Brokerage Accounts vs. Recordkeepers: When Open Architecture Makes Sense

[0:15] JD: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retire Hogs. But not just any episode. Let me remind you all how this works. Remember this is the second Thursday of the month and this is where we will do a specialty experimental show format. In January we did the conspiracy show. We dove deep into Blackrock and all that goes on there. In February we did the topic randomizer show. You remember that? [0:50] Chad: That was fun. I like that one. [0:51] JD: That was fun. And now for March, we're gonna try the no Plan Plan show. Very Rogue Guy esque of us. Just usually before these shows I'm hunkered down in my office preparing for everything that's going to go down. My wife poked her head into my office around 2:30 and was like, do you want to go grab some lunch? And I was like, yeah. And she goes oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot you have a show. I said, that's okay honey, it's the no Clan Plan show. I don't have to do anything so we can go have lunch. So we'll see how that goes. [1:27] Mark: And she was really confused and said wait, isn't that what it always is? [1:32] JD: No. What did she. We got to lunch and she goes so what's the no for dope going to be today? And I got very upset and I said I thought I told you. It's the no Plan Plan show. We. There's no no for dope. We don't know what's going on. So let me remind everyone, there's no acro sin. There's no drunk stock tips. There's no no per do. We don't. There's none of those things. [1:53] Mark: But wait, is there. Wait, is there acron? [1:55] JD: I can't remember. No, there's no acron. I Peps. Peps can be Peps on this show. They can live in their normal Pepness. We don't have to spell them out. Here's what I'd like to do to kick it off and everyone. Don't worry, Silent Jay will be here shortly. He's driving in Los Angeles back to his home from lax. See, I just said lax. And I don't have to drink. But I can drink if I want to. I've got vodka in here. But you even don't have to drink if you don't want to. Brandon's not drinking. Chad didn't have to drink. It's 9am in the morning in Australia. That's where he is. This is an international show, people, in case you didn't know. But he's decided to drink in the Morning, which I think most Aussies do. Any. Don't they drink all day there? Pretty much, yeah. [2:45] Chad: It's pretty sweet. You roll to a pub any time of the day, and people are eating swee snitty and having beer. Snitty is new to me, and it is incredible. [2:54] JD: I'm a little worried, you know, jd. [2:56] Mark: Oh, yeah. I was just about to say he's gonna be like an exchange student. They come back and he's gonna be cultured, and he's gonna. [3:02] Chad: Yep. [3:03] Mark: He's gonna adopt all the ways of Australia. Here we go. [3:06] Chad: We have. We have a point system every day of. Of who is the most Australian in the family. And you get points throughout the day when you do something that really shows you're. You're getting into the local spirit. So I got my ass kicked by today. [3:19] Justin: Y. [3:21] JD: Speaking of points, I have decided that we will indeed have a chat bar champion tonight. So we will show you an updated leaderboard later. And please do watch that. Chat bar champion or chat bar to vote for someone at the end of the show. Here's what I want to do just to start, and then we'll take it wherever we want to take it. Like, I don't care where we go with this, but I'm going to ask you guys, like, what you got going on this week or this month or this quarter or as it relates to business, kind of like in the old days, if we were going to get together before retire holics and sit in the conference room to just kind of soak in what happened in the week before of us, of us. I've been drinking a little bit. We would have a conversation about maybe a plan you had, maybe a meeting you had, maybe an advisor that was being a dick to you, shit like that. But I'll kick it off with something that happened to me in my business world. As I mentioned earlier, Devin, our internal, has been setting us up on some golf stuff down here in San Diego. And we took advisors golfing and some local wholesalers, and we got together like you do afterwards, and I had appetizers and drinks. And this advisor brought up kind of a blast from the past for me that I don't think we've talked about a lot on the show. He brought up his passion for or desire to set up clients in brokerage accounts versus a package record keeper. And I knew that if Chad was there, he would get. Would have gotten very upset and got into a big debate with this guy defending the insurance companies, because this. That was part of this guy's pitch was I don't like these package record keepers and insurance companies. The fees are too high, the investments are kind of pre selected, blah blah, blah, blah blah. So brokerage accounts, I have got a lot to say on this but let me kick the ball over to you guys. If an advisor comes to you and says hey man, what about, what about we just pass up all this Voya Hancock and just go straight to E Trade or Schwab or something and cut out all the middlemen for the fees and stuff? Like why don't we do that in a 401k [5:38] Chad: go mark, give it. [5:40] Mark: I, I would, I would give the same question back. Why don't we do it? Why? Well, why do we do it? And I would just say it. I'm gonna shrink myself here. My head's getting cut off it. There's a lot of things I could say about it. But the most basic and fundamental thing I would say is what are the client demographics? Right? What is the plan sponsor look like from a employee perspective, Owner perspective? Is this like JD likes to say, a flower shop down the street? Is this a group of architects or lawyers or CPAs or you know, different sort of professional services type company? And what are the individuals looking for? [6:27] Chad: Right. [6:27] Mark: If it's two or three people and they all want to do their own investing, then okay, I think we can consider you. [6:33] JD: But if are you backing up with David Casey in there, Robi, is that these guardrails. So you're, you're. For now one of the points you're making is giving them access to an open brokerage account where they can invest in Nvidia or Apple or Penny stocks. Is, is too, potentially too dangerous for the flower shop on the corner. But maybe okay for. [6:57] Mark: I don't want to say dangerous. It just may be very uncomfortable and unnecessary and something that people don't really want or feel good doing. So what I would just say is my thought is either we can go that direction all in, we can go the insurance company route all in or why not find a blend where. When you just said the voyage, the empowers, the nationwide so forth. Hey guess what? By the way, we can create a, a streamlined product process in place to have both a core menu for those employees who don't want to pick stocks and have access to a brokerage window through some technology bridge with the record keeper. [7:39] JD: Well, I'll tell you why. Maybe, maybe Chad wants to jump on this kind of fee kind of thing here. My answer to you would be the reason why I want to do it is if I'm a 6 person firm or I'll extend out a 15 person firm or even a 20 person smallly held kind of family business where everyone's kind of right there in the same office space or whatever. What I'm trying to do is cut down on costs and lower the overall fees of my program. And so maybe what I'm saying is I don't need the services or the tools of a large package record keeper. I would prefer to just go it alone and give my employees access to investments and then lower the fees. What's your typical record keeper fee going to be on a $3 million plan or a $2 million plan, like 40 to 50 bips or something. [8:37] Chad: Don't even go bibs if we're having this conversation. Go flat bill, flat bill on. That's going to be. I mean if you're going to let them use their fixed or. So it's going to be four grand. [8:48] JD: Can I have fun though then, Chad? Can I have fun and say what if I'm looking at this as that's what this advisor was talking about. What if when I at the after golf, what if I'm looking at this as a sales opportunity so I can walk into a $2 million Voya plan or whomever. I'm not picking on you, Voya. And I can say, hey look, looks like you're all in. Cost here is, you know, close to 1%. I'd like to show you a new option and I'm thinking, hey, you're a 20 person firm, maybe you don't need all the services of this package record keeper. What if I told you we could save you Now I can say it, Chad, 40 to 50 basis points by moving over into just a brokerage account, by giving you open architecture, you can invest in whatever you want to invest in. And they say to me, well, what am I going to lose, jd? And, and I'm like, well no one's going to come and roll your plan. And they're like, okay, I don't give a fuck about that. You're like, well you know, you may not have all the bells and whistles at the website of all the stuff you need to do. Well, I don't give a fuck about that. We maybe don't have like stuffers to put in your payroll envelopes to promote like asset allocation or whatever. Like what are they going to lose? And then why, why is that not a sexy thing? And Chad, why can I not then say I'm saving you 50 basis points. [10:10] Chad: So let's talk the reality of that because all of those things, yes, you can say, but we've seen dozens, hundreds of these, however many you want to say over the last course of 15 years. How many of them are actually saving? 