Spotting the Sharks: 5 Red Flags Your Financial Advisor Might Be Waving (SB1732)

Summary

The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode: Spotting the Sharks: 5 Red Flags Your Financial Advisor Might Be Waving (SB1732)

Date: September 8, 2025
Hosts: Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Doug
Theme: How to spot red flags in financial advisors and avoid subpar advice

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Episode Overview

This episode is a "Greatest Hits" selection, focusing on arming listeners with the tools and knowledge to assess their financial advisor's trustworthiness and quality. Joe and OG break down their "Top 5 Red Flags" to watch out for when working with (or selecting) a financial advisor, aiming to help listeners avoid common pitfalls and costly mistakes. The show weaves in humor, relatable anecdotes, and pop culture references, maintaining its signature light and friendly tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

[00:59] Context: The Market and Recap

• Joe explains the episode comes from August 2023, at a point when the stock market was booming but investor fear was high. He highlights the danger of jumping out of the market due to fear:

  "If you had jumped out of the stock market in 2023 in August, well, ...you would have lost out on a 44% rate of return in the S&P500 between that time and mid September of this year."
  — Joe [01:32]

• Emphasis on long-term investing and the cyclical nature of market fear.

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[08:41] Headline: How Advisors Handle Clients Who Want to Speculate

• Discussion of an Investment News article about advisors managing bullish clients who want to chase hot stocks, IPOs, or crypto:
  • Some advisors maintain objectivity and keep client focus on goals and risk tolerance.
  • Many refuse to pick individual stocks for clients, outsourcing that to data-driven managers.
  • Advisors may allow "sandbox" or "fun money" accounts for speculation, but set clear boundaries (no "refills" if it tanks).

"If you don’t win big, which you probably won’t statistically, then you can’t go back to the safe money that’s for your long-term goals and ask for a refill."
— OG [13:51]

• The risk-reward on speculative accounts typically isn’t as significant as clients expect.

• Context of market cycles—recency bias can sway risk appetite.

  "Last year was like, oh, I’m gonna jump off a bridge...this year, woohoo, everything’s great!”
  — OG [16:28]

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[24:19] Main Topic: Top 5 Financial Advisor Red Flags

General Theme/Lens

• Humility and client-centered focus are core indicators.
• The best advisors act like coordinators or agents, connecting clients to specialists when appropriate. "A great doctor surrounds themselves with great people."

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The Top Five Advisor Red Flags

5. Affiliation with a Big Company (especially insurance) Over Independence

"Generally, big company makes me go...And by the way, if it’s a big insurance company, I go ‘mmm’ even harder."
— Joe [28:39]

• Not all big company advisors are bad, but independence may suggest higher commitment to the craft.
• Big company priorities can mean incentives misaligned with client interests.

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4. Lack of Scheduled, Proactive Communication and Meeting Cadence

• Joe and OG quickly agree on the importance of knowing when and how often you’ll hear from your advisor.

"You should be able to look out on the horizon and see the tempo of when you’re expected to have some sort of communication."
— OG [37:46]

• The cadence sets clear expectations and accountability for both sides.

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3. Office/Staff and Surroundings—Bad Vibe from Employees or Environment

• Joe describes how a messy front office, inattentive staff, or a boastful, intimidating advisor office layout are negative signs.

“If you go into their office and they’re playing Kramer yelling or, you know, power Lunch where they’re talking about all the hot stocks that day… I would turn around and run.”
— Joe [41:06]

• Bad staff usually reflects poor leadership and culture from the top.

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3B. Compensation and Fees Are Opaque

• OG notes that while many focus on fee structure, the real red flag is when advisors can’t clearly explain how or what they charge.

“...People you’re working with should be able to easily articulate what they get paid for and how much it costs. Unabashedly.”
— OG [44:07]

• Value needs to be clear—what are you getting for what you pay?

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2. Unexplained or Shady DISCLOSURES / Overuse of Jargon

• OG calls out undisclosed or poorly explained regulatory dings on BrokerCheck or the SEC website.

“If it’s not explainable easily, my spidey sense is tingling a little bit.”
— OG [50:48]

• Joe: Heavy use of jargon and "smoke & mirrors" is a red flag. Advisors should clarify and simplify, not hide info or make you feel dumb.

“The biggest BS artists were the ones that like to talk in big words and truly weren’t good.”
— Joe [53:38]

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1. Leads with Products, Not Process/Planning

• Both make this their #1: If an advisor leads with a specific product (especially insurance), run. The process and your goals—NOT products—should be central.

“If somebody presents themselves as an advisor...and they lead the discussion around product and not process, you need to run.”
— Joe [55:47]

• Advisors should help clients "think about their thinking," not sell whatever pays most commission.

“The more that your advisor is focused on what do you want to do and how can I help you do ‘you’, the better off the relationship’s going to be.”
— OG [57:20]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On long-term investing:

  "We're always nervous about the market."
  — Joe [01:19]

• On advisor humility:

  “If the person you’re talking to is like, ‘Oh, no, no, I’ve got this big support group and it’s the big sign out front,’ I go, eh, really?”
  — OG [33:52]

• On clear fees:

  “Just tell it to me straight, man. How much is it per month? How much is it per year? How much is it on a percentage? Whatever your deal is, just hit me with it.”
  — OG [44:07]

• "A great advisor is like a sports agent: The client is the rock star, not the advisor."
  — Joe [36:13]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:59] – Market analysis and jumping ship dangers
• [08:41] – Managing speculative clients and advisor objectivity
• [24:19] – Setting up the top five financial advisor red flags
• [28:39] – Red Flag 5: Big company vs. independence
• [37:46] – Red Flag 4: No proactive or scheduled communication
• [41:06] – Red Flag 3: Bad staff/office or intimidating environment
• [44:07] – Red Flag 3B: Fee explanations are not clear
• [50:48] – Red Flag 2: Shady disclosures, lack of transparency, use of jargon
• [55:47] – Red Flag 1: Advisor leads with product, not process
• [60:53] – Summary and "What Should We Have Learned Today?"

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Notable Quotes (with Speaker and Timestamps)

• "The vast majority of people are good...And the same thing is true with advisors. The vast majority of them are."
  — OG [32:06]

• "If you don’t understand what the hell you’re doing, then it’s not great."
  — Joe [54:13]

• “You should be able to look out in the horizon and see the tempo of when you’re expected to have some sort of communication.”
  — OG [37:46]

• On the biggest red flag:

  "If someone presents themselves as an advisor...and they lead with product, not process, you need to run."
  — Joe [55:47]

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Summary Conclusion

Joe and OG deliver practical guidance to help listeners avoid predatory or unhelpful financial advisors, stressing the critical importance of process, transparency, humility, and genuine client focus. Their candid anecdotes make the episode accessible and fun while providing concrete tools for vetting advisors. Their Top 5 checklist is a must-hear for anyone considering—or reconsidering—their financial advice relationships.

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For more deep dives and resources, check the show notes at stackingbenjamins.com or subscribe to the "201" newsletter.

