Digital Transformation for 401(k) Advisors: Tech & Branding

[0:00] JD: Coming to you direct from the Fi360 conference here in San Diego, California. We've got a live audience back here. [0:25] Chad: That sounded really good. There's only four people in here, but it sounded great. Where did you all come from? Okay. [0:36] JD: Long fight. Before we get started, we have a special guest. I don't know how this happened. I don't know who got blackmailed or what went on, but we have the president of FI360 here. I want Mark to do the honors. Can you please introduce our guest by his first name and his last name? Yeah, of course I can. Well, please welcome Matt Wazowski. Was [1:03] Matt Wolnowitz: Wolnowitz. [1:03] JD: There you go. [1:05] Chad: That seems way easier. [1:07] JD: It's not that hard. I could have done it if I wanted to. [1:09] Chad: I failed English. [1:11] JD: But every episode of Retireaholics, we have to have a beer of the episode. And today we are gonna have Stone IPA from down here in San Diego. Are you gonna, like, give us a little deal on it, Chad? [1:23] Chad: Well, I mean, you know Stone better than I do. Been around for quite some time. Typically an IPA type beer, a West coast ipa. [1:30] JD: These are all things he reads off the back of the book. [1:32] Chad: I usually get, like, 12 words that describe beers, and I just shuffle between them, like grainy or earthly or something like that. So we can give it a try, then you can let me know what you want. [1:41] JD: Cheers, boys. [1:41] Matt Wolnowitz: Cheers. [1:42] JD: Here we go. If you're in the audience, please feel free to cheer with us. Now, we like to do something else on these episodes. We like to have a word of the episode as well. And how this works, Matt is throughout this entire presentation, if you say this word, then you must drink from the colorful drink in front of you. And I think today it's a Mai Tai. Okay, perfect. Right? The word of the episode. And after I say it this last time, we can't say it anymore. Will be. It's an easy one. Conference. So if you say the word, you have to drink. [2:16] Chad: Start thinking of alternatives really quickly. [2:18] JD: Okay. To kick it off, what I'd like to ask you, Mr. Big Shot President of Fi360. Oh, yeah. In a minute or less. Take a minute and a half, if you'd like. Tell us, what is Fi360? I know that the audience out here probably has a pretty good idea, but those people out on the World Wide web. What is Fi360, sir? Yeah. [2:38] Matt Wolnowitz: Fi360 is a firm that was founded back in 1999 to bring a fiduciary standard of care to the investment landscape long before the Fiduciary word or the F word was sexy like it is today. [2:52] JD: And you guys obviously are putting on a great conference. [2:58] Chad: That was quick. Boom. How come you're always the first to fail that? [3:03] JD: JD Great people here, attendance north of 700, great speakers, the right people. You got good entertainment. So you're obviously doing something. How do you see this thing next year where you're going? What's it going to be like? How's it going to improve? How's it going to change? How do you see this thing five years from now? [3:22] Matt Wolnowitz: It's a great question. When we were here two years ago, same spot, same time, we had 549 attendees. This year we've got 738. So we're pretty excited about how the. About how the conference has grown [3:38] Chad: to your left. I can hand this one to you. [3:42] JD: I'd like to say that I already. Twice. [3:46] Matt Wolnowitz: Oh, darn. [3:47] Chad: He needed to see how well it did. It's been worse, Trust me. [3:54] Matt Wolnowitz: That's pretty good. [3:55] JD: Did I hear you earlier saying that you already have the location picked out five years from now? [4:01] Matt Wolnowitz: Yeah, we're actually. We're booked through 2024. [4:04] JD: So what are you, like the Olympics or something? How do you know where are you going? [4:08] Matt Wolnowitz: Well, one of the challenges is just as we've grown, we have a hard time finding properties that can accommodate the event. Right. And rather than going into real settle, rather than going into a large conference center. Did I say conference again? Oh, man, this is. [4:30] JD: Hey, by the way, just so you know, when you're in the middle of speaking, you can save them up and catch up when you get done. Mark, Tally fun. He'll tally for you. All right, you're in for. [4:42] Chad: You're on like 30. [4:43] JD: So for our. [4:44] Matt Wolnowitz: So for our event next year, we're headed back to Nashville. And then in two years, we are going to go to Austin, Texas. [4:52] JD: A great idea might be to get the retireholics at one of those events up on that big stage to kick off the event. Something like that. Just throwing it out there. Something for you to chew on. You don't have to make any decisions now. You can do it later. [5:07] Chad: Just. But Bark county, you do have two [5:11] JD: drinks, so go ahead and catch up on those. We're not giving you any special treatment here. [5:17] Matt Wolnowitz: I don't need any. [5:18] JD: What's the main topic for today? We are going to talk about a shift to digital. Okay. And