Latest / Better Planner / #5 - Is AI Making You More Productive? | AI Tools, Costs & Advisor Value
Transcript
- Taylor Stewart: Welcome back another episode of the Better Planer podcast. Colin, how are you? Colin: Great, Taylor, how are you? Taylor Stewart: I'm good. We were just having an interesting conversation about AI and token costs and going direct versus platforms that use AI and you said press record. So where were we and what do you want to talk about? Colin: Well first I said, what compliance concerns should I have before I say the things that I'm about to say? Because Taylor Stewart: Yeah Colin: we're about to talk about how I'm actually using it in my practice. And in some ways it's still like the Wild West for how are you leveraging these tools. and what are the security concerns and compliance concerns and risks and what all. But that's not what I wanted to talk about and that's what I'm afraid to talk about, honestly. But the bigger question is like, what a productivity, the bigger theme was what a productivity boost it is for a savvy user of these tools. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, well, and also a little fuller context because we have Dora now and Cordora, our AI assistant, and just the differences of costs and how you like the AI, if you use a cloud or a chat GPT directly, and then you use it in a platform like Cordora or some of the other ones out there, you may notice some differences. And why is that? And also the pricing differences. And so I mean think it might be helpful to know because basically when you work with, if you use a cloud or a chat GPT directly, you're paying probably a monthly 20 or a 100 or 200 dollar a month plan and it seems like you can use it a ton. And you might use a platform where you get rate limited or the answers don't seem the same but like a platform like Cordora or any of the others, we access models via API pricing, via the API and that pricing is wildly different. than what you experience. I don't know if I can give a concrete example, but I was showing you basically how I'm on a $100 a month codex plan right now for some of the stuff I do on Cordora. You can run, basically see how much your usage would have cost if it was just pure API pricing. In two and a half weeks, it's $1,155 is how much it would have cost via API pricing. Colin: Wow. Taylor Stewart: It's interesting for platforms, just the expectations of that experience direct versus inside of a platform and then that pricing, that's what we would like. It's tricky. But I think what you were saying is like, or what I was kind of saying is like, I would love to boost the usage, but like it's something like, or even use a better model that's going to cost more, cost more money. we think in like old software terms, like, I can't pay $50 a month more for this software. But it's like, no. If you're paying $50 a month more for an AI that's actually doing something for you, that's the cheapest employee in the world. Colin: Yeah, yeah, backing up with how we got on this topic, I just upgraded to a more, not to the enterprise version of Claude, but to the Teams version, which is on an enterprise contract. But I'm using it a ton and starting to use it for more... more tasks that where I'm going to it directly instead of through a note taker app or something. And the quality of the note I was getting out of Claude was just so much better than on an app that's using Claude in the background. or Chat TVT or whatever it is. It was so much better going direct. And, Taylor Stewart: Hmm. Colin: you know, I came to you as the expert here, someone who's dealt with this, Taylor Stewart: Hahaha, expert. Colin: you know, who's seen this from the other side and like, why is that? Why is this happening? Maybe I should just build this thing myself. And yeah, the pricing, that was totally new to me. How... how that divide happens. Taylor Stewart: Well, yeah, mean, and the price between models is wildly different too. like current day, we're probably going to date this episode here. Opus 4.7 and JetGBT 5.5 are the top models. And they are five to 10 times more expensive than like a Sonnet, which is a cloud model. so most platforms are like, that's actually where the engineering goes in. There's a lot you can do on the pricing stuff or like to manage your costs, your token costs, but like we'll use Sonnet for most things because especially like the extraction, we might even use some cheaper models for the actual then agentic stuff like once it's very clear on what to do but it's just the pricing is, it's getting talked a lot about a lot right now of like are these token prices sustainable? Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: Because something's going on. Either there's an insane markup on the API pricing or the subsidizing the crap out of the direct usage. And it's really interesting. And so for platforms, if your software stakes on like heavy AI usage based on current prices and token costs change, could delete the whole business in some ways. Let's say you're charging 60 bucks a month and then token costs go 3X. It's gonna be challenge. Colin: Yeah, I mean, that's true in any business model where you've got variable input costs and you've got more fixed output costs. And that can drive companies out of business or lead to massive swings, a big jump in the price of the product to the end user. you know, just because the input costs can change. Yeah, this is also fascinating because I mean, as a user of it, mostly on the personal side of it and now... Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: exploring using these newer models for real business work and productivity. It Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: is such a productivity multiplier that even though I can get in the headspace of like, my gosh, I just went from paying 20 bucks a month to 120 bucks a month, I gotta smack myself and say, do you know how much more productive this Taylor Stewart: you Colin: is making? you right now? Like if you had to hire somebody to do the work that like or to gain that kind of efficiency, like how much more it would cost? I mean that's the exciting part of all this. It's also the kind of scary part of AI development but... Taylor Stewart: Well, yeah, I mean, think the key is if you are being productive, because it's extremely, extremely easy to be very busy with AI. It can Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: do a bunch of stuff, but not necessarily finish anything. But if you have, this is anything about AI, like if you know what you want and are very clear, it's magic. Otherwise, it'll just play with you all day and waste your time and your money. And yes, like the price for what you pay for what you get, if you're clear on what you, there's never been anything like it. yeah, it's interesting all that could come of all this. But I was gonna say something else on that. this is just a side comment. I almost wish people had to pay per token, Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: so they could be way more intentional versus, let me just go chat just because I can. I know the last thing I was gonna say is when you said like I can't believe I'm paying $100 a month more. We did something internal at Cordora. My co-founder and I said, okay, we're gonna get on the max plan and our goal is to max it out every single month because we need to be finding productive uses of $200 a month. Are you freaking kidding me? And Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I should say, I mean, to this point, AI is completely optimized for software development and companies like. It's not like the Cordora world I live in is just like AI optimized like crazy the advisor world is still in the stone ages and Colin: Mm. Taylor Stewart: Just it'll get there eventually but it's like it's super easy for us to get insane productivity out of $200 a month over there and I told I told my co-founder was like we need to just we need to be finding uses to do this every month as much as possible and Yeah, but Colin: Yeah, because if you're not, somebody else is. Taylor Stewart: just it's sitting it's productivity sitting there. There's so many things Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: you can do clean up maintenance Yeah, so anyways, fun chat. we wanted to, go ahead, good. Colin: Yeah, yeah, that was gonna segue into what we were planning to talk about today, which actually Taylor Stewart: Yeah! Colin: turned out to be, you know, kind of a natural segue. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: Cause you sent me this text. Today we were trying to figure out what to talk about. And it was based on an XYPN post, know, Facebook post about... you know, prospect dealing with the question of how to frame their pricing model. This advisor happened to be advice only. And, you know, kind of how do you answer the client's question? Yeah, what do I get for your fee? Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Basically, what do I get for your fee? What do I get for your fee? Is it worth it? I'm sorry to cut you off there, was, yeah, like that's the main point was like, because it's not just an advice only thing, but like, is it worth it? What do I get in return? I think the specific question was like, what return, what return do I get in return with the investment return, which is the, I think I rolled my eyes when I said that because it's like the oldest, like, my God, that's not what this is about Colin: in it. Taylor Stewart: fee. I think, well, and then, and then I gave my script that I tell everybody and it got some nice response in there. So I figured it'd be worth talking about, but. Just yeah, what is your value and how do you explain it to clients? For me, I'll just jump into what I tell people because it's been so simplifying. For me, as I tell people literally verbatim, my value comes from four places. Number one is hopefully more money and that more money comes from efficiency, maybe lowering some expense ratios, making sure you're getting the highest interest rate you can on cash accounts and improved behavior. That's how we make you more money, not picking stocks. Education, you're going to probably learn something. Saving time, hopefully you're going to save some time. And the last one is this quiet of mind of knowing that somebody's looking over things for you. And then what I tell people is number one, the more money is impossible to quantify today. There's just no way to know. And number two through four, the education, saving time and quiet of mind is completely subjective. Some people will value it more than others. And so basically, it's up to you to determine whether my fee is worth it or not. Colin: Mmm. Taylor Stewart: And I don't know another, I don't know how, I think that's completely, I don't know how you could disagree with that. But I'd love to see you try. But what are your thoughts on that? For that being your value. Colin: I love that framework and I've used it probably not verbatim, but pretty close to it with Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Colin: prospects when they ask you to try to quantify. The first thought that goes off is every compliance officer out there is waving their hands, jumping up and down when a prospect asks you to quantify Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: what can you do for them. Gosh, you better not attach a number to it, Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: an actual number. you can, you know, just don't put a number on it, maybe is the general advice, but we all know that there is a dollar Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: benefit there or a potential for it, whether it's tax savings or whether it's, you know, improving investment returns, or at least like stopping them from making a big mistake pulling out of the market when it's down. Like there's no question there is real dollar value there. I think of the Vanguard put together, they do this on their advisor site where they Taylor Stewart: In Voser Alpha. Colin: try to show what your returns would be with and without an advisor. Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: I think they have a white paper on it and it's like a 3 % difference. I Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: don't know how they got that past their compliance people or what study it's based on, but you know. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, I believe because Dow bar is a really famous study. think they basically look at the returns of accounts managed by investors, by advisors and accounts not managed by advisors Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: and come up with something like that. I think that's, I think, I mean, there's always questions with how those numbers are calculated, but like quantifying like that is so tricky. I've. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, I don't know. It would never come out of my mouth anymore, I think early on in my career. Colin: Mm-mm. Taylor Stewart: I actually wrote about it in my first book, The Dalbar Myth. But I do think probably it's true though, that over the life of a client, there is gonna be the like, you stayed invested, you did one or two little, that's the other problem. Value is lumpy. It's Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: not like every month, especially for, you charge monthly, right? Colin: Charging my toy, yeah. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, that's like they're gonna be this like well, what did I get this month? It's like no the way it's gonna work is it's gonna be like nothing nothing nothing saved your life nothing nothing nothing But like it is just true like that's just how life works. There's not like this every month I did this one thing that improved everything that's nice in theory, but just not how it works and so I don't know, just feel like that kind of getting back to like how do you explain your value or what is your value? I think that's it. Like it's those four things and it is impossible. We can try all you want unless you have a strategy. like we're trying to beat the index by one and a half percent a year, which nobody's really doing these days. Like that's just it. Like the value is hard, impossible to quantify today and it's different for everybody else. But that's not different than professions like a physical trainer. Like it's not just the dollar amount. Like some people just enjoy it. Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: And that's okay. I don't know. It's not always about did I make more money? And then it's also like, did you make more money? For what unit of time did you give up to make that more money? there's just, I think that's been so freeing for me to just say that's my value. Hopefully more money. I literally say hopefully. Hopefully. And then Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: you're probably gonna learn something. Hopefully save some more time. And then. You're quite a mind. Some people don't care about any of that. Some people like doing it themselves. Some people already know everything. And those aren't going to be valuable to you. Yeah. Colin: Yeah. I'm nervous to wade into this next arena, but obviously this discussion is adjacent to or invariably going to bring up questions about pricing models. there are certainly strong opinions on every pricing model out there, whether you are billing hourly, whether you are doing a flat fee, an AUM fee, commission-based. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Colin: How do you communicate your value and then put a price on it or a pricing mechanism on it and Taylor Stewart: Yep. Yeah. Colin: communicate that to the client? Taylor Stewart: I think there is no perfect compensation model. Every compensation model has their own issues. do think you can have objective incentive. There are objective incentives behind each compensation model that shouldn't be ignored. like, think pretending that there's not that incentive is just crazy. if, okay, commission is an obvious one. If you're paid by commission, your incentive is to... sell something, move money in some sort of way. If you're paid only for assets under management, your incentive is to get assets under management. If you're paid by the hour, your incentive is to spend a lot of hours. If you're paid just for the project, your incentive is to get it done as quickly as possible. There's no debating that right there. But aside from that, let's say you're, well, mean, let me pause there. Any thoughts? thoughts, disagreements with that. Colin: Yeah, mean, no disagreements. think that was freeing to me as a new advisor, you know, because we were in the same XYPN launch group and I'd come into it just... with all sorts of internal conflicts about how I was gonna charge and what I was gonna charge and who I wanted to work with. And just framing it that way that like there's no perfect model. And each has flaws. It's first just like a, I think more people should. People should, but I wish more people would recognize that. I think that would tone down some of the heated debates that happened in the chat and get in the holes. Taylor Stewart: It's advisors, yeah, you can see it. Normally advisors are the ones who care the most and they're crap talking the