50 basis points? If you were to take into account rate of return, and I would say [10:29] JD: none of that's like a political show. This is like the vast majority, the [10:34] Chad: vast majority of these plans that we [10:36] JD: sniff out cash, they're in money market, [10:38] Chad: they're in cash or money market. They've never had a rate of return. We're doing a couple right now because future plan, which would be one of my topics for throwing things out, is firing all their brokerage account clients. We're taking on a couple right now where these employees are buying sea shares. They have no clue. They don't know that they should be in an institutionalized share class. And so they're out there just looking up different funds and choosing to invest with no guidance. And what did that client do? They cut out a financial advisor. So maybe they would stop that. [11:12] JD: Okay, but let me go back to my thing of I'm the advisor who's going to sell this, right? [11:17] Chad: Okay, but what are you going to [11:19] JD: charge JD But I'm a good advisor. What are you going to charge? So let's say it's a $2 million plan. I'm normally would have charged 50bps because I want 10k a year. So in this brokerage account thing, I'm going to bill my client $10,000 a year, you know, $25,000 a quarter. And I'm going to go in for those 20 people and I'm going to make sure, Chad, that they understand what they have access to. I'm going to monitor those accounts, make sure that there's not heavy ones in cash. I'm going to sit down with the clerical staff and the people and have an education meeting. This is what I do. And by doing that, I can charge my 10 grand as a billable fee and I can offer investments for next to nothing and save my client 50. [12:07] Chad: Let's, let's walk that down in reality now because you would have charged 50 basis points of your 10 grand when working with, with Aoya, which would have made your life as an advisor much easier. So you've cut into your margin now of profitability by keeping the same, the same revenue amount and taking on additional work. If you're going in and you're helping them pick and select, you're providing advice. If you're setting up a core menu like there was mentioned in the chat bar. If you're trying to say like hey, these are good investments to choose from. Now you've created a diagram and you have to create disclosures for those dias like you've added a shit ton of work cut down. And why would that be good for an advisor practice? [12:47] JD: David, David K. Come on. You've been in this business long enough to not make stupid comments like that. You can charge basis points on a brokerage account. [12:55] Chad: We can't wrap it in but you can charge basis points. [12:58] JD: Charge it. Yeah, I hear you but isn't it true that most advice not most, that it's pretty. Was at least pretty common to charge 50 basis points. Have it be with a package record keeper and then and then also still feel like my job was to go and educate the staff at times and like walk them. So why is that any different? I'm just trying to make sure that they know what they have access to and I'm looking over a 20 person firm. It seems like a reasonable way for me. Let's. [13:28] Chad: Again I'm not saying it's not a reasonable way but when you talk reality now JD let's talk operations. So. So now someone's got to help that HR or payroll understand how to withhold. How does the money get to the brokerage account? Who's doing the batching? What happens when there are struggles in that all of that ends up falling onto the advisor's shoulders. If the advisor is pitching this and bringing it in, that makes shit difficult for the advisor and there's no other group to turn to and be like hey, help me out with this. Clean this up, fix this, ask questions to the advisor's on an island. [14:03] JD: I knew you'd be the advocate for that. But we'll wrap this and move on to a topic of your guys's choice. Actually I'd like to touch on the census thing really quickly. The Schwab census thing before we go but after you've made this defense of it Chad and maybe, I don't know, maybe Justin came in late, he wants to chime in or Robi here but. But you can say that it's. It's not a crazy strategy. [14:29] Chad: Not for the right group. Like Mark said, there are plenty that it will fit really nicely. [14:33] JD: And can you also accept that it might look really sexy for me as an advisor, especially if I'm like an advisor who believes in like a billable fee institutional shared glass of funds, low fee, low cost as Being the best way to provide your fiduciary responsibility is get the fees down as much as you can. This might be a great story for me to walk into smaller plans with high assets ad insurance companies and offer an alternative that I'm going into sales mode here that might seem very logical to the business owner of like, yeah, why am I over here in this expensive kind of package thing when we could kind of just go nuts and bolts here and build this together on our own Anyways. [15:18] Mark: Not, not, not to get all TPA ish on this, but don't forget, right. You might reduce cost in one area while impacting it in others. And so one thing we can't be naive to is that the TPA's job becomes more, we charge more for that. So maybe over here on a 401k with a packaged provider, those costs are extremely low, if not minimal. Then you go out of that, you bring in the brokerage field with trust accounting and all the additional things. And now we're a few thousand dollars to do that job. So we might have reduced it here, but it all leveled out in the long. So again, I think that's a good [15:53] JD: point that we didn't cover. But I think that's probably going to be fairly small. Like even if the tpa, it depends [16:00] Mark: on the size for sure. [16:02] Chad: For sure. [16:03] JD: Yeah. You're still net net a lot more affordable. Okay, let's go to the census. Tell me what, tell everyone out there what I think most of them maybe already know, but maybe they don't. And you brought this to me like a couple weeks ago. Go ahead, Chad. What's going on at a census? [16:18] Chad: And Schwab pcra, it's not a census, it's future plan. Right. A future plan is acquired and bought a bunch of TPAs over the years. They have a whole bunch Schwab PCRA brokerage account clients like we're discussing here. And they've determined that the batching and master account contribution process is more than they want to take on and they're not making enough money. And it would be my guess as to why, by the way. [16:42] JD: I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame them. It's a pain in the ass to do. But. [16:46] Chad: And so they've, I mean they've, best of my knowledge, they've reached out to a ton of these clients with letters that said by April 13, you have to have another TPA because we will be no longer be doing these types of plans. And so we're getting calls from all these groups Saying, hey, we want this, we want a brokerage account, but we can't use Future Plan anymore. We hear you guys are a resource. Can you do this? [17:09] JD: So Future Plan goes out, buys TPAs all across the country. Maybe didn't realize maybe they did. Sounds like maybe they didn't or they didn't know what they're getting into with this. A lot of these TPAs like us, we were at one point in my career we maybe had 60 of these PCRA accounts at Charles Schwab. It's since whittled down to maybe a third of that at this point for us, I think, or maybe half of that. But so they go and buy all these TPAs much like my firm cross country and realize, oh, we've got a lot of these PCRA accounts and like you mentioned, the batching and dealing with it is time consuming and difficult and, and not very scalable. And they say it, let's kick these things out. And so now what? Advisors and clients are scrambling to find solutions. [18:09] Chad: Most of