Get to Know Your Host: Scott Gannon

In our first episode, Scott, Head Coach and Founder of Magnify Wealth, shares insights from nearly 30 years in the financial industry. He discusses his journey and the evolution of his business approach. Initially, Scott followed traditional asset management strategies, benefiting from the booming markets of the late '90s. However, market downturns in the early 2000s and the 2008 financial crisis prompted him to seek alternative wealth-building methods.

Scott discovered the benefits of rental real estate and, together with his wife, invested in multifamily properties. This experience led to the development of the Asset Multiplier Method at Magnify Wealth, integrating real estate with the infinite banking concept.

Scott's goal is to educate people on efficient wealth-building techniques, emphasizing protection and cash flow generation through real estate and innovative financial strategies.

Transcript

Cameron S. Gannon (00:01)
Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode of the magnify wealth podcast I'm Cameron Gannon and I'm here with your host Scott Gannon Scott Why don't you tell us about yourself and your background in the industry? We're in

Scott (00:19)
So as Cameron already mentioned, my name is Scott and I am the head coach for Magnify Wealth and founder of, and I've been kicking around the financial services business for just shy of 30 years now. And during that time, I feel like I've seen it. I probably haven't seen everything, but I sure have seen enough to know what I like and what I don't like. And there's a lot to not like about what we do.

And I come to, it took me many, many years to kind of figure out what, what was, what felt right for me. In fact, you know, as much as I say, I've been just shy of 30 years. It was just eight years ago that I, that I completely changed the way I do business, the way I do it now. And what you'll, I guess, learn about through a series of these, these mediums, whatever medium you're on, whether it's YouTube or podcast or whatever.

you know, the intention here is to educate people on the efficient ways to, to build wealth. Now, a little bit about my journey, I guess you could say, and that's that, you know, I started in the financial business.

Basically, asset gathering is what we called it back in the day. And that was, you know, where's your money? How much are you saving? Move it over to me and I'll make it all better. And being that I started in 94 and the markets produced double digit returns for the rest of the decade. After that, I looked like a genius and I really wasn't. The training was, you know, have a wholesaler come over and tell you what the flavor of the month was and go sell it.

So there really wasn't much planning involved. It was just about getting my assets under management. And it's like I said, I look like a rock star because the markets were killing it for the first six or seven years that I was at it. But then along came the early 2000s. So we had a 50 % decrease in the market. I understood why, couldn't control it, drove me a little crazy, but...

Like I was taught one thing that I was taught at that time was you're in it for the long haul. So these things are going to happen. And this kind of thing happens kind of drop actually happens once in a generation. So what did I do come the end of 2002 and into 2003? I was telling everybody to buy, buy, buy. Cause that kind of drop only happens once in a generation. Well,

07 08 09 came along and I guess generations are now in dog years because similar results happened again in recession the whole nine yards so With that happening a second time inside of whatever it was six or seven years Really got me searching for for alternatives and Funny thing is the alternative was in my was I was living?

long before I even started in this business and didn't even realize it. So I'm going to go, I'm going to do a big rewind here to when I grew up and my parents were working class parents that both worked and what they did back in 74 after renting for several, about 10 years after they got married, they decided to buy a duplex and rent one side and live in the other.

Lo and behold we're mortgage free and what did I learn from that? Well, I learned after the fact looking back that it was a really smart decision for them And it benefited my brother and I because we were able to do a lot of nice things that we didn't know we didn't have Our parents wouldn't have had the money for if they didn't if they had to pay their own mortgage so anyway, the long story the long or the the short way to look at that is is I realized that I

rental real estate is a great wealth builder. But I only looked at this.

Cameron S. Gannon (04:30)
you

Scott (04:33)
Man, many years later, it's frustrating to me to even verbalize it as to where I've come because it was real estate that I discovered during the 2000s, studied it, understood it, but still was in the financial business. So I was an asset gatherer. And well, after that second drop, I started studying it much harder. My wife and I took a...

week long course in the US on multifamily investing. We ended up buying a couple of apartment buildings in Florida and did really well. And during that time, I was still an asset gatherer, I guess, and didn't hide anything from my clients, told them what I was doing. And for the most part, they were busy professionals and wanting me to look after their money. So I kept doing it.

And then I discovered eight years ago that there was a, I guess a strategy in my day job, if you will, that marries quite well to real estate.

That changed everything for me. I started to adopt this, while Magnify Wealth, we use what's called the Asset Multiplier Method, and this is where it was born. It was born out of my own experience being, okay, I need to have capital available to me, and I still want to invest in real estate. So that's really where I've come from, and this is kind of where...

where all this comes from is learning through trial and error of dealing with stock markets that it wasn't really for me. I'm not saying that it's not for, that the right people shouldn't do that. What I am saying is I've discovered a, I guess a strategy for myself and my clients to allow them to protect their wealth first and produce a,

Let's just say inevitable cash flow from it.

