SECURE 2.0 Deep Dive: Starter Plans & Fintech Disruption

[0:12] JD: Bro, I feel like I just took a molly. My dudes, dudettes, we got some mother freaking headlines today in the world of 401k. So all the banter, let's get straight to it. Our friends at the National association of Plan Advisors. Netscape Entertainment Tonight. I don't know what that means. You can say.net right I would think come out with an article. [0:45] Chad: I think it's short for network. [0:46] JD: And then the article titled Just reading the articles. Come on, J.D. what else is in the new setting Every cat up for retirement 2.0 people. I think unless you've been living under a rock. This thing has gone through the Senate. It is Senate approved. It is now, I think like as we speak this very minute with the House. They have a Friday night deadline tomorrow. So, Chad, for our little bet, which we don't need to talk about right now, you know, it's not done deal yet, bro. It's not done deal yet. But they have got a deadline of tomorrow night. Apparently it will take very little time to go through the house and, and Mr. Biden is president. Biden stands ready with his pen and it's uncapped and he's ready to sign on the dotted line. Yes, John, I was just going to [1:50] Chad: ask because I didn't see anything as the releases came out. Is it attached to any other larger. [1:55] JD: Oh fuck yeah. [1:56] Chad: Legislation that they're trying to push through that. I mean that's what the whole talk was going to be, but I didn't see that. [2:00] JD: So if you just go on regular news and you see everyone debating about or supporting the. [2:07] Chad: What is it, 1.7 trillion as well. [2:09] JD: You got it, the 1.6. So it's got money for attached and all of that. Got money for, for Ukraine. It's got all kinds of stuff in there, but yeah, but a lot of retirement plan provision. So I don't think it's jumping the gun if y' all don't mind out there. I say we revisit and kind of talk through some of these things because it's going to happen and it's a big deal. Let's just take it right from this article at the top and Brian Grassman talking about this quite a bit. Starter 401k plans for employers with no retirement plans. This looks like a individual retirement account kind of spin off, but I'm told it's a 401k plan, so get your brains going. This could be really interesting for our industry. I say individual retirement account like because it's capped at $6,000 with an additional 1,000 in catch up. You must do automatic enrollment and default the participants in at either anywhere from 3% to a 15% deferral rate. And this sucker would be effective for plan years beginning after 2023. So that's 2024 by my math. Tom, I'm going to go straight to you, bro. What do you think about this? I mean, it's interesting. It's going to be different. [3:44] Mark: It's going to be different when they break it down and what's actually positive, what's not positive, you know, for us. But at least the thing got through. And you know, I was talking to somebody the other day, an advisor saying, you know, a lot of their people inside the office are saying, oh yeah, it was maybe just like the fiduciary rule, like it hasn't actually gone through and they might just repeal it and whatever else. So who knows? [4:05] JD: I, well, I definitely think there's are provisions in this thing that are, are scheduled for later down the line and maybe those will change. But these things seem pretty set in stone. And you know me, I love to push against the common trend, but I'm going to give up now. This thing's going through. [4:25] Chad: It's going through. Yeah. [4:26] JD: This is how it's written. It's funny. I want to ask you, Chad, a specific question. Tom seemed kind of pessimistic, like it might hurt us as the 401k industry. I'm thinking maybe this is an opportunity to sell new shit. [4:41] Chad: I don't know for sure it is. And this goes back a little bit to the conversation we had on LinkedIn today, where I'm done looking at what's best for our industry. Because what is best for our industry is what is going to be best for the participants in this coverage and the issues we're trying to solve. Guys, we're going to be fine. This is good. This is any, any legislation, any focus, any eyes on our space, any additional money change, all of that is going to lead to some sort of positive take in what we're doing. And, and when I look specifically at the bill and J.D. i don't know if you're going to address this, but I'll throw this out. A big one that stood out to me that I didn't know was in it is the ability to convert simple IRAs. And that's an accuracy, isn't it? I knew it as I was leaking. [5:27] JD: I would call that, I would call [5:28] Chad: that 401ks in the same year, but I didn't Know that was in the [5:33] JD: bill I wasn't going to talk about. [5:35] Chad: I read that that you can mid year as long as you're going to a plan that has a forced employer contribution that you can convert the simple damn it to a safe harbor 401k in the same [5:50] Mark: word. [5:50] Chad: Oh no. [5:51] JD: I was being the optimist. Chat about how almost like. Remember when we talked about the ICON savings plan the other night and it was an individual retirement account, but they were marketing themselves as a 401k kind of equivalent or alternative. I was thinking at it more that way like oh well, geez. What record keepers Or I don't. You don't. The whole point of this thing is you don't really need a third party administrator. I wouldn't think. But you know, you can. I don't think you really need ICON either in what they're doing. Like you could create something around this and be interesting to see what record keepers would do. But you, you bring up a better point which is even if that doesn't happen, it's still a great starter program for growth to a 401k. Sorry, just. [6:34] Chad: Sorry I transitioned you straight off of it. Dude, my bad. I went to another point. But the starter program. Can I ask. We have a. And this is not an acronym, but we have a simple 401k that exists inside a traditional 401k document. This isn't all that different in the fact that it cuts off a lot of the fat. Obviously the limits are much lower. But is it going to be required to do a 5500 with this? I didn't see. Is there additional testing? I. I didn't see. I couldn't. I couldn't find any of that anywhere I read. [7:05] Justin: Well, yeah, I was curious. Are the owners going to be limited? Is it Roth only I can't remember if I read that or not. What type of. [7:11] Chad: I mean it's six grand, so I can't imagine they're. They're limited. [7:14] JD: These are great questions, but I, I'm assuming the answer to most of those things is no. And the only reason I assume that is because that's why they created it. Right. Was to create something simpler. No. Yeah, I'm just using the damn word for. For the. For them, you know, the coverage gap is what they're trying to do here. So anyways, there's a lot to cover. [7:37] Justin: It's interesting to me because they're not enforcing in any way, right or. No, they are. No, that's the optional. [7:41] Chad: Sorry, it's a Glorified individual retirement. [7:44] Justin: Like compared to, okay, we got state run plans that we're enforcing. Why don't we just do that across the board and make this an option? Like I'm just. [7:51] JD: That's not mandated. It's just. [7:53] Mark: Right. [7:53] JD: Just a different. [7:54] Justin: Are they going to gain any traction with it? [7:56] JD: Yeah. And we can talk more about employer promoted individual retirement accounts a little bit later, but let's keep moving down the list because there's a lot of here. But I still think, remember this, like, watch that. I think you're going to see people innovate around that and create kind of products looking to not only just help but actually make revenue. And it'll be interesting who could, who could fit in there and how. The. The next one was expanding automatic enrollment. So we've seen this one, right? This was, hey, if you start a plan, you're going to have to have. Excuse me, automatic enrollment. And they will. Let's go through some of the specifics here. Let's see, you'll. The initial automatic enrollment must be at least 3%, but no more than 10. Then you got to increase it every year. And then Chad starts to bitch about it and says, but, oh, what about the small employers? You're forcing them to do things administratively that they can't handle. And the government comes back to Chad and says, shut up, dumb shit. We're going to make an exception for small businesses with 10 or fewer employees and new businesses that have been in business for less than three years. So they'll be exempt from this automatic enrollment mandate in these plans. [9:13] Chad: This