these things don't have advisors that we're running into. Clients are reaching out directly. Businesses are and saying, hey, can you do this? And we're so far what we've prepped our team with is to say, well yes, but let's make sure this is right for you. And, and the dozen or so that I've talked to so far have all said the same thing. We're sick of the long time period between when money is withheld and money hits the accounts our employees are sitting in cash is difficult. And so we see it as an opportunity to say, well then let's review the different record keeper options that have a brokerage account built in and attached to it. So for those that still want to be in your brokerage world, you can, but for the rest they need a package provider. Here's a solution and it gives us an opportunity to refer the business to an advisor. [18:56] JD: I'm kind of, I don't do this often, but on this specialty show I'm scrolling back through the chat bar trying to really get a feel for everyone's comments and input here. We left one thing out in this discussion about brokerage accounts, which is. And for any like newbies that tune into the show from time to time out there, here, this one's for you, newbie. You can also get a brokerage account at your Record keeper, right? So let me really confuse people. So you need a brokerage account like Schwab PCRA or over at E Trade or whatever. And I'm going to use ones and I forget they've been purchased by Schwab. A lot of these things, right? Like TD Ameritrade and has E Trade also been purchased or. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, back to the point. But you can also go to your vendor in most cases and say I would like to add a brokerage account to my package record keeping service. Now I think all the points I made earlier about cutting into the cost and all that kind of stuff, those kind of go out the window. And so you guys tell me if I'm wrong. Now it's really just a thing of convenience. It's like if you'd like another service, AKA some of your participants would like access to equities, we can go ahead and snap on this brokerage account. But usually that vendor is going to have some, some profitability built in there too, right? [20:18] Chad: It really varies. JD There are some vendors that put a cap on the percentage of assets that can stay in the outside brokerage account. Like so let's say you've got a two million dollar plan. Well, only a million can sit in the brokerage account as far as efficiencies go. The contributions all hit the record keeper vendor just like most people are used to in a traditional 401k. And then if I'm a brokerage holder and I want my money into Schwab, I have to then go move it from my core menu into the brokerage within the Voya or Nationwide or Empower system or T Row system. Like all, pretty much all of them have it. Now the only one that really doesn't is Hancock. And so there is some efficiency from an operations standpoint, but from a client standpoint, like it does kind of suck not having the money go directly to the brokerage. I got to go to the record keeper, I got to pull it out, I got to move it out. But they're from a cost perspective too JD if you go to like a nationwide, they charge their asset charge on all the assets. So in my example 2 million dollar plan, 100 goes to brokerage or a million goes to brokerage. A million stays in the core menu. They're going to charge an asset charge on all 2 million. So the advisor comp, for example is paid on all. They used the record keepers. They're only charging it on the money that hits the core menu. [21:37] JD: So these are great nuances for advisors to be aware of when they're going out there and kind of vetting solutions like this because you're right at various. I remember a time when at Nationwide, you could actually dial them differently. So you could have your comp on the regular assets at a certain amount and then you could decide on the brokerage account whether you wanted to match that comp or whether you wanted to bring it down or bring it up or bring it to zero. So it was. You had that kind of ability. But anyways, that's another good point, is there's some, some rules about how much you can have over there. And then obviously you have to take into account the ease of the participant kind of moving money back and forth and whatnot. [22:21] Chad: From a liability standpoint. JD, we had this with that big, big SoCal Cl you've worked with, where you look and say, all right, if we have a brokerage account and it ends up being the CEO, the COO, and one other executive being the only ones that put their money in the brokerage account and they're not paying any of the advisory costs that are built into the plan expenses. These other fees, couldn't that be seen as discriminatory? These guys are contributing towards the cost of plan operations because they're pushing all their money into brokerage. [22:55] JD: You can definitely look like you're. You're failing the equal rights and benefits responsibility. Right? I always feel like that in smaller plans. I hate to see a little plan where. And I'm talking about their brokerage account being with the record keeper, but I've had little clients where they're at, say like principal or something, and then they've got a brokerage account outside of that. So the TPA is kind of marrying together the two data. And the only people that are in the brokerage account are like the big wigs. And now you're really. At this point, I'm like, hey, are you. Is there proof that you're like offering this to Mark hates when I say the rank and file, you know, and can you. Can you prove that you're doing that or is it only the owner that gets this. This option? And then anyways, we won't go down that road. Let's. Let's move on a little bit. Yeah, I hate that term. I like saying rank and file because I'm not one. And so it makes [23:54] Chad: you're such an. [23:59] JD: How about. [23:59] Mark: I don't really know what that means. [24:01] JD: If you guys could think about another kind of topic that you've ran into recently. Client experience, whatever. Get that ready and I'll kind of throw in something fun in between. [24:11] Mark: What? [24:12] JD: I went to the Apple Store yesterday to get a new laptop for my daughter. I Noticed something that was very clear and apparent to me and I don't know if anyone has experienced this out there in the chat bar or. You guys, the Apple store I went to was 80%. No, no lie, no exaggeration. It was 80% old. Old people were in there, boomers. And I feel like they were, they were flooding the Genius bar or they were over in the. Right. There was a class that makes. There was a class going on where some guy was teaching them and some dude had brought his, his tabletop Apple computer to the store because it had stickers on it and everything. And he was learning. And I'm talking about boomers here, people. I feel like boomers are going to Apple stores to get taught how to use their shit on a regular basis. And I was blown away. [25:10] Chad: Dude, they have full blown classes for that at the Apple Store. Like you can sign up when Brooke bought her new Mac, Justin, and it was training on the Final Cut Pro or whatever it is, the Adobe Premiere. Like they, they send and say, we see you're using this. We offer classes, three classes for this. Full blown educational classes for all topics there. [25:31] Justin: Yeah, they've all, they've always done that. It's been pretty cool. I haven't, I guess maybe thinking back on it. Yeah, there's a lot more old people [25:40] JD: very apparent. My. And, and then to back this up, my father in law's been staying here with my mother in law and. And he had a problem with his. I'm sorry Papa. He's been on the show in the past. Look back several years ago, he, his email wasn't working in Outlook and I was busy. I was like, you know, running out the door. He's like, hey jd, my email's not working. I'm like, hey, I'll be back in a little bit. Maybe we can take a look at. He goes, that's okay. I'm just gonna go to the Apple Store and get them to help me. And I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, that's Outlook, buddy. You're here. That does nothing to do with Apple. And then he went to the Apple Store and he came back. I said, how did it go at the Apple Store? And he goes, yeah, they told me that's not their thing. You know, they don't. Yeah, well, okay. [26:28] Justin: You didn't try to save him from that at all. [26:30] JD: I think I did. Oh no. My wife just walked by and looked at me. She heard me. [26:35] Chad: Did you just, you should have just sent them to Brandon. My father in law comes with questions. And I just text Brandon, hey, can you tell him what computer to buy? Brandon's