Episode 36: How to Work With Us
Segment 1 (Show Open):
Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome in. Welcome to Coasting in Retirement! Thank you for joining us today, we’re excited to have you! We have another great show coming your way, and regular listeners, guess what, co-host Michelle Lee Melton is back! Michelle, how are you doing? Well, it’s awesome to have you back. Our guest co-hosts did a great job in your absence, but I know there were a lot of listeners missing you.
Speaking of listeners, both our new and our long time listeners: Michelle and I are here today to discuss financial topics relevant to those of you in or near retirement, living your best life along our part of the gulf coast. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today: First segment – deep dive on our topic of the day. 2nd segment - at about 25 minutes past the hour - “Michelle with the News of the Week”. Then at roughly 45 minutes past the hour, stick around for our 3rd segment, we call it” Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth”. I’m going to try to give Michelle some ammo to shoot at me, so buckle up, we’ve got a lot to get to!
Quick background on me for those new to the show. Again, my name is Josh Null, I am a fee-based financial advisor, I hold my FINRA Series 65 securities license, and I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, we are an independent investment management and financial planning firm with offices in Fairhope, Orange Beach, and Mobile! You can find more information on me and Gulf Coast Financial Advisors by visiting our website gulfcoastfa.com, or feel free to give us a call at 251-327-2124. If you missed that contact info, do not worry, we will repeat our contact info several times throughout the show!
Alright, back to the show. Michelle, as you know, I take great delight when a listener of the show reaches out to set an appointment. And I’m proud to say it happens a lot! I’m also self-aware enough to realize that a big reason the show has proven popular with our target audience is you and what you bring to the show. And yes there will be a year-end bonus on top of the thousands that I pay you to co-host. I think we’ve done a great job of expressing how I form my opinions and judgements on investments, retirement planning, money, insurance, etc. But with that said, based on some feedback from a recent meeting I had with a show listener, what I haven’t done a great job of is explaining how those of you interested can work with us, and more importantly, why you should give us a shot. So, we’re going to try to remedy that today.
Michelle, if you’ll play along, I’ll make my point that we should do a better job of explaining what it’s like to work with us: first, what do I do? How does my role relate to Gulf Coast Financial Advisors? Why should someone think about working with us? And if they do want to work with us, how do they do it? (Pls be totally honest and off-the-cuff, no right or wrong answers).
Josh – Back and forth conversation with Michelle around:
What I do in my role as a financial advisor. Then relate that role to what I do on the biz level for GCFA, the team I’ve built around me, our plans for the future
The difference between financial planning and investment management, how they are distinct but how they are often entwined together.
Explain that the term Wealth Management is kind of like using the term “Chilean Sea Bass” as a re-branding of the Patagonian Toothfish. Wealth Management is basically re-branded comprehensive financial planning for wealthy clients. A good financial plan, whether it’s labeled wealth management or not, should include investment management, retirement planning, risk management, cash flow analysis, and some form of tax planning and estate planning.
How to work with us – describe the basic process that starts with either a phone call, email or website message. We work with investors of all sizes – should you describe an investment asset level? If so look at your ADV, I think it’s $100k but be sure to say that you work with all sizes and you bet on the person, not the account balance.
Why – 2 parts:
First discuss the difference in the type of advisors: brokers, registered reps, insurance salespeople, fee-based and fee-only advisors, and CFPs. Explain that GCFA is an RIA and that there are certain fiduciary expectations with that title. There can be a lot of bleed over in titles, in fact many “advisors” are dually registered, that is, they can have one foot in the broker / commission world and another foot in the fee-based advisor world. I came up on the insurance side of the industry so I still have my life insurance license, but as time has as gone on I am continually inching closer to the fee-only world, particularly with me beginning on my CFP journey, and I typically now refer insurance to our GCFA strategic consultant Jay Stubbs and his firm Providence Partners. Explain how this relates to the fiduciary / best interests standard vs suitability.
Second, discuss the difference between captive, semi-captive and independent advisors, the pros and cons of each. The buck stops here mentality of most independent advisors. Brand name vs skin in the game. I 100% own my book, I have no upper or middle management to report to, I have no production quotas, no proprietary products, no ancillary bank products like mortgages and car loans to sell you, ultimately, I have one boss – the client.
Listeners, hopefully we have done a better job of describing how to work with us, and more importantly, why you may want to work with us. If so, then please feel free to reach out to us, we are very easy to get ahold of. You can start the conversation by calling 251-327-2124, or you can reach us through our website gulfcoastfa.com. One our site, you can choose to send us a direct message, or you can click on the blue button in the upper right-hand corner to set up a 15-minute introductory phone call on my calendar.
