Ep797: Jimmy Milliron – Lessons From Love, Money, and Missed Opportunities

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers, and welcome to my worst investment ever. Stories of loss to keep you winning in our community, we know that to win an investing you must take risk, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives, and I want to thank all of the listeners in Florida in the United States for joining today, fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Jimmy mill iron, Jimmy, are you ready to join the mission?

Jimmy Milliron 00:40
Yes, I am. Thank you very much, Andrew for having me on Yes.

Andrew Stotz 00:44
And I know you've had some missions in your life, so I'm looking forward to hearing your story. Let me introduce you to the audience. Jimmy is co founder and president of National brokerage Atlantic, specializing in wealth enhancement, estate planning and asset protection. An insurance veteran, he previously served as executive vice president at next tier bank building a $400 million premium finance portfolio. He holds a BA from VMI and various securities and insurance licenses. Jimmy, take a moment and tell us about the unique value you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Jimmy Milliron 01:24
Thank you very much. Well, national brokerage, Atlantic and myself, we provide a unique service for life insurance and financial professionals, helping them guide the myriad of complexities of placing a case. We provide all the back office support. We have a great team that's vertically integrated from case management to underwriting to licensing and commissions and case design. And we help those in the fiduciary responsibility, and they're in clients to make their purchase of in structure of their life insurance the best it can be at that particular time. And then, quite personally, I mean, my nice contribution is I have a lot of unique stories and interesting past from, you know, from my European travels to growing up in western Pennsylvania to being in Miami, Florida. Now that I like to listen, not always talk that much and try to give it as good much as good advice as I possibly can.

Andrew Stotz 02:26
And what part of Western Pennsylvania were you in?

Jimmy Milliron 02:31
Uh, outside of Pittsburgh, 45 north, minutes north and Armstrong County, in a town called catanium, Pennsylvania. Okay,

Andrew Stotz 02:38
I don't think I've been there. I grew up in Ohio, and my grandfather's family, my father's family, basically, was from Pittsburgh, so a little bit of familiarity there. Very nice, very nice. And, and, you know, and I don't know anything about insurance, you know? Why? Because I'm a poor guy with nothing, no, no, just kidding. The reason why I don't know much about insurance is that the first thing, the only thing, I originally knew about insurance was when I turned 18, my dad said, here's an insurance policy I bought for you, a life insurance policy when you were born. I've been paying the premiums every year, and now you can take over those premiums. And right. So for 30, you know, 40 years or whatever, I paid $120 annual premium for my $12,000 life insurance, which now I figure would be just enough money possibly to send my body back to America. So, you know, and so, and that's and then I don't, I never got married. I don't have any kids. So I thought to myself, I don't know to what extent. And then, you know, I've built up cash and money over the years, so I haven't really thought about it. But maybe, could you just tell us, like the typical person that comes to you and like the problem that they're facing, or their questions that they're having, and then you know how you solve it? Because I know some of the people listening and viewing would think, yeah, what do I need to know about this?

Jimmy Milliron 04:03
Well, national brokerage, Atlantic, we have two, two lines of business, B to B, which is, we're helping the financial professional place a case and utilize our back office support for underwriting, the case management, the case design, to work with their in clients. So that's our B to B wholesale function. Then as a retail function, B to C, we're always putting life insurance as a financial tool, meaning that we're looking at the wealth protection aspects of it, other than it being like an income replacement, possible disability protection, long term care protection, which is huge. That's one of the bigger talking points right now. We're utilizing long term care policies from the life insurance carriers and as a living benefit. And what that does is, when you're 3040, 5060, years. Old there are. You could purchase a long term care policy, depending on how much you can afford and your ratings and so forth, and that will help pay for your time in whether you're doing home care or skilled nursing or assisted living. In the future, take that financial burden off, whereas today, if you want to access those monies, and you don't have a long term care policy, you'd actually have to drain your entire and drain your entire wealth out in order to access your Medicare medicaid benefits. So that's life insurance is an example as a living benefit wealth accumulation, utilizing you spoke of that policy that you kept paying for. Well, the special tax triple tax benefit of life insurance is the for permanent life insurance. The money will grow tax deferred. The money that you could take out via loan will be tax deferred, tax free also, then the beneficiary is also the if on the when the death benefits triggered, tax free. So we're utilizing life insurance as a retirement plan, a non qualified executive compensation for liquidity. We're utilizing life insurance for estate tax funding, funding, buy, sell agreements between partners and closely held corporations or companies. You know, if I have a partner I want, I'm going into I have a Buy, Sell agreement. Or if something happens to him, I want to make sure the life insurance is there to pay off his side, instead of having come out of my own funds, or, for example, I didn't go into partnership with that guy's wife, I went into that guy's partner. So a solid Buy Sell agreement with a life insurance funding mechanism, key person insurance. So also wealth transfer for charitable giving. Life insurance is an asset class. So there's a myriad it's a Swiss Army knife of a financial tool that whether you're worth $5,000 or $5 million or $500 million there's a life insurance product that you could utilize, either for living benefits or beneficiary, from final expense to complex, structured cases where we're transferring wealth and mitigating estate taxes.