always so helpful. [26:45] JD: I thought that was pretty interesting. Okay, so any one of you guys, [26:49] Justin: real quick for the wheel. Should we make a little bit of a exception? [26:53] JD: No. These people. Does Hackler not pay attention? Second Tuesday, by the way, Hackler Samson beat you to the show today and was the first to comment. Jim Sampson gets 500 extra points towards the chat bar champion. Congratulations to Samson. [27:15] Chad: Well done. [27:16] JD: Imagine you're with me in the old plan design consultants conference room. Been a long week of hard work. You take off your suit, you hang it on the a corner there, and you loosen up your tie. And I say to you as your boss, okay, rank and file, guys, in the last week, what do we. What do we need to talk about? What's going good, what's going bad? What are you learning? Let's talk and pretend like no one's listening. [27:46] Justin: Well, I learned this week that you don't take a safety meeting next to a tree with your helmet off. [27:54] JD: Say that again. [27:56] Justin: What? I haven't worked all week, jd. [27:58] Chad: Oh, [28:00] JD: okay. [28:01] Justin: I've been playing in the snow. [28:02] JD: One problem we're having is Justin has not been producing over the last few days. [28:07] Justin: Okay, you saw a handoff come in. [28:12] Chad: He stockpiles them so that when he goes on a trip, he can say that he sold a plan. That way you can keep justifying these trips. [28:19] JD: I have noticed that a lot of Justin's. Not a lot of. A fair amount of Justin's plans that come in, his new plans have names on them that I feel like he's making them up. So I think we need. [28:33] Justin: I really want to say this one out loud, but I'm not going to do it. You're referring to it. Can't do it. [28:37] JD: Can't do it. [28:37] Chad: Do it. Justin. No. [28:41] Justin: Well, I thought it was a company name. Turns out it's his last name. And I. Yeah, I cannot do that. [28:47] Chad: Hey, I got. I got one for you that's new for me. This is. And it was interesting, too. I have an advisor. It's a. It's a pretty good sized plan. It's north of 10 million. It's. It's big for him for sure. And he really wanted to be the point of contact for everything. And it's the first time I've had this in my career. And I'm not talking like, oh, once we're through implementation. No, he has. He has said to the client, I will review every email that comes through. I will Be the point of contact. I will be. The difference between all of this and. It has created so many fricking headaches. [29:23] JD: This is a great one. This is a great. [29:25] Chad: So many headaches. And it's him trying to be valuable. And I love that he wants to be present and everything, but we're in the middle of implementation right now and trying to deconvert from one provider and transition to another. [29:37] JD: And. [29:38] Chad: And it's. It's the littlest things that are slowing down. Five, six days to get a separation email sent over because it's going from our party to his party, back to ours, then to the record keeper for their edition, then back to us, then over to him again, final approval, then out to the client. And it is bad client experience. [29:56] JD: I'm surprised that it doesn't go more array because that's not typically how systems are set up. [30:04] Chad: It is. It is going away to the point where, like, he wants to approve the docusign before it goes out to the client. So the docusign process, then you have to customize. [30:14] JD: Thanks, David. [30:15] Chad: Yeah, go to this. Go. Go to this person for approval, but not sign. [30:20] JD: I heard. [30:22] Mark: I heard that word and then I just thought maybe I say it wrong. So I took that moment. I was like, I'm not gonna say anything. [30:28] Chad: Potato, potato. [30:30] JD: I do that a lot. No, he's right. He doesn't know about brokerage accounts, but he knows the English language job, David. So that's really good. We get this a lot. Not a lot. This happens from time to time. And I applaud the effort, the idea, the concept, the commitment. Like, you want to be a client advocate. You want to make things easier for your client. You probably also want to like, and I can't blame you for this. Sometimes the industry as a whole, record keepers, hell, I'll even put tpas in that category. Like, sometimes they bumble in front of your client. You know, ask the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. And so you want to be kind of a guardian of that. I think that's good instincts. But I think we're going to say what everyone thinks are going to say here is. Doesn't really flow that well that way. And what you need, I think you need to do is find your role, be really good at your role, and then try to vet out and find partners that you feel comfortable in how they do it. And then here's the real guy in me. Then also understand that if part of your reason for doing that is because you don't want things to go wrong, Things go wrong, dude. It happens sometimes. Like that's part of this world in this industry and it's everyone's job to kind of fix them as they go wrong along the way. You know, not to, not to be a pessimist here. I'm just saying real world and my, [32:02] Chad: my reality check into this would be that there are certain parts of this process where your review and, or handholding is valuable and there are certain parts where it is not. It's just a roadblock. And so I think, and we've done a lot of plans with this, this person. I think that if you spent a little bit of time looking at the process of all of these and saying, here's where I'd like to insert myself. Like, I really want to be involved. When you communicate the contracts, then you're going to create some efficiencies. But when the goal is to be a new cog in the wheel on every single step, it's going to create issues. So I guess what I'm saying is my first experience in this as I would not recommend it. Yeah. [32:51] JD: I think the moral of the story here is find good partners, rely on them, and then do your part as best as you can. And things work out a lot better than that. And if they're not working, then you fix those spots. I would argue in today's day and age, I feel like installations and conversions go way better than they did 15 years ago. Mostly just because of technology and everything. Like, I remember showing up to enrollment meetings with like 150 enrollment books and like the wrong fund list was inside of them or something wrong. You're just like, oh, you know, because someone made a mistake along the way. Anyways, good one, Chad. I like that. Thanks for sharing your story with us here in our conference room. I appreciate that. Robi, how has your week been? Your month? Your. Any. Anyone been bothering you? Any advisors being mean to you in emails? Any clients dump you with a question like, what can we do to help you here at Plan Design Consultants? [34:10] Mark: I was gonna go a way different route. Not work related. Just because I, I never do that type of stuff. No. But here's what I'll say. And I was, I was warned. When Chad leaves, he rarely asks for anything, but he sometimes says like, hey, can you, can you jump on this? Call this meeting for me? One that maybe can't be managed leaves, [34:29] JD: as in he's in Australia, right. [34:31] Mark: When he very rarely, seldomly takes any time off again and of course jump right in. And he's always like, super Easy. It's going to be real simple. [34:41] Chad: It's. [34:41] Mark: It. It's gonna be easy. Everything's already done. It's super simple. It's clean, pretty much. Just a quick call just to confirm, and then you're off. [34:49] Chad: You're done. [34:51] Mark: Did it happen to you, too? [34:52] Chad: It's. [34:53] Mark: It never, ever, ever actually happens that way. Oh, my God. [35:01] Chad: Make it easy. So it'd be easy, right? [35:04] Mark: Wow. [35:05] JD: Yeah. [35:06] Mark: Now when you jump on, you go over something, they're like, this isn't what [35:09] Justin: we want to do. [35:09] Mark: And you're like, well, I'm just here as a secondary person to this process, so. Okay, I'll just. Let me just take the bullets. Let me just strap on the vest, take some bullets, and figure it out from there. [35:18] Chad: Jd, I teed up Mark at a meeting. I had already done the point of sale. It was an owner only. DB2 partners. Should be clean, should be easy. He's got everything. And then I get into my inbox after the meeting, and it's like, we want to rerun the DB with 50k here and 150k there. And here's the last year's K1s, which were wrong. In which we gave you. Go back. Go back to your actual rate. Change this, change that. I'm like, oh, God. I thought it was gonna be easy. I thought he was done. The client had