Unbundled Services & Fee Strategy with Kim Trathen

[0:22] JD: Here we come. Starting another one of these. We get the funniest looks from every industry. Pete. Hey, hey. We're the retireholics. People say we're drunk all the time, but we're too busy drinking to give a what they say. Welcome to another episode of Retire Holics, everyone. I know, I know, I know. It's been three long weeks. Those gosh darn months that do that to you. I apologize on their behalf, but don't you fret, my cute little 401k yieldings. Yearlings. What is that, like a baby. Baby deer or something? [1:09] Speaker B: 4K. [1:10] JD: Yearlings. Horse. We're back. Gildings and king of verbosity. That's a word. It's got to be the king of verbosity. Silent J. Do I drink for the J? I'll drink twice. A guy that does no. A guy that does very creepy things with spreadsheets. Nerdy Chad and the man. The man with skin so soft to the touch that he can only wear a soft cotton robe. The R to the O to the B to the E. Everybody's favorite retireholic robe guy. All right, Justin, let's get right into it, shall we? It's episode number who the cares [2:03] Speaker B: start caring about that. [2:05] JD: And who is our lucky guest? [2:09] Justin: Still, she is a mom of three. Joining us from Ada? [2:13] Kim Trathen: Michigan. [2:14] Justin: She's a marketing genius who had the wherewithal to leave the nine to five that me, Chad and Mark are still as slave to build out her own company. She takes a very unique approach to mentoring her clients and even takes notes from rap legends like Mr. Ludacris himself to fine tune her process to coaching. Ladies and gentlemen, business mentor extraordinary fractional Chief marketing officer, Kim Trapping. [2:37] JD: Yay. [2:40] Chad: Yeah, that picture is special. [2:43] JD: Little Kim, little Kim, little Kim into his house. [2:52] Chad: Kim, had you, had you had a. [2:54] Justin: Oh, you thought that was a lie. [2:57] Kim Trathen: Had I what? [2:58] Chad: Had a singular cocktail at that point. [3:01] Kim Trathen: No, no more than singing. This was post concert. So we had already gone all the way through the concert, then very foggy cab ride to the restaurant where we had dinner reservations. And this was about an hour after getting to the restaurant. So there had been. We lost count of the cocktails at that point. [3:23] Chad: Well, well done. You made it there. And you got a picture of a life tent. [3:27] Kim Trathen: Sure did. [3:28] JD: Wow. Ludicrous. Let's. Let's get right to it, shall we? Headlines, Brandon, headlines. And this one comes to us from our good friend friends at the national association of Plan Advisors. Hyphen, blah, blah, blah, dot blah, blah, blah. Titled I Internal Revenue Service check Swing Internal Revenue Service letter allows more employee choice with 401k contributions and other benefits. I don't know if you guys are able to read this one, but I'll give you a quick summary from my take as I read about every fifth sentence. You know, sometimes when you're a big company and you want to do something that's not really in line with the published regulations, but you think it seems okay and good, you can kind of write the Internal Revenue Service like a letter saying, hey, we want to do this thing and here's how we're mapping it out and can we get your your approval on this? And this one is centered around a topic that I think we've kind of scratched the surface before. This letter was centered around going to an employee and saying, hey, we as a company are going to chuck up $5,000 or whatever it is, you know this amount $10,000. How would you like to divvy that up? Would you like to take 4000 and put it towards your 401k matching contribution and then take the other six and put it towards health and dental or whatever. My question for you all is this concept of actually putting it in the participants hands is the question, you know, like letting them choose where to allocate their dollars. I got to imagine, Chad, that you think this would be a very bright future to do something like this. [5:37] Chad: There's part of me that does. When I first read it, I immediately responded like, this is great. We don't necessarily know where they should be spending next dollar toward their future. Maybe they know better than it being just the 401k plan. And the deeper I got and the more I thought I put into it, I went, they have no fucking clue. They don't. And I'm not saying that the 401k is the right place. I'm saying that allowing them to choose may not be the right direction. And I think some guardrails need to be put up. I think choice is positive, but I think choice could create some paralysis and [6:13] Justin: participants make poor decisions. [6:15] Chad: Now if you give them three options and all three options are good options and so be it. [6:19] JD: I'm Justin, you're a smart guy. If. Let's pretend I'm your employer and you're my employee. Shall we? If I was to say to you, and it was some equivalent to what you already get and overall benefits, and I say no, here's the dollar amount, that's assuming it was fair and, and good, would you prefer the choice or would you like me and my human resources team to figure out where your dollars go. [6:46] Justin: Oh, dude, I'm so conflicted on that because I'm thinking about it from stages of my working career. Like in my early 20s, I didn't know about what to do with that stuff. If I had that option, I probably would have screwed up big time. Obviously, yeah, being in this industry or being in this industry is super helpful. Plus with, you know, with age comes somewhat wisdom. You kind of learn. Okay, I know what to do here. But the vast majority of people I [7:09] JD: think don't know would struggle with the concept. Kim, I'm sure you've received a paycheck from someone else other than yourself before. I mean, would you have liked the control over your, your money, your accounts to divvy it up versus being told what to do? [7:23] Kim Trathen: I was a big question asker, so I would have been asking all the questions. I was given the choice to try to figure out what the best, best investment would have been. But I worked, I think about a lot of my friends who literally know nothing about retirement plans and they used to come to me with their questions and I'm thinking they, they would rather have somebody make the decision for them. I know that, but I was the question seeker so I would have figured it out and I would have enjoyed having my own choice. [7:54] JD: Chad, I don't know if this article goes into it, but where my brain starts to go to is like, okay, it would be great to like give people choice and, or maybe the more realistic way this looks is that it's a consultant with the employer deciding where to spread these things out. But how does this deal with like ac, I'll drink with testing on employer contributions and stuff. Like it's going to get really dicey if you're only going to give 5,000 to this person in the, in the 401k, but then because you're giving 5,000 the other person in the, you know, health benefits program. [8:35] Chad: The way I read it JD is that it's, it's almost filtering out from the top down that the money that 5k in your example is going to count towards plan testing. Now it doesn't necessarily have to hit the 401k plan, but that is an employer contribution that's counting towards plan testing. If they choose to silo it out to their health savings account or one of their other options like reimbursement for student loans, then it still is hitting the 401k testing category. So I don't think it creates any [9:06] Justin: implications or negative Impacts there. [9:08] Chad: I think it's a participant decision. Almost like we've been given the right now with participants to choose to make the employer contribution. Roth. Right. It's still going to hit the retirement account, but they get a choice of how they want to represent it in their own account. [9:21] Justin: In this case, they're just getting a [9:24] Chad: few other options of where they want that money allocated. [9:27] Justin: Well, I think Tony hit the nail on the head right there. You see that? Oh, yeah, you're gonna talk about it. [9:32] JD: Yeah. Tony Davis kind of backs you up, Chad, where he was also saying one thing he's learned over the years is like, more choice isn't necessarily good. And I think most of us would agree with him on that. But with that said, I know there's a lot of people that are really passionate about, from a consulting perspective about where the employer's dollars go and if you could customize more for participants. And so I'm stating the obvious. This obviously is not my idea. It's been discussed if a consultant could work with a client to actually say, hey, let's look at the demographics of your employees or, excuse me, let's look at each employee individually and let's allocate to them appropriately based on their situation. Could be a nice future. [10:12] Chad: But it's not the. Let me