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Installing Oracle GoldenGate 23ai is more than just running a setup file—it's about preparing your system for efficient, reliable data replication. In this episode, Lois Houston and Nikita welcome back Nick Wagner to break down system requirements, storage considerations, and best practices for installing GoldenGate.   You'll learn how to optimize disk space, manage trail files, and configure network settings to ensure a smooth installation.   Oracle GoldenGate 23ai: Fundamentals: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-goldengate-23ai-fundamentals/145884/237273 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.   -------------------------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript: 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:25 Nikita: Hello and welcome to Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and I'm joined by Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs.  Lois: Hi there! Last week, we took a close look at the security strategies of Oracle GoldenGate 23ai. In this episode, we'll discuss all aspects of installing GoldenGate. 00:48 Nikita: That's right, Lois. And back with us today is Nick Wagner, Senior Director of Product Management for GoldenGate at Oracle. Hi Nick! I'm going to get straight into it. What are the system requirements for a typical GoldenGate installation? Nick: As far as system requirements, we're going to split that into two sections. We've got an operating system requirements and a storage requirements. So with memory and disk, and I know that this isn't the answer you want, but the answer is that it varies. With GoldenGate, the amount of CPU usage that is required depends on the number of extracts and replicats. It also depends on the number of threads that you're going to be using for those replicats. Same thing with RAM and disk usage. That's going to vary on the transaction sizes and the number of long running transactions. 01:35 Lois: And how does the recovery process in GoldenGate impact system resources?  Nick: You've got two things that help the extract recovery. You've got the bonded recovery that will store transactions over a certain length of time to disk. It also has a cache manager setting that determines what gets written to disk as part of open transactions. It's not just the simple answer as, oh, it needs this much space. GoldenGate also needs to store trail files for the data that it's moving across. So if there's network latency, or if you expect a certain network outage, or you have certain SLAs for the target database that may not be met, you need to make sure that GoldenGate has enough room to store its trail files as it's writing them. The good news about all this is that you can track it. You can use parameters to set them. And we do have some metrics that we'll provide to you on how to size these environments. So a couple of things on the disk usage. The actual installation of GoldenGate is about 1 to 1.5 gig in size, depending on which version of GoldenGate you're going to be using and what database. The trail files themselves, they default to 500 megabytes apiece. A lot of customers keep them on disk longer than they're necessary, and so there's all sorts of purging options available in GoldenGate. But you can set up purge rules to say, hey, I want to get rid of my trail files as soon as they're not needed anymore. But you can also say, you know what? I want to keep my trail files around for x number of days, even if they're not needed. That way they can be rebuilt. I can restore from any previous point in time. 03:15 Nikita: Let's talk a bit more about trail files. How do these files grow and what settings can users adjust to manage their storage efficiently? Nick: The trail files grow at about 30% to 35% of the generated redo log data. So if I'm generating 100 gigabytes of redo an hour, then you can expect the trail files to be anywhere from 30 to 35 gigabytes an hour of generated data. And this is if you're replicating everything. Again, GoldenGate's got so many different options. There's so many different ways to use it. In some cases, if you're going to a distributed applications and analytics environment, like a Databricks or a Snowflake, you might want to write more information to the trail file than what's necessary. Maybe I want additional information, such as when this change happened, who the user was that made that change. I can add specific token data. You can also tell GoldenGate to log additional records or additional columns to the trail file that may not have been changed. So I can always say, hey, GoldenGate, replicate and store the entire before and after image of every single row change to your trail file, even if those columns didn't change. And so there's a lot of different ways to do it there. But generally speaking, the default settings, you're looking at about 30% to 35% of the generated redo log value. System swap can fill up quickly. You do want this as a dedicated disk as well. System swap is often used for just handling of the changes, as GoldenGate flushes data from memory down to disk. These are controlled by a couple of parameters. So because GoldenGate is only writing committed activity to the trail file, the log reader inside the database is actually giving GoldenGate not only committed activity but uncommitted activity, too. And this is so it can stay very high speed and very low latency. 05:17 Lois: So, what are the parameters? Nick: There's a cache manager overall feature, and there's a cache directory. That directory controls where that data is actually stored, so you can specify the location of the uncommitted transactions. You can also specify the cache size. And there's not only memory settings here, but there's also disk settings. So you can say, hey, once a cache size exceeds a certain memory usage, then start flushing to disk, which is going to be slower. This is for systems that maybe have less memory but more high-speed disk. You can optimize these parameters as necessary. 05:53 Nikita: And how does GoldenGate adjust these parameters? Nick: For most environments, you're just going to leave them alone. They're automatically configured to look at the system memory available on that system and not use it all. And then as soon as necessary, it'll overflow to disk. There's also intelligent settings built within these parameters and within the cache manager itself that if it starts seeing a lull in activity or your traditional OLTP type responses to actually free up the memory that it has allocated. Or if it starts seeing more activity around data warehousing type things where you're doing large transactions, it'll actually hold on to memory a little bit longer. So it kinda learns as it goes through your environment and starts replicating data. 06:37 Lois: Is there anything else you think we should talk about before we move on to installing GoldenGate?  Nick: There's a couple additional things you need to think of with the network as well. So when you're deploying GoldenGate, you definitely want it to use the fastest network.  GoldenGate can also use a reverse proxy, especially important with microservices. Reverse proxy, typically we recommend Nginx. And it allows you to access any of the GoldenGate microservices using a single port.  GoldenGate also needs either host names or IP addresses to do its communication and to ensure the system is available. It does a lot of communication through TCP and IP as well as WSS. And then it also handles firewalls. So you want to make sure that the firewalls are open for ingress and egress for GoldenGate, too. There's a couple of different privileges that GoldenGate needs when you go to install it. You'll want to make sure that GoldenGate has the ability to write to the home where you're installing it. That's kind of obvious, but we need to say it anyways. There's a utility called oggca.sh. That's the GoldenGate Configuration Assistant that allows you to set up your first deployments and manage additional deployments. That needs permissions to write to the directories where you're going to be creating the new deployments. The extract process needs connection and permissions to read the transaction logs or backups. This is not important for Oracle, but for non-Oracle it is. And then we also recommend a dedicated database user for the extract and replicat connections. 08:15 Are you keen to stay ahead in today's fast-paced world? We've got your back! Each quarter, Oracle rolls out game-changing updates to its Fusion Cloud Applications. And to make sure you're always in the know, we offer New Features courses that give you an insider's look at all of the latest advancements. Don't miss out! Head over to mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 08:41 Nikita: Welcome back! So Nick, how do we get started with the installation?  Nick: So when we go to the install, the first thing you're going to do is go ahead and go to Oracle's website and download the software. Because of the way that GoldenGate works, there's only a couple moving parts. You saw the microservices. There's five or six of them. You have your extract, your replicat, your distribution service, trail files. There's not a lot of moving components. So if something does go wrong, usually it affects multiple customers. And so it's very important that when you go to install GoldenGate, you're using the most recent bundle patch. And you can find this within My Oracle Support. It's not always available directly from OTN or from the Oracle e-delivery website. You can still get them there, but we really want people going to My Oracle Support to download the most recent version. There's a couple of environment variables and certificates that you'll set up as well. And then you'll run the Configuration Assistant to create your deployments.  09:44 Lois: Thanks, Nick, for taking us though the installation of GoldenGate. Because these are highly UI-driven topics, we recommend that you take a deep dive into the GoldenGate 23ai Fundamentals course, available on mylearn.oracle.com. Nikita: In our next episode, we'll talk about the Extract process. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham… Lois: And Lois Houston signing off! 10:08 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.

This episode is all about the emotional side of investing during market turmoil, especially the conversations (or arguments) happening at kitchen tables right now.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Speaker 1: This episode is all about the emotional side of investing during market turmoil, especially the conversations that might be happening around kitchen tables all across America right now. Let's get into it this week here on Retirement Planning Redefined.   Welcome into the podcast, where we're going to talk about talking to your spouse or loved one about market crashes and fears. If you're sitting around the dinner table and stressing out about the stuff we've been seeing over the past few weeks, it's been a volatile March and April. It's maybe worthwhile to have a chat about how do you go about that, because obviously when it comes to dealing with money and talking about money, that's sometimes where families and relationships struggle. This week, the guys are going to help us break it down from things they say from their clients, maybe their own personal perspective and mine as well, as we have this conversation.   What's going on, John? How are you doing, buddy?   John: Doing good. Just found an electric fireplace.   Speaker 1: Oh, nice, nice.   John: For my remodel. I can't wait to have it installed.   Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, we got one of those as well when we did ours. Nice, very good. Works well. My wife's always got that thing on. I'm like, "Really?"   John: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Even when it's warm. I'm like, "You're killing me." Well, hey, there you go. Couples and spouses already over the fireplace, we haven't even got to the money yet.   What about you, Nick? How are you doing, buddy?   Nick: Good, good. Staying busy.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, let's dive into this since you're about to have this situation start to prop up because you've got some nuptials coming soon. Again, congratulations on that.   I got a few questions I just want to run through. Feel free to drop in some real life scenarios that you've seen from your own life, or clients, or whatever you guys want to share when it comes to this. It's an important question, because I so many advisors like yourselves say, "Hey, when you're building a retirement plan and a strategy, make sure both people are involved so that you understand what you've got and what you're into." Even if it's not your thing, that way everybody just feels like they're on solid ground when it comes to knowing what's happening.   How do you deal with that? As a married couple or in a relationship, how do you deal with market downturns? Because when you start seeing your accounts go down, you start to freak out a little bit. Is it a good idea to talk about that, guys? Or do you think that should be saved for talking, Nick, like in front of you guys, where you're there as a mediator kind of thing?   Nick: I think the number one most important part is that people actually start to have the conversation.   Speaker 1: Just talk, right?   Nick: Yeah, just talk. There's a reason that, I would say from the standpoint of therapy, 50% of the stress probably comes from guidance and 50% just comes from getting it out kind of thing.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: The act of literally just talking and trying to get on the same page I think tends to be helpful. The reality is most couples with many things, the way that they approach a decision, the way that they feel about something that's happening tends to be different. It's pretty rare that they're both the same.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: John and I talking about that quite a bit with clients, where many of our clients, we'll work as a team. In a lot of ways, we feel like it benefits us because we have similarities and differences just like couples do. Often times, we can pick up on more information because of that.   I think having the conversation to get a baseline of how they're feeling about the direction of things. Then, really, I do think it is important to reach out to their advisor and get an idea, a better idea of what's going on. Because the other part about that is that the phase of life that they're in really has a significant impact on how much they could be impacted. We've got clients that are working and just saving, they're often times feeling less concern. Those that are approaching retirement or very early on in retirement, they're probably the ones that are the most freaked out. Those that have been retired for a little bit longer have gotten a better feeling of it and I would say are a little bit more stable when it comes to this sort of thing. Just really getting on the same page is important.   Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. John, to expand on that, what's each person's natural reaction to financial stress? The two top things that couples fight about is money and in the bedroom, and love. Do you fight, do you flight, freeze, freak out? When you start seeing your accounts drop, are you thinking, "Hey, my dream is fading away?" How do you react to that can go a long way into how you deal with that financial stress.   John: Everyone's personality is different. Everything you just listed there, Nick and I have seen it across the board.   Speaker 1: Oh, sure. Yeah.   John: I definitely say if someone's reaction is to fight over something, it's definitely a good time to do a check with your advisor to avoid those unnecessary fights about it. Everyone reacts differently. It's good to have conversations. Back to what we were saying, just having the plan reflect how is this actually affecting your situation. Once you see that, that might actually take some of the stress away to help you make better decisions.   Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because to that point, Nick, number three is that no matter what you do, whether you fight, flight, freeze, or freak out, is it because you don't know the longterm plan or you're not on the same page? Typically, the panic comes in when you don't realize what's going on, especially if one person is leading the financial charge and the other one is just along for the ride because it's not their thing or they don't care about paying that much attention to it. But then, in these times of turmoil, now they want to pay attention and now they're freaking out because they don't really understand the plan or they don't know it at all. That's the importance of both people working together.   Nick: For sure. I think over time, we realized that when people are uncertain or they don't understand something, that leads to anxiety. And the anxiety builds up and then blows, and that leads to the freak-out factor or fighting between each other, or things like that. We've got clients who have told me one spouse can tell when the other spouse is really freaking out. They're not the personality to say something, but they become ornery or short.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: It's like, "Okay, I knew it was time to reach out so that we can have a conversation about this."   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: That absolutely is something that makes a lot of sense. Having that plan to be your guide and stay on path is super important.   One of the things that we tend to tell clients over time is, and this is really playing out, where the reality is there's a lot of people, for the last 10-plus years, that have been very heavily invested in the Magnificent Seven, or heavy in tech, and all that kind of thing. It's been a safe haven and out-performed almost everything and pulled the market. Now we've got a little bit of a cycling out of that and it seems like things are shifting a little bit more to diversification is important, that sort of thing.   One of the things that we'll tend to say to clients, at all times, you should have something in your strategy that you're very happy about having and something that maybe you're not so happy about having. When markets are going really good, you hate that maybe you've got six, 12 months in cash that's not getting a ton of return. But when markets are going bad, you're really, really happy that you have that six to 12 months in cash for different things. All those things go together to try to help stay on the same page and go back to your plan.   Speaker 1: Yeah. With headlines and internet stuff, and everything like that, it's really easy to get sucked into reactionary moments, John. How do you balance facts with feelings? That's one of the biggest things that we're dealing with. Money and feelings go hand-in-hand. How do you balance the facts in? If you're a couple at home, any thoughts or advice for folks? I know we talked a couple of weeks ago about not doom-scrolling and turning the TV off.   John: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Aside from that, what's some other ways to maybe balance the facts?   John: Yeah. I think it's ultimately looking at your situation, not just what a particular stock or index is doing that day. Like I said, last week, when someone was a little nervous and when we looked at their year-to-date return it was like, "Oh, that's not bad." It's like, "No, it's not bad. This doesn't affect you whatsoever, you can go ahead and travel." It's like, "All right, good to know that."   I think it's always going back to your personal situation, and how does it affect you, and how can you adapt. And in some situations, how can you take advantage of what's happening currently? Is there something you could do that would actually be beneficial to your overall over the next two or three years, or overall throughout your whole strategy?   Speaker 1: Good point. Yeah, definitely. You've got to get some facts in this situation because again, so many people just see the headlines, they run with it. They assume that's what's happening to them, and it may not be at all.   I guess the final piece here is, Nick, does that play back to have you talked with one another about your-   Nick: Sorry to cut you off.   Speaker 1: No, that's fine.   Nick: I'll give you one example of this. This was what the news will do to people. I have one client who's very risk averse and is concerned about the markets. It was good she checked in because she was getting pretty upset over what was happening. When we checked in it was, "Hey, everything you have is in fixed income." It was, "There's really not much risk." She was like, "Oh, it's just this news, I'm watching it, and it's all this stuff." It's like, "No, you're in really good shape. Nothing is affected." But again, it's just a matter of knowing the facts for her situation. Not everyone's like, obviously.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: She's extremely risk averse. It was good that she's in the right asset allocation based on her risk tolerance, because she wouldn't be able to handle what's happening right now.   Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hilarious. I'm glad that she got that sorted out too, so that she didn't have to stress. Nick, I was getting ready to ask you that. Is it time for you and your loved one, you and your spouse, to talk about your risk tolerance? Do you assume you're on the same page, are you on the same page? Or does your advisor even know what your risk tolerance is? Have you gone through and updated that stuff and had those pulse checks?   Nick: Yeah, it's really interesting because we'll have clients, for example, clients that are still working. Depending upon their personalities, I have a lot of clients that, if it's a couple, one person picks their own 401K investments, the other person picks their own 401K investments. Sometimes they might compare or look, and they'll pick their investments based upon ... These are, often times, people that, when they come in before they become clients, pick based upon what their own set of fact that they're using and all that sort of thing. When they shift to the phase of, okay, maybe retire, and now they're making more decisions together and trying to get on the same page.   Where we'll literally have situations where it's like, okay, say it's a couple, he's got his rollover into an IRA, she's got her rollover into an IRA, and then they have a joint account. The joint account's invested completely differently than either of the IRAs because they have to come to an agreement on it. It's interesting, the dynamics of how that works and how they slowly have to get on the same page often times. But having that conversation, those I would say that are more advanced at having those conversations earlier on, definitely end up in a better position.   Speaker 1: Yeah. At the end of the day, guys, it all comes down to conversations and chatting with one another, and being honest, about what you need to do. Especially with you and your loved one, if you're thinking that your retirement or your financial dreams are dissipating, well, A, are you on the same page with each other? And B, are you on the same page with your advisor and do they know that? It's important to sit down, have a conversation, have a chat. Reach out to your advisor, especially in these times.   I saw a line the other day, I don't know if I'll remember it exactly what it is. It was like, "Advisors, you're really earning your keep in times like these. This is when discipline and consistency beats brilliance." You're not trying to time the market and things of that nature, because there's always going to be these ups and downs. It's having a good, consistent plan to help you get to and through all kinds of different environments that are going to happen if you're retired 20, 25, 30, 35 years.   Get yourself a plan, get yourself a strategy. Reach out to John and Nick today at pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com, to get started on your situation or to tweak your situation and dive into that process with the guys. You can reach out to them at 813-286-7776. Or again, find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to us on the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or whatever platform you like using. We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick.

Ever wonder what other people talk about with their financial advisors? A new survey of nearly 400 experienced advisors reveals the biggest concerns, challenges, and financial goals their clients are facing today. From retirement planning to healthcare costs to working longer than expected, we're breaking down the key takeaways and how they compare to what we see in our own client conversations.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Marc: Ever wonder what people are talking about with their financial advisors? Well this week on the show we're going to discuss a new survey of nearly 400 experienced advisors revealing the biggest concerns, challenges, and financial goals that their clients are facing. We'll see how that compares with what the guys see here on the show. Let's get into it this week on Retirement Planning - Redefined.   Welcome to the podcast, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with John and Nick and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And guys, we're going to share this survey. We'll put a link into the show descriptions as well for folks that want to check it out, but want to run some of this information past you guys and see does that correlate with what you're seeing, do you think it's accurate, not accurate, and just spitball and talk a little bit about some of the stuff out here.   The survey was done of nearly 400 experienced advisors all with around 20 years or more of a business, practicing business, so interesting. They didn't really say exactly the age bracket of all the people they were talking to, so there could be some folks that are not necessarily retirement age. They could be younger as well as older, but I want to run down some of this stuff and just get your guys' take on it.   How you doing this week, John?   John: I'm doing well. Daylight savings is messing with me a little bit, but I'm adjusting pretty well. And one of my kids, actually both my kids, they're testing for an honor belt in karate.   Marc: Oh, nice.   John: So they're excited.   Marc: They're going to whoop on you. Be careful.   John: It's funny you say that. They're running around the house kicking me now. It's like I wanted to get them into some self-defense stuff, but now I'm getting kicked.   Marc: So now you got to walk around with some pads on.   John: Pretty much.   Marc: Make sure you're not getting beat up too much. Very cool. Well watch the shins, man. They'll get you in the shins.   Nick, how you doing, buddy?   Nick: Good. We're staying busy.   Marc: He's like, "Good." Well, let's break this down a little bit, guys.   John: That's the sound of a guy that's in the middle of planning a wedding.   Marc: Right? That's what I was just thinking. He's like, "I got to make another decision. I don't want to make a decision." Let's jump into this and we'll see if we can make this easy for you this week, Nick.   So seeking out a financial advisor, the first part of this survey, advisors in the survey said 52% of their clients have sought out financial advisors to help with the retirement planning. About 34% surveyed were just looking for somebody to build wealth with. And in an era where everybody can call themselves a financial advisor, does that strike you as interesting? What do you guys think about that, 52% looking for retirement planning versus 34 just looking for some sort of wealth building, whoever wants to start?   John: Yeah, those numbers seem accurate to me. Well, I guess I'm a little surprised it's not more looking for help with retirement planning.   Marc: Okay.   John: I'd say the majority of our clients are retirement planning based, "Hey, I want to make sure my plan's good. I want to make sure I don't outlive my money." As far as building wealth, that does come up quite a bit, and Nick will jump in as well, but I'd say most of our clients are looking for retirement planning and just making sure they're on track and making sure that they're making the right decisions.   Marc: And it's two different mindsets too, right, Nick? I mean, so you need to decide what it is that you're looking for. I mean, not to say that you couldn't work with a retirement planner who also can help you with some of the wealth building, but it is a different skillset as well. If you're just looking for someone only to help you build the wealth, that's a little bit easier, I would think.   Nick: Yeah, and I would almost, if I were to say maybe put that in other words, we talk with people at the three phases of money as far as their life goes are accumulation or growth, distribution, taking their money in retirement and then transfer when they leave money. And so I would say from that initial, that wealth building, that's most likely accumulation focused. And because so many people accumulate their money while working in their 401(k)s and that kind of thing, I think it tends to be a little bit of a different conversation and it's those people that as you get closer to retirement. So without having ages, it does make it, the numbers are interesting, and I agree with John, I would've thought maybe it'd be a little bit higher from the standpoint of the retirement planning side, but-   Marc: Well, I mean, if you're just trying to grow the money, again the market's been, obviously we haven't had a prolonged downturn, and it's been choppy here lately, but we haven't had a prolonged downturn since '08, '09, so there's a lot of information out there about saying it's a little bit easier to build the wealth. But the preservation stage, which retirement is a little bit more complicated. There's more things going on than just the portfolio.   But with that in mind, check this out. Over half of the survey of financial advisors said the average client asset minimum was 760,000. I found that to be good. I know different areas are going to be more or less depending on the economic state of the area, but when you often hear that people aren't doing a very good job saving for their retirement future, three quarters of a million dollars is not bad.   Nick: It's definitely interesting to see the numbers and how they've changed over the last five to seven years where, and you mentioned it earlier where we've had a long prolonged period of time with the market going up, and so there's quite a bit of people meeting with us or ending up with more money than they had thought that they would or that sort of thing. There's a little bit of concern with that that only lasts for so long and that there's some correction and all that kind of stuff to happen. But absolutely, definitely that puts most people in the wheelhouse of where they need to be to have a successful retirement.   Marc: I mean, it's not bad. John, do you guys have a minimum? I mean, I know different advisor firms do different things. You can't service everybody. There's only so many hours in a day. So you'll hear something where somebody says, "Well, we work with people with 250,000 who have saved or more in assets," or some or a million or whatever. Do you guys have a breakdown?   Nick: We don't have a set minimum that we advertise or market.   Marc: Okay.   Nick: I would say that the majority of the people that meet with us tend to have what many institutions have as their minimum. So in other words, a lot of places will tell people, like you referred to that, they're looking to work with clients that have 250,000 or more just from an efficiency standpoint of trying to make sure that they can service their clients and that sort of thing, and so we end up above that with most clients. But the reality is, is that the conversations that we have with clients are really we don't keep that rule set in stone because for us, it's more of a relationship-based.   Marc: Individually based kind of thing? Okay.   Nick: Yeah, and really it's something we're looking for people that are serious about planning. I would say if you were to draw a line between what we were talking about earlier where a growth or retirement planning in a more broadly focused strategy, so they're focused on that. They're serious about it. We reference like, "Hey, we don't want to convince you that you needed an advisor. We want you to know that you need one and we want to interview for the job," kind of concept.   Marc: No, that makes sense because I mean if you're giving suggestions and someone's not willing to take them, you're just wasting each other's time versus... Yeah.   Nick: Exactly, and we found that that'll waste more time than in theory working with somebody that maybe isn't where they're going to be yet. And also-   Marc: It needs to be a reciprocal relationship.   Nick: For sure. Communication's super important for us because we've also found that we've had people come in that maybe are under that 250, but their parents are wealthy and they ended up being a teacher or something that maybe didn't allow them to save as much money as some sorts of jobs, and they're going to inherit money and they need assistance that way. So I'd say we're pretty comfortable with our process and how we approach that sort of thing and really look for it on a relationship basis, communication basis, and how we all get along.   Marc: That makes sense. And it's got to be a two-way street. I mean, when we do the podcast, it's not designed to turn every listener into a client if they're not already a client, but it is designed to say, "Hey, if it's the right relationship field going both ways, then we're happy to help if we can." That's pretty cool. So that's a good way of looking at that.   John, check out some of these top concerns. Let me know what you think here. So no surprise, number one, outliving their assets, 38% of the people surveyed. That's pretty much always number one, right? Outliving your money.   John: Yeah.   Marc: 31%, generating reliable income streams, a pretty high number as well.   John: Yes.   Marc: Okay. Then it drops off to a pretty stark, down to 12% for a future stock market crash. Now with some context here, this survey was completed at the end of last year, so it was December of '24. Do you think that number's gone up recently?   John: I would willing to bet that number's gone up. I think we were talking about the market, the last real big downturn was '08, and I think in the last 10 years, we've only had two years of the market being down, the S&P 500. I think it was, what, '22 and 2014, I believe.   Nick: I'd almost say that's a leading indicator that there's going to be, it's one of those things. Once people get that comfortable, that's usually when it comes.   Marc: I mean, it's been a while, right? So because nobody's worried about it whenever it's riding high. We only seem to worry about it whenever we're in the middle of it falling a little bit. But the one that really surprises me is all the way down to 8% for healthcare costs. Now if you guys are focused more on helping people with retirement planning and strategies, that to me, again depending on the ages of the people that answered this survey, healthcare costs at 8% seems awfully low because it's pretty costly, and we need to be having those conversations when we're, especially as we're getting older.   John: Yeah, for sure. This one, it is very important, and I think it's same thing we're talking about the stock market where it's been doing well. And when you're healthy-   Marc: It's great.   John: ...you think you're going to be healthy for a long time.   Marc: You don't think about it. Right, exactly.   John: You don't think about it all. It's back of your mind. I'll tell you where we see a lot of people concerned about it is if they had to do some care for their parents. Then it becomes top of mind of like, "Hey, this was a lot that I just went through." And taking care of them or seeing, whatever, if they have to go into a facility, and then in turn that's where we see the most of our clients that are concerned about healthcare costs is if they had to take care of a loved one.   Marc: Nick, according to the survey on that topic, advisors that were surveyed in this, were saying that clients should be more concerned about healthcare costs at around 54% unanticipated healthcare cost. Will you agree with that as well? Because I mean, obviously it comes out of the blue, it can totally derail the whole strategy.   Nick: Yeah, I think part of that is, from an advisor perspective, the whole concept of long-term care, obviously I'd say many advisors have a good grasp on long-term care, but I think it's become increasingly difficult for advisors to help clients plan for that with insurance or certain products that are out there. If we went back 10 years and from, let's just call it 2015 back through maybe 2005, that was the golden era per se for clients to be able to secure a reasonably priced policy from a long-term care perspective. So I think maybe that ties into the concern that advisors have is that at the end of the day it's a really expensive problem that clients can have, but it's also an expensive solution that a lot of clients are reticent to spend on something that may not be an issue, especially in a state like Florida where all of the insurance, people have serious insurance fatigue here.   Marc: Oh, I'm sure.   Nick: So it's a funny thing. The one time I actually answered a soliciting call earlier this morning was from State Farm calling me to, and they asked me if they could shop my car insurance for me, and I said, "Sure, let's try it." And sure enough, it was going to be $1,400 a year more than what I'm currently paying.   Marc: Thanks for the help.   Nick: And she laughed too, and she's like, "Well, can I call you in six months?" I was like, "You can try."   Marc: You can try.   Nick: I don't think you guys are going to come down that much. And so it's just crazy with what people are paying here. And so I think, long story short, I think that really ties into it as well for advisors.   Marc: And I'll hit you with this last one, John. I'll let you start and then I'll let Nick jump in if he wants to. And again, this survey was completed at the end of last year, so you can't take the current market downturn into this conversation. But according to the survey, an average of 63% of clients age 55 or older intended to work to 65 and beyond. 63% of people wanted to continue working up to 65 or beyond, yet only 30% of those clients are actually still doing it. So I guess my question is, does this surprise you that people want to keep working longer? And if so, what are some of the main reasons why you guys are seeing people want to work into their older ages?   John: It doesn't surprise me. I think with the shift really since COVID of being able to work remote, I've seen a lot of people that sit there now thinking like, hey, I work from home. I can travel still and log in. And it's given them a comfort of just saying, yeah, I'm making good money. I can continue to do this.   Marc: Feather than nest some more, right?   John: Yeah, so it's just building up the nest egg and allows them maybe to feel comfortable doing some more travel that they otherwise maybe wouldn't have felt so comfortable doing. We talked about the fears of outliving your assets, so I've seen a lot of that. And then there's a lot of studies out there saying, just keeping sharp of mind. So I've seen that where people are like, "Hey, I don't want to retire because I want to stay active. I want to have a purpose and continue to do things." So I think I'm not surprised by that number.   Marc: Interesting.   John: Because we're having more conversations of people wanting to work longer because they enjoy what they're doing. And with Zoom, it's become very easy to continue to work longer.   Marc: Well Nick, I'll give you this last piece here. 48% of those people feel like they don't have enough saved to live on through retirement. I mean, you're talking about half. So half of the people surveyed don't think they have enough, so that sounds like it just comes back to just not truly having a plan or even really knowing what it is that you've got. They've probably never sat down and really pulled this stuff together so they don't feel confident.   Nick: Correct. I think you nailed it there. The uncertainty of not having a plan and not knowing and understanding what things look like really oftentimes causes procrastination, and then all of a sudden it's 5, 7, 10 years later and there could have been a couple of small tweaks or a couple of small adjustments. I mean, in reality, there's been so many times when within 30 minutes if John and I meeting with somebody the initial time, we can tell three to five things that they could do that wouldn't have a significant impact on their life, but would have a significant impact from a positive perspective on their overall planning. And so whether it's informing themselves and holding themselves accountable or working with an advisor, which we have found, and there's been a ton of studies that have found that having that partner to help guide them through the decision-making process, that there's significant value there and the average rates of return and all that kind of stuff show that because of the decision-making.   Marc: Well, think about what you're going through with the wedding planning stuff. So there was a thing a couple years ago we were talking about, some of the most stressful events we can do in life, one of them was planning for a wedding. One of them was planning for retirement, right?   Nick: Yeah.   Marc: There's a lot of decisions to be made. And so having somebody to lean on I think goes a long way into removing some of that stress because it does get overwhelming. And at some points you're just like, ah, screw it. I don't even know what to do anymore. So being able to talk with guys like yourselves and say, "Okay, look. Here's some thoughts we had," or, "Here's what we were afraid of," or whatever the case is, it gives you that sounding board to bounce some ideas off of and maybe get some reassurance.   Nick: Yep, fully agree.   Marc: Yeah, and so are you having that same problem from the wedding standpoint?   Nick: Right now we're interviewing planners-   Marc: There you go.   Nick: ...and the prices have gone up, so it's-   Marc: But you're looking for help, right, because it's a lot.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.   Marc: John, you don't want to be the wedding planner?   John: No, no. I did that 12 years ago-   Marc: I got you.   John: ...and I want no part of that.   Marc: I got you. Well, all right, guys, good conversation as always. Thanks so much for hanging out. So at the end of the day, I mean you find these surveys are pretty interesting. And I think a lot of this stuff comes back fairly similar each time, is that people are looking for some assurance. They're looking for some clarity in some of these situations, so that's the point of running through the planning process is finding out what do you got, where do you stand and how's it working for you, and do you need to make some changes?   Often people feel like we're going to have to do some major overhaul, and it scares them. But a lot of times when you run through the planning process, many people are in better shape than they realize. You just need some tweaks here and there. So if you want to have those conversations for yourself, reach out to John and Nick and get started today at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Get yourself onto the calendar for a consultation and a conversation.   And don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple or Spotify, whatever podcasting app you like using. Retirement Planning - Redefined is the name of the show with John and Nick, and we'll see you next time here on the program. Thanks, guys. Take care of yourself.

Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. Listen to this episode where we'll explore why it's so important for couples to have detailed conversations about their finances and retirement futures. We'll cover exactly what you need to discuss, and how to handle any disagreements.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Mark: Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. So check into this episode where we explore why it's important for couples to have detailed conversations about not only their finance, but their retirement futures and their dreams, this week on Retirement Planning, Redefined.   What's going on? Welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John, Nick, and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And we're going to go to couples therapy this week here on the podcast a little bit, or maybe we'll make it more manly, I guess, and call it a team sport.   However you want to look at it, you want to be on the same page with your spouse, with your loved one when it comes to retirement. I wanted to talk a little bit about that this week, guys, to see how many people generally are on the same page by the time they sit down with professionals like yourselves, financial professionals, or if it's happening a lot in real time, right in front of you. So we'll get into it this week.   What's going on, John? How are you bud?   John: Hey, I'm doing good. How are you?   Mark: Doing pretty good, hanging in there. Looking forward to chatting about this a little bit.   Nick, I hope you're well.   Nick: All good.   Mark: All good as usual. Well, that's very good.   Nick: Good start to the season for the bills, so I'm happy.   Mark: All right, well there you go.   Nick: It's early. It's early, but...   Mark: My lions, my lions are all right for right now. We'll see. I don't have a lot of hope. 40 years doesn't bode well when you have one good season in 40 years, but we'll see.   Nick: I get it, [inaudible 00:01:33].   Mark: All right, so let's dive into this couple stuff here. Why is it important for couples to work together on their retirement plan? I mean, you come in, somebody sits down for the first time with you guys for a consultation, and they're just not even remotely on the same page. That's got to be a bit more problematic, yeah?   Nick: Yeah. Not being remotely on the same page is tricky. I would almost say we probably, at least for John and I, we probably don't run into it too much where they're completely on separate pages.   Mark: Well, that's good.   Nick: I would say that there tend to be different ways that they think about money and kind of communicate about money. To be honest, that's one of the reasons that I would say that John and I like working together as a team with clients is because oftentimes one of us will kind of pick up more on the vibe that one of the people in the relationship is on, and then vice versa the other way around.   And so I'd say it's pretty rare that people in a couple tend to think about finances the same way. Even though they might end up having similar goals on the backside, they kind of attack it a little bit differently. And really it's, I think we joke sometimes, I think at this point we're 80% therapist, 20% financial advisors.   Mark: Right.   Nick: And really it's just trying to get people closer to the same page, and realizing that a lot of the things that they're talking about are pretty similar and they're just going about different ways to attack that.   Mark: Well, John, to expand on that, when somebody sits down for the first time, do you guys, if they haven't really discussed some of those big issues, is it important that they maybe try to knock some of that out before they come in to see an advisor? Or does it not really matter as long as it's getting done?   John: Yeah, I don't think it really matters. I think sometimes they're not even really sure exactly what to be knocking out prior. So to delay meeting with someone just to try to figure out, "Hey, are we on the same page?", I don't think makes sense. I think what tends to happen in our meetings is we'll ask some questions that kind of get them thinking a little differently. Like, "Oh, I didn't think about that." And ultimately, I think what we do when we do our planning, they tend to have some things come out and then they tend to kind of understand where the other one's coming from and that kind of lines up.   Mark: Yeah. Well, I mean, I talk to advisors all across the country and I certainly hear stories often about people saying, one person will say something and the spouse will go, "Since when? I never heard of that."   Nick: It definitely happens sometimes for sure. I would say almost that tends to be more on the lifestyle side of things.   Mark: Okay, all right.   Nick: Versus almost purely financial.   Mark: Like "I want to go scuba diving in every major ocean or something." And the other one's like, "What?"   Nick: Yeah, when the husband pulls, "I want to drive across country in the RV" card, that's where I've seen a lot of the sideway looks where... My parents are a good example, it's like my dad doesn't like to drive to Publix, but then he said he wanted to drive-   Mark: Across the nation.   Nick: ... In an RV, because that's going to be more relaxing. And I remind him that a thousand miles is a lot worse than five. So there's things like that absolutely. How to spend that time, or even just the extra time together. I've almost seen it where it tends to be a little bit of a smoother process for couples when one person retires first, and maybe there's a year or two lag, where they kind of have a little bit of a staggering on spending an extra 50 hours a week together, which can be a little bit of a shock.   Mark: Sure, yeah, it's a totally different animal. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, a totally different ballgame. So I would say from at least my experience with clients, it tends to be more in the lifestyle side of things. What I've seen most often with couples are it's rare that it's a 50/50 input on finances.   A lot of times I'll see it where one person might be a little bit more strategic on expenses, and then the other one might be a little bit more focused on the actual investments, things like that. But they end up being kind of having the same goal or outlook, but the lifestyle and how they're going to spend their time in retirement and how much they're willing to spend to do those sorts of things tends to be a little bit different.   Mark: All right, John, well let me throw this one your way. So my wife and I are not usually on the same page when it comes to certain different things in a relationship, like most couples. And when it comes to risk, we are completely different.   So how can couples navigate if they are in different places risk-wise? Because let's be honest, I mean the statistics are what they are. Typically, us fellas tend to want to take a little bit more risk, and a lot of times the ladies tend to want to play it a little safer. Not always, but that's kind of the average.   So how do you guys handle that and what's some advice there?   John: So we'll do risk tolerances for each client when that comes up. And we we'll find that someone, again, might be more aggressive than the other, so maybe their accounts are invested, maybe a moderate where someone else's, the spouse might be invested conservative. So that, having separate accounts makes that a little bit easier.   It becomes more difficult when it's the, a joint account. And what we'll do at that standpoint is we kind of go back to the plan. So a lot of the times it's what type of rate of return are we trying to achieve from the planning standpoint. We kind of have conversations, and we'll try to blend the two of them together.   I'd say for the most part, I don't want to speak for Nick, but he could jump in, have never really had this come up as an issue. It's kind of like, "Hey, this is how you want to do it. This is how this other person wants to do it." And for the most part, the spouses are okay with it as long as they're achieving their goals.   Mark: Interesting.   Nick: For the clients that tend to be, for the ones that have a little bit more of that risk appetite, we found through conversation that they have the risk appetite when things are good.   Mark: Sure. Everybody likes it when it's up, right?   Nick: Yeah, for sure. And not necessarily when things are bad. And so we're big fans of almost having, for lack of a better term, like a petty cash drawer or just kind of a smaller investment account that will carve out. So when there are clients that want to have that higher risk appetite, want to take opportunities to really kind of get some big upside.   Mark: So that's your speculative casino type money, right?   Nick: Yep.   Mark: If you will.   Nick: Yup, yup, exactly. And really too, because I would say the majority of our clients are pretty close to retirement or in retirement, they tend to, at least in our experience, be a little bit over that phase with any sort of larger amounts of money. Oftentimes they come to us and they're like, "All right, we had our fun and we're ready to be a little bit more in line on the risk side of things with the investment decisions that we're making." And oftentimes when we have that conversation of, "Hey, if you get an itch, let's have this off to the side and it'll help you make better decisions with the rest of the money." That tends to be kind of a winner for everybody.   John: No, I was going to say, yeah, that's kind of what we reference sometimes as a cave, this is kind of your play account where you want to buy some individual stocks and things like that, where the fluctuation won't really make a big impact overall on your plan. So as Nick mentioned, that kind of satisfies some of the very aggressive clients.   Mark: Okay. Well, so you mentioned the fact a second ago that a lot of your clients tend to be nearing or into retirement, and with a different demographic comes different feelings and mindsets about money.   So with that in mind, we tend to find that, which is really weird if you think about it this way, a lot of times you tend to find that in couples, going through the life, building of the life, raising the children, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, typically the wife tends to budget the money, handle the money, so on and so forth. She's doing all that stuff in the house. But when it comes to retirement, it tends to seem like us guys tend to take the lead there.   Is it okay for one person to handle all the financial matters? Or do you guys really prefer that both people have a good understanding, even if it's not your bag, do you still prefer them to have a general, I don't know, 10,000 foot view of what's going on?   Nick: Yes. I would say too, more and more that, again, from our experience, and maybe it's our clientele where you've got a lot of households that are both people work, both have retirement accounts, and although they may make some differences from the perspective of risk in their portfolios and stuff like that, it tends to be a collaborative effort. Again, I would say we have, anytime we do planning, we have clients fill out an expense worksheet. It's rare that they both fill it out. It's usually one of the two that are filling out the expense worksheet.   And so it does tend to get kind of broken up a little bit from who focuses on what. But it's definitely important that they're both on the same page and have a good grasp and an understanding. And I would say too is the easiest example of that, and the people that work with us kind of know this is there's one report that we go over with clients, it's like a cashflow. It's in detail, wall of numbers, lots of columns, can be kind of intense. And then there's an area called the decision center, which takes all those columns and it puts it into kind of a graph format and it's more interactive.   And I think that's kind of almost the best illustration of the different sides of the brain where one person in the couple sometimes likes the details and likes the column report and they like to, because they can go in on their client side of the portal and go through that and re-review it. And the other one is, "Hey, let's zoom out. Give me the broader picture. Are we good? Are we not good? Give me an idea of a couple of decisions that we need to make moving forward and let's go from there."   Mark: And there's no right or wrong to either one, it's just what is your personal appetite? But I think neither, like if both of you don't have a good understanding, John, that's a recipe for trouble later on too.   John: Yeah, no, I'd agree with that. It's important for both to at least have an idea of what's happening and working as a team, whether one takes a lead and one takes a backseat, we encourage everyone to have a general understanding. Because this past year has been interesting where I've had some clients have some health issues, pass away. And you got to make sure that both pistons are aware of what's happening because you don't want that situation where it's like, "Hey, I don't know where anything is. What do I do?" So [inaudible 00:11:43].   Mark: That's exactly the point, right? Yeah, that's the worst case scenario. And it often, it happens more times than people realize. So you both want to have a decent understanding, even if it's not your thing. And again, no gender roles there. It tends to be the case, but I mean, my wife is way smarter than I am, and she actually deals with, she's very analytical and deals with money and numbers all the time for work. And it's one of those things where when it comes to our retirement, she's like, "I don't want to deal with it. So you deal with it."   And it could just be as simple as, "I deal with numbers all the time, I don't want to deal with it yet another way." So no matter what it is, you find a way to make it work, but not having a decent understanding of what you have, and why you have it and who to turn to in the event of a catastrophe, is a recipe for disaster. So obviously if you're working with a financial professional and a team like the guys at PFG Private Wealth, then at least you also have that resource to turn to when something does happen like John just mentioned.   So one final question here, I'll let you both kind of jump in and chime in a little bit here. What final piece of advice would you give to couples who are maybe just beginning their retirement planning journey, when it comes to making sure that they both are feeling comfortable?   Nick: I think it depends on what phase they are in life, but in general, I think it's hard to screw it up long-term, if you're saving money. So even if you are very conservatively saving the money and you're not getting much return on your money, that kind of instills an ingrained habit of saving money and being used to living on the rest. That will lead you to better habits and better outcomes.   You can always take the next step in, whether it's working with an advisor, whether it's doing research by yourself and then making better and smarter decisions on how you invest that money that you saved. That tends to be kind of the easier part. But the behavior of saving that money first and then going from there, is the number one thing, I think that's important.   Mark: Okay. That's his advice there. What do you about you, John, what do you think?   John: Yeah, it's really similar. You can never go wrong saving. And it's really just kind of the words that just get started. Just get started saving, just get started planning, get started with any of it. Whether you have kids, you want to make sure that estate documents are in place, insurances are in place.   So depending on what phase, it's just a matter of getting started with the overall planning, and saving is definitely where you want to be the forefront. Because like Nick said, you can't go wrong. You're never going to be mad looking back saying, "Man, I saved way too much for retirement."   Mark: Right, exactly. Taking the forward steps and doing something to quote the rush song, right? If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. So don't make that choice to do nothing. Do something for yourself and your future self and get started today. Make sure that you are planning for retirement and having conversations with your loved ones so that you guys are on the same page.   And of course, as always, if you need some help, make sure that you get onto the calendar with qualified professionals like the team at PFG Private Wealth. You can find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com to get yourself some time on the calendar to sit down with John and Nick and get started today.   This has been Retirement Planning, Redefined. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on whatever major podcasting platform app you like to use. They're on all of them. So you can just type in Retirement Planning, Redefined in the search box, or just go to pfgprivatewealth.com.   We'll sign off for this week. For John and Nick, I'm your host Mark, and we'll catch you next time.

In this episode, we'll explore many of the expenses in your life that might drastically change (one way or another) in retirement. We'll break those expenses down further to see which ones are the top priorities and analyze some of the other factors that impact your cash flow in retirement. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Marc: Welcome back to the podcast. It's Retirement Planning-Redefined, with John and Nick here with me to talk investing, finance, retirement, and mastering retirement cashflow, part one, is going to be the topic today. We're understanding just changing expenses. We're going to break this into really a two-parter here, obviously, by calling it part one. And we'll do a little more focus on some of the other things on the next session. But for today, I want to explore some of the expenses in life and how they just change as we're moving some things ... as we're moving from working into retirement. And things you guys see with your clients and how you work through that process for them. So that's the topic today. Let's get into it. John, first of all, how are you doing, buddy?   John: I'm doing all right. Getting ready for the summertime here.   Marc: If it happens. I don't know what's going on in the south. I'm in North Carolina, and we've had one 90 degree day, and it's almost July. Totally unusual for us, so it's very, very weird.   Nick: Oh, it's hot here.   Marc: Yeah. It's like two states seem to be in a weird spot. I don't know what's going on with the middle of the south here. It's very strange this year. But Nick, I heard you chime in. How are you, my friend?   Nick: Doing pretty good.   Marc: Yeah. So you guys are sweltering, is that what you're saying?   Nick: It's definitely hot, yeah.   Marc: Well, kick a little this way because I don't know what's going on. It should be warmer here than it has been. So, very weird.   Nick: Well, I'll trade.   Marc: Okay. All right. Yeah. Like today, it's ... well, we're getting a ton of rain. Today, taping this podcast, it's 72 for the high, and tonight's overnight low is 58. That doesn't happen usually in North Carolina in late July or late June.   Nick: Yeah. That is pretty surprising. That's cool for North Carolina.   Marc: Very, very weird. So I don't know, Mother Nature is off her meds, I guess. But what can you do? So let's get into this conversation, guys, about changing cash flow, before I keep going down that tangent. I've got a few parts here I want to run through. What are some of the expenses that might drastically change one way or the other, either to saving us money or to costing us more money? Whichever way you guys want to take this, whatever you've seen with your clients. But let's start it off with housing. I think housing is probably the number one expense in retirement. Correct me if I'm wrong there, but what do you think?   Nick: Yeah. I would say for a lot of people that maintain a mortgage past retirement, it's definitely a significant monthly expense. One thing that we are seeing here with the tick up in interest rates over the last 12 months, we had had conversations with multiple clients from 2018 through 2021 about taking advantage of low interest rates and keeping their mortgage and that sort of thing. And for a lot of people, that makes them feel uncomfortable. But to a person, everyone that we've talked to that has done that, now that rates are where they are, they've been pretty happy about that decision and being able to take advantage and lock in those low rates. But for those people that just naturally, with the schedule mortgage that they had, and ended up paying off the mortgage by the time they retired, that drop in expenses is usually a big help. I would say one thing that jumps out that's a reminder that we use for people is ... especially because the homeowner's insurance market here has now gone completely insane. Taxes and insurance don't go away. So I can't tell you how many times we've had a conversation where maybe somebody had a mortgage that was $3,000 a month, and they're like, well, once I retire, that 3,000 a month is going to go away. And we point out, well, hey, about half of that is. The rest of it's for taxes and insurance. So sometimes that drop in expense isn't quite as much as they thought it was going to be.   Marc: Gotcha. Yeah. And it's easy to do, even with downsizing, because the market's been high. So it's not always just lowering things just to go to that downsizing piece. John, what's your thoughts there?   John: Yeah, I would say the downsizing is a big part of it. Not only if you downsize, you might be able to get some equity out of your house there. So if you downsize, buy a two or $300,000 house, you get some cash that you could do something with. But then you start looking at smaller house, less homeowners insurance, less maintenance costs, things like that, it could really be a pretty significant savings. Especially, as Nick mentioned here, with homeowners insurance. I think mine went up like 60 or 70% in a year, which was ... ... I've heard a lot of people. At first, I thought it was just me. And then I talked to some clients, friends, family, and it seemed across the board that it just shot up.   Marc: That's hefty.   Nick: Yeah, there's a lot people that are falling between five and $10,000 a year now. For homeowners insurance down here, it's gone just wild.   Marc: Well, I imagine the big hurricane added a lot to that, right? That's probably part of it. From last year.   Nick: Yeah, yeah.   Marc: Yeah, for sure. Insurance companies are like, we got to recoup some money. How are we going to do that? 60% hikes. All right, no more work stuff. Category two on the changing in expenses. I think we probably assume for the most part that no more work stuff means we're going to save a little bit of money.   John: Yeah. So this is something that when we do planning, we definitely hit on. We have different categories of current expenses and then retirement expenses, and then we actually go one further and we're looking at advanced age expenses. But this is one where you're not commuting anymore, or at least to work. So depending on what your commute was, you could be saving quite a bit on gas, car maintenance expenses, things like that. And then the big one, I know when Nick and I worked in West Shore, was the lunch expense. Where it's like every time for lunch it's like, all right, where are we going? A good excuse to get out of the office and just get a change of scenery, you find you're going out to lunch every day. That does tend to add up quite a bit.   Marc: Oh, yeah. You can spend some dough that way, for sure. So I think in this category, we feel like ... and this one I think maybe drives a lot of people feeling like, oh, I'm going to spend less money in retirement. Right, Nick? I mean, this is one of those things. Well, I'm not doing all those things now, so I'm going to be saving money. But you're also doing more stuff because you don't have to go to work, so you may not save as much as you think.   Nick: Yeah. I would also say too, that this post-COVID work from home shift has prepared a lot more people to have a better idea of the expenses that have changed. We do have a fair amount of clients that used to commute, and no longer do. And so they've gotten a peek into what that looks like. And people are creatures of habit. Inevitably, they develop new things that they do, and usually there's other expenses that replace previous ones, but-   Marc: There's always something, right?   Nick: Yeah. But oftentimes, there are reasonable reductions in some of those work-related expenses.   Marc: Okay. Let's go to healthcare. This one here, this one to me seems like this is not going to be going into the positive. This is not going to be putting money back in our pocket. More than likely, this is going to cost us more.   Nick: Yeah. I mean, for a big chunk of people, especially if they work at a company that has pretty good health benefits, and maybe they haven't had their kids on their plan for a while, so it's just them and a spouse or them solo. Oftentimes, the shift to what we budget for post-age 65 Medicare-related premiums, oftentimes it goes up for people. So we typically budget about $4,000 a year, and we have a more aggressive inflation number that we use on that. Oftentimes, people come in less than that, especially with a high deductible plan, those sorts of things. I just had this conversation the other day with someone, where they were going to have a pretty substantial jump. And they had worked for the same company for a long time, didn't realize-   Marc: You mean a jump in the premiums?   Nick: Yes. Yep. They had worked for the same company for a long time. It was big company and had really good health benefits, and premiums were going to go up. So it can be a little surprising that way. If it's somebody that's shifting more from the perspective of, kids recently got off their plan and they're cutting back on ... maybe went from a regular health plan to a high deductible, those sorts of things. It can be a drop. But honestly, I see it more neutral or go up than I see it go down.   Marc: Yeah, definitely. John, taxes, let me hit you with this one. This is a big misnomer that's been around for years. That when we get to retirement, our taxes are just generally lower because we're not getting a paycheck, we're not making as much. But more times than not, eight out of 10 times people are not in a lower tax bracket.   John: No. Typically, they tend to be in the same, if not, maybe a little bit lower. Because what you're really trying to do when you do planning is you want to keep the person's income where it was while they were working.   Marc: Right. You're trying to fill in the ... you're shortening the short shortfall. You're pulling from our assets to make up the shortfall based on Social Security or if you have a pension or whatever those kinds of things are. So you're trying to keep the numbers basically the same, correct?   John: Exactly, yeah. So we are trying to keep the numbers the same. And we find a lot of people ... I would say we find the majority of people have most of their money in pre-tax accounts. So what you'll find is when you're pulling out of the pre-tax accounts, you're paying taxes on it. So this is really important when it comes to planning, where you ... and we harp on this constantly. It's a matter of setting yourself up to adjust. So maybe if you have some tax-free money, some after-tax dollars in some other accounts, you can really try to eliminate ... or not eliminate. But try to lower what your taxes are going into retirement. And I'll say one thing that happens quite often with clients, and this is only maybe a year or two that we see in retirement, is they just have a couple of years of just massive expenses where ... we just had someone that's purchasing a second home and they need to pull out of their retirement account. And all of a sudden, it's like in that given year, that's going to be a big tax hit. Or it's a health expense. Or I've had other ones where they want to do a remodel on their house and it's like, well, I got to pull money out of my account. And everything is pre-taxed, so they really get ... we see a significant increase in their taxes in those years.   Marc: Yeah. And that's why we want to get tax efficient, if we can. And maybe that's worth looking at, trying to maybe move some money so we don't have that tax time bomb sitting there waiting on us. Some different things. And speaking of actually that, Nick, let's go to the next one here because you can chime in, it fits well with that. Is one of the biggest things we're doing is pumping money, hopefully, especially the last 10 years of working, into our retirement account. Maybe that 401K that John was just talking about. And therefore we're growing those dollars. And that is an expense that goes away once we stop working, we're no longer feeding that.   Nick: Yeah. That deferral is usually the lowest hanging fruit of expenses or cash flow going down.   Marc: Money back in our pocket, kind of thing, right?   Nick: Yeah, exactly. That outflow is usually the biggest drop, especially if it's ... if you're talking a couple that is essentially, maybe they're both maxing out or pretty close to maxing out, they're saving around 25,000. That's $50,000 a year. Granted, that's the money that they're used to living on anyways.   Marc: Yeah. Because we weren't seeing that. When we're working, it's going straight to the paycheck ... or straight to the 401, for example. But now that we're not working, we also don't have the paycheck. So to me, is it truly a savings or is it a wash, because you weren't seeing it before either? You know what I mean?   Nick: Yeah. I think for a lot of people it's a wash. Realistically, in the day-to-day setting and from a lifestyle perspective, it tends to be a bit of a wash.   Marc: Okay. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, it's more of an on-paper reduction, more than anything.   Marc: Makes sense.   Nick: And in theory, when you start ... if you want to nitpick a little bit. The money that you defer into those plans, you still pay payroll taxes on it. So there's a little bit of a savings there. So that's something that can factor in. And one of the changes that fits in with both the tax and retirement things is a lot of times at that point in time, they're no longer claiming kids. Maybe the mortgage is paid off. So from a deduction perspective, there's also a change as well from the standpoint of what they're able to deduct versus what they can deduct in retirement.   Marc: Okay. And so what we're doing is we're talking about these categories here on understanding how our expenses are going to change, whether it's to the plus or to the minus. And then we'll talk a little bit more later on about how that's going to affect us in our overall expenses and some things to cover in ways to be more efficient in that. So let's continue on with a couple more categories here and then we'll wrap it up for this podcast. So we went through housing, work stuff, healthcare, taxes, the retirement savings account when we're no longer feeding the 401 animal. John, so you mentioned earlier travel and leisure, when you were talking about there's different things we're going to spend money on. So if every Saturday is the day I spend the most money, well, guess what retirement is?   John: Every day seems like it's a Saturday.   Marc: It's a bunch of Saturdays, right?   John: Yep.   Marc: It's Groundhog Day.   John: The more time you have, you find yourself trying to fill the gap of what to do. And we see a lot of people that are, if they're like golfing, they tend to be golfing a little bit more. Or fishing or whatever it might be. I'll see-   Marc: But that's the point, right? That's the point of retirement. It's what we're striving for. But I think the scary part is, is if we haven't budgeted for how much we're ... the activity. That's when we can maybe shortfall ourselves.   John: Exactly. Yeah. That's where it's important where you're doing a cashflow analysis for retirement. Like I said, we typically look at retirement expenses. We'll look at what the person does for hobbies and try to estimate, okay, this is what we can expect. And you always want to go over the amount, you never want to go under.   Marc: I was going to ask you that. Yeah. You want to-   John: Yeah, you always want to go over, because-   Marc: ... inflate it a little bit.   John: Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you this ... and my wife doesn't listen to the podcast. When she's at home more, I start to notice my Amazon bill goes up and packages end up at the door. So when there's a lot more downtime, you tend to say, okay, what's out there? Oh, let me go run to the store. Let me go do this real quick. And all those things add up to just added expenses, which fine-   Marc: Yeah. Well, sitting on the computer or the phone, you're just like, I'm bored, I'm not doing anything. Next thing you know, you're on some sort of shopping site because you're like, I was thinking about this or that, or a new set of golf clubs. Right, it's easy to do.   John: Home projects because Pinterest is giving you all these different ideas that you should be doing with your home. So yeah, all those things are up.   Nick: All right, John. This is not a therapy session.   Marc: No, but I mean he's right, though. I mean, it totally ... and people do that.   John: So Marc, that's coming from the single guy right now.   Marc: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And you mentioned, you were talking about projects, DIY projects or Pinterest. We're right in the middle of rebuilding ... I'm building a billiards room here next to my office for the pool table. And it's just, scope-creep has taken over. It's like, oh, I can ... I factored in the budget. I'm like, I could do it for this amount of money. And I'm way over budget. And that's, again, if you're retired ... I'm still working. But if I was retired, that could be a real problem. If I let scope-creep get in there and I'm spending 25% more than I budgeted for this project, that could be an issue. So you want to make sure that you are inflating it, to your point. Puff those numbers up a little bit, just to be on the safe side.   Nick: Oh yeah, big time. I don't think I've seen anybody come in under budget on anything in the last three years.   Marc: Yeah. And that's with professionals, let alone doing it yourself, right?   Nick: For sure.   Marc: Okay. So that's travel and leisure. So the last one here, last category, insurance. Many people, guys, walk into retirement saying, well, I don't need insurance anymore. That's also that old standard, as far as the financial services world. Well, who needs ... why do you need insurance if your kids are grown and you don't have to replace your income because you're not worried about sending them to school. Or all that kind of stuff that you guys have heard probably a million times.   Nick: Yeah. So we'll see ... one of the most common insurances that go away, whether it's at retirement or early in retirement, is life insurance. So we obviously emphasize the fact that a death early on in retirement is the bigger risk, especially if there's outstanding debt, those sorts of things, versus later on in retirement. So sometimes we'll have people that, maybe they've got three to five years left on their term policy and the premiums aren't prohibitive. And we'll just them keep the coverage because there's still a mortgage, or just that additional money if something were to happen would be a big boost to the surviving spouse. But disability definitely goes away because disability insurance, by definition ensures your ability to work. So if you're not working, then you're not insuring anything. So that's something that drops. And then some of these supplemental policies that maybe were provided by the employer, aren't portable and you can't take them with you anyway. So some of those things will drop off. So that's definitely something that can be adjusted and adapted to reduce some of the costs.   Marc: Well, I think for every situation, insurance is one of those questions, John, that goes either way. Some people may not, when you guys are developing and looking through the plan, maybe insurance isn't needed. But then again, maybe it is. Or maybe they're using an insurance policy for the cash value policy side of things or whatever. So this one is one I think could go either direction.   John: It definitely could go either way, it really depends on the individual. And like we were just talking about here, each person, whatever is important to them will dictate whether your insurance is going to be going up or down. That's really what it comes down to is, each individual, what they value and what they want to protect with insurance and what they're ... oh, okay. I'm okay without it.   Marc: Well, and that's a good way to think about what we're going to get into for the next podcast, is really assessing must-haves, nice-to-haves, things of that nature. And then how other aspects in the financial services world could affect those categories we just ran down. So we're going to wrap it up this week. So again, these are just the expenses categories, and some major ones here to think about how they may change to the plus or to the minus with our cash flow in retirement. And we'll be back next week with the second half of this conversation. So do yourself a favor, if you haven't done so yet. Reach out to the team if you don't have a strategy or a plan in place, and get started with a consultation and a conversation for yourself. You can find the guys at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com, where you can get started today on a strategy for yourself. Reach out to John and Nick there. And guys, thanks for hanging out. I'll see you next week ... well, in two weeks on the podcast. Nick, have a good one.   Nick: See you.   Marc: All right, John. Thanks, buddy.   John: Sure.   Marc: And I'll catch you later. We'll see you guys here on retirement Planning-Redefined, with John and Nick.