already filled out new client information form. [35:46] JD: No, but it's not Mark's fault. The client just pivoted on a bunch of. Right. [35:50] Mark: No, no, there was no. No issue. It's just funny because Justin, when he. When he. When we were talking about this in our meeting, Chad's like, yeah, it'll be easy. And then Justin goes, no, it won't. I had one. [36:02] Justin: I think the last one, I don't know, there was like, three that you had me do at one point. And two of them were just terrible. One of them, I get on the phone with them, and they have a simple in place that they're currently operating. And so. [36:14] Chad: But they never told us about 401k. [36:16] Justin: Yeah. It's like, oh, Jesus, Chad, take care of it. [36:20] JD: How do you guys do these days with how. How accurate is the information you get about prospects? And how many times do you have to pivot? Because you guys still. [36:33] Chad: 100% of the time we're pivoting. [36:35] JD: You pivot, not in agreements. Are you still kind of working in a zoom world? Like, yeah, you're. You're not majority in terms of. What I'm talking about right now is like, Actual, like, point of sale with a prospect. Like, you're not necessarily. And so I'm wondering how often it is that the advisor, like, describes the situation to you and then you get there and it's something entirely different or not what you were told. [37:04] Justin: I don't know about you guys. For me, it's not that crazy. There definitely are times where we come across scenarios where it's just not accurate at all. But it sounds like Chad goes through it a lot more than I do. [37:15] Chad: Well, when I say 100% of the time, I'm not saying that the information is not accurate, but it's usually not holistic. We need more. Usually and often it's not accurate where the advisor has some information on what they think is important, but then we get in, and the client's objectives are very different than what was laid out to us. Or often because we're doing so much retro work. JD and HCE determination is based upon last year's income. Well, they give us this year's income, and it looks like nobody's an hce. But then for some reason, last year they all got big bonuses and they were HCs. That kind of stuff happens all the time. [37:53] JD: I love. I love that Ackler's like, or it's a hackler. He's like, what do you know? Like, why? I don't know how you guys work, but the honesty is like, there's no acting going on here. I don't know what the they're doing. Chad's in charge of these guys. They got no idea. You know, what I do, Samson or hackler represent is like, I get an email when a new client comes in. Ding. And I look at my phone. I go, ah, just got a new client. Awesome. Ding. Get another one. Great. Good job, Ding. Oh, Justin just brought us in a new client. Why does that name look so weird for that plan? Is he making that up? Yes, maybe. [38:34] Chad: Three months ago, I asked jd, do you want us to pull you from those emails? Like, why are we still copying you in on them? And he said, no, those are my favorite emails. Copied. [38:43] JD: Hit on him. [38:44] Mark: This is my favorite one. [38:49] JD: All right. [38:49] Justin: Actually, did you guys run across clients often? Sorry, jd, I might have derailed you there, but [38:57] Chad: I had one. [38:59] Mark: Yeah, that was loud. Jesus. [39:05] Chad: Clients who. [39:06] Justin: Who don't pay attention to the design of what they're doing or anything like that. I had one particular client recently. We signed up years ago, and they. We had. We wrote the exclusion for the safe harbor match. It was only for the nhces. It was going to be provided to it, but we had one employee go in and out of it. And so we came back to him this year and said, hey, this employee was an HCE last year. You owe them like 10 grand. They flip the F out. Are you guys coming across anything like that? And are you guys actively, you know, engaging with the client on, you know, just a reminder every year, like, hey, keep track your HDE status. [39:42] JD: Hackler, be nice. I like that Michelle was asking questions. It'd be fun. [39:47] Chad: I think Hackler's about to. I think he's saying, like, hey, this isn't. [39:51] Justin: We should. [39:53] Chad: This isn't advice. [39:54] JD: We should do a segment where we answer questions like that. [39:57] Mark: No, I'm. I'm pretty sure to. Hackler is basically saying, like, no. He's like, don't ask these guys. [40:05] Chad: Yeah, [40:08] Mark: he's gonna direct messenger offline. Just talk. Talk to me offline. [40:12] Chad: Talk to the 401k fix it guy. [40:14] JD: Hey, yo, Michelle, let me talk to you for a second. [40:17] Mark: Let me talk to you about your. [40:19] JD: Your full 3B plan with the E all match. So I want to tell you, like, it's not that big of a deal. They haven't found the 5,500. Like, who cares, man? Like, the government's not going to look for them. They. So I suggest you just tell them to look the other way. Continue on. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. [40:38] Mark: Actually, what. What Hackler's going to say is, here's. Here's my guy. Jason, talk to him. [40:44] JD: Whoa. Hackler, watch it. EDC screws it up. I fix it. [40:50] Mark: Sorry, Justin, I don't remember what your question was. [40:52] Justin: Dude, I'm not going to go over it again. [40:54] JD: I forgot. [40:54] Justin: It doesn't matter. [40:56] Chad: Jd. [40:57] Justin: JD was so bored with my question that he went right to Michelle. [41:01] Mark: Michelle, throw some more questions out. I love it. [41:04] JD: I think what just was talking about it, and I'm going to turn into a prospecting thing. I used to tell advisors, when you walk into a prospect, have a few questions about their provisions to ask them, like an existing plan. Like, ask them, like, what their entry dates are or, you know, the vesting schedule or, you know, is there an excluded group? Or you can pick a bunch of them. I'm sure Chad can give you some great ones to ask. And when they can't answer those questions to me, it's a great moment in the meeting. It's like, well, wait a second. How the are you administering this plan on your end if you can't tell me what the entry date is. And I will tell you, as someone who sits in on a lot of fiduciary review meetings, I see problems unearth themselves years after, you know, like, like where the client's running a plan that's not aligned with a document and. Or the record keeper's doing something on their end that's not aligned with the document and no one figures it out until years down the line. So it's a real deal. Justin, to point your point, it happens all the time. Or clients typically understand all the nuances of their. The design that was laid out for them. [42:19] Chad: One that I often ask Justin, for those listening and this should be one that you throw in the hopper is, is or say I say, I want to make sure that your plan provisions align with your employee handbook. And I mean, probably 60% of the time, their employee handbook, what they're handing out to employees, where they translated provisions from, what was the original SPD over is wrong. Like, almost every time they've made amendments, something has changed. And they never update the employee handbook and so. Or vice versa, they change the employee handbook, but don't amend the IRS documents. And now you have this disconnect. That's a fun one for me. And we, I tell that to clients that we're onboarding too, is when we get through the doc design call, make sure you're updating your employee handbooks, whatever you're hiring out or handing out to new hires, not the spd, but what you've written in your own verbiage. [43:15] JD: And here's the next, here's the next problem is you can, you can train someone upon installation and really kind of like dot your I's and cross your T's. And then there's turnover and everyone else, it's like, so that person leaves 18 months down the line. And I'll be totally honest. I mean, for vendors and TPAs to be cognizant and run any kind of scalable business at any kind of size and to be able to like, realize like, oh, if you're even in the know that someone at HR has been replaced and now they're doing, no one would train them properly to execute on it or someone trained them improperly. There you go, bada bing, bada boom. Mistakes start happening, then you got to fix them and clean them up down the line. So it's a real deal. It's definitely something that needs the attention of everyone. [44:10] Justin: It makes me wonder my specific situation if even like, you know, payroll, vendors or whatnot automatically toggle that person over or Not. Or if it's just one thing to where it's like, hey, this person was an HCE last year. Now they're an