our intended audience is financial advisors, retirement plan advisors. So that's kind of who we're talking to and what does that mean I want to break it into two areas? I want to talk about operations and service and what a shift to digital means in that. And I want to talk about, yes, branding and marketing and what a shift to digital means in that space. When it comes to operations and service, I think it's fairly straightforward. If you can use technology to make things more efficient, to make things easier on you as an advisor, to improve your client services through this new, modern technology, that's a good thing, right? [6:05] Chad: Yeah. [6:06] JD: You guys, help me. Give me some specific areas where people are doing this. [6:10] Chad: As we thought about this, my mind immediately goes to scalability because most of the folks here and most of the folks we talk to are at that breaking point where they have 10 plans, 12 plans are graduating to 20 plans, to 30 plans, and they're looking and saying, how do I scale my model? And I think from a move to digital standpoint, one area that always gets overlooked is initial data collection. You're bringing that client on board, yet you're still sending them a PDF of your contract, or you're still sending them a PDF of gathering their company name and their ein and some of their general information. Why have we not moved into digital where they can click a link on their phone and input this information for you and have it mapped directly into your CRM? I feel like we're an industry that is behind in that way and then something as simple as DocuSign, I mean, we can have our contracts DocuSign, yet we're an industry that has not moved there yet. We're from where we're at tech based Silicon Valley up in Northern California. I'm starting to see advisors do that because they're operating in the VC and in the tech space. And I will tell you that the feedback is phenomenal and immediate of the difference that the client experiences when they're embracing that mobile or that tech or that move to digital in that space. [7:22] JD: What do you think the lag is though? Why are more people not doing this? I think that record keepers, TPAs, those types of businesses had to collect data. We had to have databases and CRMs basically to do workflows, to do tasks, to make sure things got done by deadlines, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think the advisor's job, albeit just as important, is a little more loose in terms of deadlines and certain dates and things. So not mandatory to do. But I'm with Chad. I think if they can collect that data, it's going to one help them do a much Better job. But let's take it a little further. If you've got that data, say participant emails right now, you can start to communicate with the participants in these plans. And I know emails, that's nothing new, but I think it still falls in this shift to digital because how many advisors are out there using email blasts like we might with mailchimp to our clients and our advisor partners to educate, communicate, brand themselves to the participants in the plans. We're a tpa, so we're more in this small micro market a lot. I don't see that being done nearly enough, if at all, in many times. [8:36] Chad: Well, as we talked about this, one of you all brought up that isn't that something the record keeper often bridges the gap on? Yeah, I think they do. But not every record keeper is the same. So if you're talking about an advisor building scalability, you've got 20 plans with eight different record keepers. You can't rely on their communication techniques. And so having the appropriate data collection up front, and I think it allows you to bridge perhaps not only into the education side, but we see the big buzzword, retirement readiness. And I have to imagine, Matt, you're probably seeing and hearing it as much as we are. If you are embracing digital, people are starting to utilize that and even the retirement readiness space. Right. Education and getting folks involved in their plan. [9:19] Matt Wolnowitz: Yeah, I mean, I think the retirement readiness, you know, the gamification, there's a lot of talk around that. And you know, I mean, really and truly, we're interested in improving participant outcomes. So if gamification is a way to help the end participant see the benefit of contributing more, it's good for everybody. I think one of the challenges though, that I've heard from the firms that are really focused in this space is at the end of the day, somebody has to pay for it. And is it going to be the individual plan participant? Is it going to be the plan or is it going to be the advisor that's willing to write the check for that? I think that that's one of the challenges right now, slowing it down in driving broader adoption. [10:01] JD: That'll sort itself out. That'll get. [10:04] Chad: Somebody's going to cut into margins because we still tend to be an industry racing to the bottom at this point. Until as we're going to touch on in a moment, we can change that, that thought as to where we need to be going. [10:14] JD: Back to the subject at hand. If you're