Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Sean Vazquez, Founder of PMV Financial Discussing Guaranteed Income

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Sean has been in the Financial Advisory field for over 13 years. He has specialized in working with school district staff on educating them on how exactly their CalSTRs and CalPERS actually work, and their options to close the pay gap in their pension. He has enjoyed educating clients on how to maximize their pension as well as introducing them to tax-free alternatives. I have also worked with small businesses, Buy-Sell agreement options, and other opportunities for businesses to protect their interest as well as ways to retain their key employees.Sean continues to educate myself to make sure that he’s up to date with new products and services that will benefit his clients.Adding Long Term Care plans recently to their scope of service has been beneficial to many of the clients, and he sees it as an underserved market that will have a huge impact on their clients’ estates, taxes, and even dignity. Sean loves what he does and has a passion to serve.Learn more: https://pmvfinancial.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-sean-vazquez-founder-of-pmv-financial-discussing-guaranteed-income

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, Sean Vasquez, who's the founder of PMV Financial and will be talking about guaranteed income. Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me.

Hey, I always love words that have power behind them and guarantee is one of those words, isn't it? I mean, when you're talking about anything that's guaranteed, your ears perk up, but when you combine the word guaranteed and income, now we're talking. So I want to hear all about how you serve your clients with guaranteed income strategies. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and background. And how did you get into the industry? Yeah, so that's quite an interesting story, I think. I was obviously working as a broker in the off supply, janitorial supply and school supply realm.

And basically, our vendors in California were leaving California and I was not able to fulfill my client's orders like consistently or in a timely manner. And so I was looking for just another way to obviously start a business, find something that will financially, you know, keep me afloat, basically, and maintain my lifestyle. And while surveying one of my clients who was legacy full circle financial, I went in there, was dropping off some toner and paper and all that fun stuff that goes into the office. and they probably just had a meeting. You saw these young, good-looking guys and ties and suits and look like a Mercedes and BMW Fest outside. You know, success leaves clues sometimes, right? Yeah. And so it piqued my interest.

I think timing is everything and God knows how to put you in certain situations that are good for you. And at least in my case. And so I just asked, you know, the president there, like, what do you guys do? What is this stuff? And so he gave me a brief rundown on what they do, who they service. And my next question is, was it lucrative? And he was like, well, it could be. You know, we have people that starve and we have people that do well, right?

So it just depends on what you put into it, which I like, right? I like being rewarded for the work that I do. So anyways, I just asked them, what do I need? Do I need a degree? Do I need this? What do I need? And so you basically told me what it took to get licensed in this business. And basically that week, I took a whole week off.

I finished my 52 hours in a week. I probably was licensed in less than a month. I was licensed. I took my test and I showed up over there and said, okay, man, so here's the deal. I'm licensed. What's the next step? And he kind of was like, oh, okay, right? So basically I shadowed him for about three months, just became his kind of his runner and just said, hey, listen, I'll do your paperwork.

I want to learn this business. And in the meantime, I'm going to be slowly handing over my old business that I had to different reps in the industry. And the good thing was that I was heavily involved in school districts and head start programs, state preschool programs, and they're, you know, bringing their products and stuff to them. So I had really good relationship with these people. And they were in the 403B business as far as helping educators in school districts in California with their supplemental income. So it was kind of really a nice fit and introduction. And I had a good enough reputation with my clients that, you know, once I told them I was transitioning,

they were very interested in learning what we were doing. So that's pretty much how it took off. And I just found love with doing what we do with our clients and taking care of them and making sure that, you know, when we leave their table and they do business with us, we know they're taking care of whether they make it to retirement. tours, God throws us a curveball or something, they're covered. So it's pretty nice. You know, two words jump out during that introduction. One is relationships and the other is hustle. You know, you see something you want, you dove right in, you hustled, you got it done, and then you built relationships

along the way and capitalized on relationships that you had already built. And that's, that's powerful. You're not just looking at someone as a number on a piece of paper or a computer screen. You, you and then you said at the table. That means that you shake hands and pat backs and meet with people in person and treat them like human beings. I think that is spectacular. That's a great way to do business. Well, thank you. Yeah, I think that's the only way to do business for us.

Yep. So guaranteed income. Talk a little bit about how the concept of guaranteed income works. Why don't we define it and then move into how does guaranteed income help reduce? the fear that we all have, which is running out of money during retirement. Yeah, so guaranteed income, right? It's exactly what it says. It's guaranteed income for the lifetime of the client.

