Fee Disclosure Opacity & Advisor Compensation Data

[0:00] JD: Okay. [0:12] Chad: Who is it for you? [0:18] JD: Happy birthday to Silent J. Actually, yesterday was his birthday. Thank you. What is that? [0:24] Chad: Where are you? [0:25] JD: 32, 28, 29. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Retireholics. Yep, I'm here. These other two guys are here, but we know you came for everybody's favorite retire Holly guy. Justin, take it away. Who the is our guest today? Let's go. [0:47] Justin: Ladies and gents, this one is long overdue. He's a man who took a lot of for his cold calling efforts, but put us all in our places. He's a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu and a white belt in judo. He and his wife Ashley have three kids. Advisor extraordinaire and founder of 338 Fiduciaries in K. Cool. Steve, I'm not sure if you've seen any of the shows this year. Crowd wants to hear less from me and a little bit more from you. So we play a game called Rapid Fire, where you can only respond with one word answers. Are you ready? [1:12] Steve: I'm ready. [1:13] Mark: All right. [1:14] Justin: You fart in a crowded elevator. Are you claiming it or are you blaming it? [1:20] Steve: Blaming. [1:22] Justin: Okay, who's nicer, you or Grant Ellis? [1:25] Steve: Grant. [1:27] JD: Okay, incorrect response. [1:29] Chad: What's a guilty. [1:31] Justin: What's a guilty pleasure that you will defend to your death? [1:35] Steve: Bjj. [1:37] JD: What? Bj. What? [1:42] Steve: I panicked. I panic, guys. [1:43] JD: I panicked. [1:44] Justin: I think this is the first time a guest is acro. Send in the intro. This is great. [1:47] Chad: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I missed that. [1:49] Steve: Oh, no. [1:50] Justin: How many people have you choked out? [1:54] Steve: I mean, everyone. Tats ever kill anybody they don't, like, go out. [1:58] Chad: I've never. [1:58] Steve: I've never made anyone pass out. [2:00] JD: No. [2:00] Justin: Okay. [2:00] JD: That's an actual term. [2:01] Justin: Yeah. Do you lean your airplane seat back or do you keep it locked in place? [2:06] Steve: Locked. [2:07] Chad: Oh, you. You absolutely would. [2:09] JD: Nice. [2:10] Justin: And question. Everyone's dying to know, does Nate Moody have a hot sister? [2:16] Steve: Say it again. [2:16] Justin: Say, does Nate Moody have a hot sister? [2:19] Steve: Yes. [2:20] JD: Yeah. [2:23] Justin: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. [2:26] JD: I got a little weirded out by the BJ thing, but I don't know. I know what we're talking about there. [2:32] Steve: Yeah, I panicked. Definitely. [2:36] JD: Let's. Let's. Do we do headlines anymore? Brandy even have that queued up. You want to call it headlines? [2:42] Justin: Do we do headlines? [2:50] JD: Headlines. [2:53] Chad: This is like a Family Guy episode. It just keeps going and going. [2:57] JD: Thank you, Brandon. This is from, I believe, foreign key specialist Mag. Does anyone know who the insured retirement institute is? Have you ever heard of that? [3:09] Chad: ChatGPT does. Because I asked it. [3:11] JD: I Think that's a drink for Chad? I was not really aware of them, but it doesn't come as a surprise to me. If you go to their home page, they are called, they describe themselves as the voice of the insured retirement industry. So I'm thinking they're like a national or American Retirement association, but for the insured retirement industry. Like a lobbyist group over there in Washington, the District of Columbia. They came out with a 2026 retirement security blueprint. It was released, like in the last few days, and on it is a call for lifetime income to be required in all defined contribution plans. Okay, let me give you a quote from this guy. Their chief government and political affairs officer, Paul Richmond, during a media briefing, said the blueprint is recommending that Congress enact a law requiring defined contribution plans to include as a plan feature a lifetime income distribution option that participants can choose for their accounts. Then he goes on to say, nobody's required to take it. It's. It's just that it would be added as a plan feature. Just like, yeah, enrollment and automatic escalation, which is now required. [4:44] Justin: Even comparison. [4:45] Chad: That is the stupidest comparison imaginable. It couldn't have been a worse comparison. I mean, it just shows how little that guy really knows about the space. He uses that as the comparison. [4:56] JD: I'm going to go to our guest first before I flip out. But Steve, what do you think? So we force every defined contribution plan to have some kind of guaranteed income solution. Does that sound okay? [5:08] Steve: I don't want to get too America, but I think less is more, you know, less is more on these things. And I think it's crazy. [5:16] JD: Yeah, yeah, it seems a little nuts to me. I've talked before on this program that for guaranteed income to work, to me, I used to say they would need to be a qualified default investment alternative. And I've heard from a lot of them that are pushing this that, hey, we want to be one of those. And I used to push back on that. Like, kind of like that. Bro, you can't be a, I'll drink a qdia. Like, that's, that's, that's a, that's a nutty thing to, to do. This is like, now we've gone outside the galaxy here. You want to mandate it on all plans to have that. Like, I, I'm literally flabbergasted by this. Chad, if you look at all the people that work at this, this entity, you want any guesses where they all come from or like 80% of them [6:12] Chad: come from the insurance Space. [6:13] JD: Yeah, yeah. I mean there's some advisors in there. [6:18] Chad: As expected. [6:19] JD: As expected. [6:21] Chad: Can we talk about the topic as a broad picture though JD because let me just ask the question. Is decumulation an issue for the average person retiring from a company with a 401k balance? [6:36] JD: Yes. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's tough. [6:39] Chad: And do we think that, that some sort of. And, and don't let. I'm not ready to go down the. Well, it depends on the size of their balance and the expense of it yet. But do we think that some type of lifetime income would be ideal for these people? [6:56] JD: Steve, you answer that question. [6:58] Steve: I'd argue no. I feel like on the accumulation side it maybe makes sense to have more general options, but I feel like on the decumulation side, I mean that's where the numbers get kind of crazy and really needs to be customized. And just having one option that maybe you can choose if you want it and having a plan like execute on it when all of them don't really execute on anything. Well, like it just seems like one more thing and so totally fair, totally fair. [7:22] Chad: Steve, I was trying to be more 30,000 foot level and say if they're faced with two options, someone retiring at 65 years old that is a hard working American and has $75,000 in their 401k plan, would we rather them take that as a lump sum or would we rather them have an option for some sort of lifetime? [7:43] JD: You're throwing me on 75,000, you're throwing on that one. I will jump on the positive side to say of course I think a lot of humans out there would love to convert their retirement savings to a very easy number to say, hey, you are going to get $5,000 a month for the rest of your life. And I think a lot of people be like, okay, that's simple, I can wrap my brain around that. And it's a lot easier than me trying to manage say a million bucks and with markets that go up and down and world events and all that kind of stuff. So I totally get the concept. My problem with it is always been the fees. You know, it's always been that we know that insurance is, is riddled with these fees by the way, for good reason. Like that's a big ask to tell someone you're going to pay them for the rest of their life not knowing when they're going to live. So I understand that you need to have a fees