The Retirement Plan Game: Simplify 401(k) Fee Structure

[0:00] Chad: And they're a fiduciary. So the blue, literally this is where they love to play. This is where they come alive, is inside the fire. Because we're protecting the fire and we're running rough shot on the system. [0:24] JD: Random guys here on our couch to the to speak. [0:28] Justin: It says we got him on Las Vegas Boulevard. Right? Last night we met him on Las [0:32] Speaker D: Vegas Boul on this trip. [0:36] JD: Thanks for being with us and geez. Company Two West. I get that right? [0:40] Chad: Two West. Nailed it. [0:42] JD: Like every episode we have to have the beer of the episode. This one's a classic. It's Guinness. I. I seem to have two bottle openers here. One is from adp, one is from retireholics. Chad, I need you to open the bottles for me. Which one will you choose? There you go, buddy. [1:00] Chad: Jeez. [1:01] Justin: That stands for like actual deferral percentage test. Right? Like that's. Those are not a company, by the way. [1:07] JD: I don't know what ADP is and I really don't care. We also are going to have a word of the episode and feed us. Since we're going to be talking about your guys services and what you're offering to advisors out there. Because advisors is such a big part of our industry and advisor is such a word that rolls off the tongue. We'll go with advisor. That'll be the word of the episode. If you say that word, you must drink from these little shot glasses which by the way were provided by principal financial group. And somehow that plug somehow first eagle snuck a little stuffed animals. [1:51] Chad: Super, super snarky. [1:53] JD: You don't want to be associate. [1:55] Speaker D: I just counted four advisors from you. [2:00] JD: I said those before. [2:01] Chad: I said I did that on purpose. All right, Good boy. [2:10] JD: I usually don't like dark beer. You guys. You guys know that. [2:15] Chad: Not a fan. [2:15] JD: But somehow I have always liked Guinness. [2:20] Chad: It's not a normal regular Guinness. [2:24] Justin: It's smooth. [2:25] Chad: That's nasty. [2:27] Justin: Yeah. I mean it's an extra stout, 5.6 alcohol by content. [2:31] Chad: It's fantastic calories and stuff in this that you could actually live on this for like a week with the protein in the first. [2:37] Justin: I'm gonna give it a shot. [2:39] Chad: I think we have more beer in the fridge. Challenge accepted. Yeah, Challenge accepted. [2:44] JD: Let's kick right into it. The reason why we brought you guys here is our audience is advisors for the most part. Yes. That counts. [2:57] Chad: That's the first of many. [2:59] Speaker D: It goes with the Guinness. [3:00] JD: I don't know. [3:02] Speaker D: It's heavy, gross. [3:06] JD: And. And you guys are doing services for them. You've evolved to such a point now that you're helping other financial professionals in the 401k space. [3:18] Speaker D: You know, in a nutshell, what we built was everything that we. As we were growing our firm out and growing our services out, we did not want it to be kind of contingent upon choosing a certain provider. So everything had to be scalable and kind of an umbrella over top of all services. So when we did that, we kind of created some really good stuff. Right. To take the market, to take. To take care of our clients. And after a while, we built this proprietary package of service deliverables, sales deliverables. You're going to see the card game here in a little bit. And everything meant to cover any provider that an advisor would want to work with. [3:51] Chad: Advisor, yes. Wow. I know. [3:56] Speaker D: I was trying. [3:57] Chad: I was trying to. He's going to state the next 30 seconds. You're welcome. [4:01] Justin: By the way. [4:02] Chad: That's good stuff. [4:03] Speaker D: Like, this is going to be a hard conversation now. All right, I'm on point now. So. So at the end. At the end of the day, we built out our own stuff. And somebody came to us. It wasn't a business model that we decided we were going to get into. Somebody looked at our stuff and they said, guys, I want that. That's pretty good. No, no, it was actually a provider looked at it and said, that information's pretty good. I like the way you've packaged it out. Would you ever consider helping other advisors? And as you. [4:30] Chad: It gets harder and harder. [4:33] JD: Just keep calling them advisors. Welcome to this show. [4:36] Speaker D: This conversation is going to get really, really quick because that's a