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June 24, 2024 16 mins

In this episode of the United States of Small Business podcast, host John Quick sits down with Brandon Neely, a serial entrepreneur and financial strategist. Brandon, along with his wife Amanda, transformed their financial struggles into success after running a coffee shop in Chicago's South Loop. Now, as co-hosts of the Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast, they help business owners implement smart financial strategies.

Join us as Brandon shares his journey, the importance of putting Profit First, and practical advice on building a secure financial future for your business. This episode is packed with insights and strategies that every business owner needs to hear. Don't miss it!

Check him out here:  https://www.wealthwisdomfp.com/report

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Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
Welcome to the United States of Small Business, a podcast where
the essence of American entrepreneurship is celebrated
in every episode, with host JohnQuick at the helm.
Join us as we embark on a journey through the heart of the
nation, uncovering the inspiringstories of small business owners
from coast to coast. Experience the vibrant energy of

(00:20):
bustling cities and the serene beauty of Small Towns Hall while
discovering how individuals are turning their entrepreneurial
dreams into reality, even against the greatest odds.
Each episode brings you face to face with the dreamers,
creators, and doors who form theeconomic backbone of our
country, all sharing their spirit of innovation and

(00:40):
resilience. Whether you are in the early
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(01:01):
For deeper insights and to connect with the heart and soul
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smallbusiness.com. Subscribe to United States of
Small Business with host John Quick now and be inspired by the
powerful stories of entrepreneurship, community, and
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(01:22):
Begin your journey of inspiration with us today.
Welcome to another episode of the United States of Small
Business Podcast. I'm your host, John Quick, and
today we have an inspiring guest, Brandon Neely.
Brandon is a serial entrepreneur, Profit 1st and
Bank on Yourself professional and the Co host of Wealth Wisdom
Financial podcast with his wife Amanda.
Together they transformed their financial struggles into a

(01:43):
stability and success after running a coffee shop in Chicago
South Loop. Now they share their knowledge
to help business owners implement smart financial
strategies and achieve profitability.
Joining us as Brandon discusses his journey and importance of
putting profit 1st and how you can build a secure financial
future for your business. Stay tuned for an episode filled
with invaluable insights and practical advice.

(02:06):
So without further ado, Brandon,welcome to the United States of
Small Business Podcast. Awesome.
Thanks, John. I'm I'm excited to be here,
especially talking about small business, specifically in the
US. Well, that's awesome.
This will be fun to hear a little bit about your story and
and hear a little bit more aboutwhat you do today.
But first, take us back to what it was like opening one of your

(02:28):
first businesses. I heard it was a coffee shop in
the heart of Chicago. Tell us, tell me all about that.
Yeah, so our the former businessname was Overflow still lit
around today because we've sold it and and someone else is doing
amazing work with it. But what we learned is this idea
of community building. We really wanted to create a, a

(02:49):
place like Cheers, except without the alcohol.
And we also learned a lot about ethical economics, buying good
coffee. People are making it and
oftentimes we're we are buying it on the cheap, making a lot of

(03:10):
money. But we were like, wait, somebody
needs to make a change about this, this, this slavery and in
the coffee world is not cool. We needed somebody needs to do
something. So we found out that the direct
trade movement and all that. And so we combined community
building, local and ethical economics and we were like, oh,

(03:31):
this is it. And the overflow was was formed
out of that. That's pretty cool.
Tell me one of your biggest lessons outside of that just
from running a brick and mortar coffee shop.
Yeah. So one of the things I learned,
three things I would tell every business owner is because I went
through a lot, and I know this is a very shorter podcast.

(03:52):
I could go on forever about this.
But a couple of things I say is know that you know that you know
that you're called to something,right?
Because it's going to be hard, especially if you're stepping
into your own business. Running a business is not for
the faint of heart, so you need to know that you're called to it

(04:12):
because it will get hard. Probably the second, third year
into it, you're going to be like, what the heck did I do,
right? That leads into my #2 which is
have a team around you that careabout you, not just what you
produce. You know, whenever we had our
coffee shop the second year intothe business, we had all kinds

(04:34):
of things that happened to us, right?
From a miscarriage to grandma dying to or cat dying, all kinds
of things. And the customers just want to
hear how's it going? They want to hear, great, now
give me my coffee, right? They don't want to hear, yeah,
life sucks right now. So having a team around you that

(04:57):
care about you, your marriage, your other areas of life is
really, really important. And then the third is know your
numbers. Too many business owners have no
idea about their numbers. So knowing your numbers is key,
and actually knowing how to readAP and L statement, those kind
of things really, really important.

