The WealthTech Podcast Episode Transcript

Host: Mark Wickersham

Guest: Mark Gilbert, Co-Founder & CEO Zocks

Episode Title: How AI is Rewiring the Advisor Tech Stack

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Mark Wickersham: All right, Mark, welcome to the Wealth Tech Podcast. I am happy to have you on the show. I am looking forward to today's conversation, talking about all things AI, which is obviously the latest rage, and with good reason, and talk about

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Mark Wickersham: how AI is impacting the advisor tech stack and advisor productivity, and really how it's evolving the industry in general.

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Mark Wickersham: Mark, would you mind kind of giving a brief overview of yourself and Zocks?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, it's great to be here, Mark. So quick overview of me. I'm, you know, an engineer by training, so I've worked on software products for quite a while. I was at Microsoft for quite a long time.00:00:45.930 --> 00:00:55.449

Mark Gilbert: at a company called Hearsay Social, which a lot of people in the industry use if you're at larger firms. And then, was at a company called Twilio before starting SOX?

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Mark Gilbert: about three and a half… a little over three and a half years ago now. And Zox is really an AI assistant for financial advisors that, frankly, tries to help them with all of the administrative tasks that they spend time on, and, you know, most of them don't love to spend time on.

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Mark Gilbert: And it saves them a lot of time, saves their team time, but also, as we're seeing now, as we're expanding to more and more scenarios.

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Mark Gilbert: is really helping them grow their business, and frankly, like, just provide the best client experience they can. And so that's really what we're laser-focused on, is, you know, really helping advisors use AI to, you know, just frankly, improve productivity, improve the client experience, and grow the business.

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Mark Gilbert: And frankly, like, hopefully love their job more.

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Mark Wickersham: It does seem like this is one of the areas where advisors are saving a significant amount of times, 3 to…

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Mark Wickersham: 4 hours a week per advisor, which is fairly significant. It's also one of the ways in which advisors are adopting AI, one of the early use cases.

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Mark Wickersham: For AI adoption. Before we get into all that, though, I'd love to hear… whenever I have a chance to talk to a fintech founder, I'd love to hear about your founder's journey, so…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, why did you start, you know, the firm? What was the kernel that got you motivated? And then, also kind of looking back on it and saying, you know, after 3 plus years of breaking rocks and being at it, what has surprised you the most?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, so we started the company, so just, you know, flashback a little bit for me,

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Mark Gilbert: you know, I was at… I was at a company, I built up the product team, and then was the CTO of a company called Hearsay Social. For those who don't know it, it, it's essentially a SaaS company, a vertical SaaS company focused on financial services and insurance.

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Mark Gilbert: that initially helped people get on social media in a compliant way, market, and do all those things, and then kind of expanded out beyond that. So that was really the first time I saw firsthand

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Mark Gilbert: in my view, how powerful vertical software can be. Like, it's just, you know, it provides a lot more value to the people, it's tuned a lot more to the scenarios, and we became, you know, through that long run, became very familiar with the financial advisory space, the RIA space, and all of this. So that was kind of a key background.

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Mark Gilbert: Then I went to a company called Twilio, and ran their communication infrastructure around the world, and onboarding, and a whole bunch of other things for a while.

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Mark Gilbert: And for those who don't know Twilio, it's essentially a layer that typically developers use for communications and software. So if you ever talk to an Uber driver, that's actually Twilio. If you get a text message from Airbnb, that's Twilio. All of that is actually a service called Twilio underneath.

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Mark Gilbert: Through that, I, I became the sponsor, the exec sponsor, and worked with a lot of enterprise clients, and a lot of those were banks and insurers. And so what was happening is we talked with them, you know, they would program their communications, and they would start to ask, like, is there any way to actually see into what's going on here?

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Mark Gilbert: And, you know, we started looking at,

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Mark Gilbert: at, you know, what's possible there. There's a lot of breakthroughs in AI, even before, kind of, the LLMs were big, that allowed you to start to do things like topic detection and things like that, that, you know, we thought were very powerful.