Transcript

[Joe]

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[Joe]

Not available in all states Happy Monday Stackers. Welcome to Greatest Hits week on the Stacky Benjamin Show. You know we've got a fantastic episode today. We are going to dive into subpar advisors. What's interesting about this show is not only OG's take on how to spot a subpar advisor from a long ways away and my take on the same, but also just this idea that all advisors are not created equal. And well, you will see sometimes people say they had bad relationships with advisors. Certainly I think we can do a better job at interviewing and at looking at some of the clues early on. You don't want to have bad people in your corner, which is why I thought this is a great episode. I'd also love to get your take on today's headline because what's interesting is this episode is from August 2023 and we'd had a nice big stock market run. Sound familiar? What's funny is people were getting nervous about the stock market at that time and so imag, if you had jumped out of the stock market in 2023 in August, well I went and did the homework here, you would have lost out on a 44 rate of return in the S P500 between that time and mid September of this year. If you reinvested dividends, which most of us do, you'd have missed out on a 60% rate of return if you were, quote, nervous about the market. Of course, we're always nervous about the market. Next week we're going to have David Gardner from Motley fool on who's going to talk about investing and how you should set your sights on a much more long term approach than just looking at what the market's doing today. So I'd love to get your take. I think the advice still holds up from 2023, and I thought it was a unique spot in history where the market had gone up, people were worried about it, people starting to jump ship and look at if you what would have happened if you had done that. All right, we're gonna get on that here in just a second. But before we do that, every Monday, we all raise our mug. So st. Wherever you're at, raise your bug, your coffee, your water, whatever. And we have a salute to our troops on behalf of the men and women making podcast and mom's basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union who serve our military and our veterans. Thanks for keeping us safe this last weekend. Let's all go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we? My gosh, you boys already know I'm not letting that Ramsey boy come over and play until you clean up your rooms.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And on today's show, how do you know if an advisor is really on your team? We'll help you with some insights as Joe and OG share their top five red flags that an advisor might not be as good as you'd expect in our headlines. Speaking of advisors, what do advisors think when you want to speculate on a stock? A recent industry publication dives in. And so will we. Plus, I'll share some yummy Italian history trivia. Yummy, amazing, amazing Italian history trivia. And now two guys who are nearly as good as bruschetta on a random Wednesday. It's Joe and O. Jj Jaja G. Don't like the word yummy.

[OG]

Joe, what's brusketa?

[Joe]

That's what I was wondering.

[Doug]

You know what it is? Oh, I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's the right way to say the word.

[Joe]

Oh, my God.

[OG]

Okay. Budapest.

[Joe]

Welcome to the.

[Doug]

Yes.

[OG]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Joe]

That is the right way to say that word. Everybody, welcome to Americanization for the win. My name is Joe Salsi. I Average Joe Bunny on Twitter, we're gonna say things however the hell we want. And Doug, if you actually read the script that our own Lacey Langford has written for you, you would know why yummy was in there, because it's foreshadowing what you're going to talk about later. Yes, he has no idea what the hell's coming, as usual. But I'll tell you, we're bringing it today. As Doug did mention. He's not even really sure himself what he said. But hey, it's going to be fantastic. Fantastic headline. But you know what the most fantastic part of this show is? Mr. OG is here with us. That is by far the. What's that line? It's the Surrey with the Fringe on top.

[Doug]

It's oh, cheeks and ducks and geese better scurry.

[OG]

I have no idea what you idiots are talking about. Probably something from this early 70s.

[Joe]

He knows exactly what we're talking about. How are you, man?

[OG]

Fantastic. Until you started making fun of ducks. I don't know what that's about.

[Doug]

On top.

[Joe]

We had a site. No, we said duck scurry because you're around. Actually, I think we're ducks. Not making fun of the duck slurry.

[Doug]

The chick scurry too. Dude, the chick scurry pretty fast.

[Joe]

You talk about the young chickens, right? That's what you're talking about? Yes. I don't know how we got here. You know what? I think you guys need a timeout while I play this. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. With rising housing prices and steeper mortgage rates, we know homeownership may seem too expensive to be achievable. But that's why we offer a Home Buyer's Choice Loan that can open the door to affordable homeownership. Our Home Buyer's Choice Loan has no down payment options available, which means you don't need to wait years to save money. And with our no refi rate drop, you might be able to lower your rate in the future without refinancing. Plus, while most lenders require borrowers to purchase private mortgage insurance unless they can make a 20% down payment, we don't require PMI. Finally, we offer fixed payments, so your monthly payment will always be the same. So if you're looking for your first home or your next home, you can open the door with a Navy Federal Home Buyer's Choice loan. Visit navy federal.org to learn how you can achieve homeownership. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members are are the mission. Terms and conditions apply. Equalizing lender loan subject to approval and eligibility requirements. Learn more@navy federal.org I don't think that timeout was long enough. You guys get back to your corners. Let's play this. Huge Savings on Dell AI PCs are here and it's a big deal. Why? Because Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are newly designed to help you do more faster. It's pretty amazing what they can do in a day's work. They can generate code, edit images, multitask without lag, draft emails, summarize documents, create live translations. They can even extend your battery life so you never have to worry about forgetting your charger. It's like having a personal assistant built right into your PC to cover the menial tasks so you can focus on what matters. That's the power of Dell AI. With intel inside, with deals on Dell AI PCs like the Dell 16 plus, starting at $749.99, it's the perfect time to refresh your tech and take back your time. Upgrade your AIPC today by visiting Dell.com deals. That's Dell.com deals. There it is. All right. Oh, geez. Here, Doug's here. We got a top five today, some of our favorite episodes. So let's go.

[OG]

Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Headlines.

[Joe]

Our headline today comes to us from Investment News, which is an industry rag for financial advisors. And this is in a piece written by Greg Greenberg. Greg, talking to a bunch of advisors OG and is sharing how different advisors rein in overly bullish clients.

[OG]

Is that a thing?

[Joe]

If you've got somebody that wants to go off the deep end. I remember being overly bullish. Yeah. People are like, I want to go individual stocks. Let's make. I remember I had this, I had a client one time who was like, hey, let's do this. Let's buy a bunch of stocks. Let's put stop losses on them just below. And if they go down, we'll go to cash, and then we'll just regroup. The next time we see an indicator that the market goes up, I'm like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about, dude. Like, like, what are you talking. We can forward call the market. He goes, no, that's a cool thing. We can't. But if we continually put stop losses under it when it goes down, we won't lose much money when it goes up. It's unlimited upside potential. We could just redo it every day. Overly bullish. Overly bullish. Or, hey, how about we take half my portfolio and put it in crypto?

[OG]

But, oh, you're using it as a, as a synonym for stupid. I see. Now it makes sense. Now I'm getting it.

[Doug]

Not an overly aggressive inmate at the prison.

[Joe]

Well, this, this says Wall street lore, says a shoeshine boy Gave Joseph Kennedy a stock tip just prior to the great of 1929. And it's so unnerved, the future presidential patriarchy immediately cashed out his whole portfolio. It was his realization that rampant speculation got so out of control, eventually led to the establishment of the Kennedy family. Like he saw it coming because he was going the opposite way.

[OG]

Yeah, because nothing says I don't have any Kennedy money yet, as the shoeshine boy, et cetera, et cetera.

[Joe]

It's like, well, that's what he's saying. If the shoeshine boy is giving him a tip, it must be the bulls must be running crazy. Like it must be crazy talk. So he says. Greg notes that whenever bulls start stampeding, speculators emerge soon after taking retail investors along for the ride, or for a ride, depending on whether they escape in time. So he talks about going after IPOs, going after collateralized mortgage bonds or meme stocks. And he says they always end in speculative excess. But anyway, he talked to a bunch of different advisors about how they handle it when clients go, hey, I got this craziness. I wanted an idea. Yeah, what do you do, OG Well.

[OG]

I want to hear what other people say first.

[Joe]

Sure. Brandon Dixon James President, Wealth Manager, Resilient Wealth Management, says that most of his clients aren't convinced the current bull market's here to stay. And it's ultimately his job to keep them even keeled when the investment pitch gets fevered. He said, while things seem positive on the the front of this current bull market, I think the idea is never being too high or too low. My job is to be objective with my clients and always refer back to their goals and their appetite for risk. So at the end of the day, we can't control the ups and downs, certainly can't predict it. So I focus on what we can control. He says he won't purchase individual securities for clients. Always outsources that responsibility to third party money managers. If somebody wants to buy individual stocks, have somebody do it for them that actually is using some data to do it.

[OG]

Yeah, I like the idea of kind of be in that neutral position. Right. When the pendulum swings one way too far, your advisor should be like, no, it's not as bad as you think. It's okay, it's okay. And then when it's the other way, like YOLO, AMC GameStop, you're like, nah, it's not as good as you think.

[Joe]

Or if they're like, wow, my portfolio is up a ton, you're like, yes.

[OG]

We call lifeboat drills. We pretend you know what happens if the, you know what happens if the market's down 20% in the next year? What does that, what does that do? You know what, you got $800,000 and next year you look and your account's worth 540. What does that mean to you? You know, how does that, how does that make you feel?