In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Nick and Taylor return to talk about the retirement plan implementation after the initial process. When you decide to be our client, we ask for all the information needed to open your account with our custodian Charles Schwab.Listen in to learn what the transfer process of your investments from your current custodian to Charles Schwab looks like. You will also learn about the 45-day meeting, which we set up to answer any of your questions, finalize the important parts of the investment strategy, and talk about estate planning.In this episode, find out:Episode #199 - a recap of our retirement planning process.The personal information we need to create a client's account with our custodian Charles Schwab.The transfer process of your investments from another firm to Charles Schwab.How we can replicate your account from another custodian exactly as it was at Charles Schwab.How the transfer process of a company plan differs from an IRA to an IRA transfer.The tax planning process to help you lower your taxable income during your retirement.How Nick communicates with clients throughout the process to ensure everything is set up.The 45-day meeting – answering questions, finalizing the investment strategy, and discussing estate planning.Tweetable Quotes:“Exactly as it was at the other custodian, it can be replicated right at Charles Schwab.”- Nick“For many advisors and us, we don't work for Charles Schwab; we're not connected to them in any kind of financial relationship or dictated by them; they're simply a custodian.”- Radon StancilResources:If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Sometimes a search goes wrong. It'll start with a sense of unease, and only really become apparent after the acquisition, but it can be a stressful, morale-crushing experience when it happens. That's the experience that Nick Bamford had at one point during his own search journey. That case study forms the basis of this important session of the inaugural EtA Forum. Nick – who is now happily running SRO Technology, found himself in a situation with an (eventually) hostile seller and management issues across the board when he took over a business. Analysis and due diligence indicated that the acquisition was worth pursuing. However, when the seller embarked on an extended holiday immediately, Nick was forced to become far too active in the first hundred days, and it became rapidly apparent that there were cultural issues within the business. Ultimately, Nick felt the situation was unsalvageable and decided to exit. Fortunately, the agreement protected him from liability. After a period of reflection, he was able to resume his search journey, eventually finding SRO Technology and now growing that company through acquisition. It's rare to get such an open and frank dialogue as you'll hear in this session. Nick and SMEVentures' Jake Nicholson had a free-flowing conversation that holds back nothing. Consequently, it's essential, both in learning how to identify the red flags that a deal will be challenging, to highlighting the kind of change management mistakes that can occur early into an acquisition. Connect with Jake Nicholson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakenicholson/ Connect with Nick Bamford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/njbamford/ What we discussed: 2:01 Jake and Nick kick off their conversation by discussing the big lessons learned from Nick's search. 3:05 Nick summarises his pre-search background, and what inspired him to start his search. 5:13 Nick describes the company that he eventually found to make an offer on. 7:09 Nick summarises the criteria that made the business an attractive target to make an offer on. 9:46 Structuring the offer – Nick describes how he undertook this from a position of inexperience. 11:18 The seller started to have second thoughts deep into the process. Nick explains where those stemmed from. 12:32 Ultimately the seller pulled out, five months into the process. Nick describes what his next steps were. 14:20 The seller actually then came back, and Nick summarises what happened next as discussions were started again. 15:27 Nick describes the first day in the company after having closed the deal. 16:24 Nick explains the diligence process that led to the closing of the transaction. 17:42 Nick describes his first few weeks after taking over the company. 20:11 Nick describes his first experiences with the management team, with the seller being away. 22:16 Nick also brought some new people in early, and describes the experience of making his first hires. 24:35 Another area where Nick saw the need to improve the business was in the finances, so he describes his first efforts to grapple with that. This, too, ended up producing headaches for him. 28:29 The next challenge that Nick needed to grapple with was a cash crunch. He explains how that occurred and how he responded to it here. 32:35 At this point the seller flagged interest in coming back in to run the operations site of the business, or even take the business back over completely. Nick talks through how he managed this. 34:57 Having decided he needed to exit the business, Nick explains his next steps. 38:36 Nick explains what he did after to recover from the ordeal and get back on track, and how his new company, SRO Technology, is in a very strong position. 44:19 Pete provides a summary and analysis of the session. Quotes: Nick: “One of the big reflections I had from the experience of my first search was, the way that someone behaves during a negotiation is pretty much how they're going to be in business.” Nick: “My mindset during the search was very much that I'm going to run through and I'm going to look at a bunch of deals. If one hits the criteria, I'm going to do that one.” Nick: “The thing about being a seller is that you either spend more time with the business or the kids, but there's an emotional side to ready to let go and retire.” Nick: “I was happy with the due diligence that I did. I was probably a little bit optimistic in terms of what the construction sector was going to be doing. There was a lot of infrastructure at the time, in 2018. And there's a lot of infrastructure being announced. So that pipeline of infrastructure was shooting up and it was going to be a driver behind some of the growth. But overall, I look back at the due diligence and I figure I did a reasonable job.” Nick: “Everyone says keep the deal flow going when you're negotiating, but everyone drops the flow when they've found a solid candidate. K that going when you're already imagining yourself in the CEO role and earning a salary is a really hard thing to do.” Nick: “The seller went on holiday, pretty much straight away. I didn't ask him to not go on holiday, because I put a lot of confidence in his ability to manage the transition. He knew the company, right? He knows the people; he knows the best way to do that. Now I think that actually, that's not the case, and unless a person has handed over a company before and has gone through that transition, they're not necessarily coming from the best place.” Nick: “For me, part of leadership is demonstrating that I'm prepared to do the work and prepared to get dirty. My reflection on that was that it didn't work. All that happened was people in the company just started seeing me as a billable resource.” Nick: “I hired two manager slash salespeople who started about two weeks after me. One of them turned out to be very good, and I would work with him again, maybe I will. The other guy was useless. He was meant to sell stuff. And he hadn't sold a cent. And I fired him 12 weeks into his employment. But during that time, while giving him a chance, these two existing managers were looking at the leeway that these guys were getting, and getting really angry, and I needed to do something about that. So very quickly, I'm faced with the big decisions that you don't want to be making in your first 100 days.” Nick: “The seller will complain bitterly about some of the changes, but you've got your business, you got to pick your course. So, in my case the seller said he'd get this person fired, and he'd committed to the boys. He was like, ‘don't worry, I'll take care of this. I'll tell Nick to fire,' and I said no. I was sticking to my values, which is something I've never regretted doing. But when I said no, the seller was pretty angry, as were the two managers.” Nick: “We ended up at this kind of impasse where there wasn't enough money for me to comfortably run the business, although I could have had a structure in place and Westpac lined up to provide invoice financing.” Nick: “I sat down with a mentor, and the question he asked me was, if you were a third-party investor, if you were outside and you weren't involved, would you pick yourself to run the business? I realised that I was going to lose the two key managers, and didn't have enough cash to keep this thing going, and the relationship with the seller had completely broken down. So when I looked in the mirror and answered that question, I had to say I would if I were invested in a passive investor, I would have picked him to take the business.”

Wouldn't it be nice if you could sleep at night knowing that you don't have to worry about pests in the properties you manage? In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull interviews Nick Drzayich from Cover Pests to learn about dealing with pests in property management. You'll Learn… [02:00] Cover Pest… It's like Insurance for Pest Control [03:59] Dealing with Pests as a Property Manager [07:48] Dealing with the Different Kinds of Pests [13:13] How Partnering with Something Like Cover Pest Works [16:02] Eliminating Having to Figure Out Who is Gonna Pay the Bill [17:15] Using Pest Coverage as a Selling Point for Property Management Tweetables “We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed.” “It's nice for the property manager to have someone else get some eyes on the property every once in a while.” “It's increasing the visibility. It's decreasing some of the potential costs for the owners. It's protecting the owners.” “We go out, and we take care of it.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Nick: We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed and then obviously the property management companies, they don't have to hassle with the back and forth and who's paying the bill.    [00:00:14] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently. Then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.   [00:00:53] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry. Eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.    [00:01:13] Now, let's get into the show and my guest today, I am hanging out here with Nick, and Nick, you got to tell me your last name. I should have asked you before the show.    [00:01:25] Nick: No, that's okay. I tell everybody to just say "does your eye itch?" And that'll about cover it. Okay. It's pronounced (dur zye ich) Drzayich. It's a Serbian name, and it's way too many consonants in a row.    [00:01:37] Jason: Nick Drzayich. All right. From Cover Pest. Cool. And is it Cover Pest or just "Cover?" Website says "cover."    [00:01:45] Nick: Yeah. Cover Pest. Yeah.   [00:01:47] Jason: Cover Pest. Okay, cool. Well Nick, glad to have you on the show. So tell me-- give us a little bit of background. How did you-- and I'll just say for those listening, it says, "pest control solution for property managers," like on your website. So tell me a little bit about Cover Pest, and how did you get into this?    [00:02:04] Nick: Come from an insurance background actually. 13 years or so ago, I started and grew a independent life insurance agency, and so that's kind of been my background. Right. And so within insurance, you're obviously taking a big cost in life insurance. There's a death benefit with other insurances. There's big expenses that come at some point throughout the life of a policy and you're taking the cost of that and you're spreading it out among all the policy owners.    [00:02:34] Jason: Mm-hmm.   [00:02:34] Nick: So kind of with that mindset. I was chatting with my business partner who lives north of me, and he actually runs a pest control company and has for several years. We kind of got to chatting about this combination of life insurance and kind of sharing this cost, spreading the cost out and how you could potentially do that with pest control. And that's how we kind of landed on this idea of using that model to help property management companies take care of their pest control issues, which we know are just a hassle whenever they happen. Yeah. And solve that issue for them and allow them to take that off their plate and add a little bit of revenue in the meantime. Got it. And what areas do you guys cover? Is this a national business? Or is this local? How does this work? Yep. So this is a national business.   [00:03:21] We obviously have the ability to go anywhere in the country. We have, we started it here in our home state of Idaho, which is where we have the bulk of our clients. But ultimately, yeah, we we work with vendors across the country to be able to help take care of the issues that, that property managers are seeing.   [00:03:37] Jason: Cool. So help me understand how this works. Like why would a property manager decide, Hey, I should work with Cover Pest instead of just use some pest control vendors locally and connect with and have these people in as a feather in my cap. What advantages do they have with working with Cover Pest and why would a property manager choose? Or why do they choose to work with you?    [00:03:59] Nick: Yeah. Great question. So. As soon as you mention pest control to a property manager, you're probably going to get just a lot of heartache right there. Whenever an issue comes up, it's technically it's a tenant responsibility. Yeah, but ultimately it's going to come back to the maintenance manager. It's going to come back to the property management company or owner every once in a while. And so they're having to deal with finding a vendor. Vendors got to contact the tenant, get the service done, and then you got to figure out where you're sending the bill, and there's always going to be a fight there. The tenant's not going to want to pay it, the owner doesn't want to pay it, and you, as the property manager, you don't want to pay it either. And the benefit here is that, we work best with companies that have some kind of resident benefit package. So what our service does is it kind of slides right into that resident benefit package, and for a very nominal fee compared to what you would normally pay for pest control, your tenants are able to have all their pest issues covered, and when they need service, they put the request in online-- goes to call. We send a technician out and take care of it. There's no additional cost on top of what that monthly fee is.   [00:05:03] So like I mentioned, we kind of slide in the benefit packages. We also work as a standalone amenity for those that either don't want to put us in a benefit package or don't offer a benefit package.    [00:05:13] Jason: Got it. So what are what are property managers typically bundling in along with Cover Pest in, you know, in addition to Cover Pest in their resident benefits packages that you're seeing?   [00:05:26] Nick: Yeah, so oftentimes we'll see-- a big one is filter service, so furnace filters that are shipped--   [00:05:31] Jason: mm-hmm    [00:05:32] Nick: --every few months. There's a lot of times some kind of a credit building aspect to the benefit package. There's usually some kind of a maintenance, a 24 or seven maintenance benefit that's inside of that package. And then a lot of times there'll be some kind of perks. You get a free maintenance request once a year on something that would normally be charged to you, or you have late fee, late payment protection. Once per year, you can make a late payment and not have to worry about any kind of fees. So those are just some of the things that we're seeing inside of benefit packages along with our service.    [00:06:03] Jason: Got it. And what are you typically seeing property managers charge for this resident benefit package? And I would assume this is something that they're convincing the tenants to buy as a product.   [00:06:15] Nick: Yeah, so ultimately, what we've seen is that the benefit package just rolls right along with the lease agreement. There's not an option there for the tenant to either pay for or not. It just is what it is and you get it. Yep. And they range across the board, right? From, you know, 20 bucks all the way up to 75 plus dollars per month, depending on what's in the package.   [00:06:41] So when we were designing our service to be able to slide into a benefit package, we wanted to be super conscious of increasing that at all right because any increase in a benefit package cost is going to come with some kickback initially. And so there's got to be some good value there. So we had that in mind for sure, but they definitely range. They kind of run the gamut of, you know, pretty cheap all the way up to some pretty expensive packages, depending on what's offered.    [00:07:08] Jason: Got it. Now you said kickback, but I think you mean push back, right?    [00:07:13] Nick: Yeah.   [00:07:13] Jason: Okay. All right. Just making sure. People are like, "is there an affiliate thing going on here?" right. Okay. Yeah. Right. The tenants are going to be a little frustrated if it's too expensive and they're going to say, "Well, why am I being forced to do this? I don't know that I need all that stuff." Okay. So then, can you give us an idea of what this would cost? How do you price this with companies? Is this like on a per unit basis that you work out a deal with the property managers? Are there certain rates? Is this something that they just can do on certain properties that they can convince the owners to buy into? How does that typically work?    [00:07:48] Nick: Yeah. So when we onboard a company. It's pretty much an all or nothing deal. Right. We want to make sure we cover all of their properties regardless of where they're at and if they have current pest issues. We do work individually on a customized basis with each property management company to decide: "all right, what are you seeing typically pest issue wise? What package makes the most sense, and do we need to customize a package to best fit?" So, at a broad level, we have a couple of different packages. One of 'them is more of a basic package that covers the things that don't typically happen a lot, but when they do happen, it's a real hassle.   [00:08:25] So a good example of that would be bed bugs, for example. They don't happen a ton, but when they do, it's a pretty severe cost.   [00:08:32] Jason: Right.   [00:08:33] Nick: Yep. And and then going up from there, our upper package is a little bit more of the common stuff that people call on a regular basis. Your spiders, your ants, wasps, bees, that sort of thing. And so we do have a couple of packages that we work off of, but we do customize with each company and make sure that we're covering what they want and making it specific to them.    [00:08:56] Jason: Got it. I'm sure it differs. Like here in Texas, we have some big bugs and a lot of mosquitoes here in Austin, but yeah, in some markets, I would imagine you've got certain issues that are just typical to that market and then other markets you don't, and it might also have to do with sometimes-- unfortunately might have to do with the class of the property or the area of the property that it's in, how well it's maintained, stuff like that.   [00:09:21] Nick: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, ultimately we don't want the tenants to hesitate to call because that's what normally happens, right? They know that they're responsible for it.    [00:09:30] Jason: Yeah.    [00:09:30] Nick: And so, they don't call and they just kind of sweep it under the rug either literally or figuratively and the pest issue goes untreated and it can get out of hand, and so we want to eliminate that from happening. We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed and then obviously the property management companies, they don't have to hassle with the back and forth and who's paying the bill.   [00:09:57] Jason: So let's make this a little bit real. So let's say you've got a tenant. They've got some pests. I don't know what kind of pests would be a serious issue, but they decide not to call. Give me an example you've heard of, and then it's incurring additional damages that then the owner's going to have to pay for. Can you think of something like that?    [00:10:17] Nick: Well, I can tell you that, for example, like an average bed bug cost to remediate is going to be anywhere between 800 and a thousand bucks.    [00:10:25] Jason: Okay.    [00:10:25] Nick: So right there, you know, our average package is probably around 10 to 12 bucks a month. So if a tenant is paying 10 to 12 bucks a month, they have a bed bug issue, they're paying substantially less than what they would have to pay to have that remediated through just a general pest control company. Those obviously become much bigger issues when you're looking at multi-family situations where units are connected and those bugs can travel. So I've seen that stuff get pretty out of hand, but ultimately we want to get it controlled as, as quickly as we can so that doesn't happen.    [00:11:00] Jason: Yeah. I hate roaches. Really don't like those things like yeah. I remember being in some houses, like some just not really nice areas, like visiting some houses and stuff in upstate New York and high humidity, and there were some units that I went in that had some really nasty infestations with cockroaches and some of them are really freaking tiny. They're just running around all over, so. Yeah, I hate those things.    [00:11:27] Nick: It's rough. It is nice. Yeah. It's nice for the property manager to have someone else get some eyes on the property every once in a while because typically if you're seeing a lot of bugs, there's a reason. The bugs want to eat. And so there's some cleanliness issues there. So it's nice to be able for us to be able to report on what we're seeing and if we're seeing multiple calls on the same property that's a little bit of a red flag to maybe send someone out there to take a look at the property and have a chat with the tenant.   [00:11:52] Jason: Got it. Yeah. So one of the key benefits then is it's giving you greater visibility into some of the problem properties as to what's going on.    [00:12:02] Nick: Yeah, absolutely because we're going to track every time we get a service call, and you're going to see that report as well. So we can both kind of keep eyes on it.   [00:12:09] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. So this is something they can build into, you know, along with their leases as part of their resident benefit package. It's not going to increase their costs. Does this become a profit center in any way for property managers or is this just mitigating costs?    [00:12:26] Nick: Yeah, we've had property managers use it just to kind of mitigate those costs. No additional revenue.    [00:12:32] Jason: Mm-hmm.    [00:12:32] Nick: Most of the companies we work with as with everything in their benefit package, they're going to add some kind of a mark up there or an admin fee just for them for kind of doing the work and yeah and setting up the relationship. So it makes perfect sense, so that's what most of them will do. And it's kind of up to them, how much they mark it up, but yeah, there's definitely an additional kind of profit stream there that can be created through using Cover.    [00:12:54] Jason: Got it. And certainly some advantages to taking greater care of the property. Cool. So what are the big questions besides the ones you've already touched on that when people come to you, they're really curious to know because I'm sure some of our listeners are probably thinking, "Hey, maybe this is a good idea."    [00:13:13] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the main questions I get is how do we roll it out? Yeah. And a couple different ways. Typically what we'll do is it's a kind of a slow rollout and it's upon lease renewal or a new lease creation. So as you're working with a property management company, they have new leases come up. They'll send us that batch for the month. That's renewing and we'll get them added into the service catalog. We have had companies that have gone in and asked their tenants, "Hey, do you want to opt into this right now in the middle of your lease?" and that option is there as well.    [00:13:44] Jason: Have you seen much success with that, with them doing that? What percentage do you see typically? I don't know if you have that data, but...   [00:13:52] Nick: that are opting in?   [00:13:54] Jason: Yeah. If they put it out to all of their residents for opt in, I'm just curious what the typical response rate is that people are like, "yeah. I'll go ahead and do that." Maybe 10%?   [00:14:05] Nick: Yeah. It's not high. Not high--   [00:14:07] Jason: yeah   [00:14:07] Nick: because--    [00:14:08] Jason: I would imagine it's like, "Hey spend more money. Do you want to?" And they're like, " yeah."    [00:14:11] Nick: exactly. Yep.    [00:14:13] Jason: Okay.    [00:14:13] Nick: So most frequently, most commonly, it'll be rolled out as leases are renewed and as new properties or leases are assigned, that's the most common way that it's done.    [00:14:23] Jason: Okay. Got it. So they sign up with you. You've worked out the pricing based on what sort of package they need, you implement, consult them and help them figure out how they're going to roll this out, and they're probably building this into their lease with some verbiage. You typically provide some verbiage for them to add to their lease as part of this.    [00:14:41] Nick: Yep, absolutely. We have some stuff that you can throw in.    [00:14:44] Jason: And then they get this rolled out. So then they've got this new maybe profit center, but at least it's being paid for by somebody. It's increasing the visibility. It's decreasing some of the potential costs for the owners. It's protecting the owners. If something gets really bad it could cause a lot of damage. And I'm curious, like, you've mentioned bed bugs, and I mentioned roaches, but what else are you typically seeing causes a lot of damage? I mean, termites, we hear a lot about. Is this something that is checked for or like relevant?   [00:15:13] Nick: Yeah. wood destroying bugs like termites are a completely different animal.    [00:15:18] Jason: Yeah.   [00:15:18] Nick: That's not honestly a part of what we do. It's another specialty altogether. As far as damage is concerned, mice and rats are another one that are--   [00:15:28] Jason: oh yeah.   [00:15:28] Nick: --they're out there, and we hear about them and we treat for those. Those ones will come in and cause some real issues. If nothing else, just scaring the crap out of people.   [00:15:37] Jason: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And then, you know, safely doing the cleanup because--   [00:15:42] Nick: right.    [00:15:43] Jason: --You know, some issues with some of that stuff, so yeah.    [00:15:46] Nick: Yeah.    [00:15:47] Jason: And so no on termites, but yes, on bed bugs, roaches and mice and and rats. Okay. Got it. Any other questions that property managers might ask that would be curious about your service or that you'd like them to understand or know?   [00:16:02] Nick: Yeah, maybe just to, again point out that sometimes when we go out to do a service the property management company will expect another bill from us or think that there'll be another bill coming, but it's all taken care of. Just in that monthly subscription that's paid for by the tenant. There's no additional fee, no additional cost. We go out and we take care of it. And so that's a common question, common concern. One other one that comes to mind is sometimes they'll be rehabbing a property or making some significant changes to one of their properties and they'll want to stop the service or pause the service. We're definitely open to doing that and have done that. So pausing service during a rehab or big remodel is definitely something we can do. That's one question that has come up in the past as well.    [00:16:44] Jason: Unless they potentially could uncover something in the walls during that room.   [00:16:49] Nick: Right. Right. Yeah. And that's another thing to mention. Yeah. Another thing to mention is the service kind of runs with the address, not necessarily the tenant, so--    [00:16:59] Jason: okay.   [00:16:59] Nick: --if you have a property that maybe sat vacant for a couple months, and you had a maintenance manager out there to check on something and he notice a pest issue. He can just give us a call and we'll go take care of it. Even though there's not a tenant in there, because it kind of runs with the address.    [00:17:15] Jason: Got it. And that justifies including it as part of the rent as well. So if you're saying, "Hey, this. This property, in some instances like in California, like you have to usually pay for lawn care if you want the lawn to be maintained because some people just won't do it sometimes, right? So there's certain things you would include. So this would be included. You could then-- that could be a selling point to the tenants. Like this comes with a resident benefit package where it includes this and this, you won't have to worry about pest control. You won't, and these other things.   [00:17:46] Nick: Yep, exactly.   [00:17:47] Jason: Okay. So potentially as the benefit of helping, sweeten the deal a little bit on a potential rental property for a potential resident, so.   [00:17:55] Nick: For sure. Yeah.    [00:17:57] Jason: Cool. Well, I think we've covered most of the highlights. This sounds like-- it sounds like a no brainer. It sounds like a good service. Let's tell everybody how to get in touch with you and how to find you.   [00:18:10] Nick: Yeah, super easy. Our website is CoverPest.com and you can call me anytime. My number's (208) 477-1330. That's my cell. And you can go on to CoverPest.com, submit a form, and we're happy to chat about creating kind of a custom pricing model for your property management company.    [00:18:29] Jason: Cool. So I want to ask one more question. So when they hear you say, "you'll call my cell" and "here's my number," they might be thinking, is this a scalable business? What if somebody has 10,000 doors or they're a big conglomerate, you know, or they're a small property manager. Is this a scalable model for you? Can you handle different size property management companies?   [00:18:50] Nick: Yeah, what's nice is that our portal, our backend portal that's a part of our website makes it really easy for property management companies to go in and add their properties to their list. So every time they have a backed upload of lease renewals. They go to the service portal, they put it in there and they're added and they can see exactly which properties are covered in that month. And then, yeah, we work with a network of pest control companies that we use as vendors to service accounts that we get with property management companies in different states, if that makes.    [00:19:23] Jason: Got it. So you've got this all figured out really well. I appreciate you coming the show, Nick, and it's been great hearing about Cover Pest. So thanks. Thanks for coming on.    [00:19:33] Nick: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.    [00:19:36] Jason: All right. Cool. So check them out at coverpest.com sounds like a good service. And as always give me your feedback. I want to hear... those of you that work with Cover Pest, let me know how it goes. And those of you that are tuning in for the first time, and you got some value from this episode, or if you're not tuning in for the first time, give us some feedback. If you find us on YouTube, The Google play store, or you find us on Spotify or iTunes, give us some feedback. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. And we may even give you a shout out on a future episode. So we appreciate that. And if you're interested in growing your business, check us out at doorgrow.com, and if you want to join our free community of property management entrepreneurs, you can go to doorgrowclub.com and that will get you to our Facebook group.    [00:20:23] Join that community. We've got some great people in there and you know, a rising tide raises all ships, as they say this will allow you to connect with some other property managers and have a resource you can go to to ask questions. And we'd love to hear from any of you inside there, so make sure you join. And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.   [00:20:49] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!    [00:21:16] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. 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There are plenty of external factors that often negatively influence our chances of having a successful retirement. But often, failure comes from within. On this episode, we'll talk about some of the common ways people get in their own way when it comes to financial planning. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome into another edition of the podcast. It's Retirement Planning Redefined with John, and Nick, and myself. And we're going to talk about the secret to retirement success. Here, it is. Get out of your own way. Typically, we are the success or the reason for failure, one of the two, because we tend to muck up the works ourselves by often injecting our emotions and thoughts into these things. And rightfully so, because that's part of it, which I think, again, we're going to talk about the value of working with a team and some professionals like John and Nick, because we tend to get in our own way. And I think we all realize that we do that in many aspects of life, and certainly money is one of those. What's going on, guys? How you doing this week, Nick? What's up buddy?   Nick: Everything's great. Perfect.   Mark: Yeah. Rock and rolling?   Nick: Yep.   Mark: Feeling good?   Nick: Yep. It's great.   Mark: That's fantastic. John, how you feeling my friend?   John: Doing all right. A little upset over the weekend. The Celtics lost game three to the Miami Heat, but there's another game tonight. So-   Mark: Another chance.   John: Hoping that they could tie up the series.   Mark: There you go. Fantastic. Well...   Nick: Yeah. I'll throw in a good gold [inaudible 00:01:01] lightning, our own fire.   Mark: Okay.   Nick: Free nothing as we record this.   Mark: Nice. Very nice. So what do you think about my statement there, getting out of our own way? There's lots of external factors obviously, that negatively influenced stuff in our retirement world. Right? We can't control the markets, but we can control how we react to them. Do you feel like that's a fairly accurate assessment of finding some keys to success sometimes is, getting out of your own head?   John: Yeah. Yeah. I would 100% agree with that. And we're seeing that right now where the market is, it's down year to date. There's a lot of negative news out there and, there's always negative news out there. But there's a lot of things happening in the world and it's creating a lot of fear. And what that does is it really eats into people's perceptions of what's going on with their portfolios. So naturally what's happening is, hey, when is the bleeding going to stop? Do I need to pull out of the market? Do I need to get more conservative? What should I do? So this is really a period of time where, important to get out of your own way and just stay the course.   Mark: Yeah.   John: And we harp on it quite a bit in all of our podcasts, but this is where the plan is essential, because we've had some reviews and people are nervous and rightfully so. But when they see the plan, it's like, how does this 10% pull back, whatever it is at the time, affect your overall plan? And they look at it and they say, oh, it doesn't really affect that much, just yet.   Mark: Right.   John: And when they see that, it's like, oh, okay, that makes you feel a little bit better. See where I'm at. So yeah, 100%, stay the course and definitely get out of your own way so you make good decisions.   Mark: And I think if we're talking with the market being the first one on the list, fear and greed, that's the normal stuff, jumping in and jumping out. And we tend to feel like it's the only thing we can do are these two things anyway. A lot of people, we're going to touch on that in a minute as well, but often it's well, all I can do is the market are cash and the market's scaring, the pa jeepers out of me so let me just jump out, and that's typically when we're making the wrong decision, especially if you don't have a plan. So having a strategy in there, because yes, it stinks when we're losing, we talked a little bit about on the last episode. Everybody's fine with risk when the markets have been on fire for 12 and a half years or whatever, but when they get real shaky for a few months, that's when people tend to get in their own way and allow that fear or greed to jump in there.   Mark: So since we covered that one on your initial part there, John, I'm going to jump to number two. No, go ahead. If you've got something else.   John: Yeah, yeah. One, actually you mentioned greed there and actually, it plays into the fear thing as well-   Mark: Okay.   John: Because, we've talked about the markets running up and when that's happening it's, I only got X percent this year. If I was more aggressive, I would've got a little bit more. So we have had those conversations where it's like, hey, should I get more aggressive? And the answer is no. Go to the plan, look at your risk tolerance, stay the course because when you try to get greedy and then all of a sudden, let's say you do go to a more aggressive portfolio.   Mark: Right.   John: And we have a big pullback in the S&P and in equities and all of a sudden, you're more nervous than you should be because you're taking more risk. And now you start to jump out and you get to that fear stage and you just make bad decisions.   Mark: Yeah. Great point. Great point. Well, Nick, talk to me a little bit about getting in our own way, when it comes to picking an investment or doing something solely because we think it's a tax help, right. It's not part of the plan, it doesn't make sense in other arenas. The idea is, no I'm doing this simply for the tax advantage. Is that a bad move?   Nick: Yeah. A really good example of this would be towards the end of last year, early this year, we made a pretty big cycle in client's portfolios from the growth side of the market to the value side of the market. And so that did cause some capital gains and probably a bigger capital gain shift than we typically have for clients that are in taxable portfolios. But again, the premise was that we felt strongly that moving forward, it was going to be something that benefited them from a performance standpoint, which is the number one priority. And that's really turned out to be the case where really the value markets are down closer to 3% or 4%. The growth markets are down close to 30%. So that's kind of a perfect real world, real life example of, yes, nobody likes taxes, but sometimes taking some gains and recycling the portfolio and shifting to where we think things are going to look better moving forward, is something that makes sense.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: Taxes are again, something that people don't like and when we want to, we avoid it, but it should rarely ever be the number one priority in any sort of financial decision making.   Mark: Yeah. Don't let the tax tail wag the dog, as the saying goes, don't do something solely for the tax advantage, especially if it doesn't fit well into the overall strategy. And I'm glad that you brought up that point there where, looking at that and saying, hey, we do things, they all work together. There's a lot of these puzzle pieces that ebb and flow and move in and out together. So sometimes you do one thing and it has a ripple effect to another. And that's a great point. So I'm glad you brought that up.   Mark: John, another one on here is the cash conversation. I mentioned a minute ago, people tend to think there's only two options, the market or cash. And when it gets choppy, we go heck with this, I'm getting out and going to cash. And then we can even, maybe even just right now, we might even find this need to justify it by going, well, the Fed's ticking the rates up so I'll get a little bit more in cash, right. Even though it's nothing compared to inflation, but anyway, that can be a bad decision. You're getting in your own way. And then you might wind up just sitting there too long. And I mean, what if you jumped out in April of 20, when the pandemic was happening, we're down 30%, you jump out, you sell, you get your losses locked in and you stayed in cash the rest of 20. Well, you missed a heck of a second half.   John: Yeah. That that's accurate. And that's why it's always important to stay the course, because timing to get back in is almost impossible. Because the rallies up happen really within, if look at historically, it's always a couple of days or a week or two.   Mark: Right.   John: And if you miss it, you miss a majority of it. So important to stay the course. Be in the right risk tolerance so you don't go to cash or something like that. And then we have seen this quite a bit as well with cash in the sideline. And it can happen in an upmarket where we're hitting all time highs constantly, because it's like, hey, I don't want to put this money in because we keep hitting highs, it's going to come down at some point. And then now where it's the reverse, where we're having a pull back and it's like, well I don't want to put the money in because it's currently going down. So strategy against that would be dollar cost averaging into the market. Just piecemealing it and that typically will help some people get back into it with less risk.   Mark: Yeah.   John: And there are other strategies involved, but definitely you got to put your money to work [inaudible 00:08:15] pace inflation and especially nowadays.   Mark: That's a great point for sure. All right. So Nick helped me out here, buddy. I don't want to fall to fear. I don't want to necessarily fall to greed. I don't want to make bad choices from a tax standpoint. I don't want to go to cash and do nothing. Well now I don't know what to do, I'm just stuck. That's number four on my list. We overthink it to the point where we just freeze and we do nothing. And as the song says from the great Canadian rock band Rush, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. So doing nothing is just as bad sometimes as doing something in the wrong way.   Nick: Yes. The overthinking side of things is definitely something I have empathy for people with. It takes me about a month to book a trip and probably sitting down five different times with 20 tabs open each time. So I get the process issue.   Mark: Well, humans procrastinate. Doesn't make you bad, it just-   Nick: Yes. Yeah.   Mark: We all do it. Yeah.   Nick: For sure. But what this does and people hear this a lot from us because we talk about it a lot is, it's the importance of the plan. So a lot of times what ends up happening is, the reason that people are frozen with indecision is because they're worried about their process. They're worried about the outcome and usually the fear of the unknown is more fragile and worse than actually knowing, having some certainty on what things look like, even if they're not ideal. So when we have people that are overthinking things or are really fretting about a certain decision, usually what we try to do is go back to the plan. So hey, let's re-review the plan. Let's look and see what things look like. And one of the things that we emphasize with clients that work with us from a planning perspective, is trying to help them start to make decisions differently.     Nick: And so the way that we do planning, the way that we're able to model out different situations and scenarios, we'll joke with people, let us tell you no. Because a lot of times what happens is people are limiting themselves out of concern of the unknown. And so, let us be your guardrails a little bit, let us be the bumpers in the lane to use an analogy and we'll help you work through these decisions, but instead of worrying about what the outcomes are. It's almost impossible for people to figure out all the outcomes on their own.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: And so let us help you figure out, let's see the potential outcomes, let's see what we can do to mitigate some of the risks associated with it. And we can really narrow down. And so having that open door policy with clients and having them work with us, to work through these sorts of decisions where, we're a team member versus them trying to figure it out on their own is really important.   Mark: Nah, I like that. And I'm a heck of a bowler with the bumpers up. I'm just saying, so.   Nick: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It definitely increases the average.   Mark: It did a little, just a little bit. So to check this out, John, let's do one more here on this conversation about getting in our own way. So a friend of mine, super nice guy, we're chatting the other day and this is what he says to me. Tell me what your reaction to this. So he says, Hey, my neighbor and I, we're good buddies. We're the same age. And our house costs the same amount of money, roughly that, where we live here. He's going to cash. And he's like, and I know you talk about stuff on podcast and stuff all the time. He's going to cash and he's advising me to do the same thing. I think it's a good move. And I said, why? Because you're the same age and your house costs roughly the same? Don't you think there's like about a million more things you could base this on?   Mark: So my point being is, is getting advice from people who really don't need to give you advice. I'm sure his friend and his neighbor didn't have any ill intention, but that just seemed like a goofy scenario to me. It's water cooler talk, so many of us do that.   John: Yeah. Yeah. We see that quite a bit where people are, my friend's doing this or like you said, my neighbor's doing this, but we have to constantly remind [inaudible 00:12:20] everyone that every situation's completely different. Something that might be good for someone else isn't good for you. And that's the importance of really getting the plan and making sure all your decisions are based on your plan.   Mark: Yeah.   John: And not your neighbor, not your cousin, not whoever-   Mark: Cousin Eddie. Yeah. Right.   John: Yeah. What we typically find with this is everyone always tells you about their good decisions. Like, oh yeah. I went for cash and this is what happened. They don't tell you when they didn't make a good decision.   Mark: Yeah.   John: It's not exciting to talk about when you lost money or lost an opportunity. So definitely want to leave it to the professionals and not a neighbor, a buddy that really doesn't have much experience in navigating these environments.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: Yeah. It's the whole wins in Vegas scenario.   Mark: Exactly. Exactly.   Nick: People always talk about the wins and I just want to jump in on this one-   Mark: Sure. Go for it.   Nick: Because one of the things that I've been trying to emphasize with clients as well, especially those that are new to maybe, having an advisor or a planning relationship is that the advice that we're giving for them is the advice that we're giving at that set place and time. And so meaning, people tend to feel more comfortable when there are like general rules of thumb or those sorts of things. And so maybe it's a question like, a basic one that happens all the time is extra payments towards the mortgage or not. And so one of the things we've been trying to really get through people's heads is that, hey, we may be telling you to not do that right now, but it's because we have goals over the next one to three years that we're trying to hit because of X, Y, Z factors. And that might be something that we target three years down the road, but right now, it's more important for you to do these other things, to put yourselves in a better position to be able to do that.   Nick: And so what having that kind of conversation with people have seen the light click on quite a bit, because giving them the situation where, Hey, let's take you and your friend, and let's say that nine out of ten factors are the same, but that one factor can dramatically change-   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: The advice. And so even though you might feel like you have a twin in so many different ways, that one factor can be a huge differentiator on the sort of advice or the sort of strategy that you should have in place from a financial perspective. And really, you hear people talk about, each situation's unique, but really being more specific in helping them realize that has been something that has been helpful for some people lately, especially with the choppy waters that we've been in the last four or five months.   Mark: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you listen to this podcast and there's three guys on here having a conversation, but the three of us need different things for the time of life that we're in and whatever's going on. You two might be similar in age for example, but one's got kids, one doesn't.   Nick: Exactly.   Mark: I'm older than exactly you guys. So there's a million variations could go into what you need individually. So again, I don't think that the neighbors or coworkers or cousin Eddie or whatever it might be mean any ill will, but it's just not the best advice. So again, getting in our own way sometimes is listening to those people who really we shouldn't be listening to. So that's going to wrap it up this week for the podcast. So the secret to retirement success is you and how willing you are to not get in your own way, to make sure that you realize the things that you know, and the things that you can do, and then turning to those people to help you in those shortcoming areas.   Mark: I don't pretend to try to rebuild my car from the ground up, because I have no idea how to do that. Sure, I can change some spark plugs and change the oil, but that's the limit of my knowledge. So I'm not going to tear the whole thing apart and start from the ground up. Same kind of idea. So that's the conversation, make sure that you reach out to John and Nick. If you've got some questions, if you're worried about sabotaging yourself, doing some things you shouldn't be, especially in these choppy waters, as Nick mentioned, it's easy to do. It's easy to let that little fear monster jump up and nibble in our ear. So reach out, have a conversation with the team at PFG Private Wealth, before you take any action, especially if you feel like you need to make a change.   Mark: I think that's a fundamental thing that we do as humans as well. Sometimes we feel like if we're not doing something, we're doing something wrong and often not doing anything could be a good move for your situation, but you need to find out through the process of getting a plan put together or just reexamining the plan that you may already have in place. So pfgprivatewealth.com is how you make it happen. That's where you can find John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth. Again, pfgprivatewealth.com. Pretty easy to remember and reach out to him if you got some questions or concerns, get on the calendar, hit the subscribe button for whatever platform you like to use. Athol, Google, Spotify, so on and so forth. For John and Nick. I'm your host Mark. We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