there, but I just feel like when you're going to mandate something and Sorry to go back to the article. I know you wanted to talk in generality. I feel like you definitely don't want to mandate stuff that is difficult to understand when it comes to fees. And so, yeah, to me, I, I put on my tinfoil hat once again and think this is a money grab. This is it. [9:04] Chad: 100%. [9:04] JD: Yes. This is becoming more and more in our industry because we have all these assets and all these participants, all these employer plans. It's a real. We're a target for a lot of products because there's a ton of money. Yeah. So we can move on from this. Go ahead, Chad. Sorry. [9:25] Chad: The only thing I was hoping to get out of you guys was to acknowledge that this is legitimately a problem. The decumulation of these assets that people accrued over 30 or 40 years that have no investment knowledge and don't know how they're going to live in retirement. They just figure, I got Social Security and I've got some money here. We, we need to try to help it. This is not the solution in my mind, but we've got to start taking some steps. I think when I asked ChatGPT some of the like, help me give me your interpretation of this. It came back and said, look, we've seen the investment phase in the industry. We've seen the fee compression phase in the industry. We've seen the accumulation push for tax efficiency in the space. We've seen automatic features to get people to save more. Now we've got to solve for how to help them create a meaningful retirement when they get there. [10:17] JD: It sounds like that artificial intelligence that you're talking to is reading a lot of media. [10:24] Chad: But that's, that's true though. That's, that was my point of asking you guys. The way I did is that is true. That is what we have to start solve for. [10:31] JD: I get it. But you got to be very careful when you're buying something because you get this simple solution out the end when you're really paying for it through the nose. You know, you could have had. You work really hard to accumulate all that money and so you want to try to pick the best way to do it. I think you'd probably. I'd love to see the math on kind of backing up Steve on hey, how about just paying a fairly capable financial advisor to help you kind of manage your decumulation phase in retirement versus buying some type of annuity. I wonder how those two things would match up. But I digress. Let's move on a little bit because there's big news in the 401k space. The retireholics has a merch store. Okay. [11:25] Mark: Haven't we had this before? [11:29] Chad: That was it. That was a huge mistake for me to make that thing. Oh. [11:33] JD: And you know where this comes from in 2026. I want to ramp up prizes to our. Our viewers that tune in, but I don't want to wake up hungover on a Friday and. And have to figure out who to send to and. And get stuff made and all that kind of stuff, because I'm nice. [11:52] Mark: Nice. [11:52] JD: So I'm a slacker. I want to be able to send them somewhere where they can go get the stuff and I can give them a discount code or something. [12:00] Mark: A promo code. [12:01] JD: Yeah, yeah. So right now it's just a holding place, but it's@retireholics.dashery.com d a s h e r y dot com. It's a, you know, an app that does this stuff. We built out our thing, and you currently can buy a rogue guy hoodie or shirt or whatever is there. You pick. You pick your colors, and you can buy a Chad's Nuggets hat or magnet or whatever. I just put those. Chad. Did. [12:32] Mark: Did we get. Are we on, like, an nil deal here with this? [12:36] Chad: Like, yeah, yeah, we get a cut of this. [12:39] JD: We can do that. [12:39] Mark: Oh, that counts. [12:42] JD: So there's Chad's nuggets and this. [12:45] Chad: Has that been so terrible? [12:46] JD: I didn't even notice that? So anyways, those were two funny ones I put up there. We will work to put up good stuff that you all can go out there and purchase if you want to. And I'm working with the company to find a way to, like, I don't need to have any profit on it. So we'll strip down the price to where it needs to be. And then I'm hoping I can work codes to where y' all could get free and I just give you a code privately. Go there. So anyways, Guitar looks merch store has been founded. It will continue. Let's pivot to an excited discussion. Well done around 408B2 and 404A5s, because who doesn't like talking about that? That was a question. Who doesn't? Justin? Okay. I want to talk about their transparency, the differences between the two, how they differ from vendor to vendor. But let's start with this. Steve, you look at a ton of these. I think potentially this might be a big claim right now. Maybe more than anybody. Any, like, regular human who looks at 404-8404-A5 and 408-B2. So I'm gonna kick it to you first and maybe explain to the audience why I said that. Like why are you some guy looking at this shit all the time? And then help me understand. Start off with a couple basics like are they transparent? Can you figure out what the fees are? [14:19] Steve: Yeah, totally. So I founded a company called K quote. K quote. It basically helps compare 401k providers by scanning in fee disclosure documents. And so like last year we ran close to 10,000 basic proposals in our system. And so much like you go to deposit a check in atm, our system literally you can scan it in, basically scan in like the fee disclosure documents. And so like because I like, because we're looking at so many documents, I, I, someone has to teach our developers how to read them. And so I basically optimize them. Generally late at night, between the hours of 11 and 1 o' clock, you go, that's what my best concentration time is for whatever reason. And you know, I'll go through and just take a look at them. 452s are basically between the plan sponsor and, and the record keeper. The record keeper and the plan sponsor and the 445s are really for the plan participants. [15:13] JD: But do you feel as though when you're reading through them, do you always get to the truth? Is it there somewhere? [15:23] Steve: That's rough. I'd say it's rough. And there's like every record keeper is different. I'd say the best like large record keeper is principal but outside of that I'd say they're, they're rough. An example would be like fidelity I posted about today. They're too transparent. Like if you can be too transparent. So like on their 445 document it'll, it'll show like their, their fee, right? It'll say like 35 basis points, record keeping services. The issue with that is they're giving you all compensation. So like if they're generating revenue that they're counting it in that fee. Every other fee disclosure, 445 fee disclosure for the participants list that, that number as an asset charge. But them, and so like, like even fidelity trying to be too, too transparent is, is a mess. [16:07] JD: It obviously varies, it varies from vendor to vendor. Chad. I know when 4.8B2 first came out, that was a while ago. I remember a lot of the vendors and I, and I get it trying to cover all bases. Like they had different product types, different share classes, different, you know, like they had a lot of stuff and so a lot of the four way B2s, at least originally were very generic. You know, like, they're kind of like, hey, that, you may have this, you [16:36] Chad: may have this reference that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [16:38] JD: And so to me, you would read it. And I've still seen these to this day where you're just like, okay, I can't, I can't make up or down of this, like what the actual fee is now. And I want to go to you guys on this, the 4, 404, a 5. I mean, come on for a second. This is supposed to go to the participant and the participant, which definitely has a right to know, hey, what are the fees in my 401k plan? And if, if you're confused at the end of a 445, we've got real problems. And Chad, tell me that's pretty much the case, isn't