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Mark Gilbert: And so we left Twilio, I left Twilio, earlier in 2022, really with the focus on, can we get structured data, and I'll talk a little bit more about what that means, but structured data out of conversations,

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Mark Gilbert: for advisors, and the reasons we started with advisors is, you know, we knew… like, one of the things that's really interesting for me in this space is, I think because of the compliance and the security and now the privacy requirements, it's typically fairly hard for financial advisors to adopt new technologies quickly. Like, they can't just use random stuff, right?

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Mark Gilbert: And so, you know, we just thought, hey, if we go take this and tailor it and build it out as a proper platform for the industry, it'll be very, very powerful. And then I, like, what happened is we started to talk with advisors more, and frankly, even, like, do more

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Mark Gilbert: customer research and get them on an early adopter program. It became very clear that both they were spending a lot of time both preparing and following up for meetings, like, that was a key kind of scenario, and

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Mark Gilbert: And they frankly didn't love it, is maybe the right way to put it. Like, they really want to be spending time with clients and doing all of these things.

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Mark Wickersham: I want to be present, I want to be engaged, right?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, that's it, and they want to be doing that, and they always viewed it as, you know, like, it's the whole spectrum, right? Some people were really great at capturing data, but they felt like they were not engaging with the client properly. Some people would engage with the client and think they knew everything, and then leave, and like, you know, have stacks of stuff that they still hadn't actually written up or followed up on with the client. They'd be months behind.

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Mark Gilbert: So that's really how we got going.

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Mark Gilbert: And then, you know, I think what we're seeing in this latest generation, if you will, because it's moving quite quickly, is, you know, our initial thesis around structured data is not just, like, notes and CRMs and things like that, because that makes sense, but I think whenever we see new technologies come in.

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Mark Gilbert: It very often kind of replaces the manual, which is, like, we need to take notes and put them in CRM.

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Mark Gilbert: By getting structured data in, and you can see this in a lot of what we're doing now, we can actually start to drive a lot of workflows, right? We can fill out forms for people, we can open accounts for people, we can start to do things like moving money, we can create, you know, like, fill out eMoney and fill out plans for people, all of these types of things. And so that, for us, is super exciting, because, you know, I think we kind of viewed the first version as a bit of a painkiller, like, hey, this is annoying, we'd love to fix it, and now…

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Mark Wickersham: Value, first mile type of thing.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, I think everyone always starts with, like, hey, it's great to save time, which is true, and it's great, especially, again, like, you know, when it's things that you don't love doing, and the feedback's been super positive, which is awesome, but then you can take that and start to do things, and so we have, like, users now

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Mark Gilbert: that have really started to change the way that their businesses operate, which is great. Like, they're able to just serve a lot more people, or offer more services, too, and, you know, we can chat about it a little bit more.

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Mark Gilbert: But you can start to see these, like, kind of the evolution and getting more sophisticated in how they're using AI, and really kind of changing the way that, you know, that they operate and that they work with clients.

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Mark Gilbert: So yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: So what is surprising to go.

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Mark Gilbert: surprised me the most… it's funny to say this, because, like, I've been in tech my whole life. The speed of AI, even, like, we knew going in, we're like, oh, this is gonna be great, you know, da-da-da, and, you know, things that we thought were two to three years to build, 9 months, right? Just, like, immediate impact.

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Mark Gilbert: And then, and that has continued to be true, right? Like, the things that we can do now versus even when we launched early last year.

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Mark Gilbert: are really pretty phenomenal. And it's… it's funny, because we, you know, we live in this space, obviously, like, we look at it every day. And, you know, we… we talk to a lot of advisors at conferences and things like that, and we were at one recently where we were at the conference last year, and, like, this fighter came up, and they're like, oh, I was really meaning to look at this, and, you know, just super busy over the last year.