[Joe]

Go back to the individual stock thing. Brandon says that the reason he outsources it, if they ask him to buy, they don't want to buy it. Og they want him to go buy individual stocks, he goes, I just think that these third party managers that I recommend to my clients have the resources and around the clock research teams that can do a much better job on a larger scale than I can. Because, and this is a paraphrase of what he says because it goes on for a few sentences. He said, because his job is to manage the relationships. His job is to build financial plans. His job is not to be Joe Stock Jock. If you're going to do that at all. And obviously earlier on he said don't, but if you're still going to insist on doing it, have somebody that does it full time, that, that's, that's what they do. Similarly, Greg Halter, director research at the Carnegie Investment Council, says if his clients want to have a brokerage account to speculate, that's fine with him. He said we really don't want to know about it. Some clients do buy individual stocks to speculate, I'm sure, I would imagine it would be the companies that are so called penny stocks, but again that's something we don't encourage. They come to us for our expertise. I like that last sentence. They come to us for our expertise, not to throw darts.

[OG]

Well, and there's a double edged sword here with the Fun Money account and we've talked about this on the show quite a bit about having the sandbox account, right, the, hey, this is my fun stock account. Whatever. We put some parameters on this, you know, when clients ask us about it. Mainly that if you, if you hit it out of the park, so you do. Well, number one, you can't say see, I told you so because you know, you were trying to play a lottery game and you happen to win and secondly, we reserve the right as your advisors to go, well, you should probably take some of those chips off the table. And secondly, if you don't win big, which you probably won't statistically, then you can't go back to the safe money, that's for your long term goals and ask for a refill you know, if it's like, well, I want to do. I want to have a fun money account with 10 grand in it. And now you blow it up and it goes down to, you know, 2,200 bucks, and you go, I need a refill. Nah, we're done with that experiment. You know, that's kind of the. The message that we try to communicate. The other thing that's really interesting is when you really kind of peel back the layers of this when it comes to individual stock positions or the speculative stock positions or whatever you want. Even if it's sectors or whatever, it's like, really, what are you trying to gain and what's the most upside? Right. I've not known very many people who are so committed to an idea that they're willing to take all of their capital into one singular idea. Most people are not that foolish. You know, they're talking about a certain percentage, right? Like, I want to take 10% of my portfolio, and I want to go crazy with it. I want to buy all tech stocks or, you know, or I want to buy a single position. It's like, okay, cool. You got a million bucks. You want to put 100 grand in this thing? What's the most that you hope happens? It's like, well, I hope it goes up better than the market. It's like, all right, cool. So the market's going to do 10 automatically on average. Or you're hoping you do 12, you're hoping you do 13, 15. Like, what's your number? And you start putting some dollars to that, and you go, I'm taking all this risk for an extra 2,200 bucks return or an extra $5,000 return. When you start putting real dollars and cents to these percentages that you're thinking about, it's really not moving the needle that much in the long run compared to the risk that you're taking of a single idea with a percentage of your portfolio.

[Joe]

Yeah. Riding that roller coaster, the emotional turmoil that you're going to go through. There might be some people listen to this OG with all of the talk still of, you know, of recession, of possible problems in the real estate market, all these things, this idea that we're in a bull market, There may be some stackers out there going, we're in a what? We're in a bull. Like, if you haven't looked at it lately, since last October, the S P500 has been going, yeah, crazy.

[OG]

It seems like it was just a flash in the pan. But remember that this time last year, we were kind of in the thick of it, you know, we were, we were just as far into it last year at this time as we are this year into this time and see how the differences feel, you know, it's like, woohoo, everything's great. It's like last year was like, oh, I'm gonna jump off a bridge, you know, and it's like, you know, we've had the same experience, you know, over that same period of time. It's just the other side of the equation. Both of which by the way are unnatural, right? The minus 20 worse than average. The plus 20 so far this year better than average. So what does that tell you when you look at like the concept of standard deviation or the concept of variability? We're outside the norms on both sides of this right now. It seems like it's gotta eventually settle back down.

[Joe]

And that also brings up, I think a good point. If you sold at the bottom because of the fact that you were afraid, you're like, I can't take anymore. The market roughly bottomed out, I think around October 11th. If you bought Spy, which is the spider, that's The S&P 500, you got paid $357.74 a share today trading at $456 a share, some 20 odd percent. Yeah. Up 100 bucks a share. Yeah. So big, big, big number. We will link to this story and more resources in our show notes and we'll dive deeper in the 201 our newsletter, stacky benjamin.com 201 and of course we've been talking about this just the last couple weeks. Coming up next. Oh gee. And I have another top five type of episode that is I go around the country, meet stackers, people like, I love it when you guys do top fives and we don't do enough while we're doing one. Today we're going to talk about red flags that might give you kind of a heads up that your advisor might not be as good as they could be. But, but Doug, as we said earlier, I think you've got some yummy trivia and I. And by the way, the reason you've got yummy trivia is because next week OG is a prelude. This is kind of like a signpost along the way. Next week, Len Penzo sandwich study. Coming up, we're gonna have Len Penzo diving into sandwiches and you gotta, I can't wait to see that egg salad sandwich. How much is the price of eggs?

[OG]

I say they've gone down, gone up in a year.

[Doug]

I just diving into egg salad.

[Joe]

Well, they've gone down now. But are they down? How far down? Are they off the high? Would we've been better to not have. I don't know. We'll see next week. But as a prelude, I think we got some Italian foods.

[OG]

Doug?

[Doug]

Italian Joe.

[OG]

Italian.

[Joe]

Sorry. Italian to go with my bruschetta.

[Doug]

I swear to God that's the right way to say that. Okay. Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor. Doug, and I come bearing good news. In only seven days, Len Penza will be here to share the results from his sandwich survey. If you're new to stacking Benjamins, it's an annual tradition that you won't want to miss and a great way to see how inflation affects your wallet. Well, here to help lay out the red carpet, let's talk about one of his favorite topics. Bologna.

[OG]

Oh, boy.

[Doug]

That's how you say that word, too. Funny thing. Not only is Bologna a meat, it's also a great city in Italy. Yeah, while Bologna is known for salty goodness between two pieces of bread with maybe some mayo, the city is famous for miles of historic porticoes, its leaning medieval towers, and its gorgeous Piazza Maggiore. See? Kind of nailing this. What do the two have in common? Both the city and the meat are part of a huge culinary tradition. You know, depending on who you ask, Bologna, the city, not the meat, has made tons of Benjamins. Well, it was florins, but now I suppose it's gyros on its bolognese meat sauce. But it's also known for bringing the world another popular Italian dish. So today's what dish is it? I'll be back right after I go set the table for dinner. I don't care what time it is. I'm starving. After reading that.

[OG]

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[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm alpha man and meat lover Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. You know bologna this time, I mean the meat, not the city, has a great history of its own. Bologna is really bologna sausage, derived from the Italian mortadella, which comes from the city bologna. See the connection? No. Well, get your glasses because it won't get better. Maybe we should just get you a trivia answer, huh? The question is the city of Bologna, Joe, Is it bologna?

[Joe]

I think it's bologna, isn't it?

[Doug]

I was nailing all of these Italian pronunciations and I've been screwing that one up the whole time. All right, keep moving. Maybe nobody Will notice city of Bologna is home to a time honored Italian dish that to this day delights millions. What's the dish? Lasagna. Want more food stuff? You gotta wait one week. For now, let's put feed your brains with some great info. Our top five red flags that tell you an advisor might not meet your needs. With Joe and OG.

[Joe]

Doug, even I'm hungry after. Oh my God.

[OG]

All the good news about what's happening.

[Joe]

Lasagna is so good.

[OG]

Going to Italy or not in a week.

