Let me tell you about the hardest problem in my wife’s business.
It wasn’t patients. It wasn’t marketing.
It wasn’t even the $650,000 she borrowed to start her dental practice back in 2008.
It was people.
If you’ve ever tried to grow a business, you already know this.
You can’t expand without great people, and great people are the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to lose.
In dentistry it’s brutal. A great hygienist or office manager can walk across the street any day of the week and get offered more per hour. And every practice in town is dangling the same tired bait: a little more salary, a 3% match, “great culture.”
So most owners end up in a bidding war for talent.
And here’s the problem with a bidding war: you can only win it by overpaying, and you can only keep winning it by overpaying again. It’s a game where even the winner loses.
My wife refused to play that game.
And the reason she could refuse is a concept I stumbled into at a conference in 2009, listening to an older gentleman named Nelson Nash teach a room full of people how to become their own banker.
The Infinite Banking Concept.
Most people hear IBC and think personal finance.
Cash value.
Policy loans.
Being your own bank. All true.
But here’s what almost nobody talks about: IBC is one of the most powerful TALENT tools a business owner can own.
My wife used it to turn her practice into the place top people wanted to join and didn’t want to leave, which is exactly what let her expand instead of constantly backfilling seats.
We call the strategy the Dual Executive Reward Plan. And if your business does over $1 million a year, I’m going to be blunt with you:
You are crazy not to do this.
Not “you should consider it.” Crazy. And by the end of this article you’ll see exactly why.
The Lie Every Business Owner Believes About Retention
Here’s what most owners think keeps top people:
Money.
And here’s what’s funny. Darren Hardy, in The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster, lists the 5 things key employees actually want, in order of importance:
- They want to work with other A players
- They want a company with vision
- They want to be challenged to do great work
- They want to grow personally AND professionally
- They want to be fairly compensated
Read that list again. Compensation is DEAD LAST.
So why do top people keep leaving over a few dollars an hour? Simple.
Because when nothing else on that list is visible, money becomes the only scoreboard. If the only way an employee can measure whether you value them is their pay-check, then every pay-check down the street is a threat.
The fix isn’t paying more. The fix is giving them something no competitor can match: a future with their name on it.
That’s what we built. And the vehicle we used surprised everybody, including our CPA.
Why Everything Your Advisor Sells You Is Broken
Before I show you what we did, let me save you from the three “solutions” the financial industry will try to sell you. I call this the Retention Plan Graveyard:
Grave #1: The NQDC Plan. Non-qualified deferred compensation. Sounds fancy. Here’s the reality: it’s expensive, it’s complicated, it strangles your cash flow, and you don’t even get your tax deduction until years down the road when you transfer the benefit. You need a highly paid advisor just to babysit it. Pass.
Grave #2: The 401k Match. Everybody’s default. You get a tax deduction, sure. But think about what you’re actually buying. Zero control. Your employee can take your match, quit Friday, and roll it over Monday. There is no retention in that plan. None. You’re literally funding their exit. And the money? Gone. Locked in a plan you can never touch, eaten alive by fees.
Grave #3: The Standard Executive Bonus. Immediate deduction, which is nice. But again, no strings. No service period. No control over the incentive. It’s a gift, not a strategy.
Here’s the pattern. Every one of these plans forces you to make a trade: benefit the employee OR benefit the business. Your money goes into a box, the lid closes, and it does exactly ONE job.
And if you’ve followed Wealth Without Wall Street for any length of time, you know that violates my first rule of money:
Never let a dollar do only one job.
What We Did Instead (The IBC Talent Play)
Here’s where Infinite Banking changed the game.
My wife and I were already using IBC personally. Specially designed whole life policies where our money grows guaranteed, tax-sheltered, protected from creditors, and, here’s the key part, accessible any time we want, penalty free. We were using it to finance our life instead of borrowing from banks.
Then the question hit me:
If this tool works this well for OUR money, why not point it at the biggest problem in the practice: attracting and keeping key people?
That question became what we now call the Dual Executive Reward Plan. “Dual” because it’s the first retention plan I’ve ever seen that works for BOTH sides of the table at the same time. Here’s the simple version, in a model you can draw on a napkin:
THE DUAL EXECUTIVE REWARD PLAN
There are two ways to structure it:
Option 1: The Executive Reward Bonus Agreement. A simple contract between your company and your key employee. They complete a service period that YOU define. Three years, five years, whatever fits. When they hit the finish line, they get a lump sum. Your business attorney drafts it in an afternoon.
Option 2: The Executive Reward Split Dollar Agreement. You take out a specially designed life insurance policy on your key employee. You own it. You pay the premiums. You split the rights and benefits with them. They pay a small annual tax on the economic benefit, pocket change. And here’s the part that makes every candidate’s eyes go wide: if something happens to them before the service period ends, the death benefit splits between the company and THEIR FAMILY.
