The Manufacturers Network

Lisa Ryan sits down with Michelle Kozin, an organizational strategist who uses behavioral science to help manufacturers connect people strategy with business strategy. Michelle's background in change management started with large-scale ERP implementations, where she learned that the technology was never the hard part. The people were.

In this conversation, Michelle and Lisa unpack why the same recognition can motivate one employee and completely miss the mark with another, why pay is rarely the real reason a skilled tradesperson walks out the door, and why role clarity might matter more than personality type when it comes to unlocking performance. They also look ahead to a shift already underway on plant floors: leaders who will soon manage AI agents alongside human teams, and what that means for trust, communication, and job design.

• Why change triggers fear of loss, not fear of change itself, and what that means for how leaders communicate
• The difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, and why money is rarely the true reason someone starts job hunting
• How to recognize employees according to how they're wired, not how you'd want to be recognized yourself
• Why treating everyone "the same" often reads as unfair, and what real fairness looks like instead
• The difference between behavioral assessments and job assessments, and why role clarity solves more retention problems than personality typing does
• How AI and automation are reshaping job expectations the same way ERP implementations did two decades ago
• One question every plant manager can ask before their next one-on-one to build more trust this week

Michelle Kozin on why people resist change: people aren't afraid of change itself, they're afraid of what they might lose, whether that's control, influence, or relationships.

Michelle on recognition: a gift lands based on the person opening it, not the person giving it, and that means leaders need to know how each team member is wired before deciding how to show appreciation.

Michelle on fairness: real fairness means matching your approach to the person in front of you, using the same standard of communication but a different path to get there.

Lisa Ryan on AI and human judgment: machines will be right the vast majority of the time, but the small percentage where human judgment matters is exactly where tribal knowledge and critical thinking need to be protected and passed down.

1. Before your next one-on-one, ask yourself one question. How does this person want to be led, similarly to you or differently? Let the answer shape how you open the conversation.
2. Audit your recognition approach by employee, not by policy. Some people want public praise. Others want a quiet handshake and a private word. Find out before you plan the next round of engineering week gifts or service awards.
3. Separate role clarity from personality typing. Before investing in another behavioral assessment, make sure every person on your team can answer this: what does success in my role actually look like right now?
4. Over-communicate during any transformation, especially the uncomfortable parts. Sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly builds more trust than protecting people from bad news ever will.
5. Get ahead of AI-driven job redesign the way you'd handle any major system change. As AI takes on more tasks, job descriptions and expectations will shift. Name that shift out loud instead of letting people guess at what their role now requires.
6. Watch for the quiet quitters. Most people disengage long before they resign. Treat consistent, values-aligned recognition as a retention tool, not an afterthought.

Michelle Kozin is an organizational strategist who helps companies and leaders connect people strategy with business strategy using behavioral science. She has spent 20 years using the Predictive Index methodology to help organizations improve hiring, define roles, and unlock performance through better leadership. Her work centers on how trust and connection form under pressure, particularly during periods of organizational change like digital transformation, technology implementation, and now the rise of AI in the workplace.

Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn or visit predictiveadvisors.com.

Lisa Ryan, CSP, MBA, is the founder of Grategy® and host of the Manufacturers Network Podcast. She works with manufacturing, industrial, and skilled trades organizations on employee retention, workplace culture, and the human side of AI and automation. Her newest book, Smart Plant: Aligning AI, Automation, and People, is available now on Amazon.

• Explore more episodes of the Manufacturers Network Podcast
• Learn more about Grategy at LisaRyanSpeaks.com
• Get Smart Plant: Aligning AI, Automation, and People: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZMFBVZ2

Brian Kaufman is co-founder and chief product officer at Strudel, an AI startup that gives technical support teams real-time context when issues hit and detects error patterns before they become customer-facing problems. His background is in software product development and healthcare technology, but the problems he solves map directly onto what manufacturing companies face every day: institutional knowledge that lives in people's heads instead of in systems, and support teams solving the same problems over and over from scratch.

Brian and Lisa dig into what it actually costs when undocumented knowledge walks out the door, how AI can serve as a partner to experienced technicians without replacing their judgment, and what a realistic starting point looks like for manufacturers considering AI-assisted support.

