Fiduciary Value & Fee Strategy with Daniel Bryant

[0:04] JD: Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the show. It's the first Thursday of a month, which means everybody, this is a good old fashioned retireholics format. Acro sin is in play. We'll be doing our games. We'll be, you know, everything that you've all been accustomed to. And it's been a while, Robey, since I've done a song. And I've got one today that I'm kind of fired up to do. Everybody out there in the chat bar, you ready for some rocking music with a little 401k spin? [0:44] Justin: Brace yourself. [0:45] JD: Let's do this. Okay, I've got to do a couple things here. First. I've got to set myself up for what Brandon taught me to do here. Turning that on. [0:56] Mark: Mrs. Brandrup comes every time you sing. That's the only time he's here, is when you say changing. [1:04] JD: Changing my mic and. Hang on. Sorry. And now I'm going to get my music ready and we'll get ready to go. [1:14] Chad: Are you in your recording studio? [1:16] Daniel Bryant: Is that where you are? [1:18] JD: And here we go. Can you hear that? All right. Say yes. [1:26] Daniel Bryant: Yes. [1:26] Mark: Yes. [1:27] JD: Yeah. When you were here before couldn't sell you a plan you're just like a. Up your high fees I can't stand your conflict of interest isn't a beautiful thing. You smell like some feo. You're so evil but you're a pep and I'm a hater. What the hell are you doing here? You don't belong here. I don't care about your profits [2:46] Daniel Bryant: or [2:46] JD: your lies to congress, your stupid sales pitch. You smell like dirty piss. I want you to know this. I'm telling the world you're so fucking evil and you smell like fell and you're a pap. Okay, I'm done. Hey, turn it off. [3:32] Mark: You stayed in it that whole time? J.D. that was good. [3:35] JD: How'd I do What? You know what sucks about that is I have to. [3:40] Chad: I honestly thought Daniel was like. I made a bad decision. [3:46] Daniel Bryant: I got somewhere to. [3:48] Mark: I checked the panelists to make sure he was still logged in. [3:51] JD: Mark, it's so awkward because I have to go to a totally different screen so I can't see anyone. And I'm like. I don't even know if they're hearing me or what's going on. So. [4:00] Chad: All right. So I need to. I need to get a vote from. From everyone on this panel. JD that was an amazing song. And I think if we're gonna start evaluating your songs, I'd give you a B. A B minus on that one. But the question is, and I'm gonna ask this to Daniel, Chad and Justin Dewey Ackerson, J.D. for that song. [4:24] Mark: Yes. [4:25] JD: Oh, yeah, yeah. [4:26] Justin: Okay. [4:26] Mark: Once the show starts, he's rung up. [4:28] Chad: All right, all right. [4:31] JD: I have the lyrics. I can count it. And awesome. And make up for it. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks. [4:36] Daniel Bryant: Really good. Really good. I liked it. [4:38] JD: Appreciate it. I'm not sure if Fred Reese will like it based on his recent comments on pooled employer plans. But let's go straight, Justin, old school kind of style. Do us all a favor, Justin, and intro our guest for the show today will do. [4:55] Justin: Our guest joins us today from the land of deep dip, deep dish pizzas. Steve Urkel and a shiny bean looking thing. Quite the underachiever. He attended undergrad at Dartmouth and then went on to earn his NBA at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management with his three best friends, Snap, Crackle and Pop. Was a guy named Captain Crunch and he started an acapella group called the Bottom Shelf. He's a best selling author, serial entrepreneur, entrepreneur, a philanthropist and one hell of an adjunct lecturer. The senior advisor of more companies than I can count on his LinkedIn page and the senior principal of 4100 Group Financial Services, Mr. Daniel Bryant. [5:30] JD: Nice. [5:31] Daniel Bryant: Thanks guys. It's awesome. Awesome. [5:33] Mark: Welcome Mr. Bryant. [5:34] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, looking forward to it. That was really good. Nice intro. [5:38] Justin: Well, thank you. [5:38] Daniel Bryant: The bottom shelf. I don't know where you, where you found that one. That's, that's, that's in the deep state right there. [5:44] JD: Nice. Well done. [5:45] Justin: On your home page of LinkedIn. [5:47] Chad: On. [5:49] JD: He found your MySpace. He found your MySpace. Everyone, you know what to do. Rate Justin on a scale of 0 to 10 and how well he does but. Yeah, I'm with you Bill. I'm with you, Mrs. Brandrup. That was a good one, Brandon. Let's get it started man. We got some to talk about. Let's go to headlines. Everyone. Have you seen this? Todd Kading of Leaf House. Love the dude. Love the dude. He had a little Jerry Maguire manifesto moment. I feel like like he put pen to paper and made a big defense of record keepers and the fact that they're commoditized and the fact that we've push them in this race to zero and I say we. I feel like he's pointing at you, the financial advisor. I'm gonna go straight to you, Mr. Guest man from Dartmouth. Question. You started a big shop in Sheridan Road and in your career did you ever commoditize the services of a record keeper or squeeze their Fees. [7:07] Daniel Bryant: You know, I think it's, I read what Todd wrote. It's, it's. You know, when we started Sheridan Road in 2004, I think it was a long time ago, right. Our whole process, our whole thought process was how do we become fiduciaries? We were always involved in sort of wealth management, executive comp, retirement plans. Right. So we always had that sort of convergence, which is commonplace today. But at the end of the day, we looked at record keepers. We looked at the asset managers, we looked at the technology providers. We were all in this thing sort of together, trying to, you know, improve outcomes, trying to sort of help people get from point A to point B. Now, you know, there's obviously been a lot of change with record Keepers. You look at Empower, you look at all these other guys. But I will say something, and this is a little crossover to another headline that you had, you know, in 2014, 2015, we actually had a small market solution with Empower, right. So we created it with MPower, with an outsourced TPA with technology. So a lot of the stuff that we're doing today, it's not new, it's not that innovative. Right. But I think it's. I don't know. I didn't really like the article. [8:21] JD: Daniel, you owe us your first acrosyn for the acronym for third party administrator. So take a drink from your hard stuff. And Chad, I got a question for you. In reading this, was Todd Kading actually like, being this kind of Jerry Maguire manifesto defending the record keepers or like, is this really a rebellious move or is this actually not rebellious at all and instead a strategic play for Todd Kating, AKA he wants to get his little manage account service on all these record keepers platforms. So this is a little bit of ass kissing here. Disguise, rebellion. [9:01] Mark: I, I feel like we know him better than that to say it's ass kissing. What I do think that he's following the flow of many of the people that understand the space well, which is the work that the record keepers do is difficult, especially with the changes that are going on from a legislative perspective with automatic enrollment booming, with auto escalation booming, with people taking loans and distributions and in service, there's a lot of moving pieces. What I will disagree with what he said is that, and I'm a culprit of this, I will say that the services are commoditized and the services have become commoditized because so many have become so freaking good at it. They do a really good job. And he complained a little bit about the mergers that have taken place. Mergers that have taken place have eaten up some underperforming record keepers. That's why they were gone. They weren't, they weren't of this upper echelon. And so I don't mind saying they're commoditized. There are different services, but the work that they do has become fairly commodity, fairly much a commodity at this point. So I'm on both sides. [10:11] Chad: Can I, can I take the complete opposite route and do some butt kissing to him and say, good for you, man. Like, I actually enjoy that. [10:18] Mark: I'm like, so did I. [10:19] Chad: Good sticking up for something that it. I, I agree with. I feel like there's non stop pressure to just this race to zero and all these like, yeah, hey, like pointed out somebody with respect, someone who's been doing this for a while is like, come on, do we want to have good service providers who can employ good freaking people who understand this, or are we just gonna have artificial intelligence just take over and have nobody behind the scenes and it's just a bunch of computers? So I, I'm cool with it. [10:50] JD: Very. [10:51] Chad: A manifesto. And maybe I just don't, I'm not very smart. I don't know a definition. I thought it would be like 78 pages, but maybe that's a definition of something else. So I, when I, when you said manifesto, I was like, I'm not going to read that. But then I open the article and I'm like, even better. I can read that. [11:10] JD: Daniel, I'm going to give you the, the end here, but let me first kind of pivot here and see what you think about this. And then we'll, we'll wrap this up so I'll jump on his side. I didn't know Todd was here when I was talking on him a second ago. Sorry, Todd. But I'll tell you where I do agree with him is the bold move of kind of telling advisors to kind of straighten out their act a little bit. I definitely, I'll kind of mirror Roby's thoughts. It has always frustrated me that as an industry of partners, third party administrators, record keepers, advisors, and all the kind of ancillary tech around it all we're working on in this industry together, yet we're always pushing each other to like, oh, can you sharpen your pencil and lower your fee? Oh, I'm going to move from this record keeper to this record keeper because it's cheaper by 4 basis points. Yeah, we're always grinding each other down and I, I would love to see More people stand up to the advisor community, I guess is who I'm, I'm pointing out here and say, look, kind of man up, woman up, show the value of our industry and stop spreadsheeting shit and trying to whittle down fees. Like that's your value, because it's not. And I'll let you kind of whatever you want to talk