tough word. [4:42] Chad: I got your back. [4:43] Speaker D: Bottom line, how do we help them scale them? [4:46] Chad: Them. [4:46] Speaker D: How do we help them scale them? And we kind of spent a year backfilling our firm with great quality people [4:53] Chad: to make sure that we were taking care of them. [4:56] Speaker D: 120 plans that we had built. [4:58] JD: Your own shop still working? [4:59] Speaker D: That's right. Absolutely. And the rest of us went out to try to. How do we scale this? And luckily, we've had a lot of interest, and in just over a year's time, we've had 15 advisors connect to our firm. [5:12] Justin: Here we go. [5:12] Speaker D: It's not possible, by the way. [5:14] Chad: Get in there. [5:16] JD: Isn't that funny? I think that's how it always seems to work. [5:20] Speaker D: I'm sipping this now with the understanding [5:22] JD: it's going to be empty in product creation and stuff. It's. People get really good at doing something. [5:28] Speaker D: Yeah. [5:28] JD: And then they realize, oh, well, we can help other people do this. As well. [5:32] Speaker D: But it's not easy to flip that switch. [5:35] JD: It's not. [5:36] Speaker D: It's been fun, though. [5:37] Chad: It's been fun. [5:38] Justin: And so you still have your book as a practice and you have now started partnering with these FAs to say, look, we have built this, this process, these procedures. We have it ready to go. Almost as if you're taking them under your wing and maybe you are. And you're saying, here it is, look, it's successful. Look at what we've done with it. Get out there and go. [5:58] Speaker D: And the advisor that you stop, you [6:02] JD: stopped, we'll give you that one. You cut it off. And the fa, checking your back. [6:05] Speaker D: Thank you. Didn't cross the plate for a guy. The FA is heavy in wealth management, typically. [6:12] JD: Right. [6:13] Speaker D: So it was. I'm not saying retirement plans are an afterthought because they weren't an afterthought, but they're. They were heavy in wealth management. They just attract, they attract business. They attract business owners. [6:24] JD: It's still true today. There was a time when this whole industry was like, oh, it's only going to be the 401k pros. They're going to be the guys that gobble up all the business. I've heard this for over a decade. [6:36] Speaker D: I've heard that. [6:37] JD: And when 408D2 and 445 are coming, that's what's going to happen. It's going to consolidate and only the really good 401k pros would have the business. I don't see that happening. You're still going to have these guys and girls that have five plans, 10 plans. [6:55] Justin: I've definitely seen that happen. Mid market and up though. You have shops that are 401k only shops and they are chewing up that mid market indoors. [7:05] Chad: I think that small play because the folks that we're attracting, those FAs that are heavy wealth management, they have 15 or less plans, but they also have a desire to grow because they want to diversify. They just don't know how to grow because it's an. It's a gross topic. Right. Either build it, partner or buy it. Most of those shops don't want to do any of that stuff other than can I find somebody that is aligned with me, that doesn't want to buy me, that wants to support me and grow me and make it efficient. Yeah. And just take all the stuff that we built and use it and we train you on using it. And then it's not just about 338. You said 338 on steroids. It's like 338 on steroids. White glove. Like we're going to teach you how to sell. We're going to teach you how to scale. We've got products, we've got things that can enhance you and differentiate you because [7:52] Justin: that space and I want to get into a little bit 10 million and [7:55] Chad: below spaces where a lot of these folks play. [7:57] Justin: Yeah. [7:57] Chad: So we've got 2 billion on our own book. And I think what Johnson county is what, 250 million? Yeah. It's not a blast at 250 million. It's not exactly fun. That sub 10 million dollar space is where most of our people play. Yeah. Are you guys still. Do you guys obviously have your book? Are you guys still actively getting new clients as well? Or have you cut that out for the relationships with the other. There's no conflict. [8:20] Speaker D: After several years of building a brand locally. [8:23] Chad: Yeah. [8:24] Speaker D: For the first time ever, incoming phone calls are coming. [8:27] Chad: It's starting to happen. [8:28] Speaker D: What's weird, I'd like to say a little pat on the back. We've developed a really nice reputation. [8:32] Chad: Nice. [8:33] Speaker D: That we don't have to work as hard as we used to to find that next client for the local book. [8:37] Chad: Yeah, yeah. We'll still grow that local book at around 10 to 12 a year, which is a good, healthy growth rate while we. Yeah, button it up. Shore it up with that awesome team over there. And then we're gonna go out and build this. This is our main focus. [8:49] JD: And Can I talk about that? I think that's important. People always think like, oh, you're competing with me or this or that. I think it's more valuable to the financial professionals that you guys help that you're actually still playing the game and doing it yourself because you learn stuff, things change. [9:09] Chad: Everything that they see has been tested by our own clients. [9:12] JD: There you go. [9:12] Chad: Well, we even see our own cookie does that. You know what I mean? [9:15] Justin: As TPA is arguably the best providers we partner with are ones that have good bundled shops because they know the data that we need and what. How to run a plan. [9:25] JD: There's a lot of value in that. I want to be clear, because people will define what you're talking about as a 338. We kind of look at 338 and think, oh, it's. And it varies. But someone picking a menu and monitoring those funds and replacing those funds. You said 338 white glove. I said 338 on steroids. And what that means in a Clearly defined. Thing is you're going way outside of just the investment monitoring and you're helping with other things. Can you be specific about those other things that you're doing that make it white glove. That make it on steroids. [10:01] Speaker D: So in around these, this community of this conference 338. I get it. Right. That's what people know and understand in other conferences. [10:08] Chad: People call it tamp. [10:10] Speaker D: Yeah. I say, yeah, right. So you're kind of familiar with that TAMP model. So we're the. We're the back office solution. Really. We. We really. When we're talking to a new faa, we say, you know, we're your tamp. We're your back office. Oh, by the way, we also do 338. [10:23] Chad: It's a. [10:24] Speaker D: By the way, it's kind of a. By the way, it's really not a338 on steroids. It's really a. We're your back office. And by the way, we have really good services on 338 as well. [10:32] Chad: Committee charters, board resolutions, IPS's, fiduciary risk reviews, all that stuff you talked about doing 10 years ago. [10:38] JD: Yeah. [10:39] Chad: We proprietarily have packaged it and then they take everything that we've got. So literally everything that we give our clients on a full service book is the exact same thing we're giving to these guys. [10:50] JD: I think that's a perfect transition to this card game. So I was. We're going to play a game. I was with an advisor. I want to play a game. [10:59] Speaker D: Any up. [10:59] JD: I was with. Oh, you're right. [11:02] Justin: I want to say advisor as well, because I need to try. [11:05] JD: I was some dude and he told me about the card game. Then I'm here at this conference, two other people tell me about the card game. So the card game is infamous. [11:18] Chad: You texted me earlier and like, what's up with this card game? I'm like, how do you even know about it, dude? [11:22] JD: Growing and popular. [11:23] Justin: The world's gonna know now. [11:25] Chad: Oh my. [11:25] Speaker D: So 402 people might know. [11:28] Justin: Watch your website hits. [11:29] Chad: We'll go up. [11:30] Speaker D: Like really? [11:31] Justin: Yeah. 12 whole people will now come on after they watch the show. [11:37] Speaker D: Just 12. Let's clear some space here. [11:40] Chad: Going on the same theme, right? Money simplified and getting rid of jargon Shirt perfectly matched. [11:48] Speaker D: This. [11:48] Chad: This was born out of a. Whoops. Marco and I were five hours away from home trying to pitch a committee of five on a $10 million deal, which was big to us. It's probably nine years ago, eight years ago. It was like our fifth client. [11:59] Speaker D: Game. Game changer. [12:00] Chad: Game changer. And I did exactly what you said. I walked into that meeting, and Marco usually lets me run the meeting. And then we chime and we're a really good yin and yang. Let you know. You just. No, I just a bulldog. And I just a hog. I'm a ball hog. [12:11] JD: Sounds like Justin. [12:14] Justin: Say, this sounds so familiar. [12:15] Chad: When I started, I started the meeting getting into the 48B2 4 4A5 jargon, right? And you could tell these people hated me. I could smell it. And so I did a timeout five minutes into another. These are smart people. These are smart people. [12:30] Speaker D: Director of hr, CFO and the head of nursing. [12:33] Chad: And I'm talking custody record key, TPA stuff that they were just. And I walked around the room and I said, time out. I don't feel like this is going really well. I'm just going to call myself out on it. Marco's looking at me like. [12:48] Speaker D: He goes, time out. [12:49] Chad: I went, holy sweat. [12:52] Speaker D: He calls it time out. And I'm like, what do you mean, time? I can go to the bathroom. [12:57] JD: How am I doing? [12:57] Chad: So how am I doing? Ten is, you want some more of this? Or one is, you know you're not going to hire us. I went around the room and I told him, scale me right now. Scale this meeting. 1, 2, 12 hr goes, I'll give you a 4 because I feel sorry for you. I'm like, all right, thanks for the transparency. May I have permission to re engage and we'll see where this goes? And I said, sure. And so I took the jargon and I turned it into Pepsi cans, salt shakers, and sweet and low. Whatever you get your hands on the table. Just impromptu. I said, when I say custody, it's this Pepsi can. This Pepsi can holds your money. It's the bank, and there's a fee for that. This pen or this salt shaker is your website. That's really what I'm talking about when I'm talking about a record keeper. Now, they do more than that. But I simplify. But simplifying all that, people started moving like, oh, wait a minute. You mean my Pepsi and my salt are together? I'm like, that is correct. [13:53] Justin: That's called disgusting. [13:54] Speaker D: That's a gross combo. [13:55] Chad: You can separate Pepsi and salt and hire a PA right? So far more palatable at the end of the 90 minutes, it was a game changer. We won the deal. They gave us 10. [14:07] Speaker D: Really not a very good story if we didn't win. [14:08] Chad: I know, I know. So then what happened was we get out in the parking lot. It was hilarious. Marco looks at me, he's like, what the hell just happened? Get in the car. Don't talk. Just get in the car. Don't talk. And I get in the car, and I'm like, I don't know, but that was awesome. I almost just said that. [14:22] JD: In your next five minute. [14:23] Chad: I almost do that. Word down. [14:25] JD: Your next five meetings. You showed up with a bag with a salt shaker and a Pepsi. [14:28] Chad: I went home. My wife's elementary school teacher. I put it on index cards with a Sharpie, and we started playing it with clients, and clients loved it. Index cards with Sharpie. And then we eventually grew and matured and we hired a Millennial. At least it wasn't laminated. [14:41] Speaker D: I guess, you know, when we knew it was awesome? I'm not kidding. We were. This is down in. In Wichita. [14:46] Chad: We. [14:47] Speaker D: We played it, and there was a doctor in the room, and he looked at me, he goes, you guys just taught me more in five minutes than my advisor taught me in five years. Went over my shoulder and took a picture of it. I remember thinking, I think, yeah, we [15:00] Chad: tried to get it trademarked and color coded and all this stuff. [15:04] JD: Think about that for a second. It's all common knowledge to us because we do it every day. [15:10] Chad: Yeah. [15:10] JD: And we understand all the relationships. But if you're talking to somebody who doesn't really get it, even you, if. If they don't get half of it or something, and you're just throwing out those names verbally trying to explain what they are, that's a lot to take in. So to put it in visual props. [15:26] Chad: And it's designed for two things. It's designed to differentiate our FAs, and it's designed as one of our core values is we're educators. I want to educate the buying public on how to purchase our products because they're complex because of everything you just said. And if we can teach you how to buy both business model and understand who the players are, then you. Obviously, it's very powerful. Yep. You empower them. And then if anybody else, like Ross was saying yesterday, wants to come in and talk about fees, funds, and fiduciary. Whoopi, do we play cards? And we do that too. And it's different our guys, because this is the first appointment. It's also the second appointment. It's through