nhce on day one, we got to start giving them a. A match. [44:31] Chad: I didn't follow you there. [44:33] Justin: So in my. In my particular situation, excluded HCs from safe harbor match this whole time, they become an athlete, they become an hce, and then all of a sudden they fall off from being an HCE again. Does the system recognize that automatically? [44:46] JD: Oh, dude, first payroll. The attack is. I find the attack up all the time like that, and I almost don't blame them. I'm in a situation right now which I can't really disclose, but where the record keeper is really up on a nuance like that and it's going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix it. And it's exactly what you're talking about, Justin. It's just a little nuance in their system that they hadn't corrected. Anyways, this. This is. This. To me, the. The optimist in me says this is what makes this industry so great for people that want to actually get into the weeds and understand the details because they can provide immense amounts of value in these situations where kind of people who are just dabbling, it's going to be impossible for them to understand all these types of moving pieces that you're talking about. So kudos to the 401k Pro. And if you're someone out there who's trying to get in this business, learn all the details because you. That's how you create value for your clients. I'm going to talk. It's not talking. I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you some news that I'm pretty sure has not hit the general, like wires yet. And I've. I've hinted at it on this show the last few weeks, but I haven't. [46:08] Chad: And you didn't even share it with us, right? It was like a month ago. You hinted at it. You wouldn't even share with us. [46:14] JD: Well, there's two of them and I'm. I'm gonna give one of them today. And hopefully I don't get in trouble for this, but if I do. Whatever. Let me drink some vodka to get some courage. [46:29] Mark: Anyone have any bets here? [46:30] JD: Are we for j. Spill it out. [46:33] Chad: Right. [46:33] Justin: I can't bet. I know what it is. [46:35] Chad: It's an acquisition. [46:36] JD: No, no, no. It's a. It's a company going kaput. [46:40] Chad: Oh, okay. [46:41] JD: So we had. I believe we had their CEO on the show and We've also been had one of their people who's a close friend of the show and there's other people I know that are connected to this company. But so if you remember, it's the, it's the UK backed smart. So smart is in the UK and they kill it in what's a 401k plan over there and a pooled employer plan. Well, they came over here and created Smart USA and had 200 plus million and you know, funding behind them. And they originally came to the market and were going to tackle pool employer plans. And I was kind of questioning the CEO about kind of their, their model and the pricing and I, you know, in my ness, it was one of those shows where I said I've done this a couple times to our guests. So I apologize. Not really. But I said like I don't see how this works out. Like I don't, I understand how you're making enough money. Well then they went and they, they pivoted and then if you remember, we did some breaking news stuff on here where they were like going to partner with Trans Am or someone and they were going to be the technology. Then they had bought stadium and we're, we're doing all this stuff. Like they really had pivoted from the original model which I thought was to come in and, and kind of, kind of crush the who employer plan market. And then they started doing other things and I said several times on this show like I don't, I don't get it, like I don't understand. And even Danielle got, Daniela got mad at me. Remember I was telling. She didn't really. Yeah, but she had called me and was like, hey, what's going on? Anyways, they're done. They fired their entire staff and Smart USA is, is no more. So I hate that people lose their jobs, but it kind of feels good to say I told you so. [48:51] Chad: That's what Mark feels like with stock tips every week. Do you know any, any news from Daniella? Because she's obviously a sought after professional. [49:00] JD: She'll land on her, she'll land on her feet for sure. She's a big woman. She knows she's a pro. But no, I haven't discussed this with her in any way, so. But she'll be fine. [49:12] Chad: Yeah, she's an adult is what he's saying. And a professional. [49:16] JD: Well, she was one of the industry pros and I don't want to talk too much about her. I love her, she's great. But she was one of the industry pros. That they attacked. So she was a real 401k person that they had brought in. My concern is obviously not with her. She knows what she's doing. My concern was these people coming in that didn't know what they're doing, trying to quote, unquote, disrupt our industry. And I'm thinking the whole time, like, one plus one equals two. Like, this doesn't make sense what you're doing. So anyways, they've gone under. I gotta. Not now. Let me be clear. Smart. The company is not gone under. They're crushing it over in Europe. Just the concept of coming here in the US and I don't know how much of the $200 million they spent, but they had offices in Nashville and obviously it hired a lot of people. And so there you go. Can you try that? You know, Danielle will be fine. She'll figure out where she's going. I got another one for you. One of these disruptors that is also secretly laying off a bunch of people. But we'll save that one for. For our next show. [50:28] Chad: Come on. [50:31] Mark: I have a. I have a question. When's our movie coming out? [50:35] JD: I told you, it comes out in March of 2024. Scribble Scribble April of 24. Scribble Scribble May of 2020. [50:43] Mark: I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna keep asking until it comes out. [50:48] JD: How about manage accounts? I've seen some news. We don't do headlines on the show, but I've seen some articles recently about record keepers. Samson doesn't like Samson. [51:03] Chad: Is there anything you do like Samso? [51:05] JD: Okay, since this is the no Plan Plan show and we're. We're coming to the end here, why don't you kick in the chat bar? Something you'd like? Us? Yeah, thanks, Chad. There you go. Give us a topic. No, it's quick. On manage accounts. I'm seeing record keepers starting to have press releases announcing that they have their own managed accounts coming to fruition. When I first understood managed accounts, like 15 years ago, I had. I was working with a vendor. Nationwide Financial came out with it. That was really my first exposure to it. And they had like three or four options that you could choose that were independent money managers. So you just select one, then eventually they had their own. And I remember thinking, you, you can't have your own. Like this is a managed account. You want some third party independent to do this. Well, I feel like that's shifting a lot now and it's going to become second nature for the record keeper. Themselves to have a managed account. Are you guys okay with this? And more importantly, are your advisors okay with this? Like am I making a, a mountain out of a molehill? [52:16] Chad: It's. I'll comment first. When you had asked at the beginning of this for, for topics, I wrote down three of them. One was plan transitions on takeovers. It used to be fairly common to say we'll do a mapping. And then you started seeing the push towards a TDF transition. And now I'm starting to see a heavy push towards the managed account transition from these record keepers. And it's because they're getting more of a hold, they're getting more of a sliver. More profitability. Yeah, Justin, they're getting, they're getting more out of it. But. And I think that too many advisors are turning a blind eye to it and allowing the record keeper to dictate what type of transition is going to happen from when you're moving a plan from one to another. And I personally, I think the managed account transition is not the way to go. Just like we talked about defaulting people into managed account, it's higher expense, it's got usually more headwind. I don't think if you're defaulting, if you're transitioning and you're, you're moving from everybody's existing holdings and elections that they made and you're moving them over that you shouldn't be moving them into a managed account. And I'm seeing more and more of it right now. [53:25] JD: I guess I'm trying to be the pure guy that says I'd love to see Todd Kading and Leaf House like take over the world or in some of his peers, you know, this independent type of money manager that's doing manage accounts versus the record keepers, trying to find their way back into profitability. And jd, why are you