Ep 109. Roths, 401(k)s & SIMPLE IRAs: Retirement Game Plan for Blue‑Collar Pros

Summary

Podcast Summary: Green Side Up – Ep 109

Title: Roths, 401(k)s & SIMPLE IRAs: Retirement Game Plan for Blue‑Collar Pros
Date: January 29, 2026
Hosts: Jason Lee & Jordan Upcavage
Guest: Danny Gutcher, MBA, Financial Advisor at Case Wealth Advisors

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Episode Overview

This engaging episode dives deep into retirement planning options tailored for blue-collar professionals and small business owners in the landscaping and tree care industries. Hosts Jason Lee and Jordan Upcavage are joined by financial advisor Danny Gutcher, whose practical, approachable style breaks down the essentials of Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, SIMPLE IRAs, and more. The trio explores key strategies for business owners wanting to support employee retirement, the comparative benefits of various plans, and the broader impacts of financial planning on workforce retention and personal peace of mind.

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Meet the Guest: Danny Gutcher

[02:56 – 11:00]

• Danny is a financial advisor at Case Wealth Advisors in Tampa, FL, holding an MBA from University of Tampa with a strong background in finance and collegiate baseball.
• His journey: from baseball catcher at several universities to researching traumatic brain injuries (CTE) before pivoting to finance.
• Danny emphasizes his youth as an advantage for long-term client relationships:

  "I’m going to outlast you in terms of work shelf life, and I'm going to be with you through your retirement because I'm so young." – Danny [25:17]

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Financial Advisory Models & Fiduciary Duty

[18:47 – 22:23]

• Advisors today are predominantly fee-based (e.g., 1% of assets under management), as opposed to commission-based trading.
• Fee-based models better align advisor interests with clients:

  “We have a legal responsibility to act in the best interest of the client. That's what fiduciary means.” – Danny [20:58]

• The importance of customizing financial plans and providing local, individual attention to clients.

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2. Ideal Clients and Building Trust

[23:03 – 28:00]

• Danny works with all levels, from those just starting out to high-value accounts.
• For new, young clients, starting small (even $50) is welcome.
• Trust, transparency, and a personal fit between advisor and client are highlighted. Sometimes the best advice is to focus on debt and emergency savings before investing.

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3. Business Owners: Retirement Plans for Employees

[29:36 – 33:38, 36:35 – 40:19]

• About 20% of Danny’s business involves advising on company retirement plans (401(k), SIMPLE IRA, etc.).
• Advisors manage plan selection, ongoing reviews, and provide education to employees who might not understand the benefits or reasons for payroll deductions.

  “They don’t know what they don’t know. So that’s when we come in and explain… we show them the growth.” – Danny [33:01]

• Local advisors can give more personalized attention than generic payroll-service advisors.

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4. Roth IRAs, Traditional IRAs, and Contribution Strategies

[35:38 – 38:44]

• Roth IRAs are ideal for young or lower-tax-bracket individuals; contributions are post-tax, and withdrawals are generally tax-free.
• Annual contribution limits for IRAs recently increased to $7,500; 401(k) limits are higher ($24,000 as of 2026).
• For those living paycheck-to-paycheck, starting small is better than nothing. Emergency funds come first, then begin investing—automation and consistency are emphasized.

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5. SIMPLE IRA vs. 401(k) for Small Businesses

[39:28 – 41:51, 50:36 – 54:02]

• SIMPLE IRAs are easier and cheaper to administer for small businesses, with a lower contribution cap; businesses can switch to a 401(k) as they grow.
• Two SIMPLE IRA matching options:
  • 2% flat contribution to all employees
  • Up to 3% match based on employee deferral
• About enrollment reluctance:

  “When they saw that money start coming out of their check… it's like, we talked about this for weeks!” – Jason [40:45]

• Employees are encouraged to maximize employer matches—described as “literally free money.” [61:41]

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6. Employee Participation & Retention

[54:02 – 55:21]

• Retirement plans are framed as employee benefits, helping attract and retain talent, reducing expensive turnover.
• Vesting schedules can protect employer contributions and incentivize employee loyalty.

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7. Tax Planning and Diversification

[44:16 – 47:35]

• Tax diversification is a core part of good financial planning; a mix of pre-tax and post-tax accounts offers flexibility as tax laws change.
• Advisors gather comprehensive client information to tailor strategies for both immediate tax savings and future withdrawals.

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8. Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)

[48:57 – 50:36]

• HSAs are highlighted as triple tax-advantaged vehicles for health expenses—pre-tax contributions, tax-free growth, tax-free withdrawals for medical needs.
• Limits and eligibility rules apply but can be an important part of a holistic plan.

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9. Implementation Steps for Business Owners

[65:29 – 67:11]

• The process for starting a plan: discuss goals with the advisor, get employee interest, and leverage potential admin fee credits under recent legislation.
• Retirement benefits, like health insurance, can be structured for mutual benefit, ensuring employees have “skin in the game.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “[On business retirement plans] If you’re not getting that full company match, I mean, that’s 100% rate of return. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think any advisor can get 100% rate of return every year.” – Danny [41:51]
• “I'm trying to explain it to people: I'm going to outlast you in terms of work shelf life and I'm going to be with you through your retirement.” – Danny [25:17]
• “Maintaining a relationship with a current customer is six times cheaper than acquiring a new one.” – Danny [55:00]
• “If you want me to give you more money, like, I am willing to give you more money if I'm helping you plan for your future.” – Jason [41:47]

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Practical Takeaways

• Start small, but start early: Even $20–$50/month can get you moving toward retirement security.
• Prioritize emergency savings and paying down debt before investing.
• Maximize employer matches: Never leave “free money” on the table.
• Consider a Roth IRA if you’re early in your career or in a lower tax bracket.
• Simple IRAs are manageable for small businesses; 401(k)s offer more flexibility for larger or growing companies.
• Tax diversification matters: Blend pre- and post-tax accounts.
• HSAs are a powerful tool for those with high-deductible health plans.
• Employee benefits like retirement plans and health insurance are key retention and recruiting tools.

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How to Contact Danny Gutcher

• Office: 813-871-0809
• Email: [e-mail]
• Firm: Case Wealth Advisors (Tampa, FL)

“I’m young and hungry… I’ll be with you ‘til the end.” – Danny [71:58]

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Segment Timestamps

• [02:56] – Danny's background and why youth matters in advising
• [18:47] – How fee-based advising works and the meaning of fiduciary duty
• [23:03] – Who Danny serves and building financial trust
• [29:36] – Setting up retirement plans for businesses
• [35:38] – Roth IRA overview and emergency savings advice
• [39:28] – SIMPLE IRA vs. 401(k) explained for business owners
• [44:16] – Tax diversification and planning
• [48:57] – Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
• [50:36] – When to consider upgrading from SIMPLE IRA to 401(k)
• [54:02] – Retirement plans as employee retention tools and vesting
• [65:29] – How to implement a plan in your own business
• [68:50] – How to contact Danny & final thoughts

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This episode delivers practical, jargon-free guidance for small business owners and their teams, emphasizing that with the right advice and steady commitment, anyone can build a solid retirement game plan—even in the “messy reality” of blue-collar entrepreneurship.

Transcript

[Jason Lee]

Welcome to Green side Up, the perfect podcast for small business entrepreneurs looking to cultivate success in the landscaping and tree care industry. Join Jason Lee, a seasoned landscaper, and Jordan Upkavage, a true tree whisperer, as they share their wealth of experience and insights to navigate the challenges of growing your business. Get ready to hear real life stories, practical solutions, and invaluable advice that will empower you to thrive amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship. And now, let's keep the Green side Up with your hosts, Jason Lee and Jordan Upcavage.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Good morning, Jason Lee. Welcome back to the Greenside out podcast. We are here in person, merely four feet away from each other, about to arm wrestle to get our day going. And we have a long litany, I don't know if that's a word, a long list of interviewees and content that we're going to cover today. And it's good to see you in person.

