Lisa Sakai, Financial Consultant and co-founder of One Vision Retirement, talks about getting her start in Hollywood, how "Bucket List Acceleration" is bridging the present with the future, the one surprising group that often gets left behind in legacy planning, why it's hard for people to be HONEST about their goals, and why goals for yourself AREN'T selfish, one area where Gen Z is headed for disaster, the two biggest tips to getting your future financials in order, and digging so deep you can touch the bottom of the ocean.
Legacy means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it's lasting integrity. It's building and maintaining a history of greatness. It's making an impact on people and community. For others, it's dependable security and assurance in an uncertain time. To us, it's all of that and more. It's a mindset, a brother and sisterhood of hardworking people dedicated to doing the right
thing for you and those you care about of growing today for a better tomorrow that's what legacy means at southwestern legacy insurance group what does it mean to you let's talk legacy
Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. My name is Gary Michaels, and we're really excited about our guest today, Lisa Sakai. Lisa is a financial consultant who works with clients on what she calls bucket list acceleration. And once I first heard about this, I love the term bucket list. It's an excitement thing for many, hope and vision.
And as the co-founder of One Vision Retirement, she's been working with clients across the country for over 12 years now. So welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about this.
Absolutely. We're excited to have you. So let's get right into this. After first trying careers in Hollywood and in education, you moved to insurance, which is the space that we're in, as you know, which you say fueled your commitment to helping people and ultimately led to you launching your own practice. If you wouldn't mind, walk us through your unique career path
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I grew up in Los Angeles, so that was part of it. So I grew up in Pasadena, California, which is a suburb essentially of LA. And I loved old movies when I was growing up. It was a way to escape. I was pretty shy. It was my way of kind of getting out of my own head and just escaping. And so I loved old movies. I loved movies in general.
I thought I was going to be a screenwriter or producer or somebody. I never really wanted to be in front of the camera, but I wanted to to be part of the process, to be part of that world, right? And I went to college in Ohio, of all places. It was Paul Newman's alma mater. It's called Kenyon College, a very small liberal arts school. I loved that.
And then I came back and I started my world in Hollywood. And I did that for about, I would say, two and a half, maybe three years. I worked in a small agency where they just did some Latino work for actors. And so they did a lot in the Latino market. And I loved kind of seeing that whole world and then moving into some of the bigger agencies and production houses there.
And I've loved what I was doing, but I kind of felt a little empty, I guess is the kind of word. And so this is 100% true story. It sounds like I've made it up, but it's not. I was getting my boss's car washed for the fourth time that week. He liked a clean car and he liked it detailed. I was thinking and I just thought, you know, am I doing what I what I really want to do?
You know, I work really hard. I still work many hours and and is this all I can do? And I know that movies and entertainment help people, but I wanted to directly help people. So I left Hollywood right after that. And I moved into teaching, which is the complete 180 of Hollywood. So then I moved into that and teaching is a lovely profession.
But I give a lot of props for people who get through it because it's like the corporate world. And people don't realize that. And I just wasn't made out for that. And so I started looking and insurance loves teachers because we can explain things in a way that that others can't. And so they love teachers.
And so I started in finance and I kind of moved from just insurance into doing full financial planning because I wanted to know what the story was behind all the insurance and all that stuff. And now I do financial planning mostly.
So your company is called One Vision Retirement. Talk about One Vision and how it started and how you actually carry it into your business now.
Yeah, we got the name mainly from taking a reference from the Queen song, One Vision, to really look at the client's vision, right? There's so many, unfortunately, I hate to say this, but in every industry, it's like this. There's so many people who have their own agenda when it comes to working with clients. And we really feel that it's about the clients want, the client's vision.
The one vision is the client vision and helping the client get a focused vision on what they're trying to accomplish. I'm a big believer in why, you know, the Simon Sinek, the why factor of why are you doing this? What is the purpose? Getting a lot of emotion and core values put around your why because it helps you get through a lot of hard times and
And so it really is about that focus of the one vision of the client. What are we trying to accomplish? And it's hard. People don't want to talk about that. Just like they don't want to talk to insurance. They don't want to talk about this either because it's really looking internally and sometimes being selfish. You know, sometimes it is being selfish and saying, I want to retire at 50.