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Mark Gilbert: would love to chat with you now, and it's amazing how much, like, has changed in the last year since, you know, like, it… you kind of have to pop out, but you just realize, like, wow, this is moving very quickly, right? And all the good and the bad with that. Like, some really…

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Mark Gilbert: meaningful improvements, as you were mentioning, around time savings, and, you know, we're seeing these business improvements, and there's a lot of stuff that I, you know, I don't think won't last, frankly, right? Like, it's kind of more of a toy, and people will play with it, but it's not quite there yet. But the speed and just velocity of the AI movement has, I think, caught a lot of people.

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Mark Gilbert: Off guard.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I mean, it's been really great in terms of taking unstructured information and making it structured, and then you can do all sorts of stuff with it. I think you've…

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Mark Wickersham: See that around, obviously, with meeting notes, and being able to capture that. On the alternative investment side, you see that as well, because it's primarily a document-based information structure, and to be able to unlock that information.

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Mark Gilbert: 100%.

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Mark Wickersham: Huge, certainly that low-value first mile, you know, capturing those notes, versus having somebody, maybe a junior person there, dictating that information, or having to have three people in a meeting, and really none of them are present, because they're trying to capture everything, versus being fully present with the client is huge.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about, Zach. What makes it unique?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, so for us, there's really 3 things that… that are different, I think, from us and, you know, almost anybody else either in our space around it. One is we do have what we, you know, what we call structured information, so we go very deep, and that comes out in a variety of ways. Like, that's why we can fill out forms, that's why we can now do things like…

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Mark Gilbert: You know, account openings with certain broker-dealers. We can do, like, we're starting to do this with more of the custodians.

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Mark Gilbert: And and frankly, like, as you look at… as we integrate with systems, because, you know, I think integrations are really critical in this… in this industry, because nobody loves typing data into a whole bunch of systems.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, we just go very, very deep, right? So, like, you know, with eMoney that we launched, this summer, you know, we do a little over 220 data points that we can actually, like, really fill out a plan in, you know, in kind of fullness.

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Mark Gilbert: So that's one big piece for us. The second one is just how we work with privacy, compliance, and security. So by default, we do support reporting, but by default, we don't record, and I would say, like, well over 90% of our clients.

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Mark Gilbert: don't record the conversation, you know, as people are talking, we basically are transcribing live, and then getting the data we want out of it. People always ask us, like, hey, what does that mean? Does that mean I, you know, I can't do this, or, you know, need to do this, or whatever else? And there's definitely a legal aspect to it, but the bigger piece, I think, for it is just, and which is why we did it initially.

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Mark Gilbert: is clients just, you know, people get worried that there's gonna be a recording of them come up, but, you know, and it's gonna get sliced weird, or whatever else, and we just found in our early adopter program that people were, frankly, sharing less. It's probably the easiest way to put it, and it was a worry for.

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Mark Wickersham: The client was sharing less on these calls.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, just because they're worried about, like, ugh, you know, like, if this comes out, or if this gets clicked, you know, like, it's just weird. And, you know, like, they trust their advisor and everything, but I think that's definitely been a big piece. And then the third one for us, which affects, like, we call it really the enterprise platform. It actually affects our smallest advisors, too.

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Mark Gilbert: But, you know, from the largest firms, you know, they can go through and do things like set compliance policies, they can connect into the system, they can get data into a data lake, data warehouse, like, we essentially integrate with a whole bunch of different systems in that world.

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Mark Gilbert: And then it goes all the way down, I would say, even to, like, the individual advisor, because of…

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Mark Gilbert: We do have a lot of, like, analytical capabilities and things like that that they almost inherent, because, you know, these large firms want it as well. So those are really the big three. It's, you know, we have structured data that goes deeper, kind of integrations and all these workflows that we can now do. We have,

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Mark Gilbert: you know, security and privacy that just has a different approach. And then, you know, the enterprise platform and the ability to fully configure it is a huge deal for a lot of people, too.

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Mark Wickersham: Love it. Tell me a little bit about the impact that your product has. A typical use case for advisors that adopts your product? What type of impact do they have?