[Jason Lee]

That's very good to see you in person, Jordan. I'm going to start this episode off with a monster energy drink to get my day going.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Get your brain going. So tell me, we have a guest speaker today, somebody that is to your left shoulder. Who do we got here? Dude?

[Jason Lee]

So we have Mr. Danny. As I was just introduced. I'm familiar with Danny's father for laser engraving, Allen, as you mentioned, who has done our green setup podcast.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, he did our coasters and he did our intrigue media martini glasses. So baseball bat, laser engrave, Alan the sun, Danny Gutcher the son. Welcome to the show, Danny. And thank you for being here in person in my house, here at the bunker table that your dad helped us create the sand.

[Danny Gutcher]

I was there too, if you remember. We. We did the sawmill out front.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes. The Alaskan chainsaw mill out front. So, Danny, I asked you to come record an episode with us.

[Danny Gutcher]

Really?

[Jordan Upkavage]

For two reasons. Right? From my knowledge, you are a professional and you are some flavor of a money guy. Okay. Retirements and investments. And we briefly talked at, I don't know what social event at your dad's house or it could have been your wedding.

[Danny Gutcher]

It was my wedding party.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Your wedding, your after the fact wedding party. And you're like, hey, Jordan, have you ever thought about retirement? And blah, blah, blah. I was like, all right, well, let's plan that out so you can educate me on this. And then that's kind of stemmed. Wait, instead of you educating me on this, let's record an episode so you can educate me and all of our listeners on whatever the hell it is that you do. So Give us a rundown on your background, who you are, where you're at in life, and what's up in the life of Danny Gutcher.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, so like I said, Danny Gutcher is the name. I work for Case Wealth Advisors. We're a financial advising firm here in Tampa, fully licensed. Myself three other advisors that work with us.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what kind of fancy email signature acronyms do you have? You gotta have something.

[Danny Gutcher]

It's just Daniel Gutcher with mba. Cause I got my MBA from University of Tampa, playing baseball there. Won a national championship.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So University of Tampa is a niche. I don't know if niche is the right word or elite or. It's special. Right.

[Danny Gutcher]

Elite would be a good word in terms of. Are you thinking baseball or baseball or.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hard to get into.

[Danny Gutcher]

I mean, they're just a private school, but the MBA program especially is pretty world renowned. I mean, a lot of people come to go to the MBA at University of Tampa. I mean, they're competitive with the Notre Dames and. And like. Yeah, like.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So it's not like a USF parallel. It would be a step above.

[Jason Lee]

It's not. So your. Your MBA might have a little bit more street cred than.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. Phoenix.

[Jason Lee]

Phoenix University online.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, an MBA is an mba, which is a master's in Business Administration.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Danny Gutcher]

And I did a little bit of a concentration in finance. Not technically, but a lot of my. You call them extracurricular classes or elective classes. I should say I did a lot in the finance space just because that's what I was interested in. And obviously that's what I'm doing now professionally.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, well, you mentioned baseball and University of Tampa.

[Danny Gutcher]

Tell me about that. We can talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Grew up in Tampa. I went to Gaither High School. Played there for Nelson North.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What position?

[Danny Gutcher]

I was a catcher. Well, not originally. I started out freshman year. I played a little bit of. I started a little bit of the season at shortstop in third base.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Ooh, the scary ones.

[Danny Gutcher]

Still living out my. Yeah, my infield dreams. But come sophomore year, Coach north was like, hey, we need a catcher. I know you've caught before. Like, would you be up for trying it out? And I was like, will it get me more playing time? And he said, yes. And I said, I'll do it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And how tall are you?

[Danny Gutcher]

6 foot 1, 6, 2 on a good day.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is that a normal height for a catcher?

[Danny Gutcher]

That's tall for a catcher. But, I mean, you got Joe Maurer, one of the best catchers to play the game was 6 foot 5, 6 4. Yeah. Tall guy. So the days of the short, fat,

[Jordan Upkavage]

stocky catcher, that's what's in my head.

[Danny Gutcher]

There's still. There's still some out there, like Alejandro Kirk, guys that still have that kind of build. But they've definitely gotten a lot more athletic as the game has gotten a lot more fast paced than athletic. Um, so it's not uncommon to see that stereotype. Right. Um. And obviously it's a stereotype for a reason. Cause there were a lot of catchers like that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But that was our high school catcher at Wharton High School. His name was Ben Hardy.

[Jason Lee]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

He's like this short.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It's hard to push over kind of guy.

[Danny Gutcher]

So. But nowadays it's. The catchers have gotten a lot more athletic and. Yeah. Got recruited to go play at usf. Out of high school, went there. I was recruited by Chuck Deraliman, who then left for University of Florida. My second year was Covid 2020. So that obviously that threw a wrench into everything. We had some senior catchers that obviously got their eligibility back. They were coming back. And I kind of looked at it like, I'm not going to get any playing time here until I'm at least a junior or senior at usx, at uss. So I made the decision, kind of a mutual decision. Cause there was a new coaching staff as well to transfer. That took me to Eckerd College down in St. Pete.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes. Okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

I remember so being there and it was a weird time because it was still 2021, 2022, kind of moving through Covid 2021. We didn't have a season

[Jordan Upkavage]

like no playing at all.

[Danny Gutcher]

No playing. With Eckerd being a private school, they were able to make their own decision on whether they wanted to participate in the season or not.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Now did you have scholarships for this?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So you had athletic scholarships and academic. And being from Florida and going to a Florida school, like they're very. They're fantastic with keeping their students in state with bright futures or Florida prepaid. They really want their talent. They want their Florida students to stay in Florida. So I got a lot of academic money that way. And that allowed my athletic scholarships to be a little smaller because I didn't need a full scholarship because I had all that academic money.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right. So playing catcher and I'm using my high school memory here, pop time is something.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes. Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Like how fast you can go from knees to feet or feet to standing. Right. So what's a pop time and what's Your pop time.

[Danny Gutcher]

Pop time is from. So the pitcher throws the ball from when the ball hits the catcher's glove to when it hits the second or whoever's covering second base when it hits their glove. So that time from when it. Glove to glove, basically from catcher's glove across the mound.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Two second based glove.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

That is the pop time. You think of the pop of the glove.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right. So you have to take it out of your glove, get into a throwing position, whether it's on your feet or knees or however you want to do it. Yoke it to second base and the speed of the ball and pop.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

So a good time for that was two seconds is a good time. Which is. That's pretty quick.

[Jason Lee]

That's really quick.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. I think people underestimate how quickly the game of baseball moves. Because when you're watching it, it doesn't move very quickly. Right. But in terms of the movements of the game itself, they're very high powered, very explosive movements. So it takes some athleticism. A lot of people like to shit on baseball players because they're unathletic, like NASCAR drivers.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. But I mean, baseball players are some of the most athletic people out there.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what's your pop time?

[Danny Gutcher]

The fastest I've ever had in game was like a 1.8. Boom. Which is quick. That's really fast. But I was averaging 19 to 2 0.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Now, do you do that from your knees or are you getting on your feet?

[Danny Gutcher]

I do either.

[Jason Lee]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Depends on where?

[Danny Gutcher]

Depends on your arm strength. Obviously, if you're throwing from your knees, you don't have that leverage from your lower half. But sometimes it's quicker or makes more sense to throw from your knees if it's a bad pitch or this or that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, what I do know, Danny, is I had the pleasure of playing softball with you a time or two.

[Danny Gutcher]

That is right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The independent tree service tree slugger softball team. Danny was in the outfield, the six foot, however tall you are, gazelle running like a real athlete amongst a bunch of chubs that are tree guys. Not running like athletes. I was in the infield. You're in the outfield and. And you threw a fricking softball from outfield to home plate. And it was like a Russian missile coming out of the silo. It was like, holy crap, where did this come from?