about. [12:32] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, I think, I think, I think I totally agree with you. I think, you know, advisors need to sort of show their value. Show. You know, we always said, hey, we want to be the McKinsey of retirement plan consulting. People thought that was crazy. We wanted to sort of charge a premium and then over deliver. But I think, you know, the, the race to the bottom, it is real. I think, you know, advisors need to sort of think about where they are in the food chain. Think about the overall benefit spend of companies, right? They're spending hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars of benefit spending. The voluntary benefits. I talk about that all the time. It's a smorgasbord of sort of benefits that are available. And the retirement plan advisors had the opportunity decades ago to sort of be the sharp end of the stick to the participants. And I think they've sort of seeded that, you know, conversation in a large respect. It's not great, but I think that's where they are. And so it's, you know, they have been hammered on fees. I think it's going to continue. But I think the only way that advisors survive in the way they are today over the next multiple decades is to partner and align with record keepers. TPAs technology, they gotta embrace it. [13:52] Mark: Hey, before you transition, JD let me ask one question. Just an honest yes or no. 10 years ago, was the recordkeeping community making more than they should for the services they were providing? [14:05] JD: Well, that's, that's a difficult question. It really depends on the size of the market. [14:09] Daniel Bryant: And it's, I would say, I would say 15 years ago. I mean, look, the technology is so antiquated across most of these record keepers, right? So it's, it's, you know, horrible. It's, it's, it's gotten enormously better. But I remember we pitched like the Department of the Navy in 2007, right? And we had the, it was in Memphis. It was one of their divisions. It was like multi billion dollar plan. We'd been in business like three years and Jim and I looked at each other and we're like, we are way over our skis, right? As a total retirement outsourcing play. And I remember we learned a ton on just the pricing, how much they made, all of that stuff. And we kept that, you know, we just kept that information that we learned so that we could actually drive their costs down to something where they could still make money. They got, they have to make money, right, but that the margins wouldn't be so high. So I'd say late 2008, 2009, they're making really good money. I think today, I think it's a lot skinnier. 10 years ago might have been fair. [15:12] JD: You know what the good news is? The good news is that if they use pooled employer plans and all the conflicts of interest that arise there with proprietary investments and kind of pay to play things, they can start to make some of that revenue back. I'm just kidding. I'm joking. We'll move on to the next one. Empower Small Business solution. I'll get it. I'm gonna go to you, Chad, first on this. When I see this, I have to be honest. My first pessimistic, kind of negative thought is like, wait, Empower's been selling TO Small Employers 401k plans for a long time. Isn't this reluctantly a shiny thing? Or we've got a digital solution. I, I still think a lot of this is like using fancy words and stuff. You throw a little tech in there and now you've got a digital solution. Now with that said, Meanie jd I read through this a little bit and it seems great. I can't poke a lot of holes into it. They're definitely leveraging third party administrator partners. Not that that makes it a great program. I'm just saying, like, it's flexible. So Chad, your take on this. Wouldn't you have always gone to Empower for a small employer 401k plan? And what, what's going to make this different? [16:30] Mark: No, I mean, there was a stretch of time back in the day when Empower had their key solution which was aligned for small market. Then as they started to roll out premier key and custom key, they started to go upper market and. Yeah, and the last. What, Guys, you can quote this with me because their wholesalers are pretty damn honest about it. Call it the last six or seven years they've been like, we're not really interested in startups. And in fact, many other wholesalers wouldn't even quote it because they felt like if we put that in front of the advisor, it made them look so high that the advisor then wouldn't bring them the $2 million plan so the wholesaler would be like, yeah, we're, we're like a $3,000 billable. And I go, that's fine, that's great. A lot of what we want is a build expense for the client. So if you're 3,000 billable plus advisor expense, plus the, the investment cost, that's in the ballpark. Now this pitch, JD is different. This takes us back to remember nationwide when we used to be able to put a plan in, in like five days because we could do their contracts because we could load the provisions into the system. They looked at the third party administrator and said this is actually our wholesaler. And so let's give them this, this ability. That's what Empower has done here. The advisor or the third party administrator can create the contracts that are signature ready, that can generate their proposal. That includes the third party administrator's pricing and the advisor pricing on one location. You can create the DocuSign, you can put in plan provisions. They're narrowing the field of flexibility in terms of plan provisions on the design to try to make it easier, they're putting a 338 on there. Let me ask a lot of what we talk about in the small space needs to happen and they're kind of doing it right there. [18:10] JD: Daniel, let me ask you, you think back to your old advisor days when you're rolling up your sleeves and doing this stuff. I mean, how do you feel about these quick, efficient installs? Like, is that, is that important to advisors? [18:25] Daniel Bryant: Totally. I think, I think these small, these small plans are very hard to make any money on them. Right? So you want to be helpful, you want to do the right thing, you want to help these seven or eight employees of XYZ Co. But it's very, it's super difficult to make any money on those. And so just the time and expense it takes, the calls that you're going to receive from the owner, the cfo. It is, it is really difficult. So I think a lot of the benefits firms, right, they've constructed call centers, acronym ono, They've, they've, they've created call centers. And so the small plan market just funnels into these call centers to answer these questions. And that's a little bit of what the advantage that the, the benefits, you know, providers, you know, Hub, you know, all these other folks, they have these massive call centers that take questions. I mean it's not great, but it's, that's where they've got a little bit of an advantage. But I do like the digital, the digital, digital solution makes a ton of sense and if it's 3:16,338 easy lineup, [19:31] JD: I stand, I stand corrected. I have always thrown darts at this whole like, oh, we're gonna enroll you or get you set up. Sorry. As a plan in 15 minutes or less. As a third party administer, I'm like, wait a second. I want to have a conversation with you about provisions and things. And the last thing I want you to do is get into things you don't know what you're getting into. So I've always been kind of a naysayer of that. But I loved your financial advisor perspective there. Like, I really mean this. If you want to sell small plans that don't have real levels of profitability or that shit's got to go quick for you, you can't be sitting in on six different meetings and watching the paperwork go through and doing all this stuff. So you're kind of cheap. [20:12] Daniel Bryant: I mean, I mean jd, you guys will make the money, right? You guys charge a flat fee, you guys get your fee advisors in that market. But it's, it's, it's de minimis and it's really difficult to, to make that work. So you need, you need huge scale and that's why empowers, you know, that's why they've done it. Huge scale. It's very profitable. Suboptimal scale is a huge amateur capital. [20:38] JD: Yeah, I mean you hit the nail on the head that startups have basically funded my Lambos. That's how I buy those. [20:45] Daniel Bryant: Right? Exactly. [20:46] Mark: Startup plan jd Something new that's popping up for us that the time needs to implement plans have become even more important throughout the year. You know, we always had a safe harbor deadline to get a startup plan set up by 10 1. You've always kind of had an end of the year, if they weren't going safe harbor to get a deferral set up by 12:1. Now you've got, you've got, I'm not going to say it, I don't know what the full acronym is. A simple, you've got mid year conversions of those plans that are requiring quick setups because we also have to meet 101 deadlines because we have prorated limits. So we have more of a need probably now than ever to be able to set plans up quickly. And when you force the, the third party administrator in the mix, at least you're going to get proper design consultation. That, that's, I guess that's a big benefit here. You're going to set up a plan quickly. At least it's with someone that knows what they're doing and is going to draft appropriately. [21:46] Daniel Bryant: The other thing I would say, guys, is this whole financial wellness, financial literacy. I know we might talk about this a little bit later, but that's an area where advisors can actually make money. If you're a small business owner, you've got eight employees, you know what? You actually do want to help them with financial literacy, you will go the extra yard because you do care about them. It's just a cost issue for you. And so I think that you could charge, you know, say you're charging $1,000 on that plan as an advisor or something like that. You could also charge 1000 bucks or 1500 bucks to do financial literacy, financial wellness, all those sorts of things on top of it, either through a tool or in person. That's a way to sort of make the math work for advisors. [22:30] JD: Spoken like a true entrepreneur who built a business and sold it. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But yeah, advisors, pay attention to what he's saying. You can come up with creative ways to create value, deliver services, and bill your clients for even the smallest of plans. I'd love to see that. [22:54] Daniel Bryant: And I would. And I'd also say real quick, the sort of executive comp plans, right? Executive benefits we used to run. We used to do these all the time. So any S Corp, llc, you know, massively overfunded life insurance policies, right. We call them personal portable pension plans. Tiny death benefit and people would be able to save as much money as they possibly could. It's terrible. [23:19] Chad: Daniel. [23:19] JD: On this show, on this show, we call it a limited liability corporation. Drink your drink, bro. Okay, we're gonna go to the next. [23:26] Chad: I'm just surprised you knew that, J.D. [23:29] JD: to be honest. Well, when bro dies ripping on your intelligence, yeah, you're in trouble. Let's go to Butterbeer's LinkedIn. [23:39] Daniel Bryant: Butterbeer. Yummy. [23:41] Justin: I haven't heard this name in a while. [23:43] Chad: I don't think you should just refer to him. [23:45] JD: I know I'm going to get in trouble. [23:47] Chad: I think you should. [23:49] JD: I'm going to get in trouble with the. The man who. Never mind. Brian Graff post on LinkedIn talking about the American Retirement association and a plan to help and or improve a racial savings gap. I'm going to kick this over to anyone that wants to jump in because one, I'm uncomfortable talking about racial things and two, I didn't really read this art. This, this article in this post because I was trying to create a Radiohead Song. So please, someone jump in here. What's going on? [24:28] Daniel Bryant: I'll jump. I'll jump in. I've done a lot of work on this area, as you guys probably know. So research for the book I wrote a couple years ago, I spent a ton of time with everyone from, you know, Jamie Dimon to leaders of all these different organizations, you know, Thassundra Brown, Duckett, Tia Crep, who's done a ton of work around this. So when you start talking about those groups within our society that are woefully underprepared or unprepared for retirement, financial literacy, all these sorts of things, it is a pretty big gap. Also, the private equity firm with whom I affiliate. Oh, my gosh. The private equity firm with whom I affiliate, they, you know, they're big believers in the racial divide or wealth gap. So I would just sort of say a couple things. [25:20] JD: One, you just said racial divide or wealth gaps. You kind of put those in the same category, or are they separate? [25:30] Daniel Bryant: I would say. I meant to sort of put those two together. I think there's. There's a lot of divides within savings rates. How you slice the data, you know, we don't need to go down that path, but when you slice the data in terms of where people are from a saving standpoint at age 60, based upon gender or race or ethnicity or all of those sorts of things, it's. It's. It's pretty varied. So I'll just say a couple things. One is, you know, we have this little foundation, the Shared Road Foundation. We just created this Shared Road Scholar program. And it really. We're looking to partner with, like, LifeSense and some other organizations that are focusing on vets, folks that were formerly incarcerated. There's a whole fascinating thing around that. So we've got a person on our board, Robert Sherrill, who was incarcerated, totally turned his life around. Pardoned by the governor of Tennessee, the president, United States. And he's made his first person in the history of the United States. And he, like, his dad was killed in jail. His mom was a prostitute. He was. He was on the street at age 3. Drugs. He was very good at selling them. Anyways, in jail for six years. He came out and he's on our board. And he's so inspiring. But he says, look, when you leave jail, you have $75 and a bus ticket, right? And in one and one month, you've got to have a job and you've got to have a place to live. And he said, that's totally Impossible. Because people say, hey, you're an ex convict. I'm going to pay you $3 an hour. So you look at vets, you look at the LGBTQ community, you look at race, you look at all these things. I think there's a lot of opportunities, at least to focus on. [27:16] JD: Sometimes I, I think that all sounds so good and so great, and I want to bring those types of causes up. Sometimes I just wonder if I'm playing the bad guy role here. I apologize. But if, if the American Retirement association is more like, I don't know if retirement plans are a racist or see color. I think retirement plans see wealth. And there, you're not going to get help if you don't have money. So it doesn't matter whether you're white, black, brown, yellow, or green, if you don't have money, you're going to be part of that savings gap. Now, you brought up some little different things which I think are applicable and appropriate. You know, like that. That's prison and. Yeah. And families and all this kind of stuff. So I stand corrected a little bit. Okay. [28:05] Daniel Bryant: Also, I'd also say real quickly, and I know this is sort of a difficult conversation for people to talk about, but today in companies, they are willing to sort of segment the employee base and have a conversation with them, Right. Ten years ago, be like, oh, you can't segment women from men, but you can. And people do. People who are divorced, men, women, you know, mothers, whatever, families, they have different needs, they've got different life goals. And it's better to segment. I'm telling you, I think it is. I think we got to get over ourselves and just do it, because you're going to have better outcomes for people. It's difficult, for sure. [28:45] JD: I'll tell you where. A great place to start, I'm sure Butterbeer would agree with me, is the coverage gap. You know, I mean, the more we can attack that coverage gap, the better we can do to help all these types of people start to build some savings. So. Okay, cool. Gotta. If I ever talk any about the ara, I'll drink for that. It's never really meant because at the bottom of my heart, and I'm not bending a knee to Butterbeer, but at the bottom of my heart, though, that firm, that, that institution and all the people there and all the work they do is phenomenal. It's necessary they protect us as an industry as they should. And. And I'm just, I'm a massive supporter and I stroke a lot of checks to those people. For all of your guys designations and all the education and training people. Jesus Christ. Okay. [29:39] Mark: Hey, you should be happy though that all the continuing ed that we do, we make sure it's free because they send out that whole come get your continuing ed and pay an extra $200 for this course. At least we do all the free stuff. [29:52] JD: Yeah. [29:53] Daniel Bryant: I just have a follow up question. I mean, I know I don't want to spend any more time on this, but why, you know, what do you guys think we should do about this? Not just nothing. Right. It's just the accessibility gap. [30:03] JD: About, about financial financial wellness for people in need of it or about the coverage gap. [30:12] Daniel Bryant: Financial wellness. I know, coverage gap. Obviously more people we can cover, the better. [30:16] JD: But I go if I have to give you my honest answer, if, if you and I were sitting down and having some beers and talking about it behind closed. [30:23] Daniel Bryant: We are. We're right next to each other. [30:25] JD: That's exactly right. Now I'm here honestly tell you the obvious answer, which is I do think it's a money problem. I think it's a profitability problem. I think the capitalist in me is like, okay, to deliver services to people, there's got to be revenue there some way. Otherwise what's going to move the needle? I know you're a philanthropist. Philanthropist, got that right. I think therapist and, and you focus on a lot of that kind of stuff is great. But I think in the, in the real world, like services are going to come to people when other institutions are real, can make money from them. And I think that's a real barrier to getting finance. You know this, you wrote a book on it. It's a real barrier to getting financial wellness and financial planning and financial education to people that don't have any cash in their pocket. And so I, here's my answer. What might change it? Maybe artificial intelligence, maybe technology. Maybe the scalability of being able to do things without actual humans involved might help. [31:24] Daniel Bryant: Robi says Mark loves it. Yeah, he loves it. [31:27] JD: I don't know. [31:28] Chad: Yeah, no, I think again, Daniel, to your point, it can't be an uncomfortable conversation to have the fact that the, there's, there's folks you know in Washington D.C. i'll drink for that. Talking about this just means that it gets brought out on a, on a bigger level, bigger scale. But honestly, I just think it starts [31:48] Daniel Bryant: with [31:51] Chad: the group of us up here. Can't go out to those communities and tell people about this stuff. It needs to be coming from people. Sometimes people just trust people within the community. If I Look like you. I might have the same thoughts to you, same background as you. They, again, it's a different way of communicating with, with people who are on the same level, maybe who have come from the same background. [32:14] Daniel Bryant: And so, yeah, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta get them younger though, right? [32:19] Chad: Yeah. In my opinion, I'll say it starts with people getting into this industry who are not getting into this industry. And so, and my take just goes way more organically than, no offense, J.D. but using technology, it goes to actually getting that more authentic feel and getting people involved who know what they're going through. [32:42] JD: I like that Sherry's comment about getting [32:46] Justin: college grads or whatnot to our conferences. [32:49] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, totally. [32:50] Justin: Getting them exposed to our industry earlier. That's a. [32:52] Chad: So I, I, dude, high schoolers not even grad. Like, yeah, dude. Yeah, I did this high schooler to [32:58] Justin: a conference, you know, mid, mid school year. [33:00] Chad: But you pay them to come, you feed them, you give them a free place to stay. [33:05] Daniel Bryant: Like, I'm telling you, they're totally clueless. I, I taught a class like two years ago, it's called Adulting 101 at a college. And it was all these graduating seniors, they, they had to take a health wellness class, all these other sorts of things. And I just