is new plans only, right? [9:16] JD: Yeah, yeah, new plans. [9:17] Justin: Yeah, they're everyone else's grandfather. I don't think 10 less people is hard to administer. It's those, you know, 50 plus companies with high turnover. That's the pain in the ass. [9:30] JD: No, but what Chad's point was, Justin, is that those companies have. Yeah, they have hr. And these people are. [9:36] Justin: Some do, some don't. Right, [9:39] JD: Gotcha. Hey, I'm drinking eggnog and bourbon. [9:43] Chad: Oh, that's what I should have done. I did. Screwball. [9:47] JD: Let's see, when does this one go into. Into place? This provision will be effective, the automatic enrollment one for plan years beating after December 35, 2025. So as Silent J says 2025, so plenty of time to kind of prep for that one. This is the big one, I think. Feel like the credit. So the credit's gone through the modification of the credit for small employers. No longer is it 50%. It's now 100% of your administrative costs. I would think that Chad, Justin, Mark and any salesperson out there in the world would think that. This is fucking awesome. I believe it's $5,000 per year for three years. You need to be under 50 or up to 50 employees. Some the line somewhere there. [10:43] Mark: Yeah. [10:44] Justin: Up to 50 now are they, are they just saying it's hey, if you know 100 of your, your expenses up to 5,000 are doing this. 250 is it NHCE? I didn't see it capped. [10:55] Chad: I had read that right now it's not capped at all. I don't think it's capped. Moving forward, I think it's 100 of your build expenses. [11:02] Justin: Yeah, but what it did, I even [11:04] Chad: looked to see if there was a participant count like there is now. Right now it's 250 per part up to fifth or up to five grand. I don't think there's a cap. I don't think there's a per part count. So I mean I think if you have two employees and you're paying six grand. [11:18] JD: Okay, let me read to you guys. Let me read you guys. An existing credit of 50 up to the annual cost of $5,000 to 100,000 for employers with up to 50. So the cap of five grand is still in place. If you read this article from the national association of Plan Advisors like it was legislation, which it's not. It's just an article. But they choose their words pretty carefully over there. [11:43] Chad: Yeah, see I'm, I'm in the actual disclosure section 102, modification of credit. Like wait, you're on page, you're on [11:50] JD: page 3223 or whatever. No, I'm, I'm pretty sure there's a cap. [11:57] Chad: Okay. It would make sense that there would be, but I wish that there wasn't. I would prefer employers to take on as much of that build expense as possible. Drive down the asset based charges in that headwind. [12:08] JD: Now I think there's, there's additional stuff beyond the 5k which is you know, [12:15] Chad: benefit space, auto enroll space. [12:17] Justin: There's a small cap on that too. [12:18] JD: Well, there's additional credit to employers of 50 is phased out from players to gym. About this section tax. Never mind. I don't know why I try to read these things from the deal. Savers match. If I'm getting this one right. This is the government actually putting in a match for participants. This sucker doesn't, is not effective until 2027. And the whole reason behind it being that, that far out as, as you can imagine there's going to be some. Some pipelines that need to be built and some internal structures at investment companies and the government. Like, this thing can't just happen overnight. But that's a nice hope and a dream. [13:02] Justin: I don't actually like it. I think it's bullshit if I interpret it correctly, because how I interpret it was they're taking away the credit they're giving right now. [13:10] JD: Right. [13:10] Justin: So they were. They're actually increasing the taxes you have to pay in this year. Then they're going to give you a $2,000 stipulate, you know, whatever match that's going to grow, and then they're going to tax you on that in years when you retire. [13:23] JD: That's like any match you get is going to be taxes. [13:26] Justin: Yeah, but now you're taking away the tax credit up front and just being done with it. So people are going to be paying more taxes on the front end, and then now taxes on the back end that the other one. [13:34] JD: Are you understanding what he's saying? Because I'm not. [13:36] Chad: I'm not. Can you say that? [13:37] Justin: I interpreted it right from what I read. I didn't dive into the details. Was right now savers get a tax credit. Right. Just right off their. Their tax form. [13:46] JD: Oh, you mean broke, like super low income. [13:49] Chad: Yeah. The savers credit, which probably stands for going away. [13:54] Justin: And then they're going to give you a match. And so now your taxes are going to increase because you're not going to have as much of a credit in the given year, and now you're going to get a match. I can't remember what the mat. What the amount was. I think was relatively the same. And then that's going to be taxed when you retire, too. [14:09] JD: Okay. [14:10] Chad: Webby seemed to know a lot about this. Well, just. He was chiming in that he thinks this is the best overhaul of legislation that was already in place, is what he had said in the chat bar. No, I have to read up on that. Jess. I get what you're saying is they're pulling the initial credit right now and saying, yeah, we'll give you a match, but in doing so, they're giving you a taxable match that you'll pay taxes on later off, later on in life. So I get what you're saying. Taxes aren't an issue for the people that they're trying to give the match to. [14:37] JD: Good point. [14:38] Chad: Their income is very low, so I don't think the tax benefit side of it is. Is all that great. It's about getting money into the plan that they can now invest and hopefully earn on. [14:46] JD: Tom, feel free to chime in at any point. I know you'd love to talk technology and stuff. Are you not excited? Yeah, right. [14:54] Mark: It sounds like this is cool. I mean, it sounds like you guys really know what you're doing, which is really cool. I didn't dig into the legislation, [15:03] JD: almost spit my beer on the keyboard because I was thinking the exact opposite. I was thinking, like, the audience must be going right now. Like, can you guys figure out the facts before you start talking about it? No, that. [15:11] Chad: It just came out right in the [15:14] Mark: middle of the show. It's all good. No, but there's going to be a lot of excitement. I think the main point Chad made. Right. Any news is good news. So when there's focus, then people are going to pay attention and they're going to pay attention to certain things. So we get a little bit of attention on us, which is cool. But. Yeah, I'll chime back in. When you're talking about tech, we can. [15:33] JD: They're gonna. [15:34] Mark: Dude, I gotta. I gotta tell you, though, hold on. I've been in the chat bar a lot, and for you guys to do the show, have a conversation, read the chat bar, and actually keep all that together, I'm like, I got add. [15:46] Speaker E: I'm going back and forth. [15:47] Mark: Like, I. Oh, my God, you're. That's amazing. [15:50] Chad: When JD teed up his first question to you about the. The starter 401k plan and you went to the billet hole, I'm like, oh, he's realizing how difficult this is. It's not easy. Well, there's. [16:02] JD: There's other in there. If you're like, Chad, you can go read the 4000 pages or whatever it is, but there's. They're going to allow for the. The credit's going to go to. To pooled employer plans so they can be. They can be part of this type of thing too. Pooled employer plans can now be offered to 403B plans. Yippity, yay, yippity. [16:26] Chad: Who. [16:26] JD: Who gives a. They're going to mess around with required minimum distributions, taking it from 72 to 73 and then eventually to 75 and 2033. Student loan is a big one. So we've been kicking this can around for a while. You're going to be able to match participants that cannot participate in the 401k because they're paying off their student loans. So you can take a look at those student loan payments and come up with a. With A match. What we were worried about, especially as third party administrators, was how that would impact the discrimination test. Apparently you're going to be able to kind of silo that and move that over. I do want to be clear that's not a new mandated provision. That'll be something that each employer can decide whether they want to add that to their plan. And, and some emergency savings account stuff, which is kind of cool. So you'll be able to tap into your, your phone K. From an emergency savings standpoint with a bunch of rules, think of it as like a, an