Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 136: Leveraging Technology and AI for Amplifying Your Client Experience Process w/ John Prendergast

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136: Leveraging Technology and AI for Amplifying Your Client Experience Process w/ John Prendergast · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Gone are the days of traditional paper statements and manual updates.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: As financial advisors, we're now equipped with an array of digital tools and platforms that not only streamline our operations but also really redefine how we engage with our clients.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: In this digital era, clients expect more than just numbers.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: They crave personalized insights, real-time updates and seamless interactions.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: So if you're a financial advisor looking to harness the potential of digital reporting to not only meet but exceed your client's expectations, you are in the right place.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Today, we'll be exploring practical strategies and expert insights on how to leverage technology, including AI-powered solutions, to really craft an unparalleled client experience that builds trust, that fosters transparency and these long lasting client relationships that we're all looking for.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: My guest today, ceo of Blue Leaf, john Pendergrass, is going to help us understand how advisors can create client experience through a digital lens, even for the not-so-techie.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So enjoy this conversation between me and John about creating a client engagement loop and really transforming your client experience with I don't know what you'd call it digital magic.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Look, I know you're here because you know it's possible to have leftover energy for your family and still have your dream business the business that you are running instead of it running you, and today we're going to talk about how you can use technology to do just that.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: So if you're new to the Efficient Advisor, welcome.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Griewy.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I started, built and sold by 37, a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel-obsessed human who loved taking vacations.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same thing and to really just help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Really, my job is to help you figure out how to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So let's dive into this interview with John Pendergast.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Well, john, welcome to the show.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I am so glad to have you here, as we were kind of chatting before we hit record.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I always like to make sure that I have guests who are truly, truly in the financial planning space, and I especially love when I have a guest who has been there done.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It was in the trenches as an advisor and I would love for you to just kind of share your backstory and sort of how you ended up where you are right now.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess I qualify as somebody who ran screaming from the trenches.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: So my exposure to financial advice and financial planning I mean man, it goes back to when I was in high school.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I actually traded stocks in high school and eventually used that to help pay my way through college, and so I've been fascinated with finance and investing for a really long time and long circuitous path you and I were talking.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: It seems like no one has a direct path in this industry and I am no different.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I did a bunch of different things, including running a Boston chicken Boston market franchise, so lots of different things.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: But after I sold that business I wanted to get back into the industry and I started doing some work with Merrill Lynch as an FC and eventually rolled out to a small financial planning firm because I thought, well, the cold calling thing wasn't my thing, let me try and do this more as a planner.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: And lo and behold, you still have to generate business and you still have to go out and get after things and, honestly, what this industry does for a living in terms of generating business was just too hard for me.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: But I've always kept it in my heart.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I went to business school, I rolled out of business school and became an investment banker.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: I hear the booze from the audience.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: I wasn't one of those bankers.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I didn't cause the financial crash, though.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I lived through it.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: So I did M&A and I did some public offerings for technology companies, and my undergrad was actually a combined undergrad computer science and economics, so you can kind of see where this is going.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And then the financial crash happened and I got calls from panicked friends and relatives, many of whom were financial advisors still, and financial planners, and no one could tell what was going on.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody had a very complex financial life where accounts were everywhere lots of institutions, lots of accounts.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: There's no one way to see it all.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: And I rolled out and I founded what eventually became Blue Leaf.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I've done a lot of different things and I have a deep appreciation for the work that financial planners do and financial advisors more generally.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: It's hard, it's a hard business to get up and running, it's a hard business to maintain, it's a hard business to scale, and so founding Blue Leaf was about making that a little bit easier.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: A little bit easier to manage your client relationships, a little bit easier to operate the business.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And here I am.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, good, I just want to pause real quick and highlight something that you said.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: So, for people listening, if you feel like this job, this business, is hard, you are not alone.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It is hard because it feels hard, because it is actually really, really challenging.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So anytime we can bring on a guest or present a template or an idea or something that makes working as a financial advisor just even a little bit easier for you, I am totally here for it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So today we're kind of diving into this idea of client experience through sort of a digital lens.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: So would you share with us what is the question that everyone kind of looks at?
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Or client experience is sort of a good buzz phrase right now.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: When you say client experience, what does that mean to you, john?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's comprehensive, so we are going to look at it through a digital lens, but I think of the client experience as literally everything that touches or impacts clients.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: It can be your office and your office decor, it can be your process, it can be your information gathering forms, it can be your Zoom background Literally everything that touches a client.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And I think where Blue Leaf comes at it is well, traditionally, a big part of client experience is actually the reporting that we share with clients, and these days, in a digital world, quarterly report with a maybe annual review meeting, it's just not enough.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: So how do you engage clients with a combination of presence and meetings and the like, but engage them digitally, the way that they are all expecting today?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And so that's how we think of client experience.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Digital is a big component because it's the thing that allows you to automate and scale your client experience, but it never replaces the personal interactions with the advisor.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: It's only a supplement.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So you're saying digitally.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: It's important for advisors to kind of come alongside that live experience that they're still providing, but perhaps there's ways for their advisors to work more efficiently by having better digital presence or a better digital client experience?
