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Generational Wealth & Collaborative Planning with Steven Rogé | Financial Planner Search · Financial Planner Search

• Gregory Wilnau: coming on the podcast today. How are you doing, sir? I am doing great. To get started, maybe you could just take a moment and ⁓ tell us a little bit about your practice and and what you specialize in. steven: Excellent. How about you? Sure. So we're a ⁓ registered investment advisor. Main office is in Bohemia, New York, but we also have an office where I'm located up in Beverly, Massachusetts. And ⁓ we have clients in in 15 states. We're a fee-only ⁓ fiduciary with a ⁓ a specialization in both financial planning and investment management. ⁓ we primarily serve ⁓ three three groups of of clients, the younger saver, ⁓ the pre-retiree, and the post-retiree that had been ⁓ do-it-yourselfer. So we have ⁓ just under 300 clients and ⁓ do comprehensive financial planning. we work with our clients on estate planning, tax prep, ⁓ tax prep, but not filing, ⁓ tax planning. And ⁓ Yeah, w ⁓ we we serve clients in ⁓ mul multiple facets. Gregory Wilnau: I I love it. Maybe you could take a second to explain a little bit more about maybe what inspired you to do this. I think you're a second generation, right? Your dad started the firm, is that right? steven: That's correct. ⁓ my my my father, who's educated in ⁓ chemistry, has his master's in chemistry, did did what most advisors, I mean what what what most chemists ⁓ do when they get out of school. They go look for a job and ⁓ and then somehow wind up working for the telephone company, the New York telephone company on Ninex, in ⁓ human resources. So Right, right. Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ cool. Yeah. ⁓ of course, because that applies, right? You that you're using that chemistry to create human resources. steven: Right. ⁓ so yeah, he he was ⁓ you know the the the type of fellow that everybody around the office when they had a question about finance would wind up gravitating towards him. and in nineteen eighty-six he said, you know, ⁓ you know I've been I've been burned by his own financial advisor, quote unquote. and there's gotta be a better way of do things. Let me start studying. For the certified financial planning ⁓ certificate, which he saw a little ad in the back of ⁓ the New York Times, and ⁓ you know, started his own business in 1986. And a couple years after, ⁓ Ninex was offering voluntary payouts to people who would leave the company. They were doing some downsizing. So ⁓ much to the chagrin of my mom, who was very worried about my father leaving a very stable job at the telephone company. ⁓ you know, he took he took the package and started doing financial advisory work full time. ⁓ and as you could say, the rest is history. Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ yeah, I love it. I love it. I think also too, 'cause you and I ha had a conversation two days ago and we were having technical difficulties and ⁓ my my daughter's back there playing, sorry, don't let that distract you. and we had some technical difficulties and we actually had to schedule another call because our original episode didn't record, so we're recording this episode. ⁓ and in that episode you share with me ⁓ that a lot of your clients are actually the children of your clients. So it's multi-generational, which is I think the ⁓ it's a big thing because it shows that, you know, ⁓ the parents trust you enough and the kids start working with you. But and that's kind of s ⁓ also what happened with you and your father, right? So there's a lot of continuity there. ⁓ any thoughts on that? steven: Yeah, so ⁓ roughly a third of our clients are multi-generational. So the adult children of our clients and in some instances the ⁓ adult grandchildren of our clients. And you know, some of them we get started working with them, you know, as soon as they're 18 years old. ⁓ many of them have custodial accounts before then. and ⁓ you know, their parents want to see the next generation, you know, be as as well versed in in finance, personal finance as as they were or they learned through working with our group here. Yeah, but you know, it's it's it's interesting you talk about continuity of the of the relationship and how it passes down. But you know, this my father built the firm a little bit differently than some of his peers did did over the years. ⁓ A lot of them in a lot of this industry You know, you have you have your primary advisor, and that's who you work with. You build nice rapport with them. ⁓ but if something happens to that advisor, you you're you're kind of you you're transferred to the next advisor, and all of that history and rapport is lost. And my father said, you know, from day one, that's not happening here. ⁓ we are a team of financial advisors, ⁓ many of who have ⁓ carry the CFP. Gregory Wilnau: Right. steven: ⁓ designation. And ⁓ we, you know, we all have different backgrounds, have different specialties, and the client's gonna benefit from that collaborative team approach. And of course, there are downsides to doing that. That's mostly operational and profitability wise for the advisor. And that's not important to the client. It's important to the client is that they get the best ideas from. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. steven: A couple of advisors taking different perspectives, bouncing ideas off each other, and giving the, you know, the best solution ⁓ to our client. Gregory Wilnau: Maybe w we could ⁓ spend a moment to talk ⁓ about your clients a little bit more and zoom in on that. Maybe you could ⁓ describe in more detail the type of person who ⁓ comes to you. What's a typical situation that they need you to lead them through? Any any patterns? steven: Yeah, so absolutely. So yeah, just to touch back on, you know, our three primary clients. The the younger saver, ⁓ they're usually in their late 20s or in their 30s. They have strong earnings potential. You know, they're going to be upper management or they're going to be an entrepreneur at some point. and they're really not sure how to or ⁓ prioritize things. So we're making all this money, but they're not sure. you know, which account to put it in, ⁓ which which goal to save towards. So, you know, do you put it in, do you max out your your work company's 401k? Do you open up a Roth? Do you open up a traditional account, a traditional IRA outside? Do you pay back that student loan? Do you start instead of in in lieu of those things, saving towards a down payment on a house? So it's really this hierarchy of. Where to save. and that's typically the solution that we solve for the younger saver. ⁓ I would say probably the bulk of our clients are the pre-retirees. So they come to us three to five years before retirement. ⁓ they have a lot of anxiety. You know, can they retire when they want to retire? Can they retire early? When they retire, can they afford that second home or that vacation home? Can they go on yearly trips? Do they need a part-time job to meet these goals once they retire? ⁓ and you know, they have accounts scattered all different places. They have advisors, they they might have an advisor, but really all they do is investment management. They might have their insurance advisor, they have their tax professional. They may have had a financial plan done at some point, but it's probably stale. And they have no nobody to put it all together in a cohesive package ⁓ to look at it from a variety of different angles, ⁓ to make sure that they can meet their goals over time. And finally, we have quite a bit of post-retirees that have historically they've been do-it-yourselfers, they've been really good savers, but at this point they know maybe we could be do be doing things better. Roth conversions. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. steven: Maybe they have an advisor that sent them a calculator, but really isn't taking into account the whole picture. ⁓ they're not entirely sure they've done things very, very tax efficient over time. You know, asset placement is important, concentrated stock positions at this point, not entirely sure how to handle it, concentration risk. They they they're charitably inclined, but not sure they're getting the biggest bang for their buck on their charitable contributions. And then probably most importantly, typically what we see nine times out of ten, and usually, you know, in the household is one primary person that's focused on the financials. And, you know, somebody else has their other specialty around that, around the household. And they start to wonder, what if something happens to me? Is my is my significant other able to handle all of this? Gregory Wilnau: Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. steven: During a time where they're most vulnerable, right? Their spouse is either incapacitated in some way or they're no longer with them. And so they come to the realization that maybe we really need to start to develop a relationship before their spouse is vulnerable, to build that trust, to build that history, to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible during a really difficult time in their life. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, be you want definitely wanna be proactive. Let's talk about your young savers for a moment, 'cause that's interesting. ⁓ I love that you serve that niche ⁓ or that ⁓ demographic or that type of person. What are some of the questions that you find your young savers typically have when they meet with you for the first time or start working with you? steven: ⁓ boy. So I would say they know they should have done estate planning work, but they haven't. And again. Gregory Wilnau: A young Sabres thinking about estate planning? Wow. ⁓ okay, that makes sense, yeah. steven: Yeah, so typically they're dealing with a a newborn, right? And and may they may or may not have had a will. ⁓ but now they know if they've had a will pre-child, it's probably gotta be updated. and it's important to recognize that just making the beneficiary the child is not a good idea. Because If they were to inherit assets, they're a minor. So now this all has to go through a court system, and you're relying on the court to decide who's going to be in charge of that child's financial future. So if other court systems are anything like Massachusetts, it could take two, three years of probate before someone's figured out who's going to be managing these assets for that minor child. ⁓ so it's important, and not many young savers realize they need a trust. The second you have a child, you need a trust. And a trust account or a trust document and subsequently a trust account, all it really does, it's it's it's very specific instructions for for ⁓ whoever's managing the estate, for the court system, whoever gets their hands on it for the probably the lawyers. What's happening with these assets? Who's in charge of the finance for the child? Who's, you know, in charge of ⁓ the healthcare for the child and the well-being being of the child? And you could separate all those. They don't have to be the same person. So I'd say that's probably, you know, the biggest priority when someone comes in is, you know, people come in, they, you know, they think I need financial advice. And I'm like, no, you really need legal advice at this point. But that's what that's what having ⁓ a financial planner as a quarterback. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. steven: ⁓ really does is notice the you know prioritize where's the biggest liability right now and and nine times out of ten it really is on the estate planning ⁓ side I I would say you know a a lot of times more and more we have very complicated employee packages. so a lot of times they have choices. ⁓ you know healthcare choices. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Help prioritize, yeah. steven: Do you do the high deductible plan? So then you can get the HSA health savings account. ⁓ do you want that or or do you want the you know a different type of health insurance? And and then not only that, but insurance in general. A lot of times they have access to low-cost group life insurance. So a lot of times, you know, they're underinsured at that point because now they have a young mouth to feed. They have a spouse that's reliant on that income. And, you know, so we'll evaluate the insurance need. And again, we don't sell insurance. None of us are licensed insurance agents. So we like to think we're as unbiased as possible in terms of evaluating do you have enough insurance? So and then we and when then we ⁓ send them in the direction where it's most beneficial to them. And typically it's ⁓ a lot of these, a lot of these plants have perks. And so we'll go through all the perks that they may or may not be ⁓ you know have access to and ⁓ you know send them in the right direction. Gregory Wilnau: love that. Where do you typically find your clients? How do they typically find you? Where do they come from? steven: Yeah, so most of our clients are referral still to this day. my father was probably one of the first, if not the first, financial advisor in New York to have a website. ⁓ Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ congratulations. Forty years later. Ca yeah, congratul congratulations. That's that's awesome. steven: Yeah, so So you'd be so you'd be shocked how much how many times, you know, someone just Googles us, ⁓ and we're one of the one of the top ⁓ people that come up because of all the content that we create, the times that we've been quoted in third party resources, newspapers, articles, et cetera. ⁓ and for those younger people, the newspapers used to be like ⁓ used to fold them out and there was articles on them. ⁓ now everything's online. And more and more, ⁓ Believe it or not, ⁓ somehow artificial intelligence has picked up our company. And ⁓ we're typically if you search for fee only advisor, roughly in the areas that we have offices in, will be, you know, the top one, two, three ⁓ recommendations. Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. That's that's great. okay, so let's talk a little bit more about your practice and ⁓ your your vision for it. ⁓ so when it comes to your practice, where do you see it in the next one to three years? What's your vision? Are there any goals you're working on? steven: Yes. of them might be boring, ⁓ but I would say a lot of them are technological. We've always spent a lot of money on the best technology for ⁓ my colleagues and our staff. we have technology that multi-billion dollar firms are using in-house and very sophisticated systems. And technology seems to be advancing at such a rate ⁓ that there keeps Being, you know, new players in the market that are coming up with better and better and better systems. So it's almost a full-time job to keep up with technology and operations management. You know, my father was also part of the Navy. And so from, you know, from for forever now, he's been really into process and procedures. ⁓ so we have a very, you know, lengthy process and procedures manual. ⁓ thankfully, have a couple of people at the at the firm that are really good at that. And we keep updating them. But there is there are technologies now that start to bring in the different technology solutions and then start so they start talking to each other. And we think that's going to make for a much better client experience and also free up our time. So we're not typing in data, and instead we're out talking with our clients, finding solutions for them. Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Yeah. So you're ⁓ less time ⁓ spent doing a lot of the administrative things, the data entry things, the things that need to be done, but that ultimately don't ⁓ involve the r the relationships, right? steven: Yeah, and and that's the most important thing is is the relationships. ⁓ it because without speaking with clients directly, it is difficult to be proactive in terms of identifying opportunities that they could benefit from, but more importantly, you know, identifying the liabilities that they might be headed for. And unless we have that We have probing questions and a great relationship with each one of our clients. We're not going to be able to identify those things. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ so ⁓ in going this direction, this vision that you have for it you said it's boring, but to me this is kind of interesting, you know. I think technology is really changing quickly. Is there anything standing in your way or any challenges that are getting in front of that? steven: Yeah, it's it's mostly ⁓ you know, to change over systems and anything, especially with personal information as sensitive as the stuff that we work with on a day-to-day basis, it's difficult to to take liberties with just doing stuff really quickly. You have to be methodical, you have to really vet the, you know, the people that you're moving to and get and get there. you know. Their safeguards and what they're doing with our client data. ⁓ so you're gonna be very careful with that. And I think it's just more the anxiety of making this huge switch and then figuring out six months later, there's a new kid on the block with even a better, more comprehensive resources. ⁓ Yeah, it's it's and then also, you know, with a smaller firm, somebody's time is taken away from the client to focus on, you know, systems might system migration. So, you know, you can't do it too often. ⁓ or else, or else you again, you're not spending time ⁓ with the client. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, you definitely want to have that balance. how how about this? As your as your practice has grown, are there any programs or trainings that have shaped how you ⁓ po sh shaped your approach or positively impacted how you serve your clients? Is there anyone that you'd like to give a shout out to? Does that question make sense? steven: Well yeah, for sure. So I I think ⁓ you know, as we I think we we touched on in the our ⁓ our dry run. ⁓ my my career took a turn a few years ago. ⁓ I started out in investments. I've been fascinated by investments my whole life, you know, growing up quite literally under the desk, listening to my dad's phone calls. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, our our our preview interview. Yeah. steven: with clients, going to industry conferences as a teenager and sitting in on the conferences because those were our family vacations. The Morningstar conferences, the Schwab conferences, ⁓ TD, TD back when TD had conferences, NAPFA, National Association for Personal Financial Advisors. ⁓ Those were our family vacations. And my father would put books in front of me on Warren Buffett as a young kid. I was doing book reports in junior high and high school on Warren Buffett when others were doing book reports on Michael Jordan and other athletes. I was fascinated by investments, compounding growth, ⁓ business, how businesses were operated, how they were managed, ⁓ the concept of being a good fiduciary as a CEO of a company. And so I grew up in that in that industry in investments. And I guess it was about 15 years ago, it really came to to the we came to the conclusion that indexing, novel concept, right? Today, every I think everyone knows about it. But 15 years ago, and even today, there's a lot of financial advisors still trying to pick, God forbid they pick individual stocks. Boy, good luck. ⁓ but even picking ⁓ Good actively managed mutual funds is so hard and it's nearly impossible on an after tax basis to find an actively managed mutual fund that's gonna outperform their respective index. So having switched to the index approach on the equity side of investments, that freed up a lot of my time. In addition, we started using Orion's Eclipse to help us manage our clients' portfolios. ⁓ Prior to doing that, it would take weeks and months to rebalance clients' accounts. It was practically a full time job, just rebalancing accounts. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. steven: So having gone to indexing, freed up time, having using technology to help aid in us rebalance clients' accounts, freed up time, I pretty much put myself out of the job. So thankfully, when you work for your father, thank you. You work with your father, you say, you know, hey, I either I'm gonna pivot to something else, or you can fire me and I can move back in as a grown adult with kids. So Gregory Wilnau: Congratulations. Yeah. steven: You know, over time I saw the value sitting in on client meetings consistently our our our our certified financial planners were adding value in ways that were multitudes beyond the time spent trying to pick individual investments. And so I said, you know, Dad, Ron, ⁓ I really want to start studying for the CFP. And ⁓ he said, absolutely. I think in the back of his mind he never said it, but he probably always wanted me to. ⁓ so ⁓ you know, the career pivoted towards a more of a planning and relationship role rather than kind of more of a back office investment role. and ⁓ during COVID, passed the passed the exam, thankfully, first try, knock on wood. And you know. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. steven: The I guess, you know, the rest is history in the in that sense. And I will say a couple of things during that process really opened my eyes and things that I enjoyed that I didn't realize I enjoy, would enjoy. I thought estate planning would be a bore. It's actually quite fascinating. And the thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that we're able to save for clients and working with them on their estate plans is is just fascinating. And then two, coming out of that, I never want to stop learning. ⁓ recently did the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy, the CAP program. More and more of our clients, as they've become wealthy and have more money than they need, have been more charitably inclined. So we really saw the opportunity to have somebody at the firm, be it me, that was very interested in this, to Start studying to learn about the different players in the charitable process. So not only our clients being the one that's donating the money, but from a perspective of the charity and receiving the money and how they view things. And so we really have a 360 view of the whole charitable planning process ⁓ from this program. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. I love how that's been able to help you be more comprehensive in what you're doing. ⁓ you know, we never do these things alone, so I always like to ask this question on on the interviews because it helps me understand more about how you think and how you're looking to to grow and and learn and add more value to to your clients. So I love that you're doing that. Okay, maybe we could talk a little bit more about what it's like to to work with you. Maybe you could walk us through your actual process. So when somebody ⁓ signs up to become a client, say today, maybe you could tell us what happens the first four to eight weeks. What does it look like to work with you during the course of a calendar calendar year? steven: Sure. So yeah, our our planning team is wonderful. They have a ⁓ you know a set out process and it really starts with simultaneously a a comprehensive cash flow worksheet, which we get all of your income and all of your expenses and ⁓ pretty much how much you're saving or how much you're spending if you're in a deficit, ⁓ to to get things running. At the same time, we're in constant communication about goals and objectives. ⁓ so again, do you want a second home? What location is that second home? Because we got to figure out how much it's gonna cost, what are property taxes down there, what is insurance gonna cost down there, especially for the size of the house. ⁓ in the case of Florida, can you get insurance? and and hash all those details out. So it's it's a lot of back and forth, mostly through email, but the occasional conference call. And ⁓ we typically have l a lot of preliminary calls before the comprehensive financial plan. ⁓ we open accounts, we use Charles Schwab and to a lesser extent interactive brokers, but Charles Schwab accounts are opened to be ready to accept assets and consolidate assets and streamlined investments. so that's you're set up with your own secure client portal so we can securely share these documents, which is more and more important nowadays. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. steven: ⁓ and then eventually there becomes a a time where a plan delivery meeting is is is set up. we go through the plan, make sure the clients on the same page agrees with the plan, they sign off on the plan. ⁓ it's typically in two stages. We have an investment plan and then the comprehensive financial plan. ⁓ what's you what's interesting is that the investment plan, we have a target rate of return. And you'll see that target rate of return move over to the financial plan because that whole financial plan is not going to work if we can't achieve that target rate of return. ⁓ we you know go over what investments we will or won't make, ⁓ what the volatility of those investments or your portfolio will be over time. Are you okay with that? And then pull that all into the plan. ⁓ Like most advisors, we, you know, you run Monte Carlo analysis. So in essence, what that means is say you have a deck of of cards, ⁓ but instead of, you know, Jack of Diamonds, Ace of Ace of Hearts, or whatever, they have ⁓ the stock market returns or the bond market returns on the back of each card. ⁓ as you know, sequence of timing of returns matters just importantly as the actual rate of return. And it shuffles that deck up. And then spits them out in 30,000 iterations and looks 30,000 times whether or not your plan works as we discussed, or if there needs to be some changes made. so we also do bad timing analysis because one of the big questions retirees have is what up, what if the year we retire, the stock market's down, we go into another great recession, like 2008, 2009. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. steven: Can can my retirement plan is it resilient enough to withstand that? We answer those questions. ⁓ and if it can't, we provide different scenarios, multiple planning scenarios on how it would survive that type of negative situation. ⁓ so once that's the plan sign off on, we really get to work on moving accounts, updating beneficiaries, working with your estate planning attorney. Working with your tax professional and coordinating taxes, moving assets around so a little bit more optimized in terms of taxes and return going forward. More and more now, clients are coming to us with concentrated stock positions that need to be diversified. So there are any number of ways to get out of those concentrated positions, in many cases, tax-free. So, very simply, you know, we could save a client. Gregory Wilnau: Well. steven: Possibly a quarter million dollars on taxes from the get-go, you know, from had they work with us versus had they not, or defer those taxes out for a period of time. And time value of money. If you defer those taxes for a period of time, you're in better shape than had you paid those taxes today. So there are a lot of advanced ⁓ scenarios now that we're working with our clients on ⁓ to avoid those taxes. Gregory Wilnau: That's awesome. And what does it look like ⁓ to work with you during the course of a calendar year? Do you guys do like quarterly meetings? ⁓ how do you kind of keep up with the ebb and flow of your clients' lives? What does that look like? What's the basic structure? steven: Yeah, the basic structure is ⁓ we meet once or twice a year. ⁓ either one one meeting is sometimes in person, unless you're remote, ⁓ another meeting is is virtual. and we we go back to the financial plan, right? The the financial plan is an organic, ever changing document. ⁓ it's not you get your financial plan and it goes in the drawer and collects dust. It's it's an organic document that we're constantly updating. So During our meeting, we'll bring it up. There'll be action items. We're going through each action item to see where we are in the process to make sure it's getting done. And we're going to be a big pain in the butt that no matter how much you like it or don't. Right. ⁓ so yeah, a lot of times I think one of the biggest misconceptions is, ⁓ you know, I'm gonna people come in, I just want a financial plan. All