other models and it gets so tiring. I think that's where you just, what's objective? There are incentives. You cannot ignore that there are differences in incentives. I mean, I think, and I tell people this too, I built Adderoke this way because I believe it's best. I don't believe it's best because Adderoke was built that way. I think... I chose the flat fee model that does manage investments but doesn't charge extra for it for a reason because I believe saying like I have no incentive, my compensation does not depend on where your money ends up. I think that is objectively the most often best model. I said that stupidly because there are times where sometimes Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: you don't need it and sometimes a commission model is better, sometimes an hourly model is better. I do think that on the whole is great and it's nice to say you can keep your money where it is, I can manage it directly, it doesn't cost you extra. Because my thinking was the value is in the advice, not who's clicking by yourself. Now, come to find out actually sometimes managing it directly for people is more valuable because it actually gets done. like, yeah, that's just. A quick thought there, I have two more thoughts that are swirling in my mind. First of all, hourly, I think we talked about this maybe in the first one, it's so tricky because you could change somebody's life in an hour that's worth $100,000. Could be, Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: depending on the size of the case, but you're not gonna get paid for that. Colin: Sure. Taylor Stewart: And so it gets back to this, you're not getting paid for effort, you're getting paid for results, and on an hourly model, that's extremely difficult to charge full value. Colin: Yeah, because those early hours are the most valuable hours. That's Taylor Stewart: Cuz just do the do... Yeah. Colin: when you're going to find the savings for the client or the most glaring gap in their plan. And, you know, they could well say, well, see you. Thanks. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, yeah. And if you took like, let's say you charge AUM on a pretty wealthy client, typical fees, and you do great work for them, your hourly rate is insane. And there is no way you could charge your hourly rate. Just call it what it is. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily, if you're actually producing results. And then my other swirling thought is, I think a lot of people get into the flat fee world because they think AUM is overpriced and they love to say like, pay 1 % when you could pay $10,000 a year? And I used to be in that camp. like, yeah. But then I was like, Colin: Mm-hmm. Taylor Stewart: this is stupid. Nobody's talking about value here. That's actually what actually matters. Like, why are you a masochist? It's like, yay, I'm gonna charge you 1 10th of what it's worth. Why? Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: And I think we've both come a long ways on this, that flat fee does not mean lower fee. It's just a different way of computing it. Flat fee doesn't have to mean the same fee either. We talked about this in the first one of like, well, it doesn't take me any more effort to serve somebody with a higher net worth. It's not about effort. People say like, a Colin: Sure. Taylor Stewart: restaurant doesn't ask, you know. when somebody says how much does this meal cost, you don't ask them how much is in your wallet. Well, it's not the same because they're getting a different value out of that meal than in financial advice. And so I don't know where going with all this. just think basically my main takeaway is that there is no perfect model. Charge Colin: Mm. Taylor Stewart: for value, there are incentive differences and clients are picking up on that. think, yeah, they are becoming more aware of some of the different models. But the price itself, which was actually your original question, is, and we should probably talk about that, like how do you come up with the price? That's tricky. Colin: Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to, and I've evolved my pricing structure over time. I I came in as an AUM, you with an ADV that said I charged by AUM and then I've added on an hourly model. I've added, you you got me into this flat fee model and that's the one that I've stuck with. But how do you choose a price? I mean, I think it's... That is, that's hard. You know, because there is such a, I think it has to start with who do you want to work with and how do you want to serve them. Taylor Stewart: Yep. Colin: Because that totally dictates the price that you can charge. Like you can't charge a super high hourly rate to somebody that's, you know, making very little. You Taylor Stewart: Hmm? Colin: can't, you can't, well, I don't want to be so... It's hard to charge a flat fee, know, stick to your, it's hard to feel good about sticking to a flat fee when you've got somebody that walks in that's, you know, you're charging 10 basis points too. And so how do you pick what you do? I think you have to, it depends on the model. It depends on who you're trying to serve. Yeah, how do you think about it? I've got too many thoughts swirling around in my head to be coherent at the moment. Taylor Stewart: about how much your price should be. Well, I come back to this of like, a golf lesson comes to mind. A golfer, I take some lessons and let's say it costs $250 a lesson. And then there's also golf tech down the street where you can get like a package of 10 lessons for $600. Am I getting ripped off? I Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: mean, I think there's an objective difference, but is it objective? You can just pay more for stuff. It can be up to the consumer. don't know why we