Latest / Financial Planner Search / Tax-Focused Retirement and Entrepreneurial Strategy with David Brooks | Financial Planner Search
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- Gregory Wilnau: David, how are you doing today, David Brooks: Hey, I'm doing really well, Gregory. How about yourself? Gregory Wilnau: I am completely jealous of your studio. It is rocking. And you were telling me before we started recording that you actually do a lot of this stuff. So you've got your own show, you mentor other advisors. How did you get started in this? Help us understand maybe about your practice, what you do and what you specialize in. David Brooks: Well, as you can tell by all the gray hair on my head and on my chin, I've been at it a while. ⁓ Ironically, I was a college dropout and ⁓ basically I ran a couple of pizza places. And so I ran the number one store in the world for the largest pizza franchise out there. And you can figure out there's a game you can play, you know, that has the same name, we won't give any names out. anyway, Ran that store just outside of Disney World's doors and dropped out of school, made a ton of money. Over $100,000 as a 19-year-old because they paid you like an entrepreneur. They paid you way back then basically a whopping $15,000 salary. Now this is 1987, so give you some prospect here. But they paid you 20 % of the store's P &L. Every four weeks you did the P &L in the store. And so you quickly, if you had any understanding of what was going on, Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ nice. David Brooks: Be an efficient manager, use your time well, keep your staff and your labor costs within reason, increase sales and your bottom line increases into more profit and you are getting bigger bonus checks. So I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. I had no idea I'd end up in the financial services industry. Lo and behold, I was going to franchise that particular industry and they changed ownership. And so I decided I didn't need them. And I opened up my own restaurant, turned into four in a couple of years. And before I know it, I was a millionaire in my 20s. And it was... I mean, a rough, hard journey grinding. Anybody who's worked in restaurant industry, if you've ever been a bartender or waiter, you know you work hard long hours for the cash you get, but running the place, you run 80, 90 hours. But I literally missed my son's third birthday party. It's a story I actually tell quite often. And so with my wife being pretty upset at that, it was time to make a life transition. So we put our establishment up for sale. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, absolutely. David Brooks: and I'm now getting a check with a couple of commas in it. And so I need some financial advice. So I call my broker up. He worked at one of the original Wall Street firms called Payne Webber. Doesn't exist anymore, but I asked him to do some help. I need some help financial planning. He brought me in and showed me a little pie chart with all these colors on it. I was gonna invest my money and I could count on like 70 to $90,000 in dividends for the rest of my life. I was like, this is gonna be great. Sign me up. And then I asked him some tough questions. What do I do next? I'm trying to think about what my next career move is going to be. I want to be at home with my kids. And long story short, he's like, why don't you just come work here? I'm like, what are you talking about? I've been selling pizzas and calzones and wings to tourists outside of Disney. And he's like, you're a people person. You'll need that skill. And you do more research. And I did. traded a lot of stocks and even commodities in my own account all those years. Had some fun with it. So I was intrigued by it. was like, why not? So anyway, long story short, I signed up. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. David Brooks: became a rookie stockbroker at Payne Webber about 27 years ago, I guess now and ⁓ they were they were gobbled up by UBS a couple years later and the dot com bubble smacked me pretty hard as it did everybody and back then when I first became an advisor, hey, can you fog a mirror Gregory? I'll take you on as a client, know, and you would over promise service no matter what size the account was and I mean, because you were but it was a fun business, but you were trying to get in it but when that dot com bubble happened, and so many people forget this three Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Yeah David Brooks: consecutive years of double-digit losses on every industry. And I personally lost over half my fortune, along with most of clients I had, you know. And I wish I could tell you that that was the end of the pain, but the one thing I told people I had on my side is had time. I wasn't even 30. So I had time on my side to recover. Retirees, who mainly we work with here at Retire Smart, don't have that luxury of time. So we talk about risk management being really... Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. David Brooks: a key thing you have to understand when you're, when you know, you've accumulated these assets. But I would say that was the end of the pain. The real pain came when I got a letter in the mail from the IRS and I got the largest tax bill I could imagine. Yeah, what was bigger than anything I've ever made in a year, right? So was a pretty big number that I owed from the largest transaction of my life when I'd sold my restaurants now almost five years in the rear view mirror and I didn't get good proactive tax planning. So Gregory Wilnau: That's never a good feeling. That's, that's, yeah. David Brooks: I've been on a mission literally since 2003 to understand for most of my clients, taxes are the number one bill you're going to face, both in life, but it gets even worse in retirement. so I left the big warehouse, big box world back in 2010 and kind of started my own thing and built a firm up. We got acquired by a much larger firm. And then I moved, I was in Florida all that time. I moved to Nebraska nine years ago. to do tax planning actually for another firm. was thought I was done being an owner and lo and behold, the opportunity came about and that wasn't a good fit. And my wife and I prayed about it and we are Christians and it's important to us, but we loved Omaha. We moved here. We're a wonderful town we live in and we started Retire Smart, started this, the new firm and we've been on a rocket ship. mean, we've had over a thousand clients come on board with our firm. We've scaled this out, trained a lot of advisors and built out an amazing practice. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, me too. David Brooks: And I think that's because one, we're laser focused on only two types of clients do we help here. Those that are at or near retirement and those that are entrepreneurs that own small businesses. Those are the people we focus on because those are folks that the tax code penalizes the most. there are over 1700 incentives in the tax code today to help somebody pay less in taxes. But most of us don't understand how the tax code is written or why their incentives are there, right? And so we Gregory Wilnau: Don't even, yeah. Yeah. David Brooks: We don't use all those, but we have it down to about 170. 10 % of them we do actually utilize in various ways, but we find each client, depending on if they're a retiree or a business owner, by layering five to eight tax strategies that help them stop overpaying taxes, they can have a much more fruitful retirement or entrepreneurial life by reducing their overpaying in taxes. And that money, they're an entrepreneur, either helps you grow your business more, if you wanna put more money into the business scale, put more to the bottom line to feed your family, if that's important. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. David Brooks: you know, or just have, you know, give it away. One of the things we are able to do now, give a lot of money away, which is great. And then retirees, it's really critical and important, Greg, because so many advisors have helped clients defer, defer, defer, because we all have been told this myth, right? Hey, wait till you're retired, man, defer your taxes, because you'll be in a lower tax bracket when you're retired. And that's a joke. That's 4 % of the people I've run into. And I've retired over 2,500 people. So I'm telling you. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Congrats. That's good. David Brooks: For most people, if you're a successful saver, you really need to understand taxes are your number one expense and you need to get a handle on it. Whoever you get advice from, really, really important. Gregory Wilnau: What are some of the questions that your clients typically ask when they meet with you for the first time? David Brooks: You know, that is a really great question. What questions? And I always tell people what questions you should ask, right? So when you're meeting with someone, I always tell people you want to make sure, first of all, that and I coach advisors too. you know, advisors like I'm like, well, why would anybody hire you? Give me your elevator pitch. And I've got experience and, you know, I went to this school and I got this degree. like, OK, that's that's the barrier to entry. Thank you. That's expected. No. What do you do differently? So once you get around the basics of Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, the typical rigamarole. Yeah. Yeah. David Brooks: Does the guy or gal you're looking at hiring, do they have the expertise, the knowledge, and the credentials and education that you're looking for? But then, you know, take it a little step further. Do they align with you? And there are different sets of values we all have, and some are gonna be more important to others. So I think it's really important if you're just authentic, which is one of our core, so we have five core values, smart, stewardship, Moving forward, authenticity, relationships, and transparency. Those are our five core values here. And authenticity, right in the middle there. Be authentically who you are. And I'm authentically, I do a lot of media, as we're talking about. I've done national TV, I do local TV every week. I have a radio show that airs on 14 different slots now throughout the Midwest. And I'm who I am. But I also will repel people that aren't attracted to that. there's nothing wrong with that. Gregory Wilnau: And that's one of the great things about content marketing is which is what you're doing. Like people can kind of self identify whether or not they like you, they vibe with you or not. And those who do will be naturally attracted to you and those who don't will intuitively not be. it's, know. David