offshoot of a hardship or something. And we can talk more about that as the kind of year comes on in 2023. But the news here is this sucker is here and I think we'll know by tomorrow that it's, it's legit. And so now we'll, we'll start preparing for all these things. [17:46] Chad: One, one more JD because as I read through there, I was trying to come up with areas that I, I didn't know existed in there. The opportunity for employees to elect a match or a non elective as Roth rather than a traditional, I thought was super interesting. [18:05] JD: Jeannie Fisher likes that. Yeah, that would be, that would be Jeannie Sutton. I need to learn. I need to. [18:10] Chad: That would be awesome having that opportunity, especially younger in your working career to say, my employer's offering a match. I'm going to contribute and I'm going to take those dollars and make it a Roth contribution. Make your deferral pre tax. Make your other Roth. Like you have so much flexibility. [18:25] JD: Now I got another headline. Are you all familiar with the company Robinhood? [18:31] Mark: Yep. [18:32] JD: Come on, Thomas, you know Robinhood, right? [18:34] Mark: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. [18:35] JD: And for you. [18:36] Speaker E: Thanks, Brandon, by the way, for putting [18:37] Mark: the chat bar over my head for a little while. That was helpful [18:41] JD: for all you 401k nerds who never get your nose out of 401k stuff, Robinhood was this, I think it's fair to call it a very successful app, but it allowed the general folk, you know, I think their average age of the people that use it is like 30 something. And it allowed them to. Sherry, Great micro investing. Thank you. That's the right term for it. So you could literally just open an app, chuck some money in there and you can invest in Apple and whatever, you know, and right there on your phone. And so it took off. And if I look to this article here by Plain Advisor magazine, I think Robinhood hit a high of like 18.9 million users. So if you think about that, that's quite a bit. I think it's dropped to like 12, just north of 12 million users because of volatility in markets. I think. No, people weren't getting crypto on that, on that thing that you had to go to. Could you on Robinhood. So maybe the downfall of crypto kind of spooked some people out of there as well. But anyways, the point is this article is that Robin Hood is announcing that they are getting into the retirement game. Sort of. Kinda. And they said this has always been their plan. Yes, Chad. [20:04] Chad: Sorry, I'm typing it in the chat bar. [20:06] JD: Oh, and this has always been their plan. I immediately thought like, oh, are they getting into 401k? Because as I read the article, they said the, the Menlo Park, California based firm is entering a crowded world of startups with online 401k small plan providers, lifetime income outsourcers. And what did I do? [20:26] Chad: Testing you, Justin. I was testing him because he's weak on the controls. [20:30] Justin: What do you mean a week? I've gotten everyone, haven't I? [20:34] JD: If you read down further, they're really getting into the individual retirement account game. And so they're, they're using their app, their technology to pivot a little bit. Although remember, this is always their plan according to them and, and allow for their users, 12 north of 12 million of them to start saving for their future, you know, instead of buying crypto and the, the newest, you know, investment that CNBC is talking about, drink for that shit, right? [21:04] Chad: I don't know. [21:05] JD: They, they can take also with this app, take a more responsible approach and, and save for their future. What kind of knocked me back was that Robin Hood is doing a match for them. Were you guys able to look at that a little bit? [21:21] Chad: Yeah. [21:22] JD: Look at Justin. Justin got up on the wrong side of the bed today, Mr. [21:26] Chad: He took over negative Nancy role. $16. [21:30] Speaker E: Come on, Rogue guy is here. [21:31] JD: Dollars. That's the match. [21:33] Justin: It's 1% of deposits. [21:34] Chad: Yeah. You have to max out to get the 60. Still. It's free money. [21:39] JD: Is that all it is? [21:40] Justin: It's 61 over age 51%. [21:45] JD: It's 1% of the 6K you put in. [21:47] Justin: It's 1% of your deposits. Yeah. [21:49] JD: When the most you could put in would be 6k for the. Yeah. [21:52] Chad: I mean my bank gives me 5% cash back. That's kind of nice. [21:55] Justin: I thought it was really cool until I read the faq. [21:58] JD: I didn't get that far. Yeah, guys, come on. [22:02] Chad: It is still free money. [22:05] JD: Like I Get it. [22:05] Chad: It's a small dollar amount, but it's still free money. It's, it's not a negative thing to look at. It's an investment by a business. [22:13] Mark: If there's a five dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk, are you gonna pick it up or not? [22:17] Chad: Yep. And then I'm gonna give it to charity. [22:21] JD: I'm kind of with Justin, I'm kind of with Justin on this one, I feel like. But you know, it'll catch headlines. Maybe it's the lure that gets people kind of, you know, involved in thinking about it and signing up and, and so the. [22:34] Justin: I guess I'm also curious what they're charging. [22:36] Chad: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So Sherry, Sherry mentioned 50 in the chat bar. I, I've, I honestly have absolutely no idea. But, but that was going to be my statement Justin is if I can put my six grand into an individual retirement account over here and get nothing from it, or I can put my six grand into an individual retirement account over here and get $60 for it. I'm gonna go get the $60 depending on now you got to look at fees and investments and all that stuff. But, but all things considering equal, that's where I'm going every time. [23:05] JD: I think what they're banking on is if you're that 35 year old again the average, you'd rather do it through this cool little app on your smartphone that you think is, is user friendly and easy to set up versus going through the monotony that is getting set or TD Ameritrade. I'll drink for the Ameritrade's got, They've got these 12 to you know, 18 million or more. You know, as markets change, kind of captive audience that they could be the provider for individual retirement accounts because of their brand and the ease and all that kind of jazz. So I don't know, check it out. It's planadvisor.com and my big takeaway here is because when we talked about that icon savings plan and now Robinhood and then even somehow I connect the dots to the starter K in the setting Every cat up 2.0 and I, and I feel like there's this new kind of game in town around these individual retirement accounts and imagine it. Maybe I'm really stretching it here but imagine Justin walked into those really small employers and instead of selling them a 401k plan, you could sell them something that's simpler, easier, doesn't cost as much because it's, it's built on A chassis of a, of an employer provided individual retirement account. I don't know, maybe there's something there. Is that weird, Chan, that I think that way? [24:44] Chad: No, it's not. Okay, good. Here's my overall, overall take from this JD is that they in almost all this legislation there's some poke at bridging this coverage gap. There's a lot of benefit in it and I think the, in the long run what we're going to see is many of these changes are going to get more people involved. I put in the chat bar the change from three years to two years for long term part time employees is another one. Everything that they've done specific to our space is about getting more people in the plan. Getting more, I shouldn't say that, getting more people saving because there are changes to the individual retirement account space, this small starter plan space and I think we're going to continue to see things trend that direction. [25:29] JD: As Jason Grant said on LinkedIn today, Chad, kumbaya. Kumbaya, Chad. Very, very loving of you Justin. [25:39] Speaker E: What? [25:40] JD: It's that time for you to intro our guest and you out there are going to rate Justin on a 0 to 10. Let everyone know this chatterbox that's been sitting here chiming in on these provisions and you know, leading my ears with his chat, chat, chat, chat, chat. The guy won't shut up. Who do we have here on the show today, Justin? [26:02] Justin: Is it really called an Intro anymore? Yeah, 30 minutes into the show you're [26:06] JD: introing the guest, you fucking dumbass. [26:09] Justin: We know his name anyways. He's a tech enthusiast who's often referred to as Mr. Gadget, but it's really just his family who calls him that. But he seems pretty pumped about it regardless, so