There are some important terms you're going to come across as you prepare for retirement. Having a basic understanding of these will help you achieve financial success, so we'll cover what they mean and what you should know on today's episode. And don't worry. We won't go quite so far down the rabbit hole where we expect you to be able to explain how a company's P/E ratio meshes with it's Alpha and Beta ratings to determine how much stock you should buy. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey everybody welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John and Nick and I, as we talk about Retirement Planning Redefined here on the podcast. As always, don't forget to subscribe to us on whatever platform you like to use. Find all the information you need at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's the guys website pfgprivatewealth.com. Lot of good tools, tips, and resources to be found there. We're going to have another conversation today about some financial jargon. This is more kind of investment terms you might want to know or have heard and maybe you want to get a better understanding on, especially if you're sitting down and you're shopping for a professional or something like that. You want to kind of understand some of these things that you're talking about. Now we're not going to go super deep. We're not going to get into PE ratios and alphas and betas and all that kind of stuff, but we're going to keep it kind of high level. So we'll jump into that this week on the podcast, Nick, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   Nick: Pretty good. Pretty good. Staying busy. We're recording this, just kind of closing up tax season. So happy that that is over for-   Mark: I bet.   Nick: Everybody that is at least not filing an extension.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: But yeah, it's obviously a lot going on in the world. So it's been keeping us pretty busy.   Mark: Yeah that's true. Very true. John, what about you buddy? You glad tax season's over?   John: Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun kind of hump to get over.   Mark: I like that little pause. It's fun. Yeah.   John: Yeah. So, no, it's good. It's kind of a mark that people have on their calendar, so that's over with, and really we start to kind of get busy afterwards.   Mark: Yeah.   John: Because a lot of people kind of delay meetings until after tax season, so excited to get back at it. And then also excited that NBA playoffs started. So Boston Celtics are playing the Nets right now.   Mark: Alright now, there you go.   John: Gearing up for that, so-   Mark: There you go. Very good. Well we probably should have done a show really on tax planning versus tax preps right after tax season because really tax planning is something you should be doing all year long with your retirement professional anyway, but we're not going to do that this week. Maybe we'll do that here in the next couple of weeks, we'll come up and do something.   Mark: But for now let's talk about some terms that people hear and probably should know. Maybe you know, maybe you have that kind of cursory high level view, whatever the case might be. Maybe you don't. So let's talk about a few of these. Let's kind of start with fiduciary guys. And this is a term that I think people should know. They should know what it is. I kind of wish, and I was thinking about this before we started that our politicians had to do what fiduciaries have to do, right? They have that legal, moral, ethical responsibility to do what's right for their client AKA us as American citizens. I wish our politicians had to be fiduciaries, but either way explain what it is and maybe a little bit of the difference between that and like suitability.   John: Yeah. So fiduciary, especially in our world's investment advisor, it's where the fiduciary is obligated to put the client's best interests ahead of their own. So really looking to do what's best for the client, regardless of any other factors. And what you mentioned there with as far as, how does that compare to suitability, where kind of like a broker has to recommend something that's suitable for the client, so there's a big difference when you start to kind of analyze that is something might be suitable for you, but it might not be the best thing for your situation.   Mark: Right.   John: Or maybe there's other things out there that are better. So fiduciary has the due diligence and say, "Hey, I'm making this recommendation. And based on my expertise, my knowledge, everything I've compared it to this is what I believe is the best for you." And also if there's any conflict of interests for the advisor as a fiduciary, they must disclose that to you upfront.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So one thing, what people really need to do when they're interviewing advisors or kind of taking that step to try to find someone to work with, it's really one of the first questions should be asking. I'd say the good thing is the industry is really going in this direction-   Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   John: Over the last, decade or so. It's really been kind of going, fiduciary, fiduciary, so that's.   Mark: Making that the standard, making it more the standard?   John: Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. So if I'm getting this right, then maybe to kind of break this down for people, and Nick feel free to chime in, but so if there's three options available, suitability would say, "Hey, any of these three technically work for my client, but this one actually pays me better or there's a reward of a trip or something like that attached to it." You're not doing the wrong thing by picking that. It's still suitable. Whereas a fiduciary has to go with the absolute best thing for the client period. Is that a fair way to break that down in layman's terms?   Nick: Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair way to kind of break it down and it can get tricky because when you really get into the nitty gritty in theory, people can argue about what's better now versus what might be better down the road and that sort of thing.   Mark: Right.   Nick: But if anything, I think what's important for people to understand is the conflicts of interests, the potential conflicts of interest and where they come from. So, if you're working with an advisor that is tied in with a parent company that has proprietary products, then they're probably not able to function as a fiduciary. So-   Mark: Gotcha.   Nick: Understanding that there's a conflict of interest, a potential conflict of interest, there is just something that people should ask about so that they understand it. It can be from experience just kind of chatting with people. It can get a little overwhelming for people to kind of really drill down understanding the difference between fiduciary and standard versus a suitability standard. But people oftentimes understand conflict of interest. And just to kind of piggyback a little bit on your short little rant earlier about politicians, many people would be shocked to know that many politicians are able to invest in companies even though there may be conflicts of interests.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: And the fact that's able to happen. And there's some websites that track those sort of things, but oftentimes they're privy to information that will impact a company in the marketplace and they're able to take advantage of it even though, the rest of the country can't do that, so-   Mark: Yeah, I was just even talking financially. In just their basic decision making when they pass laws.   Nick: For sure. For sure. But that's a good example of them not passing laws that-   Mark: True.   Nick: Aren't good for everybody.   Mark: Well and to John's point, so there's nothing wrong with asking, right? When you go in and sit down with someone, you just say, "Hey, are, are you a fiduciary?" Right? That's a fair question, and there's nothing wrong with asking that.   Nick: Agreed.   Mark: Yeah. Okay. All right. So let's move on to the other big term right now that everybody's getting hit over the head with, on a regular basis, and that's inflation. At the time we're doing this podcast guys, the CPI numbers came out a couple of weeks ago for March, pretty ugly. Gross is a term that has been thrown around quite a bit some of these numbers, 8.5% on the inflation, we're talking what 48% on gas, 35% up on used cars, food 13 to 17% up. So inflation break it down a little bit.   Nick: Yeah. So inflation has to do with spending power of money. And so one of the easiest ways for people to kind of think about it is, you mentioned food for example, one of the things that we kind of joke around with people is they were able to a couple years ago, do you remember when you could walk out of Publix and get everything you needed for 70, 80 bucks versus it now costing 100, $120 for the same amount of stuff. And the tricky thing with inflation is that it's there on a consistent basis year to year, but every 10 to 15 years, it kind of creeps up on us. And then we realize, Hey, this is kind of annoying.   Nick: And then obviously we have times we're in right now where there's some hyper inflation and kind of pocket books are getting hit. The one thing that I would say just to kind of pour some water on it is that although there are some real substantial issues that people are dealing with, there are some kind of, I guess, what we would almost call acute factors that are having an impact on it, that we would hope subside to a certain extent within the next year or two. But also there are going to be ramifications that we're already starting to see where the FED is doing things to try to combat inflation, like increasing interest rates, which we're kind of already on the docket, but has been getting pushed down. The cans been getting kicked down the road for a while.   Nick: And so things like mortgages, mortgage rates are now I think mid fives I read, whereas a year ago, closer to three. And I was just having a conversation with somebody to kind of put that in real world numbers. A half a million dollar mortgage at rates a year ago, a half a million dollar financed amount is from a monthly payment standpoint is equivalent to around 370,000 now, or if you look at it inverse half a million dollar mortgage at current rates is going to cost you around $700 a month more than it was a year ago. So that's going to have a real impact on housing prices and a lot of other things as well. So those are some real world examples of how inflation kind of impacts our life.   Mark: All right. So yeah, obviously we're hyper aware, we've talked about it before a little bit, but inflation we always kind of think of, at least I do it anyway, like calories, right? We know it exists and we don't often put a lot of thought into it until it's slapping us in the face, so to speak. And it's definitely doing that right now, so a lot people very concerned about that. So when we are talking about that, what happens is you start thinking, well maybe I should take a little more risk or whatever the case is with my portfolio to try to outpace inflation or keep up with it or whatever the case is, especially in these crazy times. So that leads us into risk tolerance guys. So what is your risk tolerance? And is that a wise move to try to take on more risk to combat something? Usually it's not.   John: No, it's not. And this is one of the most probably important things in building a portfolio that someone should really take a look at, and it's often overlooked. So risk tolerance is, to kind of bring it down to the simplest form is how much loss is an investor willing to take in their portfolio? How much volatility can they tolerate? So one of the things that we do when we are building a portfolio for our clients, the first thing actually is we have them go through a risk tolerance questionnaire to determine, are they conservative, moderate, aggressive? And from there we really help us design the portfolio so that way we can kind of match up the expected volatility of the portfolio with kind of what they could bear.   John: Because one of the worst things you could do investing is jumping around. And I hate to say it seeing a little bit right now I've already kind of feel a few phone calls I'm like, hey what should we do with the market? And if this volatility's already got you nervous and it hasn't really, it's been a pullback but it hasn't been anything too significant.   Mark: Right.   John: You really need to take a look at am I invested correctly because as we all know, as you shift to conservative or to cash, and then the next week the market just rally up and all of a sudden you just lost all. You realized your losses and didn't get to recover from it.   Mark: Yeah, knee jerk reaction is not the best right now. Right?   Nick: Yeah. And I would even jump in with that too going along with what John said where I think we have hit that point where people have forgotten what it's like to have bad markets, or even a normal market cycle of having a negative year. Even during COVID when the markets pulled back, 35, 40%, they bounced back by the end of the year. So it was never really realized. There was a short period of panic, but the recovery was quick, but.   Mark: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nick: There's a lot of people that don't remember that hey, there are going to be years where the market is down 10% for the year, the whole year. 12 whole months, so that's something that's interesting that's happening right now that we're seeing. Plus, historically where people would shift would be to fixed income or bonds. And that's not necessarily a safe place right now, either. So we're kind of in this, almost unicorn phase that only comes along every 50 or 60 years where there's not a lot of opportunities in many places. And so there's going to definitely have to be some patience involved-   Mark: I like that.   Nick: In the next 12 to 18 months.   Mark: Yeah. I like the unicorn phase. That's a good way of putting it. It's definitely been interesting, that's for sure. So do you guys kind of with the risk tolerance, is it kind of that number kind of system? Do you guys do that risk tolerance kind of thing where you kind of give someone almost like sleep number, if you will. If you're 100 or if you're a 20, how does that work?   John: Yeah. So how we do it and I've used actually some programs that do that. They give you a risk number based on how you answer questions. We have a set of some pretty good questions that give us an idea of what that person can kind of stomach.   Mark: Okay.   John: And what their expected return is. It's really, when you start to break it down, it's a lot of the same questions just asked differently to really kind of understand how the person ticks.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So we do a real good job of figuring that out. And then as advisors, part of our job is to make sure we put them in the appropriate portfolio based on how they answer.   Mark: Yeah. Because it's pretty easy to say conservative, and you go, what does that even mean? Right? Or I'm moderate.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Well what does that mean? That's probably a wide window, right?   John: It is.   Nick: Yeah. And then I would say one of the things that without it sounding like a commercial for ourselves, one of the things that we do that's a little bit different than some places that we do have what's called like a tactical tilt to how we manage money, where if we do have significant concerns, we will tamp down the risk. So maybe if somebody's normally in a portfolio that's a 50/50 mix stock to bond and what we would consider a moderate portfolio, if we have significant concerns in the market, we may drop them down to 30% on the stock side of things in certain cycles where we have high concerns. So sometimes what we found is that helps allay some fears for some people that there's some proactive potential changes, where if we really feel like it's going to hit the fan, we will make that change.   Mark: Right. Okay. So risk tolerance, another big one then definitely making sure that you're having that proper risk tolerance for yourself, especially in these inflationary times. When it becomes, it's hard to not feel, I think as humans, we feel like if we don't do something, we're doing something wrong or we have to take action or therefore we've made a mistake. And sometimes doing nothing can be a smart move. Especially in volatile times when it comes to a financial standpoint, if you don't know the correct answer, making no move might be a good place to start at least. That way you're not having that knee jerk reaction. And then of course, talk with a professional. Get some advice, and get a good strategy in place so that you know the right moves to make at the right time. Let's do another one here, guys, another technical one, dollar cost averaging, what is that?   Nick: So dollar cost averaging is the easiest example that most people have exposure to on a regular basis. And they don't probably realize that they're doing it is when people are contributing to their 401k. So every two weeks, a certain amount of your paycheck goes into your 401k and you have a set allocation and you are buying in to that allocation at whatever price it's at that point in time. So the thought process with dollar cost averaging is that you are balancing, you're investing over a period of time. Where sometimes you'll be buying at a premium, sometimes you'll be buying at a discount, but the objective is to continually invest and make sure that you are not trying to time the market.   John: And part of that is also what we're finding with the current market where it's at, with people with money on the sidelines, it could be a good way to kind of take some of the risk of putting all your money into the market and all of a sudden it dropping. So there's a strategy to basically say every, if I have 100,000 I want to put into the market every month or so, I'm going to be putting in 10 grand into it. That way, if it does dip down immediately, I only have $10,000 at risk. So dollar cost averaging, as Nick mentioned, most people are doing the 401k, not knowing it, but if you have money on the sideline in a volatile market, or if you're nervous, it is a good way to kind of get money that was on the sideline into the market.   Mark: Okay. All right. Well let's do one more guys and we'll wrap it up this week. Asset allocation, another big term we hear. We probably get that tossed around a little bit. Give us the kind of high level view of what that is. And because often I think people wind up feeling like they have a whole bunch of one thing and they're diversified because they've, I don't know, for example, I've got a whole bunch of mutual funds, so therefore I'm good. So explain what asset allocation is and is that correct? What I just said, is that really diversified or not?   John: Yeah. So asset allocation's kind of taken diversification to a different level. You could have seven different mutual funds, but if it's all the same type of funds, for example, like a large cap growth fund, they're going to do the same thing in reality when the market goes up or down. So when you do asset allocation, you're spreading your money, your portfolio within different asset classes, such as large cap stocks, small stocks that Nick mentioned, fixed income earlier, cash, some alternatives.   John: So what you do there is when you're building a portfolio and again, starting with your risk tolerance and your goals, you determine, hey my risk tolerance is X, here's my goals. I should be in a, let's just call it in income in growth portfolio. Well, what's the right mix of asset classes to make that work and to kind of bring it down to layman's terms here? Imagine kind of cooking, you're making recipe for a pie. The pie has certain ingredients to make it work and make it taste good. And that's basically what you're doing in your investments. It could be 20% large cap, 5% small cap, 20% fixed income, and our job as advisors and wealth management is we build that portfolio for the client if they hire us to do so.   Mark: Gotcha. Okay. All right. That's a good way of breaking that down. You just think about like a pie. So, and who doesn't love pie? So there you go. All right guys, thanks so much for the conversation this week. Good stuff talking about these technical terms, some jargon here. Hopefully we kept that pretty high level and it helped out with some of the things that you might be thinking or hearing. And if you've got questions, definitely reach out to the guys.   Mark: As always, before you take any action sit down. If you're already working with them, maybe share this podcast with someone who might benefit from it. If not, if you've been listening for a while, just reach out to them, have a conversation, and chat with them for yourself. You can find all of it at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's their website pfgprivatewealth.com. They're financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth, which makes a lot of sense. So make sure you subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, all that good kind of stuff. That way you can catch past episodes as well as future episodes. For John and Nick I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

There are certain age milestones where you should really pay attention to your retirement planning progress. On this episode, we'll look at the most important birthdays as you approach retirement and cover the exact things you should be checking off your to-do list at each age. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey, everybody. Welcome into another addition of the podcast. This is Retirement Planning Redefined, with John and Nick and myself, talking investing, finance, retirement, and birthdays.   Mark: We're going to get into important birthdays in the retirement planning process. As we get older, I don't think any of us really want birthdays, but these are some things we need to know. They're pretty useful. Some of this is pretty basic. Some of this stuff's got some interesting caveats in it as well. So you might learn something along the way. It can go a long way towards that retirement planning process.   Mark: We're going to get into that and take an email question as well. If you've got some questions of your own, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com.   Mark: John, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   John: A little tired. Got woken up at 2:00 in the morning with two cranky kids.   Mark: Oh yeah.   John: So if I'm a little off today, I apologize.   Mark: There you go. No, no worries. You get the whole, they climb the bed, and then you're on the tiniest sliver?   John: I got one climb into bed, I think kicked me in the face at one point.   Mark: Oh, nice.   John: Another one climbed into bed missing out on the other one, because they share a room. Then I had the sliver. I woke up almost falling off the bed.   Mark: There you go. And usually freezing because you have no blankets.   John: Yeah, yeah.   Mark: That's usually the way it goes. Nick's sitting there going, "I don't know what you guys are talking about."   Mark: What's going on, buddy. How you doing?   Nick: Yep. No. Pretty low maintenance over here.   Mark: Well, that's good. Hey, don't you have a birthday coming up?   Nick: I got a couple months still.   Mark: Okay, a couple months.   Nick: Yeah, I just got back from a trip a few weeks ago. Some buddies that I grew up with, a group of us have been friends for a really long time, I guess, going back to middle school. We're all turning 40 this year, so we rented a house in Charleston, and all survived.   Mark: Nice. There you go.   Nick: Yeah. It was good.   John: This is how you know Nick's turning 40. He came back with neck pain.   Mark: Exactly.   Nick: Yeah.   Mark: Hey, when you start to get a certain age, you start going, "When did I hurt that?" It's like, "I didn't even do anything." Yeah. You don't have to do anything.   Mark: Well, you know what? That's a good segue. Let's jump into this.   Mark: We're going to start with age 50. I turned 50 last year. First of all, the thing that sucks is you get the AARP card. I don't know about all that. That's annoying as a reminder that you're 50.   Mark: But the government does say, "Hey, let me help you out a little bit here if you need to catch up on some of the retirement accounts, help building those up." Talk to me about catch up contributions, guys.   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is when you hit 50, there's two types of accounts that allow you to start contributing a little bit more money. The most basic one is an IRA or a Roth IRA, where the typical maximum contribution for somebody under 50 is 6,000 a year. You can add an additional thousand to do a total of 7,000 a year. The bigger one is in a 401(k) or 403(b) account, where you're able to contribute, I believe it's an extra 6,500 per year.   Nick: This is also a good flag for people to think about where, hey, once that catch up contribution is available, it's probably a good time, if you haven't done any sort of planning before, to really start to dial in and understand your financial picture a little bit more. Because if you talk to anybody that's 60, they'll tell you that 50 didn't seem too far back. So that's a good reminder to dig into that a little bit.   Mark: Yeah. It adds up. It's not necessarily chicken feed. You might hear it and think, "Well, a thousand dollars on this type of account over a year, or 6,500 on the other type of account, whoopedidoo." But if you're 50 and you're going to 67, let say, for full retirement age, and we'll get to that in a little bit, that's 17 years of an extra seven grand. It's not exactly chicken feed, right?   Nick: No. It's going to be big money down the road.   Mark: Yeah, exactly. So that's 50.   Mark: John, talk to me about 55. This one's really similar to 59 and a half, which most of us are familiar with, but most people don't understand the rule at 55. So can you break that down a little bit?   John: Yeah. We don't see people utilize this too often, but an example would be let's say you're 50, 55, 56, and for whatever reason, you leave your current job. You have an opportunity, at that point...   John: Let's give a bad scenario. You get laid off. If you didn't have a nest egg saved up in savings, there's an opportunity to actually access some money from your 401(k) plan without penalty. What you'll do is, basically, you take the money directly from the plan, and you just have it go to your bank account, and the 10% penalty's waived.   John: Now, some people need to be careful with this. Once you roll it out to an IRA, this 55 rule here, where the 10%'s waived, ceases to exist. It has to go from the employer plan to you directly in that situation. It's a nice feature if someone finds themselves in a bad situation, or they need access to money, and the 10% penalty's gone, but you still have to pay your income tax on that money [crosstalk 00:05:03]   Mark: Of course. Yeah. That caveat being, it's only from the job that you've just left, right? It can't be from two jobs ago kind of thing. It's got to be that one that you've just walked away from, or been asked to leave, or whatever the case is. That's that caveat.   John: Correct.   Mark: It's basically the same rules, Nick, as the 59 and a half. It's just is attached to that prior job. But 59 and a half is the more normal one. What's the breakdown there?   Nick: Yeah. Essentially what happens is, at 59 and a half, you are able to take out money from your qualified accounts while avoiding that penalty without any sort of caveats. One thing to keep in mind is that usually you're taking it out from accounts that...   Nick: For example, if you're currently employed, the process of taking it out of the plan where you're employed can be a little bit different, but it's pretty smooth and easy if you have an IRA or something like that outside of the employer plan.   Nick: One other thing that happens in most plans, for people at 59 and a half, is, and we've seen it a bunch lately, where a lot of 401(k) plans have very restricted options in fixed income and those sorts of things, where most or many plans allow people to take inservice rollovers, where they're able to still work at their employer, but roll their money out of the plan to open up some options for investments outside of the plan.   Nick: That's not always the best thing for people. Sometimes the plans are great. Fees are really low. Options are great. So it may not make sense, but oftentimes people do like having the option to be able to shift the money out without any sort of issue.   Mark: Okay. All right. So that's the norm there. You got to love that half thing. You always wonder what the senators or whoever was thinking when [crosstalk 00:06:56]   John: Finally, they got rid of the 70 and a half [crosstalk 00:06:58]   Mark: Yeah. They get rid of that one. Yeah. We'll get to that in just a minute as well.   Mark: John, 62, nothing too groundbreaking here, but we are eligible finally for Social Security. So that becomes... I guess the biggest thing here is people just go, "Let me turn it on ASAP versus is it the right move?"   John: Yeah. So 62, you're now eligible. Like you said, a lot of people are excited to finally get access to that extra income. You can start taking on Social Security.   John: Couple of things to just be aware of is, any time you take Social Security before your full retirement age, you will get a reduction of benefit. At 62, it's anywhere, depending on your full retirement age, roughly 25 to 30% reduction of what you would've gotten had you waited till 66 or 67.   Mark: They penalize you, basically.   John: Yeah.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, if you do the math, it ends up breaking down to almost a half a percent per month reduced.   Mark: Oh wow.   Nick: Yeah. It really starts to add up when you think about it that way.   John: Yeah. We always harp on planning, so important if you are thinking about taking it early, once you make that decision, and after a year of doing that, you're locked into that decision. So it's important to really understand is that best for your situation.   John: Other things to consider at this age, if you do take early, Social Security does have what they call a earnings penalty slash recapture. If you're still working and taking at 62, a portion of your Social Security could be subject to go back to them in lieu of, for a better term, [crosstalk 00:08:27]   Mark: It's 19,000 and some change, I think, this year, if you make more than that.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Yeah.   John: Yeah. Anything above 19,000 that you're earning, 50% goes back to Social Security. [crosstalk 00:08:36]   Mark: Yeah. For every two bucks you make-   John: 5,000 goes back to Social Security. So that's really important.   John: Something that I just want to make, last point on this, is that earnings threshold is based on someone's earned income, and it's based on their own earned income, not household. That comes up quite a bit, while people say, "Well, I want to retire and take at 62, but my husband's still working. Am I going to have a penalty if I take it?" The answer is no. It's based on your own earnings record.   Mark: That's where the strategy comes into play too. Because if you are married, then looking at who's making more, do we leave one person's to grow, as we're going to get into those in just a second, to grow towards that more full number.   Mark: Again, that's all the strategy. It may make sense for one person to turn it on early, and the other person to delay it. That's, again, part of the strategy of sitting down and talking with a professional, and looking at all the other assets that you have, and figuring out a good move there.   Mark: Nick, let's go to Medicare. 65 magic age.   Nick: Yeah. Actually, my dad turns 65 this year. So we've been planning this out for him. He is a retired fireman, so he has some benefits that tie in with his pension.   Nick: One of the things that came up, and just something that people should think about or remember, even if they are continuing to work past 65, is it oftentimes makes sense to at least enroll in Medicare Part A. You can usually enroll as early as three months before your birthday. The Medicare website has gotten a lot easier to work with over the last year or two.   Nick: Part A, the tricky thing is that you want to check with your employer, because usually what happens for the areas that Part A covers, which is usually hospital care, if you were to have to be admitted or certain procedures, it's figuring out who's the primary payer, who pays first, who pays second. So making sure that you coordinate your benefits. Check in with HR, if you're going to continue to work.   Nick: If you are retired and are coming up on that Medicare age, make sure that you get your ducks in a row so that you do enroll. Most likely you're going to start saving some money on some healthcare premiums.   Mark: Technically, this starts about, what, three months early? It's a little actually before 65. I think it's three months when you got to start this process, and three months before and after.   Nick: Yep. Yeah. You can typically enroll three months before your birthday, and then through three months afterwards. There can be some issues if you don't enroll and you don't have other healthcare, at least for Part A. There can be penalties and that sort of thing.   Nick: Frankly, with Medicare and healthcare in retirement, this is a space that we typically delegate out. We've got some good resources for clients that we refer them to, because there are a lot of moving parts, and it can be overwhelming, especially when you start to move into the supplements and Advantage plans, and all these different things.   Mark: Oh yeah. And it's crucial. You want to make sure you get it right. A lot of advisors will definitely work with some specialists, if you will, in that kind of arena. So definitely checking that out when we turn 65.   Mark: Again, some of these, pretty high level stuff, some of this stuff we definitely know. But we wanted to go over some of those more interesting caveats.   Mark: Let's keep moving along here, guys. Full retirement age, 66 or 67. John, just what? It's your birthday, right?   John: It is your birthday. That's the time that you can actually take your full Social Security benefit without any reduction, which is a great thing to do. Then also that earnings penalty we discussed earlier at age 62, that no longer exists. Once you hit your full retirement age, 66 or 67, you can earn as much as you want and collect your Social Security. There's no penalty slash recapture.   John: When that happens, people have some decisions to make. If they're still working, they can decide to take their Social Security. I've had some clients that take it, and they use that as vacation money. I've had some other ones take it, and they take advantage of maxing out their 401(k) with the extra income. Or you can delay it. You don't have to take it. You get 8% simple interest on your benefit up until age 70.   John: So full retirement age, you got a lot of big decisions to make, depending on your situation. But you want to make sure you're making the best for what you want.   Mark: Definitely.   Nick: Just as a reminder to people that that 8%, and you had mentioned it, but it does cap out at age 70. So there's no point in waiting past 70, because it doesn't increase any more.   Mark: Right. Thanks for doing that. It wasn't on my list, but I was going to bring it up real fast. So yeah. People will sometimes email and they'll say, "Hey, I want to keep working past 70. How's that affect Social Security." It's like, "Well, you're maxed out, so you got to just go ahead and get it done." You can still work if you're feeling like it. Your earnings potential is unlimited, but it's just a matter of you're not going to add any more to it. So I'm glad you brought that up.   Mark: John, you mentioned earlier, they got rid of the other half. Thank God. The 70 and a half thing, just because it was confusing as all get out. They moved it to 72.   Nick: Yeah. Required minimum distributions, as a reminder for people, are for accounts that are pre-tax, where you were able to defer taxation. 401(k), traditional IRA, that sort of thing. At 72, you have to start taking out minimum distributions. It starts at around 3.6, 3.7% of the balance. It's based on the prior year's ending balance. It has to be taken out by the end of the year.   Nick: An important thing for people to understand is that, many times, people are taking those withdrawals out to live on anyways. So for a lot of people, it's not an issue at all. However, there are a good amount of people that it's going to be excess income.   Nick: Earlier mentioned, hey, at age 50, really time to check in and start making sure that you're planning. One of the benefits of planning and looking forward is to project out and see, hey, are these withdrawal going to cause you to have excess income at 72, where maybe we're entering into a time that tax rates could be higher, tax rates could be going up, which is fairly likely in the next five to 10 years. So if we know and we can project that, then we can make some adjustments to how we save, should you be putting more money into a Roth versus a traditional, and how we make adjustments on the overall planning.   Nick: So making sure that you understand how those work, and then the impact that it has on other decisions to take into account for that situation, is a huge part of planning.   Mark: Definitely. Those are some important birthdays along the way. You got to make sure you get this stuff done. 72, there's the hefty penalties involved if you don't do that. Plus you still got to pay the taxes. All this stuff has some crucial moments in that retirement planning process, so definitely make sure that you are not only celebrating your birthday, but you're also doing the right things from that financial and that retirement planning standpoint along the way.   Mark: Again, if you got questions, stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. You can drop us an email question as well, if you'd like. That's what we're going to do to wrap up the show right now.   Mark: We got a question that's sent in from Jack. He says, "Hey, guys. I've thought about meeting with a financial advisor to plan my retirement, but I've never used a budget or anything like that before. So I'm wondering, should I budget myself for a couple of months before I meet with a professional?"   Nick: Based upon experience, putting expense numbers down on paper is one of the biggest hurdles for people to get into planning. But with how this question is phrased, I would be concerned, because it's kind of like the situation of starting a diet. You start a diet. You're going to eat really good for two to three weeks. You're trying to hold yourself accountable. You're functioning in a way that isn't necessarily your normal life.   Nick: One of the things, as advisors, that we want to make sure that we understand are what are you really spending. It's great to use a budget, but if you're budgeting to try to look good in the meeting, which we've seen happen, you're painting a false picture, and you're not letting us know what the finances actually look like.   Nick: So I would actually say to put down the real expense numbers in place, let's see what it really looks like, and then if we need to create a budget after we've created a plan, then that's something that we can dig into.   Mark: Yeah. John, let me ask you, as we wrap this up, sometimes people associate seeing a professional financial advisor with a budget. Also, people have a cringe to the B word. They think, "Well, I don't want to live on a fixed budget," or something like that.   Mark: That's not necessarily what we're talking about, right? That's not probably what Jack is referring to. He's just trying to figure out, I guess, more income versus expenses, right?   John: Yeah, yeah. The first step is to analyze your expenses. That could be what he's referring to as far as, "Hey, should I take a look? Should I get my expenses down before I meet with someone?"   John: I'd agree with Nick, even if that's what you're looking at, versus the budgeting, I would say no. I think the first step is sit down with an advisor, because they can assist in categorizing the expenses correctly based on today's expenses, versus what expenses are going to be at retirement.   John: I think it's important just to get going rather than trying to prep. Because we've seen a lot of people that have taken ... They've been prepping for years to meet. That's years where they haven't done anything, and they've, unfortunately, lost out on some good opportunities, otherwise, if they just said, "Hey, I'm going to sit down first, see what's going on."   Mark: Yeah. It gives you that built-in excuse.   John: [crosstalk 00:18:26]   Mark: It gives you that built in, "Well, I'm not quite ready." Well, you might never be ready if you play that game. Especially a lot of times when it's complimentary to sit down with professionals, have a conversation. Most advisors will talk to you, no cost or obligations. So why not right? Find out. Just get the ball rolling. That's the first step. It's usually the hardest part too.   Nick: Yeah. One thing that we typically tell people is that we are not the money police. We are not here to tell you that you can't use your money the way that you want to use it.   Nick: The way that we view ourselves, and what our role is as an advisor, is to help you understand the impact of decisions. Whether those decisions have to do with spending money, saving money, whatever, it's to make sure that you understand the impact of your decisions so that you make better decisions. That's it.   Mark: There you go. Yeah. It's your money, at the end of the day, your call, but certainly having some good, well, coaches in your corner, if you will, advisors to help advise, that's the whole point. But I like that. Not the money police.   Mark: All right. That's going to do it this week, guys. Thanks for hanging out. As always, we appreciate your time here on Retirement Planning Redefined. Don't forget. Stop by the website.   Mark: If you need help before you take any action, we always talk in generalities, and try to share some good nuggets of information, but you always want to see how those things are going to affect your specific situation.   Mark: If you're already working with John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth, fantastic. Then you already have a lot of this stuff in place. But if you have questions, or you're not working with them, or you've come across this podcast in whatever way, or maybe a friend shared it with you, definitely reach out and have a chat. pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe on whatever podcasting platform app you like to use.   Mark: We'll see you next time here on the show. For John and Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you later here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