put up there A, A W2. Is that an acronym? So W2. I think I'm safe there. [33:31] Justin: You're good. [33:31] Daniel Bryant: And literally I just walked through what their paycheck was going to look like, right? And so I said, you're going to make $50,000. Basic stuff. And you could see even professors and lecturers were literally taking notes. You know, they're like, wait. And so the kids are, I'm like, you're not moving to New York and living in Soho. Like, that ain't happening. Like, you're, you're never going out to eat. [33:53] JD: When you make, when you make, when you make 60 grand a year at your new job, you don't actually make 60 grand a year, right? No, exactly. [34:01] Daniel Bryant: I'm like, you're gonna have like 5,000 left over. So anyway, I think it's to your point. I know the chat box, I mean, it's, you got to start high school and in college, these people have to get a clue. They are clueless on the Real World. And then it hits them in the face. [34:19] Chad: Can we, can we stop teaching kids how to do like square dancing and pottery and tell them to like, do a tax form? [34:28] Mark: Like, hey, on the, on the positive side of things, some of the younger kid education that does still exist but you know what they're teaching Mark. [34:37] Chad: Sherry, I didn't mean it like that. [34:41] Mark: Balancing a checkbook. [34:42] JD: Oh, I know. [34:43] Chad: I remember doing that in seventh grade. [34:45] Mark: But we're beyond that now. There is no checkbook. You're not writing checks. Like it needs to change. And that's. It's something that I know American Retirement association offers to advisors, stipends or opportunity to get speakers at local colleges within the community. If you approach the ARA and say, this is what I'm trying to do. They have a campaign for this. [35:10] Chad: He only could go so many times without he. He just wanted to talk fast. [35:14] JD: Let me jump on. On Roby's back on that a little bit. And I think you're gonna like this R.O. guy is. What about. You were talking about P.E. they want to hear from the people of that they know that are from their communities. But they also love the famous people, the sports people. So if we could get like NFL, I'll drink. And this has happened in the past where you get like big famous running backs, wide receivers that talk financial literacy type of stuff. All the people watching on the TV at home are like, wow. And I would say whether they're white, black, or as Greg said, purple, like they're all fans of these, these guys, you know, and then they'd be like, wow, okay, if this big time wide receivers telling you I should think about financial literacy, maybe I should. [36:08] Chad: I see, I. The only reason why I disagree with that is because that person is living a life that only 1% of us even could potentially do. They're making millions of dollars. They're living in a fantasy land. [36:28] Mark: What does that matter though, Mark, if it's creating impact? That's why they have these guys sell shoes and these girls show sell tennis rackets. And because it works. [36:37] Chad: Well, maybe let me explain myself then, right? I think the conversation needs to be more about real life understanding of how things work, not a dream of, hey, because yeah, I don't care who you are. You go and you talk to kids and you're a professional athlete. And all the kids see is nice shoes, nice clothes, maybe some jewelry and a dream, a pipe dream of being a professional athlete and making it out and making millions of dollars when the real person in there should be talking about, hey, when I graduated from high school, this is what I did. I made $42,000 a year. But here's what I had to think. I had kids at a young age. Here's what I had to plan for. I wanted to go to college. I had to pay my way through. You got to think about loans now. You really have to think about how that works, you know, like, it's more than just this idea of making it. It's about understanding how everything works. Once you are going down this path, your own. [37:49] Daniel Bryant: Daniel, wait. [37:50] JD: Let's. Let's let the guy who went to Dartmouth and build his business to 14 billion tell us what he thinks. Go ahead. [37:57] Daniel Bryant: Well, I was just going to say that I would start bigger than that, but that's. That's close. Yeah, I did it. [38:06] JD: I'll drink for that. [38:07] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, exactly. [38:08] Chad: Well, who actually Acro sent. I missed it. [38:11] Daniel Bryant: No, I just. [38:12] JD: Go on, Daniel. Go, go, go. [38:14] Daniel Bryant: I would just say you got it. You got to start. You got to start in high school. I really do. I'm looking at the chat box. I mean, tons of people, I think 40 some odd percent of people are going to college. So you have 60% of people aren't going to college anymore. Less and less are looking at that as, hey, that's a good use of my time. Less and less people are going to grad school. It's prohibitively expensive. If you go to, you know, private schools and you're stuck in that middle, sort of upper middle class, and you don't qualify for any loans or financial aid, those people are just getting crushed. And so I think you've got to teach these kids in junior and senior year everything that you know. Mark, you just said. I don't know what I just did there, but you got to just. [38:54] JD: That was me. [38:55] Chad: That was Chad. Chad did it in the chat bar. [38:57] Daniel Bryant: Chat box. Okay. [38:58] Chad: Sorry. [38:58] Daniel Bryant: Got it. Okay. But that's all I'm saying. I would start as early as possible. Junior year, senior year, make it mandatory. And talk about loans, credit cards, all that stuff. People have no idea what they're paying. It's a total disaster. [39:10] JD: I love it when Daniel Bryant is aligning and agreeing with rogue guy. That. That makes me happy in the world, you guys. [39:19] Chad: Oh, no, Nate. [39:21] JD: I found a little something that I keep up. Hey, I found a little something that I keep up in my cupboard with my. My wine and my expensive bourbon. It was lukewarm and just crap. [39:37] Daniel Bryant: Nice. That's good, Brandon. [39:40] Mark: I win. I'm going to get it in that. [39:42] JD: Let's spin the wheel. [39:45] Justin: I like how you said if you win, Chad. [39:47] Mark: Yeah, it's a win. [39:51] Chad: No, it's a win. [39:57] Justin: Okay, while we drink, tell us about your band. [40:00] JD: Yeah, tell us. Thanks. [40:02] Daniel Bryant: Bottom shelf. [40:03] Chad: Wait, Justin, don't start. You wait for no. [40:05] JD: Jamie. JD Stop it's up, it's up. It's up. Like I'm gonna win. [40:09] Daniel Bryant: All I've got is the bourbon. I just poured the bourbon. I don't have the idea. [40:11] Justin: Well, you don't have to. You're fine. You're gonna tell us about it. [40:13] JD: No, you're fine, Daniel. You don't have to do anything. Except for what Justin asked you to do. [40:18] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, for the band. So, two, three, go. Let's go [40:24] JD: tell them about your band, Daniel. [40:26] Daniel Bryant: That's nice. That's good, you guys. Well, jd, you're not drinking that sort of slowing down. Nice. That is impressive. Yeah, we've done it a time or two. Yeah, I bet. I mean, college. We had a band called the Bottom Shelf. It was awesome. We were terrible. But we played, you know. You know, like 40 gigs around the Upper Valley in New Hampshire. So, you know, a lot of hot spots. Not quite Red Rocks, but it was more fraternity basements. It was good. We played 80s hair band. Yeah, I played guitar and we. I had a lead guitar guy, but I played sort of the acoustic sort of, you know, whatever and saying. [41:09] JD: You still pick up the guitar and play? [41:11] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, I got a little. Yeah, I got a couple guitars here. I don't really play that much, but. [41:16] JD: Yeah, I find. I find most people that sell their company for lots of money and have vacation houses all over the world, and Lambos, they do dabble with a guitar once in a while, right? Me, not so much. But you, I get that. Okay, let's. Let's. You know what? In this kind of theme, let's. Let's go to a new topic. Sheridan Road. I don't want to pass this up like this is a big deal to me. 2004, you said you start this and you are literally the founder of it or co founder with. [41:56] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, yeah. So I. So I started The Firm in 04, and then my childhood friend Jim O', Shaughnessy, who I've known since fourth grade, Mr. Newberry's class, I sort of said, hey, you know, you want to join this thing? [42:08] JD: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop. Yeah, yeah, Jim. Jim was in your fourth grade class. [42:14] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [42:15] Chad: I don't know that Jim o'. [42:17] Justin: Shaughness. [42:17] Chad: That just sounds like a troublemaker, man. [42:20] Daniel Bryant: I don't know. No, I don't think so. [42:22] JD: Dude, the guy's so button up. [42:24] Chad: Yeah, not in fourth, fifth and sixth grade, he wasn't. [42:30] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, he was so funny. We're like ying and yang, but we. It's sort of like he was obviously his dad. Was in the retirement business. He had a small little book. And I, I literally, I was an investment banker. So my clients like PayPal and Yahoo. That's a whole separate, really fun conversation. [42:45] JD: Daniel, how old are you? How old are you? [42:48] Daniel Bryant: I'm 34. 34? No, I'm not 34. I'm 54. 