get, let me make sure I'm understanding correctly what I read. It's not the employer making the decision [10:17] Justin: as to where the dollars go. [10:19] Chad: Not in this particular making the decision as to what options the employee has, [10:23] Justin: but the employ e is choosing if [10:26] Chad: I want my money in the 401k [10:28] JD: in this particular case. But I was saying a possible reality for us in the future is put that control with the employer. You know, to say, hey, I'm going to. [10:37] Chad: That's a nightmare waiting to happen. [10:39] Justin: That's liability an employer doesn't want. That's a great point. [10:43] JD: Well, that's a good point. That's a good point. But customize customized approaches. Seems to be a lot of people are talking about that that is the future. [10:50] Chad: So just think of the short, you know, 15 plus years that, that I've been doing this. It was about getting people to save. Then it was about getting people to save the right amount. Then it was about getting people to invest correctly based upon their age tolerance. And now we're coming up on this phase of, well, maybe what we're giving them is not going to the right place based upon where they're at in their working career or their life. I think that is a phenomenal step [11:17] Justin: forward for us as an industry to [11:19] Chad: say, if the employer is sectioning money out for health benefits, for payroll, for long term care, for all the different costs and different benefits we offer, if we can then add a few other things in there that an employee can segregate money out of what the employer is going to give them and have it be more beneficial to their individual lives versus just hitting the 401k. That, to me, is positive. [11:41] JD: Yeah. [11:42] Justin: Now let's see where it goes from there. [11:43] JD: But I don't think our producers riding the mics, so I want to check your own fat thumb, you motherfucker. [11:52] Speaker B: So I was going to say sometimes it happens where when the show starts, YouTube will just pop on and the music will start playing from something else. So you should go check that. Yeah. Also. Yeah. Comment down on the fat thumbs. [12:05] Justin: Okay. [12:06] Speaker B: They're called sausage fingers, buddy. All right. [12:10] JD: Much better. Well, I don't know if. If participants will need to educate themselves too. It won't be hard for them to educate themselves in the future because they will have things like TikTok. And I have been on TikTok. I see a lot of golf videos. I'm very into small black Labradors on TikTok. It's a big thing of mine. And once in a while I get a little financial services dealio and. And I've been seeing empowers. Tick tock. I fed one to Brandon. He's going to put it up there. Then I just want to have a little combo about how empower is doing with their Tick Tock account. Brandon. Oh, sorry, man. Sorry. Personal foul. [12:59] Chad: Roughing the co worker. [13:01] JD: This is not some mosh pit. [13:02] Chad: This is a professional place of business. Let's keep it professional. [13:09] JD: We can help you make the right [13:10] Chad: call for what's next. [13:17] JD: I'm watching you. Dare I start as the pessimist? I'll just go straight to rogue guy. We haven't heard a lot from him. Is your cringe level at three or ten? [13:31] Speaker B: Oh, God. I. I don't know what to say right now. This is. [13:37] Justin: This is a trust tree mark, dude. [13:39] Chad: So. [13:40] JD: So. [13:41] Speaker B: So it's one of those things where I don't understand. It's probably a better question for Cam, like, the whole idea here around some of these things because I think that a lot of things have to be intentional where I think to myself, did someone sit down and say, let's make this super corny? Right? Like, let's make this look like it came out, you know, 12 years ago. And like, we don't know what we're doing or whatever and it's going to give this cool, like weird vibe. But honestly I don't think that that's the case. I think this is them taking a stab at it. And I'll just say that I don't. I don't think that's. I don't think they did it. I'm not going to say anything. [14:23] JD: Kim, Kim, you spend a fair amount of time thinking about these things. Your. Your Instagram is popping off. I've seen it. [14:31] Kim Trathen: Sorry, but you have to drink every time you say Luda. [14:40] JD: We can add rules. How do you feel about large corporations and specifically financial institutions trying to jump on the social media train and. Or what you just saw? Like any of your thoughts were. [14:52] Justin: Feel free. [14:54] Kim Trathen: So one thing I thought was interesting is that video that you just played has over 72, 000 plays on it on Tik Tok and it has 5300 people have liked that video. [15:10] JD: Not sure if that's a good thing. [15:12] Kim Trathen: I found it. [15:13] Speaker B: Wait, hold on. [15:13] JD: How many. Kim, I think you want less people to see that, not more people to see it. [15:18] Speaker B: But how many employees does Empower have? [15:21] Kim Trathen: Oh, good question. [15:23] JD: More than that. [15:24] Kim Trathen: Employees are that engaged? Do you think they're that engaged that they would like. [15:28] JD: I think, I think an email. I think an email blast went out and they had to. It wasn't an option. [15:33] Kim Trathen: Their bonuses depended on it. Maybe their bonuses depend. I looked at their LinkedIn after you sent that because I was really curious to see what their LinkedIn presence looked like compared to their Tik Tok presence. Their LinkedIn is not looking good. I mean, tell us how you really feel, Kim. Sorry, Empower. If anybody on here. God, should I have asked if anybody works for Empower that. No, we don't care right now. [15:57] JD: Trust me, Kim, Kim, honesty is what we're all about. I guarantee you we will get an email within the next four days about. I guarantee you, but go on and don't hold up. [16:09] Kim Trathen: Frame it. Forward it to me and I'll frame it in my office. LinkedIn posts have like 16 likes on them, so. And they're the rest of their tick tock isn't popping off. My guess is they put paid advertising behind this. It's the only way it got that many eyeballs on it because it's not super funny, it's not super catchy, it's not using in any trending audios and their other videos have like 500 to a thousand plays. This one has over 72,000. So I'm pretty sure they put paid dollars behind it. I think it is smart though. However, I'm not a fan of this video, but I think it smart for large corporations to be leveraging the different types of social media because you get in front of a different demographic, you get in front of a little bit younger demographic, you can start getting these like financial thoughts, advice tactics, even just the language that financial companies use, you can start getting that in front of younger people sooner. [17:06] JD: I just feel like every time I see, and I really do mean like every time I see a large corporation in financial services try to get into this, I just see their blueprint all over it. Like they're, they're all drink, their DNA is all over it. It's, it's awkward. Even if they're trying to jump on a trend or something, it lacks authenticity. And when I say authenticity I mean like I'm learning even as an old 53 year old that the best on social media from what I see, tick tock especially is this kind of really organic, kind of confident, no holds barred kind of, whether it's humor or whatever, it's, it's just, it's not easy to do. Like it takes some talent and I think a lot of these companies lack that talent and they're trying to clone and copy other things that they've seen. And every time I see and I'm just like wa, wa. Which then I think they would do [18:04] Kim Trathen: better if they had some key employees that are truly have an aptitude for that. Like we've seen the UPS drivers go viral on TikTok. [18:13] JD: Other industries have pulled it off. [18:15] Kim Trathen: Yes, yes. But it's their employees that are really pulling it off. It's not so much like the branded, it's not the branded videos that we see taking off. It's those specific employees that have gone in and created these large followings videoing like lip sync the problem. Right. [18:36] JD: I'll let, I'll let nerdy Chad come in here. I'll tell you where the problem is. Chad. They, their compliance offices. [18:43] Kim Trathen: I was gonna say don't say compliance. [18:45] JD: No, but it, but it is. And it's not. And it's not like it's not like what you think. They're so stuck on what an image or a brand should look like. So it's not so much compliance of like don't say the wrong things. It's like they have this corporate idea of like that they're this, you know, traditional well to do financial service company and so they're afraid to Cross lines for fear of blowback or what have you. And that limits their creativity. And so all they can do is kind of