This episode is here to give you a little encouragement. I know big goals are tough to achieve. They take a lot of hard work and persistence. That's why I create this episode as a message of encouragement just for you. Hope you enjoy and take action toward your goals today.  Thanks, Nick For more material visit: NickMaizy.com

This episode is about How to Have a Bigger Future. We talk about our Bigger Future Challenge, which you can join us for 3:00 A Clean Slate It's 2021 and this is our first recording this year.  I wanted to share with our listeners our different perspectives of how we close out a year and enter a new year.  KISMA I think this year it's a little bit different.  I like to think that every day is a clean slate. I like to think that every minute is a clean slate. But for me entering a new year, the way I was approaching it in December was very much like how do I go to bed in order to wake up and have a good day? And that's really through releasing anything during the day that didn't serve, cutting chords and falling asleep in gratitude, and setting in my subconscious what I wanted to manifest the next day. That's how I was sort of being more stealth about closing out the year and having so much gratitude for what worked, learning from any mistakes and just being released, released, released. Just complete healing and as much closing loops as I could so that I could slide into 2021. KISMA 5:58 A Time of Reflection and Assessing I was busy at the end of the year, but it was a reflective time for me. I assess the year and that forgiveness and closing loops.  Those are always huge practices for me during that time. It's to create a sense of organization, it's to look at what I can close up. What can I make sure that I don't drag with me into the new year?  And one of the loops I closed that was really exciting and opened at the same time was the sound healing. You can find the information about the next one at . Nick 11:14 Bigger Future So let's talk about this bigger future. KISMA Back in September we did a challenge called The Bigger Future Challenge. Right off the bat I knew we gotta do this again. And we thought, well, what better time than right after the new year. Nick For those of you that are listening now, I want you to just think about the bigger future. When I say those words, when we say those words, what does that mean to you?  This is not the future that somebody else's designing for you. This is not the future that you think is the only future you can have.   The bigger future is something around joy. It's something around connection, your relationships. It's definitely around money and abundance and it's your future. KISMA Bigger isn't necessarily bigger. But what it is is definitely more of the things that we want in our lives. It could certainly be something to do with your career, your work, your income, something like that. But it's also about relationships. And it's also about the energy and vibrancy that we share. It's like the presence, the bigger presence about how we show up in our lives and how we impact other people.  Nick  So we're going to be creating our bigger future as well, and we invite you to Also just to all of you out there that have been listening, we really do have you in our hearts and wishing you a very happy and healthy new year.  KISMA

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So Nick, I've never actually been to Australia. Can you tell me about any famous people that live there?Nick: Well, one famous person, his name is Ian Thorpe.Cheryl: Ian Thorpe.Nick: Ian Thorpe. He's a very famous swimmer. He won so many Gold Medals.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: Mm. In maybe four Olympics. I think he won maybe fourteen to twenty gold medals.Cheryl: For swimming?Nick: For swimming yeah. He a free-style swimmer.Cheryl: I've never actually heard of him. How old is he?Nick: He's 24 years old I think. 24 or 25. So he's really young.Cheryl: I see. You guys are really famous for athletics.Nick: Athletics, yeah. There's another famous person by the name of Cathy Freeman.Cheryl: Cathy Freeman.Nick: She's the first aboriginal[土著的；土生土长的] Australian to win a gold medal.Cheryl: Ah, aboriginal Australian.Nick: Yeah, so native Australian.Cheryl: What did she win a gold medal in?Nick: In the 400 meters sprint.Cheryl: Oh, the sprint, so she's a runner.Nick: Yeah, she's a runner, so yeah, she'd been doing it for years and years, but finally she had that big break-through and did very well.Cheryl: Is she the first aboriginal woman to win something, or is she is she the first aboriginal period?Nick: Well, many aboriginal have won events but never really at a world stage so it was really impressive to see her win the even and then she took the aboriginal flag onto the ground and did a lap of honor for the aboriginal Australians.Cheryl: Very nice. What year was that?Nick: That was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.Cheryl: Ah, perfect.Nick: So in Australia so it was really, really a special moment.Cheryl: Very special since it was held in her own land.Nick: Yeah, exactly and Sydney's a very important place for aboriginals as well.Cheryl: Why is that?Nick: Because that's where the first fleet arrived from England was to Sydney, so that was the first, I suppose, invasion of Australia came through Sydney, so.Cheryl: Oh, yeah, I remember seeing that in the movie "Australia".Nick: Oh, yeah, you would have too. It was in Australia so.Cheryl: Yeah, I guess other country's also have aborigines people. I'm thinking of Taiwan and another island not too far from Australia. Well, I think Taiwan have the aborigines. One really famous aborigines there is Ah Mae. She is a very famous singer. She's been called the Diva of Asia because of her voice. She has a really, really, really talented vocal range. Really high and really low. And she was famous also for being native Taiwanese. The aboriginal Taiwanese.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So Nick, I've never actually been to Australia. Can you tell me about any famous people that live there?Nick: Well, one famous person, his name is Ian Thorpe.Cheryl: Ian Thorpe.Nick: Ian Thorpe. He's a very famous swimmer. He won so many Gold Medals.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: Mm. In maybe four Olympics. I think he won maybe fourteen to twenty gold medals.Cheryl: For swimming?Nick: For swimming yeah. He a free-style swimmer.Cheryl: I've never actually heard of him. How old is he?Nick: He's 24 years old I think. 24 or 25. So he's really young.Cheryl: I see. You guys are really famous for athletics.Nick: Athletics, yeah. There's another famous person by the name of Cathy Freeman.Cheryl: Cathy Freeman.Nick: She's the first aboriginal[土著的；土生土长的] Australian to win a gold medal.Cheryl: Ah, aboriginal Australian.Nick: Yeah, so native Australian.Cheryl: What did she win a gold medal in?Nick: In the 400 meters sprint.Cheryl: Oh, the sprint, so she's a runner.Nick: Yeah, she's a runner, so yeah, she'd been doing it for years and years, but finally she had that big break-through and did very well.Cheryl: Is she the first aboriginal woman to win something, or is she is she the first aboriginal period?Nick: Well, many aboriginal have won events but never really at a world stage so it was really impressive to see her win the even and then she took the aboriginal flag onto the ground and did a lap of honor for the aboriginal Australians.Cheryl: Very nice. What year was that?Nick: That was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.Cheryl: Ah, perfect.Nick: So in Australia so it was really, really a special moment.Cheryl: Very special since it was held in her own land.Nick: Yeah, exactly and Sydney's a very important place for aboriginals as well.Cheryl: Why is that?Nick: Because that's where the first fleet arrived from England was to Sydney, so that was the first, I suppose, invasion of Australia came through Sydney, so.Cheryl: Oh, yeah, I remember seeing that in the movie "Australia".Nick: Oh, yeah, you would have too. It was in Australia so.Cheryl: Yeah, I guess other country's also have aborigines people. I'm thinking of Taiwan and another island not too far from Australia. Well, I think Taiwan have the aborigines. One really famous aborigines there is Ah Mae. She is a very famous singer. She's been called the Diva of Asia because of her voice. She has a really, really, really talented vocal range. Really high and really low. And she was famous also for being native Taiwanese. The aboriginal Taiwanese.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So Nick, I've never actually been to Australia. Can you tell me about any famous people that live there?Nick: Well, one famous person, his name is Ian Thorpe.Cheryl: Ian Thorpe.Nick: Ian Thorpe. He's a very famous swimmer. He won so many Gold Medals.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: Mm. In maybe four Olympics. I think he won maybe fourteen to twenty gold medals.Cheryl: For swimming?Nick: For swimming yeah. He a free-style swimmer.Cheryl: I've never actually heard of him. How old is he?Nick: He's 24 years old I think. 24 or 25. So he's really young.Cheryl: I see. You guys are really famous for athletics.Nick: Athletics, yeah. There's another famous person by the name of Cathy Freeman.Cheryl: Cathy Freeman.Nick: She's the first aboriginal[土著的；土生土长的] Australian to win a gold medal.Cheryl: Ah, aboriginal Australian.Nick: Yeah, so native Australian.Cheryl: What did she win a gold medal in?Nick: In the 400 meters sprint.Cheryl: Oh, the sprint, so she's a runner.Nick: Yeah, she's a runner, so yeah, she'd been doing it for years and years, but finally she had that big break-through and did very well.Cheryl: Is she the first aboriginal woman to win something, or is she is she the first aboriginal period?Nick: Well, many aboriginal have won events but never really at a world stage so it was really impressive to see her win the even and then she took the aboriginal flag onto the ground and did a lap of honor for the aboriginal Australians.Cheryl: Very nice. What year was that?Nick: That was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.Cheryl: Ah, perfect.Nick: So in Australia so it was really, really a special moment.Cheryl: Very special since it was held in her own land.Nick: Yeah, exactly and Sydney's a very important place for aboriginals as well.Cheryl: Why is that?Nick: Because that's where the first fleet arrived from England was to Sydney, so that was the first, I suppose, invasion of Australia came through Sydney, so.Cheryl: Oh, yeah, I remember seeing that in the movie "Australia".Nick: Oh, yeah, you would have too. It was in Australia so.Cheryl: Yeah, I guess other country's also have aborigines people. I'm thinking of Taiwan and another island not too far from Australia. Well, I think Taiwan have the aborigines. One really famous aborigines there is Ah Mae. She is a very famous singer. She's been called the Diva of Asia because of her voice. She has a really, really, really talented vocal range. Really high and really low. And she was famous also for being native Taiwanese. The aboriginal Taiwanese.

Today is part 5 of our social security series and we will focus on the survivor benefit option. We will talk about a few situations that can arise and share a couple of client stories that have revolved around this topic.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Back here with us for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined, the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Gentlemen, how's it going? Nick, how are you today, my friend?Nick: Doing pretty well. How about yourself?Speaker 1: I'm hanging in there. Not doing too bad. We are into December. Moving along nicely on this. John, how are you doing? You doing all right?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. No complaints. It's a getting a little cooler here in Florida, which is nice. It's been been hot, so it's nice to get a little a cool, no more humidity.Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now, as planners, you guys plan a lot of things, but are you the same way when it comes to holiday shopping? Have you kind of gotten some of this knocked out? We're at about the middle of the month here now in December. So you guys ready to roll for Christmas or are you last minute?John: I'll take that one first. No, I do a lot of Amazon shopping [crosstalk 00:00:49].Speaker 1: Me and you both. But how about you, Nick?Nick: Anything I can do to avoid going to a store, I do, so the majority of my shopping [crosstalk 00:00:59].Speaker 1: I think so many of us are that way, right, which obviously we can see in the death of brick and mortar, for sure. But yeah, absolutely. I agree with you there. Well, hopefully, folks, you're out there getting your shopping done. Maybe you're checking out this podcast while you're driving around doing some shopping or walking around in the malls or whatever the case might be. That is kind of the beauty of podcasting. It's not like traditional radio obviously, so you have more options, and hopefully you're subscribed to the podcast Retirement Planning Redefined. Do it at Apple, Google or Spotify, and a couple others as well, and you can find the links if you want, and podcast episodes on their website at PFGPrivateWealth.com. That's PFGPrivateWealth.com.Speaker 1: All right, part five. I think this is going to probably wrap it up, too, for our series on social security. We're going to talk about survivor benefits. Guys, give us some things to think about here. Survivor benefits are available to children and surviving spouses, correct?John: Yeah, so it is available to children and surviving spouses. For today's session, we're going to focus more on surviving spouses because that comes into play more when we're doing retirement planning.Speaker 1: Okay.John: So we always like to actually joke around with the survivor benefit. Not many people are aware, but they get a nice $255 lump sum death benefit if the spouse were to pass away.Nick: Obviously has not been adjusted for inflation.Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that doesn't cover much of anything, does it?John: No, no it doesn't. But they do get a monthly benefit as survivor and when it comes to planning, that does help out quite a bit when we're talking about strategies and trying to figure out a plan for a survivor. Kind of some rules that go with that. A survivor can actually start drawing social security at age 60 versus 62, which is kind of the normal first spouse, which we discussed last week.Nick: It is important to note that as a reminder, even though they're eligible to draw at 60, there are still the income tests from the standpoint of reductions. So if that person is working, then it may not make a whole lot of sense to get that early.John: Yeah. What Nick's referencing, we talked about the earnings penalty if you start taking social security before your full retirement age. That does still apply age 60, so if you're still working, most likely that will wipe out any social security benefit you're going to get as a survivor.John: Some other things to consider, and I'll kind of give some examples of this. Survivor benefit is not available if someone remarries before age 60, okay, unless of course that marriage ends. So we've had situations where we were planning for clients and we were talking about doing some survivor strategies and they actually ... Let's just give an example. They were 57 and were considering getting married and actually deferred their marriage until age 61 to be safe, which I don't think the spouse is too happy with us on that because it deferred the marriage, but it made sense because we actually get some pretty easy strategies, which we'll talk about later, to maximize the social security.Nick: For the widow to the eligible for those survivor benefits, they had to have been married for at least nine months. There's a caveat to that where the death was an accident, that could come into play. So essentially, that's pretty lenient, but it is important to understand the nine month rule as well.John: Yeah. And we stress a lot on just understanding what your situation is. Just kind of give you an example of that, I had a client that thought she's eligible for social security because she was married, but he passed away when they were within eight months of marriage. And she was shocked [inaudible 00:04:23] the whole time, let's say the last seven years, she was planning on it and then didn't qualify for it. So it was shocking, and unfortunately for her, she was hitting 62 so it made a big difference to her overall plan.Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. So good information there. Surviving spouse's benefit is based on what?Nick: So essentially kind of the caveat to this is whether or not people have been collecting. So if both spouses are receiving their benefits and there is death, then the surviving spouse receives the higher of the two.John: Not both.Nick: Correct. Not both, which some people will be surprised about how that works. But it's important to understand that they receive the higher of the two, not both. And one of the big factors that gets calculated into the firm calculation of the amount of money that the widow will receive takes into account when the deceased spouse originally claimed their benefit. And it gets a little bit confusing, quite frankly, for most people, but it factors in essentially whether or not they took it before or after their full retirement age. So John will walk us through an example on that. But it is important to understand how this works.John: Yeah. Again, we like to do everything in the realm of planning. So this is where doing the social security maximization strategy is very important. Social security is a big part of someone's retirement income. So you want to make sure that you're making the best decisions available to you, because the last thing you is to look back 10 years ago, it's like, "Oh, I wish I did this. I could have had X amount of dollars or really been enjoying my [inaudible 00:06:05] a little bit more."John: So just going to touch on an example of that. We'll call them Jack and Jill. We talked about some survivor strategies last week, but let's say Jack's up for retirement benefits, 2,400. Doesn't take it [inaudible 00:06:20] 70. Basically, Jill can jump on and actually take ... Let's increase it to 2,976 increases. That will be her new basically benefit for social security, so she gets a nice increase and that's where we talked about really trying to protect the spouse and giving them more income for life. And if she tries to draw early, let's say she takes it at 62, which anytime you draw early, you get reduction of benefit or a reduction based off of now the higher amount that he deferred, which is a nice little caveat. We have to really do some planning for a spouse.Nick: And one of the things too from a comparison standpoint is when we discuss the spousal benefits and how the spousal benefits do not grow past full retirement age, the death benefits does, or the widow benefit, survivor benefit does grow past [inaudible 00:07:15] age, so another reason why that's really a big factor.John: Yeah. And one thing that we'll always do, if we're incorporating strategies, you always typically want to delay the higher benefit. So if you're looking at an opportunity to take a widow's benefit or my own, rule of thumb, and everyone's different, but rule of thumb is defer the higher ones. I'll give my family as an example. My father-in-law, his wife passed away young and basically age 60, he was able to actually draw her social security benefit at 60, which a reduced amount. Most of his income is from real estate and investment income, so an earnings penalty didn't apply to him. So the plan is he's taking the widow benefit at 60 and he's deferring his, and then at full retirement age, he's going to switch over to his and get his full retirement benefit. So from 60 to 66, he was actually able to get some type of benefit and then at 66, will jump to his own and he gets the full amount.Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's some good strategies, some good things to think about, good information here when we're talking about these survivor benefits. So a couple of final key points or key takeaways, guys, just to think about?John: Things to consider is a reminder that basically when the person passes away, their social security benefits stop. And if the surviving spouse is going to take one, they'll take either their own or the deceased spouse, whatever one's higher, just making sure that it's important to plan and make sure the strategy is best for you based on your situation. Social security ... This is everything, not just survivors ... it's very confusing, and there's a lot of different things you can do, so if you're working with an advisor, just make sure that they have the capabilities to stress test your decisions, to make sure you're making the correct decision based on your situation and not your neighbors or as Nick likes to say, up north, his clients, they've talked to their plumber.Nick: Yeah. Everybody likes to get an opinion from somebody else. We will talk about opinions. But so anyways, I think the biggest kind of overlying thing, and we talk about it a lot, but we can't emphasize it enough, and even when we do overemphasize it, people still ask, but this is not a decision to be made in a vacuum. So many other factors tie into this decision.Nick: And even when we plan ... As an example, I was walking somebody through a plan this week, and they are three or four years out from retirement, and even though we have a strategy set up for social security in the plan on what we plan to do from a baseline standpoint, they asked and I really had to emphasize that realistically this decision doesn't really get made until maybe three, six months before their retirement.Nick: So we may plan for a certain strategy for four or five years, but the importance of planning and updating your plan every single year cannot be understated, because especially with social security, if we're in the midst of a recession, if we're in the midst of a 2008, we're not going to have somebody take a bunch of money out of their nest egg even though over the last five years we planned to do that. We're probably going to have at least one of them take social security, protect the value of the nest egg, give it time to bounce back and then adjust accordingly. The planning is via kind of a living, breathing thing and we always have to adapt and adjust.Speaker 1: Nope, I think that's a great point. We've said that many times here on the podcast that you've got to have a plan and then you have to realize that that plan needs to evolve much like your life's going to. A lot of times we kind of get a collection of things. We have some investments, we have some insurance vehicles, we think about social security. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a pension and you say, "Okay. Well, I've got this collection of things. I'm good to go. I have a retirement plan." No, you have a collection of things. So pulling them all together in a full retirement plan is really important.Speaker 1: That's what John and Nick do every day at PFG Private Wealth, so give them a call if you've got questions or concerns. Get on the calendar at 813-286-7776. That's 813-286-7776. Don't forget to go to the website, PFGPrivateWealth.com. You can always subscribe to the podcast and get new episodes, check out past episodes, things of that nature on Apple or Google or Spotify. So check them out online as well@pfgprivatewealth.com and also share the podcast with folks that you think might benefit from it as well.Speaker 1: This has been Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks so much for staying tuned into the show. John. Nick, thanks for your time, as always. I hope you have a happy and safe holiday and we'll talk actually I think in 2020.Nick: Sounds good.John: All right.Speaker 1: You guys-Nick: Thank you.Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Take care and enjoy the holidays, everybody, and we'll see you next time right here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

