[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Marketing Zone. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and today we unlock the marketing that actually works. You're watching Now Media Television.
I'm Marilyn Jenkins and this is the Marketing Zone, where real strategy replaces guesswork and meaningful impact rises above marketing noise. Today I'm joined by Bob Neinever, founder and CEO of Benefit rfp. Bob brings a people first perspective to business growth, leadership and long term value. And I'm excited to talk with him about what happens when trust becomes the foundation of how we market, connect and grow. Bob, welcome to the show.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Thank you, Marilyn. Pleasure to be here. I appreciate it.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. So, Bob, before we get into all the business here, I'd love to start with you personally. What experiences have most shaped the way that you see people and potential?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: You know, I actually, I had a Down syndrome sister. Probably the, the greatest gift from God I've ever received.
But I learned how to really appreciate the different types of people through her.
You know, people didn't always treat her right and I would see that and I would leave an example.
Other people treat her like, you know, she was a wonderful human being, which she was. And it just really shaped me from a very early childhood point of view.
And, and I just took those same views on people throughout the rest of my life. And it's, it's helped me more than any gift that I've ever received.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. And obviously with your experience, you're known as a lifelong learner and someone deeply influenced by travel, books and observation. How has that shaped the way that you build relationships and businesses?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: You know, it, it all changes.
You know, I, I did my undergrad through the California state system, then went on to have three masters and a lot of other individual program degrees. And every time you learn something more, it better shapes how people look at you because one, it builds the trust that they have. They know that you're educated. They know that you know what you're doing.
The 30 years plus experience certainly helps as well, but you know, it goes on to open a lot of different doors. I sit on a lot of boards, I sit on boards for the CSU system that I originally went to school with. And just by having that background, that knowledge, it builds your confidence. I've worked with the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee.
You know, those are the folks that, that write the laws that, that we work with in the financial world. I've worked with them for the last 25 years, worked with the last few White Houses and, and as you become more and More entrenched with people that are really involved with the different decision making policies that are out there. It builds your confidence, it builds their confidence and trust and, and you know, you just continue to work and put your ethics together with it and go forward.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. Absolutely. And I think that the travel and education makes such a big difference when it comes to relating to people across the spectrum.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Right. You know, we were talking a little bit before getting on the show about different travels around the world. And it really opens your eyes when you can see how different people, different countries, different ways of life exist around the world. It gives you a lot bigger, better perspective on, you know, how you can help the people you work with, what makes sense, what gives them better direction.
You know, you often hear about the world's being shaped by who, who charges the least amount of taxes in the world. And you know, as world traveler, that's not really the only thing you think about. There's a lot of the components when you're traveling.
So it just, you know, it gives you some more details towards your education or experience.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I agree. Perspective is a wonderful thing.
It is. So when you're looking at businesses today and we're talking about visibility and that kind of thing and marketing for trust, what do you think businesses are mistaking when the visibility first?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: You know, I, I think from, from an early point of view, I always, I've always learned that marketing is really one of those uncontrollable aspects. It can be an uncontrollable cost. You really can't see the bottom line, what marketing is always yielding you.
And so I've always built a practice more around referral based on my morals, my ethics, what my standards are, what my boundaries are in life.
And I've displayed that with my clients. Like I said, I've been doing this for over 30 years. Over three decades, we've never had a customer complaint, a participant complaint, a lawsuit, or a lost audit. And so when people know about that in the business world, that's much stronger than maybe doing some marketing campaign or anything like that. And so we really focus on what we can control, what we do know and providing the best service, providing the best solutions, making sure the clients are always taken care of. Especially in my business, in the financial world, on the fiduciary side, where you don't have a lot of abilities to make mistakes and recover. So you've got to be very careful and do the right things and continuously do the right things. From there, your business will explode and you Know, I talk to a lot of people, I do a lot of public speak and I've, I've written and published, I think seven books now, a couple bestsellers. And you know, the more you help mentor people with the right information, get them going down the right track, the more they're going to talk about you in their circles. And, and it always comes back that way. So, you know, I talk a lot about manifestation, writing your goals, saying your goals every day, visualizing your goals, living in your goals, and then parlaying from that. And when you parlay off of, off of the good experiences, you got to be careful too. You can parlay on the bad experiences as well. So you got to know what's right and what's wrong. And when you parlay off the good things that are going on, you're going to build a business, you know, a great relationship, whatever it may be, at the very best levels. And you just got to stay focused. You will be challenged. Everybody that becomes successful, and you know this firsthand, Marilyn, everybody that becomes successful is always going to be challenged by somebody that wants to get you off track. And so you have to stick with your boundaries.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: That's absolutely true. I love the idea of growing as a referral base, but at the same time with online reviews and that sort of thing that, that comes up to, you know, you've got to know what your reputation is online. How do you address that?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: You can, you can have, you know, any, any number of companies can work on your SEO marks online, on what your review is online, all these different things.