Key Takeaways for Manufacturing Leaders

The information exists. It just isn't findable. Most organizations aren't starting from zero. The knowledge is in old tickets, emails, PDFs, and people's heads. The first step is figuring out where it lives, not waiting until it's gone to wish you'd captured it.

Start before someone gives notice. The best time to document institutional knowledge is before retirement is on the horizon. If the person with 30 years of experience is leaving in two months, you're already behind. Build the habit now.

Ask the question nobody's asked. One of the most powerful knowledge-capture prompts: "What do you know that nobody's ever asked you about?" Experienced technicians have built sensory libraries over decades, knowing what a machine sounds like, feels like, and smells like when something's about to go wrong. That knowledge doesn't survive a standard exit interview.

AI should be an investigator, not an oracle. Strudel presents troubleshooting suggestions as hypotheses grounded in real historic tickets, not confident declarations. When a technician is standing at a machine, that distinction matters. Build trust by showing your work, not by pretending to be certain.

Machine context cuts investigation time dramatically. Knowing the model, firmware version, and configuration immediately narrows the problem space. A known defect affecting machines shipped between two specific dates becomes a one-step fix rather than a multi-hour troubleshooting process.

Don't use LLMs for everything. Strudel uses traditional statistical analysis and machine learning for the heavy lifting, reserving large language models for last-mile summarization. The result is fewer hallucinations and answers that are easier to monitor and evaluate for quality.

Your most skeptical expert is your most important early win. Find the team member with deep expertise who doubts new tools and figure out what task they hate doing most. Solve that one problem well, and you've turned your biggest skeptic into your biggest advocate.

Start small, find wins, then expand. Don't try to solve everything at once. Pick one product line, one process, one team. Get good at that before scaling. Build in an early checkpoint to evaluate and adjust.

Involve your people before you buy anything. Coming back from a trade show with a shiny new system your team had no input on is a reliable way to end up with a system nobody uses. Ask what's causing the most pain. Start there.

Working top of license matters on the shop floor too. When your most experienced technician is answering the same question for the fifth time, that's a waste. Free those people up for novel problems, mentoring, and process improvement.

About Strudel

Strudel embeds directly into existing support ticketing systems and generates troubleshooting steps within 15 to 20 seconds of a ticket coming in, drawing on historical tickets and documentation specific to the machine, software version, and configuration in question. As more tickets are resolved, that knowledge becomes part of the system, making new staff onboarding faster and institutional knowledge more durable.

Connect with Brian Kaufman

Email: [email protected] Website: www.strudel.io

The Manufacturers Network Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders, practitioners, and experts across manufacturing, the skilled trades, and industrial sectors. Host Lisa Ryan, CSP, MBA, is a keynote speaker, author of 13 books, and founder of Grategy.

Samantha Kaye Harris spent 27+ years in structural maintenance leadership at JFK Airport, managing teams of 100+ people in one of the most male-dominated environments in the trades. She started as a general maintainer, learned paving, roofing, sheet rock, and concrete work from the ground up, and earned her way into leadership one job at a time.

Today she helps women in manufacturing, the trades, and industrial environments own their voice, stay in the room, and get paid for the value they bring.

Lisa and Samantha dig into what it actually costs when women go silent on the shop floor, why psychological safety and physical safety are directly connected, and what plant managers and operations leaders can do right now to change the dynamic on their teams.

Key Takeaways for Manufacturing Leaders

Retention starts with safety, not perks. Women don't leave because the pay is bad. They leave because they don't feel safe speaking up, asking for what they need, or being heard without having their competence questioned. Fix the environment before you worry about the benefits package.

The fear cycle is a real retention risk. Samantha describes a predictable pattern: a woman arrives, over-performs to prove herself, gets worn down by constant testing and second-guessing, goes silent, starts hiding, and eventually leaves. Recognizing where someone is in that cycle is the first step to stopping it.

"Are you sure?" is a red flag phrase. Asking a leader whether she's sure, or checking her answer with another supervisor, sends a clear message about whose judgment is trusted. Leaders need to monitor this in their own behavior and in their teams.

PPE that doesn't fit is a safety and morale issue. One-size-fits-all gear made for male bodies signals that women weren't considered when the workplace was designed. Getting the right fit is a practical step that communicates respect.