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Am I understanding that correctly?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, and I think of it more than in addition, because I think it is more about adapting to the reality on the ground today, particularly post pandemic.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: So if you asked most advisors, particularly four or five years ago, are your clients online?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: No, they're old, they don't have an email address.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: You know all of these things, but what a lot of advisors haven't yet really truly adapted to is how different the world is post pandemic.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you a, for instance, one of the most astonishing stats that I've heard recently is actually it's not that recent 2021, there was a study put out by Fyserv that showed that.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of the numbers it was 72% of wealth management clients 70 and older engaged in online banking and they did so an average of six times a month.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Think about that for a second 72% of those 70 and older, six times a month.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So this idea that and I hear this all the time from advisors when we're talking about, like, ideal client avatars and how to connect and build out a client experience that serves them, I do hear that a lot that, oh, I need to be doing snail mail or gosh, a YouTube video isn't gonna work for me because.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Or my clients yeah, my clients are too old, they don't want to do online banking.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So that's really a bunch of mindset issues.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Right, that's a limiting belief or just a bunch of baloney that we kind of have has trickled over from pre-pandemic.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it's baloney.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I think it's.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: The world changed and we haven't necessarily adjusted, so and if you think about it, why the pandemic was so transformative?
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: So in most places, people didn't get together in person.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: So, grandma and grandpa, how am I gonna interact with my kids, my grandkids?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna get on Zoom.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: So everyone learned to get on Zoom or FaceTime or pick your favorite interactive technology, like we're on now.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Grandma and grandpa now also follow the grandkids on Facebook, and they have been the fastest growing demographic digitally for a really long time.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: So I think it's old thinking to think that my clients aren't online.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Now, are there clients that are still not online?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Of course, 72% that means 28%, obviously are not using online banking every month.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: So there's still a percentage, but it's far lower.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: And for those that are, I mean their lives are shaped by major media companies like Netflix and Facebook, et cetera, and that's how they're used to engaging online, which is a much more frequent immersive experience than anything that your typical advisor is putting out there, and so our business is, at least partially, about helping advisors adjust to that new reality on the ground and benefiting from it, cause there's a lot of benefits from frequent touches with your clients.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me a little bit about that.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So this idea of, okay, major media outlets are engaging with our clients digitally in a really meaningful and impactful way what does that look like?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: So, in your world, when you're talking to advisors about engaging clients digitally, what does that look like?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: What does that mean to you?
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: So I want every advisor and every advisory firm to be able to engage with their clients in exactly the same way as a Facebook or a Netflix can.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: So how does that manifest?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: So for most of the listeners, that you use a digital service, maybe you use Netflix, maybe use Facebook.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: So let's use Netflix as an example.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: This morning I opened my email and I had a message from Netflix about something to watch or something relevant to me.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't unsubscribe, I didn't click on it either I was going to work, but I saw it and tonight I am likely to remember that top of mind and potentially go watch something on Netflix and log in.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll get the email and click right through and participate in it and it will take me wherever I need to go.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: So if I'm doing that on my mobile device, it'll take me through on a mobile experience.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: If I'm doing that on the web, it'll take me through my browser on my PC and it connects all of the channels through interactive messaging and creates what we call in the design world, an engagement loop, and it does that on a very frequent basis.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: And then Netflix, facebook, et cetera, become part of our everyday experience, and that's really key, because that engagement is how we value services today.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: In fact, some have argued, and I'd certainly argue, we're in an engagement economy where the value of most of the experiences we have is based on how engaged we are, the quality and frequency of that engagement, and we want advisors to be able to deliver that same kind of experience to enhance what they're already doing and the other relationships that they're doing.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so right.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So I get you know.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Being that I have children, I get Disney Plus sends me.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Hey, here's all the cool new stuff that's coming out.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Here's what's happening this week.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting because all of that stuff used to go to my husband because he was the account holder and I was never getting it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going how on earth does he know all of this?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Like, how did like, unbeknownst to me, he was gonna get an email every week kind of telling him what was coming.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And it was just funny because the kids would be like Mom, how come you don't know any of this?
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: So now that I'm the subscriber, I get those weekly emails and it's it is.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: It's like oh, that's so great, I'm gonna remember that for, you know, family movie night, or I'm gonna keep that in.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So what does that look like for a financial advisor?
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So, maybe like topically, it's not as exciting as family movie night.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So what does that look like?