[Joe]

The Italian guy taking us into sandwich land. Hey, let's dive into this OG because you know, we get questions about advisors and sometimes people will give us clues about their advisor. In fact, I had somebody just email me today and they were telling me a little bit about their situation and just a couple things they said made me go boop. But the funny thing is for you and I, that's just years of experience. And so hopefully we can help people avoid the bad advisors because as you know, having smart people in your corner is a key to success, right? You can't do it alone. You, you have to have to surround yourself with smart people. Every person who's gone anywhere. I don't know any of those people that were the, you know, this myth of the loner who just did it.

[OG]

Themselves other than the actual Lone Ranger.

[Joe]

True fictional character, by the way. Well, no, he had Tonto. He had Tanto.

[OG]

He did, yeah.

[Joe]

So. And Silver, you know, and one of.

[OG]

My favorite songs of all time, you guys were playing weird songs earlier. We're gonna have to bust out an oldie but a goodie. For me that's. That talks about the Lone Ranger.

[Doug]

Oh, I have a feeling it's inappropriate.

[Joe]

But, but for right now, OG as you were thinking about this top five, what were some of the things that really went through your head when you were thinking about advisors not maybe not serving people's needs. Is there like an overarching theme?

[OG]

Yeah, there's humility and the kind of or lack thereof if you're thinking about it from the opposite side and the all about me, I think that's probably kind of sort of the overarching thing. And there's some other major red flags that are kind of easy to digest but the spidey sense tingling ones kind of sort of theme around that. And I'll give you an example about this. I mean ultimately, and maybe this is one of them just kind of anecdotally I was talking to a younger advisor who had called me for something and was asking about a Problem. Like a case scenario, Right. How do I solve this problem? And I said, gosh, I really just. I don't even know the answer to that. I have some ideas of where to start, but it sounds like you need to get, you know, a pro involved in this. This particular issue, some special issue. And he was like, well, no, no, no. You know, clients pay. Pay me to know these answers and. And be able to answer this form, and I can't send them to another person. And I said, well, you're not sending them to another person. It's. You're providing them the resource, the specialization. I mean, I have a personal physician, right? A doctor that does all my lab work and that sort of thing. And when I texted him, I said, man, I have real trouble with my shoulder lately. I don't know what's going on there. He texted me back and said, go see this guy. He didn't say, well, why don't you come in and I'll poke around a little bit, see if I can't solve it. He's like, I'm not a shoulder guy. Go see my shoulder guy. And I still come back to my main doctor. You know what I mean?

[Joe]

Well, and if the doctor is great, the doctor has a team of people, when you talked about lab work, who actually are doing the lab work and notice this stuff all day long and then give the results back to the doctor who also weighs in. But a great doctor surrounds themselves with great people, just like a great investor will surround themselves with other great investors.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe]

Well, on that note, og, why don't we dive in with our number five? Number five, who's going to start this shindig?

[OG]

You should.

[Joe]

Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start off. And this is because it's. It is number five because this one is going to be qualified. You know, I worked with a big company. There were a bunch of good advisors with the big company that I was with, Ameriprise. I thought they were a fine company. However, just generally, oh, gee. When I hear that an advisor is with a big company instead of independent, this does not mean independents are all great or big companies are all bad. I do hear big company. And I know there were many times during my career when the big company I was with had some ulterior agendas that truly were about sustainability of the company as much as they were about sustainability of the client. It was my job as an advisor to really kind of fight against that. When I saw great advisors at this company, they all did the same thing. So I just put. Generally, big company makes me go. And by the way, if it's big insurance company, I go, mmm, even harder.

[OG]

A double?

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

Double them. Yeah. Ultimately, you can kind of just look and see where the interests are aligned. It's really funny because a lot of. If you look at any sort of issue with, I mean, frankly, any profession, but we're talking about the money profession right now. If there's an issue, it can almost always be traced back to what are the incentives. It can almost always be traced back to that in a large organization, there's a lot of great resources. I was talking to a colleague today at lunch, as a matter of fact, and we were talking about the differences. He said, I know a lot of guys that are going to the big shops because of the ability to get line of credits. You know, they've got, you know, a 15, $20 million investment portfolio. They don't have to go get a loan at the bank. Since they're at Merrill, Merrill bank of America, kind of, you know, they're together, they're the same company. They can put their $20 million brokerage account up as collateral and go get a $15 million loan tomorrow afternoon and buy that building and start that project. And, you know, so there is some benefits to that, for sure, you know, in terms of that level of service. But the thing that's interesting is that on the, at the big company level, what is it? It's an organization that has shareholders, and a shareholder CEO has the CEOs and board of directors. And their responsibility at Merrill, at Bank of America, at Ameriprise, at Wells Fargo, is to the shareholders. And there's more shareholders than clients generally, so certainly more dollars involved. You gotta be responsible for the people that you're responsible for. And the CEO, the board of directors, they're responsible to shareholders ultimately, you know.

[Joe]

And that gets back to our credit union discussion that we had a week ago. Right. Where credit unions, nonprofit organizations, still want to make sure that they bring in more business all the time to keep the credit union going, but they're responsible to their members versus the shareholders. It is the same thing for an independent advisory firm, though, too. Right. The independent advisory firm doesn't have shareholders, but still wants to earn a. Earn a profit.

[OG]

Absolutely.

[Joe]

So while I think that's important for the ownership, I do think that I've seen the difficulty in this business with advice. This is why I think independent looking independent might be just a clear way to go, is that I know how hard it is for an advisor to go Independent. I know how difficult it is to run the business without that backbone of support like I had at Ameriprise when I had a franchise of that system. To be able to make the jump first, which is not easy and then second, to be able to set up all the systems on your own and to keep the systems and to make it all run really takes a level of commitment and expertise and commitment to the craft that you frankly may have. And, and a lot of people do have. I don't want to, I don't want to throw too much shade here. There are some awesome people at some big companies who I really think do a hell of a job.

[OG]

But I mean most of them, to be clear. Yes. Like the vast majority. This is the thing that's interest interesting. It's like you see something, you know, on the news, right. And it's like the picking something. I don't know the.

[Doug]

Try that in a small town manicurist.

[OG]

Who murders people or something, you know, and you go all manicurists are bad, right? No, they're not.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

No. The vast majority, you know, all doctors are generally pretty good. They try to help people. There is the one guy who gets hooked on pain pills and murders a bunch of patients and you know, does a bunch of fraud.

[Doug]

There is that murdering patients.

[OG]

Well, I'm not a doctor, but I can imagine.

[Doug]

I can see how they're manicurists. Murders are everywhere.

[OG]

Yeah. You know, I just thinking about a story that I read about the other day. My point is, is that the vast majority of people are good.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

And the same thing is true with advisors. The vast majority of them are.

[Joe]

That still is my number five. I have a bias toward independent. It's not a deal killer. Definitely though. Oh gee. If I hear that it's going to be a financial plan and it's with an advisor that's with an insurance company, you better believe insurance coverage through that company is going to factor fairly heavily into your financial plan. What's your number five?

[OG]

Well, I'm going to stick with the initial theme which is the kind of know it all, it's all about me. You know, I wrote it three different ways. Know it all, it's all about me. It's all. It's only them. Those are like the things that I wrote. And as it relates to what you were talking about in terms of being independent versus a franchise or an employee organization, it is a lot different to be in the business running a business of providing advice versus being the advice provider. Right. And kind of to your point about commitment to the overall craft of providing advice, to be able to organize a group of people and say, we have this team of people, we have this group of people who all have different specialties, who all are really good in their own right in different areas. And together that group of people are going to provide this level of service to the end user, to the client. Is a different level of commitment to the profession than being behind a desk and waiting for somebody to show up and going, what do you think I should do with my rollover? You go, oh, we got these funds. You should buy. You could do that. That's an idea. I'm kind of not giving enough credit. But it's kind of along those ways. If the person you're talking to is like, oh, no, no, I've got this big support group and it's the big sign out front, I go, eh, really? Kind of like what you were saying, really? And there's some truth to that.

[Joe]

Sure.

[OG]

But it's a lot higher commitment level if you can recognize and have the humility to understand that there are areas that you don't have expertise in. And I'm willing to find the solution, or the advisor's willing to find the solution, whether that's internally or externally to provide the best service.