Alright folks, coming up next - There’s always a lot going on in the world! Particularly the world of finance, investments and money. Every week Michelle and I scour what she calls the interwebs for financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those in or near retirement. So join us after the break to hear Michelle and I discuss this week’s relevant headlines in our “Michelle with the News of the Week” segment. Stay tuned!
Segment 2 - News of the Week:
Josh: “Welcome back to Coasting in Retirement, your host Josh Null here! As we discussed before the break, every week Michelle and I scour the internet for financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those of you in or near retirement. Our job is to help you all understand how these headlines impact you, especially when it comes to your money! Note – if you want to read our referenced articles yourself, we also include the links in our show transcript, which you can find on our website gulfcoastfa.com under the podcast tab. We upload our episodes every Monday after the show airs on Sunday. Without further ado, here’s “Michelle with the News of the Week”!
1. Michelle: Alright Josh, our first article is from Market Watch, titled “What is an independent financial adviser? (and) How do they differ from the rest?” So, to be honest, I am probably just like most other people in that I just lump in anyone that deals with investments into one pile. I did not realize there were so many differences. This article does a good job of laying out the pros and cons of working with an independent advisor, things such as reduced potential conflicts of interest with someone that isn’t an employee of a larger corporation, but I’ve got to ask you Josh, at the end of the day, how important are these differences to regular, everyday investors?
https://www.marketwatch.com/picks/what-is-an-independent-financial-adviser-how-do-they-differ-from-the-rest-d7e2ceab
2. Michelle: Next up, an article from our friends at SmartAsset. The article is titled “11 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor” and what it really means is 11 questions to ask a financial advisor before hiring them. FYI – what’ your sign isn’t one of them. Neither is “what’s your biggest character flaw” or other terrible interview questions, sadly. (I just care too much, Mr. Biz Owner, it’s by far my greatest weakness). What I would like to do is to rapid fire a few these suggested questions at you and have you give your reaction about the importance of that question.
First question: Do you abide by a fiduciary duty? Josh – important – but investors need to be wary about how advisors can dance around this. Explain that, especially with annuity and insurance shops.
Next question: do you have any disclosures on your record? Josh - Important but not everything. I have none but people need to realize that the bar for making a disclosure, which is really a client complaint, the bar is not that high, and the complaint doesn’t even have to be valid. I’ve seen extremely honest advisors get hit with a complaint on an account they inherited and had no role in making the original investment decisions. As long as your advisor can reasonably explain any disclosures and the total number is low, you should be ok. The main thing is frequent disclosures, or complaints, that have a consistent theme, which FYI is usually around unsuitable investment recommendations or illiquid product sales. Go to brokercheck to see.
Next: Do you require a specific minimum investment? Josh – this is the least important question. And investors would be astounded as to how many advisors couldn’t chin the bar on their own client minimum requirements. As we said in the show opening, we had to list some type of minimum in our ADV disclosure when registering GCFA, and while I do have to be careful with my time, I bet on the person, not the balance.
Last one: How do you make money? Josh – super important and the advisor needs to be able to produce something in writing AND easily describe how it works.
Quick final note Michelle – SmartAsset is a paid lead generation service for financial advisors, I’m not part of it but maybe they need to throw us a bone for all of their articles we use.
https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/questions-to-ask-a-financial-advisor
3. Michelle: With all of this talk about fiduciary vs suitability, or independent vs captive, or Republican vs Democrat…er, wait, that’s another show…with all of this jargon talk Josh, I felt that a lot of investors just want to know that they can trust their advisor and the system, and not get screwed. ESPECIALLY those in or near retirement that don’t have the time to overcome their advisor screwing up their money in a major way. So for the 3rd article of the day I turned to steady eddy Investopedia and their recent article titled “Type of Financial Advisor Scams and How to Avoid Them”. This article starts discussing one of the most well-known financial advisor scammers of all time, Bernie Madoff, and asks the question: if rich investors can get scammed by a guy like Madoff, what chance do regular everyday investors have? This article goes into several different scams perpetrated by financial advisors, recognizable words like Ponzi and unrealistic terms, but it also mentions things I’m not familiar with, such as churning and affinity fraud. Let’s talk about these different types of fraud and what people can do to protect themselves.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/043015/top-financial-advisor-scams-and-how-avoid-them.asp
4. Michelle: Last article of the day Josh, and I pulled it from your website because I was lazy and didn’t want to look that hard for a 4th headline. You have a fresh off the press blog titled “What is the Fiduciary Rule and Why You Should Care” and I must say I appreciate that you kept it short and sweet. So, Josh, presuming you even wrote this article, what IS a fiduciary, and why SHOULD people like me care?
https://gulfcoastfa.com/blog/what-is-the-fiduciary-rule-and-why-you-should-care
Josh: Michelle, great job as always with the headlines, these are all important pieces of information that impacts those folks in or near retirement! Listeners – if you would like to continue the conversation with us, then why don’t you give us a call at 251-327-2124 to talk to me or to set up an appointment at a later date, or you can always reach out to use via our contact page on our website gulfcoastfa.com. Don’t forget to click the blue button in the upper right corner to put a 15 minute introductory phone call on my calendar!