And people say, well, that's super selfish. You have kids, you have this, you have that. Not really. As long as you look at all the different aspects and figure out what you're trying to accomplish, if that's your vision, let's make sure everything that we're working towards is going towards that.
We really make sure that we're taking out that kind of financial language that gets really confusing for people. and really focus on what are we trying to accomplish and helping people figure out if a strategy that we're putting in place makes sense for them or not by going through the pros and cons.
So one of the big things you focus on is something called bucket list acceleration, which intertwines short-term aspirations with long-term financial strategies. Explain the concept and how it works and how you're trying to bridge the present with your client's future.
Yeah. So, you know, being in this industry for such a long time, I realized, especially starting in insurance, you know, I realized it's really hard to focus on something that is going to happen 30 years from now, 40 years from now, even 20 or 10 years from now. It's hard to be real motivated to get started because we have that natural tendency to say, okay. I'll start tomorrow.
I'll start next month. I didn't hit it this time, so I'm going to have to start in six months or whatever it is, instead of just getting going on something. And I was trying for a couple of years to figure out what is that thing that we could put in place on the short-term level that could get people motivated on a longer-term side of things and get people excited about their money. I mean,
I feel like I was reading a report from Intuit and I think it said something like 80% of people would rather talk about sex and different things like that than talk about their personal sex life and talk about their finances, which is odd to me. I mean, I just think it's such a taboo subject and we need to get people excited about that. And so people have a bucket list that we are not
trying to really accomplish. I mean, we all have that friend who's been saying that they're going to go to Italy for the last 20 years. And you're like, just go. I mean, my God, look, I'm tired of hearing about this. And they don't have a plan in place. And we can easily take those kind of aspirational things and put them in your planning so that you're
celebrating wins along the way, and we wrap it into your overall big planning. So you're still saving for the 3040 years, but your bucket list item is attached to your overall saving strategy. So if you save for your long term, you're also saving for your short term. It can be big or small. People think it has to be like going cliff diving in Bali. It doesn't have to be anything big.
It could be getting a massage package or whatever it is. It could be I have one client who's trying to retire her mom. That is her bucket list. That would make her so happy if her mom could stop working. It could be whatever you want. What you're doing is you're taking control of your money rather than the money controlling you.
Because what happens is we just don't want to focus on it so much that money just kind of goes in and out of our accounts and we have no idea what's happening. And hopefully everything's doing what it's supposed to be doing. But we don't know because we don't really have control of anything. This gives you some control so that now you have that money to do something else with if you want.
Or you could put it in your long-term savings. But now you have a bucket of money that you have choices to do something with. Do you recommend people get separate accounts? Separate accounts. You've got to have that break in your mind of knowing what's your long-term and what's your short-term.
What's one of the craziest thinking big bucket listings you've seen?
One of my clients wants to go skydiving. That makes me want to vomit. And he's trying to get his terrified wife to come with him to do it. And I don't know if that's going to happen. But he wants to put away the money to do that. And he wants to he's right now trying to figure out where he this kind of a newer client. So he's trying to figure out where he wants to do that.
And who knows, his wife might still say, I'm not doing that. And maybe that money is going to go to something else. Right.
Well, as you know, Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group and this show presented by our company. Tell us a little bit how life insurance and final expense coverage specifically plays a role into people's financial wellness, especially if they do something like whole life, accomplishing two goals with it. And then it's an investment as well as protecting the ones you love.
Yeah. I'll even throw another component in there as well, which is long term care planning, which it can be a huge part of legacy planning because it's protecting your legacy as well. So, um. It plays a huge part. I always say what, you know, I talk a lot to people about what do you want to do in life? But one of the questions I ask is, what do you want to leave behind?
I work a lot with families, but I also have a specialization in working with women who don't have kids because I'm married, but I don't have children. I've chosen not to. And so I understand that kind of world and what they're trying to do. So legacy planning is huge for them too, because what are we doing with this money? What kind of impact do we want to make with the money that we have?
So insurance can be a huge part of it. A, it's hard to get money available when a loved one passes. So if a loved one passes and It's not like you can just call up their broker and say, hey, I have the power of attorney. Give me $10,000 so I can start their funeral planning. It's very difficult to do that. You're going through custodians.