I had to mention it. His go to cocktail is a Maker's Manhattan up. I'm not sure what that is, but I imagine you have to wear a vest to order it. He's enjoyed in Manhattan in both Manhattan, New York and Manhattan, Kansas. I'm not sure if he realizes this, but there's also Manhattan, Florida, Manhattan, Illinois, Manhattan, Indiana, Manhattan, Mississippi, Montana, Pennsylvania. So you've got some work to do, buddy. [26:44] Mark: I've got half of them checked off. Thanks, buddy. [26:47] Justin: Despite his ripish age, he can still bust out a mean worm on the dance floor. But by far my favorite fact about this guy is he was raised as a musician and has been seen on the corner of a San Franciscan street playing the accordion for some spare change. He's the founder of 3P 3P Consulting Group and the most well groomed man in 401K, ladies and gents, Mr. Tom Condren. [27:08] JD: Oh, my gosh, Justin, you. [27:12] Chad: You've grown up right in front of our eyes. [27:15] JD: You just took your average up big time, which protects your job. [27:19] Justin: I got a job through the end [27:20] JD: of the year and you're sitting there bitching about us doing introing our guests, and then you Babe Ruth it and knock it out of the park like it ain't no. Come on. [27:29] Mark: I like the way you look, coach. [27:33] JD: That was well done, everyone. Give Justin a score. I'm seeing lots of tens, twelves, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. I mean, crushing it. [27:42] Chad: Three piece. Thank you for joining, everybody. [27:44] Justin: Happy to be employed. [27:45] Mark: Well done. Super happy to be here, man. [27:48] JD: All right, we're going to talk a [27:49] Mark: little bit scary on this side of the chat bar, though, I gotta tell you. [27:52] JD: We're gonna talk a little bit tech with this guy today. And so I'm going to start with the tech of all tech. Have you out there in the chat bar. Have you heard of chat GPT? And I'm going to drink for that. Because the. The acronym stands for generative pre trained. If you haven't heard about it, even Webby says, of course, it is a artificial intelligence technology. Think of it as like the 3.0 version of Google or something. You can go there to this thing, and in live time, you can type into it a question. Coders are going there and asking the AI to fix the mistakes in their coding. It can. It can write a poem for you. You've probably all seen this stuff. There's AI out there that does art for you. Like, you can give it some cues. It'll do art. There's stuff that'll like. You can give it photos and it'll create, you know, tweaks to your photos. Like, there's all this really crazy, as Faith puts it. [29:01] Chad: Is it a site, Judy? Like, I don't understand. I've not seen that. Yeah, singular site. [29:06] Mark: Send you the link, buddy. [29:07] JD: I've gone to it from a website and I actually have it open right now, so I can't. [29:13] Justin: National breakpoint averages are going to skyrocket. [29:15] JD: I'm@chat.OpenAI.com and I'll drink from that because this. And let's see, I'm gonna type in right now and say, hey, write a short. [29:33] Chad: Oh, I have to sign up. [29:36] JD: Hang on, hang on. Okay, right now, live. Here we go. Live. I wrote write a short poem. It's already. It's already answering Me write a short poem about Tom. [29:46] Mark: There you go. [29:47] JD: And his love for 401k and three piece suits. Chad, this thing is. It wrote it right this second. Tom loves his 401k investing for the future. Smart. He's also quite suave in a three piece suit. Sharp and refined, he exudes confidence and charm. That's the short poem it just wrote. [30:10] Chad: And it's accurate right here in front of me. [30:12] JD: I was with this thing with my. My kids this morning because they're all home from college for holidays, and it was writing. It can write a short story on stuff, but does it rhyme? I think I read that shit wrong. I think I've been drinking. [30:28] Mark: You have to ask it to rhyme and it'll rhyme. [30:30] Chad: It. [30:30] JD: Yeah, sure. Yes, Jim, it's smart. All poems don't have to ride rhyme, Sampo. Anyways, it'll. It'll blow your mind. I did ask it if who Fred Reese was, and it immediately told me who Fred reached the ERISA attorney was. I then thought, oh, I can't wait to see what it says about me, man. Big shot retire holics guy. And I put in my name and it goes, I don't know what you're talking about. Had nothing. Had nothing for me. Me. I. So I told you a lot of people are using this to really like, solve. And remember, this is the 1.0 version of this. I will tell you this. I did then get nerdy with it. Chad, you'll like this. And I asked it, what's the contribution limit for a 401k plan deferrals in 2022. And it gave me last year's. It gave me last year's 19. [31:24] Mark: It's only through 2021. Oh, it's data is only through 2021. [31:29] JD: Oh, okay. So I was flawed then. I. I shouldn't have asked it a question outside of its data set. [31:35] Chad: Okay, ask it what it. What the contribution limit was in 2012. [31:39] JD: Yeah, it'll tell you. [31:40] Chad: Yeah, yeah. No, back to no, that's easy. That's an easy one. [31:44] Mark: 89. [31:44] JD: I'm not gonna sit here and play on this thing, but you all should go out and. [31:48] Mark: But it's awesome. [31:48] JD: Check it out. To sign up chat. I. I think I just gave it my email. Oh, I gave it my phone because it had to give me. [31:55] Mark: Somebody put the link in there. [31:57] JD: Okay. [31:57] Mark: In the chat bar too. [31:59] JD: So let me take it further than this. Chad has talked about artificial intelligence as a technology, and I have kind of poo pooed him in the Past because I imagined it. And when I say talked about it, he talked about like in a 401k work sense, you know, or imagine someone going to our website@ planesign.com and being able to ask questions about their testing or their limits or how to take a 401k loan. And Chad was nerding out telling me like AI could answer, can answer it for them. And I imagined in my head that the artificial intelligence was, that it was more like a tree chart or a hierarchy diagram, you know, just a. If this, then this. And we'd have to go in there and spend, you know, years building out all the answers for it. Well, I'm a dumb surfer. That's not how this shit works, right, Chad? Like this is, this is real intelligence that in a microsecond goes out and finds answers and uses migraine. [33:05] Chad: And obviously that's on a grander scale. What I had come to you with was within our own site and it's what we used for ever present, which essentially is, you know, all your frequently asked questions, your, your team bios, like everything you can give it in an artificial intelligence chatbot. It will be able to respond live to the people that are asking, what are your pricing? Or how often does this change? Or what's the limits? If, if you have it there, it will pull it. This is going far beyond that. This is now going into, I think Sherry said 10% of the interwebs is what it's covering. That's mind blowing. [33:43] JD: That's insane, right? [33:44] Chad: That. Yeah. Imagine what that can do from a service perspective. Imagine what that can do. And I'll give you an example if you'd like, but it'll blow. Time for a service person sitting on an Empower desk when that employee calls in and asks a question about that that maybe they're not even privy to, but that employee now in Empower can pull answers like that. [34:07] JD: Now Chad's talking about using it as a tool, right? [34:12] Mark: Imagine that. Yeah, but that's where like people get, people get scary, you know, scared about it or whatever. It's going to take over our lives. It knows too much, whatever. It's a tool that needs to be used. I mean, that's the exact application at a service desk or something. I mean, there's nothing more annoying than making a phone call, putting punching in all of your crap. You get to the somebody that you tell your story and then they move you over to somebody else and the person picks up and doesn't know about you. You know, it's Like. But why did I punch in all that crap? Can you just take the data from there to there? But the AI. And it's in the banking world, which is very. Think about. Oh, I said I. All right. So my. [34:52] JD: All right, take your time. Take this kind of involved show, everybody. Tom, what you got? Put it right in front of you. [34:57] Mark: This is a blue. It's called the Blue Ghost. Can you see that? [35:01] Chad: Yeah, yeah, it looks green. [35:03] Mark: Layers. [35:04] JD: I mean, right? I'm sure it doesn't look. Well, there's a blue person. [35:09] Chad: Oh, whoa. [35:11] Justin: Someone's gonna. [35:12] Chad: It's gonna be our first guest that dies on air. [35:16] Mark: No, I'm just gonna light my beard on air. So what happened is I took too long to. To penalize. To get penalized. [35:23] JD: Well, I got news for you, Tom. This is a live show and. [35:27] Mark: Yep, there we go. [35:29] JD: Killing the vibe right now. [35:31] Mark: Yeah. All right, here we go. [35:33] JD: Oh, yeah, I can see the flame. [35:36] Chad: I see the blue. [35:37] Mark: I could turn. I could turn the lights out, but there you go. [35:40] Chad: Very good. [35:40] Mark: So there's two way. Two ways to go after this. You either light your beard on fire. [35:44] JD: Yeah. [35:45] Mark: Use a straw. Actually three ways. Or you put it out first. [35:48] JD: No, I vote number one. I was voting for number one. That's cool. [35:54] Mark: Next one will be the straw. [35:55] JD: That's the best penalty shot we've had on the show, hands down. Sherry said something. Damn it. Sherry said. [36:05] Mark: Oh. [36:05] JD: She said Kentucky Fried Chicken used artificial intelligence for their social media. I believe it was Twitter. And they got in trouble because the artificial intelligence doesn't quite understand humans and the world and trends and. And people getting canceled. And I'm making shit up here. But I'm sure it said something that was kind of ill timed. Right. Or didn't make sense because they're not human. I hear you, Sherry, but I also feel like we're at beginning stages of this, so it's gonna take some of those Kentucky Fried Chicken mistakes. And by the way, don't you let Kentucky Fried Chicken off the hook when you find out that it was a computer that did it. Anyways, I feel like I would. [36:47] Chad: I look at that and I applaud Kentucky Fried Chicken for trying something like this. I mean, it's a story you see once every six states now. [36:56] JD: So my point would be this. I recently, I think I talked about this on a past show. I got a phone call from someone asking me about my home and if I owned it. I said yes. And then they asked me some questions about interest rates and stuff and. And this and that. And I basically was trying to get off the phone because I had emails to answer and I was kind of rude. It was responding to me. I think it was a computer. I'm pretty sure when I hung up, I'm like, I don't think I was talking. Sherry says it's a bot. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a bot. And I could barely tell. Brannon has says Brannon has said this numerous times. Drunk in the after show. Artificial intelligence will very quickly get to a point where you will not know that you're talking to a computer. And so maybe it will not need to be used as a tool. As Chad mentioned and Tom mentioned, you'll just. The, the, the artificial intelligence will be the one sitting at the cubicle at [37:58] Chad: Empower Chad, even with the chat bot, dude, there's been a number of times because I prefer to kind of test that tech. If I'm on a website, it's like, oh, you can call this number or chat with us live. I'm going to chat with them live. And I know at the beginning of that it is a chatbot and it is so precise and so good, it does not feel that way. And then eventually I get kicked over. It says, hey, hold on for a second. We need to get someone involved in the conversation. And it might kick at somebody, but it's incredible. [38:26] JD: I'm just saying, open up your mind [38:27] Mark: and it's going to be, it's going to be embedded in your. It's going to be embedded in everything. Like you hear the terms, right? Edge computing or hybrid cloud computing. There's so many different things out there. One of the things I'm going to do is throw a little 30 second TikTok type videos out and just simplify those terms. Like we've used the word especially in the news headlines, trillion many times. How much. Do we really understand what the word trillion is? If you break it down in terms of time? [38:51] JD: A thousand billion. [38:53] Mark: No, one million seconds is eleven and a half days. One billion seconds is about three decades. One trillion seconds ago there were still mastodons walking the earth. That's like, we don't conceive how big that is. It's 31,000 years. [39:13] Speaker E: Seconds. [39:14] JD: But how much was it? How much was the, how much was the setting every cat up for? Was it 1.7 trillion? [39:21] Mark: Trillion? [39:22] Speaker E: Yeah. [39:23] JD: Back to the mastodon. Check in dollars, bro. How long would it take you to do this? [39:31] Speaker E: A long time. Well, seconds. So if you could spend a dollar a second, it's the same thing, right? 31, 000 years. [39:41] Mark: No, I know. [39:41] JD: It'll take you forever. [39:42] Justin: That's crazy. [39:43] JD: That's crazy. But have you ever rained for a long time? I'll wrap up the artificial intelligence here quickly. But if you haven't, and I don't care where your political views are, although I don't consider Joe Rogan that politically slanted any one way or the other. But watch Elon. And I didn't used to think Elon was, but he's. He's becoming pain. It was pretty political. He says, watch Elon Musk on Joe Rogan if you haven't. I think most people have. And he's been there twice, but I think it's the first one. And Elon, who, whether you love him or hate him, is a very smart individual. Tony. Guy's a dick, man. Yeah, Tony. [40:23] Speaker E: He has a few controversial people in our industry, too. [40:26] JD: He talks about artificial intelligence and how it will learn at such a fast clip. Almost to your Mastodon effect, Tom. Where it's going to learn so fast, JD Gets dumber by the minute. It's going to learn so fast. Which means any little Kentucky Fried mistakes that it's going to make today, it's not going to make in the future, and it's going to learn at a really hyper fast clip. [40:57] Speaker E: So the sort of scary part about it, though, is there's a difference between AI, right? We say AI and machine learning. Sometimes we actually mean it, and sometimes people are just using the term dumb. All right, I'm not gonna like this one. [41:08] JD: Finish your thoughts. Finish. Finish your thoughts. You don't talk often, Tom, so keep going. [41:14] Speaker E: Yeah, no, so there's machine learning, right, which is actually taking those algorithms and then learning, getting a little bit deeper, coming back and validating the algorithms. But then there's deep learning. So there was a race cars that were taught how to drive, and they were autonomous. There were two race cars, exactly the same mechanics, exactly the same drivers, exactly the same everything. One is slightly faster than the other. And so deep learning is when you go beyond that machine learning, where we can't actually crack open the computer and see what is it thinking and why did it do what it do. Why did it do what it did? Right? And the only explanation that the guys have is I think on that day, one of the drivers was probably pissed off at his wife. And so we drove a little bit more aggressively. And that's the only thing that they can figure out of why that one car beats the other one by microns. But it's Just deep learning is crazy. [42:08] JD: It's a whole nother level of thinking. And I would just suggest that unlike the people who loved their horse and carriage and didn't like the idea of a car and unlike the people who loved a taxi and didn't like the idea of Uber, like keep your brain open to this shit because it could be phenomenal for us. In the pre show I was talking about how I was having this conversation with my 20 year old daughter who's back from France for Christmas and we were talking about all the things in her life that have just dramatically changed from a technology standpoint. We're talking about going to Blockbuster and getting movies and now you just hop on your TV and a bunch of other stuff. But just in her lifetime, which is in her lifetime, she's 20. How much has changed? Watch what happens in the next 20 years. It's going to be like going from a million to a billion. I believe in Tom's type of, of analogy there. Let's. You know what I want to do, Chad, since you're, since you're such an honest, integrity filled guy. Let's, let's, let's spin an integrity filled wheel of ice. The wheel of I. Katie's ready. [43:27] Chad: I hope it lands on Mark. [43:30] JD: Be good. [43:30] Justin: Yeah. [43:35] Chad: All right, who's drinking for Mark? [43:37] JD: I'll take it for him, I guess. [43:39] Chad: I wanted three pieces. Drink for Mark. [43:41] Speaker E: I don't have a screen after. I wasn't prepared. [43:44] JD: I got it. [43:45] Speaker E: JD got off the last. Was the last show two shows ago. He's been sick. I can't drink. [43:49] Mark: Mark took all of his shots, all [43:51] Speaker E: of his penalty drinks. So he deserves. [43:53] Chad: True. [43:54] JD: I'll take it. I'll take