the whole sales process. The cards are to be on the table because the. [16:09] JD: What's also neat about that is sales can be tough. It can be A lot of fun, too. But to have something that you can anchor yourself to is probably really calming and empowering for a lot of your guys. Right? [16:21] Chad: I like that. [16:21] JD: Mark, it's your cue to ask him, what do you say? Let's play a game. Or what are we seeing? [16:28] Chad: Play a game. Doing little war games. Play the game. So try to talk. [16:39] JD: Try to queue you up for your freaking jokes. That was from yesterday. [16:42] Justin: That was from a different episode yesterday. [16:44] Chad: My. [16:45] JD: My cue is, what's the minimum at this table? [16:47] Chad: Like 25. Oh, you want to play a game? Yes. What is that? 25? 35. [16:54] Speaker D: 40 bucks. [16:56] JD: That's all he has left. [16:57] Justin: 6. [16:58] JD: Crushed it last night. [17:00] Chad: I left $18 in chips on my tip for the cleaning lady today because that's all I left with. It was all blue ones. I'm like, I don't want them. Give them to the cleaning lady. [17:08] JD: All right, show us. [17:09] Chad: So this was the version of what we did in the middle of the Kansas that is today. And so we. We named it the Retirement Plan Game. [17:17] JD: Very creative. [17:17] Chad: Yeah, really creative. And so we throw that up toward the top and then we talk about you. You're ABC Co. You're the company that has the money. You're the plan sponsor. Also creative name, ABC Company. [17:29] JD: Right? [17:30] Chad: There's your. [17:31] Speaker D: Please do. [17:32] Chad: There's your $5 million bucket. That is a benefit to your people. Right. And this is something that's important to you. Retention and all these things, right? They say, yes, that is important. I said, cool, thanks for supporting our industry. You advisor you. He just said it to drink. Did you put that down there so you can accidentally kick it over? So now that you've got this benefit, you get a couple things in return for that. One of them is risk. Yeah, you pick up a little bit of risk with it as a business owner. Right? [18:02] JD: Scary red color. [18:04] Chad: Scary red color. Blue in the game is good. Red just means be alert. And there's all kinds of risks. But the three ones we talk about are the DOL likes to come in and make sure your processes are prudent. Right. So make sure that you're buttoned up. There's risk to that in case you do it wrong. There's litigation risk in the market that our FAs play in. It's really not a big. It's not that it's not a thing, and it's not that it's not scary. I think 5 million dollar plans don't have enough money to attract the ERISA turn. I think a lot of people sell this on fear and I don't like it, so we just call it out. But it is what it is. And then, as you guys know, more than better than us, qualification risk, all the things that you're not doing right can land you in trouble and potentially have to go through voluntary. That's legit, right? That's legit. The other type of thing that you inherit is the liability that comes with this because you're responsible for making decisions on other people's money. So there's the big F word, right? You all know I'm a fan of the F word. I think we talked about that earlier. This is just the fiduciary, right? And fiduciary is. It's a big deal, right? You're in charge of other people's money. Their money has to be invested in something. So you've got to be able to show that you're prudent on your investment selection, monitoring and all that stuff. And then here's the thing that everybody in our industry likes to talk about. Feast, feast, feast, Feast, feast, Feast, feast. Because they're important. They are. So we play the game. You're blue in the middle and there's your stuff. [19:24] Speaker D: Good for you. [19:25] JD: You're surrounded. [19:26] Chad: You're surrounded with cool opportunities. These are opportunities. Red creates opportunity for you. [19:30] Justin: You're so positive. [19:31] JD: Yes, [19:33] Chad: games are fun. Red is opportunities. So then when we talk about this, everybody gets this, right? It's pretty simple. Now we talk about there's four people with their fingers in the pot that are taking money off of your people's plan. There's four components you have to have. One is somebody to hold the money. Pepsi, right? [19:50] Speaker D: It's the custodian. [19:51] Chad: And that's just the person that's protecting it from creditors, right? It's