conservatively copy some things. And I thought. I had a question for Chad, but what does Chad know about social media? [19:23] Speaker B: Nothing. [19:23] Chad: But that is exactly what I was going to say is that when you look at that video, you can't just feel like compliance created it, because I do. I look at that and I'm like, nobody with a creative bone in their body decided this is what we're going to try to put out on our social presence. It was somebody that is as nerdy as me that said, this is going to be great. [19:43] JD: Let's do this. [19:43] Chad: Let's try to make it look like an old ESPN commercial. [19:46] JD: Tom, on your way to work, can you pick up a referee shirt at Dick's Sporting Goods? Phenomenal. What the fuck? Okay, let's. Yeah, let's try another. Here's another feel good one. Please tell me I've got this somewhere here. Yes, this is from planadvisor.com 401k millionaires hit record. So apparently we now have more 401k millionaires than ever before. We're approaching just under 500,000 401k millionaires. [20:22] Speaker B: Good thing. [20:23] JD: That's great that we're hitting new records. Rogue guy, what do you think about 500,000 of 330 million people? That's not fair because I guess we've got kids and stuff in there, but I don't know how many adults are of the 300. And how many people do we have in The United States? 350 million? 340 million? I have no idea. Someone tell me. [20:44] Speaker B: Well, well, guys, I don't. I don't want to brag or anything, but if I continue to save at the current rate that I'm saving at. [20:59] JD: Dang it. [20:59] Speaker B: I will be a part of that metric and give or take 37 and a half years. So I'm already putting myself into that bucket. I am a millionaire. [21:13] JD: I had your punchline for you. I thought you were going there. I needed. Just didn't ex. [21:18] Speaker B: I missed. [21:18] Justin: I missed one. [21:19] Speaker B: All right, look at the quote or [21:21] Justin: look at the chat. [21:23] JD: I thought you were setting us up for, like, I'm gonna get there by, you know, age 145. [21:28] Speaker B: I was trying to be realistic because at some point I'll be like, maybe I'll put a little more. [21:33] Chad: I'll up my. [21:34] Speaker B: My percentage. [21:35] JD: But. [21:36] Speaker B: Sorry, J.D. i forgot your question. What'd you say? [21:40] JD: I was just saying that whether you Thought that was impressive that there was 500,000 people with a million. Or is that disheartening? [21:47] Speaker B: No, I'll say this like, I don't care. That's good for them. You know, it reminds me of those stupid commercials with Voya where they're carrying around, like, $9 billion. [21:59] JD: Yeah, I like those. [22:02] Justin: It's like, I'm assuming they're trying to celebrate this. And I think it's just simple math. You're gonna get. You're gonna naturally get more and more the longer 401ks are in place. [22:11] JD: Fair enough. [22:13] Chad: A millionaire MEANT Something different 20 years ago than it does. [22:16] Justin: That's a great point, too. Yeah. [22:18] Chad: With inflation and the way things have changed, like, it's still. It's still a massive achievement, but let's not downplay that. What that article leads into that a lot of these millionaires don't feel like. Yeah. [22:31] Speaker B: You know. You know, who says things like that? Like what Chad just said, Somebody who's got a million dollars in their 4K account. [22:38] JD: We're always very sensitive to the people that don't feel that way. But it's true. And even the article does mention it says one third of American millionaires consider themselves wealthy, so two thirds of them don't. And I know that's very geographic driven as well. [22:55] Justin: You know, what's it feel like, J.D. [22:58] JD: you know what? To be totally honest, as I search for a joke in my head, let's just go with honesty. Having a lot of money feels damn good. Like, you sleep well at night, you know that? [23:12] Speaker B: You know why you sleep well? Because your mattress is good and your. Your cotton sheets are like a thousand thread count or whatever. [23:19] JD: You know what feels good is, like, people ask me how much something costs that I bought, and my honest answer to them is, I have no idea. Like, I just buy it. [23:29] Justin: Do you. [23:30] Speaker B: Do you know how I know you're an asshole? [23:32] Justin: Sorry, guys. [23:34] JD: You want to know why I truly am an asshole? Because that is actually a true statement, what I just said. I'm literally. I have no idea what it costs. I just gave him my card, whatever it is. [23:43] Speaker B: You know what? I still count up my Kohl's cash, and I think that I'm rich. [23:47] JD: Okay. [23:47] Speaker B: All right. [23:48] JD: Like, throw a little on top for yourself, buddy. Just give me. Just give me the Lambo. I want the Lambo in that bright green just came out. Just throw a little on top for yourself. All right, let's. Let's do one more. The American Retirement Association. This is big news for our industry. Has Unveiled a new website. And when I say new website, I mean, that's the national association of Plan Advisors, that's the American Society of Pension and. [24:21] Chad: Yeah, [24:25] JD: that's the American Retirement association and all those other entities they claim to run, which I think is a farce. But they all have new websites. It's there, it's new, it works. Looks fine. Not much to report on that. Let's. Let's move on. [24:44] Justin: Not much to report on it, but [24:46] JD: it's a headline public service announcement. Don't be shocked when you go there and it looks different. That's what happens to boomers. You know, boomers show up and they're like, hey, this looks different. I don't understand. Where do I toggle? Where do I go? Where's the menu bar? Somebody help me. [25:02] Justin: Where. Where does boomer age start? [25:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll just say it's probably January. [25:06] Justin: I was wondering. [25:08] JD: For me, it started about six months ago. Yeah. At 52 and a half. I became a boomer. I. I cannot. When my phone rings and my iPad is open, all hell breaks loose for me. [25:24] Justin: Do you answer? You pull it off your hip to answer it, too, or. [25:26] JD: Justin, I don't know what to do. [25:28] Speaker B: I'm like, devices are iPad [25:34] JD: devices. Ring. Let's see. Let's play a quick game, and then we're going to jump into some serious business talk. Last show, you all had to suffer through a throwback version of the lamer game game segment. And although I did enjoy brushing your teeth in the shower, thought that was well thought out. But let's bring back the. The modern version of this game, the much better point zero version. The no for Dope game. The no for Dope. [26:04] Justin: Totally original. God, this. This intro, I'll give it to you, it gets me every time. I love that thing. [26:22] JD: I work hard on it. Okay, Kim, this how this works. I came up with this game a long time ago, and it's got some rules. I'm going to go to you first every time. I'm going to bring to you kind of a pop culture subject, and you're going to let us know if you think it's dope or you think it's. Nope. And then you're going to tell us why. Okay. A little bit of explanation. Okay. You know when you go to the grocery store and you got your cart and you're leaving the grocery store, you paid, you got everything in your cart, and you're heading towards your car and there's that little area on the ground. When you leave the bumps and the knobs are usually in yellow, and they're like little speed bumps for a shopping cart. And for me personally, you're going over and all your bottles of vodka are clinking and clanking together and. And it's very disruptive. What's. What's with this? Are you dope on these things? Are they safety protocol? You're. No. Why? [27:18] Kim Trathen: I know. I think they're a giant pain in the ass. I don't see anybody that's like, thank God those were there. That just saved me. [27:27] JD: Yeah. [27:27] Kim Trathen: I've never met anybody. [27:28] JD: What are they? What do they save you from? [27:30] Chad: Do they bring. [27:32] JD: What do they save me from? [27:33] Justin: That's what I need to know to make a decision. [27:35] Speaker B: You know that there's, like a purpose behind them, right? [27:37] JD: What is the purpose? Runaway carts. [27:41] Kim Trathen: How is there an actual runaway crowd? [27:45] Chad: Mark, I know where you're going now. [27:47] Speaker B: I feel terrible. [27:48] JD: What? Go. What? [27:50] Speaker B: Oh, I don't. [27:51] Justin: Oh, no. It's gonna be like handicap something. [27:53] Chad: It's gonna be for people who are visually impaired, isn't it? [27:56] Speaker B: Oh, no. [27:57] Justin: Oh, God, I'm so dope on those. [28:01] Speaker B: That would be the really intelligent Kim. [28:04] JD: You are such a. My God. [28:09] Kim Trathen: I. Oh, wait, wait. I brought my snake Brittany