an advisor and you want to become more modern, you don't necessarily have to Create these things yourself, as Matt's talking about. They exist, they're out there, these tools, these tech that you can adopt. Snap onto your own client situations and kind of get that. [10:32] Chad: And I even, I think if we're talking about onboarding a client, what about the service beyond that? We're sitting here at FY360. I think it warrants at least stating [10:41] JD: that's some tech that makes efficiency and [10:43] Chad: how do you use it when you communicate to these folks? [10:46] Matt Wolnowitz: Conference, [10:49] JD: that is the thing. [10:50] Matt Wolnowitz: I can't believe I said that. [10:51] JD: You're a retireal veteran. That's what you do when you want to sit. I think you're going to need mine. Fi360 and scoring these funds and helping advisors and their clients with a prudent system to remove and replace and monitor and IPS that's utilizing tech. And you have done that for them. And so I know everyone out here is aware of that and using that. But to those advisors out there in the world, if you're not using something like that to consolidate all your plans and all your businesses and make life easy for yourself, easy and understandable for your clients, and I'm not trying to do an advertorial for you here, we have that scheduled tomorrow. But it's the truth. It's the truth. They need that type of stuff to make their business work better. [11:37] Chad: We talked about it this morning. But specific to having that technology, I think the move to digital for me, while it is much about leveraging that, it's about how you're going to communicate those results to the client. Are you simply going to send an email that has an attachment with the results of their quarterly update, or are you going to spend a little bit of time and leverage some of your social media or leverage a market overview with some sort of video that you attach into this? So embrace the move to digital, even with things like communicating your quarterly investment review. And I see none of that. Well, I see very little to none of that, folks out in the marketplace. [12:14] Matt Wolnowitz: One other point that I wanted to bring up, because you touched on data aggregation, DocuSign, the ease on the front side, we know as a firm that's really rooted in fiduciary principles. The greatest threat to the advisor, especially in the plan space, necessarily when they set up a plan, but it's 17 years down the road when they get sued for a decision that was made initially. And so really, you know, we really are focused on the monitoring phase once something is set. And that's where unfortunately, a lot of the case law comes out of the precedents after the investment decision was made. Initially. [12:49] JD: That's a good addition. That's a good addition. But what I want to do now is shift to something little more fun. Fun for the audience, fun for you, and it might allow you to drink some more. [12:59] Chad: And I need to try the Mai Tai, so hopefully I'm there too. [13:01] JD: I don't know if you ever played this game. We just remembered it today. It was a game called Never have I Ever. And you can actually play along in the audience because how it works is I'm going to make a statement and never have I ever. If you have done this, then you have to take a drink. So what happens is you kind of learn a little bit about the people around you. Oh, okay. [13:23] Chad: You said don't send this episode to your wife. So we'll get it. [13:29] JD: The first one comes a little close to home. And what it is, is never have I ever watched an episode of Retireholics. Hold on. That doesn't count tonight. So if you've never watched an episode of Retireaholics out there, you cannot drink. If you have, please take a drink question. Yes? Is it a full episode? If you've never gone through a full episode, don't drink. All right. If you have, that's not bad. Thank you. Binge second. Never have I ever. And then we'll get to some real stuff here. Never have I ever left an industry conference in the middle. In the middle of it to like hang at the pool or something. You know, it's. It's one o' clock in the afternoon. You're supposed to go listen to Frederician room 202. [14:21] Chad: You would never walk out of Fred's after Fred's session. [14:25] JD: Depends on the. [14:26] Chad: You guys are all liars. Nobody's drinking. And that includes right now. You can't walk out of this session either, my friend. [14:35] JD: So never, ever have. You walked out of a conference, went to the pool, and Chad's thinking of the Brits and Laguna. Yes, I have. Screw you. [14:41] Chad: You have. I found you at the pool later. But I also think you said C word twice. Not that. The event. C word. Geez. [14:50] JD: Does it really count when I send you to go in and take notes and stuff? [14:54] Chad: Yes. I still found you. Cool. Hey, guys, we have a show together. We're coming back. [14:59] JD: We're coming back. [15:00] Chad: Okay. [15:00] JD: Second part, daily occurrence shift to digital was branding and marketing. And this is going to flow right along these concepts from Sherry Fitz and