it? I mean, they're hard to. [17:21] Chad: I mean, probably 98% of the time, I would say for participants, and Steve was alluding to it earlier, I've looked at thousands of these things and not only are they confusing, but they evolve from year to year too. It's one way in 2024, it's a different way in 2025, and it's different in 2026. The problem that we tend to find, JD is that I think in some ways they're trying to make it confusing for people because it is just difficult to fully disclose and easier to make it hard to understand. I think in some ways it's on [17:59] JD: purpose, like, hey, look over here instead of looking over here type of thing. Steve, do you get that feeling when you're looking through it that you're being deceived in some way? [18:07] Steve: You know, I play devil's advocate with it because, like, you know, if you're an advisor and you're getting the fee disclosure documents because you're trying to benchmark the plan, you're incentivized to like have that plan be overpriced. And so I feel like that knife cuts both ways where by being confusing and unclear, that advisor is like, it's unclear. I'm going to go ahead and add that 50 basis points because it's unclear. [18:29] JD: Well, I don't like that. I definitely don't think any advisors should be putting a number on a spreadsheet that they're not confident in. Even if they feel like, well, it's because the disclosures were not clear to me. Like, then my point would be, okay, well, get the client to reach out to the vendor themselves and ask them point blank what their fee structure is, you know, but so I, I don't recommend that. [18:54] Justin: I mean, I think that's a great wish, but I mean, the reality is that no one's really going to do that, right? They're not going to ask the client to go do it. And if they can make this incumbent look a lot more expensive as opposed to what they offer, they're going to, you know, take that liberty when they can. [19:09] JD: What a horrible world. [19:10] Steve: The crazier part too is some of the record keepers will actually, like, they'll have errors like any other, you know, like, technology platform. They're going to have like typos and things. And so there's like record keepers that will have like outages of their fees. And so I'll get, you know, people reach out to me on LinkedIn, they'll say, hey, you know, this record keeper, I couldn't figure out their fee disclosure. And I'll be able to name it because I'm like, it's this fee disclosure. They're literally having an outage or this, this record keeper is having like a typo on their documents and you'll see something that says it's an asset charge on the 452, but it's not, it's actually just a typo like so on top of like the, you know, the gray of on top of it being unclear, sometimes it's literally just wrong. [19:51] JD: That's crazy. [19:53] Mark: Okay, I think that again, I think in theory, when this all rolled out years ago, it seemed like a great idea. It was going to uncover a lot of things and keep people informed. Unless they start telling record keepers and other providers. You have to summarize this on one page and keep everything line item with real easy, be English. It's never going to be simple. People are always going to find ways to put one fee in section three and the other in buried in section eight. And you got to have some sort of knowledge on how to figure out a blended asset charge. Over here in section 13. It's like, well, what are we doing? This makes no sense. [20:33] JD: I'm sure to the average person, that's tough. Nate. Nate Moody is commenting on Nate Moody's comments in the chat bar. [20:40] Chad: So he, he did have a couple of really good questions for Steve. [20:45] JD: I. Brandon, I just listening to you guys. So maybe we use the Q and A as it's intended, like when people want real questions instead of the chat. Okay, let's go to Nate saying because he's such a little Whiner about it. [20:59] Mark: No, say what you're gonna say. Say what you're gonna say. Call him a. You gotta say it. [21:04] JD: I use the P word and people are telling me not to use it. [21:08] Chad: Apparently that's out. [21:09] JD: Yeah. Should a record keeper be required to disclose annual revenue attributable to the individual retirement account and wealth services? So instead of just disclosing, hey, here's your wrap fee, you know, here's a share class we're using on the 401k plan. By the way, I'm Ed Murphy at Empower, and we're also made, you know, tens of thousands of dollars off your participants and in other services. What do you say to that guest, Mr. Nice Guy? Steve. [21:37] Steve: Yeah, you know, it's funny. So we ran 9,800 quotes last year in K. Quote, you have to brag. [21:43] JD: You don't have to brag. [21:44] Mark: Chill out, buddy. [21:46] Steve: You're going to give me. [21:47] Justin: Like, you can't say that too? [21:48] Steve: No, I. But like, there's only 2300 quotes where we've identified the advisor fee and the recordkeeping fee. And that just tells you that, like, a lot of. A lot of times our system is throwing an asset charge on there because it doesn't even know what the compensation is, you know, like on these documents. And so, like, you know, we're talking 70, 77% of the time, the users using cakewelt, which are specialist professionals, record keepers, you know, that kind of thing that they're not generally generalists. They have no idea what the compensation is. And so I'm a huge fan of knowing what you're paying. Paying for, and I'm definitely an advocate of that. [22:27] Chad: Can we. Can we argue a little bit? Because Nate's making another comment in there about going to zero revenue, and I did like his earlier question. [22:34] Mark: Stop giving the spotlight. He's not our guest. [22:38] JD: I love. [22:38] Chad: Thanks, Mark. The disclosure of revenue that is generated not from direct compensation or direct services rendered. My example, I guess, would be like, I pay for a streaming service, but then that streaming service puts ads on my TV and they're generating revenue from those ads that I watch. Based on the number of people that watch those ads, I. I don't want them to disclose to me how much money they made off the ads that popped up while I was on their streaming service. Like, that's part of their business model. [23:13] JD: You know, how people. [23:14] Chad: As long as these are reasonable for what I'm doing. [23:16] JD: I, I appreciate the attempt on an analogy, but we're talking about people with fiduciary responsibility in this. [23:26] Chad: And I think it. It depends on how those. Those dollars are generated, if they're generated from services within the plan. I get it. If you're talking about an employee rolling. So float income should be disclosed. Spread on fixed accounts should be disclosed. [23:42] JD: Okay. [23:42] Chad: But if you're talking about, hey, one employee decided to use us for. For rolling over their individual retirement account, I don't see why that needs to be disclosed. [23:51] JD: But did you see what the guy with a hot sister said? He said that the record keepers could go to zero at a certain point. [24:00] Chad: So what's the expense? [24:02] JD: To me, they're going to zero because they're making revenue in another channel. And so now he has a fiduciary. I have to understand that. To choose from vendor A, B, or C, you know, because I need to. [24:15] Chad: Which you need to understand. You don't need to understand what they're making. You need to understand what they're going to be providing to your participants to make money off of. Right. [24:24] JD: I don't know if an attorney would agree with you on that, but that's what courts are for. So that's. [24:29] Chad: That's. That's life, guys. [24:31] JD: Thank you. [24:31] Chad: We engage in all kinds of services that people profit on. [24:35] JD: Yeah. Thank you. Nate Moody, can you. Nate, can you direct us what we're going to talk about next, specifically? All right, let's go to the next