Psychological safety connects directly to physical safety. When a woman is spending mental energy calculating how to avoid being dismissed, she's not focused on the work. In an environment with heavy equipment and real hazards, that's not just a morale problem.

Don't send the complaint back to the floor. When a woman raises a concern and leadership takes it straight back to the crew, her colleagues often figure out exactly who said what. That's when isolation and retaliation start. Handle issues with confidentiality and intention.

One woman in a safety or HR-adjacent role changes things. Having someone on staff who has actually done the work, who gets the environment, gives women a place to raise issues without fear of being laughed off or ignored.

Community is a retention strategy. Women's groups, networking events, and peer connections within associations are growing fast because they work. If your industry association doesn't have a women's group, it's worth asking why not.

Training boxes don't change behavior. Computer-based compliance training may satisfy HR requirements, but it doesn't change what happens on the shop floor. Real culture change takes conversation, modeling, and accountability.

When women stop hiding, companies win. Samantha is direct about this: when a woman feels safe enough to fully show up, use her voice, and go after advancement, productivity goes up, teams communicate better, and the company starts attracting more skilled talent. The ROI is real.

Samantha's Truth Methodology

Samantha works with women one-on-one and through 30-day intensives to help them understand the internal patterns holding them back, learn where those patterns came from, and build the self-trust to use their voice, ask for what they want, and step fully into their power.

Connect with Samantha Kaye Harris

Email: [email protected] (Note: Kaye is spelled K-A-Y-E)

The Manufacturers Network Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders, practitioners, and experts across manufacturing, the skilled trades, and industrial sectors. Host Lisa Ryan, CSP, MBA is a keynote speaker, author of 13 books, and founder of Grategy.

If your sales team keeps losing deals on price, the problem might not be your pricing. It might be your story. Lauren Kwedar Cockerell, founder and president of Kwedar & Co., a strategic communications firm based in Fort Worth, joins Lisa to talk about why so many manufacturers struggle to articulate what makes them genuinely different, and what to do about it.

Lauren has spent 23 years in public relations working with B2B companies, with deep roots in manufacturing and industrial sectors. Her firm helps companies excavate what's already there, that unique thread hiding in plain sight, and turn it into messaging that resonates with customers, prospects, and the talent they're trying to attract.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Why "our people" and "our quality" aren't differentiators. Every competitor is saying the same thing. Lauren explains why surface-level answers won't cut it and how to dig multiple levels deeper to find what's actually distinctive about your operation.

The "yeah, duh" trap. The things your team dismisses as obvious are often the most compelling to your buyers. The challenge is that it's hard to read the label from inside the bottle.

The Thread: Lauren's four-stage methodology

• Excavate. Deep discovery through conversations, competitive review, and a close look at everything you've built
• Surface. Finding that through line, the offhand comment you almost threw away that turns out to be the whole thing
• Articulate. Translating the story into language that resonates across every channel and audience
• Activate. Putting it out into the world on your website, in media, in sales conversations, and in internal communications

Where AI fits and where it falls short. AI can help you iterate content once you have a strong narrative, but it cannot create one for you. Without a distinctive source document, you are just replicating what already exists and creating volume no one is listening to.

The new visibility equation. Trade journals, podcasts, and consistent digital content are not just good marketing. They are signals that AI-powered search uses to determine relevancy and authority. If your messaging is inconsistent or generic, the LLMs cannot distinguish you from a competitor either.

Signs your messaging problem is costing you real money. You are losing deals on price alone, your salespeople are delivering inconsistent pitches, you are attracting candidates who do not fit, and the marketing firms you have hired just cannot seem to nail it.

The first thing to do this week. Pull up your website headline, take away your logo, and ask: could this apply to any other industry? If the answer is yes, you have work to do.

Connect with Lauren

Website: KwedarCo.com LinkedIn: Lauren Kwedar Cockerell

The Manufacturers Network Podcast is hosted by Lisa Ryan, CSP, founder of Grategy and Chief Appreciation Strategist. Lisa helps manufacturing and industrial organizations build cultures where people want to stay.