54. [42:53] JD: My God, he looks like. Okay. [42:59] Daniel Bryant: Anyway, so, so, so we were just talking. I said, look, I'm, I'm gonna start this business. And, and I had introduced Jim to his wife Kathy like a decade before. And I think, I think the story goes, he was like, you know, Daniel's starting this business and shared a road financial sharing, no capital. He wants to do retirement wealth management and executive comp. And, and, and his wife was like, you got to do it. That's, it's going to be a home run. And so it was great. And so Jim, I mean, we were totally different. Right? I mean he's, he knows the space incredibly well. Sort of wizard behind the curtain. And he's still at Hub. [43:38] JD: Is he still at Hub? [43:39] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, he's still Hub. Yeah, I'll see him next. And, and so I just, you know, was really interested in sort of trying to change the industry and build something big. And, and we get emotional. [43:50] JD: Can we get emotional and kind of go like so early days. Yeah, it's, yeah, just you, then him. [43:58] Daniel Bryant: It was like employees. [43:59] JD: Yeah, I want to hear that a little. [44:01] Daniel Bryant: We had, we had. So I've got a napkin. It's in the other room, literally where we went to this burger place like every Tuesday. And we'd try to go through and sort of map out how big we think we get, how many clients, what do we have to do? And I sort of rolled it out, searched on a napkin, still have that. And you know, we hired a guy, Jeremy White, who was still in college. So he runs the Milwaukee office for Hub and he's like, you know, 40 something now. And he literally lived in my apartment downtown, literally on the floor, on the couch because that's, that's where we worked out and we worked out of my apartment and, and he was just, he's just. Talk about a baller. He, he literally would run through a wall for us. He'd work 18 hour days. He was incredible. And then we just sort of, you know, just one, you know, just managed the business, hired a couple people, a little bit of time and then where did, you know, had some, where did we, you know, luck. [44:56] JD: Where did we get to? This was a wealth management slash retirement plan firm. That sold to Hub, like four or five years ago or something. Is that right? Four years. [45:10] Daniel Bryant: Yeah. Six. Six years ago. Time passes. Yeah. So I think. I think. [45:15] JD: And I said 14. I said 14 billion at the time, but you corrected me. So how big had the shop? [45:20] Daniel Bryant: Yes, So I think we were a lot bigger than that. Probably north of 20. I think we had a bunch of AUA, obviously, and a lot of things that you couldn't sort of count assets under advisement and. [45:32] JD: Daniel, drink for that. Okay. And how many employees at the time? [45:38] Daniel Bryant: Well, we got to about 70, but when we sold at the Hub, I think we had 50. With 12 offices. [45:45] JD: I'm gonna drink. [45:46] Daniel Bryant: I'm gonna go Denver. [45:47] JD: I'm gonna drink for this. Straight off the bottle. And your ebitda. Your EBITDA was. Well, large. [45:54] Daniel Bryant: Nice. Oh, my God. Look at that thing. [45:57] Justin: Can we get the multiplier at least? [45:59] JD: I've been drinking a lot of vodka in my free time. [46:07] Chad: I love that. That's a button, and I can use it once a show. [46:10] JD: Are you gonna give us. Are you gonna give us that number? No, no, I don't. [46:14] Daniel Bryant: I don't think I can. It was, you know, it was less. [46:16] JD: Daniel, it's been some time. [46:18] Daniel Bryant: It's been six years. [46:19] JD: There's no one. [46:21] Chad: Daniel, you'll just how old you are. This number should be irrelevant. [46:25] JD: No one's scrutinizing. Okay, so you think you had 20 million in assets under management? If you include assets. I'm going to. I'm going to take some guesses here. So your revenue per year, we can talk about that maybe. Like, were you at 30 million? 40 million? 50 million less. [46:48] Daniel Bryant: No, I think. I think, you know, so we had about 40% of our revenue is wealth, revenue, and 6. 60. 60%. [46:57] JD: I just offend you. Did I underestimate your reven. [47:00] Daniel Bryant: No, no, no, man. No, no, no. I'm not going to give you any definitive numbers, but I think, you know, look, we. We had a nice business. I think one of the interesting things was I learned a long time ago, like, people don't like insurance, right? R.A. is like, I don't like insurance and things like that. There's a really funny story, so we [47:18] JD: had better be funny. [47:19] Chad: It better be funny. [47:20] JD: Yeah, keep talking, though. [47:22] Daniel Bryant: It's gonna be funny. It's gonna be funny. So this guy who was in our office, he used to rent some space from us, this guy. I'll just call him Rob. And we charge him, like, 800 bucks for an office, right? Just a little office. He's like, man, I really want to pay 600. And we. Every month we go back and forth, he tried to be nickel and diming us. And then one day he comes in my office, he's like, you know, I need some insurance. My. My mom is doing some estate planning. I'm like, yeah, no problem. How much insurance? He's like, yeah, when you go 130 million. I'm like, oh, 130 million, okay. That's, you know, that's a lot of. You know, it's a lot of insurance. So we ended up. We figured that out. We ended up figuring out we had to syndicate, that it was a multi generational thing. We told them how much we were going to make. He was like, whatever. And that's when I knew insurance ain't bad. You know, it's good for estate planning and it's good for growing the business. [48:14] JD: Right. All right. [48:14] Daniel Bryant: It's not that funny. It's not that funny, but it's actually funny. [48:16] JD: I don't know. It's good. [48:18] Chad: That was supposed to be funny. Daniel, come on. [48:22] JD: I'm [48:26] Daniel Bryant: terrible. [48:28] JD: I'm a little. [48:29] Chad: Making money is not funny. Okay. [48:32] JD: I'm a little disappointed in that. I thought so many years had gone by that Daniel was gonna be really, like, transparent with, like. Because it'd be really interesting people to understand. Shopinator out there ask, why is JD acting like an investment banker? I'm like, I just thought it'd be fun for people to understand what it looks like when someone takes a company from the beginning, grows it, sells it to Hub, and like, what does that actually look like? But what I can tell you is that usually you do pretty well when your new is this. And this is how I look at Daniel now. If I go to his LinkedIn as an example and kind of research him, I'm like, oh, well, it seems like most of the companies he's involved with. Vistria Group. 4100Fs. Is that what you call it? Or 4:1. Yeah, yeah. [49:28] Daniel Bryant: C4G. T4G. Yeah. [49:29] JD: Okay. Commonwealth Alternative. [49:32] Chad: I heard letters and so I'm ringing you up, dude. [49:35] JD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll drink, I'll drink. And. And Commonwealth Alternative. I'm getting drunk. And. And then he also. His other is like, oh, this here I go with this word. This word intimidates me. Philanthropy thing is. Oh, yeah. Then he just. You see that? He just self like. Like flexed and a vineyard, which I wasn't gonna bring up, but he's involved in vineyard. [50:01] Justin: I'm thinking, how did I miss that [50:02] JD: I'm thinking if your next chapter is like, for lack of a better term, venture capital, private equity, investment and philanthropy. Yeah, the Ibita was pretty good on that. [50:18] Justin: Ryan, how many lambos? [50:19] Mark: Kudos. [50:20] Chad: I don't think Daniel has stopped smiling this whole time. So you can tell the difference. [50:26] Daniel Bryant: You guys are, we're all, we're all [50:27] Chad: sad and depressed and he's happy. So there's a difference there. [50:30] Daniel Bryant: Well, you know what? One, one area I like a lot. I'll just throw it out. There is the is industry. That is the family office support services space. [50:42] Justin: Yeah. [50:43] Daniel Bryant: So think. So think about bill pay, outsource, cfo, tax prep, budgeting. [50:50] Mark: Love those groups. [50:52] Daniel Bryant: So that is a. I like that. So that. [50:55] JD: Why do you love this? [50:56] Daniel Bryant: It's a registered investment advisors. You're learning, you're learning. And so, so those guys hold themselves out to be multifamily offices. Right. And when they're not really, they just manage ultra high net worth money. That doesn't mean they're a family office. Family office does, you know, tax planning, insurance, all that stuff. So the, there's an industry that's growing which is let's do everything but the investment. So we're not registered, we're not licensed, and you can do all this other stuff. Not at all. And so that is a really cool space growing like week. [51:40] JD: Okay, whoa, whoa, let's stop here for a second. [51:43] Daniel Bryant: So we need. [51:43] JD: These people have no securities license. [51:47] Daniel Bryant: No. [51:47] JD: They're like the Dave Ramsey of entrepreneurs. They're just like selling services to these people. How does that so think. [51:55] Daniel Bryant: So think about if you're, if you're somebody who's got a lot of money and you own a business. This, you're like, hey look, I've got whatever, all these insurance policies, I need a budget. I need someone to pay my bills. You can charge, you know, 8, 10,000amonth to do that work for them. And so one client is paying you a hundred thousand dollars. Think about retirement space or the wealth. [52:16] JD: I get it. [52:17] Daniel Bryant: 100,000 for a wealth. You know, manager. That's like 200 clients. [52:21] JD: Right. [52:22] Daniel Bryant: Good luck. You know, or whatever it is. It's, you know, it's, it's it's a lot. [52:26] JD: But still, but still, this is a very high net worth pond you're fishing in. Like this isn't for everybody. [52:34] Mark: You gotta, you've got to be proven to get in that space too. [52:37] Daniel Bryant: And you can and you got to work. But the, the registered investment advisors, all of those folks, you know, think about the hybrids at lpl, Right. So they've got hundreds of advisors, thousands of advisors under, under these sort of purview. You know, if you can offer sort of a bundled package saying, hey, for $10 a month per advisor, $20 a month per advisor, you have access to all of this stuff. So when you do actually win a client, you can actually service them. It's really sort of an insurance policy for these folks to have somebody on the back end helping them. Does that make any sense? [53:13] JD: It does. [53:13] Mark: No, you. [53:14] Chad: No. [53:14] Mark: You will burn a lot of bridges, Daniel. A lot of those folks get referrals from their local accountant, from their certified public accountant, from their lawyer friend, from their bookkeeper. So you start offering that as part of your broker dealer, and you're going to burn a lot of those referral sources. [53:33] Daniel Bryant: We'll either, you know, we hire those people. We'll just hire them. [53:36] JD: Well, what I love about having Daniel on this show, and maybe we'll tap into it a little more before we finish, is because he's now involved in these investment firms, he probably has a good eye on, like, what's coming down the pike, what people are working on