I really don't pay too much attention to that. I know, you know, we have teams of folks that are out there that, that pay attention to that on a daily basis.
I don't, I pay attention to the things that I directly control in the relationship.
You know, Marilyn, I don't really focus myself on, on things like SEO scores and where you, where you sit in the world of the technology window today we have teams of people that do that. Where I focus really my efforts on are what my clients are seeing, what my clients are feeling, what the partners that we work with in the marketplace are seeing and feeling and you know, benefit. RFP has been a leader in technology.
We're a fintech company. We develop all the top end marketing technological tools that are out there.
And we've also been recognized for many years for having the top service programs in our market space. And so I look at that, but more importantly, I talk with my, my clients, my companies that I work with and I make sure that everything's going right by them. That's my number one indicator. And as I mentioned before, we've never had a customer complaint or a participant complaint, and that's really important to me, especially as a founder of the company. It's important that people are happy that are utilizing our services. We also grow with our relationships with these folks. They'll tell us what they'd like to say and we'll build it out. And that's how we've become a leader on developing these plans, on fixing people's mistakes that they may have gotten into with another group and then administering these plans with the top technology tools to keep everybody protected from the, the cyber hacks out there.
So we just stay on top of everything that that's around us in this program and visit with the people and build a relationship much like you would have with your family or friends.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: I love it. Relationships. It's. It's the beginning of it, isn't it?
Okay, so let's think about what makes a client or a customer feel like these people, they really understand me instead of they're just trying to sell me.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Well, no, that's a great, That's a great question. You know, 30 years of experience really elevates you. And these people that work with us, you know, they do online broker checks. We manage all the way up through the Fortune 100 companies. And so they're very good about doing background checks. I mentioned our business is really built on referrals. And so if we don't do a good job, we're not going to see referrals. If we do a great job, then we're going to see a lot of referrals. And that's really the bloodline of, of how we build our organization, our practices, and 30 years of experience, you know, many, many mastery programs, very highest credentials out in the marketplace, working for Congress for the last 25 years on both sides of the House and Senate, you know, it gives you a skill set, and clients see that. They can pull that up online. They can see that you've written books that are bestsellers on the topic.
So they know that you're really. They know what your business is, of course, that you're working in the executive business and you're making money doing that, but they're really looking for your confidence, and so they're coming to you for help managing their top people's money programs out there, and they want it done right and all these things. And, and when they look through our systems and they see how everything works because we're, we really have a development system that, that incorporates new plan ideas and it goes through and does side by side modeling based on the demographics of that exact company.
So it builds out the plan itself, also compares every funding product that's out there. So if you have a plan already in existence or you want to do a new plan and you want to compare the funding, companies are often shocked how much money I'm talking in the millions of dollars they can save by having one plan operation funded versus another and then finally administering the plan. We, we have every cyber protection that's out there known to man on these programs to protect our clients. So you don't have cyber attacks, you don't have people sneaking in to see information that they shouldn't be seeing. And this has happened in our industry and it's horrible when it happens. So we have a lot of protections that they can see online also they can pull up the information with us. And lastly, I think most clients are extremely surprised that when they learn that when a plan is funded properly and if you have a plan right now, it's not doing this, you need it to be reviewed. But when a plan is funded properly, it will bring down the cash flow related to funding these plans versus simply paying out the executive. So it'll put the company in a much better cash flow position. More importantly, it's actually going to serve as a profit center for the company. It's actually going to make the company money which they can share amongst all the benefit plans, both in the highly compensated arena and everybody else. So it really does matter. Take some time and look at these plans. It's painless. We do all the comparisons in house so a client doesn't have to.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: I'm looking forward to, to building on that. What I love about this conversation is it reminds us that trust is not a soft idea in business. It's a growth strategy. When people believe in you, they stay with you. When they stay with you, then everything changes. Coming up next, I'm talking with Bob Nienabar about why retention and loyalty may be some of the most overlooked drivers of real business growth.