[Danny Gutcher]

So Danny's the ringer. Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But then he. What? You had your own softball team and you have your personal life and your dogs and your now wife, and you're Like I don't have time for you schlubs anymore. On my Sunday evenings, I can't play on your team.

[Danny Gutcher]

Sundays were hard. Cause I, I'm always doing stuff with my wife. We like to have our weekends together. So Sundays were hard just because it. Not that it was an interruption, but it's an interruption. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. I have to play too. It's like, damn it, I got a game.

[Danny Gutcher]

Six o'.

[Podcast Announcer]

Clock.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. So. Well, thanks. That is Danny. That is college at high school. Baseball Danny, then college Baseball Danny. And you went to. From Eckerd, you then transferred to ut?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, for graduate school.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay. And you did. So you finished your four years at Eckerd.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so then you transferred to ut where you got your two year NBA and you played baseball at ut. And how well did that go? Did you get caught up in the triple A? Double A? The. What do you call that machine? The farm league?

[Danny Gutcher]

Farm league. Minor leagues.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You get caught up in that?

[Danny Gutcher]

No, that's. That's after college, when I got to UT, I was 24, 25. Like old. I was old. Yeah. In the eyes of professional baseball, I was old. So I kind of came to the realization like, unless you're a pitcher, like going through the minors is tough. Especially when they're going to sign some 16 year old Puerto Rican or Dominican from the Dominican. Yeah. And they're just. I don't know how they have this talent and whether they're 16 or not, we don't know, but don't care. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is that the minimum age is 16?

[Danny Gutcher]

That so international sign? You can sign at 16 internationally. Are there.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You think there's people signing less than 16?

[Danny Gutcher]

No, I'm saying they may be older.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

Because they have the old benchwarmers like I am 12 kind of joke is. I mean there's been, there's been major league players that have gotten exposed for being older than what they actually were.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Just like every woman at the bar.

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[Danny Gutcher]

end of the day, it is what it is. And they're, they're talented. Don't get me wrong, they are super talented. So being a D2, I mean, I wouldn't even say star. I mean being a competent D2 player, I mean that only gets you so far, right? So I didn't want to, I didn't want to kick my career down the road any longer, especially getting married and starting a family soon probably.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So waste years of your life getting caught up in something that's not likely to be long term success or lucrative.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, right, right.

[Jason Lee]

So.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So you picked, what did you study before picking mba?

[Danny Gutcher]

I actually did molecular biology is what my degree is in. So I was going to go the whole. And being an athlete with all the traumatic brain injuries, concussions, I wanted to kind of research that space. Why is Antonio Brown acting the way he is? Why is.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's the Bucs player that was freaking out.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. So he's got, he'll probably. He most likely has cte. And the issue with CTE and why I wanted to research it is that what is cte? It is, this is going to be very, very long word, but chronic traumatic encephalophil. I can't even remember now. Encephalopoly or something like that. It's very hard to pronounce.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Chronic. What was the second piece?

[Danny Gutcher]

Traumatic.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So the traumatic, the encephalopoly or however you pronounce it is basically like deals with the brain, brain injury. Traumatic would be like if you, if you get one concussion, you're not going to get cte. But if you get repeated traumatic ones.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Danny Gutcher]

That is where the cte, it could becomes an issue. Okay, but the issue with CTE is that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And then chronic is repetitive, right?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. Or chronic meaning like any chronic illness, you can't get rid of it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Sure, sure.

[Danny Gutcher]

Okay. But the issue with CTE is that researchers can't diagnose it in live patients. And so there was that there are the big study done, I want to say maybe 2015, where they took a lot of football players that had passed away and they sliced up their brain and looked at it under a microscope and they identified the cte, which is a chemical or it's just degeneration of the brain. It's very similar to Alzheimer's.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so it's an alteration of the physical gray matter of the brain, not a chemical degradation.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah, because it really started coming out in like what, like the Junior Seow era, whenever he, whenever he died, stuff like that.

[Danny Gutcher]

I don't know what he's died for.

[Jason Lee]

Your time. Yeah, I think what I think of

[Jordan Upkavage]

myself, it's a physical change, not a chemical change.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. Just like how dementia or Alzheimer's is a physical change of the brain and that's why it's hard for them to diagnose it is because it's such a. And it degrades the same area that Alzheimer's does. So they can't determine, hey, is this Alzheimer's or is this cte? So that's when they have to go back and do. How many concussions have you had? Do you play sports growing up? This and that. So it's. That was kind of the realm that I wanted to research. Just being an athlete, I was always around it. But interviewing for schools, I was heavily outclassed by people that had much more experience than I did. And with COVID I had extra eligibility. So that's when Tampa came calling and said, hey, we know you have extra eligibility. Would you be interested in playing for us? And I said, absolutely. Tampa is one of the Pre Year Division 2 universities for baseball. For baseball in the country. I mean, they have 10 national championships. I was part of the ninth in 2024. They just won last year. They went back to back in 2025. They're going for a third this year.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So you were part of a winning national championship baseball?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, I caught the last out of the game.

[Jason Lee]

Really?

[Danny Gutcher]

You get a ring or a humongous, gaudy ring? Yeah. Awesome.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, that is fantastic.

[Danny Gutcher]

So it was a good time and I mean paid for my schooling and all that.

[Jason Lee]

So you graduated in 24:24, yep. And so then after you graduated, did you start with the company you're at now or.

[Danny Gutcher]

Went right into it. So I did an internship with them the summer of 2023. So going into my second year of my MBA, the guy, my two mentors, Evan and Keith. Evan, I've known him since middle school. He was my parents advisor. So he was coming over to the house, going over everything.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Your parents financial advisor?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, financial advisor. And the way we kind of built a bond is that he played. He actually played minor league baseball with the Reds and at the time we had a batting cage in the backyard. So he would come over and after going through my parents finances, he would come out and hit with me.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, that's cool.

[Danny Gutcher]

It was awesome. So. And once I started to get a little bit of money, I started investing with him just because obviously it was my parents.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You're starting out with a couple thousand bucks.

[Danny Gutcher]

Oh, you can start with $50, right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We're not talking. You're like, hey, let's start out. I have 30 grand rolling around. You're like, I got a little bit of coin, let me do something.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. And that's, I mean obviously not to kind of completely change subject here, but we make money on assets under management. We're completely fee based. So the days of the wolf of Wall street type trading where the traders are getting commission off every single trade that's still around. But It's, I mean 99% of the business is probably fee based now. Which means that say you have a million dollar retirement account. We would charge 1% as the advisor to manage those funds and buy and sell and everything's kind of all in 1.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So 1% annual fee manage.

[Danny Gutcher]

So we would make 10, $10,000 a year off of that account. But on the same side of that coin, if that account does 20%, we're taking 1% of it. So you're going to net 19%. You're still. It's not like you're, it's not like we're killing the account by taking the fee because we're, if we're not, if

[Jason Lee]

not putting in the work.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. If we're not throwing it, we're not doing it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You're going to get fired, right?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. The people are going to leave us. So that's.

[Jordan Upkavage]

How is that model better than commission based? Or let me not say better. How is that different than commission based? Explain what commission based is.

[Danny Gutcher]

Commission based is basically like if you were to buy say Apple for however much like the, the advisor would get a commission on that trade. Just for making the trade. Whether it goes up, whether it was, whether it goes up or down.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, give me a percentage. They're making a 1%, a 5%.

[Danny Gutcher]

That's what I'm not familiar with because I have not done that type of business and it's so rare nowadays. But I mean it could be anywhere.

[Jason Lee]

Back in the day, my dad used to have a guy, the stock guy and he the trades and he'd take his cut.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. And it could be per share is what it used to be. So say it was 50 cents a share and you sell a thousand shares. That's.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So that could incentivize the guy to do a pile of trading that may

[Danny Gutcher]

not be needed, that may not be necessary or beneficial for the client. And with us being fiduciaries, that we have a legal responsibility to act in the best interest of the client.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's what fiduciary means.