the bank, if you will. And there's a fee for that, right? There is a fee for custody. It might not be a bunch compared to some of the other fees, but it's a fee. [20:04] JD: I think in the small market, that's one that a lot of plan sponsors don't understand. [20:09] Justin: They don't have a. [20:10] JD: Because it's married in with. [20:12] Chad: Nobody talks about that word. [20:13] Speaker D: We just always say, who do you send your check to? [20:15] Chad: Who do you send your check to? Yeah. And then there's what you guys do, which is a huge value and we need you because somebody has to do the compliance work, filing, getting the 5500 prepped, any kind of loans, the plan design, consulting, adding Roth Auto, this running. If somebody wants to change their match, you Guys kind of have the system for plan design and administration. And you have to charge a. Because you guys are a for profit company. Yeah. So we color coded those black primarily because those typically aren't where the fees [20:49] Speaker D: are won and lost. [20:50] Chad: Right. Where the fees are won and lost. And everybody in this room knows this is between the record keeper, which is the website, and the keeper of the records. It's the participant interface where the, the money comes to life. And the mutual fund companies, they're both green because this is where the money is. And everybody talks about juice and hidden fees, 12B, all these weird things. It's because the mutual fund companies want one thing. They want their investment management into the system. They want distribution. Who holds distribution? Record keepers that have millions of people on there. If millions of people get access to my product, guess what? I'm cutting deals with you. So mutual funds and record keepers are basically. [21:33] JD: Mutual funds and record keepers cut deals with each other. [21:35] Chad: Sure, absolutely. It's a pay to play game. What? I'll let you know my platform. How much are you going to pay me? Right. Even Fidelity just did it with Vanguard. Yeah, you can put Vanguard on here. I'm charging 5 dips extra though. At least they're telling you about it, you know. So when we're teaching the buyer that, okay, here's all the risk that you've got, here's the four components that cost money, what will happen is they'll start playing the game and be like, okay, wait a minute, I'm with John Hancock and I'm using pdc. What does that look like? Well, that probably means you're like this and then you're over here. Okay, if somebody says, I'm with Transamerica and I don't know what a TPA is, Right. Well then that means you're probably here. You're bundled, unbundled, Right. So they'll start playing with it and then we haven't even talked about the advisor community yet. Right. So, damn it, [22:26] Speaker D: you're rolling. [22:29] JD: You're doing a great job. [22:30] Chad: Yeah. So what we teach people is if you're looking for a pure system, it's really hard to find. But the only way we know how to find it is don't allow the mutual fund companies to talk to the record keeper, period. I want to know how much it costs for you to run my plan, provide a website hold, hold my money in a trust and take care of my compliance on the admin. It's like I just want a pure model. [22:54] JD: It's like when you used to run proposals. And you'd say, the record keeper. I want all. [22:59] Justin: I want all the assets to go into one Vanguard fund. [23:02] Chad: So when we. [23:03] Justin: That's what I would do. [23:05] Chad: We said, everything's going to a vanguard S&P 500. [23:09] JD: Then tell me your fee. [23:10] Chad: And then. Then the wholesalers will call and be like, well, hey, wait a minute. What about our stable value? Shut up. [23:14] JD: They'll play other games. [23:16] Chad: I'll talk to you about that later. I want your fee. Right? So you take the mutual funds off the table, and now what do you do? So here's what we try to teach people is advisors are luxury. We're not. [23:30] Justin: What have we got after this? Shot glass. [23:33] Speaker D: But whatever [23:38] Chad: the enjoyment part of fun, so we just say, hey, listen, you don't need to. You don't need us. Right? We're a luxury and we cost money. Right. But if you don't want to do this or take the time to do it right, then you need to outsource it. And we just talk about the business model. How do you buy an advisor? [23:57] JD: Son of a bitch. That's funny that you were really enjoying this. It's bold that I haven't said