And this really came about when we were doing exit strategies for our educators. And actually, a lot of our different clients who have pensions, because a lot of times in their pension formula, there's usually a downfall or shortfall of, what their salary is compared to what their pension is going to be. And it was a way to kind of have a, I don't know, like a hybrid pension on top of their pension, right? Another guaranteed income that can come in. And it was a great way to get these supplemental 403Bs, 401Ks, 4107s, whatever, IRAs, and really give that money purpose so that when the client retires,

they're able to maintain the lifestyle that they're used to and not have, you know, really reduce or not even have that shortfall and they can count on that money. I like to think of it as giving their supplemental, you know, retirement money purpose. It's a way to give it purpose so that we can cover. They know that no matter what happens, as long they're drawing breath, that money's coming in steadily. It's a great way for them to, you know, budget, make sure that the essential expenses are taken care of. So it gives them a really good peace of mind to know that that income is coming in. You know, peace of mind is another big thing. We could probably talk about an hour and a half on. But

what's the result of having that guaranteed income put into place? It's that peace of mind. It's that sleep insurance. You know, we help you sleep better at night. because you're not going to be tied to your, you know, the market volatility and all of the stress that brings. So, um, keeping that guaranteed income. And also, it makes me think of this, too, regarding that fear of running out of money during retirement. If you have like when you're doing, um, you know, maybe a budget for a big business and you're like, well, there's, here's the fixed expenses. We know what these are going to be, but here's the variable. They can go up, down and all around. Well, that's the big black box there.

you don't know what those expenses are actually going to be. Same way in retirement, the money that's in the market, the market could be up or down and you don't know what that return is going to be. But if you knew you needed X number of dollars a month to survive and live the way you want in retirement, and you knew you had guaranteed income of X, now you know you've got yourself covered, then anything else that's extra becomes as extra. So is that something that you work with your clients on, is framing it up that way with that kind of that that's salt those solid numbers yeah absolutely so it's it's a really good way to

kind of when you're doing an exit strategy or you're talking when someone's about ready to retire is get that full scope of what their overhead their fixed expenses are going to be you know each month each year for so many years and then really kind of devise a plan where we know X amount of dollars is going to be coming in with their pension or Or here's the thing, too, right? Not a lot of our clients have pensions. So then that 401K, that IRA, that retirement plan that they've been saving for all these years, that is it. Right.

If they can also grab onto some Social Security, but the main thing is, too, is how do we maintain the lifestyle that they have without worrying about, you know, turning on the news and seeing the stock market's all in red. Everyone's lost half of their money, but they can really rely and count on that steady, guaranteed income coming in no matter what, right? And protect their cash value as well. So it's really is a good peace of mind. It does take some strategy to make sure that we're not putting everything in there because you don't want to have all your eggs in one basket. but it's important to make sure that they can have something that, like you said, they go to sleep. They know that, you know, whatever happened is the economy.

Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. You know, like, I'm sure that you have some people where, you know, their friends are calling them up all in an up or going, oh, my word, I got my portfolio statement and the market did this and that. And then here's this person going, yeah, mine didn't move at all. I didn't lose anything. And I think that sometimes people have the.

thought in their mind of getting to retirement. Like, I'm going to retire at whatever age. And they don't think about getting through retirement, meaning, are you going to have enough money, you know, to live on while you're retired? How many years are you going to be retired? 10, 15, 100, 38. And so I think that that's the thing is with this guaranteed income. It doesn't just stop. It's not just for a set period of time. Talk a little bit about some of the strategies you just alluded to. that make sure that the money continues to work for someone through their lifetime, including through retirement. Yeah, well, we obviously have certain products that will strategically place their money

and funds that will guarantee that lifetime income. What we'll basically do is take a look at, let's say, someone who does have a pension and see what their shortfall is. A lot of these pensions still will allow them to also have Social Security. So in case of one we just had probably about three months ago, she actually wanted to retire early. And so we took a look at what her supplemental income was, where her cash value was, what her pension would be if she retired early. And lucky enough for her, a portion of the 403B that she had was going to allow her to be able to make up that difference, that shortfall. with the income with that guaranteed lifetime income.

And it was also going to be able to allow her to delay her social security until her later years to maxed out so that she wouldn't need to touch it right now. So basically what we're doing is she's able to retire, have her pension. We can start her lifetime income that will lower that short gap. And then later on in three more years, she'll be able to maximize that social security. So we were able to actually have a retire two years earlier than she thought she needed to just by strategically putting everything into place and making sure that all of her essential needs were taken care of. Actually, more. She's going to have a surplus of money at the end of the month. You know, you mentioned two years early, and I've heard sometimes people go, oh, well, we put the pen to paper and it looks like you could retire now whenever you want.

They're like, oh, my word, I had no clue. So what a gift of that is to clearly clarify that you can retire, have a little bit more than what you thought, and retire two years earlier than what you thought. Correct. That's amazing. So what are some of the misconceptions people have about guaranteed income? Because I think that sometimes, you know, like the game like, hey, I'm going to say this word. And when you hear it, tell me the first thought that comes in your mind. Well, if you were to say to people, talk about guaranteed income, I'm sure you get responses all over.