Cameron S. Gannon (06:44)
So tell us a little bit about the juice of that asset multiplier method. What is it? How did you discover it? And how has it changed your life?

Scott (06:57)
That's a loaded question. Okay, so the asset multiplier method is born out of a process known as infinite banking. Infinite banking is essentially becoming your own banker. So what that means is you... Well, I mean, if you look at how does a bank get started? In Canada, it's pretty hard to do. You need to have a bank charter and they're not easy to come by, a little easier in the US, but...

Let's say for argument's sake that you could build your own bank. Well, what would you have to do? You'd have to come up with a lot of capitals to start with, a lot of cash to be able to do what banks do. What's that do? They open doors and they lend money. So essentially what we do is let people do this on an individualized basis, whether it's individual, it can be corporately owned too, but it's essentially putting cash,

into a very specifically designed participating whole life insurance that produces dividends. What that does for you is it also produces what's called cash value. And cash value is your capital that you can use just like a bank does, use your money in lending or investing. So for all intents and purposes, you become the bank and that's...

the process is becoming your own banker. So the insurance policy, that just happens to be the tool that we use that has very significant and useful tax benefits and contractual obligations that give you the ability to use it as an asset to leverage into other assets.

Cameron S. Gannon (08:44)
So just to kind of give the audience a little bit of a foreshadow of what's coming into the future, give us an example of how you've used infinite banking and the asset multiplier method in your own life rather than just your clients.

Scott (08:59)
Interesting. So my first my first experience with it.

I started as a, what we call a saver and I just, I started putting money in to build and capitalize this program. And for the first, I guess, year and a half or two years, I didn't do anything with it. My first investment into it was a, it was actually a flip, a flip of a mini home. So I'll paint the picture here a little bit for you. So friends of my wife and I had a mini home under agreement.

to purchase and the plan was to flip it. And, but he needed a little extra cash. So he called me up. I didn't even look at it. I was just like, it's this much and the estimated amount to repair and the estimated resale. I looked at it. I knew the area, but I didn't go see it at the trailer itself. And I just said, yeah, how much do you need? And I sent it over to him. So I sent over the money, closed the deal and became 50 % partners on a handshake. And.

that along with spending about, I think it was if my memory serves me, it was that was a little under 35 ,000. And then we spent about another 18 or 19 to fix it. And I didn't do any of the work. I was the finance in this. And yeah, so it was actually the day it closed was 90 days to the day. And we took six.

I'm trying to remember now. I think it was about 16 and a half thousand each back out of the deal. So for what cost me in interest, 90 days, call it, round it off to 50 ,000. I don't know. Call it 60 ,000. I can't remember. I love to give you the exact numbers and I certainly can at another time, but I think the interest cost at the time was about 6 % and it was for three months. So that really amounts to about one and a half percent.

So what does that amount to? About $1 ,000. Cost me about $1 ,000 for the three months and made 16. So have you ever made 16 and 100 % on an investment before? By no means was I suggesting that I was gonna do that. I have no idea and it's not indicative of real life. Past results are not.

Cameron S. Gannon (11:18)
in 90 days.

Scott (11:30)
indicative of future results or whatever the disclaimer is, I should say there, but yeah, that was my first foray into it and, had a 1600 % return.

Cameron S. Gannon (11:40)
That's awesome. So,

Scott (11:41)
in three months, in three months actually. So do the math. That's even larger than that.

Cameron S. Gannon (11:46)
Yeah, exactly. So to wrap up our abbreviated first episode here, why don't you share with the audience just a little bit about what you want to start teaching with doing this podcast and how you want to help your audience.

Scott (12:04)
again, she's put me on the spot on that one. Okay. So, so this is, this is purely a medium. So what I've done with clients for the past eight years is I've sat down and taken them through hand, hand hold them through understanding how this process works. And frankly, for the eight years, you know, I'm not, I don't know everything. Like there's a reason why it's called the infinite banking concept because the options are infinite.

And I learned things from people that I teach every day. And I just, you know, I really wanted to be able to broadcast this more so on a, on a, you know, like, you know, this, what do you call this? A medium of, a broadcast medium, as opposed to a one -to -one or even small seminars. I've done several, several seminars of, 50 and 50 and under people, live. And so I just.

I just wanted to start doing this on this medium. So I'm gradually going to teach people how to use their money in a more creative way to magnify the use. So hence the word magnify wealth and the asset multiplier method. That's really what we're doing. We're showing people how to first protect their money, protect their lives, protect their families, and at the very same time, create a multiple use asset.

that will pay them multiple times over.

Cameron S. Gannon (13:30)
Awesome. That is awesome, Scott. So we will wrap things up now with our first episode of the Magnify Wealth Podcast. Stay tuned for next week when we dive a little bit deeper on the asset multiplier method. See you, everybody.