture, more often than not, these things are true. Now, once again, I hate generalized advice. So if you're listening to this and you think, well, he said this, no, it doesn't matter what I said. It matters where are you? Where are you going?

And is you planning to get you there? And is there a better way for you to do it because the best rule is good, better, best. Never let it rest so good gets better and better gets best. You know, what you just described with the person that thinks, oh, I don't need to file, let it have any income. But then they left the standard deduction on the table. And then they could have gone, if you could hit rewind, you could have pulled money out of your qualified account, which triggers taxes. And then rather than paying those taxes, you got that standard deduction. It probably was a wash.

And then you had your money tax free. People just don't know that. And to me, that sounds like opportunities falling through the cracks. And I know that's one of the things you talk about in one of your chapters is money falling through the cracks. What are some of the other areas similar to that that people don't think about because too many times people think, oh, I need money coming in? Well, yeah, you do. But what about the money you already have that falls through the cracks? What are some more examples of that?

Wow, you want to open that can of worms, do you? Okay, well, here we go. All right. So there's about six major areas that people who have money falling through the cracks. We call it transferring money unknowingly and unnecessarily. So one is how you pay for your house. All right. A lot of people think that they should pay out their house immediately.

Well, when you actually see the math, you suddenly realize that that's not the best choice. Now, we don't need to go into that because we get a little leave on that subject for an hour. Another one is taxes. And so are you being reactive or proactive about your taxes? Are you doing short-term planning or are you doing long-term planning on your taxes? The other one is, you know, credit cards and major capital purchases and how you buy cards, et cetera, et cetera. There's several others that we could talk about

college planning and things like that. But each one of these things, I mean, I could give you 10, 15 categories under each and every one of them that you can talk about. But know this. It's easier to find money that's falling through the cracks than it is to get high rates returned, and it's a lot less risky.

all right so if you can find money i'll just give you an example here of let's just say for the sake of argument that you're making an extra thousand dollar payment towards your mortgage every single month okay you make an extra principal payment of thousand dollars well mike here's basically what you're saying mr banker here's an extra thousand dollars don't pay me any interest on it if i need it back you can run me through the mill tell me what a bad credit rate i am and charge me any interest rate you want. And oh, by the way, if I can't make my other principal payments, you can keep this and all the other principal in my house. Doesn't sound so good anymore, does it? Yeah, really. And if you understand one thing, and there's this, and people argue with me on this all the time,

but I always, I always caution them, do the math, okay? Understand one thing. Equity has a zero percent rate of return. It has a zero percent rate of return. Your house will increase or decrease regardless of how much money you put it in it. Do you understand that? So if it has a zero percent rate of return, what that means is that all of the equity in your house is actually losing money. And it's losing money on two fronts.

Opportunity cost. If I had that money, I could invest it somewhere else, buy a rental property, put it in stocks, bonds, whatever the case would be. And then in addition to that, inflation, the value of that dollar is becoming worth less and less every single day. So houses were made to house people,

not money. So you should probably slow down the rate by which you're putting money in your house if you can at all do that. But here's the key. If you find money you're transferring out of your life unknowingly and unnecessarily, you have to learn how to beat the Parkinson's law. And the Parkinson's law says your expenses will keep up with your income regardless of how much money you make. The more money you make, the more money you spend, true or false. I would say that would be a true. statement. So here's the mistake that people make. When they find the money, let me give you another example. You had a car payment. You made your last car payment. You know what people do immediately? Buy another car. They stop making the payment. You say, well, the car's paid off. Why would I make the payment?

Because you can afford to make the payment. Now you just reroute that payment maybe over into a tax-free environment that's for your future. And then the next time it comes to buy your car, if you wanted to, you could go buy it with cash. Now, not the best idea, but you could go buy it with cash. Do you understand? Yeah, that's a great point. Because you're in the habit of paying, you may as well continue paying, air quotes, but just pay it into an investment account so that it's creating a long-term wealth for you. Dude, if you don't, I'll guarantee you within three months your life. Now, Mike, I did not say your wife. I said your life will find a way to spend the money immediately.