Andrew Stotz 07:31
And I suspect, because it's always so complex, you know, all the rules and guidelines and regulations and incentives like triple tax benefit and all that, that it's just nearly impossible for an individual to ever really figure out and understand how they could benefit from this, I would assume. I mean, is that part of what drives your industry? Or how does that work? Yes,

Jimmy Milliron 07:55
I mean, that's what drives our industry, is the fact that, you know education, you know that's, it's, it's a catch 22 I believe the statistic out there is, like 50,050% of Americans are under insured, which is a great opportunity for financial professionals in the life insurance industry. But the key items in there are, you know, there's an education gap as from going down to the smallest policies the largest policies of how the product works, how they comply to their real life situations, where to even buy the product, who to buy it from, who to trust, and so forth. So, you know, it's an education. It's education issue for people. It's very confusing. Yeah, yeah,

Andrew Stotz 08:47
well, I have to say what we want

Jimmy Milliron 08:50
to do. We want to alleviate the confusion.

Andrew Stotz 08:53
And where do people go if they want to, they want to start that process with you.

Jimmy Milliron 08:59
I mean, you can go to our website, www.mb atlantic.com you contact us there on our

Andrew Stotz 09:10
link? Yep, yeah. I'll put the link. I'll put the link in the show notes,

Jimmy Milliron 09:14
link and phone numbers at the end, and we'd be helping with number two things. If you're a financial professional out there, and you're selling life insurance, you're looking for a new distribution partner. We're here. We're here to help you out. You have a great back office, top pay, unbelievable resources and technology, education, doing what's right for your client, and representing over 40 diff plus carriers out in the market in 1000s of products. And also, if you're a consumer, we're here to help you out too, linking you up, either with our internal staff or a lot of our existing agents out there in the field, in your Pacific. Specific geographic area,

Andrew Stotz 10:01
fantastic. Okay, well, I'll have a link to that in the show notes, and I know I'm looking at your website, and you've got a lot of resources out there already. So Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be, tell us a bit about the story leading up to it, and then tell us the full story.

Jimmy Milliron 10:23
Well, I mean, I was thinking about this and we spoke initially. I mean, I could, I could put a couple little investments all the one, but it all happened around 2016 2017, and it would be my worst investment. Would be a mix between my second ex wife and a car, okay, and that, you know, the second ex wife, not a good decision overall, did not last that long. However, a lot of resources went to that second ex wife. And, you know, a lot of resources went to overall into that period. However, during that same time period, I was really looking to put a large chunk of money into Bitcoin, okay, and it came, you know, an education portion. I just talked about where to buy life insurance, how to buy it. And this is, you know, close to nine years ago, and I was very busy. I had younger kids too. With my career trying I understood the whole concept of Bitcoin. Wanted to purchase it at that time. I could not, I could not find how to easily do it and to put 60, that 100,000 plus in there. And I did not do it, and I opted to purchase a car instead, with that cash and the ex wife and so forth. And I really kicked myself for that whole little that, that time period right there, for not, you know, researching more, going the extra effort, maybe reaching out how to purchase that with a digital wallet or whatsoever, before there are any of these easy ways to purchase Bitcoin, because that could have been a lot different situation to that.