(05:18):
Yeah, they are. So you now do a, you now have a
business called the Wealth Financial or sorry, Wealth
Wisdom Financial Partners. We talked a little bit about
before we jumped on here, Infinite Banking.
Tell me a little bit about what Wealth Wisdom Financial Partners
does. And for folks that don't know,
tell us all about Infinite Banking.
Banking. Yeah.
Yeah, So a couple things. When we were ending the coffee

(05:43):
shop experience, you know, I hada child and we're having a
child. Well, we had learned that a lot
of things we thought we knew. We read all the Dave Ramsey,
Susie Orman books. We were doing all the right
things. However, we learned about this.
This is a documentary called Banking with Life.
And this was, and again going back to the Wayback Machine a

(06:05):
little bit saying, Oh well, everything we knew about money
is really it was not as it seemswe're on the banking business,
right. And so we started our first
policies not knowing we would bein this industry.
And that access to capital in those policies helped us to be
able to overcome a flood in the business.

(06:28):
Literally a roof was off in the in it flooded and that was
because of that access to capital.
We were able to sell that business and not close it.
Then that led us into what we donow with wealth.
Wisdom financial was saying, Oh,most business owners don't
understand profit. So that profit first model is

(06:50):
super, super important and they don't understand cash flow,
right. And so infinite banking, this
concept, which this is where people are like, yes, but it's
wrong and you're this or that. There's a lot of
miscommunication. Dave Ramsey loves to hate on me
on this kind of stuff. But really what it is, is it's

(07:10):
putting, I am the greatest assetas a business owner, you are
your greatest asset, not your machines or any of that.
I want to protect the greatest asset, me and my wife, right?
And so we put that in through a what we call a whole life
insurance policy that's high cash value.
And we're able to have that cashvalue that we can use, excuse

(07:35):
me, that high cash value that wecan use as like almost like a
line of credit, right? So if you have a house, you can
borrow against your house. People say, oh, that's cool,
that's a home equity line of credit, whereas this is you are
the home equity line of credit. And in essence, you're just
using you, you're able to take aloan to do other things.

(08:00):
Does that make sense? Yep, you become the bank in a in
a lot of ways that that regard, right.
Yeah. And you can choose like, no
one's going to qualify you to say, oh, well, do you have a
job? You know, all of these other
things. Whenever I tried to buy my first
house, I actually couldn't get amortgage because I sold the

(08:22):
business. And because I sold the business
and I was starting a new business, well, I didn't have
income from the new business, soit was really hard to get a loan
for my house. Whereas this you can take a loan
as long as you're funding it, you can use it for any,

(08:43):
anything, whatever you want. So that's very interesting.
I think that's, I think it's a unique method.
And obviously, you know, it's funny that you mentioned you and
Dave Ramsey fight about that method, but I think there's
something to be said about not utilizing traditional methods

(09:03):
like banking. I've never been a huge fan of
that. Tell me about you also have a
practice called the Still method.
Tell me about what that is. And for folks that have never
heard of it, unpack that a little bit.
Yeah, so let me excuse me real quick.
I'm gonna pause for a second. Sorry, it's been a little cough

(09:25):
cough. Today did you get that cough
out? Yeah, so, so part of as I've
been doing the financial thing and realizing that a lot of
people don't know what they, they, they think they know or
they just listen to the Dave Ramsey's or the whatever.
Why we created this method was saying, hey, maybe a, a life

(09:47):
insurance policy fits, maybe not.
I've used my life insurance policy to buy my office, offset
taxes, do all kinds of fun things.
But in the end, here's the thingthat's really important that
most people don't know. Whether it's a tool of, of
imminent banking or profit first, doesn't matter.
What we thought about was OK, there's this chaos in the world

(10:10):
and we have these acronyms for it to make us remember.
It's confusion, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming, and
stressful. Do you remember four years ago,
there's a thing called COVID that happened, right?
And everybody, there was so muchchaos, so much confusion.
Everything was just crazy, right?

(10:32):
That's what we all felt. We felt a lot of chaos and not
unease, right? So this is most people's lives
actually, and businesses, right?And I'm like, all right, we, and
sometimes we like chaos or we, we say we like it, but we don't.
Well, we need a move from chaos to what I call the still method.