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Give us some like really tangible examples of what clients are truly wanting to engage in and what that interactive engagement loop looks like for financial planning.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Sure, there's a variety of things here that could do this job.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So, and the other thing I'd point out is there are two different kinds of engagement.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: There's episodic engagement and many of your listeners may hear the dialogue about advice engagement, and typically this is referencing getting clients involved in the planning process, as it happens, and maybe a little longer, but getting them engaged in the thinking, engaged in providing data, et cetera.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: So that's advice engagement and that's kind of episodic.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Right, you're one and you're done.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Think of tax planning, you're gonna do that and then you're done.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: And then there's engagement over time, right?
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: So when something specific isn't happened, how do we engage?
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: So how do we do that?
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Well, one way to do that is to show people what's happening to them that's relevant to them.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: You could send an update on their balance sheet, so not a performance report, just here's how my accounts have changed, in the full context of their balance sheet, and that can tell them how their money's changing over time not how they're performing, but sort of what they have and how it's changed and it gives them a connection to their finances.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Now, if that email comes or that message comes from their financial advisor, now that's a value added engagement point, and then if that client wants to get more information about that, they could reply to their advisor, they could click and log into the advisor's portal, and so on and so forth, and that creates the same kind of a loop with the relevant parts of their financial life as the trigger.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Right Change is what attracts attention, and your financial life changes a little bit every single day, and simple updates like that can really connect people to their money and to their experience with their financial planner and remind them of all the value that their planner has delivered to them.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so are we talking when we talk about digital presence and this engagement loop?
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Is email the primary way that we're communicating with our clients or the primary way that we deliver this experience?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's one of many channels.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: But if you think about the web or mobile, the web in particular is really a passive medium.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Right, it sits and waits for you to come to it.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Mobile can be passive or active, right?
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: You can do mobile native messaging either in an app, right?
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: So if you've got a mobile app, the mobile app can do messaging, or you could do it via SMS, presuming you've got the right compliance solution in place that that can be an acceptable way to do that.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Email is pretty universal.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Almost everybody has email, so it's a convenient messaging channel that can then connect to any other channel you'd like, right?
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: So if I'm reading my email on mobile, then it's gonna connect to mobile.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: If I'm reading it on my computer, it's gonna connect to the regular web browser.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: So I think of it as more part of the mix than the primary channel.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Sure, okay, so you're talking about you kind of used the phrase that.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: That was really interesting like with episodic versus engagement over time being related specifically to the client's individual.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: So not a newsletter, not a one to many digital video, but the highest engagement or part of that client experience is more I just wanna make sure I'm understanding this correctly is you are able to then send them stuff that's specific to their own finances, so-.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, because one of the comments that I get from advisors all the time is I'm making these great newsletters or I'm putting all this time and effort into these wonderful YouTube videos and the open rate is complete garbage.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So I'm assuming, then, that the open rate for what it is that you guys are doing are these reports, are these kind of more individualized, client specific experiences are much, much higher and much more engaging.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So we see on our platform and I don't wanna make this all about the Blue Leaf platform that's why I've been focused on sort of the overall method as opposed to oh, it's all about Blue Leaf, but Sure, the open rates and the engagement rates.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: We see is about 70 to 90% of clients in any given month will have engaged with the system in one way, shape or form, and that's so.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: In order to be an engagement you have to have opened the email and interacted with it, so more than just a preview and a browser.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So that is much higher engagement.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And it isn't necessarily that Blue Leaf and what Blue Leaf does specifically, but it's the overall notion of delivering something specific to that end client.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: If you think about your Disney Plus experience that you talked about, they've figured out okay, based on what you watch, we're gonna engage with you with content that's related to that.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: We think all the data suggests will be interesting to you, so it's tailored to you.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Now, the most tailored thing to any client is their own money.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: So whenever you can deliver information to them about their own financial situation in a simple package that's easy to understand, that doesn't emphasize all the market movements, because we wanna do quite the opposite.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: We want to put those in context.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Then you're going to get high engagement.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, I love that.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So give me some, because I know this is so.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I always like sitting here.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, if I were listening, what would be my next question be?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And I think my next question would be give us some concrete examples of what are some of the things that you guys find like, hey, when we send this type of email or this type of trigger, what are some of the best and are the most engaged activities?
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Is it like you mentioned before?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Hey, there's been a change in your financial.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: What is it that kind of tends to draw the most attention?
