What Is a 3(16) Fiduciary? Plan Admin Duties Explained

[0:01] JD: By the way, Brandon, I asked him on the couch last night. I go, by the way, how's episode 12, which is from the golf course, which, by the way, I was hammered showing up there, like, hungover hammered. And he goes, yes, I'm looking so good. So we know that there's these fiduciary definitions out there, right? [0:27] Chad: What's the footage? [0:28] JD: 321, 338. And today I want to focus on 316. And for our audience, what is a 316? [0:38] Chad: Fun fact. That's my daughter's birthday, March 16th. [0:41] Mark: Oh, easy for you to remember. So you can figure out what a fiduciary is. Still have no clue. [0:46] JD: I think the best way to define a 316, I'm actually going to steal from a conversation that you guys had is just. Just take it back to point A and walk through it. And so this is the experience of whom a plan sponsor. [1:00] Mark: So that's the first thing, right? Who is a 316? Traditionally, it's the plan sponsor. [1:05] JD: The plan administrator is actually the legal name for that plan sponsor in that deal. So the best way to talk about the responsibilities of a 316 is just start it from the beginning, right? So here you go. You set up a 401k plan. The first thing you got to do is sign an adoption agreement, right? [1:27] Mark: No, [1:29] Chad: you've jumped way ahead. [1:30] JD: Oh, sorry. [1:31] Chad: That's what Lance wants us to do, but we're not there yet. [1:34] JD: Let's go. Let's take it from the start. [1:35] Chad: You gotta pick before you get to that point, you gotta pick who's gonna be doing that. [1:39] JD: Fair enough. [1:40] Chad: So pick your providers, meet with your advisor and whoever they bring in as your team and select who you want to bring in as the tpa, as the record keeper. [1:52] Mark: That's your first fiduciary action, right? Secondarily, you pick who you want to be part of that team. And now, typically, you're starting to design the plan itself. What type of plan do you want set up? Match, no match, safe harbor, no safe harbor, profit sharing, so forth. And you're using your discretion and what your objectives are to create the plan plan itself, the infrastructure. And that process is choosing the trustees, right? [2:16] Justin: And then creating the doc, signing the doc, putting it in place, signing the [2:19] Mark: doc, signing the dock. That's a big one. That's a big 316 role that people like to outsource sometimes. [2:25] JD: Because by signing that document, you're saying, hey, these are the rules. These are the provisions that we're adopting. And. And now that you've done that, you have to deliver notice to your participant. And that's going to happen throughout the year. But at the beginning, there's some notices. [2:41] Mark: That's a role of that 316 duty. Right. [2:44] JD: And not only do you have to ensure that you have the notices, but they're actually being delivered in the hands of the people that are supposed to get them. [2:52] Chad: It can be done electronically. But if those guidelines, you have to do a hard copy. So you're cognizant of that. [3:00] JD: That puppy's in place. And now you've got to make these deposits. Right. And you have to make them on a timely basis. They need to be accurate. Right. [3:10] Mark: You've got to reconcile that what you're pulling from the employee's account is indeed what is making it into the plan itself. [3:17] JD: And it's got to be going in [3:18] Mark: on a timely basis. [3:20] JD: So you have those responsibilities. Let's continue down the line. Oh, you need to determine when people are eligible, when they actually can go into the plan or actually can get the match or the. [3:31] Mark: And this kind of bleeds in to take one step back to the other types of fiduciaries. But when you're setting up the plan, you got to pick the funds. That's a fiduciary action. [3:40] JD: Fair enough. [3:41] Mark: They often outsource it to a 321 or a 338, but it is part [3:46] JD: of the 316 action on an ongoing basis. You need to kind of reconcile that what's over at your record keeper actually matches up with your payroll. Right. That monies are going into the proper accounts. [3:59] Justin: It's a lot more involved than I think people actually realize. [4:01] JD: There are no. There are loans potentially that need to be overseen to make sure they're done accurately and properly. There are distributions that need to happen. There are potentially required minimum distributions. Those are all things that, in a sense, a plan administrator and or 316 has oversight over. Right. And responsibility for. Then you kind of tail towards the end, unless I've left some things out. Maybe I