Brooks: But it's so important because so many people try to tell everybody, they're be all things to all people. And that's just not realistic, right? So, and then, know, the other thing I would tell you in the financial services world, when I started back in the wire house world, it was cutthroat. I mean, very cutthroat. Like somebody in your own office would try and steal a client from you, right? And so what we've built here, yeah. I mean, Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's... that's... wow. David Brooks: Literally somebody could be in the lobby waiting and they would try and snake them away from you. It was pretty bad because it was, and they're all doing, well yeah, but that's the way the, and that was the business world that I grew up in and it was all transactional, right? Like I was not always just 100 % RIA fee only fiduciary based business. We were brokers, stock brokers, right? And I always joke now, hey, brokers make you just that broker because they're selling you product and they're getting paid on transactional. Gregory Wilnau: Gosh, talk about a bad environment for trust. David Brooks: business. so you need to, know, so the back to your original question, hey, ask the person you work and there's no right or wrong. It doesn't, you know, I don't think everybody has to be fee based. They could be commission based, could be hybrids, but just ask them, how do you get compensated if we work together? It's just a simple question. And they should be telling you this, by the way, it should, that should come out in the first discovery appointment, whatever you're calling that, that first meeting you're having, we call it a vision appointment. What, what, are you envisioning? But that should be on the table. So you understand clearly, concisely. How are you going to be compensated if we decide to move forward, if we started to work together? And that should be laid out. And there should be no surprises to it. But I always tell people, listen, we are a for-profit entity. I have a staff of, I think, 47 now. I ran payroll yesterday. When I hit that number, I get that number sent to me in teams by my director of finance. I want to throw up. But I think that's really important. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it sounds like you've spent a lot of time thinking. Sounds like you spent a lot of time thinking about your values and the experiences that you've been through have helped shape how you approach your your business and the firm and the values that you've built out in your firm. What are some of the ways that you find team members and bring people into your business? ⁓ How do you find people who reflect those values? Does that make sense? David Brooks: You know, no, absolutely. So as you're building a team and I can tell you, I've had to learn new skills. So I was a solo producer as many small independent financial advisors are. was the only one revenue driving and I hired employees around me to service the clients and I was growing. And I had to finally hit that point. If my mission really is to help more people, I'm going to have to scale the sales team. I have to hire other advisors. And originally, I basically would go through headhunters. trying to find experienced advisors, interview them as best you can, background test them, et cetera, and try to find like kind values and had some hits and some guys are still here and had some misses. And frankly, that weren't. And so for the last five years, we've focused almost entirely on training our own. ⁓ In our industry, and I have lots of friends because I've been doing this so long at most of the big box firms, you name it, whatever color, stripe you, wirehouse, regionals, et cetera. And they're happy that they've been there a long time. But if they were to go independent, it's a different world for them to understand this side. And they're hard to change in their habits. so I have built what we call an ensemble practice. It's a team approach here. There's no one advisor relationship hired assigned to a client. We actually assign the entire team. ⁓ But the way I've trained the advisors for the last five years is we deeply go into interns. ⁓ So we hire them as interns. And basically, typically, Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Interesting. So you get to mold them when they're just getting started. Yeah. David Brooks: Yeah, we're looking for them and usually in their junior year of college. And so here we're in Omaha. So we have University of Nebraska, University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Nebraska Lincoln and Creighton University. And we have several interns just outside the studio right now working for us. We have about eight coming into work this summer here. So we run a pretty big intern program. We pay them and we pay them well above minimum wage. We actually pay them. But what we promise them is they're going to be in live meetings. They're not just going to be making coffee or running copiers. We certainly make them do some of the grunt work that's part of the right of passage if you will but we put them in real real-world scenarios and we watch them we watch their interaction with our clients we watch them how they interact with with the rest of our employees and then basically every month my have an executive team I've created we kind of do a an internal review of hey What's your