subject. The gap is being closed, people. Plan Advisor magazine. [24:54] Mark: That store sucked anyways, man. [24:56] JD: And by the way, they. They spell advisor with an e. Not the smartest people in the world, but. But they run a good publication, good media company. It's titled Small businesses see a 50% boost in retirement plan since 2020. Let me read straight from the article here. Among the businesses with 2 to 99 employees, 30% had an active retirement plan in 2025. That's a 50% increase since 2020. Okay. And this is all coming to us from Gusto. The most significant increase was in the smallest businesses, according to gusto. Businesses with two employees. Gusto saw an 80% growth in retirement plan adoption. Okay, like, this is a big deal. Like, we have been told for years that if 401ks suck, they suck in this space, this coverage gap. And God bless the American Retirement association and Butterbeer and everyone involved for making a push, because it looks to me like we're moving the needle now. We don't need to, like, spend a ton of time on this, but can we. Can we pat ourselves on the back, Steve? Is that okay? Right now that it seems like we're doing something. Okay, I think it's fair. [26:24] Steve: Yeah, I think that's definitely fair. [26:26] JD: Okay, let me see if I can do that. Good job. [26:29] Chad: I have to help. I have to help it. [26:31] JD: Yeah, stretch it out. Let's stretch it out. [26:33] Steve: I feel like there's been a few, few more impactful like pieces of legislation than things like, you know, mandates auto auto enroll and plans auto escalation. Things like that like really, really move the needle. [26:45] Chad: Is that, was it not interesting? [26:48] JD: Startup credits? [26:50] Steve: Yeah, I mean there's times when like legislations is great. [26:54] Justin: Chad, what was the stat? Did you have it recently on the startup credit? [26:57] Chad: How few people are actually 6% of businesses are actually taking advantage of. [27:01] JD: But Justin, my point was we don't like about it and then that means. [27:05] Justin: That's a good point. Yeah, I'm excited to see what these numbers are going to be at like 2030 because I mean we just got autumn roll, right? Here we go. So. [27:11] JD: And Justin, we need to keep pounding on that subject you just brought up to me. That's nuts. And as an industry we need to work really hard to like solve that. One of Chad's nuggets in his presentation on the 401k expedition series was about that very fact that, that you could go out and market to those people. So we, we need to keep coming back to that, Justin. So don't let me forget that. Chad looked like you had another thought. [27:39] Chad: I was just going to say if you read further down about participation in deferral rates, it was a little disheartening to see that the average Deferral rates between 2019 and 2025 went up 1%. You would think the auto enroll the auto escalation would have been having a bigger impact over that time period. We'll probably see it coming years. [27:59] JD: I saw that. I glimpsed at it. I didn't want to go down there because I said to myself, let's create a positive section for the show tonight where we can pat ourselves on the back and not get negative about it. And then you fucked it all up with that fucking. [28:11] Chad: No I didn't. I just acknowledged the truth. Jd. Hey Tony. Tony Davis said something and a wholesaler brought this up to me this week. He's like, hey, why don't we just start a company and just go into every startup plan and say we're going to file for your, your tax credits for you, but we get to keep 50% of them because they're not getting anything right now. At least they'll get 50 of it, and we'll make a fortune. Yeah, someone needs to start doing it or get the certified public accountants to do it. [28:39] JD: By the way, that's. That's an interesting kind of take at it. But someone could build a business in that. [28:47] Chad: Oh, absolutely. [28:48] JD: To help people. Like, that's the easiest business in the world. [28:51] Mark: All right, guys, see you later. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go do that. I'll be right back. [28:56] JD: Going to see some serious motivation out of rogue guy. Steve. We. We rank mutual funds, we score them, we review them. We stand in front of plan sponsors and tell them, this is a good fund, this is a bad fund. You need to replace it because of X, Y and Z. As far as. As I understand, Fi360 retirement plan advisory Group and their scorecard and Morningstar seem to have, like. Is it a thropoly? Is that what we call it? Like a thropoly on the space? Why do we not have other choices, I ask you? Because in addition to Cakewote. Bless you. Okay. In addition to Cakewalk, you own a company called 338 Investment Fiduciaries. So I'm imagining you spend quite a bit of time thinking about how you rank funds and stuff. Am I wrong? Are there. Are there other products out there besides those three? Am I missing that? And then, Then, then piggyback on that with what. How do you do it at 338 investment fiduciaries? [30:14] Steve: Yeah, they're totally. You know, I. There used to be one called firm, but FY360 bought it. They're literally getting rid of it this. This week. There's investnet too. I'm like, I'm an operations guy at heart. I love operations. So when Chad was like, hey, I'm. I'm. Let's, you know, let's go the operations route. I'm definitely team that. I'm on a mission to literally remove data entry from our practice and our clients, you know, lives. But so we. It's all internally. So we. We have our proprietary system that, that we use. It's run through Salesforce. It's. I think the reason why there's not more companies is just the data is super expensive. [30:49] JD: So when. Steve, can I ask you, when you are making your own. [30:52] Steve: Yeah. [30:53] JD: I'm imagining you peered over the fence to look at morningstar.fi360rpag. What did you, like, didn't. Like. You don't get super specific, but, like, are there flaws in some of those methodologies? [31:11] Steve: Yeah, I think there's always slides. I think RPAG is great. I love the thought in their construction of, like, you know, how they. How they built their. Their scores and things like that. My big argument with them, or really all the providers, is that there's so much data entry that goes into these to building a scorecard. So, like, if I have a prospective client, I have to go out and find the tickers and I gotta get the tickers. [31:38] JD: Yeah, it's a mess. [31:40] Steve: And then if I need to make fun, build fun, change paperwork, or I need to build notices, it's all manual. [31:46] JD: And so, I mean, rpa, I'll drink. Over the years has created connections with record keepers and stuff. Like, they've worked on some of that technology. [31:56] Steve: Yeah, no, I think they're great. I think they're all the vendors are awesome. They're all, you know, they all have different weaknesses. [32:03] JD: Steve's such a nice guy. [32:05] Steve: Yeah. [32:05] JD: Tear them apart. Okay, well, let me go to. Let me go to someone who's got. Who's a little meaner than you. Have you guys ever heard of rumors of pressure from the fun families on the scoring systems themselves? Because I've heard whisperings of this for years. [32:25] Chad: I have. Absolutely surprised me. [32:27] JD: Yeah, it wouldn't surprise you where RPAG, Fi360 mutual funds are having an audience with them, saying, hey, man, what the. You know, like, this fund's a good fund. It's not scoring well because your methodology sucks and you need to change this. We all know by the way, this is. All of them are a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures. So, you know, the qualitative measures could be shifted around a little bit if necessary. I think a lot of people out there think that maybe these systems also are a little gentle with a lot of the mutual funds. Now, there's two ways to look at this. They're either gentle because they're