Triad Brief Issue No. 2 | Sept. 22, 2026

Issue two is live, and we're building momentum.

If you're just joining us, this started with one question I kept hearing from members: What do I actually need to be paying attention to?

Twice a month, that's the job of this newsletter. Just the key signals for what's moving in the independent space, and what our best coaches, wealth strategists and operators are seeing inside real firms.

This issue leans into the decisions we so often see clients avoid, and the best strategies for advisors tasked with helping them past it.

Inside, you’ll hear:

See you again in your inbox in two weeks.

-Brad Johnson, co-founder of Triad Partners

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Brent Coggins, CIO | Triad Wealth Partners

A difficulty in assessing asset managers is figuring out how much of their track record of success can be attributed to luck versus skill. An investment professional can have a world-class strategy, but run into a market environment that is out of their favor. The inverse is also true where stars align and faults in a particular investment style are masked by favorable market conditions.

Lots of bad golfers have hit holes-in-one.

Planning for retirement is not immune to this luck/skill dilemma, and sometimes people run into a spell of bad luck when the time comes to stop working. Which, if you're invested in the stock market, how bad of luck can it be?

To help answer that question from a historical perspective, we created America's Unluckiest Retiree, which is someone who built up a $1 million portfolio by investing solely in the S&P 500 (using State Street's SPDR® S&P 500® ETF as a proxy, ticker "SPY") and decided to retire on January 1, 2000. For additional fun, let's assume they were a Y2K doomer and went all in on the stock market thinking the world was going to end anyways - why not be aggressive?

The reason this retirement date is "unlucky" is because after being blessed with five consecutive years of returns north of 20% from 1995 to 1999 (they would have had to only start with $287k in that first year to hit $1 million by the end of the millennium) …this newly minted millionaire retiree suffers three consecutive years of pain (-9.73% in 2000, -11.75% in 2001 and -21.59% in 2002).

Ouch. Bad luck for sure, and worse given that now you have to live off of that diminished portfolio.

But is all bad that begins bad? Let's find out.

Assume this retiree subscribes to the 4% withdrawal rule, pulling $40k out on January 1, 2000 and adjusting that number up by 2% per year to account for inflation. Let's further assume they pull this adjusted amount out every year on the first day of the year.

$40,800 in 2001.

$41,600 in 2002.

$47,200 in 2009, when the S&P 500 had fallen over 36% the year prior and had yet to reach the bottom.

You may be asking: did they even have $47,200 to take out in 2009? If so, when did they actually run out of funds? The next year? 2020? 2022?

Read Brent’s answer, plus the three lessons every advisor should be teaching their pre-retirees: Read more →

⏵ The Under-40 Life Insurance Gap is a Cultural Shift, Not a Sales Problem . (LIMRA)

The World Life Insurance Report 2026 from Capgemini and LIMRA found that 68% of adults under 40 view life insurance as essential to a healthy financial future. Adoption still lags. Why? The traditional triggers (marriage, kids) are being delayed or skipped entirely. 63% of the under-40 group has no immediate marriage plans. 84% have no plans to have children soon. Advisors serving this cohort need a different opening than "when you get married..."

⏵ M&A Set Another Record in the First Half of 2026 (Connect Money)

Berkshire Global Advisors reports 225 RIA transactions announced through June, a 39% year-over-year increase. Private equity backed 85% of strategic acquisitions. The consolidation story keeps compounding. Whether you're building to sell, building to hold or building to merge, this is the market you're operating in.

⏵ Top-Performing RIAs Are the Ones With the Written Playbook (Schwab)

Schwab's 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study, based on 1,236 firms representing $2.5 trillion in AUM, found that Top Performing Firms share a specific pattern: they're more likely to have documented referral plans, a written ideal client persona, a defined client value proposition and a marketing plan. Not strategy statements. Actual documented artifacts. The gap between growth and drift often lives in whether the playbook exists in writing or only in someone's head.

⏵ AI Adoption at RIAs: More People, Not Fewer (Investment News)

New research analyzing 6,384 Form ADV filings found that RIAs disclosing AI adoption grew total headcount 15% between April 2025 and April 2026. RIAs without AI disclosures grew 8%. AUM per advisor climbed 22% at the AI-adopting firms. The pattern is clear: AI is compounding capacity, not replacing people.