it. [43:55] Mark: He deserves it. Point. [43:56] JD: I'll do it. [43:56] Speaker E: It would only be better if you were wearing a robe. [43:58] JD: I'll do it for Robey. And while I, while I start to pound this, I'll set this up for you Tom and maybe you can take us away on this and I'll drink my eggnog for this. On Josh Itzo's podcast, he makes the comments all the time that the advisors in the planning and wealth management side are very evolved with their technology and their tech stack when compared to 401k plan advisors. Almost like we're in the dark age. Dark ages compared to them. So what I would like to kick this off with is conversation around a. Specifically a 401k advisors tech stack. And so when I say that Chad Justin, led by Tom here. What give me, give the audience some areas that we're talking about what areas would a retirement plan advisor need pack in as an example the classic one would be I'll drink the eggnog. No, I know what it is. Customer relationship management software would be one. Right. So as I pound this request for proposal. Thank you. Keep going. [45:13] Chad: It's even. Sorry Tom, but even when JD says that my immediate mind goes that's not like a part of your tech stack. But it is. It seems like it's a part of general. [45:23] Speaker E: You really want everything you tie back you have it. [45:26] Chad: Huh. I would not have gone there had being asked that. So sorry Tom. [45:30] JD: Go ahead, give me some others. [45:31] Speaker E: Problem. [45:32] JD: Give me more. [45:33] Speaker E: Well, I'll give you some others as long as I'm not sure how many acronyms are going to be in here. But prospecting proposals, plan onboarding, benchmarking, investment [45:43] JD: over seem prepared for this conversation. [45:46] Speaker E: Fiduciary, governance, financial, wellness and manage accounts and advice. And there's more, right? I mean you got marketing, you got any APIs that your technology is sinking in but Josh does. In junior high like we were the cool or the advisors over there. The cool kids were not the cool kids. They get all the cool toys and we don't get any cool toys. We have F360, we have airplane, we have. Right. There's a lot of tools that we are using on our side of the house. But when you look at Kitchas little. I say little. It's gotten huge. This huge thing of logos of all the advisor tech. There's this little tiny spot where there's like 401k mentioned, you know and there isn't a lot of tech. We're using some tech. But the opportunity is huge for somebody to really help to pull all that tech together and create an ecosystem that can pull all those pieces together and help us. And I say us, I mean all advisors. [46:41] Chad: But here's the issue still exists at least with the advisors that most of them that I speak with which is in the 401k space directly people look at tech stack and they think expense whereas I feel like outside of this space they look at. Yeah and they look at opportunity and efficiencies and I think that that is going to continue to be an issue until. Can I ask you though Chuck, in 401k why do you. [47:11] JD: What's the difference? [47:11] Chad: Because it's not a. It's. There are very few. Like if I could look at the number of plans sold in a given year and say how many of them were. How many quantity were sold by advisors who specialize in this space, it's going to be a teeny tiny amount. [47:26] JD: I understand. [47:26] Chad: And Greg said earlier we need volume and everything that you do to create profitability, credibility. I understand that's one of those spaces. [47:33] JD: Of course if you're an advisor with six plans, you're not up at night thinking about your tech stack. Is that what you're saying? [47:43] Chad: I mean, yes, but let me evolve that. JD what if you're an advisor with 60 plans but it's 10% of your company revenue, why are you going to spend a whole lot of money there if 90% is coming from private wealth? [47:56] Speaker E: If you have sells 60 more plans, if you do it efficiently but true anyway. [48:01] JD: And, and to answer, I think that, I think you just took a stab at 60. But I would say 60 is a fair amount of work. That's a good chunk of man slash woman hours to, to deal with those. And I would argue that at a minimum at 60 plans you're pulling in 300k. If you're not pulling in 500k and so you've got money to burn, to throw. [48:24] Chad: You went straight into my trap though. You went straight into my trap which is that all of of the tech stack that we're referencing with how many plans you have, it goes around servicing the plans. It goes around efficiencies or Tom [48:41] JD: selling. [48:42] Speaker E: So there's two categories. You growing your business and you're keeping your business afloat and doing what you need to do to service your clients. So those are two main categories. [48:49] Chad: You can like the servicing the clients Tom. The servicing the client side and everything that JD said and what I've heard from from others is about internal operations. Fi360crms. I'll drink for that one. Justin. Like it's about internal operations and it's not about creating a better overall experience for that client for the individual participant. Well the advisors who do do this business will invest in that but that's call it 1%. 2% of advisors in our space are investing in servicing in tech. That is servicing the participant or the client. [49:25] JD: And let's be clear Tom, the rest [49:26] Chad: are doing what tech do they have [49:28] Speaker E: to invest in to make the participants experience. [49:31] JD: I need to be clear for you and for everyone listening in, we can never forget this. If you've watched Retire Alex for a long time, you already know this. Chad speaks from the perspective of the micro market. Right? He's selling. [49:45] Chad: I speak from the perspective of volume. [49:47] JD: Yeah, he sells. He sells startups. Million dollar five million dollar takeovers you know he. Those are. And a lot of those advisors, not all we work with our fair share of experts that have large books and are with bigger companies. But a lot of what Mark, Justin, Chad, soon to be Devin are out there selling is like Chad said, it's like those old. I hate to use it. It's the, it's the two plan Tony thing, right? Is that what you just were saying Chad? [50:15] Speaker E: Like one plan one. [50:16] JD: And Tony, Tony's not going to fucking worry about a tech stack. [50:20] Chad: But it's not even, it's not even to the point of two plan Tony. It's to the point of even people that have 50 or 60 plans, it's still such a teeny tiny portion of their overall revenue that that's not the area they're looking to create. Go after the participant and they're looking to create tools to create efficiency. Like you said J.D. servicing 60 plans is tough. It's costly like yeah. Yes. So they look at tech on the inside, they don't look at tech on the outside. They don't look at prospecting like, like Tom had said they don't look at benchmarking well maybe for existing plans that could be part of it. And that's been my, my issue with, with you're all. [50:59] Speaker E: You're right, you're talking about operations. Right? Operations and how do we make things more efficient? Tech that makes things more efficient. What you had mentioned was and this is where the focus needs to be and certainly in the banking industry which is very similar to our industry old stodgy like 1400s is when the Medici bank started. Right. We'd have all these bank branch digitize the branch experience. We've kind of had the same kind of thing where 401k happened in the 80s and then we've kind of digitized written in Cobalt these old record keeping platform systems and now we've kind of written them in new languages and if you Google 401k and fintech you're going to get pretty much vest well you know, human interest for us all, whatever all the digital solutions. But what's happening is people are demanding it's solutions right on the bank, on the banking side basically people need a better experience. It's the hyper personalization to your phone to basically your experience. When you walk into the grocery store it knows you're at the grocery store, knows how much you usually spend on groceries. It can offer you a same day loan at that point in time so you don't go up to the cashier and get declined with your plastic card. [52:07] Justin: Right. [52:07] Speaker E: The, the banking side is definitely. Fintech is taking over where I think the experience, which you said it earlier, Chad, it's all about that participant and their experience. How do we make that experience better? We've been trying to use our tools that we've had for this long to kind of keep driving those tools down participants throats and try to use it the way