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Mark Gilbert: So, I would say starting off, we see, you know, kind of people go through these phases of, you know, kind of comfort with AI. Starting off, it's exactly as you said earlier, right? Like, they're spending often an hour, sometimes much more than an hour.

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Mark Gilbert: between preparing and following up with client meetings. And so, depending on how many client meetings they're doing, like, you know, we'll save them 5 to 10 hours a week purely on that.

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Mark Gilbert: We also find that typically they're teams, depending on the advisor.

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Mark Gilbert: are spending, you know, I'll say a couple of hours a week filling out forms. Like, you know, if they're writing insurance, those are insurance applications, intake forms, if they're growing their business quickly, all of those types of things.

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Mark Gilbert: And then we've recently launched the ability to reply to client emails, and again, there we see the advisor or their associates spending roughly about an hour to two a day replying to client emails, right? Like, just random questions coming in and doing those things.

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Mark Gilbert: So, right off the bat, there's very meaningful time saving for them, and that often…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, that often allows them to spend more time marketing, spend more time with clients, or frankly, just get their time back, right? Because some, as you know, a lot of advisors work a huge amount of hours, you know, per week.

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Mark Gilbert: So that's where they start, and then the other thing that's great once they get going is as they… as they integrate the planning system and integrate the reporting, system, like an Orion or something like that, we do really see them, convert more, and it's… it's, like, we've dug into it quite a lot.

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Mark Gilbert: And so for people growing their business, you know, if they come in and someone has, like, kind of a, you know, a suitability meeting or an intake meeting or, you know, you know, kind of whatever you want to call your first set of meetings, they can get a draft financial plan with, you know, a very tailored email and a tailored plan.

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Mark Gilbert: sent out to that person literally within minutes, like, under 10 or 15 minutes from the meeting. And what it means, so, like, you know, what we've seen, I would say, pre-ZOX,

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Mark Gilbert: is that often is taking, you know, a few hours to put it together, and then often the client doesn't see it for, like, 4 to 5 days, and frankly, sometimes the next week, right? That's not… like, if we're all honest, that's…

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Mark Gilbert: that's, pretty common, and so now they're able to follow up literally in minutes, and it's personal. And so, I think anyone knows who's ever buying anything, or selling, or trying to get service, like, if you talk to someone and they, you know, they… you know that they heard you, you know that they're handling your concerns.

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Mark Gilbert: and they follow up quickly with what they can do, like, your chances of working with that person are just drastically higher. And so we're seeing that as kind of a phase two, where they're growing their business more. And then as we get into some of our, I would say, larger firms.

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Mark Gilbert: Just in the sense of, like, the AUM they're handling.

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Mark Gilbert: there, we see them start to expand services or bring on more clients. So almost always in those cases, they have additional clients. Maybe they're, like, you know, as they categorize them as Tier 2 or Tier 3, or, you know, gold, silver, whatever. They're able to then go engage by kind of the Tier 2 clients, because they can actually prep, meet with them.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, and follow up in under an hour if they have, like, a half-hour, 40-minute meeting. They grow business that way. Some people are just seeing additional households because they get more…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, they just, frankly have more capacity. And then we're… one of the cool things we see now is people also are connecting us with other systems. So, like, with a, you know, like, with an estate planning system, like a wealth or a vanilla, you know, Luminary, like, one of those, we're starting to see the same thing with tax, and, like, those integrations are getting deeper for us.

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Mark Gilbert: And so what they're able to do is, frankly, just offer services in addition to, you know, pure AUM, and that helps them as well. And frankly, the clients love it, because they don't… it's cheaper for them compared to going other spots, and they don't love, you know, getting ping-ponged around between people all the time.

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Mark Gilbert: And so we've seen all of those, and it's great, and that's why, you know, as we say, like, we really believe

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Mark Gilbert: people will change their businesses with AI, like the way they operate and how they do all these things. And, you know, there's gonna be a number of things that are frankly possible, where you can make clients very happy.