Be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English or Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at NowMedia TV.
Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. I'm here with Bob Niederberg and we're talking about taking this conversation deeper. A lot of businesses spend so much energy trying to get attention, but the bigger question is what happens after that?
What makes people stay? What builds loyalty? And how does retention become part of a company's real growth strategy? Bob I think a lot of people think when they hear about retention, all they think about is hr. So why should business owners see retention as a marketing issue?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: You know, it's, it's one. You can go on many, many different sites these days, in sites like Lastdoor, that wherever the employees are putting down their information about the company they work for, if you have turnover issues, it shows up online for, but more importantly shows up to the client's point of view. When you have turnover, all of a sudden you have a new service person working with somebody out in the marketplace or you have a new salesperson working with the customer out in the marketplace. And when salespeople especially leave, you know, they, they, they build these trust programs and a client will leave with them. They might not exit all of their old business, but their new business will leave that person.
And you can imagine same thing happens at different degrees with service teams, with any level of folks that are leaving. But you can imagine if a CEO leaves, especially of a publicly traded company, one, it disrupts the stock, it disrupts the company. And that's because the whole culture of that company is about to change.
And if you have somebody that's been a very popular or, you know, very high profile CEO leaves an organization, they generally just don't leave by themselves. They'll generally take their team of people with them. And turnover is a cost.
That is something you want to stay away from in business. By all means. You know, from the, the lowest points of turnover, generally two to three times what an HCE or a highly compensated person is earning.
So if I'm paying Fred or Susie $200,000 a year, probably going to cost me $600,000 to replace that person. The higher I go up in the ranks, the harder it is to find somebody. And again, finding a CEO, if they leave, I may be paying them $1 million a year. It's going to take me about seven times replacement cost, believe it or not, to replace this person. And that's industry standard numbers. That's not my numbers. That's you know, seven times a million dollar salary is going to cost me $7 million. And that's because one, it's hard as heck to replace a higher level executive.
It's much more difficult when you start getting into the training aspects because are they bringing their services or are you bringing them your services? And you go through a lot of these transitionary phases. More importantly, if a CEO leaves and they're popular, a lot of customers are going to leave you too. And a lot of the teams, people are going to leave you. And so you're always much better keeping the people you have. You know, the old saying, cheaper to keep them is a true statement here. You lose people, you lose talent, you lose culture. You can, you can go from, you know, the highest levels to marginal levels overnight. And, and so it really does matter to pay attention. What's even more interesting too is, you know, the, our largest customers, Marilyn, you know that we manage companies all the way up through the Fortune 100. So we, we manage some of the largest companies on earth.
And, and I should say they're, they're benefit programs. We're not managing the companies, the benefit programs. They, yeah, let's get it into the right sequence there.
But you know, as we manage these, these dollars and these relationships, what they're looking to do is, is keep these people to continue that, that growth of that culture. If I keep my culture around for 10, 20 years, that company is almost always going to be much more successful. And you know, one of the things that smaller companies that may not have experience with executive benefit plans haven't learned is these plans actually, when you implement them, because of all the tax rules that are in favor of them, the Department of Labor regs are in favor with them, these plans will actually reduce the cash flow necessary to pay out executives. They will also serve as a profit center for the company. So a company will actually, when it's funded properly, when it's built properly, when it's running properly, should be producing a profit for that company, not a little way. We're talking millions of dollars for the smaller companies all the way through tens of millions of dollars for the large companies.
If it's not doing that and you have a plan, that's where you need to reach out and have that plan audited because it should always be making the company money. But number one thing is you want to keep those executives happy.
You want to keep them in parity with, you know, I'm in California, we're in one of the higher tax states. If somebody wants to work for me in Florida because of a tax haven, they can do that. Or I can utilize these benefit plans to give the California workers the same parity as the Florida workers from a tax standpoint. And so you can do these magical things just by proper plan design, setting it up, and then building the program out. But the number one cool thing that you're doing is you're making sure those participants and companies are happy, and so they're sticking around and life is easy. This is money, you know, this is benefit money. This is fun talk. So this is not. It shouldn't be tough, it shouldn't be scary, it shouldn't be hard.