that we want to use it. How can we create an experience that a participant where we kind of started out at, where a participant can be very. We still call them participants. [52:35] JD: Right. [52:35] Speaker E: They're employees, they're people. But ultra personalized experience for that person that they're comfortable with and allows them to save for the future, income included. [52:44] Mark: Everything. [52:44] Chad: Beautiful thing. [52:46] Speaker E: It will happen and the Fintechs will do it. It won't be us figuring our. [52:49] JD: Here's the thing. I think Chad Self admits that and we're using Ari's term that he was the turd in the punch bowl here. He woke up on the same side of the bed as Justin today. They were, they were spooning each other. That was so negative, so pessimistic. You are an advocate for our industry, Mr. Johansen. And if you have 60 plans or if I'm going to go further on you, if I'm an advisor who's 25 years old and I've got three plans but I have hopes and dreams of building my book to 60 and also having a wealth management side that triples the revenue or quadruples it on the other side. I want my 401k game to be strong because I'm in the business of selling 401k plans to plan sponsors and therefore I want to have the tech and the things whether it's internally for my own operations or so it's sexy and exciting to the clients that I'm talking to. And I think that if people follow, I won't call it your advice, Chad. I'm just doing this for. No, it's not for fun, you know, fireworks here on the show. But if I followed your advice and didn't invest in that space, I'm going to lose those 60 plans over time and maybe at a fairly decent pace because they're going to be sold new things that are flashy, that are cool, that are impactful, that and maybe even someone's going to come to them at a lower price because an advisor at a lower price because they've built efficiencies on their model that they cannot. To me that's. It's just crazy talk what you're saying. And I know what you're trying to do is reflect the truth of what's out there, but that's. Those people need to be guided in a different direction. [54:53] Chad: You're 100% correct. And the only way that I'll, I'll steer off that path is to remind you what I'm trying to say is that as a whole we still, we meaning the 401k space, still look at that technology as a cost. As a cost versus not an investment outside of the foreign investment. Exactly, exactly. And that's what I'm trying to change. The, the overall perception of this technology is to say don't look at it as an efficiency tool. Don't just look at it that, look at it as an opportunity, as an investment to say I'm going to win more plans, I'm going to better service, produce. [55:33] JD: You know what I call that? [55:34] Chad: The plans are going to be stickier. [55:35] JD: Here's the thing, here's what I call that. Not everyone's a winner. There are good entrepreneurs and there are shitty entrepreneurs and those people are shitty entrepreneurs and they're only going to grow their business to a certain extent. And by the way, if they're, if they're sitting on the fat hog right now, Chad, and they're going ah, I don't have the money to spend on that or if that's the case too, check out those people in 10 years and see, see where they're at and, and see where that 60 year old country club member thought he was going to be in retirement and watch me laugh at him when I drive by in my third Lambo. [56:12] Chad: I tell you where they'll be. [56:13] Speaker E: There's a, there's a huge gap though. I mean it's not like they're going [56:16] JD: to lose their wealth if they have [56:18] Speaker E: all kinds of tech to invest in. Right? We've got a few tools that are around the industry that we pretty much people use. They're not 100% happy with them. They'd like them to be better. There's nothing that's really holistic. Right. There's a huge opportunity on the, from a fintech approach to our business that can just do everything you're saying, Jed, [56:38] JD: stay tuned, stay tuned. [56:40] Chad: And it's coming and that's. People need to be open to it and don't look at it as. I don't want to spend money on that. Look at it and go, this can change my practice. This. You're going to create higher contributions to the plan. There's so much that can be from that statement. [56:56] JD: You will see those things start to change in our industry. We're going to need the record keepers and people to help out and play game with everyone that builds stuff. But we've talked about that. [57:04] Speaker E: They don't. We'll go. Fintech will go around them. [57:07] JD: Interesting. Love that. Great. [57:11] Speaker E: I don't care about their data. I can get the data elsewhere. Trust me. [57:14] JD: Let's play a quick game. Let's play a quick game to end it out and. And then. And then we'll wrap it up here tonight. Okay. Quick game. Hasn't heard the song. I'll check that out later, Webby. It's the totally original. Never copied. Nope. Or dope game. And this time, that's the way the cookie crumbles. We'll just start at the end. It's very efficient. All right. Have you guys ever heard of pilk? [57:58] Chad: Huh? [57:59] JD: Pilk. E, I L K. Pilk. [58:03] Chad: Nope. [58:04] JD: Anybody in the chat bar? Anybody? Anybody? [58:08] Chad: Nope. I feel like that's an abbreviation, though, for something. [58:11] JD: It is Milk combined with Pepsi. [58:17] Justin: What? [58:17] Chad: Oh, that sounds terrible. [58:20] JD: I've never had one ever. And I've been having milk here sitting on ice this whole show, and a Pepsi that's probably lukewarm now, but you do it at 50. 50. I'm probably more like 60. 40. [58:32] Chad: This is totally a pitch by Pepsi to sell more Pepsi, and they're like, oh, it's healthy. Pour it in milk. [58:38] JD: Today's noberdope has been brought to you by Pepsi. Cha Ching. No egg cream. [58:45] Speaker E: That's been around forever, which is basically bubbly water and egg. [58:49] JD: If you Google this. This is a thing. People are claiming. This is a. This is a thing. I've heard people talk about it being like a milkshake or something, and when I first heard it, my response was. Was Chad's like, that sounds disgusting. But the more I thought about, I'm like, maybe it's not so bad. I swear to you on my chihuahuas lives, I've never had this in my entire life. Not even a sip of it. So I'm gonna find out whether it's nope or dope. [59:15] Justin: Right? Stir that up. [59:15] JD: Not really. [59:17] Mark: Yeah. [59:17] JD: Okay. Let's use a highlighter. [59:22] Chad: Are you in the office? Are you at home right now? [59:24] JD: I'm at home. [59:26] Chad: No driving tonight? [59:30] Speaker E: I thought it was gonna chug the whole. [59:34] JD: Yeah, okay. It's dope. It's kind of like a. Like a milkshake that's gone flat or a root beer float. That's been sitting around for fucking six hours or something. I don't know. [59:45] Chad: That sounds. Those things sound really great. [59:47] JD: Decent. Okay, I'm going to go to you, Tom. Nope. Or dope. Getting Christmas emails from companies thanking you for being a valued client or partner. They come in all forms. You click on the little thing, sometimes it takes you to a beautiful Christmas song with a graphic of snow falling. Or maybe it's Hancock and they've gotten every one of their employees to, like, do a video from their backyard telling you how much they value you. Like, how do. What do you say? Nope. Or dope to this and why? Tom? [1:00:23] Speaker E: Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. [1:00:26] JD: That explains it. [1:00:27] Speaker E: Yeah, just. No. I mean, there's no. I don't need another freaking email. I know you're just trying to keep me on top, you know, you on the top of my mind or whatever. Send me some money. Send me some fruit basket. Maybe send me some kfc. I don't know. But other than that, just keep your email. [1:00:44] JD: Chad, I know where you stand on this. [1:00:46] Chad: Yeah, don't send me. Don't spend money. I don't need you to waste it. Be profitable, lower your costs, whatever you need to do. Don't send me what I want. What I want. I noticed a poke at me because I sent something to JD and said, I'd like to do this for a step. [1:01:01] JD: I really like this. This is really cool. [1:01:03] Chad: And I looked at the Christmas thank. [1:01:06] JD: Threw up in my cereal. I'm like, oh, fucking A Hancock. Give me a break. [1:01:09] Chad: It's not the Christmas side of things. What I would like is because we, as a remote workforce now, very few of our advisor partners know who they're actually talking to. They've never seen Lena, Teresita Ottacelli, like, so what I would love is a little video that said, hey, appreciate you. I'm your client account