feeling and I don't get to see everyone because I've grown the staff I can't I don't get to say head every staff member even every day it's crazy, but but with the team I trust we now know hey Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, sure. David Brooks: this one would be a pretty good fit. And there's an old adage, I think it's Jim Collins in the book, Good to Great, and don't quote me if it's a different book, but you know, get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and then whoever's left on the bus, make sure you get them eventually in the right seat. And you know, we just had the NFL draft here recently, right? So if you're the GM of a team, are you hiring because the most need, I need a tight end, or you're hiring the best culture and talent fit that's available, even though it might not be the spot you need. And I would rather hire the latter. Gregory Wilnau: Good to great. I've got it on the shelf over there. Yeah. David Brooks: I want to hire the culture fit and the talent and I'll find a spot for them until I get them in the spot that I really need them. And I think that's in and we see it in our client base that come in and reviews. mean, we sent a client survey out back in I believe January and we typically do this about every three years. We may start doing it every year, but we hire an outside firm to do a very in-depth survey. What we do well, what can we improve upon? You know, what are we missing on? there's, and when you grow, we just know there's going to be growing pains. And so we just. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. David Brooks: One of my motto is fall on the sword. We do something wrong. We're going to own it. We're just going to own it. It's our mistake. We'll take care of it. You know, sometimes, you know, we have egg on our face when we do stuff. out of that, we gave them the opportunity to give us a review. And I think within like three weeks, had over 65 star reviews show up on Google, you know, testifying, you know, hey, we love working with you. So Gregory Wilnau: Wow, congrats. That's awesome, David. Yeah. David Brooks: So that tells us we're doing something right, right? And we do do marketing. We're a bigger marketing arm than a lot of financial advisory firms. And we have the ability to do that. And because my mission is to help more people. So we do have TV and radio now, at least our local market. We actually signed the University of Nebraska Athletics last year as official sponsor. That was a really big deal for us. We don't have pro sports here in Nebraska. So that is a major deal. it's hard if you're in our community not to know our brand. And that makes it easier for our clients when they, we work with the folks that retire smart, I think you'd like them. And so now the referrals come in. The fact we're hosting a wine tasting here next week, every quarter now we host a wine tasting in our office for any client that onboarded the previous quarter so they can meet other families that onboarded with the firm, feel confident and comfortable. Other people have basically handed over their life savings. But then we do an office tour while they're here. We do some trivia and have fun. We actually. give them a tour, show them the studio and have it all go all the lights and whistles on. But it just helped. And then we make sure they understand the full menu of services that are available to them. Because typically, a financial advisor, you know, you're going to meet with them once kind of have a discovery meeting, you're going to meet again with maybe a proposal and then the clients decide to onboard with your firm. But that's all they've done in the first couple of months. They don't even know that, ⁓ you can handle estate planning, you can handle Medicare, you can handle Medicaid, you can handle, you know. And so we let them know all the menu of services are available. They get to meet all the different departments. There's somebody from every department responsible to there at that event. But that culture, they know they're part of the family and that helps them generate referrals, which is good for business, certainly. And just, you know, we love when clients give us the hugs, et cetera. And we have a board in our kitchen, our big break room. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. David Brooks: with all the thank you letters we get. So we get a couple every week and it's just nice when you get the handwritten note. Gregory Wilnau: What are some of the ways that you train your interns really into your values? What are some of the things that you look for? What qualities and the people that you bring onto your team? Does anything stand out to you? David Brooks: Well, I would tell you what you're looking for is their references or their professor's recommendations. So when interns apply, you she start talking to who these people have to answer to. So you always want to talk to me who has a business and authority over that person. So if you can talk to their parents, that's great. And many of our interns have actually been kids of our clients. You know, they've come in, interested in the business. Yeah, and we've actually hired several of them. in fact, I have one, two, I'm trying to think. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's something. That's awesome. David Brooks: At least three I can count on right now that started as clients and are now employees. ⁓ know, and so in fact, Mary, who... Yeah, clients, absolutely. Well, they love the firm, they love what we do. Well, I mean, I would tell you, so Mary, who's my executive assistant, who scheduled this, you and I together here, Mary started off as a client many years ago, came through one of our advisors, Mike, onboarded with us, was working in an admin position at a local hospital and just... Gregory Wilnau: Wow, so you've hired your clients. I have never heard that before. Yeah, that's awesome. David Brooks: hated the day-to-day fluorescent light cubicle she was working in and just wanted something different, came on board, applied, we had a client service position open, applied, we ended up hiring her for that. And of course, we're always cautious, you're a client, explain to them, now we have to give you a discount. anyway, no. ⁓ she was a great fit, but we had her the wrong seat. Skill set ultimately did not align and we hired for culture there. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. David Brooks: We found her flourishing. So for the last, I guess, three years, she's been my executive assistant and fantastic at that and keeps me on time and the reason I got in the studio on time to talk to you today. but I mean, it's, you know, bottom line is when you're identifying, you know, who's a good fit on your culture, it's what they do when you're not watching. Now, shamelessly, that, you know, they sign in letting them know, but we have cameras all around the office too. So you can see how people act when the boss is not around, right? Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Tell her I said thanks. David Brooks: And so we can find out the culture of what they do. ⁓ You can see how they handle the interviews. Are they only smiling at the person doing the interview in the process or were they cordial to everybody along the way? And we purposely have people go through the lobby and interact with them to get a feel for if they are the right fit. And sometimes you just get a bad feeling. And I will go to some of my employees and it's like the old Roman days. They're going to give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. David Brooks: You know, you got to trust your team because if your teammates are not going to be comfortable with that person, there's no sense in hiring them. Gregory Wilnau: What are some of the ways that your team gets to know your clients? David Brooks: So the wine tasting I mentioned is a great way. We do a lot of educational events. So what we have found is an educated client becomes a much better client because they understand the things that we're going to be talking about. Like we don't build out these 120 page financial plans that I used to build with software and throw them in a binder that just go irrelevant tomorrow and collect dust. It's a living breathing plan we follow. We started with an income plan, a risk management plan that was one of the volatility of their assets and make sure they're having a correct alignment. Gregory Wilnau: Right. David Brooks: We have to have a written income plan that has what if scenarios in it and then we start with a basic tax plan and then we add to those things. So we're going to meet with our clients five to seven times in the first 18 months. It's the process we go through. After the initial planning process is done, then depending on the client's needs, we're going to meet typically one to four times face to face after that per year. Most clients are literally happy with one formal review and one kind of informal review mid-year. It could be a quick Zoom meeting if they don't want to drive across town. It could be face-to-face. We let the client decide the case. We proactively call them for the meeting and they tell us which type of meeting they'd like to do. ⁓ But you have to have all these systems and processes built out so the client experience is going to be the same and you can deliver on the same service. So when we do tax planning, Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Got you. Right. David Brooks: not all clients, but over 90 % of clients are typically going to be actively doing things like Roth conversions because these clients are typically older, 60 to 63 or so when they walk in our doors, a lot of the clients that walk in and they've saved the pile of dough up 90 % of their net worth in that tax deferred bucket. And they've done such a good job, they paid off their debt, they won't spend the money. And so like, let's just keep growing it because we don't pay taxes. And we just illustrate what that looks like. at RMD age, required minimum distribution age, to 75. And if you got like a million dollars in your 401k at 60, and we go at 6%, you're have a little over 2 million at 75. And that first RMD is gonna be over $80,000. And now we have a income problem in reverse. And this is what most of our clients literally have. It's not that they're gonna be shortfall, they're gonna have too much income, and they'd be paying taxes that they shouldn't pay. And not only that, then a couple of those RMDs with future growth. And now they're paying additional taxes, IRMA, Medicare penalties, right? And one IRA distribution can create up to seven different taxes. So if it's a married couple, because now we have four Medicare penalties, BD, BD, right? Plus we're state income