[Danny Gutcher]

That's what fiduciary means. Yeah. Is a legal, legally binding. You call it a promise, basically. But it's more than a promise.

[Jordan Upkavage]

An obligation.

[Danny Gutcher]

It's an obligation. Yeah. To act in the best interest of the client.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Not in the best interest of your firm.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. Of the advisor's self.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's like power of attorney kind of deal. You know, you're making decisions that's the best for that individual.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. So we, and most advisors, if not all of them are fiduciaries nowadays just because that's the way things are.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Danny Gutcher]

But we like to bring value to our clients just because we're a boutique firm located, we're local here in Tampa. A lot of our clients are here. But we can, I know it sounds cliche, but we can really give the attention to each individual. Build them a custom portfolio, build them a custom financial plan, really actually give them the time of day. And not that these big wirehouses don't like the JP Morgans or the Northwestern Mutuals, but they just have so many people that they have to take care of that it's a lot of personal. A lot of people get lost in the shuffle. Less personal. So that's kind of the draw that we have for people, is that they want that custom attention.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what's your, your preferred type of a client? Right. You entered the business, you don't have the, you know, 10 year book of business of your clientele. I'm sure the seniors at the firm will help give you some leads, ish. That are fitting and then you're out, you know, beating the drum, generating your own relationships, network and leads for your firm. What is an ideal type of a client when it comes to money assets? Between this number on the low end and that number on the high end. Then the second question is, what is a good fit for you, Danny? Where Danny's the fiduciary.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. Honestly, we'll take. I like to say that we're selective because obviously it has to be. The client has to be a right fit for us as much as they are for or we are for them.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Sure.

[Danny Gutcher]

So I mean, I'm not going to say we have a max. I mean we have, we have. Well, tell me what we have a largest client. But I mean my first client, friend of my dad's, I say friend. They work in the scuba business together.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, acquaintance.

[Danny Gutcher]

She's a 24 year old girl helping teach people to scuba dive. And she was like, she came to me and she's like, I've got all this money in my savings. I don't really have anything in investment. So we literally started her at zero. And that's especially me being so young. I am, I mean, light years younger. Not to be rude to all the older people out there, but I mean the average age of an advisor is 60, 61 years old.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is that an. You could think that that would be a disadvantage because you have less historical wisdom.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. And.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But is it also an advantage?

[Jason Lee]

I think it is an advantage.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So I didn't meet now Jordan, I would just refer to financial advisors normally as money guys, right. So like I didn't meet my money guy until I was 30.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jason Lee]

And we met deer hunting in the woods.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jason Lee]

And like the previous people I've financial advisors I talked to were old. Like I started talking to Philip and I said, hey. I said, well, and of course, obviously now we started working together and I said, why did we spent the whole hunting season talking about landscaping when we could have been talking about making money?

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jason Lee]

And so, but you know, I told him, I said, man, I said, I want to go with somebody like you. I said, that old guy's going to die. Exactly. What's going to happen to my money when the old guy dies? I want somebody my age.

[Danny Gutcher]

And that's the, that's the pitch I make, is that he's still on Facebook. Well, it's, it's, it's got its good and it's bad points. Like you said, I don't have that historical human, which, I mean, I'd like to think I'm a pretty smart guy, but obviously I don't, I don't, like, objectively I do not have that experience. I'm in my second year.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But you're intuitive and you know about 2008 and the great Depression.

[Danny Gutcher]

I've studied it, I went to school for it. And it's like I try and explain that to people. It's like I may not have that historical performance, but you understand it. But I understand it and I can get that. Basically, I obviously have to go and manage people's money to get that experience. So give me that experience, please. But that is something I Pitch to a lot of people is like, hey, the guy that you're working with or intending to work with, maybe, yeah, 50, 55, and you're 35, 40 year old person, he's going to retire before you and then you're going to have to go and find someone else to manage your money or he's going to pass you off to someone that may not be a good fit. So I try and explain to people like, I'm going to outlast you in terms of work, shelf life and I'm going to be with you through your retirement because I'm so young. And some people look at that and they're like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense actually. But some people, I mean, obviously they don't explicitly say it, but I can kind of read it on their face like, yeah, and that's the thing. Where does this young kid know, well,

[Jordan Upkavage]

they might not be a good fit. I mean that what you said, without prompting you to say it, that your clients have to be a good fit for you just as much as you're a good fit for them. That's like the core definition of successful relationship between consumer and service or product provider. Everybody has to win or it's not gonna work.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. Like I had, this was maybe a year ago now, actually I had a lady come to me and actually I went to her because I go out and prospect a lot and we'll get into this for businesses. And she was working at one of the businesses. I walked in and she's like, oh, could you help me individually? And we sat down and we kind of went through everything and she just, she was going through a rough part of her life and she had a lot of debt and she was just recovering from a lot of stuff. And I had to tell her, I was like, it seems like you have other things that you need to get in order first before you start investing. Just because these are dire things that you need to get figured out.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Fundamentals. Yeah, let's start with some oh shit savings account. The roof falls in or your leg falls off. We have to have our oh shit account first. And then we work on paying down bad debt. That's the most expensive debt.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And then we would bank the cheaper or consolidate some of that into cheaper debt at a lower rate. Then we can start thinking about some investment that the return on that investment is a higher rent, higher rate than the debt percentage you'd be paying for.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is that about right?

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. Yeah. So a lot of people, and I

[Jordan Upkavage]

forgot fixed Lifestyle, quit buying the $6 coffee every day.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right, Right. Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So do you find that so far are the majority of customers you're coming into contact with or prospecting? Is it individuals or focus more on businesses?

[Danny Gutcher]

So, yeah, we can get into the business now. I mean, most of the clients I have are individuals, but I mean, like any advisor. And that's the old kind of the pyramid scheme, you could say, quote, unquote. Yes, I get Northwest J Mutual. It's not really a pyramid scheme, but when you go to work as an advisor at some of these bigger firms, it's like, all right, get a list of your. Of 100 of your family and friends and you have to get them to work with you and then you ask them. And I mean, that is how we work. Not as drastically. I mean, we are completely referral based.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So how else do you do it? I mean, put up a billboard?

[Danny Gutcher]

You could, I mean, you could, you could do advertisements. I mean, obviously a business cards or TV commercials, but especially in the finance world, a lot of that stuff. Under regulatory compliance requirements, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do stuff like that. So word of mouth, especially for a boutique firm, is the best thing because it's much more organic. And a lot of the leads that you get from word of mouth are going to be high conversion rates.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You have to establish trust.

[Danny Gutcher]

They're already fitted. They already trust you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, you have to establish trust. And that's the least painful way to start that process.

[Danny Gutcher]

You're not pulling Joe Schmo off the street, who.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hi, my name is.

[Danny Gutcher]

You indicated on some website that he wants a financial advisor. And sometimes those people, I mean, there are services out there that will connect you. And I'm actually in the process of. And obviously I have to pay for it, but it is a good way to generate leads. But the conversion, you have to be dialing all day, the old cold calling. And I'm not opposed to that. Give me a list and I'll call people. But in terms of putting that list together, it's very hard. But getting back to the businesses, I would say about 20% of our business at Case is retirement plans for the businesses themselves. So we would act as the advisor on, say it was independent tree service had a plan with 15 participants. We would oversee all 15 of those participants. We'd manage all the assets in the fund, we'd manage the funds that are in there. We do quarterly reviews of those funds. So if one of those is not performing for a few quarters in a row, we'll get with you or whoever the HR person is and say, hey, we've identified this one as a problem. We're going to dump it. We're going to get rid of it and replace it with something else that is performing. Because at the end of the day, we don't want people to be putting their retirement money into something that's not going to grow.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, the Ethereum of 2019.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Like, we got to do crypto and

[Danny Gutcher]

like, where'd all my money go? Right, right. And that's Crypto is a whole nother can of worms you could open up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But plan healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't know how or where to start, or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?