have. But you're 5500. Right. So now your IRS form 5500 is being prepared, and you have the responsibility not only to sign it, validate it, but also make sure that the information that's on there is accurate. There's questions on there that you have to answer honestly and truthfully. Your responsibility is for that as well. So that's kind of the landscape. [4:56] Mark: There's some other minor things in there. [4:59] Justin: The fees plan itself Determining that your fees are reasonable. [5:02] Mark: Right, Exactly. [5:03] JD: Yeah. [5:04] Mark: Getting a fiduciary or a fidelity bond. Erisa bond. I mean, there's all kinds of little things in there. But I think the way we summed it up from start to finish looks over the course of a year of starting a plan and pretty much hits on Most of the 316 rule that's [5:18] Justin: you repeated every year. [5:19] JD: And what you guys kind of stumbled upon there in that methodology of determining what is a 316 is awesome. It's very simple. What do you have to do as a plan administrator and that will make up your list of services. We're going to put a pin on that. We're going to put that on ice. We're going to put it on the burner, so to speak, and come back to it because we've got to jump into these guys right here. [5:41] Chad: It's getting a little thirsty, [5:44] Mark: my friends. [5:45] JD: When we get to that, we're going to talk about that list of services and how different. Yeah, 316 providers are tackling different areas of that. [5:56] Chad: Now send one right at the camera here. [5:58] JD: As Chad is opening up all that [6:03] Chad: was like your drive the other day. [6:06] JD: As Chad is opening up these beers and he's going to describe for us this beer that we're drinking. Let me put it into my super cool mug. [6:16] Mark: Mark, you have to pour your own today. Same with Hugh Jassin. This is. [6:19] Chad: I actually prefer a brown bag to put this in to drink out of [6:22] Mark: Brother Thelonious Belgian style Abbey Ale, which we researched and found out, which was kind of neat. That for every beer that you drink from Brother Thelonious, you're actually helping make a donation to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz where they are helping the children of the United States get adult level education of the jazz musician. [6:49] JD: I kind of imagine Mark, I imagine Mark listening to jazz music. [6:57] Mark: Mark and Phil Collins. [6:59] Chad: You don't listen to jazz music in the dark doing sound design. [7:02] JD: Cheers it up. And welcome to retireholics episode number 13, 1313, where we change the retirement plan industry one beer at a time. [7:12] Chad: Jazz music. Felonious. True. [7:16] Mark: Look at color commentary. [7:18] JD: Now we're kicked off and started Erroneous. I would like to talk about and bring a close to our very first Retire Hogs competition, which was the beer of the month club contest where we had our viewers chime in via LinkedIn account via Facebook on what beer they thought the Retireholics should have on their show in the future. And how I want to do this is each of you has chosen from those comments one that you liked. We're gonna name those fairly quickly. Fairly quickly. And we're gonna put them in a hat. We're gonna pick the winner, and then that person gets beer delivered to their home for a period of. I forget. Yes. 48 beers goes on us to them. Okay. So, Justin, maybe you want to start with the person that you're putting in the hat. [8:08] Justin: Gonna put me on blast right now, huh? [8:10] JD: Yes, I am. [8:12] Justin: So for the record, this was pretty tough. Had a lot of good ones. But when it came down to it, I chose Vince Moiseau. [8:20] JD: Vince Moiseau. [8:22] Mark: Why, Justin? [8:23] JD: Why did you choose Vince? [8:24] Justin: No, primarily because he gave me a shout out. I was pretty happy about that shout out because I am on the show. I don't get a lot of shout outs at all. [8:33] JD: I'm gonna just stay for our audience. [8:34] Chad: You've never shouted once on the show. [8:36] JD: I think that Justin's vote is super biased and horrible. It's someone in his sales territory and is someone who. I think he has disregard also. No, he gets his vote. [8:47] Mark: He's part of terrorists now you're on blast. [8:49] JD: It goes in the hat. [8:50] Chad: This is your first. [8:50] JD: Let's not give it more attention. Mark your vote. [8:54] Chad: I don't need a card to remember who it was, but I really hope [8:56] Justin: Vince gets this one. Just despite you calling it. [8:58] Chad: I'm just gonna say that some of the comments you guys had were hilarious and very vulgar in some sense, which I appreciate, but who