the board. So what are some of the misconceptions, some of your clients have when they first come to you about guaranteed income? And then what do you do to address those? Yeah. So first one always, it's too good to be true, right? Yep. It can happen. How do they do that? What's what's what, what's the trick here? What's the downfall? And a lot of these traditional IRAs, they do have some sort of income program that's on there, but it's a variable, right? If the markets takes a fall, they have a minimum amount of money that they'd be getting. So it kind of fluctuates, right? So, you know, these are certain policies that we have put in place that, again, everything, all the guarantees are in writing. So far, I mean, to take the truth, how they do that

for longevity, you'd have to get into like the different actuaries and all of the, their investments and the amount of people that go in and the billions of dollars that fund these things just probably the same as a pension program, right? And so we put everything to paper. Everything's in writing. Their policies come state what their income is going to be. And it is what it is. And so far, knock on wood, we haven't had any of our clients that are on these programs not get their check. And so, I mean, that's, that's, you know, that is a beautiful thing, especially in certain times when the market takes a little dump there and stuff and then we'll have clients,

hey, you know, the market's down, you know, what's going to happen with my check? They get the same check. Yep. Everything's protected. So steady, steady plotting. That's a, that's a, I'll bet there's a lot of advisors I've heard of in the past that just fear when the market goes down, the phone ringing, the emails coming in, like, oh, my word, the sky's on, you know, going to fall. And the kind of calls that you get when you put your

clients in guaranteed income, the calls go away or their fun calls. Well, we get those, Mike, you know, especially for new, new clients that we'll take on, whether we're rolling out an old 401k or doing a Roth conversion or something of that nature, right? So we'll get, you know, within three months, the market drops. And they're like, hey, you know, I don't, you know, they're just, they're just very curious. And is my money going to be okay? Like, hey, but you're fine, right? Yep.

You're fine. And especially when they have, because a lot of times I'm not a big fan of absorbing all of their money into these policies. You know, we want to have some flexibility and liquidity. We take, we only really are, make sure that we take the amount of money that's going to need be needed for that purpose, right? And then you have some that we need for performance, right? So, but when they see the difference of these accounts and when one's dropping, you know, just say like maybe 6% or 8%, you know, if you have a lot of money in there,

that can be quite a bit of money that comes out of your account. And, you know, sometimes zero's your hero, you know? And so they can really see the difference of what that impact is. again, on the flip side, if the market goes up 20%, you know, and the other policies doesn't hit that much, it gets a portion of it. You know, sometimes they're clients that want their cake and eat it too. Yeah. And so it's just a balance. Yeah, let's dive into that just for a second because I think that's a really important thing, which is you have that piece of mind.

You feel good that you're never going to lose money and zero is your hero means if the market takes a dump, You didn't lose a dime. Other people did, but you were because of this kind of approach, you just made zero that period or whatever the time frame is. So zero is a hero. You didn't go backwards. But then what if the market's on some tear and your friend is making 20, 30 percent that particular period? You might be capped at something else, you know, something lower, 11, 12, whatever the case is. But you might think, oh, but I wish I got that.

Yeah, but when your friend was crying to you last. quarter because they lost 30% and you made zero, you are so far ahead of the game there. And with that steady plotting, it's like the tortoise in the hair. You know, that steady plotting forward, you didn't go backwards, but you hit a couple zero periods, but then you hit the good positive, positive, positive. In the end, you win. Correct. We have to remind them a lot of times, do not forget, this is a long-term strategy.

This is the long game. And you hit it. The tortoise always wins the race, right? That slow, steady growth, never having to return, make up returns that you've lost due to the market or ill strategy or things of that nature, right? And that's why, again, it's very important to make sure that we have segmented your money, again, one, to have that bucket that is for your, you know, your purpose, your purpose bucket, your guaranteed income bucket. We establish that we need this amount of money coming in no matter. what, right? And then there's another bucket that's going to be a little bit more risk diverse. You know, that's your performance bucket. So, so it's really important to have a balanced approach

to what we're doing with their income. And then, you know, a lot of times another portion of that is going to be legacy strategy, right? So what are we eating for, you know, the wife, the spouse, the children, and things of that nature. So it's got to be a very balanced approach and make sure that we are good stewards of these people's hard-earned money and that we maximize what they can get out of that money. And, you know, peace of mind is fine and great too, but, you know, we don't want to deplete everything so that they're not able to leave something for a little Jimmy or something like that. Yep. That's awesome. Well, I'll tell you, it's such a gift to be able to work with someone and help them understand how much they need for retirement. If there's a gap, let's close that gap.

Let's also figure out where we have that stream of income, not just a lump of money sitting in some account, but where we've turned that on to be income for you. And we then can put in that, check that box of guaranteed where we're not worried that it's going to go up and down based on the market. What a, what a powerful plan that is, but you can't just, you know, go Google how to set up. you've got to have it as part of a strategic overall plan for your retirement. You've got to know your numbers. And that's what you do is you sit down with people and help them understand that.

So with that thought in mind, what is the best way for someone to learn a little bit more and reach out and connect with you? Well, yeah, they can reach out right now. Obviously, my website is being rebuilt. So when that's up, they can reach me at p.mvfinancial.com. best way to get a hold of me is Sean at PMV. Dot Financial and just send a message that you want some more information. I'll get back to you. Excellent.

Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you. Appreciate it, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders to learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.

www. www. Influential EntrepreneursRadio.com.