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'd say that there's an element of context here that we want to keep in mind, and the context is the overall market, the overall economy, what's happening in the news, etc.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And so it is always the case that something very personal to the client is what's going to get their attention most, and that is most true when something a little unnerving is happening in the market.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: So what happens if you're not doing that?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Phone calls hey, how's my account doing.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Or emails oh my God, the market's off.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: What's happening?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: So you can imagine that what they're trying to do is they're satisfying their concern, curiosity, etc.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: By trying to do that.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: In this case, what they're able to do is get that information through by a digital means, via this pushed, pushed, and then you can get that information, pushed, information as a, for instance, and so at those times the engagement is right, at the top right.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: So you're going to see 90 plus engagement in those times and you're going to see more activity on portals and mobile apps and open rates.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: They go through the roof.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: And it's the combination of those things, the message, and it's how well tailored is to the end user, but it is also the context and how that changes, and that's one of the keys here is in thinking about a system that can be super consistent, delivering information to clients on your behalf, from you, that tailored to your firm that's your firm branding, etc.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Which clients then count on, and when there's turbulence they lean on that and it eliminates a lot of the panic phone calls that we typically see.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So the contact that you, is there a specific amount of contact that's the right amount, where it's not too much, it's not too little.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: We're like sorry, I'm picturing like okay, so if we're sending something once a month for our clients to engage with and they come to expect that, does that feel as much like well, hey, we're addressing this kind of acute issue that's happening with some context in the marketplace, or do you suggest both?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Or is there a certain cadence that you guys have seen works the best?
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: We have advisors that implement variety of strategies and approaches, so we see folks who do mostly traditional and then supplemented a little bit here and there and, as you might imagine, their engagement rates are quite a bit lower.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: We have seen advisory firms attempt to do daily and that that does turn out to be too much.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Like a lot.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even if I love something.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I want it all daily.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, yeah, you become at that point it's more like a marketing thing, and also the changes become so small as to be meaningless.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: You?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Your balance sheet moves, you know, a couple hundred dollars in a day.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Even if it's a $2 million balance sheet, it just doesn't do much, so so that's probably too frequent.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: The most frequent strategy that we've seen employed, and really the most successful, is weekly plus.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: So what do I mean by that is where there's an automated something that hits clients every single week with all my branding etc.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And then additional supplemental messages that come out periodically or episodically.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So it might be that I write a market newsletter monthly, so maybe I do that.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: In addition, it might be that I also okay, there's a market condition I want to write about and I send it out in the middle of the week, and that's when that's happening.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: And we've seen advisors that will connect 150 200 times a year using that, that mix of strategies, and you might think that that was too much, but that's how much the context has changed.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Those advisors are doing wonderfully.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Their clients are super happy, they're stable, super long term focused, which is quite the opposite of what you might think.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, those clients must be a nightmare.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: They're actually they're very comfortable, long term focused, I think, because they know the details of what's happening but they know the context.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: So if Jim Kramer is honking his horn and you don't know exactly where you're at, that's an uncomfortable tension so you feel the need to resolve that or you just sit in discomfort.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: But if the advisors provided information that sort of resolves that and it does it at a much higher level, like the balance sheet, just not not just the investment account Well, so my let's say, it's bad week.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: My investment account is off a little bit.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Well, my mortgage I just made a mortgage payment and that's decreased.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: So now, actually, net, my balance sheet is up.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: So those kinds of things that really put the whole thing in context for for clients and really highlight the work that the financial plan is doing for them.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So we've seen that quite successful.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, so somewhere between 150 to 200 connections in a year.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: So I know my first thought as someone who creates content and writes things and creates emails it's like okay you got to, you got to automate a lot of it.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: That's really the key thing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I know you said you don't want to talk about blue leaf a lot, but I have some questions, sure.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: So because you know so one of the visions that I have for the efficient advisor is to be kind of a hub of resources.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: So when advisors listen and they're going.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's something I need to be doing, but I don't even know where to go.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: How do I find that?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: What?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: are my options.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Just give us kind of you.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: But before we get into kind of tech and AI, I have some questions for you around that too but, can you give us a?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: In a nutshell, how do you guys help advisors do this successfully?
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a lot of what we do is automating the reporting on the balance sheet.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: So you know we're an all in one kind of like.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: You know whether it's an Orion or black diamond or what have you.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: We're similar in that respect.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: We've got reporting and client experience, we've got billing and invoicing, we've got trading and rebalancing.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: So the focus for us is all about engaging clients, engaging advisors, and so we take that base of information and we turn that into really crisp, tight, simple reports that the advisor can turn on and send to their clients, and then the advisor can then supplement that with the kind of content that you're thinking about.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: So how do I do something engaging that educates, or maybe a YouTube video or or what have you?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and so we supplement with all of the high, high frequency automated stuff and allow the advisor again to focus on their value at Okay, I love that, and so, and I'm assuming that this is software that they can use to do this automated stuff but also use for client meetings, for planning and all this stuff, and so okay just I just want to be really clear that it's not just about the engagement piece.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Okay exactly there's ad hoc reporting, just like you'd expect there.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: You know there's.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: There's all the things that you'd expect in a typical traditional system.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: It's just that it's all geared to help the advisor engage their clients and help a firm keep their advisors engaged.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Because advisors are living the same life, right?
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: We're also all online.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: We're busy, so how does the system automatically send me information rather than make me come in and root around for it?