So we, we bring clients through that to really educate them properly, get them to focus on what they need to look at and, you know, and then just have fun with it. We have a great time with all of our clients.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: I think you make a great point, you know, about, you know, you've spent the time and effort to build the team that and the culture that you like. You've got trust in those people. Your clients have trust in your team. And if you let one slip away, especially in a very important one, then you're going to lose not only your culture, but you'll lose a slew of clients as well. And no one wants to start over like that.
Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: And you think about it, you know, in California, for example, we have a lot of IT People imagine losing somebody that's just starting to come up the ranks, but they're a superstar, they've got some magical skills, they're the next Elon Musk. That type of things come through your ranks and they're not making a bunch of money now.
And so you're, you know, you're not going to lose a lot from a cost standpoint, but from a production standpoint, when you see somebody in the midst that's exceptionally different and exciting and all that, and you want to lock them in, that's where these plans really help you out. The other thing they help you do is, is if, if you're in competition and your. Your neighboring company has somebody that you want, you can utilize these plans in a fantastic way to get those people over to your organization.
We even see companies replace the fact that they're private and they're competing against public companies that offer stock.
We see companies really get into that mix utilizing these plans. So really, any type of benefit structure for recruit, retain, rewarding top people is what you want to think about when you're focusing with these plans.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: I remember back in the day of early Silicon Valley where it was all about stock options, that's all it took, you know, drop them some stock options every so often. You know, all the mini bills from Microsoft and all that, now it's so much different. So, and to be able to use a company like you used to analyze that is pretty amazing.
We're talking about trust of your team.
So how do you, how do you start building those strong internal relationships and how do those shape the customer's experience with your brand?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: You know, everything that, that we work through, we, we don't do a lot of marketing. We, we have a landing pad if you will, for our website for education purposes and all that. But we spend a lot of time on the relationship and making sure everything's done right. And you know, that's why we've won service awards year after year after year. Fintech awards year after year after year for being leading providers of the services that we work with. The way we really measure how we're doing with clients is we ask them and we ask those scary questions, how do you think we're doing? What can we do better? What would you like to see?
And it's not always an easy question, especially I laugh when I see younger service people that are, you know, kind of just coming up the ranks asking those questions with clients. They're always scared that they're going to say something bad. But if you don't ask them, they're going to talk online about it, they're, they're going to talk to other companies. And so what we see are a couple things, is one, we really take it to heart to make sure that customers are happy first and foremost and our, the participants are happy. We do a total reward system. So we show participants on what it means to set aside money today, what it means to get company match dollars or benefits and what it means for them in the future. So we show them how to transition those dollars out at certain points in their life, whatever their goals are based on the most tax efficient ways that are out there. And you know, a lot of companies in, in America really don't fully understand the benefit rules and that's where we, we provide a lot of help. They don't realize that in America you can actually as a participant get your money out of a 401k without paying all the taxes at the end of the day and, or you can work in a place like California that has some of the highest income taxes and retire and in other states and have those states tax payments be the number they're focusing on that distribution versus what California tax would be like. In other words, I can go to Florida and pay 0% state taxes on my, on my income distributions versus staying in California and paying the higher amounts. And so there's a lot of flexibility, a lot of parity that you can get into when you're working with these programs and, and through education, through making sure through our Total Rewards program, participants are happy.
We share it with A lot of times they'll have, these are higher income earners. We'll share this information with their estate tax attorneys or their CPAs or their, their spouses. You know, you talk about having a great conversation with a spouse, sees their husband or wife going to work every single day and, and you know, they're wondering, are we going to be okay financially this year? And they bring home a report and they are showing them, hey, we're not only good now, but when we retire we're going to, you know, we're going to be okay. I love having spouses on those, we call them a concierge calls where they go through and they see the same thing that the worker is looking at and they're excited that, oh my gosh, everything is going to be good. Because that's the number one worry you have in a marriage is that. And so you can end that.
But we do, we do a lot of work just to make sure that customers understand what they have, participants understand what they have, they're getting the most out of it, taking advantage of these plans and programs and then also making sure using our technologies that what the customer is using as funding investment tools is always going to be the best in the marketplace. And we don't sell it, we show it to the clients, generally to a CFO or an owner or a treasurer if it's a large company and they make the decision and they're smart people. So they're going to look at it and say, you know, my gosh, why wouldn't I do this? Or why wouldn't I do that?