called us a dirty bastard? Right here. Kim Traithan. So you referred to us as dirty bastards. And first of all, I'm offended because I know that you're only. Look, we're clean cut, nicely dressed. You're talking about. Okay, so the dirty bastard in the [9:21] JD: corner, Kim Trathan, is definitely going into the hat. Chad. [9:25] Mark: Kimberly Oros Cunan. [9:27] JD: And she wrote a novel. [9:28] Mark: She did write a novel. She gave a link to the beer. She gave a description. I have the tough time of describing the beer that we drink every episode. You should read the description that she [9:38] Chad: wrote something about raspberries. [9:40] Mark: It was. It was fruity beer. I will give. Kimberly never tried the beer yet. [9:45] JD: I'll give Kimberly a thumbs up as well. Although she's not my vote because she pretty much put me on blast at the end of her thing, saying, I think JD Will approve since this was the closest beer I could find to a wine cooler. Ooh, thanks a lot, Kimberly. That's pretty nice of you. I actually picked the same person as Mark, so I picked Kim Trathan. And I'm just gonna read for you Kim's which Mark kind of alluded to. She says founders dirty bastard. That's the beer she wants us to drink. Why? Because I'm watching a bunch of dirty bastards discuss the retirement plan industry. Their beer should match and I'd love to win. And by the way she also was the only one that followed up later with what's the deal man? You said 50 comments and there's only been 20. Like you guys are such a joke. Is anyone ever gonna win? So that's good persistent thing. That's good persistent thing huh? We'll go ahead and let that you pick. Don't let Justin because you know he's going to try to pick his guy. [10:47] Justin: Yeah, we're building a brand new. Come on. [10:50] JD: Dun dun dun. The winner is. Oh Kimberly, you have won yourself some free beer. [10:59] Mark: A lifetime supply of beer so long as you only live for six months. [11:03] Chad: So we have to try that said beer. [11:06] JD: True. [11:06] Mark: Which actually of all the beers listed I'm pretty interested in that. [11:11] JD: Cool. All right. So we are going to dive straight back into kind of the conversation we were having along 3:16 and I want to evolve it a little deeper. We talked about what it is and so now I would like to talk about. So who typically provides 316 services? Obviously a third party administrator is a common 316 provider. But there are others out there, right? [11:38] Mark: Yeah, record keepers, bundled vendors. There's even some firms that have opened up this specific side of servicing that has nothing to do with our industry prior. Like there are firms that focus just on outsourcing fiduciary responsibilities. [11:53] JD: And I would also say to you that there are even believe it or not some, I won't call them advisors but like consultants that have a specific skill set in this area. So they come in for a fee and say hey, I'm going to overlook all this where you could still have a TPA but someone else is acting as a 316. So anyways, it can come in a variety of delivery methods. The next question is to you guys mostly is is this in demand? Are you hearing chatter around it? And give me the plan sponsors perspective, give me the financial advisor's perspective. What's the word from the streets boys? [12:30] Mark: It's a common conversation, right? I mean I'm running into it constantly. Regardless of whether it's an advisor or a plan sponsor. Usually it's not what's a 316 it's a plan sponsor saying I want no fiduciary obligations. I don't want to even be listed as a trustee is what we've been running into a few times here recently. So how do I outsource all of that? And we had this conversation earlier. That's where you got to go and pull that thing back. Say you can outsource your role, hence the 316 role, but nonetheless, you're hiring the firm that you're outsourcing to. [13:04] JD: You will always have to overlook who you hired. Keep your finger on the pulse of that provider. We're all aware of that. [13:12] Mark: Right. [13:12] JD: And you cannot relieve yourself of your responsibility. All you can do is get some support. [13:17] Chad: You can mitigate most of it. [13:19] JD: Yeah, sure. [13:20] Justin: Not in terms of risk, but a lot of. I don't know what you guys are seeing, but a lot of plan sponsors who either outsource HR or payroll or anything like that really have seen. I've seen an uptick in requests for [13:31] JD: something like this because of Fixer mo. [13:33] Justin: Yeah. Or even the larger companies who just don't want to spend the time tracking all eligibility, sending out notices and stuff like that with, you know, 100, 200 participants. [13:40] JD: I definitely think the bigger you get, the more of a responsibility insure it [13:44] Chad: is, the more attractive I'll say. From advisor meetings. I have a question I get is specific to do you as a TPA offer? 