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Right, a lot of alerting and monitoring and the like, and advisors benefit in the same way.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, for me personally, I love a push versus a pull.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I want the stuff to just come to me and I can decide, yes, no, I want to look at that, I don't want to look at it, versus me having to make time on my calendar to think about it, to then go and pull and have to, you know, kind of dink around looking for what I would I need.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: So I'm a huge fan of the push versus it always being a pull.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk really quickly about kind of tech and AI.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I know when we chatted a couple weeks ago, advisors are just super interested in artificial intelligence, kind of the good, the bad, kind of give me your little, your spiel, if you will.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: On on AI in the finance space for advisors.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're in the first inning to use a sports analogy of AI in wealth management and financial planning.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of the things we've seen so far are naive and easy versions of this.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: You know, the most frequent thing that you see announced is sort of some hybrid, tweaked version of chat GPT for X Many of those, those applications you could just go to chat GPT and kind of do it on your own.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: So so I think we haven't yet seen it in its finance specific form.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Do the things that many people are hoping right the whole?
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Can chat GPT invest better than an advisor?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Of course not.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: That's a that's a horrible misunderstanding of what that technology is doing, and so the thing that we like to do is talk a little bit about what it is and what it isn't.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So this isn't.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: You know, cyber dine systems became self aware at July 22.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: This isn't that that would be artificial general intelligence, which hasn't happened.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: What we're talking about is generative AI, and that differs in a couple of really key respects from the prior versions of AI that that people had experienced but maybe weren't aware of.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: So the recommendation engine on a Netflix or on an Amazon Much of that is machine learning and AI based, and those are classifiers.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: They put things in boxes and then connect you to those boxes right, so that's what that's doing.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: What's unique about generative AI is that it can create from scratch, but it's not really from scratch.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: It's really creating from data on the one hand and from instructions and a prompt on the other, and then, based on that instruction set, it takes all of the connections it's made through this vast source of data and predicts what it thinks you want as a result of that request.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: So that's what it's doing.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: It's a predictive model.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Every word is the result of a probability calculation.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: But and it's not brand new I think we've been seeing models like this worked on since 2017 2018.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: But what's changed?
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: What became so transformative, are three things that sort of all cross the chasm at the same time.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: First, the scale of available data essentially became the entire Internet.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: The entire Internet became accessible for data and data analysis of the past few years.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Much easier to traverse the Internet, grab the data and do something with it.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: And, of course, at that scale, it was hard without enough computing power, and cloud computing has come such a long way that there was now enough computing power to do something with all of that data and enough storage and the like, and then, finally, new architectures and the algorithms and things that make this kind of AI possible.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And if you think about it, if you've got trillions and trillions of data points and that's what we're talking about in these new models then you have to be able to create what they call long range dependencies, and that is, you know, data node to relate to data node 3.512 trillion and create a connection.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Those are long range dependencies and there's been advances there, and all of those came together late last year with chat, gpt 3.5 or GPT 3.5, and that was the model that made all the noise.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: What can it do?
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: We created in a live webinar, an investment policy statement on the fly in about 30 seconds that, in order to be useful and correct, would take another 20 minutes of massaging, you know, tweaking your investment philosophy, etc.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: And then you had a great base document.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: And this is the kind of thing I think that these models are really good at getting you from blank page to a starting template, where then the wisdom and experience of the advisor or the advisory firm comes into play and tweaks it.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: There are caveats.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: So famously, you've heard stories about these models making up facts, and there's a good reason for that.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: They will always make up facts.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: There may be controls that we can put on them, but it's a probability engine and its only question is what's the highest likelihood?
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Next word or next thing, that that you want?
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Based on your prompt and based on my training data, it's just that.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So if it thinks you want a reference to some document or case online, it doesn't bother with actually finding that it doesn't.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: That's not its job.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: It just creates a URL that looks like it's right and it will just, and it's.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: There's actually a technical term for this, called a hallucination.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: So as long as you don't use it for facts and you use it for scaffolding, thinking logic, this kind of thing it can be a quite powerful tool.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Image creation it can do wonderful things, and then there's a few other things that it does.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: That's that's subtle but really nice tool.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: So you know, as a podcaster, libby, you know, my guess is you've got a video production and you've probably noticed that sometimes I'm looking at the camera now and I'm not looking, and now I'm looking.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: But if you want to make a powerful connection with people, you want to always be looking at the camera and there are now a I tools that will take my gaze here and make it appear that I'm looking over here, quite naturally.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And that's generative.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: It's actually figuring out based on my eyes, my face, etc.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: And so when it can and can't do that, when it is the most probable that I should be looking at the camera and that's fascinating.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: But there's a million versions of those kinds of generative AI applications now in finance.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: What is what does it mean?
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: In financial planning?
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Does this mean?