[Joe]

Well, when you think about the role, what the true term I feel like, and this was my problem when I went over from the advisory side to the financial side, financial media side, was that there's too much emphasis on the word advisor in sales and sales people. I mean, an advisor in general, no matter what they're advising you on, oh gee, they advise you and advise you often does not mean they do it themselves. That is a product provider does it themselves. An advisor says, hey, oh gee, go over here and do this. Check out my guy over here. I'm going to hook you up with this great woman. She does this awesome work on taxes or mortgages or whatever it might be. You know, I got this professional doing XYZ thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna help you get connected with this group of people or this thing. Like an advisor advises, they do not keep it all in house. And certainly anybody who thinks, you know, and I am kind of biased against One Stop Shops for that reason. I think if you're doing 85 different things, if you're prepping, if you are providing the entire insurance solution, you're providing the tax advice, you're writing the will, you're doing the financial plan, you're doing, you know, you're doing everything with the financial plan. Heck, I'll write your car loan. I'll do all this stuff. How are you doing any of it really well? And are you truly the best in all these different areas? If it's all in house, I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.

[OG]

It's interesting that you're talking about that because. Because what you're talking about is a concept called wallet share, which is a really important concept in the big organizations, right? And they talk about it in their annual reports. You know, Merrill lynch or, I'm sorry, bank of America or. Or Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, these big organizations. They talk about, how much of our clients wallet share do we have? Because to be fair, the more. The more things you have with one organization, the less likely it is for you to leave that organization, right? I mean, if your mortgage and your 401k and your checking account, savings account, credit cards are all with bank of America, it's like, I don't, you know, how much of a pain in the ass is it to move half that stuff to Vanguard and go find a credit union and get better interest on your savings account and that sort of thing?

[Joe]

I also think, to your point, you know, when I got better as an advisor at the end of my career, I was trying to model our practice like I was a sports agent. Like, it wasn't about me. It was about my client, who is a phenomenal sports star or Taylor Swift. I mean, you know, create the analogy. My client is the rock star. My client is the star. And it's not about me OG it's about them. And how do I make sure I'm the concierge for them to get more money in their pocket, to do more for the. To make. Make sure that they get as much as they possibly can with the things that they have. How can we wring as much out of their company benefits, out of their paycheck, into their savings account, their investing strategy, whatever it might be that we do the right thing. So when you said, you know, it's about me, me, me, me, me, I think it needs to be about you, you, you, meaning you, you, you, client.

[Doug]

Just to be clear, did you still have Taylor Swift as a client when she released 1989? Because that album is amazing.

[OG]

I. I can think about is that workday commercial where they're like, you need to. All the rock people are like, you need to quit calling each other rock stars.

[Doug]

It's like Ozzy Osbourne and good job stapling that mike. You're a rock star.

[OG]

Gene Simmons, like, sticks his head in there. Like, Bill, you're. And he, like, sticks his head and he's like, you did really good. He, like, shuts the door. It's like, you got to quit using. You're not. Unless you are actually a rock star, you are not a rock star.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Number four.

[OG]

Okay, Number four for me, I'm going to go with. There's not any proactive communication. You don't know what the schedule looks like in the future. Some ambiguous.

[Joe]

Just before you go into yours, my number four. There is no scheduled meeting cadence. Same stuff.

[OG]

Yeah, same stuff. I really feel like you should be able to look out in the horizon and see the tempo of when you're expected to have some sort of communication. Whether that's monthly, quarterly, annually, semi annually. Like, what's the frequency of when I can count on you to be proactive with me? So you being the advisor, to be proactive with me in terms of when do I have to think about this and when are you thinking about it?

[Joe]

I absolutely love that because I think that no matter what the cadence is, knowing that they have an approach and that that approach has worked for a lot of people already means it has a better chance of working for me. If we never talk about that and it was more of a sales relationship where I buy something and then I never hear from them again, well, then we have a problem. It also gives me the parameters around how to judge them. Right. If you say you're going to contact me twice a year, let's say, and you don't, then I have good reason to say, hey, I'm not getting the service that I was promised. But if you don't know what that expectation is, it's very difficult. By the way, the other thing that I like, I also like that between those meetings, then I also feel comfortable calling my advisor and asking their opinion if something comes up. I'm buying a new car and I'm wondering if I should finance it because I can get a 0% loan versus just pay cash that's in my car fund account. Or if I'm, you know, changing houses or changing jobs, that. Whether those are included. And then I'm going to get advice from you on those things. Or if I'm not getting advice, or those are going to cost extra. I really want to be clear about what that meeting cadence is and how it's going to work.

[OG]

Great minds think alike.

[Joe]

Wow. We just. We just moved to number three. Number three. Well, since technically I went last, but I feel like we kind of Held hands and jumped that one together. Number three is this, you know, oh, gee. Remember back in the day when we were very active blogging, we had one piece.

[OG]

You were active blogging and I was actively talking about your blogging.

[Joe]

Yes, good, good, good point.

[OG]

I do remember.

[Joe]

But if you remember, if you remember the blog, there was one piece that went. They got close to, you know, if we're going to call anything viral at all that we did, this one went viral and it was how to know that your advisor sucks before you even meet with the advisor. And it was the office setting, what's going on, the office and the employee. So my number three was you can really often when you're interacting with the advisors, employees, you can get a real feel for how the organization works. Because as an example, when I was with Ameriprise, they had a receptionist named Linda who is absolutely horrible at the start was just absolutely rotten. And that stuff often comes from the top. And the guy that ran the office, Tony, good guy, but didn't pay much attention. And then he realized that needed to change. He and Linda made it better almost overnight. The two of them, they took a Nordstrom training. They did some great work together. And then, man, I realized that every office I walked into because I was a speaker going around all of eastern Michigan, so I went into a lot of different offices. You could tell what the manager of that office was doing and what the different advisors were doing based on that receptionist and how good they were. And really Linda was kind of a testament to, you know, a pretty good thing Tony was doing in Southfield.

[OG]

Okay, good job. Tony and Linda.

[Joe]

Yeah. But as an example, if you go into their office and they're playing Kramer yelling or you know, power Lunch where they're talking about all the hot stocks that day. Yeah, I would turn around and run. If they've got the Travel Channel on, maybe the Golf Channel, you know, they've got pretty pictures on their stuff. That relaxes you. That's what a good financial plan should do. It shouldn't be about.

[OG]

About stacking Benjamin's episode playing in the background. Any of those things would be great.

[Joe]

I'd say probably should.

[Doug]

About a Successories poster.

[OG]

Hang in there, Soar.

[Joe]

If they, I mean, there were other things, you know, if the advisor sits behind a huge desk.

[OG]

Right.

[Joe]

Whenever I had an advisor that sat behind the huge desk. Oh gee, you know, this guy. I'm just going to say the first name. There was a guy we work with back in our American Express, Dave named Glenn. And Glenn would always Sit behind this desk with a high back chair and his, his clients were in folding chairs. And I thought he was a horrible advisor. And I was like Glenn, why do you do. Well, I want to make sure my clients know who's in charge. And I'm like, that's why I would never ever recommend you to anybody, man.

[OG]

So complete side note, when ameriprise closed their Toledo office, I stole, took a bunch of stuff off the wall. And one of them, and a couple of them are these things.

[Joe]

Accessories. Poster. What does that one say? Virtue.

[OG]

Is it, Is it backwards attitude?

[Joe]

No, virtue of attitude. Oh. And it just goes through the virtue of having a good attitude.

[OG]

Something about a purple imagery with some dude, I don't know, fishing or something.

[Joe]

Just so everybody's clear, you say the word steel OG but you and I knew what happened when offices closed. Those things just went in a dumpster. Yeah.

[OG]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

They were gone.

[Doug]

You were like, you rescued that like it was a dog or something.

[Joe]

He did rescue it, yes. It's his rescue successory.

[Doug]

It was gonna starve to death if I didn't take it out of the dumpster.

[OG]

So like a sailboat like canted sideways like tacking into the wind. I have no idea what it says but it's, it's a sailboat so it's obviously motivational.