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Mark Gilbert: and do it in a very profitable way for you, which is a… which is a shift, right, in the industry. Like, I think for a long time, there's been a bit of a ceiling where, like, you know, without just a lot more staff, you're kind of continually hitting these… these limits, if you will.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, this is where I think that the hype lives up to the reality, in that it's literally changing the industry, and that…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, two points I think that stood out when you're talking about this. One is that, you know, advisors will be able to offer more holistic services. Clients want that. You're a trusted provider, they want more holistic, they want more of a…

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Mark Wickersham: You know, a financial coach from them, not just somebody that's managing the investment aspect for them.

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Mark Wickersham: And also, there's kind of, you know, if you look at it.

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Mark Wickersham: big picture, this democratization of wealth management, right, that you're…

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Mark Gilbert: 100%.

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Mark Wickersham: Because you can get down to that lower tier. Maybe it's for… maybe it's people that are younger in their career that don't have the investable assets, but still are gonna… you know, if you can get them on a better path earlier, you can really impact their lives. And, you know, you take a look at certain professions, too.

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Mark Wickersham: doctors, dentists, where they load up on a ton of debt early in their career, they certainly don't have the investable assets, but you look at the lifetime earnings of those, those would make fantastic clients later. If you can grab them earlier, you're benefiting both the firm and the client, so to be able to bring down that offering is certainly huge, to be able to

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Mark Wickersham: be more responsive, I think, is fantastic.

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Mark Wickersham: I think one of the things with being a SaaS provider is obviously onboardings really can be difficult for any type of technology provider. You know, change management's particularly hard for firms and advisors in particular.

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Mark Wickersham: Tell me about SOC's approach to ensuring, like, a high adoption and a high satisfaction rate, and how you're onboarding your clients.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, so we… so exactly as you said, like, you know, we've made the technology and the product very, very easy to use. Like, you can just literally click on the website and click and sign up and go.

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Mark Gilbert: And so, you know, at one level, that's very important for us, right? Like, people can come in, they can get up and running, and they see value very quickly, and we find that if you can provide value quickly, they'll spend more time, and then, you know, like, they're kind of happy to explore some of the other capabilities over time. But I think equally important is, just on the people side, you know, whenever…

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Mark Gilbert: We work with clients, you know, we'll get them set up on a pilot, and then we'll do…

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Mark Gilbert: what we call check-ins with them, and… and those have a few different goals, but one of them is just to make sure everything's configured the way they want, because, you know, especially… well, every firm, right, has, like, some uniqueness, right? They're like, oh, you know, whatever, my admin owns my calendar, but this is over here, and stuff, so we just want to make sure everything's connected.

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Mark Gilbert: and works.

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Mark Gilbert: answer any questions people have. We get, I would say, over half the questions we get in onboarding and check-in are actually nothing to do with the software. It's just more of, like, how do I talk to my client about AI? Like, what, like, tell me where this data is and isn't, right? Like, if I delete it, is it gone, right? Like, all of these types of things. And so we just want to make them very comfortable with that, and even help them

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Mark Gilbert: with best practices, and then… and then it's that. We're just essentially like, hey, where are you spending your time now? Like, where… like, kind of where the pain points? And we are very highly configurable. We have these, like, capabilities of doing different workloads and all those things, and so that often…

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Mark Gilbert: is where we can help them with that. And they can do it themselves if they want, but, you know, our preference is to kind of hear their situation.

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Mark Gilbert: do it for them, show them how to do it, so they can do it if they want later, but really help them with that. I would say, like, 70-80% of advisors, like, frankly, like, all of us, they just want the problem solved, right? They're just like, if you can make this do what I want, like, and whatever that is, right? They may go in and say, look, I care deeply… like, two examples just to give you, like, different ends of the spectrum, we see all the time, and they both make sense. Some people are like, look, I know all the finance data, I have it all over there.