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Well, again, it's a big probability engine.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So anything where you're using probability and that's a good tool, it's a good way to help solve.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: So I ask for investments that are, you know, meet the following criteria currently, and presuming you've got a model that's, you know, updated really recently, then it might be able to give you a kind of a list of things that most you can use to meet that criteria and you can investigate those things.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: It can give you solutions that others have used and have written about for a particular scenario, essentially as a suggestion hey, for this client, in this scenario where you've got to be able to bridge the expectation in the estate, might want to use these two whole life plans to do this, this kind of a thing, because it you know, it saw, it was read, it was written up someplace and it puts it out there for you to evaluate.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: It never directly take its recommendation, but it can get you from blank page to a place to start and that, in that way, is a very powerful tool.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: As a marketer, you know it can really help you write things quickly, but, again, nothing original.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: So if it's important to be original, you have to start yourself, and you really got to think hard.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: It's like having a junior copy editor that needs a tremendous amount of guidance and can't really make any editorial decisions right.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: So the advisor is going to be the editor and they're going to be the ones who are making all of the important critical decisions about what this says.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: So it's a great tool, nothing but a tool, not going to replace any advisors jobs in that sense, but it can really accelerate and I think every advisor should experiment.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: The only other thing I'd say in terms of using AI if you're an advisor, bear in mind this is a public model and it's a learning model.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: So maybe putting in a client's social security number into the models not a good idea.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: So you protect the private information, the PII, carefully and make sure you don't share that with the model because it will, you know, do its thing.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: So, other than that, you know it can do a lot to accelerate our daily work.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: That's so interesting.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So I think a lot of advisors that I talked to you when we think about AI, we think about, oh, that'll help me write blogs or scripts for video, like I think we like our brain naturally goes to marketing.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I love the example that you gave of an investment policy statement or being able to search for investments based on certain criteria.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So, really tactical ways, can advisors use AI that's not in that marketing space?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Do you have any more kind of in your pocket of things that you've done or people that you know or other ways that maybe, like just an advisor, could just kind of start to play around with it?
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean some of the image manipulation stuff.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, it can be marketing.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Actually, a lot of the use cases are, in fact, marketing, and the other use cases that I'm thinking of have to do with data, data enhancement, data correction, this kind of thing, which an advisor is probably not gonna use directly.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: They would use indirectly through a provider like Lulie or someone else that might employ those kinds of tactics.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: There are also some uses now where folks are using a combination of classification AI and generative AI to generate investment strategies, et cetera, and some of those are proving to be reasonable results.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Now the AI's supporting the investment decisions, et cetera, as opposed to driving the bus, and I think that's really important.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: It can't really drive the bus.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: It doesn't know where you wanna go really, and I think that's a really interesting use case.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: I also think that there are uses for client communication, not marketing.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: But hey, I wanna explain this market downturn or hey, I wanna write something to all of my clients about why they shouldn't panic in this particular situation or those kinds of things.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: So it's communication still, but maybe not so much marketing and more just connecting with clients.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that makes this idea of connecting with clients 150 to 200 times a year a whole lot less daunting, if there's something to kind of give you that jumpstart, because I'm right there with you.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I say all the time like there's nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper, so it's absolutely the worst.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: So it's something that I've started playing around with it here recently and it's a commitment of mine to kind of start taking it more seriously, because I think it can be a really powerful and interesting tool.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I'm still, I'm sure I'm way behind on the AI trend here, like I literally just watched Terminator for the first time with my 15 year old son, so I'm only a couple of decades behind on the whole game.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: So I'm learning how to use it.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: It does do some really amazing and cool stuff.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: So I'm committed to trying to figure out how to really get better prompts or really trying to expand how I'm using it on a daily basis, because it can be a pretty amazing tool.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as somebody who I like to talk, that may be a.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: That's why you have a podcast.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: That may be a parent, but I never love to write and I think part of it, and I think many advisors in the audience can appreciate this.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I had this internal editor that kept oh that's not great, right, and it's hard to get going when writing.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And what I've found is I can feed these tools a prompt to just get me going, and then I'll iterate and I'll tweak and what have you, and it will give me a scaffolding of logic oh, it's talking about this, then this, then this, and I'll start to take that, rearrange it, et cetera.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: But it gets me out of a blank page and I'll use pieces of it.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I remember I wanted a quick way to describe a particular I forget what the investment philosophy was, but it summarized it beautifully and then I said, no, summarize that for a fifth grader.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And it simplified it and it did a really nice job and it was still accurate and I could just lift that and put that in and with a few edits that made it sound like me and it just, it basically took care of that paragraph for me, even though it was in the scaffolding of all the logic that I had built.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: So I think, if you think about it as it doing tasks for you and not doing the whole thing then, you're in good shape and it just it isn't creative in the sense that you'd imagine it would be.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: It is taking your direction, so anything original really does need to come from you, and that's the fun part.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: But expressing those original ideas can be hard and tedious, and especially to do it right, and what I found was blog posts that I was sort of struggling with.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: That maybe were 600 words.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Now I got an easy 1200 words and it was really complete because it filled out oh well, I didn't think about this thing it suggested talking about in this thing and I didn't even take any of its text.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: I just it's idea for the next logical thing to talk about.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: I just rewrote something, and that helped.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: So there's a variety of ways I think it can help you.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've used it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I've asked it a few times like create an outline for you know a talk on, and yeah, some of the things that came up with it was like oh, that's actually a really great point that puts a bow on the whole thing, or that was a logical step that I would have probably not thought of.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of like asking somebody like hey, what else would you want to know about this?