so against the record keepers being profitable? I have to look in the mirror and ask myself that question. [53:59] Chad: Because they're massively profitable is why? It's because they're sponsoring golf tournaments and making billions of dollars. [54:06] JD: Okay, thanks Chad. That makes me feel better, but I just feel like we want less proprietary things. It would just make us look better and feel better as an industry. If we're to your point, we're less force feeding people into things that make revenue for the big institutions and instead providing choice for people to decide. Like yes, I would like a managed account service. Well, let's that one out. I like Leaf House. I like this. [54:35] Justin: I don't mind them having it because a lot of times they say, hey look, as long as you offer it, we're going to give you a 10 bib discount on our pricing. They don't. Employees don't have to be automatically put into it or that doesn't have to be defaulted. So I'm not. As opposed to it for that purpose alone. Cuts down their cost. [54:53] JD: Don't forget though that I'm going to be conspiracy theorists a little bit. You give them an inch and they take them, they take a mile. You know, it's like, it's kind of like. [55:03] Chad: That's my point. [55:04] JD: It's like the Patriot act of like, oh, they, the plans hit 9, 11. Now we need to, to survey everyone and listen to their phone calls and then 20 years later that's still in place. It's like if you let them in the door, then you'll turn around and in 10 years it's like, oh wow, we're just defaulting everyone into the managed account and then that defaults into the guaranteed income, which is all proprietary. [55:31] Chad: And these guys, so, so don't be naive though, jd. Even when you have the outside managed account that's made available through the record keeper, usually everything you just stated still holds true. [55:42] JD: They're gonna pay them, right? They gotta pay to. [55:44] Chad: They want to be on the record keeping platform because they're asset gatherers. Okay, why is the record keeper gonna let you be on there? Because you're gonna gather assets. But we want our fixed and we want our this inside the Dimanish account and so it's there. So they're, they're gonna get their sliver. [55:59] JD: I should know better. I'm. I should. I should do more like journalistic work and ask. I thought you were gonna say that. That if Leaf House. Sorry, we're just using an example, Todd. It could be any man wants to be on Record Keeper X. If Managed Account Service Y wants to be on Record Keeper X does. Does Record Keeper X charge Managed Counselor was wide to be on the platform like a certain amount of the assets or what? Like I don't know the answer to that question, to be honest with you. [56:28] Chad: Well I, I don't know the answer to that either. But my point there was that Record Keeper X is going to go to managed Account Y and say hey, yes, we'll put you on our platform as an option, but you need to be using these slivers of profitability for us. [56:45] JD: Seems grosser almost. I don't. Don't you impact my actual investment strategy with your demands so I can be on your platform I don't like that at all. [56:55] Chad: It goes back to what we've always said about these proprietary requirements. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. If they're meeting the metrics and they're prudent, then why should we not leverage them to get a lower overall cost? Now if they're not, if the fixed account is not as good as the others, if the target date fund that they want to make as an option as default is not as good as the others, out. If they're not meeting your ips, then you have an obligation to say it. We're not getting the three basis point discount. We're not going to use it. But if they are, then lower that, lower the headwind of the participant and use it. [57:32] JD: Hang on, I'm trying to interact in the chat bar. I like this. It's fun. [57:36] Chad: Brian, I'm not disagreeing, but these good 338s, they need assets. They're asset gatherers, dude. They're looking, they're looking to bring in dollars. And the way to do that is to get in the pockets of these big record keepers. [57:49] JD: Although I agree with Brian's statement, I feel like especially he added 338 there, by the way, which is a, you know, they all are typical, but they don't have to be. But they are. But he's highlighting something. You're 338, so you have a responsibility to do this the right way. If there's a conflict of interest, it's not a good thing. That is interesting. We have so much conflict of interest in this industry and we just kind of are okay with it. Even recently certain like judgments have been in favor of it, like saying it's okay if it's prudent. And I just feel like it's why a lot of our consumers don't like us or don't trust us. I should say is because a lot of this conflict of interest. Let me kick one other thing at you that I did have recently at a meeting. I was kind of shocked and I didn't know this was happening. The client had asked the advisor to come to the table with some fixed guarantee solutions. Okay, you know, like alternatives to money market, but like dick type stuff. And because the client was smart enough to know that interest rates were high and that they could walk into their local bank and get a 5% or a 4.9% guaranteed rate of return on their money. And they were concerned that the money market in their 401k plan or the, or the guarantee that they had was. Was low 2% or whatever. The advisor did his job and went to the record keeper. And it's not like JD to leave names out, but I'm going to leave names out because it's kind of shocking. And the record keeper came back with some options for the client. And the advisor presented these options to the client. And I was fucking, I was like embarrassed sitting on the car. I wasn't saying anything but just listening. They were so pitiful. And, and when they came back to them, they said one of these options. I wish I had all the details. But was like, okay, we can give you this guaranteed account, but only if you literally like we're going to put in our own money market account and you have to commit a certain amount of assets that are going in the money market account and you can't that like there was a, there was a but if type of thing to it and just, just blatantly. And then the one that wasn't a but if there was no strings attached, it was like a 2.4 or 5% return. And the CFO literally asked the question of like, why can't I walk into a bank and get twice that? But we've got, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of. And this is all we can get in our fixed. And so it's kind of my question, you guys, that the answer that the vendor gave was, well, this is not your typical. This isn't like walking down your bank. This is actually a sub account. And so we work among these other accounts. And so we just can't get the same kind of return that a bank would. And so our hands are kind of tied. And I just felt, I, I want to say to my industry, I think that answer was correct. But why don't we have that? If a Bank can offer 4.9%, why can't we offer 4.9% right now? [1:01:22] Chad: We can. And a lot of the record keepers have the ability to dial up that fixed spread. But what they do in return then is raise the asset charge. So like when we request. [1:01:33] JD: Yes, that's right. That was the option. They're going to raise the asset charge by like 15 basis points or something. Sorry. Yeah, you're right. [1:01:41] Chad: Because remember, they're always looking to make spread, right JD So if, if the rate of return out there with the bank is 4.9, they want to make 6.9 and the bank, they're going to raise the asset charge to make up the difference. [1:01:56] JD: Yeah. Well, do you do understand the frustration of the client Right. Like there's a 401k plan. [1:02:03] Chad: Let me, let me throw another variable in that was not as prevalent when, when you were selling. When I got into this space that is. Now these wholesalers can also come in and be like hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have the, the fixed account be at 2% and that gets them a higher payout in commission versus if they were to lower the spread. The same thing with the asset charge. Many of them can come in and be like hey, I can increase my profitability with a 42 basis point asset charge or I can sell this down at bare minimum which would be a 34% asset charge. [1:02:42] JD: Do you know the analogy I would make there? The fees at plan Design consultants are 17, 50 and 45. If you're in a revenue sharing product where we get five basis points. But I say to you the sales team. But hey, if you can go out there and sell someone on 5,000 