*increase team volume, secret mlm hacks, teach your downlines, the power of the internet   Listen to a recent Secret MLM Hacks course member, Nick Bradshaw, as he tells us how is team volume nearly 20X'd after using these modern MLM recruiting principles...   INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS   This is an interview that I've done with one of my good, Nick Bradshaw. He's got his own show but he wouldn't tell me what it is. You should track him down and ask him.   We have about 500 people in the Secret MLM Hacks program. For the next few episodes, I'm actually going to share with you guys some of the interviews I've been doing with people who are in the program and share what's been happening.   Nick  has almost 20X-ed his team volume since using the Secret MLM Hacks methods, which is crazy. I didn't know it was that much! I thought it was just doubling, not 20X!   He's going to walk through and talk about how he's been using this stuff and teaching the same strategies to his downline, which is ultimately what's been my goal in creating this stuff.   It's not so that everybody has to join Steve Larsen. It's so that you can learn how to do this stuff on your own and then teach your downlines and explode stuff.   A lot of MLMs are refusing to be influenced from the top down on the strategies that I'm teaching. I'm just telling you… This is the landscape of the atmosphere that we're in around here.   A lot of big MLMs are not wanting to take on some of the strategies like the internet, which is ridiculous. It's because they don't know it themselves. They don't know how to train or teach on it.   The strategy I've been teaching is actually to go from the bottom up. It's for the little guy.   HOW TO TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES   Secret MLM Hacks has been focused on training from the ground up. I don't care what MLM in you're in. That's why I'm not here pitching you guys all the time. I'll drop every once in a while what I'm in if you guys are interested, but that's not the purpose of it.   The purpose of it is for me to go and influence MLM from the bottom up. To hand tools to people inside of MLMs from the bottom up who can go reteach it to their people and explode past their uplines.   That's been the point and it's been working. We've had a lot more MLMs reaching out, asking things like, "Would you come build funnels for us?" I'm like, "Where were you when I was talking about it earlier?" It's flipped the whole table on its head.   I have a very special guest today. Somebody I have been watching and seeing everything that has been going on... And I've been impressed.   There’s not many people in MLM who use the power of the internet. I've got a very special guest for you today. It's very easy to see who is in MLM online because there aren't that many. When I first saw other people doing it I was like, “Oh my gosh I'm not alone!” I was so excited about it.   I want to introduce you to and welcome Nick Bradshaw.   SECRET MLM HACKS INTERVIEW WITH NICK BRADSHAW   Steve: Hey man. Thank you so much for being on here.   Nick: Dude it's been absolutely my pleasure. It really really is.   Steve: It's gonna be awesome I'm pumped for it. Just so people understand more about what you do, tell me when you first got into MLM?   Nick: I've been in the MLM game myself about two and a half years. Funny enough, my wife is actually the one who started all of this and I jumped in halfway through. It's really skyrocketed and taken off from there.   My wife's been doing this for about five years. And during that time I was actually a car salesman. I was working 60 - 80 hour workweeks, every single week.   When I started in car sales I had one kid and then next thing I know, I had two kids. I blinked three times and next thing you know I'm sitting next to a six and four year old kid. I'm like, “Where did all the time go?”   I was burnt out on it. I had set all these goals and I had reached the goals. I had worked my way up the corporate ladder so I could provide for my family and let my wife be a stay at home wife.   I got to that roadblock that said, “Where do I draw the line of how much time I'm spending at work versus how much time I'm spending at home?”   From there it was like, “Alright, well what do I do? How do I remedy this, how do I fix it?”   Steve: Something's gotta change, right? We've gotta shake it up a bit.   WHAT IS INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS?   Nick: How do I be a better father to my kids? How do I be the father that I want to be rather than just the provider and someone that my kids don't even know? I was literally leaving for work before they woke up and I was coming home two hours after they'd already been in bed.   That's where my journey started with MLM. My answer to all of that was, “I'm gonna jump on board and help my wife build this business”.   And so that's what I started doing. I've got all these sales skills. I've been doing this hardcore sales stuff for five years now. My wife was relatively well. She was a silver rank in her company which equated to $2,500 a month.   So I said, “Okay, if I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna do all of this, I’m gonna quit cold turkey”.   Steve: You just up and left?   Nick: Yeah, just up and left. I said, “I'm done”.   Here's the crazy part… We moved from Indianapolis to Austin, Texas two months afterwards. We completely restarted. Hit the reset button.     I've got all these sales skills and one of the things that I see really lacking inside of the MLM world was people knowing how to sell. So that was the problem that I said I can fix.   I jumped into our team trainings and I started doing all of these things. I started teaching them menu selling (which is a car world term) but it's just narrowing down the options.   Instead of giving them this huge, 16 page spreadsheet of all of these things that they can buy, you're gonna narrow it down and say, “Okay you have this option, this option or this option.”   HOW TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SECRET MLM HACKS   I started doing that and in four months, our team volume jumped from $30,000 a month to $80,000 a month.   Steve: Wow, big jump.   Nick: Yeah big jump. Just within a couple of months of just getting people to understand how the sales process actually works and implementing those skills.   But then we really came to a plateau. You can only do so much to the customer base that you already have.   Steve: Right. You need some more people eventually.   Nick: Eventually you need more people. That was the brick wall that I ran into at that point. I was like “Okay, so how do I do this?”   Marketing, duh.   If sales pushes and marketing pulls, I need to pull more people into this business.   But I had no idea how to do it because I'm not a marketer. I've been doing sales my entire life. And honestly, that's when I found Steve Larsen. I started listening to Secret MLM Hacks and I signed up to ClickFunnels.   From there… I failed. Miserably. On my face.   Steve: Sure. We pretty much all do the first few rounds.   Nick: I jumped in and I'm like, “Oh this is gonna be awesome! I'm listening to you but I'm not really hearing you”, you know what I mean?   Steve: I always laugh when people are like, “I've heard this training before”, and I'm like, “No it takes a few rounds, go again.”   Nick: I jumped in and started building these funnels and I'm like, “This is going to be awesome” and then I hit launch...   And I launch that first funnel and nothing. It was just crickets and I'm like, “Alright, back to the drawing board”.   INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH CLICKFUNNELS   I paused my ClickFunnels account because I realized that I didn’t have the skills that I need to be successful doing what I'm doing.   Steve: Right.   Nick: That's when I really jumped into it and I remember the time specifically. I was at a leadership retreat which is an invite only retreat for a company. I had just gotten Expert Secrets and Dot Com Secrets. I bought the black book with the funnel hacker's cookbook and all of that. And I brought it with me.   I'm sitting in our hotel room and I started reading Expert Secrets and I didn't put it down. I went all through the night and the next morning. When it was time to get up and go to the retreat I was still sitting there with my book on page 240 or something like that.   All of these things just started hitting me and it was like the fire was lit. I started really consuming and I even started hacking Secret MLM Hacks.   Steve:  I noticed that's what you were doing. I watch a lot of people do that which is great and I think they should model it.   Nick: When I was hacking Secret MLM Hacks somehow, someway I ended up in the membership site and I hadn't paid for it. I messaged you and I'm like, “Dude, I have no idea how this happened but I'm here.”   Steve: We were in the middle of tweaking some stuff. Yeah, I remember that. It's not that way anymore.   Nick: It's not that way anymore. A whole new revamped course and everything. I got there and I started watching your videos, consuming and I implemented.   For my relaunch basically modeled exactly what you were doing. This was probably seven months ago, eight months ago?   HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME?   Steve: A while ago now, yeah.   Nick: Since then we went from$80,000 a month in volume to averaging about $150,000 a month in volume.   Steve: WHAT? I didn't know it was that big dude… Are you serious?   Nick: Yeah. In the past 12 months, we've done a little over $1.5 Million.   Steve: So you're saying it works?   Nick: I'm saying it works dude. That's probably about the time that you really started noticing me singing your praises. I'm sitting here inside of my own business and I'm watching these things grow and accumulate exponentially.   And I'm trying to teach this stuff to my team and get it through their heads… There's no other way!   Steve: I don't know another way either. I'm not making fun of you who are like, “I love talking to friends and family. I love going to home and hotel meetings”. Good on you. But you can only do that for so long.   It's so much better to have something automated.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. I start learning more about marketing and it's a constant learning curve obviously.   But you know that? It’s so true that MLM is a personal growth opportunity with an income opportunity attached to it.   Steve: Right.   Nick: That's what it is. It's a great way to start for the traditional person who doesn't know anything about marketing or sales. You can start talking to family members and friends and doing all of that.   But the reason that 99% of us out there are failing is because we don't ever move past that portion of it.   The growth never happens and where we get into real marketing or real sales.   PERSONAL GROWTH WITH SECRET MLM HACKS   Steve: Reaching out to your network only gets you so far. After a while you have to learn how to attract more people, market to them, change beliefs, sell and close.   It's funny when people are like, “I'm just gonna treat this like a hobby.” You're not going anywhere then, sorry.   It's a business not a hobby.   Nick: That’s the way that I see this. We talked about this the other day. The way that I see MLM moving, the way that I see this momentum going... It's having a rebirth, almost.   If you've lived in our world, it's changing the way that it's happening. We're slowly moving out of those 1960's origins and moving to 2020.   You're seeing a lot more sales and marketing professionals get into the game. I'm trying to teach everybody that, I'm trying to show everybody that.   If you're not moving in the direction that things are going, you're going to become extinct.   You're going to have real professionals in this game, doing things, exploding and leaving everybody else in the dust.   Steve: There are social media platforms that were never around until 10 years ago. The distribution channels that exist now are massive and you can tap into them for near nothing.   Most MLMs are mad when you go do that kind of stuff. What is wrong with you? You could be selling so much more if you just use them! It doesn't mean you have to be on Facebook saying “MLM”.   What are you guys are doing right now that's working best for you? I'm just interested in that, because the course is big. Secret MLM Hacks is not a small course.   What is it in there that has been most helpful so far?   TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES WITH SECRET MLM HACKS STRATEGIES     Nick: The thing that I think that's been most helpful… It's just gotta be the confidence to go out and PUBLISH.   Steve: Oh yes.   Nick: The confidence to go out and publish and talk about what you're doing. It's one thing to sit there and learn it for yourself. It's another to go out and actually teach people what you're doing.   Steve: Sure.   Nick: Not only because, in my personal opinion, I think that you learn it better and but you learn how to communicate it better. The more that we've been publishing, the more that we've been putting it out there, the more that it attracts people.   Steve: Sure.   What's being published right now? Is it a podcast right now?   Nick: I've started a small little podcast at the moment.   Steve: What is it called? Feel free to shout it out.   Nick: I don't know if I want to at this point...   Steve: That's okay then, never mind.   Nick: I'm still trying to find my voice. My wife's Instagram account has been blowing up. She's got 42,000 followers right now.   Steve: That's big.   Nick: We do a lot of not direct marketing there. More like back page marketing.   Steve: Sure, that's one of my favorite kinds. Especially in MLM.   Nick: I modeled you and I set up my own little course. I started targeting people who want to make money online. The people who actually want to own a business. Not people who want to do a hobby.   Sending people through that mini-course has yielded great results.   THE POWER OF THE INTERNET AND MLM   Steve: That's awesome.   What does your funnel look like right now? I talk so much about funnels, and most of the MLM world is still very new to the funnel term and concept. But what is it that you guys are doing right now?   Nick: The big thing we're doing right now is the little mini course which basically teaches marketing for MLM.   Steve: Sure, that's awesome.   Nick: The big idea behind that is, if you want to recruit more people into MLM and you don't want to talk to your friends and family, then:     You have to target people who actually want to own a business but people who aren't necessarily getting the results that they want out of the current business that they're in.   Setting up this little mini course that teaches people how to market. People who actually want to learn how to market their MLM. Then we invite them to join the downline.   At the end of this course I affiliate for you and I say, “Hey, there's two ways that you can learn this…”   Steve: Which I see by the way, thank you.   Nick: “... You can either go join Steve's Secret MLM Hacks and learn it from the master. Or you can join my downline and I'm gonna teach you exactly what I'm doing to grow my downline to do $1.5 Million per year.”   You can say in your current business and learn from Steve or you can join me and learn from me.   Catching that low hanging fruit, I suppose. Taking advantage of the way that the current MLM system is.   You have so many people that are unsatisfied with the business that they have because they're not learning the things they need to run their business.   TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME   Steve: Which reeks of opportunity for the rest of us who actually know what the heck's up.   Nick: Exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's kind of like a smorgasbord of low hanging fruit.   Steve: It is, yeah.   Nick: As far as extra recruiting goes and getting new people, it's great when people actually want to use the product, they believe in the product, they love the product and all of those things.   That's an amplifier but it's not a requirement.   Steve: So you guys have a course, you're selling, you're driving traffic to the course and then on the back you’re saying, “Hey, if you want to come join, this is what we've got”.   Nick: Exactly.   Steve: That's awesome. I was filming some training for my own team three weeks ago now. And I just wrote RECRUITING.   That is what most MLMs teach you and the method for it is just walk around. Think about the power of what we're doing with this stuff.   We're taking the recruiting model and replacing something in front of it so that we're not actually promoting the MLM.   How long did it take you to create your course?   Nick: I created the course in about seven days.   Steve: RIGHT? It's not crazy, man. You create this course so then you're no longer promoting an MLM. So Facebook is okay with you suddenly.   You drive traffic to that and take the money to dump it right back into ads. It's amazing and it changes the whole model.   It's literally INFO PRODUCT + MLM. Mashing together two different industries.   Are you doing phones sales as well? Closing them on the phone?   TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES THE POWER OF THE INTERNET   Nick: To a degree yes. I will offer that to people and I have an application process (modeled after you).   Nine times out of 10 when someone goes through the application process, I set up my auto-responder. My email service will kickback a set of emails that walk them through the process of setting up their account.   Then I've done an automated overview. A business overview that teaches them about the company.   During this entire time, I never even mention my company's name.   Steve: This is the craziest part! Same thing!   Nick: I've literally modeled what you've done.   Steve: I LOVE IT!   Nick: For months my entire office was covered with print out after print out of exactly what you did.   Once I finally mapped it out in my head, it was more about the concepts at hand.   Another thing that I think a lot of people struggle with inside of the funnel world is that they think it's about pages.   Steve: Right yeah, it's not.   Nick: It about the framework. What is the state of mind that he's putting every single person in?   Once I finally understood the framework behind it, I knew that's why I failed the very first time that I tried ClickFunnels. Because I thought that it was just all about pages.   But once I understood the core framework and moving somebody through the funnel and how that's done, then all of a sudden it made sense.   Steve: Right.   INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFERS   Nick: One of the coolest things that happened out of all of this and how I feed this recruiting machine is by putting self-liquidating offers throughout the course.   The course is dripped out over five days and on each day there's a small self-liquidating offer.   Whatever I talk about that day, I then give them an offer to say, “Hey, if you want to learn this more in depth right now, click this”. Then it goes to a new page with a little sales video for an offer for $7.   Right now it's $1.50 per opt in on the front end and on the back end it's churning out $38.   Steve: You're speaking louder than whole MLMs even know how to!   Nick: Exactly and it pays for itself 17 times over. I'm paying myself to recruit people.   Steve: Last week on Secret MLM Hacks we put $1400 in and we got $20,000 back out (not including how many people got recruited and then they get handed the same recruiting systems). I don't know how it fails.   The biggest issue is the education. Most MLMs don't know how to do this which is understandable. It's a newish thing.   What would you tell to somebody who is on the fence about trying this?   ON THE FENCE ABOUT SECRET MLM HACKS?   Nick: The biggest thing that I would tell people is fail and fail fast. Just do it.   When we over think it, nothing ever gets done. I'm a perfectionist myself which is why I listened to Secret MLM Hacks 18 months ago and I just started doing this six to eight months ago. It wasn't really until the last three months that it really took off.   I’m still constantly tweaking and doing things to it but the fact is that I just did it.   I finally put down the pen, I finally put down the book and I went out there and I did it. Then I hit publish and I wasn't scared to feed the machine up front and put a little bit of money into it.   Nothing is ever gonna get done if I just sit here and read books. The knowledge is great...   Steve: But nothing happens.   Nick: You just gotta do it. Be active in your pursuit of what you want.   Steve: Be clear about the fact that this is not a hobby.   We've treated this like an actual business. We've got phone closers, we're talking to people and training.   I hate when someone joins because they're trying to do you a favor. Then they're wondering why they don't go build.   You recruited the wrong who! We gotta change your who altogether!   Nick: Every bum on the side of the street needs an opportunity.   Steve: Right!   Nick: I live in Austin and if you walk down downtown Austin you're guaranteed to see about 10 every 100 yards.   They might NEED an opportunity, but they don't' want it. You gotta find those people that actually WANT to succeed in whatever it is that you're doing.   DO YOU WANT THE SECRET MLM HACKS OPPORTUNITY?   Steve: Dude I am so thankful that you got on here. Thank you so much for sharing. I did want to ask one last question.   How many people have you been recruiting since you turned it on six months ago?   Nick: I would say we're probably getting five to seven a month.   Steve: That's awesome! On autopilot?   Nick: Yeah, on autopilot.   Steve: And the quality of person is really high which is awesome.   Nick: Five to seven a month is what we're recruiting into our organization and we get paid for a lot of people that say no to us as well.   Steve: Yeah, they bought the thing up front which is the beauty of it.   Nick: And I say five to seven, that's five to seven that we ACCEPT.   Steve: We get three to four applicants a day but I immediately cut out at least half off them because I can just tell…   Nick: Once you get to a certain point, you have to be able to say no. You have to self-select and be able to weed out people because otherwise it just becomes too overwhelming.   Steve: Then you turn into a life coach rather than a “Here’s what we're doing in our company this week” coach.   Nick: Exactly.   Steve: With love, I'll say that as tenderly as I can.   Nick, thank you so much for being on here, I really appreciate it. This was awesome, man. Really means a lot that you jumped on.   HEAD OVER TO SECRET MLM HACKS NOW   I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today.   After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next free training.   There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers without friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM.   If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.