360. So they're. They're looking to work. To work with providers, TPAs alike that have that capability. [14:00] JD: Okay. So there's definitely a need. There's definitely talk about it. And I want to kind of tie in and we'll hit our next subject, which I kind of call my soapbox subject, but which is I kind of have some personal. [14:11] Chad: So look at no longer a dirty bastard. [14:17] JD: I have kind of some personal opinions around this. But so here is an advisor asking you, do you offer it? And we're seeing lots of offerings from consultants from bono providers from TPAs, from independents. You guys mentioned a list of services. Right. We named off probably 15 to 20. Right. And we were just sort of scratching the surface of things that happened. Here's my flow is there are lots of different 316 offerings out there and they center around what they're committing to. Right. What per their contract is that 316 actually saying, yeah, I will have oversight over this. And my issue with it is that vendors are choosing from that list and thereby watering down what I think what originally was intended as this great premium service like this, this really cool premium, tons of oversight mitigating Your risk in a big way. And now the industry, in an attempt to create a sales advantage, has come up with some cheaper alternatives. How are they cheaper? Easy. They just decided they're only going to cover a few of those services and or they're going to caveat what they're doing by saying, look, I can only do my job as good as some of the things you provide me or some of the job that you do as well. You with me. Therefore, an advisor could say, do you do 316 and you could say yes. And that could mean nothing more than you're going to go ahead and sign the 5500 but take no responsibility for anything because it's all based on the data that they provided you. Or you could say yes and you did every one of those services and you did it diligently. Should there be a different fee for both of those variations? [16:06] Justin: If you're going to tell someone that you, you know, you provide 316 but you really don't provide everything you're giving them. I mean you're completely misleading them. And the plan sponsor, well, here's the [16:15] JD: problem is knowing our consumer and our industry and even the advisor we partner with, people are gonna get tangled up in this. [16:22] Chad: Yeah, I heard someone refer to it as 316lite is out there now. Like, you know, if you offer it, I like that. Do you just pick the five or ten things you're gonna do and charge a fee for it, but you're really not doing everything. And then they consider that kind of a lower level version. [16:41] JD: I think the moral of the story there is buyer beware a little bit. And that's gonna be the hard part [16:48] Justin: really because somebody is gonna say, you know, maybe a plan sponsor advisor is gonna see, okay, I have 316 services here and it's gonna cost me five, $500 up front, $10 ahead or something like that. And then they're gonna see someone like us who do quality service and it devalues what we do because we're gonna have a premium charge for it because we're gonna do everything well. [17:04] JD: It's super tough. [17:05] Mark: It's interesting too many of the 316 contracts that I've seen, and this is outside of the provider world, this would be independent folks just list what they do, not what the duties are as a whole. Of the 316, we saw one recently from Standard that did a side by side that says, hey, here's the plan administrator role, here's what you're still responsible for and here's all the things we're gonna do, which I thought was kind of cool, because it lets the client know, hey, we're a 316, if you take us up on this service, but you still have some duties that we can't outsource based upon your specific business. [17:37] JD: And again, to kind of wrap this subject, I love that. I love that they're highlighting what they do and what the plan sponsor has to do. My issue is kind of what Mark was saying, or what Justin saying is you're going to see all these spreadsheets, all these RFPs, so to speak, all these comparisons, I should say. And it's going to say 316 services, check, check, check. But they're all different. And then like you said, one's gonna say it's 500 bucks. Someone else is gonna come in and say it's 1500 bucks, and some poor decisions are gonna be made out there. So