In this episode of the Manufacturers Network Podcast, Lisa Ryan sits down with JC Carr, Territory Account Manager at World Emblem and founder of Whips Miami, to talk about the future of manufacturing leadership, supply chain resilience, automation, and workforce culture.

JC shares his unconventional path from launching an exotic car brokerage during COVID to becoming a rising voice in manufacturing with a growing social media following focused on the human side of industry.

The conversation explores what manufacturing leaders are getting right and wrong about automation, digital transformation, workforce engagement, and operational growth. JC also shares lessons learned from working inside large-scale supply chain environments, including Amazon, and why community involvement, leadership accountability, and employee connection still matter in highly automated operations.

If you’re a manufacturing executive, plant manager, HR leader, or operations professional trying to balance technology with people, this episode offers practical insight grounded in real-world experience.

• How JC Carr built a business during COVID selling exotic car lease deals
• What manufacturing can learn from Amazon’s supply chain systems
• Why automation should eliminate frustration, not human value
• The difference between digital transformation and culture transformation
• How manufacturing leaders can improve workforce retention and engagement
• Why simple tools often outperform expensive technology investments
• What manufacturers should consider during mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation
• The hidden risks of fragmented supply chains
• How community involvement strengthens leadership and workforce loyalty
• Why younger workers want purpose, connection, and impact from employers

JC Carr is a Territory Account Manager at World Emblem, one of North America’s largest emblem and embroidery manufacturers. Having worked across nearly every department in the company, he brings a full-spectrum understanding of manufacturing operations and customer experience.

He is also the founder of Whips Miami, an exotic car brokerage launched during college, and has built a social media following of more than 120,000 people by highlighting the human side of manufacturing, leadership, and modern industry.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jc-carr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jc.carr/

Company: https://www.worldemblem.com/

Technology can improve efficiency. But manufacturing still runs on people.

The companies that win long-term will be the ones that use automation to support human judgment, strengthen culture, and create workplaces where employees feel valued and connected.

Leadership development is not about creating people who can follow instructions.

It’s about creating people who can think.

In this episode of the Manufacturers Network Podcast, Lisa Ryan talks with Scott Burgmeyer about leadership growth, succession planning, emotional intelligence, and why so many organizations struggle to develop future leaders before it’s too late.

With more than 30 years of experience in manufacturing, operations, consulting, and organizational development, Scott shares practical lessons from working with companies ranging from small manufacturers to organizations like Google, Procter & Gamble, and Bridgestone.

The conversation explores:

• Why leaders struggle to let go and delegate
• How to transfer knowledge before experienced employees retire
• The difference between managing people and developing leaders
• Why employees need permission to think and make decisions
• The hidden cost of constantly answering every question yourself
• How emotional intelligence impacts operational performance
• Why strategic plans fail after the meeting ends
• The danger of confusing activity with results
• Succession planning mistakes that create tension and chaos
• How personal growth directly affects company culture and retention

Scott also explains why leadership teams must stop focusing only on technical performance and start investing in the growth of people at every level of the organization.

One of the biggest takeaways from this episode:

Organizations rarely outperform the growth level of their leaders.

• Ask more questions instead of immediately giving answers
• Create low-risk opportunities for employees to make decisions
• Focus on outcomes, not just activity
• Build leadership systems that continue beyond one generation
• Evaluate whether your strategic plan is actually moving key metrics
• Develop future leaders before you urgently need them
• Make professional and personal growth part of your leadership expectations
• Use feedback early instead of waiting until problems grow

When trying something new, ask:

• What worked?
• What didn’t work?
• What do I need to do differently?

Website: Become More Group

LinkedIn: Scott Burgmeyer on LinkedIn

Website: Lisa Ryan, CSP / Grategy

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a manufacturing leader, operations executive, HR professional, or business owner working to strengthen culture, retention, and leadership development inside their organization.

Manufacturing companies don’t usually fail because of bad products. They fail because growth exposes leadership gaps nobody wanted to deal with.

In this episode of the Manufacturers Network Podcast, Lisa Ryan talks with leadership advisor and Trajectify founder Mike Krupit about what really happens when organizations grow faster than their people, systems, and communication.

Mike shares lessons from decades in Silicon Valley startups and explains why retention problems are often clarity problems, leadership problems, and culture problems disguised as “people issues.”