bit. [28:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [28:14] JD: I don't know if Brandon's got that. He may. We may. [28:16] Chad: Yeah. [28:16] JD: Okay. [28:17] Speaker B: I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut now because I thought they served a different purpose. I thought that those bumps when you went over. [28:23] Justin: Yeah. [28:23] Speaker B: Like, there was technology that registered your cart. So that way, like, when you got to a certain point, you couldn't go any further or something like. I. I don't know. [28:32] Chad: There you go. [28:33] JD: I'm gonna take it a step further. [28:34] Justin: Those blister like bumps, also known as truncated domes and detectable warning pavers, are part of tactile paving. It helps the visually impaired detect when they're about to be on the sidewalk run over by a car. [28:46] JD: Here's my controversial flow on that. Now that I've had time to think about that. [28:49] Chad: Just wants people to get run over. [28:51] JD: I think that's rude. I think that's rude to blind people. Because if I'm blind, figured out how to navigate my way around this planet. [29:02] Justin: What if you're a new blind person? [29:05] JD: Just last week, I feel like the [29:06] Kim Trathen: doors opening signal that you are heading out of the. [29:10] JD: Good point. [29:11] Justin: But you don't know, you know how deep. [29:13] Speaker B: You don't know that. You just [29:15] Kim Trathen: know they got in, they're getting back out. Now they know. [29:18] JD: I'm just saying. I got Mad respect for blind people that navigate around the the world. And I don't think they need those stupid little yellow knobs. I think that can do just fine without it. And I think every time they walk over that where every time they have their cart and their vodka bottles are clinking, they're saying to their blind selves, this goddamn thing. Why is it here? That's what I think, Kim. Next. Birds as pets. [29:50] Speaker B: And you said mine was bad. [29:53] JD: Got to put a dumb one in the middle of the good ones. [29:57] Kim Trathen: So I'm actually gonna go with dope on this only because I just recently heard a story about a bird. I think it was a cockatoo or a cockatiel that solved a murder mystery. [30:12] Chad: Okay. [30:13] Kim Trathen: Handed out that the own their owner was shot. So only because of that, I'm going with birds. [30:18] JD: I think that was a cartoon on Nickelodeon, but I don't know, maybe look it up. [30:23] Kim Trathen: It happened in Michigan. [30:25] JD: Chad, you like cocks? I mean cockatoos. [30:27] Justin: Whoa. [30:28] JD: Or birds like, hey, I'm in. [30:30] Chad: I see no negative to having a bird as a pet. Like, I prefer to snuggle my dogs, but I can't snuggle a bird. I don't know. Each their own. It's all right. [30:40] JD: Do you know who had a bird as a pet once? Obi Wan. I'll drink. Yeah. Justin, you like birds? [30:51] Justin: Not particularly. But it would be cool to have you train one that can just say all sorts of rude to people. [30:57] JD: Yeah. Like. Yeah. Can they all talk? All birds? No, just certain birds. [31:03] Speaker B: I don't know. [31:03] Justin: I don't know much about birds. [31:05] JD: Rope guy. I don't. I don't want to know how you feel about birds. Okay. Okay, go ahead. Everyone wants to know if you have [31:13] Speaker B: a bird as a pet. You birds are meant to fly. And you. Yeah, I saw Brandon put in the chat. I was going there already. [31:27] Chad: You're. [31:28] Speaker B: Are you serious? Like you. You're just gonna put a. An animal that could literally go from California to Idaho tomorrow if they wanted to, and you're gonna put them in a three foot box? [31:40] JD: Yeah. So true. [31:42] Justin: No. Do you feel the same? [31:43] JD: Oh, gosh. [31:45] Justin: What? Fish. Do you feel the same about pet fish? [31:49] Chad: Yeah. [31:49] Speaker B: You know what? Now I do. [31:51] JD: Yeah. Roby, I. I feel the same way about you working here at pdc. Okay, last one. I don't know if. Of course this happens on the female side of things. I don't. I don't go into female bathrooms. [32:10] Kim Trathen: Are you gonna ask me often? [32:12] JD: But you go into the bathroom and all the stalls are Open. But there's that big, beautiful handicap one at the end. It's got more space. It just feels like it's VIP to me. [32:27] Kim Trathen: least. [32:27] JD: Like, so. No for dope on using that. Like, that's not for you, is it? That's for. [32:32] Kim Trathen: Oh, man. It's not. But I do if there's not a line, like, if I'm the only one in there because girls are quick in the bathroom. We're not like boys. We're in and out like that. [32:48] JD: That is the word. You need to drink for that, by the way. That's. That's an acro sin right there. That's a. That is. What do they call it on the Internet? Misinformation. Chad, have you ever just said, I'm. I'm taking the big one? [33:05] Chad: Absolutely. And I'm. I don't feel good about it. I think Justin knows probably more than anybody how mad I get when people park in handicap spots when they're not supposed to. Oh, God, that's drives me fatty. But that one, I don't. I don't know. It doesn't bother me as much. So, yeah, I have. I'm guilty. [33:24] JD: And I just want to be clear. When I park the G wagon, the handicap. It's just because I want to run in to get my coffee from Starbucks. I'm going to be right back. It's not. It's not that big of a deal. [33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, Justin, you can walk over the bumps. [33:37] JD: Justin, I know you've done it. Have you ever been in there and then worried, what if someone comes in a wheelchair next and you're stuck in there and they're just kind of like, knock, knock. Hey, I. I can't get into these other stalls. Like, what are you doing? [33:53] Justin: Thank God that's never happened to me. I don't like to use those. Those ones. To be honest with you, the toilets are always too tall. My legs. You know, just. You guys never noticed that about handicap stalls? The toilets. The toilets are taller. [34:06] Speaker B: Have I ever. Legsies dangle. [34:10] Justin: Yeah, no, it's just not comfortable, man. It's gotta be low to the ground when you're doing your business. [34:16] JD: I need Will Smith to erase that from my memory, what you just said. I don't want to think about that anymore. Hey, J.D. [34:23] Chad: did you take your two drinks, by the way? [34:27] Justin: Speaking of drinks, has everyone taken theirs? [34:33] JD: You want to spin it? [34:35] Speaker B: What? [34:35] Justin: Oh, we can do that. But I thought Kim had said a acronym. [34:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [34:41] Justin: Oh, I took 10 minutes ago, maybe. [34:42] JD: Yeah. Okay. [34:43] Justin: I didn't want shirt. I Wasn't paying. Just making sure. This game here. Yeah. What is that? [34:49] Speaker B: What is that? [34:50] JD: Glass of wine. That's an odd. [34:52] Chad: Oh, my gosh. Nicely done. [34:55] Justin: Okay, gangster. [34:57] JD: Hey, Kim, sometimes taking your two favorite things and bringing them together isn't really the best idea. [35:03] Kim Trathen: Like, I'll let you know tomorrow how this sits. [35:06] JD: Yeah, let's. Yeah, it. Let's spin the Wheel of Ice, then we're going to talk about pricing and profitability. Oh, there's Jen on top of it for me. You don't run this show. [35:20] Chad: I agree with her. She's spot on. [35:23] Justin: Brandon runs Wheel of Ice. We know that now. [35:25] Kim Trathen: Oh, [35:29] JD: okay. Kim, you were about to drink Smirnoff Ice and you're going to kick this off for us. You had an Instagram post where you talked about ruffling some feathers, that you were going to possibly ruffle some feathers. And you were talking about pricing in the coaching industry. I realize, but let's apply that to financial advisors, record keepers, third party administrators as well, if we could. Any business. Everyone talks about price increases as a smart business. You were talking about lowering prices and I thought that was very interesting. So set the stage and then we've got some questions for you. [36:03] Speaker B: Thanks for waiting, Justin. [36:05] JD: Why would a business want to lower their prices? [36:10] Kim Trathen: All right, so let's talk about raising their prices. Raising prices. Are we raising drinks? Is that what's happening here? Raising prices, raising drinks? [36:19] JD: We're just becoming diabetics is what we're doing. [36:23] Kim Trathen: But I was talking about how sometimes the smarter. It's like, it's basically for the retirement plan industry, it's like bundling versus unbundling. Right. So in the coaching space, we can throw the whole kitchen sink in there and charge people exorbitant fees, or we can unbundle and have them paying for the things that they're actually going to need and use. So I don't know if that's going to ruffle some feathers here with bundling versus unbundling, but when we think about, right, if