Andrew Stotz 12:12
Yeah, definitely. And what, you know, what? Let's think about a young person who's in a situation where they're facing a little bit of a mounting hurdle, you know, of investing in something. And you know, they need to overcome some things, and at some point they're going to decide, ah, it's too much, or I don't have time. And let's just imagine that that thing is a good thing that they should be investing in. But yet they just decide, I just don't have instant

Jimmy Milliron 12:41
gratification of, oh, I can't figure this out. I really, you know, psychologically in the back, I wanted that car. It was nice. I can't and I just said, Oh, I'm not gonna mess around with this Bitcoin. It's probably a scam. Who knows the cars are easier than I talked myself into it. And I'll throw that ex wife in there that led me down that path, also, second ex wife and

Andrew Stotz 13:07
and why? Yeah, second ex wife. I skipped my first wife. That's what I always say. I skip my first divorce. Let's say, but why is a car a bad, bad bad thing to do, you know, as opposed to having invested it, you know, in something,

Jimmy Milliron 13:25
well, I mean, you just, it's, it's a waste of money. I mean, I mean, you mean, there's a million articles on it. It just loses value as you get it. I mean, I could have a lot of, no, I've wasted a lot of money on cars, but at that particular time, I should have really put it in the Bitcoin and not the car. I'm

Andrew Stotz 13:44
one of those rare guys that bought a car and sold it for three times what I bought it for.

Jimmy Milliron 13:49
Well, that's great.

Andrew Stotz 13:52
That story, Andrew , was a 1963 Lincoln Continental that I bought in Thailand. Wow. And I wrote it. I drove it for 10 years, and then the government changed the laws and basically said, you can't import these kinds of cars anymore. And all of a sudden, the value of it went up, you know, three times. And someone came along and said, I want to buy it for you. I said, Okay. And I had that's when I realized, like, also, you have something like that. It's, it's, it's really a piece of work, you know, a beautiful 63 Lincoln Continental, and you realize, like, I have this in my hands for a period of time, and then somebody else is going to have it, and somebody else had it before me. And so I was at the point where I was willing to let it go, and the price was right. But let's say that happens, you know, in in 0.0001% of the time when you buy a car,

Jimmy Milliron 14:41
exactly, you're exactly right. Mine was the total opposite.

Andrew Stotz 14:46
That Lincoln was a blast. I tell you, you know, What color was it? It was black. No, no. And had suicide doors. So suicide doors, yeah, super cool. And you had the hideaway headlights, no. No, it didn't, but everything was electric in it, so all the windows up and down, the locks, this that, I mean, it's just incredible. And it was, it was like, perfectly taken care of. Oh, wow. And it, and it had a right side drive that didn't look like it didn't appear like it was just made up. So I felt like maybe I didn't go to the history too deeply, but it's possible that it was made for, let's say, the Hong Kong or British markets, where people are driving on the left hand side of the road. And so maybe there was a certain number that were manufactured, you know, with that, with that dashboard, so, but yeah, that was, that was a blast. I don't know, because the tickers, it wasn't really, I didn't know how many times it turned over, but I don't believe it was written that much because, you know, it appears to have been in Asia for a long time, maybe even from the beginning. And you know, I just don't think people put a ton of miles, particularly when you're running around in a city in Asia. So, you know, you can only go so far in Bangkok. And then, of course, a big concern is, you know, is this damn car going to overeat in the middle of this traffic at, you know, 100 degrees, and you know, nothing's moving. And so there was, you know, other things you had to worry about too. So let me, let me ask you, based on this story of what you've talked about, you know, and what you've continued to learn now, as you've grown in your knowledge and experience, what's one action that you'd recommend our listener take? So let's say that they're faced with this situation, what's the one thing that they should do to start the right the going in the right direction for their decision making.

Jimmy Milliron 16:43
I think just, you know, go that extra effort, learn extra research how to do the transaction. In my case, learn more about it. Weigh some options. Maybe ask some advice if they're younger, from a mentor or from their parents, what would they do instead of just arbitrarily going off of a personal gain, you know, just not a very wise, you know, make me feel good investment,

Andrew Stotz 17:13
that's good, yeah, the idea of asking someone is always a key, because you get good feedback, even if it's negative, and you decide To do the thing you've at least considered, you know, the different alternatives. So, and let me ask you, what's a resource? I know you've got the website, you've got a lot of articles and stuff on there, but if we think about, you know, you personally, too, is there any books that you've read, podcasts you listen to, any advice you've had that you would consider to be something worth sharing with the audience. Well,