(10:53):
The and it came from actually from the Bible.
Be still and know right? Those kind of things were were
in our heads. And so we have the chaos,
confusion, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming and stressful to
still. And the the funny part on the S
is set your sights right. You know how many people I talk

(11:16):
to over and over again. I'm asking what are your goals?
What do you want to accomplish in life?
And they have no idea. I'm going to go to Disney World
with my kids. I don't know something they've
never actually talked about thatwith their spouse or themselves
for that matter. And so you have to know where
you want to go kind of have a a trajectory.
So set your sights. Then you have to track your in

(11:36):
and out. Are you doing the things that
you want to reach that goal right?
If you're not doing the one set your sights and movement
tracking, then you're not going to get there more than likely.
Then you have to inspect your progress.
Sometimes it's you're going in that direction and you realize

(11:58):
you're off by a a little bit. So set your sights, track,
inspect your progress, look for 1% adjustments because we don't
just happen quickly and then live deliberately.
So that's in our Five Smooth Stones book.
That's there. Five Smooth Stones.
It's a interactive journal that we created just to help people

(12:19):
think. It's not about a tactic of which
policy to do or put it into a 401K or not.
It's asking the questions and then you implement the the
tools. That's awesome.
For folks listening in there is a 5 smooth stones.
It's a financial center in Journal for the first person to

(12:40):
e-mail me, John Joh N at United States of smallbusiness.com, I'm
going to send them a free copy of that.
So e-mail me. I'm going to get lots of emails
on it, but the first person to e-mail me is going to get it
John Joh N at United States of smallbusiness.com and I'll send
them a free copy. Brandon, tell me a little bit
about how somebody would interact with you.

(13:02):
Meaning there's going to be folks out here listening that
are going to want to hear more and you help folks kind of
through this and learn some of this.
What's that interaction like? How can somebody kind of get
involved with what you're doing?Yeah, well, one is we have a
podcast, you know, our self, wealth, wisdom, financial, a lot
of thinking. It's more of a looking at

(13:22):
history and you know, some of the things we think we know that
just ain't so, as Mark Twain likes to say or liked to say,
and that's one is listen to our podcast, YouTube again or go to
our website, wealthwisdomfp.com and schedule a discovery call

(13:44):
with one of us. We we will give you as we think
about this. I'm not going to be the guy that
just says do it. I'll do it all for you.
I want you to be in the driver'sseat as we build a plan or a
strategy. I like to educate my clients so
that way they are, you know, it's their life, right, Right.

(14:04):
And so we want to be able to have the tools like knowing how
to operate the vehicle is reallyimportant.
I might be really good at this, this infinite banking thing, but
I want my clients to be able to say, hey, what are the levers?
How can I do this a little bit and it really help them.
I'm, I'm a heart surgeon in thatregard.

(14:24):
So, but you have to know, hey, something's not right.
I want to move in that better direction and that's why the
tools are there. Nice.
Well, we'll put all those links in the podcast description for
folks curious not only the linksto the your podcast, Brandon,
but to the five smooth Stones Journal and your website as
well. 15 minutes here has gone by in a flash brand.

(14:47):
Do you have any last year beforewe head off the floor's yours?
Man, we could have gone forever.I, I, I feel like I just said a
whole lot. And, and some people are like,
Oh yeah, well, it didn't, he didn't say this or that.
I'm like, well, because we got afew minutes.
So if you guys want to learn more about what we do or just
be, have an ally on your team. Like that's really, I, I like to

(15:11):
think of us as the safe money ofbuilding the foundational
assets. So that way you can grow your
business to thrive. But if you have a good
foundation in place, you're going to go really far.
Most people haven't thought about it and they're, they've
built a upside down pyramid whenit comes to their finances and

(15:31):
their business. And so we want to help build a
good, stable foundation so you can take advantage of both the
highs and lows of whatever is happening in the world, because
it's a crazy world out there, right?
Now, yeah, it is. Well, Brandy, we should have
nothing but success here from the United States, a small
business podcast. Folks, again, listening in.
If you just got the tail end, I want to encourage you to go back

(15:53):
and listen to the whole thing, Brandon here from Wealth Wisdom
Financial shares, some tidbits of information that I really
think will benefit you along your journey, not only in life,
but in business. And yeah, Brandon, thanks so
much for joining us. We hope everybody has a
phenomenal rest of their week. And until next time, I'm John
Quick from the United States a small business podcast.

(16:13):
Thanks, Brandon. Well, thanks.
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