tax and federal income tax and sometimes even AMT tax. so if you, and that's what's great is I actually built software to show all this. We actually license software to other advisors now because the tax code has been such a big. a big part of our practice, but we model all this out. of course, modeling is modeling. You have to make some assumptions, right? We know what can happen there. But we typically model reasonable growth, five or 6 % or so. We're not like, hey, if your portfolio grows at 12%, like it's done the last 10 years. No, if it just grows at half that amount, you have these tax problems. And so then we start to formulate a plan, Roth conversions. Are they charitable and inclined? Should we do donor advised funds? Should we just do lump giving? Should we do some advanced tax strategy? Should we add in charitable trusts? etc. and help the client get the tax planning part done. And so that first year we're going to we basically meet the first appointment is what we call a vision appointment. They come in for what we call the report card, which is our software. And we grade them just like you're in school on the five key areas to what we believe is a successful retirement. And that's smart. Sources of income, you got to know where your source of income are coming. That's the written inflation adjusted income plan. Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ nice. David Brooks: The M is medical and healthcare, something often left off the table in financial planning, yet the second biggest expense behind taxes. Then the A is for advanced financial planning, asset and liability management. Do we have assets we wanna sell, a business, a family farm, rental property? Do we wanna pass or transition any of these assets to our kids? Do we wanna use the wealth they've created now, et cetera? We have to have a plan for that. Spouse to spouse first and then ultimately to our beneficiaries or charities that we want. risk management, the R, and then T, taxi, phishing strategies, like we're talking about. So, at the first meeting, we discover what they're trying to uncover, make sure we understand, we heard what they said, and we have a very strict model, it's called the serve model. We serve our clients, we set the agenda, S has set the agenda, we evaluate, the E in serve is evaluate what we heard, V is verify that we heard it correct and ask any follow-up questions, then we're gonna review and recap. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. David Brooks: if we think we can help them and then E will decide if we should move forward and engage or not. So we—and we literally show this on the board of clients. This is how we do everything and then we have a very formal process for every concern they want us to potentially address. And so the second meeting is when they decide, you guys are the fit. Let's move forward. Basically start the transfer process over. Then we're gonna meet typically six or eight weeks later. All assets have been transferred. We've got them allocated based on what we discussed. So we're gonna have to make sure they know how to view their assets, do a mini, what I call a mini review. And then we set a six month strategy session. So six months after that, we're gonna do our first review. And then we have to remind them of what the whole plan was because it's a lot. And it's like, wait, what are we saying? So that's why we meet so much to re, yeah, you've got to do it. So they realize what you did and why. And in between that two month meeting, the mini review and the six month strategy session, Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I like how you have a six month check in like that because things can change and people can forget. Yeah. David Brooks: there's typically one or two things of homework depending on the client's age. So if they were 64, we're gonna send them to a Medicare class. If they haven't adjusted their will. Gregory Wilnau: Cool. Wow, dude, you send your clients to school, dude. I love that. That's awesome. David Brooks: ⁓ absolutely. We teach over 104 classes a year. We have a 1200 square foot classroom. So we teach social security two nights a month like every other month. And we do Medicare. We do a Medicaid spend down class. We do a digital asset class. We do a charitable giving class. So we've curated a whole content of 14 different educational classes and we run them throughout the year. And depending upon where they are in their plan, we know which class to invite them to. And by the way, we're not bad marketers. So if you wanna bring your neighbor, Sally, to the, that's great, you know? And so half the class is prospective clients and half the class is clients. And so they don't have to try and juggle everything. Gregory Wilnau: Sure, sure. That's amazing. David Brooks: right when that decision's coming up, before we make a social security decision. So if there's 61, go to social security. So before your turn 62, you understand the rules of the game and then we'll have that conversation at your next review with your advisor. Should we wait? Should we continue waiting? Usually we are waiting. But so we have a very structured process. So we educate the client on what matters at that point in time. And we have a business exit class, a proactive tax and business exit class. I am one of four SEPAs on the floor. We have certified exit planning advisors. And we say exit planning, a business owners, entrepreneurs, you and I, exit planning is not today. It starts today, but it doesn't matter if the exit's 25 years out. You have to start thinking about your books and records, the business, what entity you're operating in. About 40 % of all small business owners we talk with are in the wrong entity structure based on what they tell us their goals are. And because somebody just told them, just create this. And they did. And then they started the business and they got so busy growing them. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. Things change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David Brooks: run the business. I know this was me when I had my pizza places years ago, right? So, through life experience, and then this collaborative approach we put together, I really feel so confident in the process we built for these, for the two types of clients that we handle. And basically, they know with confidence, they're going to get educated. And it's so much easier for them versus if you just come in for an annual review and some, all right, now we're gonna hit your estate tax thing, or now we're gonna hit your, you know, wills and trusts. Well, We send her to the class first and we have an estate attorney not affiliated with the firm, just good friend that we refer a lot of people to. He and one of our advisors that does also happen to have a law degree teach that class together. And then the clients can sign up for a free consultation with the attorney. But then when we come back in, all right, did you have the consultation? Did you update the will? And then in the CRM, we just task it out every 36 months. Do we need to change your beneficiaries? grandkids get born and you leave them out. We see this all the time. And so there's so many things you can be doing ahead of time planning makes life easier on the other end. And we give out what's called a smart document checklist. It's like an inventory. And we ask clients to fill this out. And that's one of the things we'll typically hand out in the first annual review. All right, I want you now to an inventory of my property casualty agents, Joe Johnson at State Farm or whatever. And you list everything out and then you give us a copy. We keep a copy and then you tell us where the the physical copies in your house and then ⁓ my gosh when you know the unforeseen happens we lose somebody the adult child hey roll top desk in the den top left drawer there's a smart document you grab that and so they now we help them through the process of when you lose a loved one mom or dad mom or dad's pretty emotional usually one of the adult kids is gonna help them walk through everything we've already got it laid out what what's gonna happen and so then you really are putting your fiduciary hat on and helping them understand how to take care of it because it's an emotional time and you should not be making emotional decisions, you know, based on finances during that time. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. So I'm really interested in ⁓ learning a little bit more about the curriculum that you've built out. Did you create this curriculum yourself? Are you licensing it from somewhere? How did you create this stuff? That's awesome. David Brooks: No, yeah, we created our own curriculum. And I know there's services out there that do it, the tax class, basically, I built out from life experiences and just implementing. And the tax class is real simple. Basically, we just tell a couple of stories, you know, so everybody can see themselves in the stories that we tell and it explains the situations that they're likely to go through. And the same thing with Social Security. We basically explain the Social Security options. First, we're going to explain all the Gregory Wilnau: Sure, sure, yeah. David Brooks: the basics of it, all the different ways you can claim social security, what the rules are, why you might take it early, what the discount is you're taking, et cetera. Then we get into spousal benefits. We even teach a little bit about the benefits that you no longer get to use that were once really useful, like restricted application and filing suspend in the good old days, if you will. But we talk about the likelihood, what if social security runs out? That's a real fear. Well, would tell you politically, I don't think that's a real fear because no politician is going to take a check away from somebody who's already retired. Now, do we have to make some actual changes? Yes. And that's part of the education is explaining when Social Security came into play in 1935, you know, and how it's paid for. And while there is a massive pressure because it's a little over 14,000 people every day are turning 65 this year, we're at the peak of the boomer run. that Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. David Brooks: that pressure comes off in just three years, right? I mean, it will have been over and I'm Gen X, we're about half the size of the boomers, literally it's much, much smaller generation. So the pressure will come off, so security, we do have to figure out how to fund it during that period. But right behind us is the millennials, 96 million strong, bigger than the boomers. Yeah, and they're just now earning peak income. their, know, they're past their mid forties now, they're, you know, closer to 