anyways, hopefully that's super valuable to whoever's tuning in, is that when you're looking at 316, you gotta dive deeper and figure out what's going on. And I like to be honest with our. With our audience. I'm struggling, you know, as the CEO of our company, trying to figure out what's the best 316 that we can offer. Because my first instinct was, let's offer the premium one. The one that just looks at everything and covers everything for them. And I thought, what a great opportunity to offer a high quality and a high value. But that would come at a cost. Now, I'm afraid that if that's my product offering, that it's going to end up in the trash can because they're going to see cheaper ones alongside. It's time. Tough world, man. [18:52] Mark: Let me add one last thing to this, because we had a conversation on it last week. I love that thought of a heavy 316 taking on all of those. But the bigger issue is what's the number one component to that is payroll. Right? True. You need to have access to payroll. And so in my mind, in order to offer a true 316, you either have to have a payroll provider that plays friendly with you, or you need to be offering payroll in some capacity, [19:21] JD: or you're feeding data to your vendor, your payroll. You know, you could also have to [19:27] Mark: have a payroll provider that's. That's friendly. [19:29] JD: But I love that you brought that up because. And that is a great segue. And maybe on a future episode, we could dive deeper into that, because you're right. The next Kind of stone to overturn has to do with where is the data coming from, how accurate is it? [19:42] Mark: How do you validate all that stuff? How do you monitor eligibility? You need a good payroll feed, and [19:47] JD: there's some possibilities of that. I don't even want to ask. [19:49] Chad: Payroll feed of the person doing that needs to know what they're doing as well. [19:53] JD: True, because you don't tell me that ADP and Paycheck center are gonna be awesome. 3:16. Because I'll throw up all over this table. [20:00] Chad: All right, on that note. [20:02] JD: On that note, it's kind of my favorite part of every show. It's the one thing that has been in every single show, and it's is usually accompanied by a great singing intro, Someone with a wonderful voice. [20:19] Mark: Maybe that was just it. [20:20] JD: I don't know. [20:20] Chad: Maybe the editor put it in there because you. [20:22] Mark: Oh, because we're not drinking fast enough. Is that what you said? [20:25] JD: It is the Wheel of Ice. [20:28] Justin: I think it's Mark's favorite part of the show as well. [20:30] Chad: It's really not. We lost our production assistant, so there's no longer a hand. [20:36] JD: I have a strong feeling that I'm not gonna lose this. [20:40] Mark: I have a strong feeling that Justin's actually gonna lose this one. [20:43] JD: Watch your mic. I haven't even seen the Wheel. What does it look like? [20:49] Chad: I just want the audience to realize. [20:51] JD: Can I see it? [20:51] Mark: How. [20:52] JD: Oh, amazing. [20:53] Chad: That is not. [20:54] JD: Yeah, apparently it's you, Mark. Okay. Do we have a Schmidt vice? [20:59] Chad: The Ice Queen is upon us. [21:00] JD: Don't worry. [21:01] Mark: Thank you, Ice Queen. [21:02] Chad: You guys have a way to open this? [21:04] Mark: I don't know if Mark's hand strong enough to twist that open. [21:07] Chad: Is it twist off for sure? [21:08] Mark: I think. [21:09] JD: Yeah, it is. [21:09] Mark: How many times have you done this? [21:13] JD: If you can't open your own, unfortunately, then you're in trouble. So this is actually. Every time you do this, you'd like to make it a whole big grand. Just drink it, and we'll just move on. [21:26] Chad: I'm actually just sitting here, Mr. [21:27] JD: Stealing the spotlight. He's got a, like, milk, this Wheel of Ice moment. [21:31] Chad: Because I don't want to do it. [21:33] Mark: Yes, you do. [21:34] JD: By the way, I'm rethinking this mug. It's kind of hard. [21:37] Mark: I'll be quite honest. This. This beer's a little tough. [21:42] JD: You're always getting this kind of beer. [21:43] Justin: You know what it reminds me of? The beer we drank a couple episodes ago from Standard. [21:49] JD: Do you know that Mark's, like, getting slower as the episodes move on? [21:53] Mark: Do you Blame him. He ages with every day. I feel like you, you lose a year of life every time you drink one of these. [21:59] JD: Oh, wow. I didn't even finish it. [22:00] Chad: If you see him in an AA meeting in your ears. Going off ice is part of my job. [22:07] JD: I could probably get sued. It's all my employers. [22:11] Justin: Let's be honest. That's not the only reason