Rebecca Horahan. And so. But we're going to touch on it. Kind of a retireholics vibe. [15:14] Chad: I think it's fair to set the stage a bit and remember from a switch to digital where our as an industry, branding and marketing has been 10 years ago to now, it was all about sending out flyers, sending emails. Yeah, sending out emails, but flyers, events at hotels. [15:34] JD: This was advertisement, this was branding. [15:36] Chad: This was branding. Yeah, it was a lot of print and it was a lot of paper and it was very little digital involved back at that point. By the way, you absolutely loved the paper folders. We all know I'm the nerd on the show. I think we sold spreadsheets and yes, I love paper. [15:51] JD: Chad loves spreadsheets so much. He has, you know the game at the grocery store, the Monopoly game where you get the pieces and play on the board. So he's taken the spots, put on a spreadsheet and now he fills in when he gets the stand. That's fucking ludicrous. That's crazy. [16:08] Matt Wolnowitz: What is that? [16:09] Chad: They got. I think that's two drinks. They all thought it was a bit awkward that I track also coaching my [16:13] JD: daughter's five year old software, taking spreadsheets a little too far. Go ahead. And sponsored by Microsoft Excel. Matt, you told us earlier that you had a story re engineering, what'd you call it, to learn social. You got someone younger to help you out, right? Not that you're old or anything because I know you're not. [16:31] Matt Wolnowitz: Oh no, I am old. [16:35] JD: Drink? [16:36] Chad: You would love a drink. [16:37] Matt Wolnowitz: Nice job, son. [16:39] JD: Tell us that story. Yeah. [16:40] Matt Wolnowitz: Four years ago we had a keynote that spoke about the benefit having a reverse mentor. [16:46] JD: Reverse mentor. [16:47] Matt Wolnowitz: I had a recent college grad, Renee Watkins, who adopted me on the social media side and I agreed to help her mentor on the career side. So it was a great trade. It was way more tilted to my benefit, but that was the only way I could have learned. [17:03] JD: So she takes good courses and we're [17:06] Chad: at that point right now. I feel like in this switch to digital where we left the process paper world behind and we're all in a world of being present on social media, present in the digital world. And I think what we want to talk a little bit about is that transition, how we've gone from needing to have a LinkedIn presence, needing to have a social media presence to truly embracing it and being evolved. [17:29] JD: You're saying, you're saying checking the box by having those things, okay, what's two years from now? So check this out. So at the keynote, at the kind of opening remarks, we were all Let know, and I think we already knew this, that financial services ranks very low in terms of the general public's opinion or trust. And I think what's been really shocking is that what car salesmen come in above us and insurance salesmen come in above the financial services industry. [17:53] Chad: Where is used car salesman? [17:55] JD: It's up there. [17:56] Chad: It's above us. [17:57] JD: It's above. I'm making that up. I don't know, but I think so that's a problem. And I think social digital can be a solution to that problem. And let me kind of unwrap this for you. I don't see that. When I look into my industry, I see financial advisors that are very passionate about what they do. I see financial advisors that learn and educate themselves. I see financial advisors that are having fun, that care about their clients, but yet I see media and these other companies talking about an evil Wall street and this 1% of these fees that we're stealing from them and all these things. I don't see that. I see good people that are good at what they do and care about what they do and have personalities. And that's what we see every day. I think to move us up that list, we have to show that to the world. We have to show that to the general public. And the best way to do that is through this digital space, through social media. Don't just have a Twitter account, don't just have a LinkedIn account. Use it to show people who you are, what you're about. I know for a fact that Rebecca and Sherry have talked a lot about people bringing their personal life into some of those things. Also show your brand ethos, show your company, show your value, show your skill sets, but show people that you're a good person. Show people that you care about stuff. And I see those examples. So I'm not just making them up. It's not six years ago. It's not. You should consider Twitter. You should consider LinkedIn. You should consider your digital presence. It's now and it's happening when people like Nevin Adams are taking selfies. I haven't seen a Fred Reese selfie yet, but. And this guy here is going off on Twitter. I can't even keep up with his tweets while I'm here. [19:50] Chad: That means something. [19:51] JD: If you can't, that means it's happening now. And so you gotta jump in. [19:55] Chad: So the thought, the point there is branding side of this. We as an industry are seen one way. We want to change it and make sure they know who