50 than 40, the oldest millennials. Gregory Wilnau: That's me, baby. David Brooks: and they're starting to earn better incomes, pay more in taxes. So all these problems can be solved, but politicians don't want to talk about that stuff because they need to sell fear to get reelected. yeah, which is why I'm a big fan of term limits. But anyway, that's another story. We can talk about those things too. But to your point though, the educational content is derived around real world scenarios that we've gone through with our clients. And we've even curated new content and classes based off of client experiences. So, Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, that's ⁓ Yeah, we'll save that for another time, for another time. David Brooks: One of my advisors has the, Rick Edelman created the ⁓ certified digital asset specialist. ⁓ I'm drawing a blank one, the certification he's got, but he loves crypto. And so we created the class, not that we're gonna be investing a lot of retirees money in cryptocurrencies, but they wanna understand what it really is and how does it work. So we have a very basic class explaining how cryptocurrency is ironic because everybody buys it because it's decentralized, yet they all buy it on an exchange, versus how you actually supposed to. transacted. But anyway, but we teach them what it is. And so they're not fearful from it, right? We don't want people to listen to fear mongers and make horrible mistakes. Like, I think gold is a fantastic asset. I own gold, I own silver, physical gold and silver. And it's almost in every client's portfolio in some way, or form. But these commercials that just bombard people, these, you know, put your money in a gold IRA, it's an unlicensed person not selling a security, and they don't understand how gold is taxed. It's a collectible if you buy coins, 28 % capital gains tax plus state tax. So 33 % tax if you bought gold coins here where I live and then sold them for a gain later. And no one tells anybody this stuff. then these gold IRAs, ⁓ they're storage fees. then one of our clients was told they had a meltdown fee when they bought one. So we just want clients to be educated so they don't make these irrational decisions based on the media. Gregory Wilnau: Mm, a meltdown for you, David Brooks: you know, of the day. And let's face it, when things like the Iran war break out, oil spikes, people get nervous and you see more of those commercials run on certain channels, et cetera. We're here to just calm people down, filter out the white noise and get to practical planning that has real results. It's been tested, right? The processes work, et cetera. Understanding there's no magic bullet. It doesn't exist. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. ⁓ Well, I love that you create your curriculum around specific examples, real world examples, so that people can kind of see themselves in those stories. So I love that. That way it's relatable. On that note, ⁓ for somebody who sees themselves in this story, is interested in possibly working with you or taking the next step, what should they do next? Where should they go? David Brooks: They would want to go to our website, Retiresmartnow.com. And there's a ton of content on there. They can find our YouTube channel if they want to watch more content, but they can also just click to schedule a 15 minute discovery call. And that's usually the easiest process is we schedule to have 15 to 20 minutes with one of the licensed fiduciary advisor in the team to just do an intake call. Just mainly what we're trying to do is just answer the primary question or concern they have to see if it makes sense to even schedule. you know, an hour long appointment or not. And because one of things I will tell you, we don't do a lot of tire kicking meetings, so to speak. In other words, when people come to see us, we actually tell them we need we need some documentation. So we want statements, we want your tax returns, because the work we do is off of real data. And we can't do it off of, know, well, I have about this much. And so that's what the phone calls for. Look, and if someone's not ready to actually give documentation, then then they're not a fit. And we get it. And there's no problem with that. But Gregory Wilnau: Sure. David Brooks: We run a pretty tight ship, so to speak, but we know the results work and you know, our average client, it's well over six figures in tax savings that they receive by going through the planning process. So the potential tax savings are very real once you understand how the tax will work. And that's what we just say is like, there's no obligation for the first two meetings. After that, the clock sort of starts to run. And so, you know, but we can't, you know, it's like going to a doctor and hey, tell me what's wrong with me. All right, tell me your symptoms. No. I don't want to tell you. Well then, not all I can do, right? Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, David, thank you so much for everybody listening. Retiresmartnow.com. Go check it out. See if you're interested in working with David and his awesome team. David, thank you so much for coming on, telling us more about what you do. And we appreciate you. David Brooks: Hey, my pleasure, brother, and keep spreading the word out there and finding great advisors for people to work with. Gregory Wilnau: We will. Thank you.