in terms of fintech. And I always think that that's a really interesting conversation. But before we do that, Daniel, I'm imagining it's been a while since the sell to Hub, but you're probably sitting on some cash then. And I know, I know you got these multiple homes and, and these Lambos. We've been talking about all this stuff, but what you do need. What you do need is good investment advice. [54:21] Daniel Bryant: Yeah. [54:21] JD: And you could not have come to a better place because everybody know. Well, not everybody knows. The people in the know know that it's retireholics, where you figure out where to invest. And so it's another episode, another segment of Drunk Stock Tips. Daniel doesn't seem interested. You better get your pencil out, bro. Like, start thinking. [54:53] Justin: All right. [54:54] JD: I mean, Mr. Bryant, if. If I could tell you because I didn't prep that tonight. We've done this on past episodes, the returns that happened. [55:06] Daniel Bryant: I love it. [55:07] JD: From Rogue Guys predictions. [55:09] Daniel Bryant: I've got my swap account up right now. I'm just. [55:11] Chad: Okay, there you go. [55:12] JD: I'm. [55:13] Daniel Bryant: Put the tickers in right now. Smart man. As you're talking. [55:15] JD: Smart man. Smart man. Smart man. I. I'm not going to do a long thing here. I know I usually do. I'll just be short and quick. Rogue Guy, he's like an alien that came to our planet from another universe [55:35] Chad: and another planet where I think that's the definition of an alien, but go on. [55:39] Daniel Bryant: Okay. [55:40] JD: Where their language was investments. And so it's just natural to him. It's like you and I feeling the. The wind blowing in your hair or. Or smelling something on this. [55:53] Justin: On. [55:54] JD: You know, as you walk down the sidewalk after a morning rain. He just knows what's going to happen when the stock market. And he's proven it. And I won't go into details, so here we go. Robbie, we got a stock for you. It actually comes from the chat bar. The chat bar gave us this talk. I haven't looked it up myself. As I mentioned, I was writing a Radiohead song. The stock is. I'll drink for this, even though I'm not. Why E T I. That's the ticker. Y E T I As I drink my whistle pig. [56:31] Chad: Well, wait, is. [56:32] Daniel Bryant: Hold on. [56:32] Chad: Time out. Is that's just the name of the company. Yeti, right? Like, that's not an acronym. [56:38] JD: Okay, is it. [56:38] Chad: Wait, is it yeti? Like, is it. [56:40] JD: Yeah, don't stop me from drinking my. [56:44] Chad: I think you just want. [56:45] Mark: Yeah, Smart. [56:46] JD: Yeah. [56:46] Mark: YETI holdings, buddy. [56:48] Daniel Bryant: Yeah. [56:50] Chad: Okay. [56:51] Daniel Bryant: How's it done today? How's it doing that? How'd you do today? [56:53] Justin: Down 2% [56:56] Daniel Bryant: today. [56:58] Chad: Yeah. [56:58] Justin: Just. [56:59] Chad: All I need to know is how. How much is this stock today, right now? [57:03] Justin: 3791. [57:04] Daniel Bryant: Nice place, that. [57:07] JD: Okay. It's been on a ride, Roby. It's been a ride. It's down and it's. It's down, down, down. [57:12] Chad: Okay, okay. I'm not looking at any of that. I'm going off of. I'm going off of feel here. [57:18] Justin: Stanley really got the best of them, [57:19] Chad: you know, you just say stanley, those are the cups, right? Does Yeti make cups too? [57:26] Justin: Yeti makes cups, bro. [57:27] Mark: Yeah, he makes cups for sure. I mean, they're no Stanley. [57:30] Chad: But right now, first off, dude, how are you gonna come out and make. And I'm gonna call it an ice chest. I'm gonna date myself here quite a bit, right? A ice chest and charge hundreds million dollars for. Yeah, like, no. What's those special chat. [57:50] Mark: Everybody in the Midwest buys them. It's insane how many there are, Mark, [57:54] JD: it won't surprise you. I have two of them. [57:57] Chad: Yeah, well, yeah, right. So, yeah. So it starts in the Midwest and creeps its way out and then everybody gets to the. The coasts and realizes, oh, that's stupid. Never mind. That was a dumb purchase. And yeah, Chad, in the Midwest, Walmart's gonna have millions of them to sell. So they're going to be coming out on discounted rates for years to come. So. Yeah, your buddy Billy, John and Sam will always have their yeti coolers ready to go with their stupid stickers and their. Their stupid light beer that they want to drink out there. Yeah, have fun with that. There'd be nice and cold. But no, you don't buy this stock because it's an ice chest. They sell foam ones. Dude, it's. It's an ice. [58:41] JD: How many times can I say this? [58:43] Chad: What is it? [58:44] JD: Can it. [58:44] Chad: Can you run over it with an 18 wheeler and it doesn't break? Maybe. [58:47] JD: I don't know. [58:48] Chad: Maybe that's a sales point. Jenny, I. I'm in the zone right now. You can't talk to me. So why is an ice chest so expensive? Does it make the ice? [58:57] JD: No. [58:58] Chad: Does it store the ice and keep things cold? [59:02] Justin: Sure. [59:02] Chad: There's a lot of other ones that do that too. Comes to mind. Igloo. [59:10] JD: Yeah, right. [59:11] Chad: The red ones, the blue ones, they got the wheels, they break, but you buy another one because they're 22. [59:17] Daniel Bryant: I got like 10 of them. [59:19] Justin: Not everybody is financially savvy as you. I mean, there's this thing called keeping up with the Joneses, buddy. [59:25] JD: Igloo does not have social media influencers. Let's be real. [59:29] Chad: So here's what I'm gonna say. Have. Have we experienced this with other items where the new flashy cool one comes out and next week, oh, guess what? The yeti's no longer the most popular. It's the Abominable Snowman. Right? I could just create the same thing in years from now when their patent expires, and I can just steal their idea. Something else cool takes. Guess what? I can make it cooler colors and I can make it bigger and I can sell it to idiots like you, Chad, who want to buy the cool thing and better influencers. [1:00:04] JD: Better influencers, maybe they get. [1:00:07] Chad: So, no, you don't buy this stock. If you do, you're an idiot. [1:00:11] JD: All right? And Daniel, you should short it. [1:00:15] Daniel Bryant: I'm shorting it. I'm shorting. Normally, I already. [1:00:18] Mark: Normally I would fight Mark a little bit and like, oh, I'm gonna go buy it then. [1:00:21] JD: Kind of makes sense. [1:00:23] Mark: I'm not doing it, dude. [1:00:24] JD: Trust me. I am his record keeper. I analyze his stats. I'm his custodian, if you will. Like, I. I do all his metrics on his. Do not go against what he says. That would be the worst thing ever. You know how on Twitter or X, do I drink for that? No. The people go against Jim Cramer. Like, there's a whole field. Like, when Jim Kramer says buy something, they. They short it and sell it. Do not do that with Rogue Guy. [1:00:53] Daniel Bryant: He's on Generac. [1:00:55] JD: Way too talented. Thank you, Rob Guy. And much like our guest, I will. I'll be jumping on my brokerage account a little later tonight and making that happen. Yeti that even though John. John Florence is one of my favorite surfers and he's. He's an influencer for them. But you, John, John, let's. [1:01:16] Chad: Let's be honest. I'm probably dead wrong, but I'm just gonna stick with it. Okay? [1:01:21] Mark: You're hitting like 970 mark. [1:01:24] JD: You're never wrong. Let's. This is because. [1:01:29] Chad: Because I'm cheap and I won't buy one of those because I don't. I'm frugal. So there you go. [1:01:33] JD: This is classic retire Alex. Although Daniel wrote this book years ago, but usually someone will come on our show, Daniel, and they'll be like, they're here to promote something or whatever, and we won't talk about it till the very end. And you're not. You're not here to promote your book because this is a while ago. [1:01:52] Daniel Bryant: I just happen to have one right here. [1:01:54] JD: Oh, there you go. But that's what I want to talk about now. So you actually did write a book. The Financial Wellness Mandate. Rogue Guy loves wellness. Like, I mean, he's all about wellness. No, let me give you Rob guys take on this. You all out there that love wellness. You can create all kinds of great stuff. Technology, systems, tools, strategies. But the fact of the matter is kind of per our previous conversation, the rank, not the rank of foul. The regular people say it. Sorry. The regular people out there, they don't give a. They're going their job every day. They're trying to, like, slug away, get it done, go back to their families, play catch with their kids. Like, they're not going to pay attention to the email that hit their inbox or the text message that came in or whatever. Financial wellness plan you or Bright Point or I'm too drunk to come up with all the names of the different ones out there, but whatever it is, like, that shit's going to fall flat on its face because the great, great majority of people are going to pay attention, tell me your book has answers to this and that this is not true. [1:03:09] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, so the book is. And again, I wasn't coming on here to promote a book or whatever, but the book is really about being the employer of choice. For millennials and Gen Z. Right. So it's basically the fact that the world has sort of changed. We've got a different demographic, who's in charge, they've got different wants, needs, desires. So in order to be able to attract and retain good talent, you've got to sort of have an array of benefits that sort of boomers didn't really expect. [1:03:37] JD: Or can we stop? Can we pause? So you're saying. And say this to Rogue Guy. When you say this, you're saying that the new employees, they want this. [1:03:49] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's, you know, if you. If you ask who wants, you know. And again, there's a whole array of sort of benefits. It's not just sort of financial, wellness or digital advice. It's a whole array of things. So if, you know, like an employee assistance program, an eap. Right. [1:04:06] JD: So. [1:04:06] Daniel Bryant: Com. Psych. [1:04:08] Chad: You said the words you didn't need to say. [1:04:10] JD: Yeah, you didn't need to say the acronym after the word. [1:04:15] Daniel Bryant: I did it again. I did it. I was just thirsty. [1:04:17] JD: Is he. Is he properly drinking for his mistakes? [1:04:19] Daniel Bryant: This is my, like, third glass. He is. [1:04:22] Mark: He is. [1:04:23] Daniel Bryant: Four Roses. That's good. But the. Anyway, those guys, they've killed it, right? It's like a $4 billion company no one's ever heard of before, and they're offering sort of this, you know, 1-800-number we can call and talk about whatever. They do financial planning, they do tax planning. And it's. It's needed. It's. It's a great business. So anyway, that's. That's the nature of the book. It's. It's talks about AI, it talks about technology, it talks about all sorts of stuff. [1:04:50] Mark: You're gonna have five of those by the time you're done overtime in a while. [1:04:55] JD: What was the. What was the wellness company I mentioned earlier? Bright, right? What do they call it? [1:05:01] Daniel Bryant: Side. [1:05:02] JD: Bright side. [1:05:03] Daniel Bryant: Okay, Right. Thin. There's a Bright Finn that just started. Christine Devane. [1:05:07] JD: Do you have. You're a. You're an investor? [1:05:11] Daniel Bryant: No, go ahead. [1:05:13] Justin: I know all these podcasts you were on where I got the. The name of your band from. [1:05:18] Daniel Bryant: Oh, really? [1:05:18] JD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [1:05:19] Chad: You listen to a podcast? [1:05:21] Daniel Bryant: Wow, Justin. Doing your homework, man, that's good. [1:05:23] Chad: Wow. Usually he writes the intro, like, right when we log on to the show. [1:05:28] Justin: Well, I got a text from JD around 2:00 clock saying, hey, [1:05:33] JD: right now I'm the one that did the research, not Justin. [1:05:39] Chad: Justin, you gotta give credit where credit's due. [1:05:41] JD: Come on. And Ed, every day you make your [1:05:44] Chad: boss work for you. [1:05:47] JD: Ed Metzler was on that podcast as a host. He's no longer with that firm. Give us a little quick take of the landscape of wellness companies. Bright side, like, are these companies succeeding? Are they generating revenue, or is it working for them? [1:06:06] Daniel Bryant: You know, overwhelmingly, no. Right. So the key is that the sharp end of the stick here, the holy grail, is the employee, or I mean, the employee. Right. The participant. Right. They're the ones who need the. Need the benefits. They're the ones who all, all of us are trying to get in front of. I think the issue with these small financial, wellness or digital advice tools is how do you get them to pay? Who's paying for what? Is it the employers employer should pay? Exactly. Is it, Is it, You know, hey, what if, though, you go to a registered investment advisor or, you know, retirement advisor, and they, you know, offer this to a company? [1:06:45] JD: Should. [1:06:45] Daniel Bryant: I was literally talking to somebody today about this, and they have a client that, you know, buys and supports this tool. Should they get paid? Right, yes, yes, yes, I agree. And then if they engage, if the individual person engages, then it's a huge upcharge. So. And so you can have the retirement advisor also charge whatever they want for it. I just, this is a much longer segment, but I think it's, by and large, it's not been well thought out. The tools are needed. It's just a matter of employers don't have the bandwidth, the patience, the perseverance to sort of keep selling. And, you know, getting this in front of people, right? They say, they throw it out there and they say, oh, nobody used it for three months. I'm canceling it. Well, as we know, when we're talking, that doesn't work, right? [1:07:34] JD: Ro. Guy, Roy, this guy wrote a book on it and he's backing you up 100%. [1:07:40] Mark: It's like the two of you were married. [1:07:44] Daniel Bryant: We planned it out beforehand. [1:07:46] JD: You had thoughts. [1:07:47] Chad: I, I paid him a lot to [1:07:49] Mark: say that it wasn't even a nickel in the bank, do I. [1:07:55] Daniel Bryant: But I would say one, I would say one thing. The, the firms that are doing well. So there are firms that are doing well. They're focusing on a niche or a particular segment of the population, a particular industry. [1:08:06] JD: But you're just, you're just talking distribution now. You're not talking like, they're just. They found the right niche. [1:08:13] Daniel Bryant: They found the right niche. Exactly who people want it, not for profits. Right? We know they have benefits. [1:08:19] Mark: If you as an advisor or you as a human resources person find A way to scale it and properly push it out, then it becomes reasonable. But like so much tech, you spend time and you get excited about it, but when, then it comes to implementation and if it falls flat on its face, like you said, in four months, then you pull the plug because you're back doing your day job and you work on the business and you stop working on this tech. [1:08:43] Daniel Bryant: I always tell people, like with startups and little companies and I had an old client called MySpace back in the day or Ask Jeeves, all these different folks. [1:08:55] JD: We were the TPA for Ask Jeeves. I'm gonna drink. [1:08:58] Daniel Bryant: I know, okay. That's so great. Anyway, you know, I always tell people you've got to have a great addressable market, but then you've got to be able to sell it. So I'm like, people like, oh, I've got a great idea, I've got a great this, I got a great addressable market and they can't sell it. I'm like, well then the business sucks, right? So you've got to be able to. Great idea, big addressable market and you got to be able to sell it. That's the thing with Fintech. Right now you've got a few that are doing really well, but most, they just can't sell it. They just. Okay, close. [1:09:27] JD: Daniel, before we go to chop our champion and kind of wrap all this, although I'm thinking I'm going to do an extended after show just by myself if no one else comes. [1:09:37] Mark: But I'm. [1:09:38] Chad: I'm with. I'm here, I'm here. [1:09:40] JD: Okay. All right. [1:09:41] Chad: Rain outside. I don't think I'm going to soccer practice today. [1:09:43] Daniel Bryant: What time is it? [1:09:45] JD: Let's go, bro. Who cares? Who cares? Daniel, here's my. [1:09:50] Chad: Yes, that's the second guess that's done. [1:09:54] Daniel Bryant: Yes. [1:09:54] JD: Okay. Here's my photo cigar. Right. I've said this before on the show, but I want to propose this utopia to you, Mr. Bryant. Like imagine and I did this on stage. I forget where we were. We were doing a live show on stage and, and Mark kind of questioned me on this, but I said to the audience, imagine if I was an employer and when you came to me to get hired and then you went through the whole process and I said, we would love to hire you, but I want you to know here that at, at XYZ Company, we value you so much that we're going to put you in our 401k plan. You're going to get a safe harbor match and a profit sharing contribution and Health and dental and vision and all these things. But we also value you so much that we have an advisor on our plan. And maybe that Advisor handles our 4.1K and all these other things. But they're also going to sit down with you, and this is mandatory. If you work here at XYZ Company, it is mandatory for you to sit down with this person because they're going to help you with your own personal financial plan. Yeah. They're going to make sure that you have emergency savings and your rent is at the proper price. It needs to be in your car payments. And you're dealing well with credit cards and these other things. And I want you to think twice before you join XYZ Company because this might seem a little intrusive, but it's only because we love you and we care about our employees and we want you to have the best of the best. And we can provide you that as your employer. [1:11:39] Chad: Oh, boy. [1:11:40] JD: Okay, let me finish. God damn it, Daniel. And, and so this is a non negotiable here. Like, so we're seeing you work here. You will go through this process and it's. And. And then my takeaway from this was I'm ending now is I think that's a great thing. Like, I think a lot of people like, oh my God, I would love to go work for that company. I might be intimidated. Maybe my finances suck. I'm deeply in debt. I'm embarrassed about what I have, but I should take this leap and work for this new company that actually wants to help me short that out. Go. [1:12:20] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, I was just gonna say we had a client around these supermarkets back in the day, upper Midwest, 20 billion dollar company. And we pitched the business like 2006, 2007. Huge plan, like 800 million bucks. Like then. And we pitched the business. We won the business. Massive rfp. We won the business because we walked in there with this idea to put a laminated thing because we said, where are the employees? Where do the employees hang out? Right. The Blake. The break room. So we, we laminated this thing under the sort of pad on the break room. And we change it every month. So month January would be like, they'd be reading it, eating their. Their lunch, and they'd be reading about insurance or financial planning or whatever. [1:13:05] JD: And they were almost better than the talk about retirement truck. That. Oh my. That's cool. [1:13:12] Daniel Bryant: And they just were like, that is a freaking cool idea. So we go in, we leave it there, we change it out every month. Super simple. In all like 300 stores. They had, and they loved it. And they said that, you know, savings rates went up, we'd measure, you know, that sort of thing. You got to be creative. Totally agree. [1:13:33] JD: Justin, I feel like you're gonna say something, but I want. I want. I want to force you to say something right now. Talk. [1:13:43] Justin: Well, I'm good, thanks. Keep having a drink, you guys. [1:13:49] JD: We will. We're gonna move on to chat bar champion. Oh, and we all know this is a little different these days. [1:13:57] Chad: Is anyone still here? I mean, we're like, way over time. [1:14:01] JD: Oh, my God. [1:14:02] Mark: Solid night. [1:14:05] Daniel Bryant: I'm in London right now. It's like three in the morning. [1:14:07] JD: There's still three people here. [1:14:09] Mark: Are you really? Oh, [1:14:14] Justin: I'm really excited about my chat bar. [1:14:16] JD: There's a ton of people still here. It's. It's still good. We're all good. [1:14:20] Chad: The best of the best. [1:14:22] JD: Okay. [1:14:23] Daniel Bryant: Right there. Look at that. [1:14:25] JD: Got a good group, Schoffner. Yeah, you know what? You know