You might be calling Fidelity and getting them the death certificate. It's not that easy of a process. And so having just one company to call and say, here's the death certificate. Send me the death benefit moves a lot faster. And so you don't have to come out of pocket necessarily for that.
And your loved one wanted you to use that money and put the rest of their estate for your use, for your growth.
When you're sitting down with the person, how do you start talking about the now, the five years, 10 years in the future? How do you put it all together? Because nothing's promised 20 years down the road. How do you do that? I think that's an art. I really do. Yeah.
Yeah, it is. You know, we start with, you know, what are your goals? But most of the time, this isn't really covered in goals. Goals are dreams, aspirations. I try to get people to dream big. Like I want them to really kind of tell me what their biggest goals are, right? But then we pull back to what keeps you up at night. And that's a very difficult question.
You know, like what keeps you up at night? What's your fears? Because people don't want to talk about that. So they'll start to say, and I have found that people will say what they think people want them to say, what they think that they're supposed to say. So, oh, taking care of my loved ones, not leaving debt.
I'm not saying that that's not what they want, but they say it in a way that I know that that's something that they've read or they've been told that they're supposed to care about. So I just start asking questions like, if something should happen tomorrow. And I usually will use a story, a personal story or something to talk about.
I've said, what would you want to make sure we have in place for your kids, for your family, for your husband or your wife? Like, what are we trying to accomplish? What would you want them to be able to do? And so we kind of go into that and I just start pushing. Like I listen, I don't have like a set amount of questions. But I really believe we have two ears and one mouth for a reason.
And I really listen. And I start to ask more and more questions and start to push them into a place that they're really uncomfortable. And it's hard. I mean, it's very difficult to push people to that uncomfortable because they are squirming. They do not want to talk about this. And I get that. And they don't like me very much at that moment.
But by pushing through the uncomfortable, we get to what they really want. Yeah. And we get them to make educated decisions. That's my goal is I tell people, look, you don't have to do anything. We could go through insurance. We could go through disability insurance. We could go through all this different stuff. And you might decide not to choose any of it.
But I want you to make an educated decision because right now you're just making the decision to not decide on it. And a decision is being made for you. rather than you have control of the situation and go, I don't feel like we need that. And that's okay. I've had clients who would go through the whole process on talking about insurance, going through the ins and outs of it, how it works.
And they go, no, here's our game plan. And as long as I check in with them every year and make sure that they're, they still feel that that's the right game plan for them.
I don't force them to do it because as long as we have an idea of how we're going to handle something or that their situation or their strategy is still fitting the circumstances that they want and what they think about, that's the most important thing. But I really think my job is to push people outside their comfort zone, um, And I don't take that lightly. I don't like it.
I'm kind of a people-pleasing person. And I had to address that a long time ago because you can't do this job well if you're people-pleasing. You can't. I have a saying that I write down in my journal every day, which is digging so deep that I can touch the bottom of the ocean. That's what I do with clients. And I think by having that conversation, I write full notes about
After conversations that they have in writing, they see that what we talked about was clear to me what they want. And I think over time, we might not address these things for a couple of months into our relationship. Because it is very personal. Insurance, as much as people don't think, is a very personal conversation.
Not only are you talking about legacy and you're talking about what they want, what they truly want, they have to feel comfortable saying, I want these two kids to have something and this kid I don't. And you have to be able to get them to that comfort level to say that. So I don't really jump into insurance right away.
I talk about that's where the bucket list planning and stuff really helps open up that relationship. And that's why I always say, you know, when you're buying insurance, make sure that you're building a relationship with who you're buying insurance with. They've got to understand who you are, because if you're not sure why you have it two years later, that wasn't the right person to buy it from.
You are on a personal mission to also help independent women be better with all this. How did that get started? And talk to me a little bit about that.
Yeah. So I was one of those women that didn't understand anything about finance like 14 years ago. I have a story that I tell and it's 100% true where my husband was talking about, oh, should we move some money from our bank account to something that got a better interest rate? And I remember looking at him going, interest rates are for loans. What are you talking about? I don't understand that.