And they pick and we implement and manage it and administer it and do all the things. But they see these values on a quarterly basis when we do reviews and then we have a large year end review that we do with every client and it's always served the purpose. So, you know, as things change, we change. If clients want to see things that are out. You know, with AI out there, it's kind of the talk of the town these days. It's not really new for us. We've used AI for, for many, many years.
But it's the talk of the town. And so we incorporate that where they can see it from a benchmarking standpoint when it comes to plan design to participant performance and how to get the most out of these plans.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: So I love that, I love that retention doesn't always get talked about like marketing, but it should, because loyalty is one of the clearest signs that your message, your experience and your value are truly aligned. After the break, I'm talking to Bob Neaber about human centered positioning and how the strongest brands connect without sounding forced or artificial.
We'll be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
I'm back with Bob Nienaber. And this is one of my favorite parts of the conversation, because great marketing is not just about getting seen. It's about making the people feel understood. If your message looks polished but doesn't feel real, people can sense that immediately. So now I want to talk about how businesses can position themselves in a way that feels authentic, relevant and genuinely human. But first, Bob, this has been a great conversation. Before we continue, I know that our audience will want to connect with you and reach out to you. Can you tell us a little bit about how they can do that?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you can certainly go to benefitrfp.com and go to the website, log in and either, you know, somebody on my team or our offices will get in touch with you.
And, you know, in the meantime, if you want to just log into the site, you can have access to all the different information that, that sits on the, a lot of education, a lot of cartoons.
You know, we met the, the creators of south park years ago and they did a lot of cartooning for us. And, and we use that to make learning this topic simpler. So you can go through that or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.
We have, you know, I have tens of thousands of personal followers on LinkedIn and, but I promise you, if you show up, I will respond. I will see you.
So you can go to just Bob Nienaber on LinkedIn and, and I'll connect with you there.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Fantastic. Fantastic. So you said that every human being has unique potential. How should that belief change in the way a company communicates with its audience?
[00:27:19] Speaker B: You know, I would, I would say when, when you're communicating, people often think so I do a lot of public speaking. I'll get up in front of a, you know, a couple thousand people, I'll make a speech and, and, and I have to make a presentation in that case that's broad and reach. But when I'm working with people individually, you know, I'm, I'm much deeper in that relationship.
I'll know about their families. I'm a very inquisitive person by nature, so I'll know about their families. I will know about what their kids are doing, about what, you know, they do for sports or for activities or any of these types of things. And, and I just remember them because I have a true interest in that. When you have a true interest in people's well being or where their kids are going to, you know, what, what's happening, what the challenges are in their lives.
I've done wounded warrior, you know, 100 mile bike rides and stuff because some, some of the folks had an interest in wounded warriors and that was their thing that they did. And so I got involved and, and the more you get involved with clients and with your business partners, the more fun you're going to have out there. I've, I've literally stayed around the country and around the world because of the relationships that I've met and, and fostered. And you know, these are relationships that we do, we do skiing events together in the winter. I'm a, I used to race professional motorcycles as, as a young guy.
You know, I foster those relationships. I, and the more you do that, that culture ties into what I do. On building executive benefits, you know, it's the same type of thing. The benefits provide the financials to make these things happen for people.
But the real gem on these relationships that, that have built either through some of the largest companies in the world or through much smaller companies have been absolutely wonderful. And you know, it's just, just like building a friendship. Get to know them, hang out with them, you know, have a cup of coffee or beer if that's your thing, whatever, and, and just enjoy yourself with these people.
Everything else comes together and you want to think of your teams that way. When you're building out benefit plans, your, your teams, you know, understand the financial needs, but they need to see the soft side, the real side of you too, so that they stick around in that culture maintains.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: I love that, that you're right. It all comes down. The culture shines through the entire brand and everything. And, but where do you think brands most often lose that human side of their messaging? So because your Your culture message, your brand message is going to attract the right people that you want to continue.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Culture.