[Jason Lee]

Mitigro. Innovative product that focuses on root and soil health. A different approach than loading up the ground with more npk. Mitigro is a blend of mycorrhizae, fungi, bacteria, vitamin B and Iba, which is a rooting hormone.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The concept is simple. More roots equals a healthier and more robust plant. This simple concept is exactly why both Jason and I have incorporated mitigro into our PhD programs. Deep Root applications on my end for mature or struggling trees, soil drenches and spray applications for when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.

[Jason Lee]

Give Mitigro a shop for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitogrowpro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G-R-O-W P R O dot com.

[Danny Gutcher]

A lot of plans have an advisor slapped onto it as part of the payroll service. It's all integrated together. And the business, they don't have a real relationship with that advisor. And it's hard to get a hold of them sometimes because they're not in the area, this and that. So we like to go around and pitch ourselves as, hey, we're a local firm. We can be there for you whenever you need us. We'll come in quarterly, do educational seminars for all the participants, telling them, why is this money coming out of your paycheck? Because, I mean, we visited a business the other day and they were like, we have like 30% participation in our plan. They have a very young employment staff, like kids straight out of college, and they see that $300 coming out of their paycheck and they're like, uh, I want that money. Like, stop doing that. So because they don't they don't know what they don't know. So that's when we come in and explain to them like what this is for. We show them the growth.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But that $300 was their choosing.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You elect, you could make it 30.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, well, it depends. There may be deferral minimums. Okay. With some businesses, but yeah. And that's the whole. Like if you hear about like a company match, that's the whole. If you defer 4% of your income, your company, company will percent of that deferral. So if you're making 100 grand a year, you put 4,000 in your 401k, the company will also put 4,000 in.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Let's back up before we get into that, I'm going to wrap my head around the. I am in a. I'm an employee and budget is tight at home, from my post tax money to the cost of rent and power and food and all that. That whole conversation and I'm like, man, I'm over here kind of like breaking where I don't have a whole lot to start with or put away. Right. And you mentioned a minimum. That's what I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to solve a problem right now where if I don't have $300 a week or $300 every other week, if I get paid biweekly or what have you, what my strategy could be is every week I go to my bank. I bank at Wells Fargo, Truest bank of America. And I have my checking account and I have my savings account. What I can do is every pay period, I could have a certain amount of money go into that investment bucket. That is my bucket at the bank. And it could be $10 a week, it could be $30 a week. And then once that savings account, investment savings account reaches minimum of 300 or 400, then I could have. Tell me if this is accurate. I could have a distribution that once I hit 300, 400, 500 in that account, then it transitions to you guys to minimum threshold. Would that be a realistic workaround?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, obviously we want people, we always tell people to build an emergency fund first because that's the most important thing. If something were to happen, you don't want to be putting it on credit card. But if you have that established already or if you're comfortable, you can start an investment account with nothing. I mean, we start a lot of our funds at American Funds, which is a mutual fund company. Great company. We can start a Roth IRA brokerage with like $50 a month, $20 a month.

[Jason Lee]

And would you consider that Roth IRA like the, for any individual, kind of like the baseline of planning.

[Danny Gutcher]

Roth is the best, especially for young people starting out, because Roth is a tax advantage account where the money that you're putting in is post tax money. So if you put in, say it's 10 grand, you've already paid the taxes on that 10 grand up front. So that money's going to grow tax free. And when you go to take it out, you don't have to pay taxes

[Jordan Upkavage]

on it, you don't have to pay income tax.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

When you take it out, you don't pay any tax.

[Danny Gutcher]

Not no capital gains, nothing really. Okay, so I have already paid the tax on it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I have, I pump 10k of post tax money. So they have my. What I. You said emergency fund, but sorry, you'll

[Danny Gutcher]

have to pay a little bit of long term, but that's like capital gains, but that's 15%. Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So I work up my oh shit account to where there's an injury, kid, hurt, ambulance. Right. I have my emergency fund. Once that is in a comfortable position, then I go to money going into a Roth IRA that is post tax that I already paid my Social Security, Federal withholding.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So then that 10k grows to 1000-002000-00300,000. By the time I retire, I pull that money out and I don't have to pay income tax on that money. I would just pay the capital gains at 15% on what it grew to.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So say that account like you said grew to 300,000, but your contributions were 150. You won't pay capital gains on the 150 on the 150 because you won't pay on your contributions, obviously, because those aren't capital gains. Right. So it's definitely the, the best thing for a young person because they're in a lower tax bracket where in a traditional IRA you can write it off against your taxes because it's pre tax money. So a lot of people.

[Jason Lee]

And then that Roth IRA there is a max contribution per year.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, well also the traditional as well. But so the traditional. And the Roth last year was 7,000. Now this year they bumped it up to 7,500. Is the max that you can put in annually. Annually, yes. And that's kind of the government's way of saying we're offering you this tax advantaged account, but that keeps people from putting all their money in there. And then when Uncle Sam comes to collect, he's kind of SOL to say it kindly and Uncle Sam doesn't want that, obviously. So they put caps on the roth limits, the IRA limits. But the 401k on the 401k side, like with your. If you're an employee of a company and you're contributing, the max there is 23, 5 or last year was 23,500. Now it's I believe 24,000 for 2026. So a lot of people, like high income earners will max out their 401ks to get that tax benefit.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so let's think about a landscape company, a tree service.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right. I'm the employee. I am likely not going to max out $24,000 a year in a 401k. I'm much more likely to fall in the Roth IRA or IRA of 7,500 or less annual contribution. From a business standpoint, from what limited visibility and knowledge that I have for the business to operate the 401k, is there more paperwork and like tax returns and stuff involved in the business 401k compared to whatever a simple IRA is?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, definitely. I mean they call it a simple for a reason. It's a simple. I mean it is an acronym, but they made the acronym because it's a simple easy plan to administrate for a business. So with a simple IRA on the business side, you can either do, to be eligible, you can either do a 2% flat contribution to every participant or every employee in that plan that is like mandatory company has to pay it whether or not the employee contributes to that account. Or you can do up to a 3% match based on employee deferral. So obviously with a 3% match, you're going to be paying a little more. But if the employee only puts in 1% or 2% of their paycheck, you're only going to have to match that 1 or 2%.

[Jason Lee]

So for my business guy frog landscape, we, we have a simple IRA plan for the business.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

And we do the 3% match.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Up to 3%.

[Jason Lee]

Up to 3%. And I mean, and I don't track by participant what it is. I just see the money come out and it's not a large amount of money because we don't have, you know, a ton of participation. But we probably have four to six people participating.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Out of how many?

[Jason Lee]

20. 20, 25.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so four to six participants out of 20 or 25.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah. But to your point earlier of, you know, we money guy comes out, this is what we're offering. We're doing a simple ira, yada yada. We get set up with the business. We have people that have been with me a long time sign up. Well, buddy, when they saw that money start coming out of their check, I mean, it's like, we talked about this for weeks. This was not a like. And there's no high pressure or anything. This is what we're doing. Like, we're gonna pay you. We're gonna give, like, I want to better your retirement. Right. And offer something to you. So we're. This is. If you put your money in, we're going to back in and match and match our money.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So I thought that was a really good idea and a benefit to our employees. I mean, we had two guys, they started seeing the money coming out and. And then one of them is mainly his wife. Like, she's like, oh, they're stealing. They're stealing from you. It's like, well, yeah, you know, and

[Jordan Upkavage]

it's like, well, yeah, they can opt out. Right. They don't have to do this.

[Jason Lee]

I don't know. We worked it out where.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, they.