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Mark Gilbert: that's in my head. Like, what I really want is the personal information, right? Like, I'm worried about forgetting their kids' or grandkids' names. I'm worried about forgetting to ask them about

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Mark Gilbert: a vacation or something, and I want that right at the top, and I want to know that going in, and I want all that data captured, and I want that at the top of my notes, and I want the, you know…

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Mark Gilbert: Other people, very opposite, right? They're like, look, I just need to pull from all these systems, I don't want to do that, I don't want to see the assets they have, I want to see all that, and both of those are fine, both of those are fully configurable and can do it, and, you know, we have templates and things to help them do those things. But that's really what we do, is we find,

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Mark Gilbert: you know, like, checking in, which is why we call them check-ins with people, is just very helpful, right? It's just like, you know, any questions they have, any bumps, any, like, kind of customizations, we can do that, and that has led us to be…

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Mark Gilbert: very highly adopted. We also have things like free pilots, so people don't, like, we really don't like to pre-sell things, you know, it's like, if you, like, use it, if you get value of it, that's awesome, we love that. If you don't right now, or it's not really a priority for you, totally fine, right? Like, we don't want to kind of stick you in some year-long contract or something like that that you don't want. So I would say those two things are,

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Mark Gilbert: you know, are the most important for us. Like, the smooth product, easy to get on, and then just frankly, like, having people check in with you and make sure that it's doing what you want it to do are probably the two biggest. And with that, we've had, like.

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Mark Gilbert: very good, like, very, very fast adoption, and then I think we're also, in a great way, growing with people. As people become more comfortable with AI, you know, they start to see what it can do. You immediately get questions of, like, hey, if you have all this data, can you do…

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Mark Gilbert: this or this, and that's how we build the product, right? That's why we now have forms, that's why we now, you know, have started to do account openings and things like that, is just, frankly, from people being like, you know, great, you fixed my note problem, like, now can you fix, you know, this problem or this problem? And so, it's fun, right? Like, you just kind of work through what we call the time pits, which is, like.

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Mark Gilbert: Where is the firm?

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Mark Gilbert: Where's the advisor or other teams spending time that they would rather not?

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, so I assume you're eating your own cooking on these calls?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, not on this one right now, but our team does, like, our sales team does.

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Mark Wickersham: Right, so you're using your product to be able.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, and we've customized it, it's very flexible, so, like.

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Mark Gilbert: We even… when we do check-ins, we actually… that's how we roll up product feedback, right, is we will.

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Mark Wickersham: It sounds like a product manager's dream.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, it is, it is like, trust me, I know, because it is, like, you can actually almost now look across and be like, oh, there are, like, 30 people who want to be able to, whatever, open an account, or, you know, like, there's 60 people who are trying to take this data and fill out an insurance form, or whatever they do with it, right, or jam it into eMoney, things like that.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, you know what they say? Like, the product manager's action is like, well, your opinion is interesting, it's irrelevant, right? What does the data say? What is the, you know, how many data points do you have to say that people are looking for X request versus.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, 100%. We always say it's not about your feature, it's the right feature, right? Like, what is the thing that you need, and what, you know, what's the right thing to do?

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Mark Wickersham: And I also think it's great that you're checking in with your clients, you know, especially systems that can be configurable, you end up… clients left their own devices, end up as, like, this perpetual novice, right? Like, just enough to kind of…

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Mark Gilbert: Totally, yeah. It works, I don't want to touch it, I don't know, yeah. And we see that, like, I would say, frankly, like, we probably spend as much, if not more, time on, like, their CRM systems and other systems they're using, because they just, like, they just got up and running, and they're like, yeah, I just don't want to touch it, because, you know, it's a pain. And that's where you can start to actually help them.

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Mark Gilbert: connect these systems better, and frankly, get more value out of everything they use, right? There's a lot of software that we know, like, people are just kind of scraping the surface on the value there, and so we can help, ideally, with all those.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about CRMs for a little bit. There's a little bit of talk out there. You know, noteetakers trying to become CRMs, CRMs actually adding…

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: shaking capabilities. It's certainly interesting to, you know, especially you're talking about your… you're providing an integration layer across, products, but tell me a little bit about, you know, your approach and how you see kind of the industry in general kind of shaking out between those kind of

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Mark Wickersham: core systems.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, so our… maybe I'll take those in reverse order. Like, I'll talk about kind of how we look at the different systems, and then our approach. So,

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Mark Gilbert: you know, like, we think each of these systems has, you know, a pretty critical role. Like, I think when people think of CRMs.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, often what people think of as a CRM, which is, like, I keep my contact information for my clients in there. In this industry, there are a lot more than that, right? Like, they're often books and records for people.