you were to double your fees and lose half your clients, your bottom line stays the same. Right. Also, if you were to lower fees and you have twice as many people come on that you can serve, you're still making the same and you're serving a different market then. So that's really what. Really what I was talking about with that. [37:07] Chad: It sounds like it's less about lowering and more about charging for the services you're actually rendering. You know, almost like a la carte pricing, which in the 401k space has gotten a lot of record keepers in trouble. Where one plan is sold one way, the advisor comes back and says let's put another plan there. That plan is sold without certain features and now they're looking for certain notice fulfillment, for example. And it's not on that proposal, it's not on that client and there's a hole in the model. And I, I think the hard part in our world is that retirement plans are still very much sold and not bought. And in, in that capacity, too many people don't sell what the client actually needs. They try to sell what will be bought. And so they're out there trying to drive the lowest price on a spreadsheet in front of someone instead of trying to bring some value or trying to find out what the client actually needs and stripping out the services they don't. I'll give you an example for us and the guys know this. We charge, I'll call it extra for cross tested profit sharing, for example. Well that's because a lot of clients don't need it, they don't use it. Why are we going to bake it into pricing for, for those that are never going to touch it and then average out for the ones that that do? [38:26] JD: Wouldn't be fair to the rest of the community. [38:28] Chad: It wouldn't be. [38:30] JD: Yeah, well, but so when I saw you say that, I didn't know where you were going to go with it, Kim. And I was pleasantly surprised in some of the ideas that you put forth in terms of you talked about like payment plans, which might not necessarily flow in our industry could if you kind of got creative about it and thought about it, I mean you definitely could charge clients monthly versus quarterly versus annually and see how that kind of plays out for their own business model. Just being more flexible was kind of an idea that you were bringing up. You talked about unbundling the signature offerings, which we're talking about here by the way. I don't know whether we did that successfully or not, to be honest with everyone listening in, but we did create something called Kickstart which was just that it was kind of a reduction in services and a, and a simplicity in terms of design and everything. And we try to offer it at a far lower rate than our normal kind of normal services. And I don't know, to be honest with you, whether that was a win or not a win. It creates relationships. It gets the guy's foots in the doors for foots in the doors for more advisors person jump right in. And so that Was cool. Sometimes I worried a bit about like Chad saying that clients and partners that we offered the lower price solution to somehow when they woke up six months later, felt like they deserved the same that our other clients got. You know, and it's really hard to then get on a call with a client and say, hey, you paid for the less version, which is why we treat you less well. [40:13] Chad: Let me, let me add to that what we learned in this, Kim, is that a lot of the clients that wanted the cheaper version actually ended up being far more difficult clients. They were seeking cost and they weren't communicative, they weren't helpful, weren't. They didn't make servicing them easy. In fact, they made it even more difficult. And I correlated that to the fact that these were people that were truly buying solely on cost. [40:40] JD: Let me set up Kim real quick and then I want to hear the guy's thoughts on this. Let's focus less on a third party administrator. And Kim, if you've got something here, great. If you don't, it's totally okay. But I'm pretty damn sure this works in other industries like this. There's got to be examples of where this works really well. And so maybe you can back that up. And then guys, maybe you can start thinking about what about financial advisors, like how might they use this type of approach? So Kim, this gotta work in the world we live in. [41:11] Kim Trathen: Yes, absolutely. So one thing about attracting a cheaper quality client, like that's kind of what happens when we feel like we've attracted the more difficult clients. I would just challenge you to think through what else was different in that conversation. Was there any part of you when you were selling it that thought it was going to be an easier sale and thought it might require less talking through less explanation? Because in my mind, if somebody's wanting more than it's like awesome. It's time for you to upgrade. Like you came in at this with us and now it's time to upgrade. [41:45] JD: By the way, that's a smart technique as well. Not. And not to do it in a sleazy way, but no, sell low and anticipate or look for upgrade possibilities. Like that's a strategy in itself. [42:00] Kim Trathen: Yeah, absolutely. I use it in my own business. I've been able, with the business coaching side of what I do, I have been able to keep it at a lower investment level for early stage entrepreneurs. And then they can buy upgrades with me. They can purchase additional additional service once they realize that's what they need. And then also so I would I would challenge you to think through was the conversation just as in depth so that they understood what they were getting. And I don't think we ever want to take on clients that are not going to be a good fit for our business. So even at that lower level, everybody all the time. Right. But like if you're only seeing them come into the cheaper one, it's like maybe there wasn't some pre qualification done. [42:43] JD: You see these guys sitting next to you and their internal Devon, you, they are hungry, going after scales, numbers. You think they walk in an environment and go, I don't think you're right for us. No, I don't. [43:01] Kim Trathen: Maybe they need a little more. [43:03] Justin: I've never done it. [43:05] Kim Trathen: Yeah. [43:06] Chad: Our world is a little different in that most of our clients are financial advisors and we're brought in to help them win their client. And so our larger relationship, sometimes we have to take on a, I'll say tough client to solidify the relationship, which ends up being our actual client, the advisor, because It'll be another 10 referrals after that. Now there is a balance to that. If we bring on a crappy one. Yeah. If we yes, that crappy one and we service it poorly, then that advisor is not going to bring us the next 10. [43:42] JD: We're blessed to have entrepreneur and Ubiquity founder Chad Parks in the chat bar and I'll kind of wrap this topic with like people like him, the business they build. You know, the answer here is, is finding the right balance. Like you need to find the right. And this doesn't have to be your whole business model. You can do exactly what Kim says. You can have offshoots, you know, kind of unbundled services. And I, I hear your point, Chad. Everyone heard of the problems that can occur there. But the key is can you create products or solutions that have the right kind of service and or overhead attached to them and then the right profitability and the right pricing and then kind of mix and match and try to find the right solutions. I will tell you, in Chad Park's business, which is becoming more and more different from ours or always has been, but they're doing individual retirement accounts or doing all different types of, of plans beyond just one. So clearly Ubiquiti is going to have different pricing models, different value adds, different service solutions. And so that's the only takeaway I want for people here is to realize like if you're running a business, and by the way, that means, I would say even the three of you are running a business, you're running your sales business for plan design consultants. And if you're a financial advisor out there, you're running a business. Hell, if you're a wholesaler or an internal wholesaler, you're running a business. And you need to think about how you go about that approach. That was actually stupid. [45:15] Chad: Jd, before you transition, you asked the question of us about financial advisors. [45:20] Justin: Yes. [45:20] Chad: And I'll, I'll make a comment and give a shout out to one who Mark works with. Now, the only advisor in my career that in a, after a point of sale, but in a point of sale, essentially said, hey, my fee is X because you have four locations and I'm doing a quarterly enrollment meeting at each location, which requires this much time and effort. I'm doing quarterly fiduciary review meetings. I'm doing an annual plan review meeting. And he laid out time spent. This is what it's going