[Jason Lee]

They got out as soon as they could. I don't know if that was. I can't remember if there was an option to get out then or when. As soon as they could get out, the one got out, one stayed in. Yeah, but it's like, man, you don't have to do, like, there's no pressure.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jason Lee]

But if you want me to give you more money, like, Right. Willing to give you more money if I'm helping you plan for your future.

[Danny Gutcher]

And I mean, that's where we would come in and kind of we would talk to them. We would talk to each participant and be like, this is what's happening. And I mean, I like to think that we're good advisors and we can get a good return, but if you're not getting that full company match, I mean, that's 100% rate of return. That is free money that the company is giving you just for participating in the plan. And I don't know about you, but I don't think any Advisor can get 100% rate of return every year consistently.

[Jason Lee]

And then maybe there was. I can't remember now. This is years ago, but, you know, with the one person who was just like, oh, well, they're taking all these fees and they're taking my money. I'm giving you money, man.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jason Lee]

Like, you're getting. Getting free.

[Danny Gutcher]

The fees are going to be anywhere. Yeah, obviously. And not in your city.

[Jason Lee]

That was. That was our one outlier. Everybody else is no problem. It's run smooth sailing ever since.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, that's great. That's great.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So there our accountant I years ago briefly talked about this and this is what his thought was. He goes, well, you can go down this rabbit hole of retirement, but if they participate, they should be very committed for the long term goal of this. And what we want to avoid is contribution and commitment for a short period of time. And then the employee uses that retirement as the safety net. Oh shit account and they go, oh Well I need $3,000, have it in my IRA. I'm pulling it now because I need it. And then they get penalized from it. And it was a huge moot point.

[Danny Gutcher]

And work. Yeah, yeah. Because especially the penalties for. You can withdraw for certain things like first house. There are exceptions to when you can withdraw penalty free early from your 401k or whatever retirement plan that you have through work.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Or IRA. Right?

[Danny Gutcher]

Or IRA. Yes. Because yeah, traditional, an individual IRA, traditional or Roth, you have to wait until 59 and a half to start taking contribute withdrawals.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Age 50?

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, 59 and a half age. And that's because they're intended to be retirement accounts. So that they put that restriction on to incentivize you not to keep people from pulling their retirement money for. Because they want a Range Rover or

[Jordan Upkavage]

a vacation or whatever.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. And it's like. So they slap a 10% penalty on top of. Especially when you're retired, most likely you're going to be in a lower tax bracket because you're not working, you're taking Social Security, this and that. So when you're taking from like a traditional IRA or a 401k. Yeah. You're taxed on an income tax like annual basis, but you're in a lower bracket than when you were working. So on top of that 10% penalty when you take it out early, especially if you're in your highest income earning years, say you're doing really well and you're making 300 grand, you're going to be that money that you take out is going to get taxed as if in that tax bracket which is, I mean, gosh, probably close to 40%.

[Jordan Upkavage]

39.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So on top of that 10%, you're getting taxed 39% on annual income because of your situation at the time. So that's why and it's something that we talk about a lot at case is tax diversification because you don't want to be all. We don't know who the administration is going to be in the future. We don't know what their tax agenda is going to be.

[Jordan Upkavage]

We're talking about the president.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, yes. The government, whoever the, whoever's the president at the time, what their tax agenda is. Is it going to be higher? Is it going to be lower? We can assume that it's going to be higher just because that's the way things go. So that's why we tell people to do a Roth, because that's tax free money. You won't get taxes heavily. But if for some reason it was to be lower because there's a tax favorable president in office, you don't want to be taking that tax free money if it's not going to get taxed very heavily. So that's why we like to have people, we sit down, we do a full plan with them, we talk about tax diversification to where we want them to have kind of a nice blend between their Roth and their traditional and their 401k. That way, depending on the situation of the country at the time, if you need to draw more out of your Roth IRA because taxes are higher, you can do that. Or if you need, if taxes are lower and you want to draw out of your pre tax income, then you can do that because it won't be taxed as bad.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So that would be the information you gather and the intimate understanding of, let's say I'm going to be your customer.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. Understanding of you. Sit down. You would bring. Yeah, we would know a lot more about you than probably you want us to know. But.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Danny Gutcher]

I mean we're all, we're all licensed. We're there for, we're professionals. We have, yeah, we have good intentions. So it's like, and that, that is something that, that kind of steers people away is they're very intimidated, giving out a lot of financial information because they're like, oh, what are they going to do with this? But it's like it's our job. Yeah. To help you. And as professionals we have a duty to do that. Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I go into the dermatologist, you got to take your clothes off so they can look at you. All right, so I'm going to, I'm going to have to get financially naked in front of you. You look at everything. Now that you see everything, you'd say, okay, Jordan, I suggest you put this amount into a pre tax Roth. I suggest you put a Family Trust 401K over here. And we have two different tax shelter strategies for whenever you need to pull it. We have options for the most efficient way to pull it.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right Right, right. We're always, always thinking about tax. And if you're working with an advisor that doesn't talk about tax, probably not a good person to work with. I don't want to step on toes, but taxes are such a huge part, not just for when you're retired, but also currently. I have a client, you know him, he lives down the street, he makes a lot of money and it's like, how do we reduce that tax burden now to where you don't have.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is it that guy right there by my parents? Oh, that guy.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Silver fox.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, the silver fox.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Okay.

[Danny Gutcher]

I don't want to.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, no, we're good.

[Danny Gutcher]

Give out any names. Just for privacy reasons. Of course. Yeah. He makes a lot of money, a good income, and he's also W2, so that handcuffs us a little bit because there's not much you can do on a W2. And that's the tax filing form for those that are listening that don't know what a W2 is. A lot of. A lot of business owners are 1099 or they run stuff through their business and they can write off a lot of stuff, but a W2 person cannot write off a lot of stuff just because they're a typical. Just traditional employee. Employee, Yep. So that's how we're doing stuff like we're trying to set up an hsa, we're trying to.

[Jordan Upkavage]

What's that acronym?

[Danny Gutcher]

It's a Health Savings Account.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Got it.

[Danny Gutcher]

Okay. So it's just another. It's another machine. Machine. Another account that is pre tax money. You can write it off at the end of the year. It's actually kind of the best tax advantaged account. There are severe limits on it because of how easy it is. It's pre tax money, so you can write it off at the end of the year, but the money grows tax free because you can use it and spend it tax free on any qualifying medical purchases.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Now I'm old and I need home healthcare nurse.

[Danny Gutcher]

That or you have a doctor's appointment. Prescriptions you can buy. I think you can buy band aids at CVS with an hsa. So it's a triple tax advantaged account to where you can write it off in the year that you're contributing. It grows tax free and you can take it out tax free for. Obviously you can't go buy a house with it, but for any medical purchases you can withdraw it tax free.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Your deductible, can you use it? Let's say I break my leg and I have a $6,000 max out of pocket deductible.

[Danny Gutcher]

I think I'll have to double check because I've only done the one and we're in very early talks. So I haven't even implemented it yet. But I would assume that you could use it to meet a deductible because it's a health. It's a health expense. Yeah. And it's kind of a newer thing they've been around, but it's definitely caught in a lot more. It's caught a lot more traction kind of in the mainstream space.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I've only heard about it within the past 18 months.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So we have a lot of business owners that listen to the show and it's a common. And this might be for Jordan also. But, you know, as we're signing up for a plan, it was recommended for me for the size of business. We are what I have going on personally, that for our business, a simple IRA was the right answer. But that simple IRA versus 401k for a business starting out at like, what point is it a size of business where a 401k might be better or what those two things side by side.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, it's definitely like a cash flow kind of change. So just because with a simple your. Your contributions or contribution limits are lower. So to really take advantage of the 401k, it's nice to have a lot of cash flow as the business owner because obviously the business owner is an employee of the business and they can participate in the 23, 5 or now it's 24,000 a year contributions they can match themselves because it's not the individual matching, it's the business matching 24. Right. It's a separate entity. So the individual business owner can take advantage of the 401k if they have a lot of cash flow that they can put towards that 401. A simple IRA. I think last year the limit was 16,500. Now it's 17,000. So it's a little lower. But for a company that's a little smaller, maybe not have that much cash flow. Like a simple. It's great because it's a retirement plan. You get the match. It's very easy to administrate because you don't have a bunch of these forms that you got to do. But a 401k definitely opens up many more avenues for you in terms of investing. And just the way you can structure it, it can get very, very complicated. More so. I mean, I've got two great mentors with me that are kind of walking me through it.