being influenced by the mutual fund family industry themselves, or we all know that in 401k, like, you don't want to be removing funds freaking every month, every quarter like that. That's not good for. For a healthy plan sponsor. So. I don't know. Nate Moody, should I have a question around this? I just kind of rambled. [33:34] Steve: I mean, it's definitely possible. It's definitely possible for there to be, you know, issues with that. I mean, they. Their interests aren't aligned right. With having a complete, you know, objective process if it's owned by, like, fun families. [33:48] JD: Did someone bring up great gray in the. In the chat. In the chat. [33:52] Chad: No, I think you just desperately wanted to bring it up. [33:55] JD: No, Fred brought it up. [33:57] Chad: I thought, oh, I missed that. [33:59] JD: Freddie's here. Freddie B. Freddie B. Freddie B Investments Trust. Be a. Yeah, that's great. A great gray of scoring their own collective investment trusts. Yeah, that was a fun kind of evolution, huh? Buying Vince G's business. But, hey, you're in the collective investment trust now. All of a sudden, you, when all the dust settles, you realize, wait a second, like, he's got his hand in a lot of cookie jars there. But again, one of my favorite guests of all time on the show, Rob Barnett, I believe his name was, a little elon Musk of 401K. He's kind of on the spectrum in a good way. Like a guy was so smart. So I like that. Scoring their own. Oh, look at Brandon. He's throwing that up there, like, to kind of back up our conversation. I like that. Okay, let's. Let's. [34:48] Chad: Jd, do you think that artificial intelligence, broadly, will put some of those companies out of business as a whole? Like, why. Why do we actually need them? [34:59] JD: I mean, right now you need to tap into all the data, which I'm sure Steve's very aware of. Like, we need all those. All that data. But that's. Everyone can have access to that data. So, yeah, with artificial intelligence, by the way, we've built something at. At Waze. It's called K Fund, and it's just in beta. We're just playing with it. But yeah, totally, Chad. AI can analyze tickers and funds. And do you want to give it a custom methodology to let it know how you want it to do it? Of course you can do all of that. I feel like these days I say I can do anything and I feel bad about it sometimes, but it. But it can. [35:38] Chad: JD's gonna have to down that whole bottle at some point. You're only showing five for him, but that's like 15 already. [35:45] JD: Let's play a game. Let's. Let's play. It's not a game. Let's. Let's take a break from the serious stuff. We're gonna do a brand new segment. This is where I share my journey as a California surfer who bought a ranch in Texas. We call it Texas Time with jd. [36:14] Chad: That's good. [36:14] Justin: There's supposed to be some audio in that. Or not. [36:16] JD: Next time we'll have some music. All right, you ready? This is how this goes. [36:22] Chad: Oh, [36:26] JD: oh, there's a lot. This is how this goes. I bet you didn't Know this, but on my ranch in Texas, the water comes from under the ground. It's called a well. It's kind of like magic or something. But the water doesn't come from the city department. And I get no bill for my water called a well. Thank you. This has been Texas Tales with JD okay, let's move on to the next section. [36:58] Mark: Thank you for that education, that, that. First off, the voice that you can't do. The voice, that's offensive. Secondarily, Nate, when we're having fun, don't ask a serious question, buddy. That's like a total buzz kill. Okay, just like hold it in for a second. [37:18] JD: All right? Nate's here for the real shit. You gotta let me fly. Jesus. Okay, this one's gonna be good. I'm excited about this, Steve. Maybe you can kind of like co host with me here and kind of help me set this up. Through your company Cakewalk, you have the ability to pull Data on over 2300 plans. And this data is going to show us the fees, basis points, revenue for advisors and record keepers. Kind of set it up a little bit and then I'll. I'll kind of throw some numbers at you, but so you have access to this. Oh, help us understand the details of it. Is this the incumbent plans? This isn't just proposals, right? [38:05] Steve: Like this is just incumbent. So basically what happens is when they run a. When a user runs a fee disclosure document through K quote, we kind of save that document. If it has the advisor comp and the record keeping comp, we'll basically regurgitate it back as like our averages. Yeah, perfect. So it's interesting though that you know, of the almost 10,000 quotes, only 2300 where we actually list the advisor comp and the record keeping comp. And so the vast majority, the users have no idea what the actual compensation is. They just know the total cost. [38:38] JD: Well, that's going to kind of tied to a later survey I want to talk about, but let's look at your numbers and thank you for sending along that spreadsheet. And by the way, guys, like, as much as I would love to use that spreadsheet, Mark, you were recently asking where to get from stuff we. I don't think we can use Steve's stuff just for this show tonight, but here we go. Everyone buckle up. Let's talk about financial advisor comp and record keeper comp. Based on the cakewalk numbers, which come from over 2300 plans. Okay? A $500,000 and Steve, don't, don't get Nervous here. I'm going to round some of your numbers here but a $500,000 plan, half a million dollar plan. What is the typical advisor comp Silent J. What would you guess this. It's easy answer. Yeah. 50. [39:33] Justin: Well you said 500 is half a million. I was like as we go. [39:35] JD: Yeah, I know. [39:36] Chad: I'm pretty sure. [39:37] Justin: Sorry, I thought I heard you say 5 million all the way up there. Never mind. [39:40] JD: Pretty sure. [39:40] Chad: We determined that your abbreviation for basis points. Right there is a penalty drink for both. [39:46] JD: Really? I thought we didn't. [39:48] Chad: Yeah. [39:48] JD: Okay, so we all understand that that's 50 basis points. That makes sense. I believe the K code actually called it 49. But you know we won't split hairs here. Record keeper comp on a half a million dollar plan chat on average but. [40:07] Chad: But like bundled. Are we including admin? [40:11] JD: Well it's just. Here's the thing, it's a great question because there's going to be nuances but your guess should be based on 2,300 plans that say this is our wrap fee. [40:23] Chad: I wish you. I wish you hadn't sent it to me because like I have a mental picture of it and I know what the answer is. But how I would have answ without saying that spreadsheet. I probably would have said close to 1%. Thanks. [40:38] JD: Thanks for being transparent. Okay, so yeah, it's actually came in at 73 basis points on. On Steve's thing. Okay, let's. Let's keep moving forward. Everyone stay with me. $2 million plan advisor comp drops slightly to 46 basis points and the record keeper drops significantly from 73 to 45. Kind of interesting at 4 million or around there. The advisor is at 39 basis points. Ah no, I didn't say the word. And the record keeper. That's how drunk I am. I thought I said the acrosin when I didn't. That's good. And the record keeper is at 35 basis points for another reduction of 10. And shout out if you feel like you think any of this is weird or off. I don't seems Fairly. [41:36] Chad: That was 4 million, right? That was 4 million. [41:39] JD: Yeah. [41:40] Chad: Okay. [41:40] JD: And at 7 million the advisor's at 32 basis points and the record keeper is at 29. And then his next category. I'm sure Steve would self admit this is a little dodgy because it's. This one's tougher. It's 10 million and up with the average at 26 million. So you're dealing with a big swath here of, of. Of plan Size. And it's Advisor comp at 30 basis points and the record keeper at 20 basis points. Okay, question. Oh, or I'd love to see from the chat. Bard, what did Nate Moody say? Like, this is interesting, but let me kind of start the conversation. Both the record keeper and the advisors comp and cold hard cash. I know we just talked basis points, but it goes up as the assets increase and it actually pretty significantly goes up. As an example, an Advisor may make 8,500 on a $2 million plan and 22,000 on a 7 million dollar plan. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring this to you, Steve, first. And then I want the chat bar to pop off and I, and I want the guys to answer. Let's assume for a second that, that those, those, these plans have the same amount of participants. Okay. Because this Advisor went from 8,500 on a 2 million dollar plan to making 22,000 on a 7 million dollar plan. And by the way, the record keepers revenue kind of mirrors that pretty closely. Okay. Which is another interesting thing. So my question to you is if the head count's the same, say 2 million dollar plan with 30 participants. 7 million dollar plan with 30 participants. My son asked me the other day because he's new to this biz, like, is that okay? Like, yeah, yeah. [43:38] Steve: I, I think it just comes down to the, the level of service that they're providing. Maybe they're playing the long game. Like, maybe they've had that plan since startup and they've for basically, you know, operating that plan pro bono for what they're probably worth. But. [43:51] JD: Okay, I think that's fair. I like that. And by the way, you don't need to be put on the spot to answer for all this. But. So if maybe they didn't make a lot of revenue in the beginning and now they need to make up some of that, I think that's a fair answer. But let's get back to the core question, which is, okay, let's, let's assume I'm looking at two brand new prospects. One's 2 million. One, 7 million. They both have 30 participants. Am I going to charge the bigger plan more than the lesser plan? Chad, let's take Steve off the hot seat for a second because we know it happens. But is it okay? [44:27] Chad: It's probably happening far more than it's not happening. [44:32] JD: Of course it is. [44:33] Chad: And that was my comment to Moody. And then Fred also said in the chat bar, like, new advisors are going fee based. They're charging a flat fee. And Moody's like based upon the number of meetings and the size and I'm going maybe in the market you guys are operating in, in the mid, upper small to micro. Not at all. Not at all. [44:53] JD: I want to piggyback on Nate Moody again, not just because he has a hot sister. I want to say when my son asked me this, I even said as a third party administrator, even though ours is much less, you know, we're typically getting this kind of 5 basis points on the assets. If, if we're in a revenue sharing type of situation, when assets go from 1 million to 5 million to 10 million and up, is there not a level of severity there? Do not my actions now as a company that's providing services have a higher exposure, a higher liability, a higher like things are more important. Is that a fair statement to say, Steven, you don't have to agree with me? [45:40] Steve: Yeah, no. I mean I'd say it isn't. It isn't. I mean there's no punitive damages. Right. As far as on the fiduciary side. So like they're only going to try to fix the issue. Maybe legal fees. I'd say there is more liability, but it's marginal, you know. [45:55] JD: Marginal. Yeah, I think it's fair. And I, I can tell you as being 50 years in the business, we've never experienced that, knock on wood, you know. But I do think when I'm dealing with problems with my larger asset clients. Oh, Fred. So Freddie B. Says not a fair statement. I love that. The chat. Sorry, you had a thought? [46:16] Chad: No, I'm just, I'm just struggling with that concept. And I'm not disagreeing with everybody that's saying that the potential liabilities go up. And Nate's example of insurance with larger [46:27] JD: assets is that everyone's kind of defense. [46:29] Chad: Yeah, that's what everybody's saying in the chat bar. I guess my comment back would be the client's liability goes up. Does the advisors really? How many advisor offices are being being sued by the boogeyman for. For the plan lineup? They're not. It's the client that's being sued. [46:51] JD: True. [46:52] Chad: For the lineup. So I don't think that the advisors liability is going up and the TPA's liability is going up. And I don't maybe the record keepers, maybe you could argue that one for me, but I'm not sure I agree with that. [47:06] JD: Justin, you had some thoughts say, see [47:08] Justin: Jim's comment about if there's more money in the plan, we can be sued for more. [47:13] Chad: We are our Advisors getting sued. I'm not seeing that eventually. [47:19] Steve: I mean if they're the 338, they're. I mean they're on the hook for it. 321 their co fiduciary. I mean. [47:24] JD: Oh, great point. [47:25] Chad: But look at litigation. That's not what we're seeing. Guys. [47:28] JD: I don't think anyone would argue that A338 fees would raise as assets raise. I think that kind of makes sense. But we were talking about a record keeper. We're talking about a third party administrator, we're talking about a financial advisor. Well the bottom line is it's, it happens in a major way. I would argue that it's the, it's the norm and it still continues to be the norm. So let's, let's try to have more conversations about this. I love that Freddie B. Sand. He's point blank on this. Yeah, it's interesting because it's not, it's not how it plays out these days. So let's. [48:07] Chad: You see what Hooker wrote. If the, if the fee is being paid outside the plan, there's no increased liability there. [48:15] JD: Fees being paid. Sorry, I gotta scroll back from that. [48:20] Chad: Specifically about charging too much because we've seen so many lawsuits for excess fees. [48:26] JD: That's great Hooker. I would love to see a world where plan sponsors pay advisors by check. You and me both know that third party administrators, that's where the bulk of their revenue comes from. It'd be interesting to see what record keepers getting paid by check. These would all be business expenses. I, I think and I'm. There's a lot of smart advisors out there that sell that concept to people and can do it with confidence. But the fact of the matter is it's, you know this. Obviously it's a lot easier to go around and tell people that shit's free and not a business expense. And it's kind of baked into everything. But. Okay, let's. Again I keep, I sound like a broken record with this. Like hey, let's not give up on some of these, these subjects and keep talking about them. Because I will tell you this. If you lined up 100 plan sponsors and you ask them and I'll just pick on the advisor right now. Apologies. Hey, should an advisor make more on a 30 person plan with 7 million versus 2 million, what do you think? 100 plan sponsors would answer that question or 100 participants, they would say no, of course they wouldn't. [49:39] Justin: Yeah. [49:40] JD: Okay, let's move on to the 2026 plan advisor with an E. You know that's the mag. That's the media. They can't spell, but they, they love their advisors. With an E Advisor value survey, it's it. Here's a summary of it. Over the past two decades, advising for employer sponsored retirement plans has undergone a transformation. I know Freddie B. Believes this. I have to drink for that? [50:09] Mark: Why? [50:10] Justin: Why you don't. What? No, you know, it's not an acronym. It's initialism. [50:14] JD: It's initialism for his class name. I got a drink then. [50:17] Mark: You owe like 70. We were. You know what, we're just gonna call that one a wash for tonight. [50:22] JD: I'm gonna. No, I'm gonna alcohol poison myself on this. Almost exclusively. What was once almost exclusively exclusively an investment focused discipline has expanded into a holistic effort centered on fiduciary governance, plan design and participant outcomes. Yeah, it's no longer just about the investments. There's a lot more to it. You ready for this fun stuff? Plan advisor, this current stats, I'm going to give you. They surveyed 104 plan sponsors, by the way. [51:01] Mark: So many, by the way. [51:02] JD: Well, it started with a bigger group, by the way, Nate Moody. And by the way, everyone listening in. Come on. You love JD bringing these stats, right? This is good shit. This is 2026 retire hollow shit. [51:14] Justin: I miss the made up stats. [51:16] JD: The question, the question was when they asked these plan sponsors to rate the overall service received from an advisor or an advisory team, 76.1% said excellent for their advisor. That's a pat on the back for you people out there, you financial advisors. 