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: topic.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's really interesting.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I know we need to wrap up.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you want to make sure that you share with the advisors listening today?
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I know you asked a great question prior to the show and asked me to think about a couple of tools and texts that you know, and there are a couple, two different categories that I thought advisors, as small business owners, would really benefit from.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: So the first thing is what we do internally at Blue Leaf to train our management team and for them to train their team.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: So if you're a small business, training your staff might be, you know, not something that you typically do.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Right, it's really hard.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: You're not a formal trainer and you can't write a curriculum.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: So what do you do?
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: How do you try and do this?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: So imagine I'm a firm with five or 10 advisors, I've got staff and a couple of those folks are kind of my management team, my core, and I want to impart a philosophy of how we manage the firm.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Where do I even start?
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: So what Blue Leaf did is we started a book club for our management team and every month we read a book or listen to a podcast or we take a master class together and then we work through that all together as a unit.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: So some of our go-to literature things like extreme ownership is one of our bibles on leadership and we did that as a book club book and we worked through that with me highlighting the things about it that I found really important that we wanted to do at Blue Leaf, so it's a great way to essentially create a curriculum without being an educator.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: And then bring that to your team, and it can be done for anything Like sales and persuasion, customer service.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: We're right now doing this.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I love this book how to tell a story.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: So this is by the Moth Radio, our people from NPR and all of their experience which is wonderful, by the way, as an audio book.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: So we're doing that as a book club because we all have to tell stories to communicate.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So that's tip one.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Can I ask a quote Before you tell me tip two?
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: can I ask a?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: question Do you, as kind of CEO, do you feel like you need to read and do ahead of time, or are you doing it alongside?
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I will do it alongside.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: But I four key pieces of the curriculum, so key books.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: We use an Andy Grove book to sort of teach our management approach.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: We use that extreme ownership book to teach leadership concepts that we want embedded there.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I read it, I highlight it, I write kind of a curriculum, I write highlights and questions and so I do prep extra because I believe it's my responsibility as leadership to teach my people, to mentor my people.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: But this gives me a way to do it that I'm not coming up with it from scratch.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: That is an amazing idea, yeah.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: But with this particular how to tell a story, something like that, I'm just along for the ride.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: And for those books we'll share responsibility to lead the discussion following when we all read it.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, fantastic.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you Sorry.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: I'm always like tell me exactly how did you execute that?
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: I love that, Okay.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: So your first kind of tip is this idea of doing a book club to teach concepts to the team.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: What's the second thing that you had?
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: So the second thing is managing our workflow, so project management, et cetera.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: We found we were using tons of spreadsheets to sort of organize information and that got really cumbersome and even though we're 100% online for everything a Google or Google shop as opposed to Microsoft, so Google sheets et cetera that got really cumbersome and it was missing components and so we started to adopt these work management tools.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: I think is the class of things.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: So these are tools like Monday or air table.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: In our case we use air table and it's like a very powerful, very flexible database plus spreadsheet, plus workflow, so we can create you know, you've seen Kanban boards like Trello that you can move and manage processes.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: You can, in this move, cross that with a calendar system or just a list and you can display the information anyway that you want.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It's very, very, very flexible, but that's how our project teams collaborate.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So we've got one for project product and engineering, we've got one for finance, we've got one for sales and marketing, we've got one for success and support, and that's how we organize all of the project level work and collaborate across the teams, or these sort of very flexible tools which have workflow components, but they're simple enough.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: They're not these big project management systems that nobody knows how to use, like Asana, which was really challenging for our team.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: So that one may not sound like a revelation, but it really changes the game for us in terms of staying on top of all of the processes that we need to manage.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: When we onboard a client, that's how they're managed, that process.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: When we build a product or add features, that's how that's managed.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: So it's a really fantastic class of tools and if you've got one expert in the building who can adjust and build these things, or consultant that you can hire to do whatever it is you want, they can be super, super powerful.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I love that.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: And then I have one more question for you.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: That was not in the, that you were not in the know, but as CEO, so managing a team of how many people do you have?
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Just about 20.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: About 20.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: What is sort of your way of, or do you create white space for yourself?
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: How do you create time where you can actually spend time kind of casting a vision or thinking or putting in that creative brain, versus just sort of being in the tornado of the business and managing all the people and the things and the projects?
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: And how do you actually create that space for yourself?