I am [22:13] Chad: creating like the best case against you possible. [22:16] JD: Documented. It's on YouTube. [22:17] Chad: Yeah. Let's move on support on my. [22:21] JD: On my case again to our next section which is called hashtag not your typical advisor. And this is a section of the show where we try to find unique, cool, creative, innovative ways. [22:37] Chad: I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. [22:38] JD: For advisors to set themselves apart from the competition, we're going to hashtag not your typical advisor. [22:45] Mark: This is probably the most well received section. I felt like they were calling me just to see if I would look at my watch. [22:52] JD: I was pretty sure. So my father in law was gonna watch on periscope because I was gonna bring him today, but I apparently left the house without him. [22:59] Justin: Let's be honest with ourselves though. How many Periscope viewers did we have? [23:02] Mark: Three? Jeez, I don't know. [23:05] Chad: Ten collectively. But that's a lot of people who pop in and pop in hang out. Oh, that's stupid. [23:12] JD: Hey, you guys are making fun of our Periscope stuff, but we actually are getting a a lot of social media interaction and [23:20] Mark: segue. [23:21] JD: Oh, I wasn't even doing that on purpose. What's our next topic? So our topic for not your typical advisor. I knew I'd make that mistake one time is social media for advisors. And I referenced and this is a great guy to follow. Principal has a dude out there, John Furchen. Hopefully I didn't botch his last name, but so check him out on LinkedIn and Twitter. He does great stuff. [23:50] Mark: He does. [23:50] JD: And one of the things he's done recently is this. Embrace social media. And so it's a blog post that he did for advisors. [23:58] Chad: I've heard him speak about this for the past few years. [24:00] JD: Oh yeah, it's his kid. [24:02] Mark: When I went out to home office, he did a really compelling presentation on why you need to be involved. [24:07] Chad: I sat without a table with him in Chicago and they had us out for a TPA conference. And I actually broke the news to him right then and there as he spoke about social media, about retireholics. He immediately popped on there and looked at it. [24:19] JD: So I knew this, but I had forgotten about this. This is the guy that you guys met with or whatever. Oh, yeah, I didn't know that. Or I'd forgotten. He does great stuff. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad that he's a fan of the show. So you read his blog post. He comes up with three points. I'm trying to pull them up now. The top three things to do before you dive into social media. Because let's be honest with our audience, a lot of advisors aren't so hip to social media. Right. Maybe it's intimidating. Maybe they feel like it's a waste of time. Maybe they feel like they don't have the time. [24:58] Chad: It's. I would say over all of that, it's compliance. [25:01] JD: Compliance. [25:02] Mark: It's. Well. And that's what he addresses at the very beginning. Right. Which I loved. Yeah, it's the unknown of compliance. [25:07] JD: And by the way, I've heard that problems from. [25:09] Chad: Yeah, about like, I can't even post a blog without putting it through compliance. So it turns them off naturally. [25:16] JD: Well, I. I personally feel like you better get over that real quick because [25:21] Chad: figure out a way. [25:22] JD: One, compliance is definitely gonna kind of ease up. But to all compliance means is that you have to put things in front of them. Well, I got news for you. You don't have to create a Twitter tweet right on the spot. You can go ahead and create 16 of them and archive them for a future date, throw them through compliance, get them approved and using them or a blog post the same way. Fine, write your blog now, throw it through compliance and post it two months from now. Get ahead of the game. [25:49] Justin: That, though, is what about relevance? You know, say you, something comes up, something's going on in the industry, the DOL rule or whatever, and you want to post about it, but you got to wait three and a half, four, five weeks, whatever it is, before you can post it. By then, is it relevant anyway? [26:02] JD: Well, here's the good news. Whether right or wrong, buddy. How long ago did the DOL fiduciary roll come out? Are you still seeing crap about it every day on your Facebook? I guess my point is that our industry is very, very slow and long and stays in the moment for a long time. [26:21] Mark: And we've from the beginning of having this conversation with advisors. The way he starts off his blog post is fantastic because this