Alright folks, coming up next : Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth. What have been some of my predictions? Have I been right? Was I ever wrong? How wrong? What do I think is going to affect investors in the near future? We talk about all of these things and poke a little fun at my big mouth. Stay tuned!
Segment 3 – Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth:
Welcome back! Your host Josh Null here, along side co-host Michelle. So, I am opinionated, I have strong opinions at times, I would say a radio show host that isn’t probably wouldn’t be very interesting to listen to. And I am paid in my profession to offer professional guidance and opinions to my clients, otherwise what use am I? Sometimes I feel so strongly about something that I talk about it publicly, on the various podcasts and radio shows I’ve had, sometimes I’ll even make predictions, and while I usually proved right, there are times I swing and I miss. Want to hear me eat a little crow? Then let’s get at with Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth. Alright Michelle, what’s first?
1. Michelle: So it’s fair to say that we have been, ah, somewhat skeptical of cryptocurrencies in the past. But as crypto bro will tell you Josh, the industry has had a bunch of good news lately. Here’s a couple of examples: a handful of what’s called Spot Ether ETFs were approved recently and have already seen billions of dollars in activity. The price of Bitcoin is holding strong. And it should be noted that not only has presidential candidate Donald Trump recently turned towards supporting crypto, his VP pick JD Vance is well known as a crypto advocate. You have long held that those in or near retirement need to steer clear of crypto, but with all of this good news, what’s your big mouth got to say now?
Josh: I was thinking about this the other day Michelle. Is 10 years, which as a better chance of still being around:
2. Michelle: Josh, I believe this is something that you and JD Gardner discussed in length on the last episode of Coasting in Retirement. You’ve long held that bond performance was much more correlated with stock performance than many investors realized, and that the quote unquote “safety” of a 50/50 or 60/40 equity to bond portfolio was probably a little overstated because it has proven that bond prices and stock prices can and will fall in unison, particularly giving the United States’ current monetary and fiscal policies. So with bond prices taking their worst beating in US stock market history just a few years ago, what’s your approach for investors that desire the steadiness of bonds but are experiencing unexpected volatility with their 60/40 portfolio?
Well listeners, I hoped you enjoyed a peak behind the curtain on how I form my opinions and predictions, and more importantly, that I’m willing to admit when I am wrong. Which isn’t very often, but still. Now, to our listeners that have more questions the various investments and topics we discussed in this segment, we invite you to reach out to us. Call us anytime at 251-327-2124 to make an appointment or find us at on our website at gulfcoastfa.com.
Folks, that’s it for us this week here at Coasting in Retirement! I want to give a huge thank you to my lovely co-host, Michelle Lee Melton, a thank you to our awesome radio station FM Talk 106.5 out of Mobile, many thanks to the provider of our show music, local band Sloth Racer, huge thank to the show producer, Mr. Chaesare Gray, and as always my sincere appreciation for all of your out there that have been listening and joining us on this journey. We would love to be a part of your journey as well! Until we talk again next Sunday, have a wonderful and productive week. This has been Coasting in Retirement with Josh Null!
GCFA Disclosure:
Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, LLC ("GCFA”) is a registered investment adviser offering advisory services in the State of Alabama and in such other jurisdictions where it is registered, filed the required notices, or is otherwise excluded or exempted from such registration and/or notice filing requirements. Registration does not indicate or imply that GCFA has attained a particular level of skill or ability, nor does it constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or any state securities regulator.
The Coasting in Retirement radio program serves mainly to disseminate general information including those pertaining to GCFA’s advisory services, together with access to additional investment-related information, publications, materials and links. The publication of this radio show should not be construed by any client and/or prospective client as GCFA’s solicitation to effect, or attempt to effect transactions in securities, nor should it be interpreted as GCFA providing personalized investment advice, or any type of professional advice, for compensation, wherever this program is broadcast. Any subsequent, direct communication by GCFA with a prospective client will be conducted by a representative that is either registered or qualifies for an exemption or exclusion from registration in the state where the prospective client resides.
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