[Joe]

So I think you can look at the surround sound the advisor is providing. What does the surround sound look like? And man, if it doesn't feel right, if it doesn't feel on, if they have bad employees, I would say all that stuff comes from the top. It all comes from the top. That's my number three.

[OG]

Okay, so I gotta put something in there about cost because you know, everybody's like itchy, itchy trigger fingers like what about the cost structure?

[Joe]

Fees. What about fees?

[OG]

Fees. And we've said a hundred thousand times, I don't actually care how advisors get paid. And there's about 350 different ways to do it. And all of them are fine in my opinion for the right people.

[Joe]

Hey, can we also add something else there OG Just while you're on that statement. Also, I believe the attention to fees is because most people don't know enough about really what's going on in the financial planning business to truly comment on anything else. It's easy, it's low hanging fruit and it's lazy. Just want to add that.

[OG]

Well, I'm looking at it from the client perspective, maybe in the media perspective it's lazy for sure. But on the client Perspective. It's something that's right there and again. Back to what I was saying before. I don't know that there's a right answer for it. I think that the people that you're working with should be able to easily articulate what they get paid for and how much it costs. And that simple and unabashedly, like, we get X dollars, we charge you this much per month. We have this percentage fee, we have this structure, abc. Da da da da. If you get into some sort of like. Well, you know, we really get paid a couple of different ways, and it just depends on the sometimes. And. And we really paid a third way. And that's through your recommendations and your referrals. And like, okay, just tell it to me straight, man. How much is it per month? How much is it per year? How much is it on a percentage? Like, whatever your deal is, just hit me with it, right?

[Joe]

Lay it out.

[OG]

It is what it is and there's nothing wrong with it. Especially if you're a business owner associated with running a business of financial planning or advice of some kind, CPA firm, whatever it is, you need to, as the owner of that business, be able to pay your employees and heat and cool your building and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So you put some thought into it. Hopefully you're not just arbitrarily going, I don't know, charge us. How's 600?

[Joe]

How does that sound?

[OG]

How's 650 sound for your tax forms today, sir? Like, you've sat down and said, this is how long it's going to take me and this is how I'm going to charge based on that and the time and expertise and that sort of thing. So just do it the same way. Like, it's. Don't be like the doctors. Don't be like, the hospital where my son broke his arm.

[Joe]

They were like, nobody knows.

[OG]

They're like, how much are you paying, insurance or cash? And I'm like, well, how much is it? We don't know. Well, you fixed an arm, I'm certain, in the past. It's a big building. You have lots of doctors here. You must have a general sense of how much it costs to fix a broken arm. No, we don't know until we bill your insurance company. And I just couldn't even believe it.

[Joe]

There it is.

[OG]

You know, and that's. I think sometimes advisors do that. They're like, well, how much you got? It's like, well, yeah, what do you mean, how much I got? How much is it? What well, how much you. What kind of car you want? You know, it's like, just tell.

[Joe]

That's what's difficult too. Like, if I'm trying to evaluate whether to hire somebody to be in my corner or not, I got to know what the value is. I mean, one of the questions OG that frustrates me the most is, is expensive, right? How often have we had that question? I get charged X amount. Is that expensive? My first question always is, well, what are you getting for that? I need to know what you're. Because it might be super. You might be paying next to nothing and it could be hugely expensive. You be paying a ton of money and it's not expensive at all because you're getting this Cadillac of service. So what am I getting versus what I pay? I think is. Is much better metric. And by the way, this is, you know, we've interviewed people at different philanthropies and this is kind of a carryover. There was a period when it come to philanthropic giving, and there's still people with philanthropic giving that are like, what's your overhead? And what's the kickback we've seen on that lately? OG the best evaluations of a philanthropy are not around overhead. They're around reach and results. Because. And we've had people on this show tell us this, we need to be able to hire good people to get good results. I can't pay people nothing and get great talent in here to get great results. So if I pay a little more, we can extend the reach by X times that. You know, we could 10x, we could 100x that because we actually paid a little more. So it's not always about expenses. It's about what do I get for that? So I like that one, two punch as well.

[OG]

Number two, this one's kind of an easy one. An unexplainable or unanswerable, an unreasonably answered disclosure on adv.sec website, broker check, something like that, right?

[Joe]

Oh, that's a good one.

[OG]

There's a public location where you can do your checking on your people. And so if you're a broker or an advisor, there's a website called Broker Check. You can just put that into Google. You can look at the SEC website and search for my advisor on the SEC website. If they're a CFP certificate holder, you can search for disclosure history on the CFP board as [e-mail] and all of us have things in our past that we wish we would have done differently, right? I mean, I can I was just talking to a buddy of mine at lunch about estate planning and he's like, I'm just giving all the money to my kids at 25. And we talked about that and I said, you know, I'd like to think I was pretty responsible at 25, but in the hindsight of looking at from 45 to 25, I was an idiot, you know, And I could say that about being 44, honestly, you know, it's like, yeah, that 24 year old, oh gee, he was dummy. But some of those foibles, some of those errors, some of those errors in judgment mistakes, whatever turn up on your record if you're going to be an advisor, right? Especially if it's money related. And there was a long time, a very long time, I think almost until 2012ish or so, where any sort of financial issues in the background almost excluded you completely from being in the financial industry. If you had a bankruptcy, if you had a foreclosure, if you had a tax lien, if you had anything, you know, missed a payment on your credit card, red flag, you were done.

[Joe]

Done.

[OG]

From the recession in 2007-2009, the government and also the CFP board sort of relaxed those standards a little bit and said, we understand that life happens on occasion, right? It's just you do your best and things don't go according to plan. And as long as you can kind of sort of explain what happened and how you solved the problem, we will be willing to talk about that or allow you to stay in. And so I'm not talking about financial issues where it's like, listen, I had a medical thing, my partner got sick, we had a medical issue, mom and dad were ill, I had to sell the house in foreclosure. Da, da, da, da, da. Red flag, right? That's what happened. I'm talking about the red flags of client complaint settled out of court, client complaint settled out of court, client complaint settled. Like, what's going on here? You know, if you've got ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, all these, you know, oh, the client screwed me, my boss screwed me. You know, I got screwed on that. And there's not really any answers to that. Anything that has to do with fraud or malfeasance with client funds, automatic, never pass, go, do not collect $200, right? There's no, there's no coming back from that. In my book, personal financial issues, I think you can have some conversation around it, you know, try to understand what happened in their circumstances because it's going to be there. But if it's not explainable easily, my spidey sense is tingling a little bit.

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah.

[OG]

No.

[Joe]

And if they just shy away from the discussion, you know, I've said publicly that on my record there was one complaint and I was very happy to go through it and talk about exactly what happened. And it frustrated the hell out of me that it was on there. And I think through my explanation of. And this is the bad news, OG it was on there for a good last four years of my tenure as an advisor. And I think two people. Two people looked at my record between my existing clients and people that were thinking about who to hire. Not enough people do exactly what you just said when they hire help. Well, now look and see what's out there.

[OG]

Yeah, it's really interesting. We have, we're fortunate that we have a company that comes every a couple of weeks to do a little clean in our house. Think about all the stuff that you do when somebody's gonna come roof your house or clean your house or mow the grass or, you know, do something. You go, well, do you have insurance? Are you licensed? You know, I'm gonna check the builders association, make sure you're in good standing. I do all these things. And then what do you do when you go to hire a. An investment advisor? Well, she seemed nice.

[Joe]

Yeah, right?

[OG]

Yeah, I just. It was really easy. I just rolled over my $2 million account. It was super simple.

[Joe]

Yeah. Sound great.

[OG]

Did you give them a once over? Did you look online or did you Google them real fast? You know, just to.

[Joe]

Well, the fact of where you're getting your advice, it always frustrates me because that's often what happens when people are getting advice from the wrong places. They didn't do enough due diligence up front. And I feel like if you're going to surround yourself with a great board of advisors, you're going to do a lot of. If these people are going to base your life decisions on. In areas where you might have blind spots, do half an hour of due diligence.