to require. And here are my costs. Only one person has ever done that in my career, and that's John Lococo. Nobody else has. Every advisor will come in and say 50 basis points. Or some will even get creative and say, I'm, you know, 5 grand and 25 basis points. So they'll have thought as to why they're charging what they're charging. But very few of them, to Kib's point, ever lay out the services they're planning to render. And if one client doesn't want quarterly reviews, or one client has one location and not four, or one client wants all online and nothing in person, there's no change in their cost structure ever. So why couldn't you go into a $3 million plan that doesn't want in person meetings and go at 15 basis points even though your normal is 25, and sell it that way because you know your workload is less. [46:42] JD: Why couldn't you just want to do it? Because you want to make a G today, but you make it in a sleazy way. Like, why don't you go in just because that looks salesy good, your competitors aren't doing it. You walk in after your competitor and you say, hey, did the, did the guy before me or the woman before you ask you how many meetings you wanted every year or how many meetings you want for employees or whether you wanted this or you wanted that? I'm about to ask you because guess what? I'm a lower my price based on what I have to offer you. I think there's a lot of consumers. I'd be like, oh shit, that makes sense. Like, I don't know why the last guy didn't ask me that, you know, so that's cool. [47:20] Chad: Let's see what happens when they go ask the last guy or gal that question. They will have no rebuttal. [47:26] JD: Yeah. Oh, we charge, we charge 40 basis points. That's what we charge. [47:30] Chad: We have a 50 basis point minimum. [47:33] JD: Well, when your assets, when your assets reach 10 million, we'll reduce that. Yeah, but that's got nothing to do with what I want from you in terms of my services. So I think Kim's concepts that come from outside of our industry are very applicable in our industry. And I would just hope that this would motivate people to spend some creative time when thinking about how they might price their solutions and their product, because there are some answers there. And those answers could move the needle in terms of growth and sales and those types of things. And we'll come back to growth and sales and, and how to go about that with some innovative strategies. Unless there's something that Jen wants us to do next. Is Jen still here? Jen, it's your show. What, what, what do you think we need to do next? And Jen, I want to give you a little disclaimer. If I ever advertise a show online about what we're going to talk about. The beauty of this show is we get drunk, we just talk about whatever. So it's just really a. It's just a fishing lure and you're a fish in the water and you see it and you're like, oh, they're going to talk about this. [48:42] Speaker B: Boom. [48:43] JD: You grab it and then I reel you in. I'm like, no, we're not talking about that. We're talking about this. Bam. Deal with it. Retire holics. Okay? Let's, let's do what everyone wants to do. Make money. And Kim, you know how you make money? You gotta. I get, I get so excited when [49:04] Speaker B: you go on those little, those little rants. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. [49:08] JD: You gotta find a guru, you gotta find a leader, you gotta find a mystic. [49:14] Speaker B: This was someone wasn't on the agenda [49:17] JD: who can read the star. [49:18] Justin: That was. [49:20] JD: And here on Retire Hollis. [49:21] Speaker B: Look at it. [49:22] JD: We call that drunk stock tips drum. [49:25] Justin: Even if it wasn't who gives a We do what we want. [49:30] JD: Apparently so. I don't know what, what's dedico means? [49:39] Justin: She really? [49:40] JD: Yes. Well, we happen to have in our, in our presence here now that very such guru rogue guy just has a knack for these kind of things. The only stock that I'm hoping he gets right these days is good old Cheesecake Factory. [49:57] Speaker B: That's not. It's not looking good. JD. 38 right now. [50:04] JD: Yeah. Jumped back up. Jump back up. It's all part of the game. It's all part of the game. I'm not going to go into your history right now. I. Let's see if. If everyone's interested. [50:15] Speaker B: We'll. [50:16] JD: We'll set that up for our next show. And we've got a big guest coming, by the way. [50:21] Speaker B: On. [50:21] JD: On our. [50:22] Speaker B: We have a big guest right now. That's what I'm. [50:24] JD: Yeah. Sorry, that was kind of rude. Listen. [50:27] Justin: Hello. [50:29] Kim Trathen: Hi. [50:30] JD: Another female, mind you, is on the docket coming at us. And a big one. Almost as big as the one. [50:37] Speaker B: Don't. Don't care. [50:38] JD: Go. [50:38] Speaker B: Move on. [50:39] JD: Someone give me the shovel. Okay. Ruby. Yeah. Stock for you. Yeah, it's gotta find where it went. We use it. We pay money to this company. [50:53] Speaker B: Oh no, here we go. [50:57] JD: As you would guess. [50:58] Justin: Do we really use it? [51:00] JD: Yeah, yeah, we do a lot. [51:03] Speaker B: Some of us do. [51:05] JD: The. The ticker is. I don't drink for saying the letters. D, O, C, U. The company's called Docusign. [51:13] Kim Trathen: Oh. [51:14] JD: As you would imagine. Blew the hell up in 2020. Thanks to the good old pandemic and everyone working from home. It has since then kind of corrected itself. And I mean if that's the term you want to use. It does about 58 billion. And wait. 11 billion in market cap. Almost 12 billion in market cap. And the current price of Stock is at 56.93. It reached a high of 200 or 300 plus in August of 2021. But I know you don't care about that, Robey. Do we buy it? Do we sell it? What do we do? [51:55] Speaker B: Again, I'm just gonna keep my answer real simple. Does it. Is it something that makes life easier on people? Yeah. [52:10] Chad: Yeah. [52:10] Speaker B: I think about signing a document [52:16] JD: sucks. [52:16] Speaker B: It's a Docusign, right? Like it's in the friggin name. They. They named themselves correctly. [52:24] JD: Have you personally used it? [52:27] Speaker B: Yeah. It's super confusing and I don't. I'm a boomer when it comes to using it. [52:32] Justin: It's. [52:33] Chad: It's actually not easy. [52:34] Speaker B: It's actually not very user friendly, but. But it's better than a paper and a pencil. Okay. I think they're at a discount right now. You gotta buy. You gotta get in there. Get in. [52:51] JD: Yeah, it looks to be. I guess the question would be do they have a lot of competition or what is the future? [52:56] Speaker B: I couldn't even tell you who their [52:58] Justin: company is artificial intelligence gonna do. [53:00] Kim Trathen: I use one of their competitors, so I know. [53:02] JD: Oh, you do? How dare you? [53:04] Speaker B: What's their name? [53:05] Justin: What are their names? [53:06] Speaker B: Use signature. [53:08] Kim Trathen: I use sign. Now [53:13] Speaker B: that's a stupid name. That's a stupid name. [53:15] JD: We need to compete with Docusign. We need to compete with our company. Beat. [53:22] Justin: That's pretty good. [53:25] Speaker B: Signatures for sure, right? [53:27] JD: No, they've got to be curve when it comes to this type of stuff. Chad, do you think Robey's on the right track? [53:34] Chad: So I have two thoughts. One, DocuSign is incredibly expensive, and I have to think that they're going to compress some of those costs, which will lead to less profitability and probably see a little stock drop. I also wrote into the chat bar, [53:48] Speaker B: like, what's he saying? [53:50] Chad: I think we're on the verge of a pullback team. I really do. I think you should be saying, sell to almost everything if you're trying to predict the next six months. [53:59] JD: That's a doom stare of the economy right now. [54:02] Speaker B: Wow. That's a guy who has a million dollars in his 401k. [54:05] Chad: It's a guy that's sitting here in an election year in a polarizing. You're looking at the markets and going, we're still slightly inflated from where we should be. And. Yeah, Chad, right? Put all your money in crypto. [54:18] Speaker B: Let me ask you a question. [54:20] Justin: Oh, Jesus. [54:21] Speaker B: Important question. When your pen runs out of ink, how are you gonna sign a document? [54:28] Chad: I'm gonna open it up in Adobe and I'm gonna electronically sign a date stamp in Adobe. [54:33] Speaker B: You're gonna sign the document, flip it, reverse it. Scratch that, docusign it that. I mean, they're already winning. [54:43] JD: All right? Don't worry. I just, I just, I just rallied up in my E trade back in Robey. He. He rarely gets this stuff wrong. He's got a high, high, high percent. Tomorrow. [54:52] Speaker B: Tomorrow their stock's going to go up by exactly 3 cents. [54:58] JD: I. I would like to set for the agenda in the future to