But I wouldn't say it to him. I was so afraid of looking so stupid. And this is my husband. We had just got married. I should not be ashamed of saying, I don't understand. But I was embarrassed because I thought, I don't know anything about this. He's so much smarter than I am, blah, blah, blah. And I recognize that with women. We tend to have a lot of women who...
are afraid to say, I don't understand that. Or if they say, I don't understand it, they make it about them being stupid or not good at math or something like that. And really, we're not getting the education. And I'm going to say we as everyone is not getting the education on this. Nobody is teaching this.
I heard Morgan Housel, who wrote The Psychology of Money, say this, and I think he's absolutely 100% true. The two most important things are health and money, and we don't teach either in school. And he's absolutely right. I don't know why we don't touch on money on personal finance at all in school, but we don't. And I think it's because of the psychological aspect associated with both.
And it's okay that we weren't taught it, but we have to take control and go, how do I become better educated on things? Because My worst clients, I always say, are the ones that have moved their money from one person to me and say, well, I don't need to know about it because you're my girl and you got it. I don't like that.
Because I could decide that my bucket list is to stop doing this and move to Fiji and you're stuck with a plan that you don't understand. And it doesn't mean you have to understand it 100%, but you have to be involved in it. You have to be willing to ask questions. And so that's my mission is to get women to just recognize that it's okay that we don't know some of this stuff.
And it's not a personal reflection. It's a societal thing. I call it financial dysmorphia almost. Like we think everybody else gets it and we don't get it. Everybody else is set. And we're a mess when it comes to finance. I hear that all the time. I'm a financial mess. That's what everybody says when they first start talking to me. That's not necessarily true.
A lot of times people have a really good foundation or really good parts of their foundation in place. They just have to do some tweaks and just get some education and knowledge. But that mindset is really, really harmful. There's actually a really interesting study out into it, put it out this year, where Gen Z is not saving at all. They're young, right?
They're 25 and under, but they're still not saving anything because what they see in social media, they think they'll never be able to retire or they'll never get to that kind of wealth. So why even try? That's bad. That's really bad that we have this in our society.
So what does like this mean to you?
For me, it's the impact in the world that I want to make. That story about when I was in Hollywood and wanting to make the impact, to me, that's what legacy is. How many people have I helped? How much have I made a positive impact? How many people have a better financial journey and financial outcome because I helped them with it? That's for me what my legacy is.
Like I said, I don't have kids, so it's not necessarily a monetary one. It's more of a personal mission to try to do that. And, you know, I probably should put a number of how many women I want to help educate on finance and not just educate, but enjoy finance.
Making a difference is such a big part, I think, of what you're trying to do and do something important. And what we're trying to do at Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group, it's not just about selling insurance, but it's making a difference to the people around you and people that you love. I believe that's why we were put on this earth.
I agree. And money is a great way of doing that. I think people think of money as something materialistic or bad. We still have that money is bad kind of thing. But with money, as long as you have control and you know what you're trying to accomplish and you have you know, your core values set and you understand things.
Money is such a great tool to make the influence that you want to make in this world for good. And I think people don't think about it that way enough.
So is there a difference in your personal legacy versus your business legacy?
It's funny you just said that because I was thinking, I wonder if he wants to know about the personal side. So personally, you know, it's funny. We just redid our estate plan because we moved to Arizona from California a couple of years ago. So we got our estate plan redone.
I would say for me, I think finding some organizations that we can join up with in terms of some community stuff and giving back, that would be something I would be interested in looking into more than I have in the past, especially for like... grants and things like that for kids who are trying to go to college without a huge amount of debt and go through that.
My husband was a benefit of a lot of grants, and I think that's really important. But yeah, so I think we're still trying to figure out what we want our legacy to be. But I know for me, my major goal is for financial independence or financial freedom by a
That doesn't mean I'm going to stop working or doing what I'm doing, but I just want that ability to not have to have money be a controlling factor, but that we're controlling it. But I think we're still trying to figure out what we want our legacy to be. I know for me, for my husband, I don't ever want to leave him with anything to worry about. And I know for him, that's the same thing.
We want to make sure everything's taken care of.
Right. If you were to give two main tips for our listeners on how to be better with their one vision of financial, what would be your two main tips?