what? Rub guy. Even if we drop below Deanna, look at Deanna. There's 700 viewers to the good viewers. To the good viewers. You know, they're the good one. [1:14:38] Chad: Yeah, no, I get it. [1:14:40] JD: Like chauffinater and. Never mind. I'm not getting Hackler. No, it. Okay, Chap. Our champion Hackler got 500 points for showing up first. I think he's in the lead, but that doesn't matter. That should not influence your decision. [1:14:57] Justin: Plenty of time left right now. [1:14:59] JD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, Justin. Plenty of. Plenty of months left in the year. And the prize, I want to remind everyone, the prize for this [1:15:10] Daniel Bryant: signed copy of the book. [1:15:11] JD: No, no, the prize for this is going to be borderline illegal. Like, we all have to. [1:15:19] Mark: We're going to Mexico. [1:15:22] JD: We will have to sidestep the sec. I'm drinking. Like, this is going to be big time. [1:15:32] Mark: Thanks. [1:15:34] JD: You know me. [1:15:35] Daniel Bryant: YETI stock is going through the floor. When I short again. [1:15:39] JD: When I go to the store and I buy, I usually. And they say, oh, we got. This is the affordable stuff. This expenses. I'm like, I want expensive. And that's how I'm gonna treat this prize for this show. Like, it's gonna be gnarly. [1:15:55] Chad: And they look at you and they go, sir, are you sure? [1:15:59] JD: No, no. [1:16:00] Chad: Can you afford it? [1:16:01] JD: Mark, those jokes do not apply to me anymore. I have short hair. I'm well manicured. I look like a normal person in society now. [1:16:17] Justin: You kind of look like the dude from Breaking Bad. I'm not gonna lie. [1:16:20] JD: Oh, my God. [1:16:26] Chad: You look like someone sells Meth. [1:16:30] JD: I don't want to go negative here, but thank you to my wife and her breast cancer for shaving my head, because I think it looks good. We'll talk more about that later. Tracy, I love you, breast cancer. You. There's Chad. And that's why I shaved my head, everybody. So if you stuck around and want to know why I shaved my head, I did it for my wife. All right, Justin, chapter champion. I gotta vote. Don't steal my vote. [1:17:01] Justin: He didn't say much, but because I've never seen Mark so rattled by one guy just joining the chat bar and saying, [1:17:09] Chad: you. [1:17:11] Mark: Oh, Nate has got Mark's. No. [1:17:15] Daniel Bryant: Yeah. [1:17:16] JD: Okay. All right. My votes. And I'm gonna drink for this when I say it is GG he was off the chain. Chad, your vote. [1:17:32] Daniel Bryant: I. [1:17:33] Mark: This one goes back and forth for me because I went back and looked at the chat, just all my blue writings. It's either hack or Samso that I commented to over and over and over and over and over and over. So I've got to go one of those two. And I think tonight Samsoe had hack. So I'm going. [1:17:50] JD: Samson, I like how you go for the veterans like the pros. I go. [1:17:54] Mark: Who gets me to comment? Like, if I'm. Because I comment all the damn time in the chat. So if you're getting me to comment back, then I'm super interested. [1:18:02] JD: All right. I haven't done the math on all this, but, Daniel, the last vote. [1:18:09] Daniel Bryant: Nate Moody. Yeah. [1:18:13] JD: Wait, Chad, did you go Nate or. No? No, no, no. [1:18:15] Mark: I went Samson. Mark hasn't voted yet. [1:18:18] Chad: Well. [1:18:19] JD: Oh, Roby hasn't voted. [1:18:21] Mark: Roby has not voted. [1:18:22] JD: I forgot about Rogue By. But do we care about Rogue guy? Should we just move on and. [1:18:27] Mark: Oh, yeah, we do. [1:18:29] JD: Your vote. [1:18:31] Chad: I'm taking the high road here, And I'm gonna say my votes for Nate Moody. [1:18:42] Mark: Oh, I knew you were gonna go, [1:18:47] Chad: but only if his actual name was Brett Schoffner. Nate Moody. [1:18:52] JD: Right. [1:18:53] Chad: April Fool's four days late. [1:18:55] JD: You all right? Are you guys ready for a twist? You ready for a twist? Because Nate Moody got so many votes. [1:19:05] Chad: I know. [1:19:05] JD: I took my vote away. [1:19:06] Justin: Bonus points. Bonus points. [1:19:08] JD: What? I. [1:19:10] Mark: Mark took his vote away. Mark's vote is shot. [1:19:12] JD: Oh. [1:19:13] Mark: Oh, it was April Fuels. [1:19:16] Justin: It hasn't voted yet, so that could bring it all right back. [1:19:18] JD: I thought of GG what are you doing? [1:19:20] Justin: Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. [1:19:22] JD: You mean set? All right, all right. Here's how it's gonna work. We're gonna do Something new. We're gonna do something new. We're gonna let someone in the chat bar decide. [1:19:36] Chad: Actually is okay, but it cannot be [1:19:39] Justin: any of the votes, of course. [1:19:42] JD: Justin, do I look like a idiot to you? [1:19:45] Mark: Hey, bring Hack sometimes. Did Hack. Is Hack still in here? [1:19:50] Chad: Look like you look like a guy who sells mess. Yeah, [1:19:56] JD: I like Hackler chat. That's a good call. Hackler, you decide the winner right now in the chat bar. You're moody. Or as our guest. As our guest calls it, the chat box. [1:20:10] Mark: Yeah, that's a new name, and I'm sticking with it. [1:20:13] Justin: That is a chat box right there. [1:20:15] Daniel Bryant: It's a good one. I like chat box. [1:20:17] JD: Makes sense. Makes sense. [1:20:19] Mark: Hack, you have Moody, you have Shaft, and you have Samso, and you have Great. [1:20:27] Chad: And Greg, we got it. [1:20:28] JD: We gotta stop forgetting about and Daniel. Daniel, no one's listening right now. Did you walk away with 20 million? 30 million? The guy made a million dollars. I couldn't hear you, buddy. [1:20:43] Chad: Oh, there we go. [1:20:46] Mark: Just type, oh, it's Greg winning tonight. [1:20:51] JD: Oh, drink twice. [1:20:52] Mark: Well done, all of you. [1:20:56] Justin: Oh, rookie mistake, Sha. I would have won you. [1:21:02] JD: All right, all right. We are done. [1:21:06] Daniel Bryant: That's it. [1:21:07] JD: Well, unless you want to stick around. We're going to stick around. [1:21:12] Daniel Bryant: That's so fun. [1:21:12] JD: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to another episode of Retireholics. I've enjoyed it. As I mentioned earlier, my life's gone through a little bit of a, you know, troubling moment these days. And so coming here and hanging out with y' all means the world to me. Like, it's. It's got a little bit of normal as my wife deals with chemo and we do all doctor appointments, all that kind of. So I love you guys, and I can feel your support right now, even though you haven't said it. And you. Some of you have. I feel it. Rogue guy. Justin. You know what people don't talk about here is I call you guys my sales team. [1:22:06] Chad: But no, earlier you called us your cast members. [1:22:10] JD: So there's that or rank and file. But you know what, everybody. You know what, everybody? The. The. The four of us here, we continue to click on the clock here. We've been together for a long time. We're keeping this going, and I don't know if you pay attention. I thought Brian was like, no, don't talk about the movie. I'm not talking about movie. [1:22:52] Mark: Only your brother can get away with that. Only your brother can get away with that. [1:22:57] JD: What was. My brain is reminding me to be quick. What was my Point. We're still together, guys. We're still together. We. [1:23:05] Chad: We. [1:23:05] JD: We've been doing this retire holic for nine years. [1:23:09] Daniel Bryant: Wow. [1:23:09] JD: And we're still doing this, and you're still. We're still working together, and I'll shut up. I love you. I love you guys. Daniel, thank you for being a guest on the show. We appreciate that. It's long overdue. Like. Yeah, yeah. [1:23:26] Chad: Where can everybody buy your book? Is it on Amazon? [1:23:29] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, you buy them. Amazon. Yeah. Anyway, you know, we've sold like 80, 000 copies, so it's. It's out there a couple years old. We might update it, but it's. It's good. [1:23:39] JD: He just keeps dropping these little things. [1:23:41] Mark: Yeah. So subtle. [1:23:45] Chad: Yeah. [1:23:45] JD: Okay. [1:23:47] Chad: On here. [1:23:48] JD: Okay. [1:23:50] Daniel Bryant: Yeah, thanks. [1:23:51] Mark: I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal. [1:23:59] JD: And more importantly, you guys, we love you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in again, hanging out in the chat box and doing what you do like you love you. And so I want to say this now to you, the guys that stuck around. If you don't see us at live shows this year doing on stage stuff is because of my wife's cancer. So I'll let her know that you guys are pissed at her, and we'll figure that out later, but we'll be back in 2025. That's a really hard, edgy joke, rub guy. That's what that is. [1:24:37] Daniel Bryant: She's okay with it. Yeah. [1:24:40] JD: I see. [1:24:41] Mark: We love you. And we know, you know, we have Tracy always in our thoughts and prayers, [1:24:46] JD: of course, but we love you, chat box. We love you, Daniel. We love you cast on the show. And we're gonna play a little song out, and if someone. If people stick around, we'll figure that out. That just might happen. I don't know where the wind blows, but thank you again. Oh, if you're here in two weeks, the next retirehog show, I say if Mark, Chad, Justin, if you want to show up in some format, that's fine. Even Brandon. But what I'm doing with it is because, you know, it's experimental. Right. I like. No. [1:25:29] Chad: What is it? [1:25:30] JD: I'm gonna take on Frederich and his pep argument. Have you ever seen a. A. A video where someone watches it and then experiences it for the first time and talks about it? [1:25:46] Daniel Bryant: Yeah. [1:25:47] JD: That's what I'm gonna do on that show. I'm gonna break down the pep, Break down Fred Reese, break down their podcast, Nevin and Fred. It's just gonna be me doing it. For a hour. But if one of you guys want to. [1:26:03] Daniel Bryant: You fellas been doing a bit of [1:26:04] JD: booze and have you sucking back on Grandpa's old cough medicine maybe? [1:26:10] Chad: Well, I mean, oh, my God, because [1:26:16] JD: those old are getting that wrong. And not you, Nev. Not you, Nev. But mostly Fred. [1:26:22] Daniel Bryant: Re. [1:26:22] JD: The regionator. He's that up. The guy's going a little bit boomer on this, and so we're gonna figure that out. Now let's play some music. Sorry for the long.