Jimmy Milliron 17:43
you know, with, you know, I just reread, I was on the flight to Germany, to Europe for the holidays, and I reread that, and I read it a long time ago, Donald Trump's art of the deal. And, you know, I reread that looked through, you know, it's timely. And you know, the biggest thing is, you know, don't be afraid to pick up the phone make a couple calls. You know, everyone relies on text, email, all the WhatsApp signal, tele, like all these different forms. You know, there's nothing like just picking out the phone, maybe dialing a couple of times, getting along a real person on the other end, working through it, finding a solution, or just, you know, calling people up that you instead of just texting them, you know, to talk to them, staying relevant,

Andrew Stotz 18:35
that's great. I have a funny story about that book, because I was asked by a business in Thailand to help sell the software that they created. They wanted to sell the whole software package that they created here in Bangkok, and they told me, the buyer is Microsoft, and we're flying to Redmond to do the deal, and we need you to negotiate this. Well, I had never done any deal like that. And so I told them, You know that I don't know if I'm the right guy, but they said, no, no, we want you to do it. So I said I went on a website that I used to go on all the time called Get abstract.com and it has five page abstracts on books. And I printed the top 10 negotiating books that I could find and deal books. And of course, the art of the deal was one of them. And so I had 50 pages, you know, 10 books, five pages each. I got on the airplane, and I read all of them, and I wrote notes on each book onto one page. Now I brought 50 pages down to 10 pages. And then I looked at those 10 pages while I was on the airplane, and thought, what are the commonalities until I could get it all down on the one page. And I said, from these 10 books, this is what I learned. And they didn't know I was doing that while I was sitting in my chair. And then, and then, when I was the night before, I just did everything that they told me in the book, and I went into the negotiation, and the first thing I did. The night before, I asked the lead guy, Hey, why don't we have a drink at the bar while everybody else goes home? And he's like, yeah. And I just, and I basically anchored him and said, you know, there's, you know, there's no way we would sell this software for what you're thinking. It's way, way more expensive, you know, more like 200 $300 million and, you know, screams and yelling and all of that, but, you know, I just knew to plant that anchor. And then I knew from these books, was one of the big answers, is you're going to have to do better than that, with no indication as to what better meant. And because you may say, Well, I'm not taking 50 million. It's got to be 60 million at least. And you think, Oh, I could be saying, well, Oh, thank God for that, because we were going to pay 100 million. But anyways, we did the deal, we sold the software, and it turned out to be a success. But you know, Trump's art of the deal was one of those books so that was a fun one. Oh, that's a good story, but it's a good, good point. Maybe you got to get that back out and reread it, yeah,

Jimmy Milliron 21:05
scrub it off. I mean, it's relevant today. It's, you know, it's, it's still relevant today. I mean, it's aged well, yeah.

Andrew Stotz 21:13
And I think that the point about talking, you know, people just don't do it anymore. And I had a negotiation with a government entity recently, and they were pushing for something that I thought was a bit strange, and I knew a friend of mine that had done some work with them, so I just got on the phone with my friend. I said, Hey, you know, what do you think about this? Oh yeah, this, you know. And they we had a long discussion, and I went back to that government agency, and I just sent him an email and said, you know, here's some things I'm thinking about, you know that? And next thing, you know, they proposed the different terms that were better. And I thought just picking up the phone and talking to that person helped me to go back into that negotiation really better understanding, you know, the people I'm negotiating with. So that was great, and just pick up a phone.

Jimmy Milliron 22:03
Yeah? I mean, it's just all about picking up the phone. I think I mean, as abstract as it might seem to people picking up the phone, it really works. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 22:11
it's so funny. When you call people these days, I think they're surprised, but I just call and say, oh, sorry, I didn't text you. But you know, Alright, last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Jimmy Milliron 22:24
I mean, my number one personally, you know, I'm on, I just turned 49 so on a, you know, health and wellness journey right now, need to lose some lbs on that the year previously, or two years ago, I quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey. And, you know, afforded me a couple pounds extra. So now I've given up cigarettes. I've given up alcohol starting out the year in order to, you know, have a real good kick start to, you know, lose these lbs.

Andrew Stotz 23:03
Yeah, exciting. Okay. Well, listeners, there you have it, another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Jimmy, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience? Well,

Jimmy Milliron 23:28
I'm good. Thank you very much. Andrew and I wish everyone well, all

Andrew Stotz 23:32
right, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth, fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that. Today, we added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside. You.