we actually are. Leverage social media to get the personal side, the authentic side, the who your brand is, who your firm is, who you are out there. Because the marketing side that we're all used to is not gonna get that personal point across 100%. Now, I'm never. And we chatted about this a bit before. I will never be the person that walks around with the camera out in front of me. That's not me. Like, I'm not going to be taking seriously. Well, first off, if you did that with how injury prone you are, you would end up okay. [20:37] JD: That's fair. I'm not a huge fan all the time of the guys doing the selfie videos talking. Although some of them are very well done. Some of them have good editing, and they're good. And they do get across that message. And I get it. If you're not comfortable with that, maybe you don't want to be on a YouTube show and drink beer and make a fool of yourself either. But I tried to get out of there. At the end of this, Matt's laughing at me. So go the other routes, right? Write a blog, professional blog. Do a podcast like Rick Gunser. There's plenty of other ways to use this digital space, and we all know them. I'm just saying it's time to do it. Okay? And we were talking about to rise your brand to make people see our industry better. Well, guess what? What comes along with that? You also will sell more. You will be more successful in your business. Because in today's day and age, when a client meets you, and I'm stealing from Rebecca and Sherry here, but when a client meets you, that's the first thing they're going to do. I do it myself. When I meet someone, I'm going to go see and check out this person. What's their digital presence look like? You know, And I'm not going to write you off if you don't have a Twitter account or, you know, you're not doing a lot on LinkedIn. It doesn't mean I'm writing you off. But if I go there and I see that this person's posting valuable content, I can see they're passionate about whatever it is, socially responsible funds, automatic enrollment, whatever their thing is, then immediately rise up in my mind of this person's into this stuff they're passionate about. They're doing it. What do you think a plan sponsor thinks? They think the same damn thing. Which is going to increase your. What do you guys call them? Close ratios and this and that. You're the sales Guys, I just surf and talk about this. [22:21] Chad: So what I think. I think a good question to ask ourselves, and I'm asking this right now of myself, and I think my answer would be the same as yours, Justin. If I were to talk to an advisor that you work closely with, knows you personally, and I were to ask them, what type of person is Justin? What type of business person is Justin? The answer that I would probably get is, you know, truthful, helpful, authentic, willing to go to the ends of the earth for me. All these great things. [22:46] JD: Totally got you guys. Packers fan. [22:47] Chad: Packers. Wow. [22:48] JD: That's not the words I would have used. [22:49] Chad: If I look at your social media, will I get any of that from. From your social media presence, professional side? No. I mean, I'm just as guilty as probably a lot of other people out [22:59] JD: here with that too. Do you think at our audience? [23:01] Chad: Yeah, don't throw them under the bus. But I think that's family. That's my point, though, is that even folks who have a decent presence on there. I think I have a decent presence on there, but you don't get to know who I am as a person. And what you're trying to say is if we're going to rise from where we are in the financial services industry, quote, unquote, where they believe we are, and build some. What were the words used in the keynote was Credibility. [23:25] JD: Talking about that trust, that dope little graphics. [23:29] Chad: If we're going to build this, people have to start to know who we are as individuals and why those form our beliefs into automatic enrollment, why we care about asset allocation, all these things. And I'm as guilty as anybody. I think that's the question to ask ourselves is if someone looked at our social media, would they get an idea of who we are? [23:48] JD: With me, probably would everybody? So what's the takeaway? The takeaway is I want to see record keepers. I want to see mutual funds. I want to see dcio. I want to see plan advisors. I want to see everyone come together and start to rise our brand. And by the way, it's the truest form of authenticity. I want the general public to see what we're really about, who we really are, what we really care about, and the skill sets we have. That's the takeaway. That's what I want our audience to do. We're going to wrap this show. Okay. With that. Thank you, sir, for having us here at the FI360 conference in San Diego. We really, really appreciate it. It's been a great event. If you haven't come to this event before. Check it out. We are the retireholics. [24:40] Chad: He did say conference, man. [24:43] JD: I was almost terrible. Part of the retireholics. And we are changing the retirement plan industry with our guest here. One beer, Mai tai at a time. Thank you very much.