[Jason Lee]

But so can a business have both?

[Danny Gutcher]

No, it's one or the other. You can either have a simple or 401. A lot of people will start out with a simple and then we're actually working with a cybersecurity firm right now and we're trying to transition them from a simple to a 401k because they've kind of reached that point of the business's life where they've got a lot of cash flow coming in, they're doing acquisitions, they're really growing quickly. So it makes sense from a tax standpoint to get more tax write off.

[Jason Lee]

So that's a possibility as a business grows. For myself specifically, if we go down the road and we start cash flowing, more money and become highly profitable and I personally want to, you know, as the business owner, be able to put more into retirement. We could roll that simple into a 401K.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes, absolutely.

[Jason Lee]

So then the 401K has on from I guess the business owner to employee standpoint. You know, would it have like we have the 3% match now would it be the same scenario where we offer

[Danny Gutcher]

that you could, you could, yeah, keep it at the same 3%. You could go up to 6%. It's really whatever you.

[Jason Lee]

6% a cap on that or is

[Danny Gutcher]

there 6% is usually the highest that companies go. I don't think it's necessarily like a cap because I've seen some that are like 7 or 8%, honestly, which is huge. But obviously some companies, especially if they have a lot of employees that are contributing a lot that'd be very expensive to match that because they're obligated at

[Jason Lee]

the end of the day, I mean for us, I mean, you know, we signed up for this not for my own personal benefit, but for the employees to try to offer something. One, is it an employee benefit? And then two, get that buy in long term. If you're going to be here for a long time, we won't take care of you.

[Danny Gutcher]

It's just another incentive, especially for business owners to retain that talent. It's just something to offer because I mean turnover is probably the worst thing and I know it's probably very prevalent in the landscaping and tree service industry. There's a lot of turnover with employees and it's expensive to go out and hire more people and onboard them and take them through the training and this and that. So offering a retirement plan is a good incentive. Obviously it's not a catch all, but it's going to keep some people because they like that match or they feel, they feel like they're being taken care of.

[Jason Lee]

So then if you get into like independent tree service in what Curtis is 25 years.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah.

[Jason Lee]

So you know, a 50, almost 50 year old business that has, you know, employees that have been there for 25 years and that trend follows through the next 50 years. Then you know, taking care of those people for.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. You know, retaining talent until retirement. Yeah, retaining talents. The, the cheapest thing for a company. And even on the flip side, like when you're out going and getting clients or customers going out and marketing for a new customer is like, I want to say from class, it could be different now. This was three years ago. It's six times more expensive than maintaining a relationship with a current customer.

[Jordan Upkavage]

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[Jason Lee]

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[Jordan Upkavage]

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[Jason Lee]

Intrigue Media is fast tracking lead volume for both Sky Frog landscape and independent tree service. You should give them a try for your business. Visit intriguemedia.com if you want to make more money and crush your competitors online. That's intriguemedia.com so I'm going to break

[Jordan Upkavage]

this down with a cabin punch at a calculator in a very simple way.

[Danny Gutcher]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Jason and I went to a like a business finance seminar a couple of weeks ago for three days. Break the business down, build it back up financially. The gentleman putting the seminar on, his name is Tony Bass. And his guidance for how to start with this would be a simple IRA for your employees where they put in a contribution and you match up to 3%. Okay, so if I take a employee that makes $50,000 a year, okay, that's about 25 bucks an hour. Okay, so if I take $50,000 a year and that employee is going to contribute 3% and commit 3% of their monies would go into retirement. So 3% of 50,000 is 1500 bucks. Okay. So as the employee, I would look at this as can I afford $1500 a year either in disposable income or fun money or changing lifestyle and buying less at the gas station and banking that 1500 annually. Well, let's do this. I'm curious. What's 1500 divided by 52 weeks? So I need

[Danny Gutcher]

15.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's $28 a week. Right. So I would need to bank $28 a week. That's my 1500 dollars annual.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Then the business would match that 3%. If the person put in 3%, so that's now $3,000, they go into the IRA bucket a year. And it's growing, and it's growing. So if we don't grow it at all and it's just a savings account, if we take $3,000 a year, total 15 employee, 15 employer, times 25 years, that's $75,000 with no compounding interest.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Do you know off of the cuff. The hard question is, that's also if

[Danny Gutcher]

they're making 50 grand every year, not they're not getting raises, they're not sure. Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, let's just keep it flat.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, right, Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

If we have 75,000 with no interest, that's all principal. Do you have a guess of what that savings model would be, what that 75 plus interest would really look like? I don't have a mortgage amortization reverse spreadsheet in front of me because it's going to grow it. Call it 10 to 15% a year.

[Danny Gutcher]

Oh, that's very aggressive. Because we run all our financial plans and obviously we can't. We're not allowed to guarantee any returns.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, nobody can.

[Danny Gutcher]

But we run all our plans at 5% because I mean, market historic, historically has returned after taxes and everything. About 8% is like S&P 500 annual return is average 8% a year. That's after taxes and everything. Before taxes, it's closer to 10%. But a lot of people like to say that because it looks better. But like I said, we really pay attention to the taxes. So we do everything with taxes in mind. So we run all our plans at 5%. And people see that like, okay, I'm gonna be all right at 5%. And it's our job to do better than that. Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So let's say I can't get to what that 75,000 would've been.

[Danny Gutcher]

So you can do if you plug in and I don't know how to do it and maybe complicated on there, but if you. The equation would be 3,000 times. Well, it would be It's a little more complicated than that. Say it was just a one time. I'm going to do it. Simply say it was a one time contribution of 75,000. Obviously you can't do that. But the math would be times 1.005. No, 05, sorry, 1.05 to the power of 25 would be your return 25 years at 5% growth.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, I need my graphing calculator to do that.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's a little more complicated than an idea.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Let me just break it down. So simple, all right? I've now been 25 years in. I got seven. Let's just pretend I got $75,000. Poof, it's in there. I'm starting at that. At 5% of 75,000. That's $3,750. So you would really, at year 25, your one year change would be the $3,000 contribution of employee and employer plus a free $3,750, which would be that year' percentage.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So for $1500 you really get $6,750.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's just the simple math. Now you compound that to the nth degree.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right, we're right, right, right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well over 200,000.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So like I said earlier, the, the match I think is the biggest thing and obviously a lot of people take advantage of it, but not everyone does it to the full extent. So like if your company has a 3% match, a 4% match, a 5% match, defer that percent of your income, you don't necessarily have to max out your 401k but at least get that match. Because that's like I said earlier, literally

[Jason Lee]

for the employees, free money.

[Danny Gutcher]

Literally free money. It's a write off for the business, for all the business owners out there. So if people are concerned about making ends meet to get that match at the end of the year for the business is a tax write off.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So can the business contribute at the end of the year or does the business need to contribute throughout the duration?

[Danny Gutcher]

It all depends on the plan documents. Some businesses like to do it each paycheck, I think just because deducted every. A lot of the simples are every

[Jason Lee]

paycheck once a month, which would be

[Jordan Upkavage]

$28 a pay period.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, it depends on the deferral rate, the match, obviously, everything like that. But a lot of companies, especially the bigger ones will, yeah, they'll just dump it in at the end of the year. Like especially the high cash flow companies will just at the end of. Because they need that cash during the year for stuff. They don't want to be strapped because they're making matches to people instead of buying materials or this or that. Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So at the end of the year, when you're trying to blitz your bank account, you can blitz it into these different.