A special conversation I had on stage at the Traffic Secrets event with a friend and a student Nic Fitzgerald. On this episode Russell talks to his childhood friend, Nick Fitzgerald about helping him go from being in a technician position to being in an entrepreneurial position. Here are some of the inspiring thing in this episode: Find out how Russell found out his childhood friend was in desperate need of help and what he offered to do for him. How Nick was able to make to Funnel Hacking Live via credit card, and then spent $1800 on a program without telling his wife. And why being on the program helped Nick be able to ask a client for $25,000 on a project, when that was his previous yearly income. So listen here to find out how Russell was able to help Nick achieve his entrepreneurial dreams. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. The next two episodes are a really special one. For our Two Comma club X members and our inner circle members I did an event recently, some of you guys heard me talk about it. It was a traffic secrets event, where I’m getting all the material ready for the book, and start teaching this stuff. Anyway, it was really, really fun and as I was doing the presentations, the night before when I was doing all the prep work I had this thought. I was like, I want to bring up somebody on stage and it’s somebody who was a friend I grew up with in elementary school, and junior high, and high school, someone who was down on their luck, who was really, really struggling. About a year ago I saw him post something on Facebook and I reached out, and this interview is happening about a year later. During the process he tells his story about what happened and the transformation and the change that’s happened by being involved inside our Clickfunnels, Funnel Hacker community. So I wanted to share that with you as part of the event, so this first half is going to be Nick kind of telling his story and it’s going to be the story from the bottom of the barrel where they were, they literally made $25,000 a year for 3 years in a row and then the transformation to this year, they’ll do well over six figures. And that’s going to be this first podcast. And the second podcast episode is, I’m actually going to be doing, I did a live coaching session with him on stage, and I want to share that with you as well because I think there’s a lot of things for you specifically that you can get from this episode too. So the next few episodes are going to be sharing this really fun conversation that happened late night at the Traffic Secrets event with my friend Nick Fitzgerald, and if you think that name sounds familiar, I have talked about him before on this podcast. In fact, a little over a year ago I did a podcast episode called being a rainmaker that was a personalized podcast that I sent to Nick specifically to help him with what he was struggling with at the time. So anyway, I wanted to share this with you because it will take you full circle to show you kind of the progress and the momentum and things that are happening in his life, and I think it will be encouraging for you to hear the story because no matter where you are in your journey right now, if you are struggling, doing well, or if you’re somewhere in between, there are parts of this story that will resonate with you. And in the second episode where I coach Nick I think will help everybody as well. So with that said, let’s jump right in and have some fun. I want to introduce you to my friend Nick Fitzgerald. Alright so I want to set the tone for the next hour or so of what the game plan is. So I have a first initial question that I’m curious about with everyone here. I’m curious, who since they joined the Two Comma Club X program has had some kind of experience with Mr. Nick Fitzgerald? That’s powerful, I’m going to talk about why in a little bit, but very, very cool. So some of the back story behind this, and then we’re going to introduce him up, and when he comes up I want you guys to go crazy and scream and cheer and clap, because it will be good, and then I want him to sit down so we’ll be the same height, which will be good, it’ll be fun. So some of the back story, I actually met Nick the very first time in elementary school, and even in elementary school he was a foot and a half taller than me, which is amazing. He was like 6 ft 2 in like third grade, it was amazing. But we knew each other when we were dorky little kids and going up through elementary school we were both doing our things, and we didn’t have a care in the world and everything’s happening. And as we got older he kept getting taller, I stopped growing. And then we got into high school and he kept growing and he joined the basketball team. I didn’t keep growing so I went downstairs in the basement, literally, at our high school in the basement they call it the rubber room, and it’s this room that smells like, I don’t even know, but it’s under the gym. So he would go upstairs and fans would show up and people would cheer for them, and scream at their games. And all the girls would come to the games. And we’d go down in the rubber room by ourselves and cut weight and put on our sweats and lose weight and we’d jump rope and sweat like crazy. And we’d sit there, and I remember one day after working out for two hours pouring in sweat, I had my plastic gear on and my sweats on top of that, my hoodie and my hoods and we got the wrestling mats, and literally rolled ourselves up in the wrestling mats to keep the heat in, and we laid there and we were so hot. And I could hear the basketball players in the gym up above having so much fun and people cheering for them. And all the girls were there. And I was like, “Why are we not playing basketball?” It doesn’t make any sense. But during that time, obviously we were in two different kind of worlds, and we didn’t really connect that much, and then we left our separate ways. And I didn’t hear from him for years and years and years. And then do you guys remember Facebook when it first came out? The first time you got it and you log in and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can connect with people.” And you start searching the friends you know and then you find their friends and you spend a day and a half connecting with every person you’ve ever remembered seeing in your entire life? Do you guys remember that? So I did that one night, I connected with everybody. Everyone in high school, everyone in junior high, or elementary, everyone in every stage of my life, as many as I could think of. And then I was like, I think that’s everybody. Okay, I’ve connected with everybody. And one of those people that night was Nick. And then, but I didn’t say hi, I just friend requested and he requested back and I’m like, cool we’re connected. And then after that I got kind of bored with Facebook for like a year or so. Then a little while later I found out you can buy ads on it and I was like, what, this is amazing. So we started buying ads and everything is happening. And it’s crazy. And then what happened next, I actually want Nick onstage to tell you this story because I want you to hear it from both his perspective and my perspective, I think it’d be kind of interesting. Yeah, I want him to come up first. So let’s do this real quick. As you guys know Nick has been a super valuable part of this community since he came in. I’m going to tell the story about how he got here and some of the craziness of how he signed up when he probably shouldn’t have and what’s been happening since then, because I know that you guys have all been part of that journey and been supporting him. How many of you guys are going to his event that’s happening later this week? He just keeps giving and serving, he’s doing all the right things, he’s telling his story, he’s doing some amazing stuff. So my plan now is I want to talk about the rest of the story. I want to tell you guys what I told him a year ago and then I want to tell you guys my advice for him moving forward, because I feel like it’s almost in proxy. I wish I could do that with every one of you guys. Just sit down here and coach you. But I feel like he’s at a stage where some of you guys aren’t to where he’s at yet and some of you are past that, and some of you guys are right where he’s at, and I feel like the advice that I really want to give him, will help you guys at all different levels. So that’s kind of the game plan. So with that said, let’s stand up and point our hands together for Mr. Nick Fitzgerald. Alright, this has some good music. That was like music from high school. Look how tall I am. I feel like….okay, so I had him find this post because I wanted to actually share a little piece of it. So this, I’m going to share a piece of it, I want to step back to where you were at that time in your life. So this was July 7, 2017, so what was that a year and a half ago, ish? So July 7, 2017 there was a post that said, “Long post disclaimer. I hate posting this, blah, blah, blah.” So at the time my family was about to go on a family vacation. We’re packing up the bags and everything, and you know how it is, you do a bunch of work and then you stop for a second and your wife and kids are gone and you’re like, pull out the phone, swap through the dream 100 and see what’s happening.  And somehow this post pops up in my feed and I see it, I see Nick my buddy from 20+ years ago and I’m reading this thing and my heart sinks for him. Some of the things he says, “I hate posting things like this, but I felt like need to for a while. Being poor stinks. For those friends of mine who are ultra conservative and look down consciously or not, on people like me, I can honestly tell you that I’m not a lazy free loader who wants something for nothing. I’m not a deadbeat who wants Obama or whoever to blame now, to buy me a phone. I’m not a lowlife trying to get the government to pay for my liposuction. I’m not a druggie who eats steak and lobster for dinner with my food stamps. I’m a father of four, a husband, someone who lost everything financially, including our home when the time came to have your healthcare in place or to get fined, I went through the process. “Based on my family size and income, we were referred to the state to apply for those programs. We couldn’t get coverage for ourselves to the exchange in other places, we qualified for Medicaid. After the process was complete, the state worker suggested we try to get some other help, some food stamps.” It kind of goes on and on and on and he says, “In 2016 I made $25000. $25,000 plus our tax returns for the previous year. So a family of 6 living on $25,000 a year is being audited for receiving too much help, too much assistance.” And it kind of goes on and on and on with that. He says, “I’ve never abused drugs or alcohol, I’ve never even tried them. I’m just a guy trying to live the American dream and provide for his family. It’s unfortunate that we look down on those who are trying to better our lives, even if it leaves them from receiving help from assistance in place to help them. Look down on me if you want, I don’t care. I know the truth. My family is healthy and sheltered and that’s all that matters. I don’t wish these trials on anyone else…” and it kind of goes on from there. So I want to take you back to that moment, what was, talk about what you were experiencing and what you were going through during that time. Nick: I didn’t expect this. I’m a friendly giant, but I’m a big boob too. Back at that time, I had started what I thought was, I started my entrepreneurial journey. I was working in film full time, working 12, 14, 16 hour days making $200 a day, just killing myself for my family. Going through the process of, I’d lost my job because I wasn’t going to hit my sales, I was a financial advisor, and I wasn’t going to hit my sales numbers. So you know, my ticket was stamped. So I said okay, I’m going to do my own thing. And in the course of all that, it was time to get your health insurance and those things, and I went through the proper channels, like I felt like I should. And I was referred to the government for the programs, based on the numbers. And as a provider, a father, an athlete competitor, I felt like a failure. We’ve all, when you have to rely on somebody else , or somebody else tells you, “Hey, we don’t think you can do this on your own, come over here and we’ll take care of you.” That’s basically what I was told. So it was hard to accept that and to live with that reality. So we did, and I worked hard and it was a blessing really, to not have to worry about how much health care costs or have some of the things to supplement to feed our family and stuff. So it was great and it was wonderful. But then I got the email from the state saying, “Hey, you’re being audited. We’re just looking at things and we’re not sure. You’ve been getting too much help.” So at that point I’m just sitting there frustrated because I’m working my butt off, just trying to make things happen, become someone involved in the film community in Utah. And I was, and everyone knew me, and I had a reputation, but I still was a nobody in the eyes of the government. So I went to Facebook to whine, looking for what I wanted, which was a pat on the back, “There, there Nick, you’re doing…we know you’re a good dude and you’re working hard.” That kind of thing, and I did… Russell: I was reading the comments last night. “Oh you’re doing a good job man. Good luck.” Everyone like babying him about how tough life can be. Nick: So I got what I wanted, but it still didn’t change anything. I still had to submit my last two years of tax returns and all of the pay that I’d got and everything like that, so they could look at our case number, not Nick, Leisle, Cloe,Ewen, Alek, William. So it was just one of those things. I got what I wanted, then comes Russell to give me what I needed, which was…. Russell: I saw that and I’m like packing the kids bags and everything and I was like, “ah, do I say something?” I don’t want to be that guy like, “Hey, 20 years ago…” and I was like, ah, I kept feeling this. Finally I was like, “hey man, I know we haven’t talked in over 20 years…” This was on Facebook messenger, “we hadn’t talked in like 20 years. I saw your post today and it sucks. And I know what’s wrong, and I can help. But at the same time, I don’t want to be that guy and I don’t want to step on any toes. I know we haven’t talked in 20 years, I have no idea if this is even appropriate. But I know what’s wrong, I can help you. And no, this is not some cheesy MLM I’m trying to pitch you on. But if you’re interested in some coaching, I know what’s wrong.” And I kind of waited and then I started packing the bags again and stuff like that. I’m curious of your thoughts initially as you saw that. Nick: It’s funny because my phone was kind of blowing up with the comments. So I would hear the little ding and I would check. And then I saw that it was a message from Russell, and we had said like, “Hey, what’s up.” And had a few tiny little small talk conversations, but nothing in depth personal. So I saw that he sent a message, so I’m like, “Sweet.” So I look at it, and I was half expecting, because I knew he was successful, I didn’t know about Clickfunnels per se. I knew he had something going on that was awesome, but I didn’t know what it was. So I was wondering, “I wonder what he’s going to say, what he has to say about things?” But I read it and it was funny because when you said, “I don’t want to overstep my bounds. It’s been a long time, I don’t want to step on toes.” Kind of thing, Russell, we all know his athletic accolades and stuff. I was a great basketball player too, I was in the top 200 players in the country my senior year and stuff like that. So I’ve been coachable and played at high levels and been coached by high level guys. So when I read it and he said, “I know what’s wrong and I can help you.” I was just like, “Yes.” That was my reaction. I just did the little, um, fist pump, let’s do this. So I replied back and I thanked him for reaching out and stuff, and I just said, I think I even said, “I’m coachable. I will accept any guidance.” And things like that. Because up until that point in my life, especially in sports, if a coach showed me something, I would do it the way he did, and I would kick the other dude’s butt. I didn’t care. I played against guys who made millions of dollars in the NBA. I dunked, I posterized on Shawn Marion when he was at UNLV my freshman year of college. I started as a freshman in a division one school in college. So I would take, I’ve always been that kind of, I would get that guidance, that direction, I can put it to work. So I was just like, “Dude, Mr. Miyagi me.” I’m 8 days older than him, so I’m like, “young grasshopper, yes you can teach me.” That kind of thing. So I welcomed it and I was excited. I had no idea, because again I didn’t know what he did. I just knew he had a level of success that I didn’t have. And if he was willing to give me some ideas, I was going to hear him out for sure. Russell: It was fun, because then I messaged him back. I’m packing the car and Collette’s like, “We gotta go, we gotta go.” I was like, ah, so I get the thing out and I was like, “This is the deal. I’m driving to Bear Lake, it’s like a six hour drive. I’m going to give you an assignment and if you do it, then I’ll give you the next piece. But most people never do it, so if you don’t that’s cool and I’ll just know it’s not worth your time. But if it’s really worth your time, do this thing. I need you to go back and listen to my podcast from episode one and listen to as many episodes as possible, and if you do that I’ll make you a customized episode just for you telling you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it. But you have to do that first. “And I’m not telling you this because I’m on some ego trip, but just trust me. The problem is not your skill set, you  have mad skills, you’re good at everything. It’s all a problem between your ears. If we can shift that, we can shift everything else.” Then I jumped in my car and took off and started driving for six hours. And then the next day, or a day later you’re like, “I’m 14 episodes in.” he was still listening to the crappy one’s, according to Steven Larsen. The Marketing In Your Car, he was probably thinking, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard, ever.” But he did it. I said do it, he did it. And he kept doing it and doing it, and so two days into my family vacation I had Norah, you guys all know Norah right. She’s the coolest. But she won’t go to bed at night, she’s a nightmare. Don’t let that cute face trick you, she’s evil. So I’m like, I can’t go to sleep, so finally I was like, I’m going to plug her in the car and drive around the lake until she falls asleep. So I plug her in the car, strap her in and I start driving. And I’m like, this could be a long, long thing. She’s just smiling back here. I was like ugh. I’m like you know what, I’m going to do my episode for Nick. So I got my phone out, I clicked record and for probably almost an hour, it was an hour. I’m driving around the lake and I explain to him what I see. Did anyone here listen to that episode? I’m curious. I’m going to map out really quick, the core concept. Because some of you guys may be stuck in this, and the goal of this, what I want to do is I want to map this out, and then what’s funny is last year at Bear Lake, so a year later we had this thing where I was like, we should do a second round where I do a year later, this is the advice now. And I wrote a whole outline for it and I totally never did it. So I’m going to go through that outline now, and kind of show him the next phase. So you cool if I show kind of what I talked about? Nick: For sure. Russell: Alright, so those who missed the podcast episode, who haven’t been binge listening, you’ve all failed the test, now you must go back to episode number one, listen to the cheesy jingle and get to episode, I don’t know what it was. Okay, I’ve said this before, if you look at any business, any organization, there’s three core people. The first one is the person at the top who is the entrepreneur. The cool thing about the entrepreneur is the entrepreneur is the person who makes the most amount of money. They’re the head and they get the most amount of money. The problem with the entrepreneur is they also have the most risk, so they’re most likely to lose everything. I’ve lost everything multiple times because I’m the guy risking everything. But the nice thing is entrepreneurs that write their own paychecks, there’s no ceilings. So they can make as much as they want. They can make a million, ten million, a hundred million, they can do whatever they want because there’s no ceiling. So that’s the first personality type. The second personality type over here is what we call the technicians. The technicians are the people who actually do the work. And what’s funny, if you look at this, people who go to college are the technicians. What do they do, they look down on entrepreneurs, they look down on sales people. “Oh you’re in sales. What are you a doctor?” For crying out loud in the night. But they look down on people like us. Because “I’m a doctor. I went to 45 years of school.” What’s interesting, there’s technicians in all sorts of different spots right. I actually feel bad, I shouldn’t say this out loud, but at the airport here I saw one of my friends who is an amazing doctor and him and his wife were leaving on a trip and we were talking and he said, “This is the first trip my wife and I have been on in 25 years, together by ourselves.” I’m like, “What?” and he’s like, ‘Well, we had medical school and then we had kids and then we had to pay off medical school and all these things. Now the kids are gone and now we finally have a chance to leave.” I was like, wow. Our whole lives we’ve heard that medical school, becoming a doctor is the…..anyway that’s a rant for another day. But I was like, there’s technicians. And what’s interesting about technicians, they don’t have any risk. So there’s no risk whatsoever, but they do have, there’s a price ceiling on every single person that’s a technician, right. And depending on what job you have your price ceiling is different. So doctors, the price ceiling is, I have no idea what doctor’s make, $500 grand a year is like the price ceiling, that’s amazing but they can’t go above that. And different tasks, different roles, different position all have different price ceilings. But there’s like, this role as a technician makes this much, and this one makes this much and you’re all kind of these things. I said the problem with you right now, you have these amazing skill sets, but you are stuck as a technician in a role where they’re capping you out, where the only thing you can make is $25k a year. Remember I asked you, “What have you been doing?” and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve been networking, I’ve been learning, I’ve been getting my skills up, getting amazing.” I’m like, “That’s amazing, you’re skills are awesome, but your ceiling is $25k a year. No matter how good you get you are stuck because you’re in a technician role right now.” I said, “you’ve got a couple of options. One is go become an entrepreneur, which is scary because you’ve got four kids at home and you don’t have money anyway.” I am so eternally grateful that when I started this game, my wife, first off, we didn’t have kids yet, my wife was working, we didn’t have any money but I didn’t have to have any money at that time, and I’m so grateful I was able to sometimes, I was able to risk things that nowadays is hard. For you to come jump out on your own initially and just be like, “Boom, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m selling this stuff.” That’s scary right, because you’ve got all this risk. So I was like, that’s the thing, but it’s going to be really, really hard. I said, “there’s good news, there’s one more spot in this ecosystem. And the cool thing about that spot it’s that it’s just like the entrepreneur, there’s no ceiling, now the third spot over here is what we call the rainmakers. The rainmakers are the people who come into a business and they know how to make it rain. This is the people who know how to bring people into a company. Leads, they bring leads in. They know all this traffic stuff they’re talking about. These are the people who know how to sell to leads and actually get money out of peoples wallets and put it into the hands of the entrepreneurs. These people right here, the rainmakers don’t  have ceilings. In fact, companies who give the rainmaker the ceiling are the stupidest people in the world, because the rainmaker will hit the ceiling and then they’ll stop. If you’re smart and you have a company, and you have rainmakers, people driving traffic, people doing sales, if you have a ceiling they will hit and they will stop. If you get rid of the ceiling and then all the sudden they have as much as they want, they have less risk than the entrepreneur, but they have the ability to make unlimited amount of money. I said, “Your skill set over here as a technician is worth 25k a year, but if you take your skill set and shift it over here and say, “I come into a company and I’m a rainmaker. I create videos, I create stories, they’ll sell more products, more things.” Suddenly you’re not worth 25,000, now you’re worth $100,000, you’re worth $500,000. You’re worth whatever you’re able to do, because there’s no ceiling anymore. And that was the point of the podcast. I got done sending it, then I sent it to him and I sent it to my brother to edit it. And I have no idea what you thought about it at that point, because we didn’t talk for a while after that. But I’m curious where you went from there. Nick: So the first thing, you know, being told I was really only worth $25,000 in the eyes of the people who were hiring me, that was a punch in the gut. That sucked to hear. Thanks man. It was just like, I literally was working 12, 14, 16 hour days, lifting heavy stuff, I did a lot with lighting and camera work, not necessarily the story writing stuff, but you know, for him to put it so perfectly, that I was a technician. I thought going in, when I failed as an advisor and I started my own company, or started doing videos for people, and being so scared to charge somebody $250 for a video, being like, “they’re going to say no.” That kind of thing, and now I wouldn’t blink my eyes for that. But you know, it’s one of those things for him to tell it to me that way, just straight forward being like, “You are, you’re learning great skills and you’re meeting amazing people.” I worked with Oscar winners and Emmy winners and stuff in the movies and shows that I worked on, but again, I was only worth that much, they had a finite amount of money, and I was a small part of it, so I got a small piece. So listening to all of that, and then hearing the entrepreneur, the risk and stuff. I’m really tall, I’m 6’9” if you didn’t know. I’m a sink or swim guy, but because I’m tall I can reach the bottom of the pool a lot easier. When I jumped in, we had lost, as a financial advisor we had lost our home and we lost all these things. So I was like, I have nothing left to lose. Worst case scenario, and I had never heard that mindset before. We were renting a basement from a family members, our cars were paid off. Worst case scenario is we stayed there and get food stamps and that kind of thing. There was nowhere to go but up from there. So for me, I was just so excited. I’m like, I want to be a rainmaker, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know where to find the people that I could do that for. So I was in this thing where I was still getting lots of calls to work as a technician, but I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want to put myself, my body, my family through me being gone and then when I’m home I’m just a bump on a log because I’m so wiped out, all that kind of stuff. So that was my biggest first thing, the action point for me. I started thinking, okay how do I transition out of this? How do I get myself out and start meeting the right people, the right kinds of clients who do have budgets and things like that, and how do I make it rain for them. That’s when I made that shift from working as a technician. I told myself I’m not going to do it anymore. The last time I technically worked as a technician was about 9 months ago. It was for a friend. So I made that shift and it was just amazing. Like Russell was talking about earlier, when you start to track it or when it’s part of your mindset, things start to show up and happen. You meet the right people and stuff. So those things just started, just by listening to that one hour long thing, I started changing and then the black box I got, Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets and started going through that as well. And it was just like, you see in the Funnel Hacker TV, that moment where the guy goes, “RAAAAA” that’s what happened with me. It was like a whole new world, Aladdin was singing. He was Aladdin and I was Jasmine, with a beard. Russell: I can show you the world. Nick: Exactly. But that’s what really, literally happened with me. Russell: That’s cool. Alright this is like summertime, he’s going through this process now, figuring things, changing things, shifting things, he’s changing his mindset. We go through the summer, we go through Christmas and then last year’s Funnel Hacking Live, were we in February or March last year? March, and so before Funnel Hacking Live we kind of just touched base every once in a while, seeing how things are going. He’s like, “Things are going good. I’m figuring things out.”  And then Funnel Hacking Live was coming, and I remember because we’re sitting there, and I think he messaged me or something, “Funnel Hacking looks awesome I wish I could make it.” I was like, “Why don’t you come?” And you’re like, “I just can’t make it yet.” I was like, “How about this man, I guarantee you if you show up it’ll change your life forever. I’m not going to pay for your flights or your hotel, but if you can figure out how to get there, I’ll give you a free ticket.” And that’s I said, “if you can come let Melanie know, and that’s it.” And I didn’t really know much, because you guys know in the middle of Funnel Hacking Live my life is chaos trying to figure out and how to juggle and all that stuff. So the next thing I know at Funnel Hacking Live, we’re sitting there and during the session I’m looking out and I see Nick standing there in the audience. And I was like, ‘I have no idea how he got there, but he’s there. Freaking good for him.” And I have no idea, how did you get there? That wasn’t probably an easy process for you was it? Nick: No. Credit cards. It was one of those things, I looked at flights. As soon as we had that conversation, it was funny because I was, I can’t remember what was going on, but it was a day or two before I responded back to his invitation. And I was like, I’d be stupid to say no. I have no idea how I’m going to get there. I think I even said, “I’ll hitch hike if I have to, to get there.” Can you imagine this giant sasquatch on route 66 trying to get to Florida. But I told my wife about it, and this is where Russell might have this in common. My wife is incredible and super supportive and she let me go. And we didn’t have the money in the bank so I said, “I’m going to put this on the credit card, and as soon as I get back I’m going to go to work and I’ll pay it off. I’ll get a couple clients and it will be fine.” So I booked the hotel, luckily I was able to get somebody who wasn’t able to go at the last minute and I got their hotel room, and I got the lfight and I came in and I was in the tornado warnings, like circling the airport for 5 hours, like the rest of you were. So I got there and I just remember I was just so excited. Walking in the room the very first day, the doors open and you all know what it’s like. I don’t have to relive this story. I remember I walked in and the hair on my arms, it was just like {whistling}. It was incredible, just the energy and the feeling. And I was like, t his is so cool. And then the very first speech, I was like that was worth every penny to get here. If I left right now it would have all been worth it. And you all know because you’re sitting here, you’ve felt that too. So that was my, getting there was like, “Honey, I know we don’t have the money, we have space on the credit card, and when I get home I swear I will work hard and it will be okay.” And she’s like, “Okay, go.” So I did. Russell: So now I want to talk about, not day one, or day two, but on day three at Funnel Hacking Live. How many of you guys remember what happened on day three? Russell sneak attacked all you guys. I was like, if I start going “Secret one, Secret two, Secret three” you guys will be like, “Here it is.” Sitting back. I was like, how do I do the Perfect webinar without people knowing it’s the perfect webinar? And I’m figuring this whole thing out, trying to figure that out. And we built a nice presentation, create an amazing offer for this program you guys are all in. And as you know, all you guys got excited and ran to the back to sign up and now you’re here. But you told me this personally, I hope you’re willing to share. But I thought it was amazing because you didn’t sign up that night. And I would love to hear what happened from then to the next day, and kind of go through that process. Nick: So this is my first Clickfunnels, I was all new to this whole thing. I was so excited when the 12 month millionaire presentation came up and I was like, “This is awesome.” Then I see it in the stack and I’m like, “I’m seeing the wizard,  I can see the wizard doing his thing.” And I was just so excited, and then the price. And it was a punch in a gut to me, because I was so, listening to it I was like, ‘This is what I need. This is what I want, this is what I need. It’s going to be amazing.” And then the price came and seriously, the rest of the night I was just like…. The rest of the presentation and everything after that I was just kind of zoned out. I just didn’t know what to do. Because I knew I needed it so badly and I’m like, that’s almost twice what we’re paying in rent right now. You know, it was just like, how am I going to justify this when I’m on food stamps and Medicaid and all this kind of stuff. You know, “yes, I’m on that but I dropped this money on a coaching program.” Russell: “From this internet coach.” Nick: Right. And so I’m having this mental battle and get back home to my room that night and I didn’t go hang out with people. I just was not feeling it. And I remember texting my wife on the walk back to the room. And I took the long way around the pond, just slowly depressedly meandering back to my room. And I’m texting her and I’m telling her how amazing it was and what the program would do and all that kind of stuff, and she’s like, “That sounds great.” And I’m purposely not saying how much it’s going to cost, just to get her excited about it, so I can maybe do a stack with her right. “For this and this….” See if I could try it. I didn’t, I failed when it came to doing that. I told her the price and she’s like, “That’s a lot of money. How are you going to pay for it.” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “The only thing I can do, because I have to sign up while I’m here, and pay for it while I’m here. I can put it on the credit card and then we will figure it out.” So we talked a lot and I talked to my dad and it was the same thing. He was like, “Man, that’s a lot.” Just the scarcity mindset that a lot of us have with our family members and support system who aren’t, don’t think, who aren’t the crazy ones. So I went to bed and I got emotional, and I slept so so bad. Just didn’t sleep well that whole night. And again, I talked to my wife again the next morning, and I just, we just said, “It would be awesome. But I can’t do it, so I’m just going to work hard and figure something out and then if it ever opens up again, then I’ll be in a position to do it.” So I left my room that morning with that in my mind. I made the mistake of keeping my wallet in my pocket though, because I’m here. I again made the long walk back and kind of gave myself a pep talk like, “Don’t worry about that kind of stuff. Just more value out of it, meet more people.” So that’s when I left my room that morning, that’s where my mind was. Russell: What happened next? Nick: I walked into the room and Kevin Hansen, who I had, it’s funny, he does a lot of editing for Clickfunnels, and he and I had actually met independent of Clickfunnels before. It was one of those things like, “Oh you do, oh my gosh.” and it was like 2 months after we’d met. So I was talking to him, just chitchatting, and I just had right then in my mind, it was like, “Walk over to the table and sign up. If you don’t do it now, you’re never going to do it.” And it was just one of those things, because I’d given myself that speech, that whole five minute walk across the property. So I finished up talking with him and I just said, “I’ll be right back.” And I walked straight over to the table, got out the credit card, wrote it all down, and I’m like, I don’t even know what my limit is, so I hope whenever they run this that it goes through. I don’t know what’s going to happen. So I did and I got that little silver ribbon that we all got. And again, {whistling} chills. Like I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. I put it on my little lanyard thing and I was just like, I couldn’t believe it. The adrenaline and all that stuff of, “I’m doing it. And my wife is going to kill me when I get back home.” So that’s, then I went and got my seat and I was just floating, you know. I was so amped, I could have “Steven Larsened” it and screamed over the noise of everybody else and it would have been very, you would have heard it. So that’s what I did that morning. I was like, ‘Not going to do it, not going to do it, not going to do it.” I walked in, 60 seconds done. You have my money. Russell: So I’m curious, when did you tell your wife? This is like a marriage counseling session, huh? Nick: yeah, do you have a couch I can lay down on? Russell: A big couch. Nick: yeah, really. So I got home and I didn’t tell her, at all. I didn’t. I said, the clock is ticking. I have 30 days until that hits, or 20 days until the credit card statement comes and she’s like, “Wait, why is there an extra $2000 bucks on here?” So I just, I said, I’ve got some time because my wife, she’s 5’3”, she’s dainty, little petite lady, but she’s not scary I guess. But this is the first time I was really scared to tell her something in our marriage. So I just said, I’m just going to hit the road hard and see what I can come up with to cover at least the $1800 and the hotel, for what I racked up at Funnel Hacking Live, and then that will get me another 30 days to figure something out. So I went and I never told her until the credit card statement came and she saw it. She’s like, “What’s this?” But what happened before that, I don’t know, do you have something after that or do you want me to go to the next part? Okay, so me going to work and being like, “I gotta find it.” and it’s funny that night at Funnel Hacking Live, I went on Facebook and I created some half thought through offer where it was like, “Hey if I can get like 5 people locally where I’m at to do a monthly low number where I create a couple of videos for a monthly retainer, that will cover it and I can figure it. But nobody nibbled on it. So I got home and I started just trying to figure stuff out. And I had met another lady who had a company and she uses Clickfunnels for her course. And it was funny, I talked to her before I went to Funnel Hacking Live, and we were talking and she was like, “Do you know Clickfunnels?” And I was like, “That’s so crazy. I do.” Because I’d never met anybody else that had. So I got home and I shot a little video with her, it was a test to do some modules for her course and she loved it and it was great. So we were talking about, she had like 20 videos she wanted to do and we were talking about budget, and I just said, “you know what, for that much, for that many videos and all this kind of stuff, it’s going to be $25,000.” And she didn’t even blink. She’s like, “Perfect, that’s great.” Thank you, you guys. You’re going to make me cry. Thank you.  And that was like maybe two weeks after I got home that that happened. And I left her house and I tried my hardest not to do a jump heel click going down her driveway, out to my car, and I got around the corner and I messaged Russell like, “dude, you’ll never guess. I just closed my first 5 figure deal and this is what it was…” and he was like, “That’s so cool.” You know. But it was the whole plata o plomo thing, I would never have the guts to ask for something like that, I know that I should and that my skills and what I can do are worth that and more, and it’s been proven to me again and again since then, but to ask the first time, that first time you have a big ask and you’re just throwing yourself out there, and if she would have said no…Now what am I going to do? Because I had actually done another pitch where I did like a webinar pitch where I  had a stack and slides and stuff because it was for a Chamber of Commerce, and I wanted to charge them 2500 a month to do like 4 videos a year. And I did the whole thing like, “If you do it, it’s $2500 a month, or if you do it all right now it’s this…” that whole you know, and they passed on it. I was like, ugh. So it was just one of those things where being around y’all, that was my first experience being around entrepreneurs, really. I have friends who have had businesses, but I felt weird for wanting to create my own thing or being selfish because I have four kids. Like why don’t you go get a real job? All those conversations that you hear and have with yourself, especially when things aren’t going great. But it was like okay, I have to get it done or I have to drop out. And I just, even in that short amount of time I received so much value from the people I was beginning to meet, and then as the content started coming out I was like, “There’s no way I could live without this after having a taste of it.” So that was my, I had to get it done and it worked out. Russell: Amazing, I love that story. So coo. Alright, so since then, how many of you guys have watched his….are you daily or almost daily Facebook Lives? Nick: Pretty much, almost daily. I’ll miss some… Russell: How many of you guys have watched his daily Facebook lives, he’s doing what we’re saying right. He’s doing it. He’s doing it. I see it, I see it coming in my feed. It pops in my feed over and over. He’s doing what we’re talking about. He’s attracting people, he’s telling stories. All the stuff we’re talking about, he’s been doing it. But part of it, he had to have that emotion, that plata o plomo moment and then he hit it and it’s just like, he’s been running and running and running and running. And it’s been so insanely fun to watch the progress and the growth. Some of you guys know he put out an event that’s coming up this weekend and sold out in 5 seconds. He’s like, “I sold out, should I make it bigger?” and I’m like, “No people should have responded to you faster, it’s their fault. Sell it out because next time it will be easier to sell it out again and easier to sell out again.” But he did it by giving tons of value. Telling stories, telling stories, telling stories, providing more value to you guys, to other entrepreneurs, other people in the community and people are noticing. All the stuff we talked about today, he’s doing it. Consistently, consistently, consistently doing it. That was so cool. I don’t even know where to go from here. Alright I know where to go from here. Before I move into this, was it scary? Nick: All of it scary? Well, this is what, back to my competitive days, I don’t care who, I’d played against the best players in the country at high levels. And I didn’t care if you were going to the NBA, being recruited by Duke, once we got into the lines I didn’t care who you were, I was going to make you look silly. I would hold, you wouldn’t score a point on me, or I would just like out work you and if you wanted to get anywhere I was in your face the whole time. And so this was a whole different game for me. I remember Myron talking about in his speech at Funnel Hacking Live, you have to stay in the game long enough to learn the game, and I was new to this game. Like brand new, less than 12 months when I went to Funnel Hacking Live. And it was terrifying because, not necessarily because I didn’t think I could do it, I was just worried when, how long it would take. Like am I going to go and just spin my wheels and it’s going to be 15 years, 2099 and I’m wheeling up across to get my reward from him in his wheelchair, just like, “Hey buddy.” You know, that kind of thing. I just didn’t know how to make it happen quick. That kind of stuff. So I was definitely scared, not necessarily of failing, because I had failed before, I was just scared how long it was going to take. Russell: one of the best moments for me was this summer, him and his family were driving home from, I can’t remember where, they were driving through Boise, and he’s like, “Can we swing by and say hi? My kids want to meet you, my wife wants to meet you.” That’s always scary when you haven’t met someone’s wife or kids and you’re like, what if they hate me. And I remember I started thinking, oh my gosh. He spent all his money coming out here, and then he bought the thing, she might legitimately want to kill me. I have no idea. I was a little bit nervous. And I came and met them and the kids, it was super cool. I remember the coolest thing, your wife just looked at me and she said, “Thank you.” And I was like, how cool is that? Just the coolest thing. Thank you for convincing, persuading, whatever the things are to do this thing. I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we feel the guilt or the nervousness of, “Should I sell somebody something? Is it right, is it wrong?” You have to understand when you’re doing it, it’s not a selfish thing for you. It’s like, how do I get this person to take the action they need to do. Because most people won’t do it until they make an investment. It’s just human nature. They’ll keep dinking around and dinking around, whatever it is until they have a commitment, until they make that covenant, like Myron talked about earlier, people don’t change. So in any aspect of life, you want someone to make a change, there’s got to be something that causes enough pain to cause the change, which is why we have the program. We could have priced the program really, really cheap but I was like, “No we won’t.” We legitimately wanted to make a plata o plomo moment for everybody. You’ll notice, when the program signup, not everybody who signed up is here today. Some people fell away, some of them left, things happen and I totally understand, but I wanted to make it painful enough that we get people to move. And there are people in this room, I’ve joked about, Nick probably shouldn’t have bought that. If he would have asked I would’ve been like, “No dude, don’t. What are you thinking? Why would you do that?” as a friend this is weird, but I’m so grateful. Are you grateful you did? Nick: Absolutely. Russell: Where’s Marie Larsen, is she still in here? I talked about this in the podcast. She was in the same situation, she should not have signed up for it, it’s insane. I saw this text she sent Steven, she’s like, how much did you have in your bank account when you signed up for it? $70 in the bank account, $1800 a month bill she signed up for. And then it started happening and she was freaking out how it’s going, if you guys haven’t listened to the podcast, Lean In, yet I told the whole story. But it got nervous month one, then month two happened and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, I need to leave. I can’t afford this.” And she’s talking with Steven and Steven’s like, “Well, you could leave and walk away, or you could lean in.” so she decided, “Okay, I’m going to lean in.” So she leaned in, and I’ve watched as her business over the last 3, 4, 5, 6 months is growing and it’s growing and it’s growing because she leaned in. Tough times will come, every single time it comes, but those who lean in are the ones who make it through that, and who grow and who build huge businesses.

We sit down and talk about Black Texas Magazine with Founder, Editor & Chief Nickholas Bailey.Learn about Black Texas Magazine here:https://www.blacktexasmag.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and yes, you're listening to a B-Side. Now, yes, we've introduced the purpose of a B-Side before, but remember, every episode is what? That's right, somebody's first episode. So for our new folks, B-Sides are essentially random shows that we have in-between our larger shows. These are much less structured and somehow--that's right, you even guessed it--it's more lit. That's right. So there's lit. This is more lit than our regularly scheduled shows. Sometimes they're discussions that the hosts have. Sometimes they're extended monologues from just one particular host like myself or Ola or Latricia or Ade, or sometimes, yes, maybe even sometimes, maybe even most times, they're a special chat with a special guest. Today, we have a special guest - Nickholas Bailey. Nick Bailey is the editor-in-chief of Black Texas Magazine, a media outlet that is dedicated to enriching the lives of people of color across the state and beyond by connecting on a personal level through a passion for leading fulfilling lives. Welcome to the show, man. How you doin'?Nick: I'm doing well, how are you?Zach: I'm doing good, man. Look, let's talk about Black Texas Magazine. Where did it start, why the name, and what are y'all trying to achieve?Nick: Well, Black Texas started kind of as a jumping point for me because prior to this, or about--oh, I guess about a year prior to this I was the online editor for a publication called Texas Lifestyle Magazine. Great publication. They've done a lot of great stuff, but as I--as I got further into it, I started to recognize that there was a disconnect between my perspective and the perspective that they were--that they were creating. You know, like, I live a very different lifestyle than the people that they target, you know? I'm not accustomed to paying $300 for a charcuterie board or paying, you know, $1,000 for, you know, a grill set. It just wasn't really my--it wasn't really my thing, and I was pushing for some more relatable content for the average Texan, and it just wasn't--there was a disconnect there, and so after a lot of thinking and a lot of planning I decided to make the jump and create a publication for black people that was essentially the same thing in some ways. Like, I don't want to say that we just copied and pasted the formula because, you know, unfortunately I created a lot of the formula for Texas Lifestyle once I came on, but I would say that our goal is to enrich the life of black Texans and really Texans of all colors by exposing them to new brands, new opportunities, and new experiences that they may not have previously known about or they may not have previously felt like were open to them, you know? So I know for a lot of--for a lot of black people in the community, we--we almost self-segregate with a lot of things, you know? We look at things as, "Oh, that's white people stuff. We don't really--we don't really mess with that," whether it be, you know, simple stuff or the wild stuff like bungee jumping or skydiving, which I'm still kind of on the fence on. Like, they might be able to keep those. [laughs] But even things like, you know, eating at different restaurants or trying different festivals and experiences. Just really making it more palatable for--you know, for the black community, because there are plenty of people in the black community that say, "Hey, I want to live life. I've only got one life. I want to enjoy it while I'm here," and finding the opportunities for them that will enhance their lives is really the big overarching goal for us, but also highlighting the black businesses that are trying that as well along the way.Zach: So it's interesting, right? So I looked at the platform, and, you know, I think what I was taken most aback by was the amount of content, right? Like, you guys--it seems like you guys are publishing something every single day, and so talk to me a little bit about y'all’s challenges in getting this started up and, you know, what goes into managing a digital magazine. How do you juggle--it seems that there's a lot of hats to juggle. It seems that there's a lot of things to do, and I understand that you're also working full-time still.Nick: Yes.Zach: So how do you manage all of that?Nick: I manage that with a lot of stress--a lot of stress, not a lot of sleep, and an overdose of patience, because we do have a small team. We're always looking--like, we're always looking for new writers to bring on-board, but right now we do have a small team, and it's really just a matter of balancing everyone's talents and abilities. Like, for the time being I take on the burden--I take on the bulk of the burden by handling a lot of the administrative tasks. So, like, making sure that content is up on the website, proofreading the content, gathering all of the materials. So that might be, like, getting the photos in order, sorting it--like, sorting our files and documents online. So I do a lot of that stuff, and so I have the writers, and I say, "Hey, I want you to focus on writing," and the plan that I have right now is really to kind of spread that load across--across the team so no one person is having to do all of the writing. 'Cause everybody--like, to my knowledge, everybody else is working full-time somewhere as well. So what I would rather them do is each person write, you know, one or two things a month, and we could be able to keep a steady flow than expecting one person to churn out, you know, a new article every week, you know? And with balancing it with working--like, I work full-time, and for me it's kind of difficult 'cause I work 12-hour shifts. So a lot of my work is done--I guess done at night, so I'm usually up until about 1:00 in the morning making sure that content is looking good, there's no errors and we're gonna be good to go.Zach: So I have another question as a follow-up, right, really to the title of Black Texas Magazine. Has anyone run up on you with, "If we had a White Texas Magazine, that would be racist?"Nick: Not that directly, but it's been one of those side--like, side-swiped questions. Like, "Hm, why is it just for black people?" And kind of insinuating that, and to that I would say, to be honest, most of the public--like, most of the Texas-based publications we have are catered to a white audience. And, you know, I'm not opposed to--I'm not opposed to acknowledging that it may seem--it may come off as a bit contentious to say, "This is a publication for black people," you know, but at the same time it's never been a situation of, you know, "No whites allowed," you know? We've had--we've had white contributors to our publication. We have a lot of white readers. We have readers all over the world, and most of those aren't, you know, nations of color. And so I would say if they want--if they asked the question or they posed the question or the statement "If we had a White Texas Magazine, that'd be racist," I would tell them, "Well, let's go read Texas Highways. Let's go read Texas Monthly. Let's go read Texas Lifestyle." The list could go on. Most publications are catering to a white audience. Like, they may not be as blatant as to say it, but it's one of those--I would say it's one of those underlying things of once you see the subject matter you--there are ways of siphoning out certain groups by the content.Zach: Right. And, you know, it's funny because I think it's easy to forget that white is the default, right? Like, it's--like, you don't have to call something for it to be--the majority of the country is white, so most of the content out there in any type of media is largely going to be white, right? So you don't have to call--I don't have to call something white, something anything, but you do call things--you know, if there is other underrepresented groups, black, XYZ, or Asian-this or Latin-X or Hispanic-this because we're trying to highlight the fact that this is not the default, right? It's not what you immediately consider when you think about whatever audience or population that you're gonna be engaging. Okay, so let me ask you this. You know, you guys landed J Prince recently, [inaudible] J Prince, but how did that happen for you guys? Like, how did it work, and what was that experience like?Nick: For me, honestly, it was an amazing experience. I lucked into it because I got--I got an email from the city of Austin about an event that they were co-hosting. It was just an evening with J Prince where he was just hearing Austin talking about his life, and I went, and I was like--I didn't know what to expect, and I was just like, "Man, I just want to see this guy in person, see, you know, really what he's about and just kind of, you know, measure him up instead of just looking through a screen," and it was a cool event. The event went off really well, and at the end there was a line to, like, you know, take a picture with him and stuff, and I was like, "Okay, cool." You know, "I don't mind getting a picture with J Prince. That'd be kinda cool," and so I get in line, and as always they're trying to sell the book or sell merchandise and stuff like that, and just out of, you know, the spur of the moment I'm like, "I'll buy the book," and so I get the book, and when it's my turn he autographs the book and everything, and I ask him a question, and the question I asked him is, you know, "Hey--" Like, he talks about--he talked a lot about, you know, replacing IGs with OGs in terms of, you know, getting off of social media and really linking up with people that have done what we do before us and really gaining some knowledge from them, especially, like, in different entertainment avenues. A lot of the OGs that we came up with came up through nefarious ways, you know? They sold drugs, they robbed people. They committed crimes to get the assets that they needed, and so I asked him, you know, "How can we look up to these OGs and get advice from them when we're at a age where we don't want to take those penitentiary chances to make it into the industry?" And I think it kind of--it kind of put him on the spot, and he stopped and he said, "You know what? Talk to me after the show."Zach: You asked him--you asked him that in front of a bunch of people?Nick: No, it was--like, it was a one-on-one thing. I asked him, like, face-to-face, maybe two feet away from him.Zach: Oh, my gosh. Well, shout out to you for asking J Prince such a very pointed question to his face.Nick: You can't get the answers you don't ask for.Zach: [laughs] That's a good point.Nick: You know? 'Cause I would love to be in different indust--like, involved in different industries, but I don't wanna have to go sell coke to get the money for it.Zach: Straight up, yeah.Nick: But at the same time, trying to save money from a regular 9-to-5 is a very slow process.Zach: And this is the thing I think people forget, like, man, the blessing of an--you cannot, you cannot undervalue initial capital, man. Like--so you know, like, even when you talk about Jay-Z's album, the last album he dropped right, and he was talking about how I flipped this, and it's like, "Well, Jay-Z, man, you started off with, like, 400 racks. You had $400,000 from the coke game, so you say." So it's like, "Okay, yeah." If you--if you gave a very ambitious, you know, entrepreneurial person of color $400,000, man, that's gonna--yeah, they could flip that into something too. I'm not saying--they might not flip it into a billion, but they can flip it into something because they have the initial capital. So to your point, like, how--that just was such a good question because, like, okay, I'ma talk--if I talked to Jay-Z for an hour, people would say, "I'd love to talk to Jay-Z for an hour 'cause then I would learn how to be a billionaire." It's like, "Well, Jay-Z's gonna be like, "Well, I had initial capital of $400,000 because I sold drugs, and it was tax free. So I basically started with a 400--" Like, most black people don't have seed money, hundred thousand dollar seed money. They have a little bit of change here and there that they scrounge up, like you said. Like, that they hold over from their full-time job after paying off this and paying off that and whatever debt they have, and they have, you know, a little bit of change, not enough money to build an empire. You know what I'm saying?Nick: Absolutely, and that was--and after listening to Jay-Z's album, that was one of the things that I kind of left with. I was like, you know, "He talks a lot about, you know, these amazing ways to do better," and it's one of those things of "If you knew better, you'd do better." And that's cool. Like, I would love to buy a piece of art that's worth, you know, 1 million, hold it until it's worth 2 million, sell it when it's worth 10 million. That's cool. I would love to be able to give that to my children, but I gotta get that first million.Zach: Right. [laughs]Nick: It's easy--it's easy to compound wealth once you have it, and a lot of rappers talk about that part, but they don't really tell us how we can get the money, how we can get started without selling drugs, without robbing people. That's--like, that's the link they never give us, and I think that unfortunately that's because a lot of them don't have the answer for that, aside from "Sell drugs. Rob people." And that's an unfortunate truth. Like, I get it, that's the environment they came up in, but if we're trying to do better now we need new lessons.Zach: Right, right. So let me ask--let me ask you this. What advice would you have for black and brown folks trying to get, you know, multi-effort ventures off of the ground? So you have a full-time job. You've launched a magazine. It takes multiple hands, driving it and grinding it. It clearly--like you said earlier, it's stress. It's late nights. What are you--what advice would you have for folks who look like us trying to do similar things?Nick: The strongest advice I would give is work together. In college I ran a midterm program, and one of the things I taught was the idea of collective development. You know, especially if you're starting off with little to no capital. You're--like, you're working at a point where you're not getting paid. You need to find a team of people who are willing to work with you to build something up that benefits everybody, you know? Like, Black Texas isn't just me. It's not the Nick Bailey show, you know? My byline comes up very little. For me, I look at it as a plat--as I'm creating a platform to advance the careers of other people, you know? Because as we gain our audience and as we, you know, get that brand retention, that brand recognition, people start coming to the website looking for other people. They're not looking for me, you know? They're looking to see, "Oh, let's see what's up with these movie reviews. Let's see what's up with these fashion tips. Let's see what's up with these house-keeping tips." You know, "What events are coming up?" I want--I want people looking for the thoughts and ideas of other people, and for me in my particular situation I can say, "Hey, I can't pay you to write right now, but what I can give you is an opportunity to grow your name," because not everybody has the money to start up a website, you know? Even the cheapest websites that aren't free aren't cheap. Once you get past the, you know, this is BrandXYZ.WordPress.com and you get to just Brand.com, it becomes a different--a different financial burden, and not everybody--not everybody is willing to take that risk, and I've gotten to a point where I took that risk to--ideally to make it easier for other people. So I would say, you know, one, be willing to work together. Understand the vision. Don't just work for anybody, but understand the vision. Understand what it means for you personally and how it's going to benefit you personally, and then you give it your all, you know? Like, that's the truest thing that I can tell anyone, and also set ego aside, you know? Not everybody's going to be #1, and not everybody needs to be #1. You can easily do amazing as a strong #2, and what I mean by that is not everybody has to be a CEO. Not everybody has to be the founder, the president. You know? Like, I don't introduce myself as the founder or CEO of Black Texas because that's not important to me, you know? I want this to be something much bigger than myself. I'm the editor-in-chief, which is just to say I'm the guy steering the ship right now, you know? Like, I don't look at the--I don't look at the Dallas Cowboys and think of who the owner is, I look at the Cowboys and think of who are their star players, you know? Who are the people who made the team breathe? And that's how I look at--that's how I look at Black Texas and really any business, you know? We know--we know who Mark Zuckerberg is. That's cool. He made it that way. He's not the one looking at all this Russia info. He's not the one making sure that you wind up in Facebook jail for some post, [laughs] and those people may not have the fame, but they're getting us all a paycheck.Zach: Right. Right, right. Man, this has been dope, man. Do you have any shout outs for us?Nick: I did not think of shout outs. Let's see. If there are people I'd shout out, honestly I would just give shout outs to my team. It's been--like, we launched this year mid-January, and it's been a wild ride along the way. I've taken risks. I've asked them to follow me, and they have, and we really--we really made a lot of strides this year, and I'm proud to see the work they're putting in and what we're able to accomplish when we work together, you know? This is the first time that I've really steered a team like this, and to see them, you know, putting up the hard work is honestly amazing. I would want to give a shout out to my family, you know? Like, I love my daughters, but most importantly, like, my parents. They have been a well of support for me. They've encouraged me to, you know, chase my dreams. They've helped me when I--like, when I wasn't sure about myself, and, you know, my grandma's been my day one, and she's helped me in life as well, but I don't know. I would say--if I had to give a specific shout out it would be to my father, and that's because he gave me the capital to get this magazine started, you know? 'Cause, like, every year he'll give--like, he'll give a gift for Christmas, which really isn't a gift to me, it's more of a "Hey, here's some money from me. Get gifts for the girls," because he doesn't really--he doesn't really celebrate Christmas. Different religion. That's not really his thing, and so I get it, but this last year he gave me a little more than usual, and he said, you know, "Take this and do what, you know, you feel you need to do with it," and I was just at a loss, and I thought and I thought about it. I strategized, and I prayed over it, and I said, "You know, I have to be willing to take that jump," you know? It called me back to a quote from Steve Harvey talking about getting to success, and he said, you know, "You have to be willing to jump. You can't be successful on the ledge," and so I went for it. And so, you know, I've got to give it my all because I can't--I can't let folks down. That's not my thing.Zach: Awesome, man. Well, look, that does it for us, guys. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You have been listening to Nick Bailey, editor-in-chief of Black Texas Magazine. Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Time-Stamped Notes 00:20 – Ari and Nick talk about bone broth 01:33 – Trivia: bone broth has a lot of collagen and glutathione 01:49 – Marine Collagen Protein 1.5x more collagen 03:04 – Bear burger 03:15 – Grass-fed versus Grass-finished 03:58 – Nick just came back from Iceland and his luggage was lost 04:12 – It was a great task for a virtual assistant 04:23 – The problem was completely solved 04:30 – The virtual assistant advised Nick to get a Trackdot 05:00 – Working with people remotely 05:06 – There are additional, perspective benefits 05:25 – Ari talks about a baby monitor called WithBaby 05:55 – VA suggested Sugru 06:00 – Sugru 06:06 – Basically a putty, looks like a ketchup pouch 06:16 – You can mold it, and it dries into rubber—perfect for electric cables 07:06 – Bunch –the fastest way to video message 07:09 – Similar to Roger, but with 8 people—really cool way to work with remote teams 08:12 – Powerful for people in a visual field 08:25 – Company Mood – employee mood tracking made easy 08:33 – Visualizes the work climate 08:47 – Uses micro surveys to monitor people 09:28 – Ghost Browser – productivity browser 09:31 – Log into any website with multiple accounts from ONE browser 09:57 – Safari versus Chrome 10:45 – Elink – content curation and sharing 10:54 – Let’s users clip content from anywhere and format it into a newsletter/website that can be sent 11:30 – Haymakers for Hope 11:45 – Email your receipt to receive a free hour of VA service 11:48 – Blinklist book promotion – 20% OFF! 12:20 “It’s like you can read a book in 10 minutes” – Nick For more info on Less Doing, LessDoing, visit us at: www.lessdoing.com