anything [24:07] Chad: yet, so I think you're going to need mine. [24:09] JD: It's bold that you treat the financial professional's role as like, you can take it or leave it. That's interesting. I've never heard of people go that way. Well, it's true. [24:18] Speaker D: It's a scary comment, right? [24:20] JD: Yeah, it's bold, right? [24:21] Chad: It's bold. [24:21] Speaker D: I mean, honestly, he's got all kinds of little bold things that he's kind of got me out of my shell. But to walk in and say, I'm not in need. You desire me. [24:29] JD: Yeah. [24:30] Speaker D: And that's a. [24:31] JD: By the way, I tell these guys all the time, and the audience should learn from this. I like bold. I. And to sell against yourself to me, if I'm a consumer, I'm attracted to that. It's much different than the next. [24:43] Speaker D: Well, it's also true. [24:45] JD: Yeah, no, it's got. [24:46] Chad: It's got to be true. [24:47] Speaker D: It's not. [24:48] Chad: It's not a trick. It's legit. I don't care. But we're here to educate them, Right? So then when you get into the model of who you want to help, we make a blanket statement that all people are good. All people are good. This has nothing to do with people. It's just about business models. Find the right business model that you're attracted to and then go interview two or three of those people and find the right person that you think is going to connect with you in the right model and you'll be fine. So we teach them about the business models. An old school model that isn't really relevant. I say it isn't relevant. But it's an older school model as the registered representative and it's green and it's only green because of the way they're compensated. If a registered representative is compensated from the system. Right, the green system, then the green business model from an advisor cannot come inside of the fire. Dang it. You want to help me here? [25:44] Speaker D: No, no. I'm going to let this roll downhill. [25:47] Chad: So green just can't come in the fire. They're talented people, they know what they're doing, but they can't come in fire because their compensation model, that's it. The polar opposite of that is the registered investment. A start to get a little buzz here. [26:02] Justin: I just got the inner fire. All the red cards. [26:06] Chad: All right, so then there's blue. And blue is good in this, in this game. And so it's just the polar opposite. They're not conflicted. They're specialists. They charge a fee that's very transparent. It's putting on your statement. And they're fiduciary. So blue, literally this, this is where they love to play. This is where they come alive, is inside the fire. Because we're protecting the fire and we're running rough shot on the system. Because red, blue, yeah. When blue calls green, green answers a different way. Anybody that's green, when we call record keepers or we call mutual funds and you know that the blue is in the. On the phone, they talk to you different because they know that you. It's like Elliot Ness, you're untouchable, if you will. You're in charge. So there's two different components. And then we just ask. I always ask this question, if you know this now, what color of pen do you want your person to sign your contract with? Do you want it to be a blue pen or a green pen? Everybody says blue, right? And then we just educate them one more while you got to understand the dually registered. The dually registered, which is pretty prominent [27:09] Justin: in a small space. [27:09] Chad: Right. There's not a lot of just ria focused in that small. I'll call it 10, 20 million below. But. And this is fine too. So there's three different advisors to choose from. Most people say, I don't want that. What's the difference there? And we just tell them that, hey, the duly registered It's a fine business model. They're going to sign because you're going to tell them to sign with a blue pen. Okay, they will and they'll act that way. But now that they're in the house and you vetted them, you just never know what's really going on with that business model because they can sell green things to your people all day long, like annuities and commission stuff. [27:46] JD: Because you speak this. He goes talking about green things, the fire in the house. Yeah. All simple, really good. [27:52] Chad: So we just try to differentiate. And then at the end, we always laugh and they'll say, well, what model are you? And I'm saying, we're blue or I wouldn't have created