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, that is such a challenge and I think it's a challenge for every business owner I really do and particularly as small business owners.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: You always wear multiple hats.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: You do a lot.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: No, small business owner is just a manager.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: They do things right, they deliver results themselves.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Many advisors who manage the firm also manage a book of business virtually all of them and may have other responsibilities.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: I'm also a chief compliance officer.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I mean it is.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: It's tough.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: So for me it does require getting away.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: I need to.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: I can't be home, Can't be in the office, I need to go to a cabin, I need to be up in the mountains, so that's my place, usually walking, and then during the week or when I'm not away, the walk will be my thing.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: So if I leave my home office or my office downtown Boston, take a walk and that creates just the act of moving.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: I find creates enough of a separation between what you were doing and the moment you're in to actually begin to think a little more objectively, with a little more perspective.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: And this walk is not with podcast in your ears or not listening to an audio, but this is just like a blank walk, where you let your brain just kind of do whatever it needs to do.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: As horrifying as that sounds.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I think the other thing is you cannot multitask your way to perspective or vision.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: You have to sit with the silence and let your mind do its work, Otherwise you really never get to some perspective.
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: You just can't disengage far enough otherwise.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I wrote that down.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's you can't multitask your way to vision.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: I think that is just a.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: That's a mic drop.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: I think we'll have to end here, because that was really good, well, awesome, well, thank you so much for your time.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: It was great having you, and I know there is someone listening today that will really gain some valuable insights from today's episode.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for being here.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know if it's obvious to you listening, but he's a super smart dude.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: So some of the big takeaways that I had from this episode was really around this idea that the pandemic was transformative for our older clients, cause I know I used to use the excuse and I still hear it from advisors about oh, my older clients, you know they're not going to watch a YouTube video.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're not going to engage with my social media.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know I'm not going to do this or that or whatever.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: But really wanting to encourage you, you know we talk a lot about doing communication audits.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: So here at the Fish and Advisor, I'm a big believer in almost like a love language right that there are different ways that our clients like to receive information, and some people like the snail mail people, some people prefer to watch a video or listen to an audio, some people prefer written out text in an email.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: All of our clients, just you know, like normal humans, like to engage in different ways.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: So making sure that we're doing a communications audit and not making assumptions about our clients, I just thought the 2021 study that he referenced, showing you know that 72% of wealth management clients 70 plus, engage with online banking.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: That was just a really surprising number to me.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: The other takeaway that I had was this idea of engaging with clients like any major digital media service like a Netflix or a Facebook, and I loved this idea of the engagement loop, and this is how you know we value our engagement is how clients value service.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: So if they are continuing to connect and be interactive and engage in this engagement loop, that's huge.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting and I thought you know John said 70 to 90%, I believe engagement rates when the information is customized.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: So being able to create some sort of customized something and that could look like loom videos we talked about that in an episode a little while back.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I'll link that one in the show notes that could be just these customized emails with a report attached, something that is customized to the client definitely is going to increase engagement rates.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: The other thought I had listening to John talk kind of.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: My other takeaway is really this idea of tech and AI, and you know how we can use it in different ways in financial planning.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: So, of course, in my own business, I've been playing around with it with can it create an outline for a blog post?
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Can it write an intro to a podcast which, by the way, I did use chatGPT to create the intro today and I thought that was really fun and wrote a really cool way.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I kind of took some of the key things that John and I talked about, asked chatGPT to write a podcast intro to really kind of just be a living, breathing example of hey, here's how you can use AI in your business to make you more efficient.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Now I did have to go in and, like John and I talked about, customize it, put it in my voice, make it a little bit more engaging, but overall it gave me a really great draft to work from.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: And that's something that you know John mentioned in the episode and you know I talk about all the time is just how miserable it is to stare at a blank page, and especially when you're not in a creative mood and just using AI as a place to start, and I thought it was really interesting when he shared different ways of using AI in your practice.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: So, like I said, I've been using it for I don't know if you wanna call it marketing, but marketing, creative writing, things like that but gosh, when he was talking about investment policy statements and other ways of using AI to help you do actual financial planning.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Wow, I thought that was really really powerful.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: So I hope you guys found this episode super helpful.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to link all of John's info, but also the books that he mentioned, so I'm going to link, by the way, how cool is his using a book club as a leadership tool.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Loved it, loved it, loved it.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: We read books as a team, but I never really thought about it as an ongoing curriculum for training the next leaders in the business to do our training customer service.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Just what an amazing idea.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: I thought that was really really cool.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I will link all of that in the show notes for you and, as always, I'd love to connect with you over in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: It is a free community for advisors and operations folks within advisory practices to just share, collaborate, connect, ask questions, provide answers.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: It's just a cool place to hang out, and so I'm super excited that it's been so active.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I also love to hang out over on LinkedIn.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: So if we are not connected, please reach out and connect with me.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: I would love to follow you and your content and connect with you and engage with you through DMs over there.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: So thank you guys so much.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.