The conversation covers:

• Why companies outgrow key employees and founders
• How poor communication quietly destroys trust
• The difference between employees who “get it, want it, and are capable”
• Why psychological safety matters on the shop floor
• What leaders miss when they blame workers for disengagement
• How to manage up when leadership refuses to change
• Why “this is how we’ve always done it” is dangerous in manufacturing
• The connection between AI, workforce change, and leadership adaptability
• Practical ways manufacturers can rethink scheduling, culture, and retention

One of the biggest takeaways from this episode:

You cannot build a future-ready company with leadership habits designed for the past.

Mike also shares actionable ideas leaders can use immediately to evaluate whether they truly have the right people in the right seats before growth turns into chaos.

• What assumptions are we making that may no longer be true?
• Are we measuring outputs clearly enough for people to succeed?
• Do employees feel safe trying new ideas or making mistakes?
• Are leaders communicating enough, especially across shifts and teams?
• Is the organization growing faster than the people leading it?
• What is one thing leadership could change tomorrow?

LinkedIn: Mike Krupit on LinkedIn

Website: Trajectify

Website: Grategy / Lisa Ryan, CSP

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a manufacturing leader, HR professional, or operations executive who’s trying to build a stronger workplace culture while navigating growth and change.

E-commerce looks easy… right up until it isn’t. More orders. More customers. More growth. And then everything starts to crack.

In this episode of The Manufacturers Network Podcast, I sit down with Ethan Giffin to talk about what really happens when e-commerce businesses try to scale. Not the highlight reel. The operational reality behind it.

We get into fulfillment pressure, inventory accuracy, customer expectations, and why so many companies focus on growth before they’ve built the foundation to support it.

Because here’s the truth…You don’t rise to the level of your marketing. You fall to the level of your operations.

• Why scaling e-commerce creates operational challenges most teams underestimate
• The pressure fulfillment puts on systems, people, and decision-making
• Where inventory accuracy becomes a make-or-break issue
• How customer expectations are reshaping operations
• Why growth exposes weaknesses instead of fixing them
• The role your team plays when systems fall short
• What leaders need to get right before pushing for scale

Ethan Giffin brings a practical lens to e-commerce. No hype. Just how things actually work when volume increases.

What stood out in this conversation is how quickly things get complicated.

At low volume, you can get away with inefficiencies.

At scale, those same issues turn into daily problems.

Orders increase.

Returns increase.

Customer expectations tighten.

And suddenly, your operation isn’t just fulfilling orders… it’s reacting all day long.

Even with automation in place, the reality doesn’t change. When something breaks, it’s your people stepping in to fix it.

That’s where a lot of companies get surprised.

They invest in systems… but forget to build the operational discipline behind them.

E-commerce is an operations business

Marketing brings the orders in. Operations decides whether customers come back.

Speed raises the stakes

The faster you promise delivery, the less room you have for error.

Inventory accuracy drives everything

If your numbers are off, every decision downstream gets harder.

Growth magnifies what’s already broken

What works at 100 orders a day rarely works at 1,000.

People are still the safety net

When systems fail, your team is the one holding it together.

• The realities of fulfillment as order volume increases
• Where inventory issues start and how they impact everything else
• The pressure created by faster delivery expectations
• How small operational gaps turn into major customer problems

Ethan Giffin works in the e-commerce space, focused on helping businesses navigate the operational side of growth, from fulfillment to inventory management to scaling systems that actually hold up under pressure.

He brings a straightforward, practical perspective to challenges that are easy to underestimate and hard to fix once they show up.

Selling online is the easy part.

Delivering on that promise… consistently… under pressure… is where most companies struggle.

And when things go wrong, they don’t get fixed by software.

They get fixed by people.

Gratitude is a strategy.

Here’s what nobody says out loud. You can automate a facility, install the dashboards, optimize the flow… and still lose the people who make it all work.

In this episode of The Manufacturers Network Podcast, I sit down with Rylan Pyciak to talk about what’s really happening inside modern supply chains. Not the polished version. The real one.

We get into the tension between automation and human judgment, why most leaders are spending money in the wrong places, and how culture quietly becomes the difference between a system that scales and one that stalls.