is what we've ran into. It's hey, do you use social media for any type of marketing or engagement? And advisors go, no complaints, don't let me. And his next response is, did you know that your Broker dealer actually has a social media guideline and that they have rules and restrictions around it and they make it very clear what you can, can and can't do. Did you know that you can use Facebook and LinkedIn? And he's doing like an interaction and this is very similar conversations that I've had where advisors go broker dealer doesn't allow me to have a LinkedIn account. And I'm going, many of your peers do with your broker dealer. And yeah, they do. They even have a social media guide for you. [27:07] Justin: When I was thinking about this stuff, I'm not gonna lie, the first thing through my head was like, are you really on LinkedIn? Because that's probably the, I would say the most commonly used social media. [27:14] JD: It was for our industry. [27:17] Justin: I was thinking about it in terms of, okay, for us, it's great, right? We can connect with advisors, DCIOs, wholesalers, whatever. But from an advisor standpoint, are you really going to try and connect with your plan sponsors? [27:30] JD: Hold on. [27:31] Justin: You're going to connect, but more so, I think it's important to be active with your social media because those plans sponsors, before they even hire you, are going to do their research on you and if they see you actually actively involved in the industry, you know, it's going to make, you know, all the difference in the world for sure. [27:50] Chad: Utilize it, make it look good. You, we talked about it last time, show your uniqueness somehow you could do it through that. I get that there's compliance, but really make it worth someone's while to go through and read it and show what you do have, how you do it and have a picture as small as that. I mean, so John, his presentation, I recommend anyone to try to go through his presentation if they can. He talks about how to prospect using LinkedIn, how to update your profile, what to put on there, what people are looking for. I mean, he spells it out very clearly on how to set up a good LinkedIn page. And I'm focusing on that because, yeah, okay, I know Facebook, I get it. I just don't think it's used as much in our industry as you should [28:35] Mark: really focus on LinkedIn. [28:37] Chad: I would like to pitch not focused [28:39] Mark: in a professional way. [28:40] Chad: I'll be the first one to say too, my LinkedIn's horrible, but I work out, I try to keep it updated. I like to post our videos, but I don't do a good enough job either. But I think if I. [28:50] JD: You guys are great examples to talk about this because I'm probably the one that's more Deep into it from a marketing standpoint. So you guys are a lot more like our viewers. But what I want you and our viewers to understand is that social media really has grown to the point where today it is marketing. It's the current medium for branding and marketing. Whether you're an advisor, whether you're a company, whether you're selling widgets, it really is, you know, and so you need, like Mark said, you got to spend time on it, you gotta. And that's what he's saying, right? Create and follow a social media strategy. Figure out who is your audience, what do you want your brand to look like, what are the types of messages you're gonna deliver, what kind of content and valuable stuff are you gonna deliver to your audience? It's the modern day world, people. [29:38] Mark: What have we regarding that social media strategy? What have we learned here on retireholics is the most effective thing that we can do continuous. You can't just. Well, these two have. We have to continue to produce content on a regular basis. And if you're writing one every quarter, you're probably not gonna get many people that focus in on what you have to say. Whereas if you're delivering something on an ongoing basis, you get followers, you get people that like, just like we're all sitting here chatting about John. We all follow him because we like what he has to say. [30:12] JD: John's a perfect example. [30:14] Chad: Personalized blog post. It could be sharing an article. [30:18] Mark: Sharing, absolutely. [30:19] JD: You can cultivate, you can cultivate content. You don't have to create it. [30:26] Chad: You start a conversation, you see people know you're active and yeah, it's great. [30:30] JD: And so I'm gonna now talk about personal experience with it and then we'll tie it to advisors. So, so on LinkedIn I have thousands of followers and the great, great majority of them, the great, great majority of them are industry