⏵The Long-Term Care Blind Spot Draining Retirement Plans (CNBC)

A new ACLI survey found most middle-class Americans plan to rely on Medicare for long-term care. Medicare doesn't cover it. Reading this pairs uncomfortably with any retirement plan you've built recently for a client near 65. Worth adding to your Q4 review conversations.

Jesse Riley, President of Life Insurance | Triad Partners

Most advisors have a client whose plan looks polished on the wealth side. Investments handled, taxes handled, estate documents signed. But there's one section that gets glossed over at every review.

Life insurance.

Not the term policy they bought years ago. The real conversation, about what happens if the primary earner isn't there tomorrow, or if long-term care quietly runs the retirement plan into the ground. That conversation keeps getting pushed because it feels uncomfortable, the review agenda is already full and the last carrier meeting felt like a pitch.

September is Life Insurance Awareness Month, which is just a reminder that awareness alone doesn't move policies. Advisors do.

Try a different opener at the next review. Ask what would need to be true for the client's family in the first 90 days after something happened to them: who signs, who runs the business. Those aren't sales questions. They expose gaps the client didn't know existed, and they turn "here's a policy" into "here's a problem worth solving."

Living benefits and hybrid products belong in the planning conversation itself, not a separate sales meeting bolted on afterward. Reframing them that way changes who takes you seriously in the room.

Capgemini and LIMRA's 2026 research found 68% of adults under 40 see life insurance as essential to their financial future. Advisors just have to be the ones who bring it up first.

Triad Member Coaches | Adapted from DBDL Ep. 131 with Nick Whitaker

Most advisor seminars fall apart in the spaces between slides. That's the argument Nick Whitaker made in a recent conversation on the Do Business. Do Life. podcast. Nick's run more than 250 seminars himself, and now coaches on what separates the seminars that fill a pipeline from the ones that just fill a room.

Three moves stand out.

The full conversation covers how Nick reads a room in thirds and the exact ask that turns the swing middle third into appointments. Listen Here →

Hedderman walked away from a family business, then watched his father wrestle with what came next once the identity, the calendar and the day-to-day disappeared.

For financial advisors, the parallel is immediate. Clients spend 40 years talking with you about accumulation. Retirement is often reduced to a distribution strategy and a Medicare enrollment date. What happens to purpose, structure and identity gets very little airtime.

Hedderman argues that is the retirement trap most planning models miss. The math works. The client is quietly falling apart.

Exclusive for DBDL listeners: Mark is giving away his Life Care Plan as a downloadable PDF. It's a practical tool built for exactly the conversation most advisors avoid, and it's available on the episode page.

Worth the listen for anyone whose next month of review meetings includes a client within 18 months of the retirement date.

Listen and Download the Life Care Plan →

⏵ Behind the Number: Triad's Advanced Planning Model Triad was named to the 2026 Inc. 5000. The story worth reading isn't the ranking itself. It's what Scott Rinehart said in the release about why the growth is happening: investment management, insurance and financial planning were never supposed to operate in separate worlds. Advanced Planning brings them under one roof. Read More →

⏵ How to Actually Do a Discovery Meeting Michael Kitces' team published a five-step CLEAR Framework for discovery meetings that go beyond onboarding checklists. Interesting data point: 59% of advisors use more than two meetings for discovery and plan delivery, and 11% use five or more. The gap between good and exceptional often lives here, in the room, in the conversation, not in the plan document. Learn More →

⏵ The Real Reason Your Best Prospects Say "We'll Think About It". In his latest piece for WealthManagement.com, Brad breaks down Jon Acuff's research on the four procrastination personality types: dreamers, perfectionists, hustlers and analysts. Each type stalls for a different reason, and the fix is different too. Useful the next time you're prepping for a second meeting with a prospect who liked everything and committed to nothing. Read More →

Advisors hear "we'll consider it and get back to you" more than almost any other line in this business. Most of the time, it means the plan answered the question the client asked, not the one they were actually weighing.

Triad’s 5 Questions framework is a diagnostic tool for uncovering the real questions before the presentation starts. Available as a free download from the DBDL podcast page.

Download the Five Questions →

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