Read that again. Their family is protected from day one. What 401k match does that?
The Recruiting Pitch Nobody Else in Town Could Make
Here’s what this did to my wife’s hiring conversations.
Every other practice was pitching some version of “competitive pay, 3% match, great culture.” Her pitch became something no competitor could copy:
“Come build this practice with us, and we’ll open a policy with your name on it. It grows every single year, guaranteed. Complete the service period and there’s a lump sum waiting for you at the end that makes a $4-an-hour raise look like lunch money. And starting today, your family is protected by life insurance we’re paying for.”
Think about what that does in an interview. A raise says “we’ll pay you for this month.” This plan says “we’re investing in your next five years, and we’re putting it in writing.”
That’s the difference between hiring people and attracting them. It flips the entire dynamic. Instead of competing on salary, you’re the only office in town offering a wealth-building future. Top candidates start choosing YOU, current A players stop taking recruiter calls, and your best people start telling their talented friends about the practice that actually invests in its team. That’s what let my wife focus on expanding the business instead of constantly replacing the people who ran it.
Go back to Darren Hardy’s list. Look what this one move checks off:
- A players? A players attract A players, and rewards like this only get offered to A players. ✓
- Vision? You just showed them a 5-year future, on paper. ✓
- Challenged to do great work? The reward is tied to the service period and the standard. ✓
- Personal and professional growth? You’re building their wealth WITH them. ✓
- Fair compensation? A guaranteed lump sum plus protection for their family. ✓
Five for five. One strategy.
Here’s the Part That Should Make You Sit Up
Everything I’ve told you so far is the employee side. Now let me show you the owner side, because this is where it gets almost unfair.
That money you’re using to incentivize your key employee? It’s not gone. It’s not locked in some Wall Street box. It’s sitting inside an asset that gives you:
- Guaranteed growth, every year, in every market
- A competitive return
- A tax shelter
- A creditor-proof asset (ask your attorney how rare that is)
- Easy, penalty-free access
- An ever-increasing death benefit
Which means while that capital is doing Job #1 (locking in your top employee over the service period), you can borrow against the SAME DOLLARS to:
- Buy new equipment (in a dental practice, think chairs, scanners, imaging)
- Expand to a second location
- Knock down a chunk of your annual tax bill
- Float the business through a slow month or a downturn
One dollar. Four or five jobs. Meanwhile the 401k crowd has their retention money buried in a plan they can’t touch, funding employees who can leave tomorrow.
This is Infinite Banking applied to your team. The same concept we teach for personal wealth, pointed at your single biggest business risk: losing your best people.
The Brutal Math for the $1M+ Owner
Let me make the “you’re crazy” case with numbers.
If you run a seven-figure business, what does losing ONE key person actually cost you? The studies say 1 to 2 times their annual salary. For a $90,000 employee, call it $100,000 to $180,000 once you add up:
- Lost production while the seat is empty
- Recruiting fees and job ads
- Your time interviewing (what’s an owner-hour worth?)
- 6+ months of training and ramp-up
- The clients, patients, and team morale that walk out the door with them
Now compare that to funding a Dual Executive Reward Plan, where the money never leaves your balance sheet. It grows guaranteed. You can use it. You control it. And it’s quietly welding your best people to your business the entire time.
You’re not spending money on retention. You’re REPOSITIONING money you already have so it retains your people while it builds your wealth.
Under $1M in revenue, I get it, cash flow can be lumpy and you may not be ready. But over $1M? You have the cash flow. You have key people worth six figures to replace. Every year you wait is another year of turnover roulette with dead capital on the sidelines.
That’s not a strategy question anymore.
That’s a “why haven’t you done this yet” question.
Ready to Build Your Dual Executive Reward Plan? Book a Free Call
You’ve seen the strategy. Now let’s make it yours.
Book a free call with a Wealth Without Wall Street coach and walk away with a clear plan to recruit, reward, and retain your top employees using the Dual Executive Reward Plan. On the call, you’ll get:
- The agreement structure that fits YOUR business (bonus agreement vs. split dollar, mapped to your team)
- How to fund it with the Infinite Banking process, so every dollar keeps working inside your business
- The service period and reward structure that locks in your key people
- Exactly what to hand your attorney to get this done
No pitch-fest. No pressure. Just a working session that ends with a plan you can act on.
Book your free Dual Executive Reward Plan call now
Your best employee is getting a recruiter’s message this week. The only question is whether you’ve given them a reason to delete it.
Russ Morgan
Wealth Without Wall Street
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor before making decisions based on what you read here.