The first one is to really think about your life mission. What are we trying to do? Are we trying to, like I said, are we trying to retire early? Are we trying to take as many vacations and have as much time with family as possible? Are we trying to just live a happy, healthy life, work till 65? We need to kind of know what we're trying to accomplish. It's really hard.
Most of us are, and this is another one that you've probably heard a million times, we There's no journey, right? Because you don't know where you're going. We go through life just kind of not having a vision of what we want. So having a vision, even if it changes, let's say you get to 50 and you go, I'm good, actually, I don't want to retire. That's okay.
But you have to have something we're going for in order to put some strategies in place so that you can kind of envision what your life will look like, right? So having a why of what you're trying to accomplish on your financial journey is really important.
The other thing I would say is to really start to look, make yourself accountable for your money, because nobody is going to do that for you, unfortunately. I can't look at your credit card every month and go, You didn't spend your money properly, like nobody's going to respond well.
But so unfortunately, when it comes to your spending and what you're spending your money on, you do have to make yourself accountable. So I always say the first little habit.
that you should stack onto something else to borrow from James Clear, essentially is to find a time that you can just look at your credit card once a week, five minutes, maybe when you're drinking coffee on Thursday after a run or whatever it is that you're stacking that habit because you don't have to sit there and make yourself miserable at what you spent your money on.
Just making yourself aware of what you're spending your money on is life-changing.
Yeah. And what doesn't get calendar doesn't get done. So if you don't ever put it on the calendar, you're never going to do that.
You're never going to look at it. And then you have clients who come to you and go, I've been spending $400 a month on blah, blah, blah subscription that I thought I canceled. Yeah. Because you're not looking at it. Gosh. I mean, doesn't that make you mad when you figure that stuff out? Well, who are you really mad at yourself? Because you didn't look at it. Right.
And so you spent a lot of money on something you weren't you didn't even realize you were spending on.
So you're a mentor for SCORE, right?
Tell us a little bit about that. It was a wonderful experience and I would definitely recommend any business owners that have questions. They have some of the best minds out there in terms of businesses, marketing, all that kind of stuff that you can get as a free service. So I've been a SCORE mentee before. I've been a mentor.
And a lot of times it's funny, a lot of people came to me for marketing advice and not necessarily financial or other things like that, just because I'm a small business putting together marketing stuff for myself. And I kind of know what's worked and what hasn't worked or how to start on something.
So it's a wonderful way of if your business owner being a mentor is a wonderful way of pushing yourself a little bit. And if you're just starting a business or even I've had clients who are 20 years in business and they're trying to figure out how to sell their business. And they don't know where to go, who to talk to, any of that kind of stuff.
And so as SCORE mentees, they were able to tap into who do I go to first? What's the first step? That kind of stuff is invaluable as a business owner. So I would highly recommend SCORE. It's the best kept secret out there.
I've heard many, many good things about it over the years. So how would people, Lisa, reach out to you if they wanted to get some of your free advice on a consultation or want to get serious about their finances and talk about creating a plan for the future and having that one vision? How would they reach you?
Absolutely. So our website's always the best place to go. It's onevisionretire.com. So it's shorter than retirement, retire.com. You know, that's where you can find there's a resource page. So we have free downloads for people to take a look at some PDFs. One of them is some bucket list ideas. So if you're not even sure what... to look at for bucket list ideas. One of them on there is that.
Another is baby step your way to financial independence. Those are like little tiny things you can do that's going to make a big difference on trying to figure out how to get to financial independence, those kind of things. And then there is a link on the front page that you can schedule a kind of get to know you call. And we're happy to just have a chat.
And hopefully you walk away with some great resources, even if we're not a good fit for you. But our job's here just to help as much as possible. And I do a lot of the personal planning, but Chris does business planning. So if there are any business owners who are having questions about their 401k and stuff, I have that internal resource right there waiting for us.
Awesome. Well, Lisa, I want to say thank you for joining us today on Let's Talk Legacy. Thank you.
That was great. Thank you so much.
If you've enjoyed today's podcast and want to learn more, visit us at southwesternlegacy.com. Shoot us an email via our easy contact form to find out how you can become an agent or how we can meet your needs for final expense coverage. You can find this and other episodes at letstalklegacypod.com on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Let's Talk Legacy is a presentation of the Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group, a member of Southwestern Family of Companies.