this game this way. [28:03] Justin: So I feel like we should have a Pac man character on the blue card. And eat up. [28:07] Chad: This helps our FA differentiate themselves. They posture, they're instantly an expert. And this when we receive. So our process is to play cards. And then at the end of a first meeting, what we're really trying to accomplish is can we walk you through a fiduciary risk review? Right. Our version of what you're talking about, which is, give me your 408 and give me your. Your plan statement so I can see stuff. My favorite part about this is the fact that, you know, most meetings we sit in, a lot of people committees or whatever, eyes will get glossed over. I envision, you know, that committee doing exactly what we all did. We all sat forward like, hey, what's going on here? Completely. They'll start playing it and moving stuff around, taking their phones out. Can I take a picture of this? Can you leave the deck with me, please? Will you leave the deck? Yeah. Really? We've gotten to the point where we. We quit horror. We tried to protect this thing for so long, and now we've got probably 300 decks. We just had them out. Yeah. [29:01] JD: Probably can bring up good questions as well. What I like about it, though, is we. I always felt like when you go into a plan sponsor, you want to impress upon them that you're on their side. And the best way, I think, to be on their side is to teach them to consult the game. [29:15] Chad: That's it. [29:15] JD: You know, of all the players. And so you. You've brought them inside, you've popped open the hood, showed them the engine, how it works, and now they can make a decision with more confidence and more comfort. Because [29:29] Justin: I've said you as you finished, that said, the goal of that first meeting is to ask them and get the opportunity to do a review. We've told our guys for years, the goal of your first meeting is to build trust. That's truthfully what I believe. And this game and this education that you're providing is building trust. They're looking at you and going, I need that. You taught me more in five minutes than my FA did in five years. I need that. I need you on my team. And so even if you get the rfp, this is really. You've really done a good job by grabbing them in and just becoming an educator. [30:04] Chad: And if they get the review commitment, when they come back and deliver the. [30:08] JD: You know what our producer audio guy loves. [30:10] Justin: He is freaking out on that. [30:12] JD: It's the little ding ding. [30:13] Chad: JD was doing that yesterday. We're at a conference. Okay. [30:18] JD: It's time to go back into the sessions and Brandon's going back to pulling his hair out with his audio. [30:23] Chad: Like after that, after they give permission, they come back and deliver the review. It's just a fact. It's just. Here's your world, right? [30:30] Justin: Yeah. [30:30] Chad: The card game is back on the table because the review and the card game co. Mingle everything. [30:35] JD: Understand. [30:36] Chad: It is. Then they start really messing with the cards. Oh, wait a minute. We're looking at Fidelity Vanguard. The incumbent. This handcuff. So what is this model like? Put them all together. What is this model? Well, this one's unbundled only. So go like this. [30:48] JD: Sure. [30:50] Chad: How to buy, man. [30:50] Justin: That's great. Kudos. [30:52] Chad: Very cool. That was cool. [30:53] JD: Thanks for sharing that with us. I appreciate. That's really cool. I think it's valuable for our audience. We will. We'll put up all your contact. All that information will go up on the screen so people can get in touch with you. But is that what they do? Just reach out? Is there any special place? [31:08] Chad: There's an info@2west advisors.com that seems to get a lot of. [31:12] Justin: Son of a. JD baited that one really well. [31:15] Speaker D: You really did. You were really trying to throw some bone there. [31:17] Chad: I just wanted to infoestadvisors.com or you can just Google son of a. Business. Give me the whole damn thing. Or you can just go to two WestAdvisors. [31:27] JD: I want you to know that I love advisors, guys. It's all good. Thank you for being on the show, you guys. Oh, yeah. We are the retireholics. And I don't know if you know this, but we have a tagline too. We are changing the retirement plan industry. One beer sometimes some cob syrup at a time. One beer at a time. [31:51] Speaker D: That's awesome. [31:51] Chad: Thank you.