All right? It will just replace the expense. And then suddenly you can't live without that expense. Do you understand? Yeah. You know, it's, you already said it once, but like, you know, when someone gets a raise at work, yay, you know, an extra 500 a month because I got that raise. And I literally have sat next to someone who is a relative of mine who, when they got a raise,

they were immediately online looking for things to spend money on. And I was thinking, I mean, literally, that's what happened. And that's human nature. But in reality, boy, I got that raise. Let me maybe raise my standard of living, you know, instead of 500 a month, 50 a month, and go out to eat one more time with the family. But let's put that money into something long term. So that's a money leak.

And I would venture to say that if you could take all six of those money leaks and those examples and say, let's turn that into. wealth building, it would be staggering if you ran that calculation maybe out for a three, four, five years. People are astonished when they see the money that's leaking out of their lives, when they actually, when they actually see that, you know, you've got $20, $30,000, $40,000 a year that you're transferring out of your life. And all we have to do is reroute it without changing your lifestyle.

Yeah. That's a big deal, right? And if you rerout that correctly and you start getting that over into tax-free environments and or using that to create and take your tax-deferred money and get it over to tax-free environments, the results are astonishing. But remember, you know, I ask two questions whenever I sit down to talk to somebody, right? And the first questions that I ask them every single time is the first one is this, who cares about you?

And the answer to that is your family. That's it. You got it? Yeah. Not the person on the other side of the Zoom media, the other side of the desk, not your broker, not your accountant. If it comes down to brass tax, you or them, trust me, it's going to be them, okay? So you've got to care about yourself.

And I put this in the book. And in the very, very beginning of the book, I said, listen, do you want me to be honest or gentle? Well, a little of both, a little bit of both, maybe? Sorry, I don't do gentle, okay? I find gentle to be a total waste of time. right and and i and i believe it's a very big part of what's going on out there as everybody's looking for that that nice person to just to just slowly carry them along when in fact you need

somebody to slap you upside your head and say wake up okay wake up start paying attention start doing the math and start looking out for your own good because no one else is doing it for you well yeah you know and it's very similar what you said there reminds me of like the motivational speakers like coaches that say if you don't like where you at are at in life, it's your fault. Whose fault is? It's yours. You made decisions a couple years ago that led to where you are now.

And if you want to be somewhere in two years from now that's better, make some different and better decisions. So it might sound a little harsh, but in reality, you know, you have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired to make a change sometimes. Well, I would agree with you to an extent, right? And here's the thing is I tell people,

look, you cannot beat yourself up for what you did yesterday. And the reason why you cannot is because you didn't have any better knowledge. Okay. You, you'd been told your entire life you should do this. But now you have a different set of knowledge. So tomorrow it's your fault. It wasn't your fault up to this point.

So don't beat yourself up. But going forward, you've got to make a decision. Are you going to remain insane and keep doing the same thing over and over again? Are you going to do something about it? And then bitch and moan about it later on down the road, which one is going to be? Yeah. You know, obviously we can tell from the structure of our conversation here that this book, retirement malpractice, is going to be something special.

So I really appreciate you enlightening us on some of your perspectives, James, if someone is interested in getting a copy of it and learning more and connecting with you, what's the best way they can do that. And goes, go right now to our website. It's WWW. Your, that's Y-O-U-R, Safe, S-A-F-E, Money, M-O-N-E-Y, P. People, P-E-O-P-L-E-O-P-L-E dot com. You're a safe money-people.com.

Great. And I will have that link in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you, James. Mike, it was a pleasure. Keep smiling. Hey, remember to live like you're going to die tomorrow and plan like you to live forever. Because you know what, Mike, you just might.

So there's no banks and Hearst, okay? You don't get to take it with you. Thank you so much. You've been listening to influential entrepreneurs with Mike's Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www. Influential EntrepreneursRadio.com.