18.2% stacked on top of that. 76 said good meaning consistently meeting expectations. My takeaway from that is plan sponsors said, when we have a financial advisor, we love that dude or dudette. Like it's, it's good. Yeah, I, I thought it was very, very interesting. Here's for you, Steve. What percent use a 338 of those? 104. [52:07] Steve: Yeah, I have no idea. [52:09] JD: Take a guess, bro. [52:12] Steve: Sorry. 330. I'd say 40%. [52:17] JD: 19.6. You dumb. So you're way off. So of these 104, about 20% of them use a 338. Ready for this one? 54.6. Must be crazy. And call it 55. Offer Wealth Management to the participants. Okay, that's kind of shocked me now with all these surveys, you always have to ask yourself how is the question proposed and who's answering the question? So when you ask plan sponsors, hey, does your financial advisor offer wealth management to your participants? They might think like, oh yeah, I saw him in the lunchroom once talking about mutual funds. He does. I don't. But, but still pretty interesting that they said that. Are advisor services worth the fees being Paul. 83.7% said yes. Again, I feel like this is a great. [53:23] Chad: Can we go back to the earlier comment? Do they actually know what the fee is? They don't. [53:30] JD: According to the 408B2. They look fine. Or we don't know. [53:35] Mark: I mean, just look at your, look at your statement. Come on. That, that's not that hard. [53:39] JD: Steve, I don't want to create a political moment for you, but I mean, can you comment on the takeaway there that clients like having fun clients, plan sponsors like having financial advisors. It seems like. [53:55] Steve: Yeah, I, I feel like that's fair. I feel like, you know, the, like the people that I, I've dealt with, which are smaller plans, the, the HR people might have been answering the phone, you know, a few months ago and they have no idea. They have no idea anything about 401k. And so the advisors really just a guide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really a guide. Yeah, that's exactly right. A way for them to be confident about their job and their job performance. And so a team, really a team member for their, for their complete role. So I agree with that 100%. [54:28] JD: Steve, I love you. Okay. On the flip side, this survey exposed something interesting for me. Justin, Chad, Mark. Even though the above was based on 104 respondents, the original survey was over 4,000 and 838 of them indicated that they work with an advisor. 135 reported that they did not. Whoa, I thought you said JD that they asked 4,000. They did. The remaining respondents didn't respond to that question, which is another weird thing. Plan advisor with an E. Help me understand that. But my. What this made me concerned about is even with 800 saying I got an advisor and 130, 130, 135 saying I don't. Or that people, it's Thursday night. Here's my flow. The report did another survey on that of plans that had an advisor versus the ones that didn't. I'm assuming it's that 800 and that 135. Okay, you ready for this? Seems like most of the advisor list plans, plans that did not have an advisor are in the small to micro market. Over 65% of them are below 25 million and over 50% are below 10 million. Thoughts? Is this disruptors? Is this paychecks? Is it. Okay, go, go. [56:11] Chad: I would certainly think it's payroll integrated 401k platforms. So probably a paychecks old employer plan, probably a guideline, something along human interest, something along those lines that don't see the value in the 401k per 401k advisor and are sidestepping that role. [56:30] JD: Well, now that I say it out loud, Steve, it's got to be the payroll providers. I mean, those people have been dominating small market 401k plans, ADP and paychecks for a decade. Yeah. [56:42] Steve: Vanguard. [56:43] JD: Yeah. Good, great. Good ad. Good ad. Are we okay with that? Like I always try to be like on here, like a big advisor advocate. So I did this on purpose. Everyone first part of the of the survey said, I'm a plan sponsor. I love my financial advisor in every way, shape and form. But then I'm looking at this other thing saying there's all these small businesses that don't have a financial advisor. Stitch this together for me, Mr. Wilkinson. [57:22] Chad: Yeah. [57:22] Steve: I'd say you don't know what you don't know. Right. So if that HR person, you know, like if that HR person started a 401k plan with a payroll provider, maybe they've never had a 401k advisor say that. They just don't know. They don't know what they don't know. [57:38] JD: That's fair. [57:39] Chad: Yeah. And those providers aren't pushing that service. I'll give you a real quick, quick life situation today, J.D. i'm stepping into a plan that we set up last year with a new advisor I've never worked with. And the night before they've asked for essentially a fiduciary review, which I don't often sit in on, but I'm like, it's a brand new plan. I'm going to new advisor. I'm going to sit in on this night before the advisor writes and says, remove me from the plan. I no longer want to be the advisor of this plan. He wrote t row and said, carve me out. He wrote our team and said, I'm off, said I'm not joining tomorrow's meeting. And I stepped into that meeting and the client essentially said, we just don't think the advisor really does anything now. They weren't talking about this individual guy. They didn't have enough Runway time. This plan was set up in November so there wasn't enough Runway time for them to see it. But in that meeting, I started laying out what their responsibility is as the plan sponsor when it comes to employee education, engagement, investment selection, monitoring and report. Replace all of those Things and by the end of it they were going, yeah, we can't do any of that. This is a brand new plan. [58:49] Justin: Right? [58:49] Chad: It's a small market plan. But they, they in, in the business owner's mind, this is the way he opened that up. I don't need help building a portfolio, so we don't need an advisor. I asked the advisor if they would only charge their expense to the people who engage them to build a portfolio out and not charge it to others. It just showed you the disconnect of what their role is. By the time I was done with that meeting, I said, you should probably try to patch up this relationship with your advisor because you clearly need one. Once we laid out what an advisor, a good advisor would do, the problem in that example and the problem in the stats here is most don't know what advisors do. And let's be completely honest, way too many small and micro market advisors don't do the role that they're supposed to do do. They're brokers. They bring the relationship, they set the plan up and they're like, I'm out. Record keeper will handle enrollment and we'll put a 338 on for 5 basis points. And, and I'm not going to do anything and I'm going to collect my 50 basis. [59:49] JD: But just so you know, that survey where they said they love their advisor, it included small plans and a lot of them. So Steve, it looked like you had some thoughts as Chad was going on there. [1:00:01] Steve: Yeah, you know, I, I just think it's that they don't know what they don't know. Maybe