dive deeper into Chad's pessimism of the economy. So let's set that as an agenda item, shall we? That should be fun. Thank you, Rob Guy. I appreciate it. You are stacking my wallet so fat, I. I can't even put in my back pocket anymore. That's how successful you are, Kim. Let's see. Let's combine two major topics because I know Jen wants to make sure we get to everything that was in the advertised you know, postings out there. I don't even know who Jen is, but I love ripping on her. [55:39] Kim Trathen: I hope you didn't scare her away. I hope she's still here. Jenner. [55:42] JD: Oh, we love scare people away. We love scary. Let's see. Let's combine growth and business statistics. No, no, no. That. You know what I want to talk to you about. [55:53] Chad: Let's. [55:53] Justin: No, no, hit me with it. [55:56] Kim Trathen: Hit me with it. Jd. [55:57] JD: Jen, Jen, stop crying. We're going to pivot to new topics that weren't on the thing because I was. Jen, this is my example. I was researching Kim after I had already established what the topics would be, and I found her talking about something else that I thought was way more interesting. And so we'll talk about that. [56:16] Kim Trathen: Wonder what I said. I wonder what I said. [56:18] JD: Goal setting. I want to talk about goal setting. And I'm going to set the conversation with Devin. Our internal salesperson has been taking me out to little golf outings with advisor partners of ours or even people we'd like to be partners with. And I have been impressed a few times when talking business with these set advisors when they tell me specifically what their goals are for the current year in terms of, oh, we want to do this much in revenue in Q1 or Q2, or we want to do this much in new plan sales each month, or we're looking to do this, this or that. Jen, Jen, keep going [57:07] Kim Trathen: sidetracked. [57:08] JD: And I walk away from that going, like, if I had to put my money on that person versus other people I meet, I would because they seem very detailed and visionary and have planned it out. And don't you think I'm going to the marketing branding person? So I know you're gonna agree, but please enlighten us. You can't reach goals if you don't set them first. And, and don't you think as a society of all of us business people, even the guys here that have their jobs every day, and me as a business, I. I am involved in three different companies that I own and run, and I suck at this sometimes. Most of us do, don't we? Most of us suck at setting defined goals. [57:54] Kim Trathen: Yes, Kim, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why what probably 95% of people are miserable as adults. I mean, employees are disengaged, turnover is higher than ever. Like, I think there's a lot of people that if they even just approach their job differently, even if they're not in a sales position or in a leadership position, if they just approach their job, job Differently and actually set goals for themselves and then communicated that with their managers or their leadership team and had the support of it. Right. It could be an entirely different, entirely different world that that person is living in on their day to day. But in general, I think humans are just really terrible goal setters and I can't get distracted. They don't have the vision because they're not the failure. [58:45] JD: Yeah, it's going to set you up for failure. It's not going to set you up for success. Mark. Mark and Justin, one of you grabbed this first. I'm sure Chad sets goals for you, which by the way, I don't think I definitively set goals for Chad to set goals for you very often he's agreeing with me. So I, I am true when I said I suck at this stuff and I saw that even Will Hackler, I think he was self admitting he sucks at this most of the time. Which is good to hear. How are you guys at setting your own goals as sales guys? Or do you just let Chad tell you what you think it is? Like how does it play in your day to day motivation to get out there and do what you do? [59:30] Speaker B: Well, I'll, I'll just, I'll just keep it real simple. Thanks to Chad. He gives us the utmost autonomy to, to truly like you. Like, no, I, again, I think it is very good, but I think it can lead to some, you know, individual lackluster. Approach myself into that category. Like I'm not good at that. Setting personal goals. I struggle with that. So I know that we have a team goal. I know that I have an individual goal and I know that it exists. But we have to own that on our own and we have to achieve that on our own. And it's because we all truly care. We know that jd, you've given us this ability and this amazing life to do what we want to do and we, we have that and we wear that and we're true to that. [1:00:37] JD: What I want to know is how important the numbers are to you every day. Like are, are, are the goals that you set something that inspires you or is it something that. [1:00:47] Chad: Let me answer that. Yeah, let me answer that for them as a manager and tell you that I, I feel like I have failed them as a manager and say, I think, I think they're each motivated differently and Justin has verbalized it to me a number of times. He's motivated by the competition. Justin wants to be challenged. He wants to try to beat me, he wants to try to beat Mark. That that motivates. [1:01:09] JD: I thought you were talking about our competition. He wants to beat you guys. [1:01:13] Chad: No, no, no. Like, yeah, that's a driving force for him. And I have failed to give him the goals that he needs. That from a manager perspective, that's bad on my part. What I will say in full circle is that I don't think Mark is motivated by the goals. Mark is motivated by the success. Justin's motivated by the competition. Mark's motivated by the success. It's a balancing act of how you handle that. What I will say as a whole is goals are necessary because you have to be able to grade yourself. It's a very dark hole that you live in if you don't set a goal. And you never know if you're actually achieving. [1:01:51] JD: Thinking about our audience that actually wants. I know Jen wants. Is taking notes and she wants to learn something here and. Or set a goal for herself. Don't top level goals need to be defined? So then you can define lower level goals. And I guess what I'm talking about is if y' all say it's this classic thing in the industry, if you do 500 meetings is your goal and those 500 meetings equate to 200 proposals and those 200 proposals equate to 50 closed plans. This is all centered around goal setting. It's around having measurements for what you do. And I don't think you can close the 50 plans without understanding what it is you need to set goals for. Underneath that, I mean, we're not talking about. [1:02:40] Chad: Agreed. [1:02:41] JD: What is it when you like making it happen in your mind, man, we're not talking about manifestation here. We're talking about developing a strategic plan to sell a certain amount of business in a certain. [1:02:51] Chad: You're talking about the micro efforts that lead to success. Those are two different things. In my mind. [1:02:56] Justin: Yeah, you gotta. I don't think so. I mean you don't achieve the big goal without breaking it down. And achieving the smaller goals though. [1:03:03] Chad: Too fair. [1:03:04] JD: I can, you know, taking the annual, [1:03:06] Justin: breaking down a quarterly, you know, pushing it down. [1:03:09] Kim Trathen: If all you talk about are top line goals. Yeah, like the goal is likely to be realized. Yeah. Like you have to have steps to get you there. And I think there's a difference too. Like you were talking about their motivations of competition versus success. I think anybody in leadership and even people in sales, when you understand what's motivating the client. Right. So like in a leadership position, if you understand what motivates your team, then the way that you communicate those Goals and the way you communicate the strategic plan might look differently to each of them because you know what their motivations are. And even somebody in a sales position, if they can understand what the real, what truly motivates that person on the other end of the screen or the other end of the phone or the other side of the table, the person making the decision, if you can understand what their goal is behind making that decision and what motivates them, then you can speak to each client differently too. When you're in pitching, it's. [1:04:08] JD: It's less measurable. But if Justin was very much. I'm just making up things here. If Justin was very much into numbers and Mark was very much into relationships, marks would be harder to measure. But you could set goals that are like, hey, this is my dream of the future. Like, I want to have this many people that I really like and get along with and do work things together and, and go to this many events. I actually would have positioned Justin more like that. Like