right, but I guarantee you, you're either gonna procrastinate implementing it, or there'll be some items you're not gonna implement. Gregory Wilnau: That's awesome. That's good. L little accountability, right? Little accountability, you know? Yeah. steven: And it's gonna be very costly. So we think, you know, having an ongoing relationship with a financial advisor is is very important. so yeah, so we also on an ongoing basis, not every year, but pretty much every other year, we look at homeowners insurance because one thing that we've noticed is that as house prices go up, a lot of times people are underinsured. And so in the case of a catastrophic ⁓ event like a fire, you might only get, you know, two-thirds of the money you thought you were going to get ⁓ to replace your home. So that's one thing we look at. ⁓ we double check ⁓ again with asset creep that umbrella insurance coverage is up to date. ⁓ more and more clients are you know they have net worths of three, four, five million dollars. It actually becomes difficult to get umbrella insurance. Sometimes you'll have your primary insurance at one company, an umbrella insurance with another company, but we make sure you're covered there. Even so, you know, things like auto insurance, ⁓ we could a lot of times save a client money if they have an old car and they're still fully insured on it, you know, for the replacement of that car, you can get a you can get rid of that when you save you a couple of hundred bucks a year. ⁓ And then sometimes, you know, once you retire, you might not need that life insurance policy anymore. Because that your spouse is not dependent on your income anymore. So, you know, clients come to us on occasion with whole life insurance. Well, okay, what do you do with it? Well, you might want to let it lapse, but it's probably not. You might want to sell it. ⁓ you know, there are different options to you know, take a paid up option on it. So we evaluate that and save on premiums. And then you the ⁓ old, you know, the question that every client has again and again. is do they need long-term care insurance? So we'll typically run a scenario with and without long-term care insurance ⁓ to see if it makes sense for for that particular client. Gregory Wilnau: So in other words, you don't do that much at all with your clients. steven: No, it's pretty yeah, it's pretty streamlined. Yeah, you just lay back and ⁓ you know, click a button once or twice and and ⁓ you know it's pretty easy to manage your own stuff. I'll say it's pretty to manage your own stuff, you know, not very well. But but if you w Yeah, but if you wanna optimize. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah man, pretty comprehensive. Yeah, yeah. No, I I love Sure, there's other things that we want to do ⁓ also, you know. Not everybody grew up under their gr under their father's desk listening to and reading ⁓ in books on investment on on investing and doing book reports on Warren Buffett instead of Michael Jordan. There's not many people who who'd say that. steven: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, that goes back to the do-it-yourselfer. And, you know, they've been very proud that they've made money and done well over time. And mostly we've seen that they've made their money and built their net worth because they've saved a lot. And it might have been in spite of what they've done with their investments. ⁓ because typically a do-it-yourselfer is probably not tracking their overall rate of return because they probably have money in different places, right? They have their Vanguard account, they got their Fidelity account. They probably have their Merrill Lynch advisor account. And nobody's really looking at all of it to give them, you know, a bottom line rate of return. How have you done this year? But not only that, how could have you done done if you had been in ⁓ a benchmark? So it's very rare that one, someone even knows how to calculate that rate of return, or two, they're comparing it to anything in a completely objective way. and a lot of times. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. steven: The asset allocation research that they're going on is the asset allocation research that was developed 20, 30, 40 years ago, that's still being touted today by the mega firms out there. Because one, it's it they can't invest in the more modern asset allocation ⁓ things available to them because they're too big. ⁓ so you know, and two, if they did. They manage so many billions and in some cases trillions of dollars, it would be virtually impossible for them to pivot at all. So they're stuck in the in this old adage of, you know, asset placement research that's outdated because they were dealing with numbers and not people. ⁓ and then and then ⁓ asset allocation research that could be improved dramatically and most of the time achieve the same rate of return, but a much smoother ride. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Love it, Steven. All right. So last question. ⁓ for anyone listening ⁓ who wants to get in touch with you or is curious about ⁓ whether or not you're the right fit to work with, what should they do next? Where should they go? steven: Sure, you can book a ⁓ complimentary or free discovery call. You can go to www.rwroger, it's spelled r-o-ge-e dot com, and ⁓ talk with ⁓ one or two of our advisors on the call. You can find us on Facebook, ⁓ you can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, not so much. But everywhere else, we have a profile. Gregory Wilnau: Love it. Love it. Steven, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story and ⁓ talking about your clients with us. We appreciate you. steven: Thank you for the time, Greg.