Because the truth is simple. If your people don’t feel ownership, your systems don’t matter.

• Why “fully automated” operations still depend heavily on people
• The difference between scale, speed, and true orchestration
• How to build accountability into your operation without micromanaging
• Where most manufacturers waste money on technology
• Why culture is the #1 failure point in M&A activity
• How community involvement impacts retention more than most leaders realize
• What leaders miss when trying to modernize legacy industries

Rylan’s background spans everything from large-scale fulfillment environments to third-party logistics and fragmented legacy industries. That perspective shows up fast.

He breaks down what it actually takes to scale operations without losing control. And more importantly, without losing your people.

One thing that stood out right away… Even in highly automated environments, you’re still managing thousands of employees across multiple shifts. That creates a different challenge. Not just operations. Consistency, communication, and culture across a 24/7 workforce.

And that’s where most leaders underestimate the work.

Accountability beats intelligence

You don’t need a room full of geniuses. You need a team that owns results, learns from mistakes, and adjusts quickly.

Start simple before you get fancy

Some of the best operational insights still come from a whiteboard on the floor. Not a screen. Not a dashboard. Just people talking about what broke and why.

Automation should remove frustration

If you want buy-in, start with the work people hate doing. That’s where automation earns trust.

Culture is not optional in M&A

Too many leaders treat people integration like a detail. It’s not. It’s the difference between success and failure.

Top-down vision. Bottom-up execution

Leaders define where you’re going. The people closest to the work figure out how to get there. Skip that and everything slows down.

Community drives retention

When companies invest outside their walls, employees feel it. And they stay longer because of it.

• The reality behind large-scale automated facilities and workforce demands
• Why expensive tech often replaces simple, effective communication tools
• The mindset shift from “spend money” to “solve the right problem”
• What actually happens after an acquisition when culture is ignored

Rylan Pyciak is a supply chain and operations leader focused on building scalable, resilient systems across complex environments. His work spans automation, logistics networks, and integrating fragmented industries into high-performing operations.

He brings a practical, no-nonsense approach to solving problems most leaders overcomplicate.

You can build the smartest system in the world.

But if you’ve designed it without your people in mind, it’s fragile. You just don’t see it yet.

Gratitude is a strategy.

And in a world that’s moving faster every day, it might be the one thing that keeps your people grounded enough to stay.

Lisa Ryan welcomes Paul Sippil, forensic 401K consultant and self-described 401K vigilante. Over 17 years, Paul has analyzed thousands of public retirement plan filings and documented more than 1,300 cases of apparent excessive fees. His central argument is simple and uncomfortable: most American employers, including manufacturers, have never seen the true cost of their 401K plan, and the structure of the industry is specifically designed to keep it that way.

From Recovering CPA to 401K Vigilante

Paul describes himself as a recovering CPA who knew from his very first day as an auditor that the path wasn't right for him. His career shifted into financial advising focused on estate and succession planning for business owners until a conversation with a colleague revealed that retirement plan tax forms were publicly available online. That discovery changed everything.

When Paul began calling business owners to alert them to the fees he was seeing in their own public filings, he expected to be a hero. Instead, he got a response that told him everything he needed to know about the industry: I'm not paying anything and my friend handles that. The disconnect between what employers believed and reality was so profound that Paul realized he could build an entire career consulting in just this one area and he did.

The Invisible Fee Problem

The reason most employers have no idea what their 401K plan actually costs is simple: there is no invoice. Fees don't arrive as a bill. They flow silently through the structure of the plan itself: embedded in mutual fund management fees, deducted directly from participant accounts, or buried in arrangements between advisors and record keepers that employers never see or negotiate.

The major fee categories Paul walks through include:

• Mutual fund fees: unavoidable, but can be minimized by choosing index or passively managed funds
• Record-keeping and administration fees: charged by providers like Principal, Voya, Fidelity, John Hancock, Paychex, and ADP, often as a percentage of total plan assets
• Financial advisory fees: either embedded as broker commissions within fund costs, or charged as a separate percentage of assets by registered investment advisors
• Custodial fees: charged by institutions like Charles Schwab that hold the assets

The compounding problem: because fees are typically percentage-based, they grow automatically as the plan grows — with no increase in services provided.