he's a very social kind of out there doing events and stuff. But anyways, my point is, sure, you can set different types of goals that match. I'm backing up what Kim Sand. [1:04:46] Chad: But the point that you're trying to make here is that goals need to be set process. [1:04:53] JD: And I also don't think, Chad, that it's getting together on December 10th and saying in 2025, we want to do 1.5 million in new sales. Like, okay, great. But it's to Justin's point. You got to set up all the things underneath that and set all those micro goals to that equate to that number. You can't just sit around. I think too many people do that. They go, this is my goal. I want to sell. I'm an advisor. I want to sell 10 new plans a year. You know, regardless, we won't talk about the details of how big or how small. It's like, okay, you can't just say that. You. Now you need to figure out how are you going to accomplish. [1:05:34] Justin: You gotta have a plan to get there. [1:05:35] JD: And those are other goals, those are smaller goals. And so that's, that's my takeaway today is Tony. [1:05:40] Chad: Tony makes a good point too. It's gotta be trackable to Justin's comments earlier. If you're going to talk about the number of meetings needed, the number of new relationships and engagements, you got to have a good CRM system. [1:05:53] JD: Going to be hard to try it. [1:05:55] Chad: Mark, thanks. You have to be able to track it. [1:05:57] JD: We didn't. We pissed off Jen by not talking about business statistics. But if you're not. If you're not measuring things, then it's going to be hard to look back and say, oh, that didn't work. Because here's the bummer of business. Sometimes things don't work exactly how you envision them to play out. And I mentioned that that product that we came out with several years ago, Kickstarter, I think that possibly could have been a bad decision on our part. I don't know. That's. [1:06:27] Chad: It wasn't. [1:06:28] JD: But. But it's. My point is you can news alert. You can make bad decisions as a business, and the best way to determine whether they're bad or not bad. What did you drink, Chad? Whiskey. [1:06:39] Chad: Oh, my God, Mark, what is it [1:06:40] Justin: gonna be okay, buddy? Wait, where are we at on the level of terrible to Malort. [1:06:45] Chad: Oh, my God. [1:06:47] Speaker B: So can I. Yeah, I give a little insight. So Chad is actually sitting in the room next to me. He's in my home right now because they surprised me by coming out here for my birthday. It is. We found this at Safeway today. It's called Mango Shutter. It's mango jalapeno tequila. It's disgusting. [1:07:11] Chad: Oh, my God, it burns. [1:07:13] JD: You know what that reminds me of? Do you guys miss being on stage? That's when. That's the type of thing we'd go by and put on stage for our live shows. [1:07:21] Chad: I do miss being on stage. [1:07:23] JD: Next year, 2025, we'll get back at [1:07:26] Justin: it, I think, for every year instead of real quick sidebar, but not really sidebar. We've always done Malort. Next year we should have it, you know, stick to one different type of a booze for the penalty. [1:07:38] Speaker B: Okay. And can we start a. A social campaign to try to get sponsored by said selected booze? Like, let's really go all in. [1:07:49] Chad: That worked when we started the hot. [1:07:51] Justin: Let us. [1:07:52] JD: I'll let you guys. Sorry, sorry, sorry. [1:07:53] Justin: We'll get back to it. We're back to it. [1:07:55] JD: I'll let you guys know. But in all seriousness, I'm gonna be counseling with Jen to see what Jen thinks we should do next year for the live show. So we'll figure. [1:08:03] Justin: You are freaking brutal right now. You were not. [1:08:07] Kim Trathen: I almost felt bad for Jen. [1:08:12] JD: Jen, tell me you're doing okay. Jen, tell me you're doing all right. Come on. All right, let's go, chopper champion. And let's get the out of here. Who won last week? Don't know. Don't remember. [1:08:29] Justin: I remember. I wasn't here Last week. [1:08:31] JD: Yeah, you were [1:08:34] Speaker B: three weeks ago. [1:08:36] Chad: Three weeks ago. [1:08:38] JD: My vote for chapter champion is Jen just. [1:08:44] Speaker B: I second that. [1:08:46] JD: Two gents. [1:08:47] Justin: He didn't ask you. I'm going Tony tonight. [1:08:51] JD: Tony. Okay. Tony's good. [1:08:53] Justin: Solid. [1:08:55] Speaker B: Wait. [1:08:55] JD: I'm taking my vote. Jen said indeed. I don't like that word. That's weird. Indeed. For Jen. I've locked in for Jen. Chad, your vote for chapter champion. [1:09:08] Chad: I all show long. I was kush, but I feel like Hack stepped it up in the last 30 minutes. So hack for me. [1:09:16] JD: Hack. And our guest of the night, Kim. Your vote. [1:09:23] Kim Trathen: Team Jen. [1:09:24] JD: Okay. Three gens. [1:09:27] Speaker B: Hold on. Hack has a theory here. Kim is Jen. Is this. Is this something going on here? [1:09:35] JD: Hold on. No, no time. [1:09:36] Speaker B: I changed my. I changed my. [1:09:38] Justin: Ken, put your hands in the air. Jen tights up, pig. [1:09:43] JD: I think Jen wins for champion. Jen, you get a thousand points into the rankings and you're in the. The hunt for the prize at the end. Although there's some people with a. In the past, Jen, we would have sent you like 150 worth of hot dogs or something, but we don't do that anymore. Now you just get points. I'm gonna make an exception for you. [1:10:09] Chad: Oh. [1:10:10] JD: If you show up for our next show and you private Message me on LinkedIn who you call DM Boomer. DM. Slide into my DMs. I'll drink. We will send you a prize. And if you're under the. If you're an advisor needs to be under a certain amount, we'll stay within those rules, but we will hook you up with some dope just for all the shit that I've given you today. Okay. Drink. Oh, God. Chad, you know how you know you're an alcoholic? When. When you were wincing from drinking your drink, my natural instinct was to try some of my own whiskey over here. Like, instead of staying away from it, I was like, I need to experience that. Wince Kim. Thank you, Kim the business coach for joining us here on Retireholics. People can find on Instagram at. Kim, the business coach, Kim Traithin on LinkedIn. Is there a. Is there a website they can go to? [1:11:21] Kim Trathen: Kimthebusinesscoach.com they can read all about me. I'm super active on LinkedIn now. They can find me on Instagram. [1:11:28] Justin: Sounds like a tag. [1:11:29] Kim Trathen: Facebook. I'm in all the places. [1:11:31] JD: Perfect. And everybody out there. Thanks for tuning in. I know after. After the boys ran their own show last time you had thoughts, you were like, [1:11:49] Chad: In our freaking defense, JD threw that on us in the Busiest time of the entire year. And it was supposed to be creative. [1:11:57] Speaker B: Do I look creative? [1:11:59] JD: No, you got a pretty creative looking [1:12:02] Justin: polo on right now. [1:12:03] JD: Don't worry. Don't worry. Daddy's back. Daddy's back. I'm here. I got you, you little dearlings. I got you right here. I got you. [1:12:17] Speaker B: Okay, okay, hold on. Can we be serious for one second, though? [1:12:20] JD: No, I'm trying to say goodbye. [1:12:23] Speaker B: Chad. Chad texted after the show that we failed miserably at, like. I don't think people understand how hard it is to do what you do and you make it look so effortless. Like, I think more of us need to commend you on that. So thank you for being our guiding light. But, Kim, I apologize that sometimes because he is such a guiding light, he sometimes forgets we have a guest. And we should bring you into the mix more often and have a conversation with you. [1:12:54] Kim Trathen: So. [1:12:54] JD: So don't look at me. [1:12:56] Kim Trathen: No. [1:12:58] JD: I'm an overweight, middle aged man. Thank you everyone for tuning in. That we are the retireaholics. We are changing the retirement plan industry one beer at a time and we'll see you next time. [1:13:12] Chad: Thank you, Kim. [1:13:14] Kim Trathen: Thanks, guys. So fun. [1:13:16] Justin: Let's go watch some football. [1:13:18] JD: Better be there, Jen. You better be there. I'm gonna get you a big fat gift. You're gonna be psyched for a leaderboard update. [1:13:27] Speaker B: Does she need to be on the next show? The third. The third Thursday? [1:13:32] Justin: Yeah, the 19th, I think. [1:13:33] JD: Actual next one. [1:13:35] Speaker B: Oh. [1:13:35] JD: Oh, okay. By the way, it's a mystery. I don't know who she is. Is she Jenna Power City? Is she Jen the third party administrator? I have no. [1:13:45] Speaker B: Hey, is it. Is it Jen? Was this houseki that we use? Who is in? [1:13:49] JD: Oh, what if it is? [1:13:52] Speaker B: I don't know. [1:13:53] JD: Yeah, that would be funny. That'd be great. Okay. Yes. Bye. Big, big, big exit. [1:14:03] Chad: Hang out with Mark's kids. [1:14:05] JD: We'll see you next time. Brandon, play the music [1:14:12] Chad: here.