forget, consumers have choice in everything else. They can go to way more expensive restaurant and get a $30 burger or a $6 burger. They choose the 30. They're happy with it, they'll do it again. If they're not, they won't. Why do we have this moral, I need to be the cheapest person in the world? Some people just wanna pay more for stuff. And if they don't get value out of it, but if they don't get value Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: out of it, they'll stop paying for it. And I should say, I'm a bit of a masochist myself. You look at my pricing, I've undercharged my whole career. I tell people all the time, I run a charity, and I'm trying to get better at that. But I'm not over a high-priced advisor. I'm sure everybody thinks that. Yeah, like. People should always know what they're paying. I think that's a big one. If they don't know what they're paying, that's a problem. But if they do know and they're okay with it, okay. That's reacting to some of the advisor posts of basically just crapping on, they're paying their advisor $60,000 a year and they can pay me 10. If they're happy with it and content, then who freaking cares? You're gonna nitpick everything on their expense item? Sometimes people just do it. If they're aware of it Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: and happy with it and they feel like they're getting value, great for them. Colin: Yeah, think so much of this comes from, I mean, the value is in the eye of the client at the end of the day. I mean, yes, we as advisors have to be confident in that we are providing value. I mean, and I think I spend the most time thinking about like, I actually doing enough for these people to justify Taylor Stewart: Hmm. Colin: the fee that I'm charging and... Taylor Stewart: It's not up for you to decide that. Colin: That, yeah, that's true, but I mean, on another level, I still feel like I have a moral responsibility to not slack off or not just milk the clients. Taylor Stewart: to find out. Colin: Define how. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: This goes back to our first episode, what do you actually do for your clients? Because like let's say your job is to make sure that they understand their financial life and know what to do next. And you don't have to meet Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: them with them for an entire year because you've done such a good job that you don't have to meet with them for a year. I just reframed that Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: versus like I didn't meet for them a year. I've got to get in front of them. I feel bad about charging them. What if that's not what they want? What if their goal is to see you as little as possible and make sure they feel like they understand their financial life and they know what they're doing next? Are you slacking off by not meeting them or are just that good? Colin: Hmm. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Nobody thinks that way. We think we got to do something, justify our fee. I feel so bad. I think advisors are like so insecure about our fee. It drives so much what we do. Like I've got to optimize this. I've got to give them this experience. can't let, just know your job. What is your job? Get clear on what you do. And if you're delivering it, then great. Colin: Yeah, boy, yeah, we're not going to settle the debate today. Taylor Stewart: Well, I mean, like there isn't, what is there to settle? Like there's nuance with all of this. There is no perfect answer. And people gotta Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: accept that. There's no perfect me fee model, so stop trying to pretend that there is. You know, it's just, there's no perfect model. That's hard. Colin: Yeah. Bringing it full circle back to Cordora. I know you struggled with, how do you price a product like this? Taylor Stewart: Mm. Colin: And so I want to flip flip from like the advisor business, which which I mean, probably all. listeners are in, thinking about it in the context of a different kind of business, like the software business, Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: how do you justify your fee? And in some ways it seems almost like the Taylor Stewart: Yep. Colin: contrast between the types of the dollar figures that we're talking about in the advisor world, when you've got an hourly rate of $250 an hour or a flat fee of $10,000 a year. between that fee and what my subscription for Cordora Taylor Stewart: So, Colin: is is huge. Taylor Stewart: well, okay, this is a related thought that we'll talk about the software. But one thing I always tell people too is like, I'm talking about clients evaluating advisor fees. Sometimes you'd be like, paying 1 % over the course of your life is $500,000. Like, here's Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: 8 % and then here's 8 % minus 1 % fee. Look how much you paid. The massive flaw in that is assuming you could do the exact same thing without paying the fee. So if you can get the exact same results, not paying an advisor as you can get for paying an advisor, then obviously it's worse. But like that's an insane calculation and it drives me crazy when I see it because it's like, obviously if you can get the same results for free, free is better. Shut the hell up about it. that's the whole, this, that's what I'm saying. No, I'm serious. It drives me insane because it's, Colin: Yeah, no, I see. Taylor Stewart: it makes no sense. Like thanks for nothing, you know? Be like, if Colin: Mm-hmm. Taylor Stewart: we didn't pay the CEO this year, we would have made more money. Uh-huh. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: So, okay, back to. And then kind of that DIY like mindset there, go to the software. how do you price software? I think this is fascinating. The AI is just changing this even more so than ever, basically. It feels like you get to like, you build it yourself versus do you pay for software? Is that kind of where you're going with some of this? Like, how do you think about pricing? Because I mean, Colin: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: pricing, you got to charge more than your costs and then market kind of determines some of it. I mean, I would argue some tools are just wildly underpriced for what they do for you. there's just this weird thing of like, don't pay more for software, but like... The build it yourself thing, because now that anybody can build software in theory, it just comes down to is that what you want to spend your time on? And it's amazing. You can see off the bat the types of advisors. Let's say, I think our price is like $200 a month right now for Cordora, and we offer like $2,000 a year. First of all, there's costs in there. So even if you wanted to build yourself and operate it yourself, you're not saving $200 a month. You're going to be duplicating a bunch of those costs. But then it's like, how many hours are you going to spend building it to save what? And some advisors just right off the bat, I mean, I've heard it from people's mouths like, yeah, I could, but why would I? For some people, it's just that simple because they're Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: more value focused of like, okay, I could spend three weeks building it or or whatever the tool is or I could just go make money in my real job. Yeah. But then you got kind of the cost conscious. Well, mean, I got, what's the, like, I think that's the simplest way. Like, what do you want to spend your time on? Like, it's not just about cost. Like, you must not have any more valuable stuff to do. I've been in this trap. When I tinkered and built stuff, it's because I didn't have clients to go serve. Because that's Colin: Mmm. Taylor Stewart: absolutely the most wealth and creative thing to do is go serve clients and do your job versus like rebuild stuff to save costs. So. I mean, just for me, it's like, some people are gonna do it yourself for tinkerers, others aren't. And like, I don't have to be a solution for everybody. Same way I would think about it with clients. Like, I don't need to change your mind. And do it yourself, go for it. You know, for Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: people who don't want that and they just want a working tool that's connected to everything and secure and all that stuff, then here we go. It's an insanely cheap price for what you get for it. You know? Colin: Ha ha. Taylor Stewart: And so, the price, I mean... Yeah, you cover your costs and charge something that makes sense for you to stay in business, kind of like anything else. There's more to software pricing than that, but at a high level, that's it. I've had to stop taking so many calls from people who want to build their own tools, just because it's too much, but I just tell people, just be careful. Is it a distraction or actually helpful? I don't know, thoughts on that. Colin: Yeah, lot of thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I'm prone to being one of those do-it-yourselfers, just because I like to tinker, Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Colin: and I probably spend too much time doing it, for sure. the other thought I had, you know, is just being, it's like fun to be an amateur. Like you can learn the growth Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: trajectory is, you know, the learning curve is kind of on your. side right now with all these insane tools that are out there. But one of my favorite charts of all time is the Dunning-Kruger effect, where you've got this insane growth curve for early mastery of a subject, and then you get to the peak of Mount Stupid, where you don't know what you don't know, and you've accumulated all this. technical debt or, Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: or, you know, just hubris and you don't know Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: the mistakes that you've been making, as you've had this meteoric increase in product, what you think is productivity. And then you, you know, you crash down into back, back to earth and, into the valley of despair over this stuff. so like the difference between like being an amateur and being a professional in, in this world, even in, even with how much AI. has shifted things and put like power in the hands of you know amateurs really you know like I can go out and build a working prototype really quickly of something that does really cool thing But that doesn't mean I should go out and be a software developer, because I don't know anything about that. And Taylor Stewart: You're dead. Colin: the thing that I built is going to break once this Taylor Stewart: So, Colin: edge case happens or use happens. Taylor Stewart: two thoughts there. My co-founder said this beautifully months ago that Vibe coding is the new spreadsheets. So spreadsheets were actually a form of, they're a form of development of coding. There's a database, you're writing logic functions and there's a UI and all this stuff. That's all Vibe coding is. Because you're building internal tools, they're better version control, all that. They're great. And that's great. People should be doing that to the extent that they can. There's some security stuff there. that's been a good framing, that those are internal tools and they're great. All of this AI stuff, I can build a website, I can design, I can build software. You still can't do it as good as a pro with that tool though. And so Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: there's this like, here's where we were, here's