Yeah, it's. You know, it's funny, I've seen, I've seen great companies just grow leaps and bounds. I remember when, when Google and Apple and all that were in their early stages, they didn't have to recruit. The people that work for them were, you know, I can remember kids all over the place. I have a, a daughter that's in the IT business and she, she lives out in Europe and I can remember, you know, her and her friends talking about they're going to work here because all their other friends are working there. And it was kind of like a mass migration from young, from young people. And I've never seen a recruiting effort better. When a company is doing well, you know, and it can be, it can be a, a large manufacturing company or it can be an IT company or it can be a, a professional sports franchise. When an organization's doing well, people are going to want to flock there because their friends are there. Everybody's already gone there. In fact, if they don't get the opportunity to interview there, they're going to be disappointed versus a company that hasn't built its culture properly.
They might have the greatest recruiting programs out there, but they're probably not going to get near the amounts of people that are going to come from a friend telling a friend telling a friend.
And so I think the biggest thing that I've always learned in business, you know, with my staff and with great companies, because we represent some amazing companies that just have a strong foothold in their markets, is you've got to develop your culture, you have to stick with your culture, your team has to talk, your culture, and it has to be real.
If, you know, I've seen companies try and make up a marketing ploy to sound cool and do all these things, but they're just not a cool company. And the people are kind of staunchy and, you know, these things that I wouldn't want to go hang out with them at their house, I wouldn't want to drink a beer with them. I wouldn't want to, you know, do anything with them.
So employees are going to be in the same limelight, but if you have fun with them, they're going to build the company for you. And then your job is to simply put together the financial tools that enable Tim to provide them with the necessary items that they can have enough money now, enough money in the future when they retire, enough money for when their kids go to school. All these different things, it, you know, it all has to come together.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, you're right. I mean it's, it just, it just emanates from your company what your culture is and how people are. But yeah, being able to have, you know, when employees and team members, especially executive team members are bringing other people that want to work for you, that's a sign of, definitely a sign of success.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: You know, another thing I always think about when I, because it is hard, you know, what we're talking about. Building a culture within a company is one of the most difficult things out there in business for sure.
And so I don't mean to be flippant or light hearted on this stuff, but I look at, at the difference between a good company to work for and a bad company is the difference between Friday and Monday. You know, Monday is like, I got to go to work. I got, you know, versus Friday. It's like, yes, I'm finally out of here, you know, yeah, I'm free.
And when you go into a good company, a strong company that has a lot of success, you don't see that Monday attitude. It's like, yay, I get to go back. And I really, truly enjoy what I'm, I'm doing and I'm, I'm fortunate in my field of practice that, you know, people, people that know me know that I'm, I'm financial, financially able to retire, you know, long ago.
But at the same time they asked me, you know, why don't you.
To me, this is fun. To me this is a game, this is what I want in my life. And, and I enjoy it. I love it. I love my clients that I work with, I love my partners that I work with.
And I just have an absolute blast every single day.
So it's a good fit. And that's what you want your companies out there cultures to be for your employees. They need to be excited to come to work. You know, this is, this is their opportunity to shine and make money and do their own goals and, and why not have a little fun along the way.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Absolutely agree. So I mean, when we're, we're talking about, you know, recruiting and that sort of thing, keeping your teams, that sort of thing. How do you have an authentic, sound, authentic authority as your, say, one of your clients. You're, you're looking to bring somebody in that you are going to be high net worth individual and set up a package. Do you help them with that messaging at all to, to bring people in?
[00:34:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that people that Know me, know that I'm a 10 year old at heart. You know, I'm obviously not 10 years old, but I'm a 10 year old at heart. And when they bring people into those discussions, we will work with them on building packages for select people because if they're bringing in a, you know, a high ranking senior executive, they're going to have a special need or, or maybe a design on, on an offer amount. Maybe they want to give them, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars, whatever it may be as a signing bonus, but they don't want to pay it right now. They want to make sure that that person is going to be the right person so they can write that into a plan design. So we'll help them with that, we'll help them with messaging all the time. They know that for me, I've worked with thousands of boards over the years and, and still do. And, and so they, you know, the smaller companies want to know what it's like to work on a big board because they might not have that experience or how we can help them grow their company. How, you know, what is the right messaging to get the right plan design with a, a company for a participant or select group of participants. What's the way to do it right? And, and how are you going to get it out of, yeah, out into the marketplace so that they understand it and they're excited too. So yeah, we work with customers all the time and I do a lot of, a ton of charity programs. I got the 2022 Humanitarian Award for working with charities and work with companies charities and all that. And, and I work with a lot of them directly. I'll go work, work or play, whatever you want to call it with them on their golf matches, on their outings, on their events. So I participate and you know, I couldn't imagine any other way. That's, that's my job. That's everybody's job that's working in, in building teams is, is to get in the markets, get in the trenches and play.