[OG]

Well, it's like that CFP commercial, right? Where the guys, guys, a DJs a DJ. He's like. He goes, all right, so this is your plan? What did you think about it? They're like, oh, it's great. It's great. He's like, do you think I'm pretty trustworthy? Do you think you'd take. Oh, yeah. He's like, well, that's great because I'm a dj. And he takes his hat Off. He's got long hair and he's like, you know, he's like, I'm not really an advisor at all.

[Joe]

I know nothing. I learned this.

[OG]

That's why you have to search this.

[Doug]

It was a great campaign. They should have kept running that.

[Joe]

Yeah, they should have.

[Doug]

You could have done so many different professions there and it would have been hilarious.

[Joe]

To your point, Doug, it was a long time ago. We're still talking about it, right? And everybody, there's a bunch of people out there who are listening who know exactly the campaign we're talking about.

[Doug]

Say that Joe. I just picture Kevin in the background like, holy crap, how am I going to find that? What is he talking about? Just some vague old ad campaign. You shouting to me again, I'm on it.

[OG]

Yeah, he's on slack. He's like, dear Joe, please advise what the hell you're talking about at the 51 minute mark.

[Joe]

No idea. Yeah. My number two is if an advisor uses lots of jargon, an advisor's job is to make things easier. And, and I found that in my time spent with advisors, the biggest BS artists were the ones that like to talk in big words and truly weren't.

[OG]

Good at the alpha, beta and standard deviation. Omega is pretty sweet. Alpha beta.

[Joe]

And by the way, it doesn't mean you should shy away from that stuff because I would definitely show people the beta as an example. But it was my job then to explain what it was.

[OG]

I was just a restraining order for showing people his beta.

[Doug]

And it's an industry specific term apparently.

[OG]

You know, based, based on his history, he's not allowed to show anybody his beta.

[Joe]

It's like Jeff at the wedding reception that we talked about last week with the kilt going around showing 18 people's sister in law 18 times as beta. Yeah, not good.

[OG]

Don't do that.

[Joe]

But I think that advisors that use lots of jargon, listen, their job is to make your life easier. Their job is to simplify it, make sure you understand it's not their plan, it's your plan. And your main goal is if your advisor gets hit by a bus, you want to be better off by having work with them. And if you don't understand what the hell you're doing, well then, then it's, it's not a great. So that's my number two, get away from lots of jargon or people, Doug, that do the smoke and mirrors kind of thing, I think, which sometimes it's easy to see and sometimes it's not. I know you've got an example of one that I think we've talked about in the past.

[Doug]

Is it the one where you guys have both groaned when I've talked about that really big firm that's got commercials on TV all the time that says we do better when our clients do better? Right? Is it that one? Right?

[Joe]

Yeah, and that one is tough. I mean, this one. This one is a little different because. Because the average person listening won't get this, but there's a huge number of visors out there that do the same thing. And this guy is named Ken Fisher. And whenever I see Ken Fisher's advertisements, he takes something that everybody else does. See, we do this thing where we look at the most efficient use of your asset. Really? Called the efficient frontier jerk, something everybody else does. Oh, no, it's proprietary. You got to go through. Gotta go through my genius to get it. Just. I don't know if Ken Fisher is a good or bad advisor, but there's no way.

[OG]

Big advisor.

[Doug]

I would say he's nobody. Is he anybody's advisor anymore? No, I don't think so.

[Joe]

Based on his advertisements. He's just always makes me roll my eyes. Just the advertising that guy does is crazy. All right, that's my number two. What's yours? Oh, gee, you already give me yours. I'm sorry. We're on to the big one. It's time for the big one, and we're not talking about Doug's beta number one.

[Doug]

I'm just sitting here in the corner minding my own business. My beta's all over the room.

[Joe]

Yeah, my number one is borrowed. I've always agreed with this emotion. Our mutual friend Roger Whitney put it in a way that I had not heard it. But I absolutely love this, to the point that it is my number one. OG if somebody presents himself as an advisor, not a product salesperson, and they lead the discussion around product and not process you need to run, that is my number one. That they're probably not great advisor in your corner.

[OG]

I literally wrote leads with product, not.

[Joe]

That's your number one, too. It's good, isn't it? It's great.

[Doug]

It shortens the show a little bit, which everybody will appreciate.

[OG]

Yeah. This is fantastic. I really think that our job as advisors is to help people think about how to think about things, and that's borrowing a phrase from strategic coach. Think about your thinking. Sometimes people are asking questions like, do you think that this is a good budget item on our cash flow? Are we within bounds here? Is a thousand bucks a month, good for groceries and our job I don't think is to necessarily say it is or it isn't. Right. Should I have the Sunday ticket package for DirecTV? I don't know, man. How much do you like football? If you like it a lot, then it's probably a good use. I mean, if you're gonna watch it all Sunday, it's probably a really good use of money. Honestly, I don't know, man versus pay per viewing or going to the Cowboys game every Sunday. It's gonna cost you way more to do that. But it's not necessarily to say these are the right or wrong things. It's to say what's important to you and how do we use the resources that you have to do the things that you wanna do. And the more that. I mean, you said this earlier. The more that your advisor is focused on what do you want to do and how can I help you? Do you. The better off the relationship's going to be. And if you show up and you were picking on insurance firms earlier, Joe. But it's kind of sort of true because we've seen these plans from people, and if you show up and you're like, okay, I think I want to retire. And they're like, cool, Let me show you this great life insurance product I have.

[Joe]

There it is.

[OG]

You're like, wait, what? I thought I said I want to retire. Yeah, retire, retire. That's great. Great. Retirement's awesome. But life insurance. And you're focused on that, or you have a proprietary product of some kind, a mutual fund, or you have a separately managed account, or you have some deal that's tied to your firm specifically, and you're leading with the product instead of the solution or instead of the goal, rather, that the client's trying to reach or, you know, reach toward. You know, I just. Most advisors these days should have access to just about every product.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

And if you don't, that's an issue. If you do have access to every product and yet you're still leading with product, it tells me that it's about the money and not about goal attainment. Goal attainment's the number one thing.

[Joe]

It's a very clear path. Very, very clear path. And a huge. Not even a red flag. That is. That's a run. That's a go, gotta go. Doesn't mean, by the way, you don't buy products from them, oh, gee, they might have a great product, they're just not your advisor.

[OG]

Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, I see what you're saying, but I want to Be clear about it. We, you know, like in our firm, we use Schwab as a custodian, independent third party, you know, to hold your money. We recommend mutual funds and ETFs to use for clients. Does that mean that you should buy them at Fidelity instead? I don't know. But if you start with it, I think is really the delineation. You know what I mean?

[Joe]

Yeah, that's my. No, that's my point. That is clearly.

[OG]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

That is step. Agreed.

[OG]

I mean, in the initial conversation, this is how you tell. I mean, you can tell this right away if in the first 30 minutes of a conversation with somebody new, if the conversation is about, tell me all the money you have, tell me where it is, and I'm going to tell you everything that's wrong with what you're doing right now instead of tell me where your money is and tell me what you're trying to do. Tell me about your goals. What's the purpose of all of this stuff? Back to. I said I had a doctor analogy earlier, right? You don't walk into the doctor and he doesn't or she doesn't just say, okay, yeah. 45 year old, huh? Okay, cool. So we're gonna take some vitamin D pills and let's get you on Crestor and let's order up a colonoscopy. Let's go get that done right now. You go. What are you talking about? That's all medicine. Don't you have to do some tests first? Don't you have to see what's going on inside before you start writing out prescriptions? You need to work from a goal standpoint. And what are you trying to accomplish before you start implementing things?