base and 200 per head, great. I'll give you guys some slush in between. Not a problem. You know like that seems never once ever. [1:03:13] Chad: Don't even put that in the atmosphere. Not only have you never said that to us. [1:03:18] JD: No. [1:03:19] Chad: But, but we have stated pricing. Our advisors know it like we'll custom price as the plan gets larger. But we don't go out and adjust our pricing to create additional profitability for the. [1:03:30] JD: No, I know but I feel like what you just explained is what the record that some of these record keepers are doing the wholesalers. Isn't that what you just said? So yeah, I'm gonna give the analogy like yeah, that would be crazy if we were doing that. But why is it okay for them to do that? Like why this is again this thing of trust. And I wasn't trying to be negative Nancy today. Why did Nancy get attached to negative? I know lots of very nice Nancy's. I was just simply saying that we keep doing these things that create distrust. [1:04:07] Chad: Agreed. [1:04:08] JD: Should it be mistrust or distrust, let me know. [1:04:11] Chad: That's not just our industry. By the way. Justin, think about working at Veil Robert resorts. Think about working at alarming you like all of those companies as sales guys we had opportunity to create spread and what was charged. So it, it's not just the financial [1:04:26] JD: services good people that scares the out of me. That sentence you just said, the ability to create spread as a consumer. I don't like that sentence. [1:04:38] Chad: It's why. And even so I'm going back in the day I did. I sold doors and windows for Lowe's When I was in junior college and we absolutely had the ability to say, like, oh, you're gonna buy this Pella window. We'll do a markup. We can go to as low of a markup as 10%. We go as high as a markup of 23%. And I always went low. More sales. A lot of guys would sell one tenth of what I did with huge markups. [1:05:03] JD: Okay. [1:05:03] Chad: And just depending on who you ran into that day inside the Lowe's store. Right. If I'm walking down the aisle and you talk to me, you're getting a different price than if you walk down the aisle and you talk to somebody else else. [1:05:14] JD: We'll wrap it with this one and do Chatbot Champion. [1:05:16] Mark: I. [1:05:18] JD: When, when I want to get a vendor to quote me on something, I. I try to get them to quote me either through email or on the phone. Say, example, like, I want to get my windows cleaned on my house. I would need the quote. I've got this many windows. Give me the quote. Because if they come to my house and they see the two Lambos parked and the G wag and the mansion, all of a sudden, my price goes up by 10x, you know, and so that's that spread you're talking about. So even as bad for the rich people, we don't like the spread either, bro. [1:05:52] Chad: All right, that's been a while. [1:05:54] JD: Chap. Our champion. My vote for chat. Our champion is a classic. And even though he even offended my company at times, I still respect his chat bar skills. The short wearing Will Hackler. Oh, is he number one on the leaderboard right now? That shouldn't matter. [1:06:13] Justin: You can't take it back. [1:06:14] JD: I should not factor that into my choice. I should not. And I want you guys to understand that too. You do not not vote for people because they've been winning all the time. And because they're good. You vote for the best of the best. Go, Chad. Who's your vote? [1:06:33] Chad: So I had to comment too many times to Samson not to put him in the running. [1:06:38] JD: Damn. [1:06:39] Justin: How did Brian get negative 205 points? [1:06:43] JD: You haven't seen this? [1:06:45] Mark: Yeah, don't. Don't tell Justin. Make him go to research on LinkedIn. [1:06:49] JD: It's funny though. [1:06:50] Mark: He's doing your homework, Justin. [1:06:52] JD: Yeah, he created this himself. He's out there being a little. [1:06:56] Justin: Okay, all right. Okay. [1:07:00] JD: Samson Hackler. Justin. [1:07:04] Justin: Yeah, it was between those two and I gotta give the edge to hack. [1:07:09] JD: Oh, you're gonna go double. Okay. [1:07:12] Justin: I gotta do those two. Yep. [1:07:16] Mark: So see, I always like throwing a curveball. And I. I think it's amazing. [1:07:21] Chad: I'm. [1:07:21] Mark: I'm voting for Michelle and because she had a very professional, wonderful question that we all just basically ignored. Although I'm almost for guaranteeing that Chad wrote her directly and was like, don't worry, I'll answer it. Because we're. [1:07:39] JD: We're filming a show right now. [1:07:43] Chad: I already wrote LinkedIn. [1:07:45] Mark: And then will Hackler is going to try. Yeah, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be fun. So I'm. I'm voting for Michelle because she came into this thinking that the five of us sitting here were professional enough to answer her question and that we politely did not, and we all laughed about it. And she's still here. So kudos to Michelle. Kudos to Michelle. [1:08:06] JD: Okay. Okay. I like that. Well, Brandon, you're the decision maker tonight. You got Hackler, you got Samson, you got Michelle. I believe that's for your choice for 1, 000 points towards the Chat Bar Champion leaderboard. I thought I was going to get to vote for my own. I was going to do Brian, but it's out of those. I. [1:08:33] Mark: You know, he's been kind of an ass, but he's been consistent, and I like it. [1:08:40] JD: Hackler. Hackler. Wow. Okay. Taking a. Taking a jump on the leaderboard. A significant jump. Congratulations, Will Hackler. Who knows? Maybe the prize is, like, [1:08:55] Chad: shorts with the retireholics. [1:08:58] Mark: No, let's get some of those. Those. Those khaki pants that have the zipper that when it's summertime comes, those zippers come off. [1:09:08] JD: Convertibles. Let's add those to no per Dope for a future show. That's great. Little convertible pants. No per Dope. I like that. [1:09:16] Justin: The simple answer. Do better. [1:09:18] Chad: Do better. [1:09:20] Justin: She's gonna kill me for that. [1:09:22] JD: What? [1:09:22] Chad: Katie asked if she got points. [1:09:24] JD: Oh, yeah, Katie. [1:09:25] Mark: Oh, well, I was gonna say, katie, we all love you. And, yeah, just because you show up doesn't mean you're guaranteed to win every time. [1:09:33] Chad: Yeah, you do get points for being nominated, though. And you were nominated. Katie. [1:09:37] JD: Katie, don't say the spacing is off on the graphics. A thousand. [1:09:42] Chad: That's. [1:09:43] Mark: Hey, that's a couple. That's like one and a half points right there. [1:09:46] JD: By the way, do you think we're sober when we make these graphics? We're not. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to another episode of Retire. Alex, it's been eight long years that we've been doing this show, and. Nine years. Yeah, maybe nine years. Jesus Christ. And we'll see in Two weeks. Well, I shouldn't say that in two weeks, we'll see you on the first, third Thursday of each month, but I believe that's in two weeks. And we got a special guest. I believe it's the dude who was on our flashlight segment last show. Will be our special guest. What's the name of the company? Chad? [1:10:27] Chad: Payroll Integrations. [1:10:28] JD: So Payroll Integrations will be here for a full episode of. You know, [1:10:34] Chad: he knows nothing about our space, so we'll have to be specific with our questions. But it'd be good to pick his brain a little bit more. [1:10:40] JD: These are the best kind of guests. The ones that know Jack. [1:10:44] Chad: I just. [1:10:44] Mark: I was impressed. [1:10:45] JD: You called it flashlight, not spot. [1:10:47] Chad: Yeah, I know. [1:10:48] JD: I had to think about it. I think about it. [1:10:56] Chad: All right. I'm going to a fantasy baseball draft. [1:10:59] JD: All right. Go have another shrimp on the barbie, Chad and Silent J, I love you. Glad to have you back on from the snow, Roby. Yeah, buddy. Buddy. [1:11:14] Chad: Keep the ship floating, Roby. Keep the ship floating for us. [1:11:16] JD: Yeah, bro. By the way, Brandon's gonna go. [1:11:19] Mark: I'm gonna go back to bed. [1:11:21] JD: So, you guys, Brandon's going to, like, Machu Picchu or Tibet or something sometime in the future. I don't know. Okay. [1:11:27] Mark: Ju. The deep jungle of Peru [1:11:33] JD: and hack for the win. Samson for the here early points. The. The exciting chap. Our champion leaderboard continues. We will see you at the next show. It'll be a regular show. Regular show format. Love you guys. Oh, is Kush here? No, he took off on. [1:11:52] Chad: He left. [1:11:53] JD: Okay. [1:11:54] Justin: Yeah, he left. [1:11:54] JD: Peace out, everybody. [1:11:56] Justin: I see you.