You know, you do it smart, you do it wise, you build everybody money. Companies got to make money at the, at the end of the day because that's what it's all about. But you can still be that 10 year old kid while you're playing and goofing around and having all the fun with the companies and participants that you work and play with.
Love that.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: I love that. The strongest brands are not always the loudest ones though. They're the ones people remember, trust and feel Connected to. That's what real positioning does. Up next, I'm closing out with Bob Nienaber by talking about sustainable growth and what it really takes to build something that lasts.
We'll be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the Marketing Zone on NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the Marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
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welcome back. I'm here with Bob Nienaber.
Bob Nienaber. And we've talked about trust, loyalty and authentic connection. Now I want to bring it all together with a question every business owner is asking. How do I grow in a way that is not just bigger, but better? How do I build something sustainable, aligned and strong enough to last?
Bob, a lot of businesses want fast growth, but not all growth is healthy. So how do you define sustainable growth?
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really always interested more in to what you just said. Sustainable growth.
Sometimes it's fast. If I, you know, if I, I invent the next cure for cancer, it's going to be real fast growth.
You know, if I'm, if I'm developing a widget that's going to be better, it might take some time. But what I'm looking at in either case is I want my team to be the team that's going to carry that same message across the finish line. And so I try and treat all of the employees in my organization as owners and as one of the founding members of the company, you know, I've seen the world probably quite a bit differently than simply an employee coming into the mix. Employees looking for a job. What I'm looking for are people that are interested in really digging in and being part of the team and building the career.
And a lot of mistakes I think come from the hiring standpoint that, oh, I need to, I need to find somebody that's got interest that is going to do X, Y and Z. Well, no, I need to really define and understand what it is that I'm looking for from that person. And, and when I'm talking to people and bringing them into the organization, I, I believe wholeheartedly in higher, slow fire, fast. So what you, you're Trying to take your time to find the right person with the right personality. And it's kind of like dating. You know, you're gonna, you're gonna date a lot before you find somebody that's going to be your partner. And.
But once you find the right person, it's no longer just that search aspect. You don't say, gosh, I found the right person. I and I bring them in. Now it's up to them to show me what they can do. No, it has to be a partnership, just like a relationship.
You know, just because I get married doesn't mean I, I stopped buying flowers and making, you know, my spouse dinner and all these things. You work at the relationship on both sides. And so there's give and take.
I'm going to work with my employee. I'm going to open up the opportunity. I'm going to make sure they're, they're getting the right education and experience through the organization. And I'm really going to pay attention to this. And so it's a sincere relationship that you're building in the organization with the people around you.
When they see that sincerity, when they see that commitment, they're going to start acting like the founder of the company. They're going to start acting like business owners. I tie all of my employees, and I'm in the benefits business. I tie all of my employees every single year into a benefit where they can get up to 100% of their salary as a bonus if certain requirements are hit. And these are absolute strong opportunistic requirements that their steps, if you hit XYZ amount, you're going to get 25% or 50% or 100%.
And so they know that if they do a good job, just like a business owner, they're going to get compensated well.
If I do a good job, I'm going to get compensated well. If I don't do a good job, I might not get any compensation that year. And, and so we really work hard to make sure that goals and understanding and education and capabilities are in those conversations.
And then we give them the financial avenues to get these bonuses. Defer some of the dollars when their bonuses are coming in, take it and all do it really ever they want with these programs because that's, that's what clients need. That's what they want when they're talking about retaining dollars. I also educate people a lot through our offices on how to maximize dollars. You know, I'm in California. We, we have, Everybody thinks California's got the worst taxes in the country. And actually we have very relatively fair taxes, income taxes, compared to the rest of the country, with one exception. When you're a highly compensated executive, then they start to hit you before that they're very fair taxes. But if I want to have parity with, say, a zero percent tax state like a Nevada or Florida, because maybe I have employees in both sides of the country, I can make parity by utilizing the benefit plans properly. In other words, I can bring a California employee down to the 0% state tax program for their big bucket items like retirement. And you want to get control of taxes. You want to give participants that ability to control their financial life. Because there's an old formula that's been out there for 100 years. You take a dollar, you double it every year for 20 years, you're going to have more than a million dollars. You do that same formula, you plug in the 40% tax rate, then you're going to have about $12,000 in that same period of time.