The Case That Says It All

Paul shares a story that captures everything wrong with this industry in one example. A company with just three employees paid out over $49,000 in broker commissions between 2019 and 2024, to an advisor they didn't even know they had. When the HR director called to find out who the broker was, a quick Google search revealed the broker had been dead since 2014.

When Paul raised this publicly, an industry administrator pushed back saying "everybody's gotta get paid." Paul's response: you first have to be living. The story isn't just an anomaly, it's a window into an industry structurally incentivized for advisors to do nothing, stay invisible, and hope clients never think to ask questions.

What Manufacturers Are Leaving on the Table

The financial stakes for manufacturers are significant, particularly for business owners who often hold the largest account balances within their own plans. Paul walks through several practical opportunities most plan sponsors don't know they have:

• Negotiate record-keeping fees. Simply asking, no financial sophistication required, can reduce percentage-based fees that providers don't automatically lower as plan assets grow. On a $3 million plan, reducing the fee by 0.1% saves $3,000 every year, permanently.
• Negotiate or eliminate advisory fees. In many cases, advisors aren't performing active management; they're waiting for participant phone calls. Participants direct their own investments from a list of fund choices. The advisor isn't making buy-sell decisions for anyone.
• Demand dollar-denominated answers. Fee disclosures required since 2012 exist, but they're often expressed as percentages, buried in documents few people know to look for, and disconnected from any real-time cost experience. Asking "how much have you made off our plan in actual dollars, for each of the last three years?" is a question every plan sponsor should ask every provider.
• Consider paying fees at the employer level. Employers can choose to pay plan fees directly rather than passing them to participants. The benefit: employer-paid fees are tax-deductible business expenses, and the business owner, who typically holds the largest share of the plan balance, stops paying non-deductible fees out of a tax-advantaged account.

The Department of Labor has published research showing that an extra 1% in annual fees costs a 35-year-old participant with a $25,000 balance approximately $64,000 over 30 years; roughly 28% of their ending balance. For participants with larger balances, the damage is proportionally greater.

Why the Industry Doesn't Change on Its Own

Paul draws a sharp distinction between price transparency - being able to see fees - and price literacy, having enough context to know whether what you're seeing is reasonable. Even when fees are disclosed, there's no easy way to comparison-shop the way you would for a car or a cell phone. Providers don't make their pricing easy to compare. RFP processes often result in manufacturers switching from one expensive provider to another without meaningfully reducing costs.

The root cause, as Paul frames it, echoes economist Milton Friedman's four ways to spend money: the people making purchasing decisions about the plan often hold a small fraction of the assets, while the people whose money is actually at stake — participants and business owners — have little or no say. That misalignment is what keeps the market from behaving like a competitive one.

Paul is actively working with the Department of Labor to push for guidance — not mandates — that would require providers to send actual invoices reflecting fees in plain dollar terms. His view: if employers received invoices the way they receive bills from attorneys or accountants, the industry would change overnight.

Actionable Takeaways for Listeners

• Find out the name of every provider involved in your plan. Record keeper, administrator, advisor, custodian — list them all. More people may be getting paid than you realize.
• Ask every provider the same question in plain English: How much money have you made from our plan, in dollars, for each of the last three years?
• Don't accept a percentage as an answer. Push for actual dollar amounts. Fee disclosure documents exist but are often deliberately opaque.
• Negotiate. You don't need a financial background to pick up the phone and ask your record keeper to reduce your percentage fee. The worst they can say is no.
• Ask your advisor how many hours they've spent servicing your account, who they spoke to, and what they discussed. If the answer is vague, the fee is worth questioning.
• Consider whether you need an advisor at all. In participant-directed plans, advisors often aren't making any investment decisions. If services aren't being provided, fees shouldn't be either.
• Look into flat-fee providers. Companies like Ascensus and Employee Fiduciary offer low-cost, transparent, flat-fee structures that are often comparable in service quality to far more expensive alternatives.
• Think about paying plan fees at the employer level. It creates cost sensitivity, generates a tax deduction, and protects the tax-advantaged growth inside participant accounts.

Connect with Paul Sippil: paulsippil.com : resources, contact info, and more 📧 [email protected]