[Danny Gutcher]

Or you're like, okay, I've got a lot of net income here. Or not net, because it would be after the distributions, but I've got a lot of operating income here. I'm going to get taxed out the wazoo for this if I. And that's. That's when people make their. The. The matches. Business owners make the matches. Sure.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So they don't get penalized.

[Danny Gutcher]

Lower tax, income tax.

[Jason Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Because the government taken 40% of what's left over.

[Danny Gutcher]

But they've been able to utilize that money throughout the year because they waited till the end. So it really depends on the type of company. And that's what we would sit down with the business owner and go over everything and be like, all right, what makes sense? Because we don't want to throw someone into something that is going to bankrupt them and they're going to go out of business.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And the guidance from Tony Bass was, okay, if you do this simple Ira, that employer contribution, we're going to back build that into the man hour rate that you're charging the client. So if you distribute that $1,500, 3%, 4%, whatever it is, into the hourly billable rate, in essence, the business never pays for it because the client is paying for it. Because it's built into the proposal to trim your trees for $1,800. It's pennies and a couple dollars that's hidden in there to where I'm never really paying for it.

[Danny Gutcher]

You can manufacture as a company, you can manufacture ways to make up for that match by making more income. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I am selfishly motivated to try and have awesome people that work at independent tree service. That's why you have to possess a driver's license, you have to pass a pre employment drug screening, and I don't want barnacles on this battleship. Right. So if independent tree service wants to explore implementing this to the employees, what's the step to do that? Right. One, talk to Jerry Epkavage, check that box. Then two, you come to independent tree service. I explain what my idea is. Get a handful of people and names that might be interested in this concept. Okay, so now you have a list of people that might be interested in this concept. So you're not wasting your time, I'm not wasting mine. And then you sit down and out of that group of people, you do a 15 minute elevator pitch of concept. And then from those initial group, let's dwindle it down. Okay. To the people that are really interested now that they're informed. And then do you do the one on one with that second vetted group of people?

[Danny Gutcher]

So in terms of implementing a new plan, the people that we're really pitching would be like the business owners. So it'd be you and Jerry and anyone else that's kind of involved in the operations. Just because you can, you can have a plan. And now with the new Secure act, the Secure 2.0 act, a lot of the plan implementation. Because the government wants people to start retirement plans for their employees so they're willing to cover. I know for a 401 plan, I'll have to look up a simple plan. But for the first three years, all the administrative costs you can write off. So it's basically net zero cost to the business to implement a new 401 plan or retirement plan. So we're really pitching the businesses like the business owners and operators. With that being said, having that group of people is good obviously because you want participants, but really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because you could be the, as the business owner, you could be the only participant in the plan. Legally, you'll have to offer it to everyone and then.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, that's those. Health insurance man. We pay over $200,000 in premium for health insurance. Independent Tree Service covers 90% of the employee's health care. The reason why that there's a 10% burden for the employee is so they have a little skin in the game.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Like it, that's all it is. There's. It's not a free handout. It's a, it's $7 a week for the skin in the game. So that would be the owner's contribution. I want you to have a little bit of skin in the game so you're motivated to make it real and not use it incorrectly and pull it as if it's a, you know, emergency fund.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right. So yeah, a lot of.

[Jason Lee]

For our business, we, you know, on the turnover factor, I think our employees to qualify to participate, I think we set like a two year mark.

[Danny Gutcher]

Is there a minimum or you. There's not a minimum. It's all, like I said, all plans depends on the plan documents. So some companies, you're eligible day one. Not, not many. Not many. Just because, yeah, you don't want someone to start collecting that match. And there's also things like vesting period and this and that, where when a company matches, if there's a vesting period of two years from the time of that match, the employee will not have access to that money until two years down the line. So if they were to leave within those two years, the company would actually get that money back. So for any business owners out there, if you're worried that you're going to contribute all this money as a match to someone's account and then they just.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Just dip out.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, they hightail it. If you have a vesting schedule implemented, that kind of protects you from them just running away with that money and then they're incentivized to stay and work hard. It really, like I said, protects the business because it is an expense. But if someone were to take off, you'll get that money back.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So couple things that I want to do here. We need to wrap it up time wise, but we need to know, how can a listener get in touch with Danny? And then secondly, my money guy is in Washington state on the west coast of the country.

[Danny Gutcher]

Right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And I think he's doing a fine job. And you've asked me, well, what's the fees, bro? I don't know. I look at this stuff once a year.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah, right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm not looking at it every month to see how it changes. So. So step one is we're going to log into Cap Northwest Financial and I'm going to show you everything. He's telling me what the hell he's doing, doing a good job or not.

[Danny Gutcher]

It's easy to make money in a bull market.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'll say that everyone should be winning.

[Danny Gutcher]

Everyone's doing. Yeah, everybody should be winning. So it's really. And not to this. I'll do a short tangent here, but a lot of people look at a hedge fund like, oh, they're not outperforming the market. And it's like, well, when the market's doing well, everyone's doing well. Where the hedge funds kind of. And I don't have any association with a hedge fund. This is just me explaining to people that the value that a hedge fund brings is that in those down years, like 2008, that may not be a good example, actually, like 2022, like 2018, they are able to, or they should be able to minimize those losses to where they're losing less than the market lost in that year. So that's where the value really comes In. And some hedge funds do, they do perform better than the market, but they just get. I feel like they just get such a bad rap that for the cost that they are and this and that, how are they not outperforming the market? And it's like, one, it's hard to do that. I get it. But two, it's like they're also providing a lot of different strategies to minimize risk.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay, so I'm independent tree service. I'm a listener of Green Setup podcast. Danny likes baseball. I like baseball. He sounds like he's young enough to be cutting edge and not going to die before me. How do I get in touch with you to explore if you're a good fit for me personally, if you're a good fit for my business?

[Danny Gutcher]

My office number, you can reach me at 813-871-0809. That's my office number. The best way to get into contact with me is through my email because I'm always out on the road meeting people and stuff. So my email would be DG U T C H E R at k a s e wealth dot com. So dgutcherasewealth.com and then case with a

[Jordan Upkavage]

K. Wasn't it D Gutcher?

[Danny Gutcher]

Ut no, DG. I was spelling out my name. Oh, okay. I'll write it down for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for those that are only listening,

[Jordan Upkavage]

so it's D Gutcher. So D then Gutcher. G U T C H E r@what?

[Danny Gutcher]

Case case wealth.com.

[Jordan Upkavage]

k a s e wealth w e a l dash dot com.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

D gutcher@case wealth dot com.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. So, yeah, case with a K. It's the. The four start. The people that started. Case is an acronym. Yeah, it's Keith, Amanda, Scott, and Evan. So Case got it made it easy to come up with a name.

[Jordan Upkavage]

[e-mail].

[Danny Gutcher]

yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Awesome. Well, Danny, thank you so much for being on the show. Kind of breaking down, confirming what I thought I knew and then, you know, explaining more to make what I thought I knew a little bit deeper of knowledge base.

[Danny Gutcher]

So, yeah, and I'm looking to help people. I mean, I'm young and hungry. A lot of advisors are a lot older than me. And like we were talking about earlier, that can be a hindrance, but I view it as a strength because I'm going to be with you till the end, basically, for sure.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, Danny, thanks again, man. We have another podcast that we're going to be on in about 17 minutes.

[Danny Gutcher]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So I'm going to pull up my personal financials, have you beat my keyboard for a little bit, and go see and see what you think that's in there.

[Danny Gutcher]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right, man. See you.

[Jason Lee]

As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this uphill climb. Don't miss out on future episodes of the Green side Up podcast. Make sure to hit that follow button to stay updated. For more ways to connect with the guys, check out the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, keep working hard so you can play even harder and keep the green side up.

[Danny Gutcher]

Sam.