Time-Stamped Notes 00:28 – VA Services price increase on September 1st 00:40 – Clients signed up before Sept. 1st will be at the current price of $129/month and $40/hour 00:47 – Clients joining after the 1st, the pricing will be $149/month and $40/hour 01:03 – Just enough to support current clients and be able to offer the same level of service 01:17 – Fancy Hands – assistants for everyone 01:21 – Ari was a huge supporter of Fancy Hands, until the quality of the service tanked 01:45 – New website with Ari’s testimonial from 3 years ago 02:05 – Nick thought he was losing Ari as a partner :) 02:20 – Fancy Hands had huge turnover 01:58 – Launching a new website in a few weeks 02:35 – Kickstarter Camorama 02:42 – Sharing video experiences 02:50 – Recording and tracking things 03:00 – Camorama: The 4K Action VR & 360 Degree Cam Made For Sharing 03:20 – A deeper level of remote experience for people 05:19 – Use as a tool for touring remote facilities and real estate 03:44 – Ari and Nick use Roger to communicate 03:49 – Expands your ability to be more productive 05:46 – Nick’s surprise from Kickstarter – FaceCradle 06:07 – The basic type of pillow to strap on the back of a chair 06:55 – “It’s like having a massage table in your chair” – Nick 07:28 – Fidgeting leg arteries 07:43 – How fidgeting can keep your legs healthy while sitting 08:08 – Fidgeting is not necessarily a bad thing 08:20 – How to be an expert? 08:42 – Get fast negative feedback 09:32 – “The only thing I care about is what they don’t like.” – Ari 09:44 – Constantly looking for the negative feedback to build from 09:52 – Study less, test more 10:15 – “We don’t just run a test and ask for a number.” – Ari 11:00 – Basis tracking watch 11:10 – One of the best fitness trackers 11:19 – Uses a green light to read oxygen levels 12:23 – Products were recalled because of overheating and causing burns 12:50 – Go to the website and get it refunded 13:00 – Physiclo –compression tights with built-in resistance 13:19 – Compression tights are great on a plane ride 13:25 – With an extra layer of special elastics to engage key leg muscles 13:57 – “It just felt like I was given a hug.” – Ari 14:40 – Training with a weighted vest 15:44 – Haymakers for Hope on November 18th 16:14 – The 1-Hour Workday 16:18 – An article about peak time 16:40 – One hour to write as much as they can 17:31 – New dashboard and new website soon to LDVA 17:40 – More details on Trello Powerup next month “The goal is to allow people to use Trello to be able to assign tasks to us.” –Nick For more info on Less Doing, LessDoing, visit us at: www.lessdoing.com

Today we're talking with Nick Disabato of Draft, a small interaction design consultancy in Chicago. His previous clients include Gravitytank, New Music USA, Chicago Magazine, The Wirecutter, and too many other attractive, intelligent people to count. We spent quite a bit of time talking about his work designing a delightful user experience for Cards Against Humanity. We discuss... Cards Against Humanity marketing strategy Split-testing Conversion rate optimization And more Links: Cards Against Humanity - http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/ Cadence & Slang - http://cadence.cc/ Draft: Revise - https://draft.nu/revise/ Nick's newsletter - http://eepurl.com/vqJgv Visual Website Optimizer - https://vwo.com/ PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Transcript Recording: This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resources for growing your Shopify business, sponsored by Ethercycle. Kurt: Welcome to the Unofficial Shoplift Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster and with me today is Nick Disabato from Draft. Nick, how are you doing? Nick: Doing fantastic. How are you, man? Kurt: I'm well. Where are you at? Nick: I live and work in Logan Square, a neighborhood in Chicago and have been here for the past seven years. I've been independent for the past 3-1/2. Kurt: That's good. I'm about right miles from you in Park Ridge. It's funny we're doing this over Skype but we're like a bus ride apart. Nick: We are. We're probably a short L ride apart. Kurt: Tell me, who's Nick D? Nick: Nick D is me as I exist on the Internet and I run a small design consultancy called Draft as you mentioned and we do a lot of things. I publish books. I do monthly A/B testing for people. I run the world's stupidest newsletter but what I think we're here to be talking about is my one-off interaction design product, just more typical client work, more consulting work. I've done it for a variety of e-commerce clients and solved a lot of really interesting problems for both mobile and desktop and I think about these sorts of things a lot. That's kind of ... Kurt: For the lay person, what's interaction design? Nick: Interaction design, it's the process of making something easier to use and it involves hacking out the layout and behavior of a product. That can range from prototyping something and running it by users to see how they enjoy using it or whether they're successful at completing goals within it. It can range from promoting certain design decisions and hacking out functionality. It can involve figuring out edge cases like if you type in a really long response that doesn't belong in a certain form field, what happens? If you click here, what happens? It's figuring out to choose your own adventure capacity of going through a technology product of any type. I've worked... Kurt: It sounds like you're a problem solver for your clients. Give me a good example of a problem you solved with interaction design. Nick: We'll talk about e-commerce stuff. One of my biggest clients over the past few years was a board game company called Cards Against Humanity. Kurt: I dearly love Cards Against Humanity. Tell us about it. Nick: For your audience, if you do not know Cards Against Humanity, it's similar to a card game called Apples to Apples where I'm a person judging a card and everybody else plays another card only it's usually quite inappropriate. You have weird poop jokes or [scathalogical 00:03:03] things. Kurt: The favorite combo I ever got, the winning combo I ever got out of Cards Against Humanity, I will never forget. It was "Santa gives the bad children genital piercings." That was genius. Nick: My personal favorite is 'What's the last thing Michael Jackson thought about before he died?' and somebody played Michael Jackson. Kurt: That one is layers on layers. Nick: Oh my God, I still think about it. It's amazing. I've worked with them to define all of the layout and behavior for their e-commerce system. They now have, in addition to Amazon, you can buy stuff directly through them. You go through and they run through Stripe. It's not through Shopify but it's entirely independent and entirely custom. What they wanted was something that worked pretty well on mobile and they wanted something that was a little more unconventional to fit their business's needs. Cards Against Humanity, for those of you who don't know, they're a relatively unconventional business just in terms of their tone and in the way that they carry themselves and the way that they deal with their customers. Kurt: That has totally differentiated and set them apart. Nick: Yes. I think a large part of Cards Against Humanity's success is their marketing and their outreach. They do a terrific job of both of those but they do a very ... Kurt: I've seen their marketing and it's amazing. They do one-off promo cards. I've got their House of Cards promo set that they did co-branding with Netflix. What kind of outreach do they do? Nick: They do a lot of ... They'll reply to people on Twitter. They'll follow along with people's activity. They'll pay attention to what people are talking about and they'll try and be a little bit proactive about it. As far as their site is concerned, their tone is very distinctive. It's ... Kurt: Absolutely, it irreverent. Nick: Yes, it's irreverent. It's a little bit standoffish, a little bit jerk but fun jerk. It's like [inaudible 00:05:09]. Kurt: Yeah. You love them for being mean to you. It's like Ed Debevic's.. Nick: [Crosstalk 00:05:10]. Yeah, it is like Ed Debevic's a little bit which is a diner in Chicago that ... Kurt: Right, [inaudible 00:05:15]. Nick: It's definitely one of those things where they own their voice and they know how to do it. If you go through the prompts on their Website, if you go to ... I believe it's store.cardsagainsthumanity.com. You can go there and buy stuff and they ask you what country you're from right away. We can go to a UX teardown of why that is but I'll give you the high level. They go to country [crosstalk 00:05:40] right away. Kurt: I'm already there. Nick: If you choose I live in the rest of the world like not US or Canada or UK or something like that, they'll be like, "Begone foul foreigner" or something like that." They'll just make fun of you. "Send us an e-mail for when Cards Against Humanity is available in your inferior country" or something like that. They're just totally blanked up. UI Copy was definitely an enormous component of it. It's part of why I'm getting to this because I wrote a fair amount of the UI copy that is still on there right now. Another thing that you'll see on the page if you go through it while you're listening to this podcast is you'll see a row of information at the top of it. You'll go and buy something, you'll hit Pay Now and you'll see country recipient, e-mail and shipping and what it says is ... It says USA. It'll try and geolocate you and then it'll say, "Not right." You can tap back to that and two things are happening there. You can edit your order as you're going and it reads the order back to you. One thing that you see in Shopify in particular or in e-commerce in general like Amazon or anything like that, it reads your order back to you before you hit Place Order. That's an extra click that you don't necessarily need because you could get this kind of inline feedback. There's no reason why you couldn't get inline feedback. I built the interaction model to fit that and people liked it. There were two things that people called out – the way that the feedback was being read back to you and the way that it was auto-correcting as it goes. If you type in your zip code, it autocorrects to your city and state and is usually accurate. That's pretty cool and it does have for both USPS and Canada Post. It requests little information from you, moves you through the process as fast as possible at the minimum of clicks. I wrote a book that called about interaction cycle, Cadence & Slang. One of the things I say is reduce the number of steps to complete a task. I tried to make this kind of exemplar of that principle by making it as efficient as humanly possible. The other thing that people talk about is when you actually go buy something, which I see you're tapping through that right now, Kurt, that I would ... Once you finish the transaction it says, "Now, go outside" and makes fun of you about the fact that you're on the Internet and it links ... Kurt: It shames you for your order. Nick: It already has your address and if you click "Now, go outside," it searches on Google Maps for parks near you. Kurt: [Crosstalk 00:08:07]. This is incredibly clever stuff. Nick: It's thinking like, okay, I'm on a computer and I'm refreshing it whenever an expansion comes out or I'm doing all these other things and it just wants ... It's like, "Oh, by the way, you're on the Internet. Now, you don't have to be on the Internet anymore. You gave us money. Just go away." That's most of the design decisions behind this. I feel like a lot of people just reinvent the wheel with e-commerce. They want to do something safe. One of the great things with Cards Against Humanity is they don't want safe. They don't care. They want to get the orders okay but if you're messing it up, it's not their fault. It's your fault for this particular organization. [Crosstalk 00:08:56]. Kurt: Yeah, like the whole ... the entire experience ... Like it's easy to use and it's great but at the same time the game ... It starts with a product. You've got this incredibly irreverent game and then that gets extended to the messaging and the copy and the positioning. Then amazingly where everyone else would have stopped, they moved it into the actual user interface. The interaction itself is irreverent. Nick: There are a couple of people at Cards that handle a goodly amount of the logistics in getting the cards printed and shipped and everything. To use a developer term, they are a full-stack operation. They deal with the printer. They deal with Amazon. They deal with the warehouse. They want to build a vertically-integrated system for [crosstalk 00:09:40]. Kurt: I was going to say that sounds like a vertical integration. Nick: They're a good enough business and are popular enough that they can get away with it. They could ... If I did that ... Kurt: It's a great product. People love it. It's a catch-22. People love it because of these irreverent decisions but at the same time, are they able to make those irreverent decisions because people love it? It's like where do you start with that? Nick: I would be putting words in their mouth but I suspect it's kind of a feedback loop. They make these decisions and they realize they're getting rewarded for it by having more business and so, they end up making more irreverent decisions in more irreverent ways. Kurt: Why, yes. You're right. It does. It rewards itself. Anyone could start trying this and if it doesn't work out, you shouldn't do it. Nick: Yeah. I run a large part of my design practice as A/B testing. You could build this and run half of your users through it and if your conversion rate drops, either try and tweak it or throw it away. That way you're not losing an insane amount of sales on your testing idea. You're vetting whether it works for you. I suspect at least certain conceits of these like auto-complete and providing this feedback. I don't see any personal reason why that couldn't exist in other e-commerce context. I really don't. Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned split testing. Tell us briefly, what is split testing? Nick: It's essentially you have an idea and rather than fighting about it internally about whether it's a good idea, you let people decide and you're letting real customers decide. This can be anything. This can be a call to action button. This can be a headline. This can be a person on your homepage selling the thing. It can be whether a video autoplays or not. It can be any design decision you want and you have a control page which is your original page. You send that by 50% of your users and then the other goes to the other 50%, whatever you're varying and you're measuring success in sales, signups for your mailing lists, whatever have you. It can be anything that you want. Kurt: As long as it's a measurable goal. Nick: You have a goal, right. You can do this with multiple variations. Most of my A/B tests are in fact A-B-C-D-E tests where I'm vetting many different variations of something and many different permutations of something and testing it with real-life people. It reduces risk because you're running many variants. You're optimizing the page slowly and you're throwing away what doesn't work and learning what does work and where you want to be putting more of your efforts. Even a failure, which is a plurality of your tests are failures or inconclusive, you're still learning where you don't want to be putting your efforts, like you don't need to be fighting over that link, that sort of thing. I always try and frame it in a very positive way. Kurt: It's interesting. The way you brought it up is you don't have to fight about it internally. It's a great way to talk about it because in our design practice that's generally how I bring up the idea of split testing is when the client pushes back on something or they attribute some loss in sales to a change and I say, "Actually, we don't have to guess about it. We could split test it and know for certain." It's usually how I introduce that concept. Nick: Yes. Kurt: As soon as you say, "We can know for sure and we can know scientifically," then people become very interested in it. What's your favorite tool for split testing? Nick: I give all of my clients ... I have a monthly A/B testing tool or a service called Draft Revise where you pay me a certain amount every month and I run tests for you and write up reports and that's it. You never have to worry about the practice of doing this. I use something called Visual Website Optimizer. It shortens to VWO. You can go to vwo.com. For a few of my clients, I use something called Optimizely, if you go to optimizely.com. Both of those are terrific. They have very small differences at this point. It's like Canon and Nikon. They're just snipping at each other and it's making both of them much better. Kurt: I've used them. I've personally used VWO. I really liked it. I used the Google split testing tool. That thing's a nightmare. Nick: Yeah, it's changey. I would pay the money for V. If you have enough scale to get statistical validity out of the A/B tests which typically you need at least 3,000 or 4,000 [uniques 00:13:53 ] a month to be doing that for whatever goal you're measuring, usually it's more, you're probably making enough money that you can afford Visual Website Optimizer, no question or Optimizely. Don't do the free Google stuff. It just sucks. Kurt: The amount of time I wasted messing with that wasn't worth it. VWO is so much easier. Nick: Yeah, don't bother. Kurt: The support is really good. I'm not condemning Optimizely. I've literally just never used Optimizely. That's a good way to get into it for our listeners. If it's confusing or they don't want to deal with it, your service is great. I've seen the reports you run and I'm not even plugging it. It's just genuinely good stuff that you do. Nick: Thank you. It's one of those things where a lot of people don't know how to start and they don't know how to do it and I have two different offerings. One of them is a one-off like I give you a guide and I give you a lot of suggestions for what you can test and what you can change things to, things that I would change. You're getting a UX teardown and a write-up of how to put into practice but I find that a handful of those come back to me and they're like, "Can you just do this for us?" Kurt: Essentially, what you've said to them is like, "Here's a plan for immediate success based on my vast experience and you could do whatever you want with it." I imagine a lot of people are going to be, "All right, fine. You know what you're doing. You just take care of those for me." Nick: Yeah, and they're already used to paying me and I give them a discount on their first month. If they pay me $900 for Revise Express Report and then they sign up for a 2000-dollar plan for Draft Revise, you're paying only $1,100 for the first month which at that point you're not getting charged twice. You're able to hit the ground running. I signed up a Revise Express client recently for Draft Revise and it's been going well. We went from not having anything together to contract signed and A/B tests running on their site in three days because I already knew it. Kurt: That's good. Nick: I wrapped my head around it. It was great. Kurt: When you're wrapping your head around it, how do you approach optimizing a site? Nick: It depends on the site. Let's say it's like a typical SaaS business. I look at the things that I know changing them will yield a lot of fruit and that can be common elements to optimize like your headline or your call to action or testimonial quotes, stuff like that which is very optimizing 101 type stuff. Or I'd look at things that I see are clearly bad like if you have an e-mail list signup form and the button says Submit. Unless you are [crosstalk 00:16:39]. Kurt: I look for the stuff that just like, "This is painful. This goes against every best practice. Let's fix this first and get our baseline back to zero." Nick: Yeah. I break things into two categories. One of them is one-off design changes which are beyond the need for testing. Things like if you make your button Submit. Unless you're an S&M site, you have no business making your buttons Submit, all these other things. Then I also look at things and suggest "Let's test this because I'm not sure." The difference between those two is confidence. I'm still changing things. I'm changing elements on the page but I'm not fully confident that changing your headline to this one thing is going to speak to your customers effectively especially because I've been working with you for only three days if I'm doing these teardowns. It's very like intuition at that point. I will check everything within ... If you're a SaaS business, call your conversion funnel like your homepage to your pricing page to your signup page to your onboarding to all that and then you get converted from a trial into a paying customer eventually. There are a bunch of pages that you have to go through in that flow to actually figure that out. I try and vet all of those and figure out if I were building your site and figuring out your marketing page and trying to figure out a really good way to speak to people, would I do this? I bring in my experience working with dozens of SaaS businesses and e-commerce sites to bear on that and eight years of interaction design experience. That's often something that they can't get internally because I don't know any actual fulltime UX employees who've worked for as many individual clients as I have. Kurt: They couldn't possibly. Earlier you had mentioned to me the other day that you're working on something with Harper Reed. Nick: Yeah. I did it for six weeks. It was a one-off project with Harper Reed. For those who don't know, he elected the president at the beginning of ... starting at the beginning of last ... No, two years ago. It was 2012. Kurt: The way I view it is Harper Reed personally defeated Mitt Romney. Nick: His tech team certainly did. He built the team that ... It almost feels like that. If you read the teardowns of it, they're amazing but he has a startup now which is essentially a mobile e-commerce startup called Modest. It's at modest.com and first project that he did was a storefront for a toy and game manufacturer called [Choonimals 00:19:04], if you go to Choonimals Website. He's a friend of mine. He works and lives in Chicago. He works in Fulton Market. They had me come on and just be another pair of eyes on their UX. They already had a lot of interesting UX ideas there. I'm not going to take remote amount of credit for some of the most novel and fascinating parts of it but I agree with the conceit. A lot of the things were already coming together like scanning your credit card with the iPhone's camera is one of them and Uber does that. There's a JavaScript library called card.io that lets you do that where it just turns on your flashlight and lets you take a photo of your credit card and it scans your number in so you don't have to manually type it and reduce the error [inaudible 00:19:52]. He has a thing where you can buy stuff and it's basically buy with one touch and then if you ... You get a grace period where you could undo that. You can un-buy something and then ... Kurt: The easier you make something to buy, if people aren't used to that standard yet, I think there is a lot of that ... I wouldn't call it cognitive dissonance. Nick: I think you're just thrown off expectations-wise. There's a mismatch. Kurt: Yeah. Or it becomes too easy and suddenly, it's frightening. You have to have that grace period, that undo. Nick: I did not come up with these ideas to be clear. I helped refine them and offer my own ideas about them which is just like fit and finish. The idea of un-buying, you might tap something and it says Buy. It's very clear you're buying something but you don't even get an undo button in the app store if you buy something. You tap it on your iPhone. Kurt: Yeah. I bought a lot of silly things. I wish there was an undo button in the app store. Nick: I don't let myself check the app store while I'm drunk anymore because I just threw up and buy some 30-dollar application that's just ill-advised but this is like they're not going to ... It's a physical good usually. They're not going to ship it for another day at least or five hours if it's [overnighted 00:21:08] or something like that. At which point, you have a chance to take back that notion and edit your order. You barely get the chance to edit your order or merge orders on Amazon as it stands. Kurt: With Amazon, it's a scam. You could cancel an order while it's in progress but once you put cancel, it says, "We're going to try to cancel it" and it's like less than 50% of the time that it actually manages to cancel it. Nick: Right and if you're Prime, they probably already have it sent on a drone to you so you don't even know. It's one of those things where it just seems obvious that you should have an undo button when you're buying something. Kurt: Absolutely. You've got a lot of experience with this. Give me one tip for – obviously this is tough because it's general – one tip for an e-commerce store owner who's looking to grow the revenue. Nick: I'm going to drill down into this tip. You need to make it as easy for the person to buy the thing as possible and easy for them to back out of it and so, cutting down the number of steps. If you're asking for any extraneous information, if you are deliberately asking for both billing and shipping address, if you're splitting the person's name into three different fields, if you're not supporting auto-complete, those are all different forms of the same problem which is you're making the person enter more data than is necessary. Make the person input les data. Nobody likes to fill out a form. You don't want to feel like you're in a doctor's office buying a product. That's the one tip that I've got. Kurt: I guess it's pretty common with Shopify store owners. They want to do less work personally. They want like or go, "Can you make it ask them X, Y and Z thing?" and we'd say, "Sure, we could build out these product options for your products." Then when we do it, their conversion rate plummets and they're like, "Why did that happen?" Well, because you just made it really hard to buy from you. Nick: Yeah. Doing this auto-complete ... Going back to Cards Against Humanity, doing the auto-complete for your address and address validation and making it as fast as it is on that site is tremendously difficult. It is not easy programming to be putting in. Doing this focus is really hard but their sales bear out how they're doing. It justifies that decision. It almost says the amount of work that you put into the site and making it smarter, making the defaults easier and making it easier for the person, that's hard work but it directly connects to your conversion rate and if you're delighted about it ... I can't tell you how many positive twits happened when the first storefront came out that talked explicitly about the user experience and shared that out. It said, "Oh, you have to buy something." Who says "Oh, you have to buy something" about an e-commerce store? Kurt: You have to experience this. Nick: You have to experience getting sent to a park nearby you. That's very unexpected. Kurt: People are just ignoring the product itself. They'll just buy it for the sake of the purchasing experience. Nick: Right. Kurt: People don't think ... They would never think twice about someone making the interior of a retail store nice, making it easy to buy something there but as soon as it comes to e-commerce, then suddenly it's like the strange thing that no one wants to spend money on. Nick: It's funny because Apple's retail stores are beautiful and amazing and their UX is incredible. If you go in person, they swipe your card there in front of the computer and somebody walks the computer out to you and ... Kurt: Have you ever paid with cash in the Apple store? Nick: I have not. Kurt: It's same deal but the cash register is hidden inside one of the display tables. Just like the face of the table pops open. The cash box was in there the whole time. It's clearly on remote. They still use their iPhone and then the thing pops open. Nick: Right. Their UX is amazing but I bought an iPhone. I bought the new iPhone from the Apple store online the other day. Kurt: Did you go with the 6 or the 6-plus? Nick: I have 6. Kurt: You don't have monster gorilla paws is what you're telling me. Nick: No, I have normal human being hands and I don't need a Phablet. I have an iPad Mini. Anyway, I was going on it and I was on the Website, not the app just to be clear. I think the app is better but it was not fun. It sucked. It was really flunky and weird and it could be better. You're selling ... You're the biggest company in the world. You can fix that. Kurt: I noticed that they do one clever thing. You can choose multiple payment methods. I don't think I've seen that anywhere else. Nick: Amazon ... Kurt: If you were to max out your credit card and then finish up with a second credit card, they will let you do that. Nick: Or if you have one of those crappy gift cards that you get from the grocery store, like somebody gives you 100-dollar gift card and you have 18 cents left on it and you feel bad wasting that 18 cents, you could put that on the card. Kurt: You could do it. Nick: Right. That's edge [casey 00:25:58], feasible. Kurt: That's an argument I have with people is about edge cases where it's like, okay, we could fix this problem that one of 100 people have but what's that impact on the other 99 out of 100 people? I think Apple has walked themselves into that. Nick: Yeah. They can accommodate edge cases. I know that Amazon used to accommodate that sort of edge case and then they got rid of it for whatever reason. They probably saw that it wasn't diminishing returns or something but anyway. Kurt: That's a thing you could split test. Nick: Right, yeah. I'm sure Amazon does. Amazon A/B tests everything. I get bucketed into A/B tester of their pages all the time. I find it redesigns itself and I refresh it and it goes away [crosstalk 00:26:42]. Kurt: Or open an incognito window and it's a different site. Yeah, I've had that happen. Nick: Yeah. Kurt: If I wanted to learn more from you, the best way would be to do what? Nick: You should subscribe to my mailing list because it's funny. Kurt: I subscribe to it. I enjoy it, lots of good Chicago references in there. Nick: There are a lot of good Chicago ... Kurt: Like the hotdog story. Nick: There was a story ... It's a dog stand that's very popular here. It's closing this week. That is a very good way to get to know me as a person. If you want to know more about interaction design, I would go to cadence.cc which is my book, Cadence & Slang, and grab a copy. It is generally considered one of the more important texts on interaction design by people far more famous and important than me which is terrifying. Kurt: I have read it. It is genuinely good. Nick: Awesome, thank you. That's the best way to get to understand the kind of stuff that I'm talking about with e-commerce. It's applicable to any technological project but the ultimate goal is just to make things more efficient and pleasurable to use. Kurt: Fantastic. That's great. Thank you, Nick. Thank you for joining us and have a great day. Nick: Thank you so much. Take care.