they're overconfident, they don't know the role of the advisor. I'd say the advisor's role is really to give that sponsor confidence that they're doing the right thing, communicate what they're supposed to be doing, potentially find problems if they're a good advisor and then on the other side, like a tpa, in my opinion, they're there when things go oops. They're there when things go wrong. I mean, good luck. If you're with fidelity and it's bundled and the plan blows up, what are you going to do? Right. And so I really think it just comes down to being there for the advisor or being there for the record keeper. Wow. Being that for the plan sponsor, you know, and, and allowing that sponsor to be confident that they're doing the right things. [1:00:45] JD: So Stevie, I haven't been like monitoring you, but yeah, there he goes. [1:00:49] Steve: Okay, I'm down. [1:00:50] JD: You're taking your rum. Okay, good, good, good. The rum was provided by Adrian. [1:00:54] Steve: It was. Yeah. I'm just a random guy drinking in his office right now. What. [1:00:59] JD: What. [1:00:59] Chad: What rum do you have? [1:01:01] Steve: You know what? It's el pasito right here. [1:01:08] JD: Thank you, Adrian. Yeah. [1:01:09] Steve: Go Adrian. It's great. [1:01:10] JD: It's great. Go, Adrian. Good topics, good stuff. So much to dig into in this industry and I guess that's why we love it. So let's. Let's move on to the end of this show. And I'm game, by the way. I don't know what Moody's up to, but I would like to do a FaceTime with me and Mooney. None of you can witness. I'll just gonna go talk to him outside of the garage here after the show. No, let's do an after show with Nate Mooney if he's game and he can tell us what to talk about because he's popping off new and I'm trying to shut this down. So it. Let's do this. If he's game, retire. Alex updates. The next show is Thursday, March 19th. Do you remember Basic Capital when I brought that up? [1:02:03] Chad: No, I don't. [1:02:05] Mark: Well, they've been very, very not basic. Very not basic. [1:02:08] JD: They're in my algorithm, apparently. So I'm seeing them on Instagram, on YouTube, all these things. We may have Nate Taylor from Basic capital on Thursday, March 19, or one of the founders and who this is Steve. And everyone listening in is this is maybe one of the next disruptors. They've got 25 million in their series A funding, but it's with a very interesting twist. And you'll remember this now if you're a retire chat bar person, they're the ones that were had this concept that was kind of tied to like a mortgage. They basically say like, hey, you don't have the money to buy a million dollar house, but you go take a mortgage, you put your money down and you get a mortgage with an interest rate. And then what happens? Your house grows in value and you're a stud. And that's awesome. We all accept that. We'd like to do that in the 401k space. You put in a dollar, we're Gonna put in $4 for you, and we're gonna grow this thing together. And obviously million questions and all that. They will be with us next time on the show. So we'll talk about that. So product because this if. If it is Nate Taylor, I thought he was just from outside the industry, Venture capital backed little. I loved him I had a one on one conversation with him. He really knows our industry. He knows his. So if it's him, great. If it's one of the founders, whatever. It'll be awesome too. So they'll be next time. And then guess who's after that on April 2nd? Stephen Dagel of Bid Money. [1:03:45] Chad: Yeah. Yeah. [1:03:47] JD: Bid Money's been getting a lot of little like action these days with some. [1:03:51] Chad: They're doing some really cool stuff. [1:03:53] JD: So we'll have STEPHEN ON. The fourth installment of Plan Design Consultants Plug Plug Plug 401K Expedition Series is Tuesday, March 17th at 10am Pacific. You can register at plan design.com 401K HYPHEN EXP. I don't drink for that. And who's presenting? J. Mac Silent J. That's gonna bring a green beer. [1:04:29] Chad: By the way, it was his birthday. He also celebrated his 11th year with PDC. Yes. Two days ago. [1:04:36] Justin: You're celebrating your 17th this year. [1:04:39] JD: I only reach out to employees on like 5, 10, 15, and I don't [1:04:44] Mark: know, that means that, that means I get a shout out in May. [1:04:48] JD: Actually, it's HR that tracks that. I have no idea what I have with you people, so I have no clue. And so. Yeah, so Justin's gonna be doing that. That'll be awesome. It's titled how to highlight record Keeper strengths for Sales Success. There it is. There it is. Looking forward to that. Okay. Chat bar. Love you. You're back. You're in full force. You're chiming in. It's good to see you. Hopefully you're popping off on that merch store right now. I know you will in the future when we put some good shit there. Steve, you're a good human, bro. [1:05:32] Chad: You're doing some really cool things, Steve. [1:05:34] JD: Yeah, I'm learning more about you. You're. Is he frozen? [1:05:39] Chad: No, no, he was shaking his head yes to you. [1:05:42] JD: I'm frozen. My Internet. By the way, remember this? Never ask, are you frozen? Because if you're frozen, you can't ask. Steve, here's what, here's my take on you. You're a. You're kind of a cool little weird entrepreneur. Like you're, you're up at 11 to 2 in the morning doing stuff. You've got these multiple companies. I don't think what people realize is that you're also like. All this is birthed from being a successful financial advisor, by the way. Everyone, it's not just jumping onto the scene trying to create these companies. He's actually one of us who's worked his ass off for a long time and been successful. But K's338 if that's 338 investment fiduciaries, you can find them at 338if.com and K quote.com Steve. Yeah, I said you're a nerd but you're also a great human. And we're, we thought you were the like hey, cold call guy. You know, cold call guy. And we kind of gave you some not. We loved you back in the day but it's awesome to have you on the show. [1:06:56] Chad: Yeah. [1:06:56] JD: Thank you. [1:06:56] Steve: Thanks to. Thanks everyone for having me. And I'm always going to be the cold calling guy. I was bred to cold call so I'm cold calling guy first. Everything else second. [1:07:04] JD: Yes, there it is. [1:07:05] Chad: Well, I like, I like what you're doing now a little more than the cold calling. [1:07:10] Steve: I'm trying to solve some real problems versus the cold calling problem, which I don't know. [1:07:14] Chad: You are. You are. [1:07:16] JD: Justin. Happy birthday and moody. Let's spend a moment, shall we? [1:07:24] Chad: I'm going to coach baseball after show. [1:07:27] JD: Nate, you want to hop on for like a few minutes and see who sticks around? We have been. We have been. We have been the retireholics for the last 10 plus years and this is the retireholics and we are changing the retirement plan industry one beer at a time. See you next time. [1:07:45] Chad: Thank you, Steve. [1:07:46] Steve: Here's guys. [1:07:46] Mark: Thank you. [1:07:47] Chad: Pleasure man. Appreciate you joining us. [1:07:49] JD: Take care. Steven. [1:07:52] Mark: Didn't even spin the wheel. Didn't even spin the wheel. [1:07:57] JD: It's not too late, Mark. [1:07:58] Mark: And you're going to get hit right now. [1:08:00] Chad: My button is on the leave webinar right now. [1:08:03] Steve: Teacher. [1:08:03] Mark: You didn't assign the homework guy. He left. [1:08:11] JD: See you next time. [1:08:13] Mark: I drank for him last time. [1:08:15] JD: I'm not doing. Is he not drinking? [1:08:17] Justin: No, he's gone. He has got baseball practice. [1:08:21] JD: I'll drink for him. [1:08:25] Justin: Does anyone else have kids practice at out there? 8 o' clock at night. [1:08:31] Mark: So timeout, Justin. Literally. [1:08:33] Justin: Is that normal? [1:08:34] JD: This is not the ending I'm looking for. Not your rambling. Brandon, can you play some music so we can cut out?