manager. Our company appreciates your business. Like, thank you. [1:01:33] Speaker E: I think that you were gonna say bobbleheads. [1:01:36] Justin: See, that's more personable. I can get behind that. [1:01:38] JD: What happens when they find out that all those people are actually artificial intelligence computer bots? Justin, how do you feel about these? How do you feel about this? [1:01:49] Chad: I mean, overall, I'm. [1:01:50] Mark: I'm. [1:01:51] Justin: I'm. No, no, no, no. [1:01:52] Chad: Not at all. [1:01:53] Justin: Yeah, it's like, if you truly care, then send me a handwritten card. But I will say what Chad just said about having some personalization to it. I am kind of okay with that. I like that. As long as it's personalized. [1:02:04] Speaker E: That's a different approach. Don't let it get lost in Christmas cards. [1:02:07] JD: They usually need to. [1:02:08] Speaker E: Good idea though. [1:02:09] JD: Put a better effort in on it. And I don't even doing. I think the Hancock thing I love a lot of people are in that video but I will tell them to their face and if they're watching this on YouTube or LinkedIn. That was stupid, you guys. [1:02:22] Chad: Dude, I didn't watch the whole thing either. Like, yeah, it was too long. [1:02:26] JD: I'm not a waste of time. [1:02:28] Chad: And for folks who just wrote in the chat bar that said we'll write a letter and guys, we have transitioned past that. It needs to be more personable. And I don't think a letter for someone that you've never met and don't know what they even look like or do they any personal information about them. A letter that says thank you for your business doesn't get you anywhere. We need to personalize our space. [1:02:53] JD: I'm probably an asshole, Chad, because I feel like that that's the intention of that Hancock one is let's put a face to our business. And I appreciate some of the people that work hard for me and that's great and I appreciate them on an individual level. But I don't need you to take those people as a corporation and try to use them to promote your brand somehow because half of them work somewhere else five years ago. And so I don't like two years ago. I don't like it coming from the corporation next year. [1:03:25] Chad: I have a different. [1:03:26] JD: I have a different filter and a different lens. When something comes from a corporation versus first coming from a person, Tom is there. This will not make you a Grinch. You can. You can answer honestly. No per dope. Door to door Christmas caroling. So not the professional one. Down at the mall, someone rung your doorbell and now they're singing Here Comes Santa Claus. [1:03:57] Speaker E: All right, so my honest answer is I wish they went to the next door. But I really appreciate that they're doing it and putting themselves out there. And so I'll invite them in for a drink. We'll have eggnog together, you know. Well, I mean, good for you. That's awesome. But I could have done without it. So I don't even know where to say nope. And dope on that one. [1:04:17] JD: That's a dope. [1:04:18] Speaker E: Like it's dope that they did it. But nope, it's okay if you pass it to you. [1:04:22] JD: That's a dope. And. And I'm. I'm with you. I'm Claiming if I've had two to three drinks already and it's evening time, I'm loving it. If I'm sober, I'm like, who the are you? Why are you at my door? [1:04:35] Mark: Justin, do you have a package for me? [1:04:39] Justin: I. I couldn't handle it, especially if [1:04:41] JD: they're not a good. [1:04:41] Chad: They just can't sing. [1:04:42] Justin: I'm like, Like I would take Tom's approach. [1:04:44] JD: Come on in. [1:04:44] Chad: Cut you off. [1:04:45] Justin: Let's have a drink. Otherwise, get the on. [1:04:48] JD: And we all know what Chad's gonna say, so let's skip him. Last one. And this one's just a Tom. Grown men doing the worm cue video. [1:05:01] Speaker E: If you can do it. [1:05:07] Chad: You didn't walk for a week after that. [1:05:11] JD: All right, everybody. That was a fun one. I enjoyed today's show, believe it or not. I. I think we've turned a corner. Things are feeling pretty good around here in retireaholics land. Next week. Yeah, next week. We're not like those other podcasts. We don't take the holidays off. We go hard. We go hard. And next week, to finish off 2022, anyone out there in the chat bar know who's coming? We've put it out there before in a couple posts. That's right. Webby the Nevster will be coming in. Chad's not coming next week. [1:05:50] Chad: Yeah, I'll be flying to SoCal. I forgot to tell you, I'll be. [1:05:53] JD: Oh, my God. Sherry says perfect. Chad, you won't be there. I know, Sherry. That was for the other comment. Yeah. So Nevin Adams American Retirement association will be here next Thursday to kind of do, like, our 2022 finale. Don't worry, we're not going to do one of those cheesy shows where we, like, look back at the year and blah, blah, blah. We'll do a leg get freaking. [1:06:20] Chad: Sounds awesome. [1:06:21] Speaker E: Yeah, video that and send me an email. [1:06:25] JD: So I'm excited for that one. It's a great way to finish off the year. And I'm gonna vote for Chap, our champion. Oh. Last week's chapter champion was pem. He was a designated drinker for Steven Johnson on the show. And Pam has nominated a. A charity in Tennessee for animals for. For dogs. So check out my post on LinkedIn. It's there just like the week before when Tony did it and the week before that when Danielle did it. So go to my LinkedIn. Check it out. We are putting in 150 bucks and. And you can match us. Put a little bit in. Whatever you want to do by the Way we're north of twelve hundred dollars so far. So I don't know, we got nav next week, you know, maybe we can get to three grand or something. And I know that's not massive three grand of some charities, but you know, it's better than all the pizzas with anchovies. I was. [1:07:25] Chad: That's awesome. [1:07:26] JD: Right? [1:07:27] Speaker E: Chat bar. Another write off for your tax account, dude. [1:07:32] JD: So yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So this tonight, chat bar. I'm voting. We're not going to send it to the audience to vote. [1:07:37] Chad: Vote. [1:07:38] JD: We're just gonna vote right here. Okay. There's four of us and my vote is Sampo. One, because he's hammered. Two, because he's had intelligent things to say in spite of being hammered. And he said like trickster for kid. He had all kinds of great humor and different things. So my vote is for Champo. You said Sherry wrong. Jd. What? Justin. How did I say Sherry wrong? [1:08:07] Chad: Because he didn't say Sherry. [1:08:10] Justin: Anyways. That right over your head. Anyways, my bonus for Sherry. [1:08:14] JD: Okay, good. [1:08:15] Justin: A lot of good ones tonight. Actually. [1:08:16] JD: That is a good one. Someone's going Sherry. That'd be now, Tom. [1:08:20] Speaker E: Your vote, Samson. [1:08:23] Chad: Okay, so two and I'm in for Sherry. [1:08:27] Speaker E: I told you it was gonna tie, baby. [1:08:29] Chad: I put Sherry in there already votes. [1:08:32] JD: There's no plan. Sampo is the chat bar champion. [1:08:37] Chad: My vote doesn't count. Hey, let's call Mark real quick. [1:08:41] JD: Oh, he's got two. [1:08:43] Chad: Yeah. Justin. Sherry. [1:08:46] Speaker E: Oh, I guess I don't count. [1:08:47] JD: Break the tie. Yeah, [1:08:54] Chad: I thought this would be easier. [1:08:57] JD: Maybe you should flip a coin. Sherry, are you. Are you drunk or inebriated in some way right now? How many drinks have you had tonight? Don't lie. You know you're an honest woman. [1:09:08] Speaker E: Gonna say something funny in a minute. [1:09:10] JD: I'm free. Jim says. [1:09:14] Chad: I just hit Jim on the quarter flip too. [1:09:16] JD: How dare you show up to this show sober. Sherry Fitz, you are on a six day suspension. Sherry, I don't want to see you in this show for another six days for not drinking. Okay? So yeah, next week, Nevin Adams. Thank you. Three piece. We appreciate you spending some time with us here tonight. Everybody out there that tuned in, big hats off to you. This is the holidays. I'm sure you've put on your out of office. I'm sure you're spending time with a fam and it means a lot to us that you would show up on a date like December 22nd. So thank you for that. We really appreciate it. And if you're watching out there on YouTube and it's a month from now. We're on LinkedIn, and you didn't show up on December 22nd. Well, you. Okay? [1:10:08] Chad: You know what they say. [1:10:10] JD: Yeah, that's how the cookie crumbles. Let's play a song. No after show tonight, people. I got to do. And we'll see you next week with Nevin Adams. Peace out. [1:10:20] Chad: Thank you all. [1:10:22] Justin: Thank you, guys.