Nobody knows this formula better than the irs. And so what you have to do is you can't stop paying the irs. You're going to go, you know, to jail. It's not going to be a good time.
However, you can manage the process, and that's what we do with clients across the board so that they know how to manage these dollars, how to effectively get the most out of their dollars and then, you know, make them happy about these dollars. Because that's we're talking about money. We're not talking about, you know, something bad, we're talking about money. This should be a great conversation.
And we want people to be relaxed. People understand it. It's not taught very well in schools.
And so we need to make sure that we bring the opportunity to the participants when it's in front of them so they can get the most out of it.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Well, and I know that, you know, when it comes to these processes then, and like you said, the IRS and the different states where your executive.
Do you help the, your clients as they're growing and increasing their executive team, do you help them with their systems to put the systems in place that help them with that growth?
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll help them with the full benefit package. And, you know, the, we don't really get into the emotional side or the humanistic value side. We get more into the financial side when we're going through these designs. But I do share the stories with my clients. I'm an open book. I, you know, I leave names out and all that kind of stuff. And you have to because of every requirement in the world. Plus you don't want to be gossiping. But when things are working right, I share that with clients on the, especially on the humanistic side, where when you're benchmarking a plan, you want to know why a participant needs it, you want to bring a lot of, of reality into it. Nobody's brain really goes in and goes, I, you know, I really want to save 10% of my income or 20% of my income.
But if you can tell a story about, hey, this client did X, Y and Z. And when they retired from that point on, they weren't sitting at the coffee shop just taking out Social Security checks, they were traveling the world seeing people doing the things they wanted to do but they couldn't while they're working or while they couldn't travel while they had kids or all these different things. And so you want to put some life behind those values. You want to put some reasons why they do that so that when they're, you know, 90 years old and they're not doing well from either a physical or mental state, they don't have to go to a home, they can stay at home because they got the resources to take care of their needs when they're older in the house.
You know, nobody wants to die in a hospital, nobody wants to die in a retirement center. Everybody wants to be with their family and friends and all that kind of stuff. And, and that's when, what you do, when you start bringing the total rewards, conversations to people, get them to think about those things. That's the real fear. People don't fear money, they fear the lack of having money. And, and then you get them to the point of recovery, of mentally understanding life's going to be okay. You know, there's, you've all, we've all seen the, the life's good hats out there. Life's good, life's good. You want to keep life good. You want to play. Like I mentioned Before, I'm a 10 year old kid at heart. I will, that will never stop.
And yeah, it gets me into stupid situations because I, you know, I still competitively ride mountain bikes and still competitively do snow skiing. And when I crash, it's a lot harder to get up these days, you know, but, but I still act like I'm 10 years old and, and that's what I, I want all my clients to have that same ability, same comfort zone of, you know, I want to go climb the Alps or I want to go mountain biking or, or whatever.
And it takes money to do all these things.
So we want to make sure that the basics are covered and then go enjoy life. That's what it's about.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: I absolutely agree. And as we're wrapping up today, Bob, can you. I know that people are going to want to be able to reach out to you and connect, tell us a little bit more about where they can reach you and, and the types of things that you help with.
[00:46:41] Speaker B: Yeah, probably the best way to reach me directly is through LinkedIn. I get a lot of. You can go through to the Bob Nienaber LinkedIn site and click on, on, on contact a friend and. And I do. Even though I have tens of thousands of followers, I do answer every single one of those.
And so I'll get in touch with that way. Or you can go to our website, www.benefitrfp.com and that'll give you the opportunity to look around. There's a lot of educational materials. If you're in the corporate design side, if you're HR or if you're CFO or CEO or owner and you want to look at this stuff, then we will absolutely help get you going the right direction. You can contact us through the site there.
I love that.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Gosh. This, this conversation with Bob Niederberg is such a strong reminder that growth is not just about doing more marketing. It's about building more trust, creating more alignment and delivering value people truly want to stay connected to. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and this has been the Marketing Zone. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you next time.