[Joe]

We will have these listed on our show notes [e-mail]. and of course, in the 201, Kevin will have deeper dives. He's not growing about that one. That's one that. That's something he always does in the 201 newsletter. All right, that is it for today. Doug, man, there's a lot to unpack there, but let's keep it to three. What should we have learned today?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our top five advisors. Should have process that works for you and not be all about product. Second, thinking about buying risky investments. Yeah, your advisor probably won't be on board and with good reason. But the big one lesson. Do not volunteer to wash the windows. In exchange for Joe's mom's lasagna, she'll make you clean the inside and the outside. Now that's some real bologna. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2023 and is created by Joe Salsihai. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written written by Lacey Langford, who's also the host of the Military Money Show. With help from me, Joe and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the201. You'll find the411 on all things money at the201. Just visit stackingbenjamins.com 201 Tina Eichenberg makes the video version of this show. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom's friend Gertrude and Kate Younkin are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group group called the Basement. So say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the Basement fun with other stackers type stackingbenjamins.com basement not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor, I'm sure Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[OG]

Sa.

[Joe]

I know on the Tik Tok minute on Monday we did the cops that will come grab you in a public location in front of your spouse, take you away, tase you for an extra 25 bucks and then they set you up at a at a campsite, fish, beer, everything all taken care of and then drop you off at the end of the weekend at Waffle House and say it was a big mistake and generally operate in confusion so you get a nice weekend away. And that was stereotypically, you know, the guy stereotypically said men and a lot of the people in the comments were women going hey, I want this too. It's not just men. Well, this, this other thing I found in a Facebook reel I think truly is men more than more than women. But I'd like you guys to weigh in on this. This is if if married men had to have a remembering be like kids have a spelling bee. Let's listen in on Tuesday. Your wife informed you about dinner plans for this Saturday. Who were those plans with and what time. Can you say it in a sentence quote, I don't know why I'm telling your ass now, but we are meeting blank at for dinner.

[OG]

Okay, can you, can you say it.

[Joe]

But with like a more annoyed tone quote? I don't know why I'm telling your ass now, but we are meeting blank at blank for dinner. Since Tuesday. How many times has she reminded me? That would be five times. We are going to meet Ricky and Annette at 6. I do think in my relationship that is stereotypically correct.

[OG]

That's pretty good.

[Joe]

Maybe not for all couples, but I'm definitely the couple who gets reminded. Og, are you the couple in yours?

[OG]

We have a very firm rule. If it's not in the calendar, it's not happening. I'll be like, no, no, there's. I, I thought I'd put it in the count. It's like it's not in the calendar. It's like, well, I, I thought I put it in there. It's like, well, thinking about putting it in.

[Joe]

Yeah, but is that a one way. Hold on though. Is that a one way street where she puts it in the calendar or do you put stuff in the calendar?

[OG]

I'm not important enough to actually have things to put in the calendar. So I assure you there's nothing that's in the calendar that is my responsibility.

[Joe]

You're not the social director in your family.

[OG]

I have. I've would come as a shock to you, but I'm not a fan of social anything people.

[Doug]

Well, that's because people suck, Doug. Yeah, no, it's the other way around. And I'm the social director in our house, so I'm the one who's, who's doing the reminding several, several times. And I'm willing to bet there is not the inverse of that video.

[Joe]

What do you mean?

[Doug]

There is not one of those where it's the wife on stage trying to remember what the husband.

[Joe]

You're saying she, you're saying she does remember?

[Doug]

No, I'm saying she doesn't.

[OG]

It's the same thing.

[Doug]

No, mine doesn't. And, and I'm saying there isn't one out on the Internet making fun of that because it doesn't. Because no one can make fun of that.

[Joe]

No, that is not, that is totally not allowed. But man, that is, that is my household specifically right there. Welcome to the after after show. You know why? Because you are a rock star and you need a second, you need a second encore of this show. And OG you have seen some television.

[Doug]

I have seen Things.

[OG]

Yeah. Just got a quick second to catch up on some things. This is season two of a really, really great program.

[Joe]

I am offering you a chance to.

[OG]

Atone for what you have done today to help bring down the single greatest threat to New Orleans. I can't do this.

[Doug]

There are memories that I just can't bear.

[OG]

Who do you think you're talking to? Have I given you the impression that.

[Sponsor Voice 2]

Any of this is optional?

[Joe]

Why do I keep seeing you around my hotel?

[OG]

What do you want with my family? You just keep doing everything I tell you to do and you will be just fine.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

What are you not telling me?

[Joe]

Stay away from my family. The Maxes hunt you down. Get him.

[Doug]

That's not how this is going to play out.

[Joe]

What is that?

[Doug]

I think I know, but I can't remember the name of it.

[OG]

Brian Cranston.

[Doug]

Brian.

[Joe]

Brian Cranston. That's who that was?

[OG]

Yeah. It's the second season of your Honor.

[Joe]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[OG]

A little while. Honestly, kid.

[Joe]

Messes with the judge.

[Doug]

I watched the first. What is it? The first three episodes.

[OG]

Messes with the judge. That's not what happens in that show. If you don't know, don't even. Don't. Don't talk about season one.

[Joe]

I thought that was the first episode.

[Doug]

I watched that because the first three episodes, I think, were available for free. And it was fantastic. It's just. It wasn't fantastic enough for me to sign up for that streaming service because I don't already have it. So I didn't sign up Showtime. Yeah, but I mean, if they ever. Like, maybe now that season two is out, if they release the rest of season one, I'm all in. Because it's really good.

[OG]

It's on. No, it's. Bryan Cranston's a judge. His son, very early in the first episode is involved in a hit and run.

[Joe]

That's right.

[OG]

And so his son. There's some issues going on with his son. Ran from the crime. There's some extenuating circumstances. So this is season two of it. Completely different setup. If you haven't seen season one, it's almost past the point of being able to claim I didn't see it yet. Don't tell me.

[Doug]

Do they connect?

[OG]

Oh, yeah.

[Doug]

Do the seasons connect?

[OG]

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a continuation. Yeah, it's. This is. This is just the story. They just happened to hit pause kind of right there. Got you in the season, so.

[Joe]

Well, that's much better than some of these shows where the same people are involved in a similar thing, but different ever every time. And you're like, how unlucky is this family?

[OG]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Joe]

I don't want to wake up at that house.

[OG]

No. I thought that this was probably. I mean, right up there in terms of the writing of not witty writing, like Succession and Billions and that sort of thing, but the drama and suspense is right up there with any quality writing. It's fantastic. And you liked it too, Doug. You liked the first couple.

[Doug]

I really did. No, I did like it. And now you got me thinking about it again, like, well, maybe I'll subscribe to Showtime because.

[OG]

No, it's. Oh, well. And Billions is coming out again here pretty quick too, so.

[Doug]

Yeah. And there's something else on Showtime that you've told me about that I didn't watch. You tried to suck me in on.

[Joe]

I can get the early seasons of Billions now on Amazon Prime.

[Doug]

I think that's right, Joe.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[OG]

Bobby's coming back for the final season of Billions.

[Joe]

I saw that.

[OG]

Bobby's back.

[Joe]

I saw that.

[OG]

Although it's probably like one of those stupid things where he shows up in like the last episode or something.

[Joe]

That guy doing American accent is so natural to me after Billions and Band.

[OG]

Of Brothers that when Homeland, he was like a major.

[Joe]

Major in Homeland too, so. So when I hear him being interviewed, it messes with my head. He's so good.

[Doug]

A little known secret, but he's actually faking his British accent. He's really American and he's just faking the British accent because he knows they sound more charming and smarter.

[Joe]

So. Yes. Yeah. It's his PR People have told him pretend.

[Doug]

Yeah, it's so easy to do a British accent.

[Joe]

Duh. You do it all.

[OG]

Damian Lewis.

[Doug]

We've had British callers on our show before.

[OG]

Is that who it is? Damian Lewis? Is that the guy?

[Doug]

It is Damien.

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[OG]

Wasn't he in Lincoln too?

[Joe]

Oh, I don't remember him in Lincoln.

[Doug]

The movie with Daniel Day Lewis.

[OG]

Daniel Day Lewis. Different guy. Forget it.

[Joe]

Yeah, no, that's the other guy who's a good actor.

[OG]

Day Lewis. Daniel Damon. D's and L's guy doing something.

[Joe]

Some dude.