the pro, here's the amateur, now the amateur's here. The pro didn't just stop getting better. And so Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: the software that real engineers are building are way better than you'll ever build vibe coding. And the designs that designers are building with their tools are way better than what we'll build by prompting, know, getting a, you know, an average of everything else out there. So it's like, you can do that. It's still not going to be best in class though. And it doesn't necessarily Colin: Sure. Taylor Stewart: have to be for certain things, but that's just been an interesting framing too of like, yeah, great. You can build it the way it was 10 years ago. It's really what it is. And so, yeah, Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I mean, That's kind of a separate conversation than like how we price software. Just I think for people to how to think about the tools. something I told you before, I don't think we had recorded yet, but like it is so easy to be busy with AI. But are you actually being productive with AI? That's the key right now because AI is amazing at making a lot of stuff happen very quickly and making it feel really productive. And some people are harnessing that and doing great. I think you have to have a little bit of a natural exploration phase, but. I don't know how we got on that, but just be careful. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Just try to get like, what's the point of, if you're tinkering, know that you're tinkering. Just don't call it work. Maybe it ends up working, but you're exploring, which is healthy to a point. Colin: Sure. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Just what's the end goal? I know, I think it's very similar to the do it yourself for client. You can, you can. Colin: Yeah, it's so similar and I think your way of communicating how... an advisor should or can communicate their value to a potential client is like, sometimes we need to take our own medicine. We think we can calculate what's the dollar difference, how much are you gonna improve my revenue by? Who freaking knows? Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Colin: But if you're learning something, if you're saving time, if you are happier working that way, then like. Taylor Stewart: It is, that's a great parallel. client can say, know what, I'm not gonna hire you, I'm gonna save the $10,000 a year and I'm gonna research my portfolio every Saturday and make these trades and do all this. You're gonna do all that to end up in the same spot you were? You could Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: have been by hiring me. It's like kind of like maybe the same with tools like, I don't want to pay this. I'm going to go spend a month rebuilding this and get distracted and give them all this just to end up with maybe a tool that's kind of as good. It's just interesting. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I mean, we all deal with this. we have to there's another I wish I could pull up the chart. Again, my co-founder brought this to me of like of like what's worth rebuilding, what's worth automating and like how long does it if something takes you five seconds. It's not worth spending a week automating. You have to do it like 10,000 times before you ever make that time back. But we just don't think that way in the moment. It's like, well, obviously I gotta do this. Good. Colin: I need to put that on a post-it note and stick it right to my computer screen. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, we're all we're all guilty. Guilty this and like we deal with like, dude, you think we If you think advisors are bad about wanting to rebuild stuff, you should see engineers. They're not impressed by anything because they know how everything's built. They can build it all. And we have to be like, why would we? We're paying them $100 a month. Why would we spend four days? Literally, why would we spend four days building it? There's no value in doing it. It doesn't matter if you can. And that's kind of the new thing with AI is you've got to have that taste and that discretion on what to build and what not to build and what to do and what not to do. So apparently this is a conversation about what's your value as an advisor and some AI chat. You Colin: I hope other folks get something out of it. It was a rambling, far-raising chat. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, it's fun though. It's fun. like, yeah, to tie it together, your value, I love that I'm a fan of my four areas. If you got a better way, that's great. But I found that to be extremely freeing across the board and you're not for everybody. That's the other thing. You're not for everybody. You don't have to work with everybody. You don't have to work with everybody. If somebody doesn't think it's worth it, it's not an attack on your value. It's a difference of opinion. The same way that you Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: don't think... a gym, a restaurant, a resort, or a car is worth it, somebody else does, it's totally fine. It's fine, and it's up to the consumer whether they get it valuable or not. Don't abuse that. that's Colin: Yeah. The end. Taylor Stewart: super freeing. And there's no perfect pricing model. There's incentives. Each one encourages a different set of incentives that are right and wrong in different situations. I think at the end of the day, it's confidence. You gotta be confident in your own fee. Colin: Yeah, Taylor Stewart: It comes with time. It comes with time. Colin: definitely. Definitely. Well, thanks, Taylor. Always learn something. Taylor Stewart: Of man. Same, looking forward to the next one. Colin: Yeah, till next time. Taylor Stewart: See you next time.