people. Obviously on LinkedIn, you know, I don't just go to anybody. It's usually retirement or financial services people. It is, it's probably better than my mailing list, my email list. It's more valuable for me to blast out on social media. I get way more interaction, way more engagement, way more phone calls back our way for business that I send along. It's a good thing. If I can do it in, in our business model, surely an advisor can do it in their business model. And so yeah, step up your game. If you've been intimidated by it, if you don't understand it, you know, start to start to do some research. [31:23] Mark: Let's get back to this, maybe Brandon could post the Gotta do one of those link. It could be this way. Maybe it's this way. Brandon could post the link to John's article. Because I'm telling you, you get this all the time from advisors that say I can't be on social media and his article kind of breaks down. As an advisor, here's how you approach your broker dealer. They probably have a social media guideline that you can read, you can be on it. Here's what you need to be aware of. So it's more than just us ranting on it. There's something there that you can research and figure out how to do. [32:01] Chad: It might be limitations, but regardless of that, at least you're utilizing it and [32:06] Mark: people expect that this is going to be the future too. [32:09] JD: Well, thank you. So that's what I was going to say. I'm sure advisors, I mean, I asked [32:13] Chad: for meetings and I get a LinkedIn invitation days later because I know they're like, who is this guy contacting in there? And then it's like, okay, there's a. I can see what he looks like. [32:23] JD: Well, let's say the worst case scenario, let's say you are an advisor and your broker dealer says absolutely not. And I like what you said, it's the future. Guess what, eventually those chains are going to be taken off. So you might as well start now learning about it, watching it, seeing it, seeing other examples at work. Because I guarantee you eventually a financial services professional will have to be fully engaged on social media. Not have to, but it's going to be a big part of their deals. Your broker dealer will start to ease up eventually. [32:53] Mark: Let me mention one more thing regarding social media and the beer that we just gave out for six months, the six month beer supply, did you guys notice where most of the people were that commented? Well, I shouldn't say most, but did you notice the majority of the comments were not locally? Yeah, Detroit, New York. I mean they were spread and that just shows you the kind of net that you can very quickly cast in social media when you start getting followers is that you get people from everywhere. [33:20] JD: True. But you got to make sure your business is model fits that too. [33:23] Mark: Right. [33:24] JD: Or you set it up so it can. All right, so social media get on it. Financial advisors, that is our hash. Wow. They're starting to. I don't know, they're making fun of you. [33:35] Mark: There's something going on over there. Come on. [33:37] JD: They do realize you're kind of their boss, right? [33:39] Mark: I think so. [33:41] JD: So let's wrap it. This is episode 13. [33:43] Justin: Jed's head just went from here to here. [33:47] Chad: So you're all of our bosses and that's even better. [33:49] JD: Episode 13. Thank you to everybody out there who has engaged us through, through all the different social medias. It's been a lot of chatter through reaching out to us through email, through the. The comments you guys have gotten in live meetings and Justin, I keep those coming. It's all good. [34:08] Chad: Been called some bad. [34:09] JD: So thank you very much so far. [34:11] Justin: Oh, God. Tell your boss he looks more and more homeless every time I see him. [34:14] JD: Yes, that's. [34:15] Mark: Actually there's a story that we should probably tell about that. [34:18] JD: Exactly what I'm going for. No, we don't tell that story. [34:21] Mark: Come on. [34:23] JD: Here's what I'd like to leave the audience with. The more and more homeless my look appears to be, the less and less you guys ask me to go on meetings and so my days are free. I don't have to go do stuff. I surely don't have to put on a suit and tie. So it's a win win for me. [34:40] Chad: Have you been collecting a lot of change lately? Is that going well for you? [34:43] JD: Thank you. Episode 15. We are changing the retirement plan industry. One usually super dark beer at a time. [34:54] Chad: None of us finished that. Thank you. [34:56] Mark: None of us. [34:58] Chad: But I finished the smear on. [35:01] Mark: We were at the.