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Mark Gilbert: they are hubs of integration, right? So, like, data will go into them, and there's all of these different things that are there. Some people love their CRM, a lot of people don't love their CRM, but, like, that's often because of the configuration or whatever they're doing, and so there's a lot that that system does.

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Mark Wickersham: of it, not the CRM itself, right?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, exactly. And sometimes, I think, as we've all seen, right, like, it's the system that makes you do the thing you don't like to do, so if you don't like taking notes, you kind of don't like the system that you need to put notes into, right? Even though it's not… it has nothing to do with that system.

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Mark Gilbert: And so our… our approach, and we see the same with planning systems, right? Like, there's a number of different planning systems out there, different approaches in them, some of them are very useful for some people, or, you know, we even see, like, the same advisor may use multiple, depending on the client and the situation. And I think that's the same with that, like portfolio management, all of those things.

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Mark Gilbert: So our… our approach is really to connect these systems, right? To make sure that the data, kind of going into them is the right, that they're updated, that ideally, in our world.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, we are saving not just the advisor time and making their practice better, but they should be getting more value out of these systems, right? So they should be getting more value. Like, again, I'll go back to you, Monique, because it's a great example. Like, it's a very powerful planning tool.

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Mark Gilbert: generally the largest complaint about it is, like, it takes a lot of time to put the data into it, just straight up, right? So if we can get rid of that time and just click a button and push it all in.

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Mark Gilbert: you'll get a lot more value out of your planning tool, straight out, right? Same with CRM. If you have reliable notes in CRM, and it's not just notes, but it's also, like, you know, can you fill out the account and the contact information and all the details there?

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Mark Gilbert: Are there workflows that you've invested in there that we can then go kick off? All of that just makes all of these systems more valuable, because they're frankly just easier to use, and pretty much every system

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Mark Gilbert: lives on data, right? Like, a CRM system without any data is not very useful.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, planning systems without any data is not very useful. And so the more data we can get into these systems, frankly, like, the more value they provide the advisors and their teams. And that's great. So our approach has very much been that. I think we do see…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, like, note-taking, you know, like, CRMs naturally are doing it. I think we're seeing a few other ones come out, too. Our view on that is, like, I think for a very simple note-takers, some of those are good. It is challenging.

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Mark Gilbert: like, you know, when you go into these, like, larger, you know, whatever, you have a client that, let's say, has, like, two to three generations of people in the room, maybe one or two are on Zoom, you maybe have a tax attorney on Zoom, or maybe they're in the room, and, you know, like, all this.

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Mark Gilbert: Getting that right, and getting the accuracy, and assigning the data to the right people is…

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Mark Gilbert: is both challenging and also critical. Like, if you don't know who's saying what or whose information it is, like, it's kind of useless. And I think also we see that, you know, notes in the CRM are important, but there's a lot of other things that people really want to be doing coming out of these meetings, right? And so you're not gonna, like.

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Mark Gilbert: start up a CRM note-taker, because you want the node in there, and then start up your, you know, like, whatever, proposal generation notetaker, because maybe you're gonna do a generation for a proposal. Like, it's just… it's just kind of odd. And so, for us, we just view it as, like, look, this is data, you want it structured, you want it moved across those systems.

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Mark Gilbert: And, you know, we'll see… we'll see, I think, a number of things come up. With AI, you know, like, we literally, as we think of AI, like, AI is software, right? And so, like, we'll hear people say, like, oh, I have an AI system, or, like, are you my AI system? And it's a little like saying, are you my software, right? And the reality is, like, you're gonna have multiple

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Mark Gilbert: software systems. Almost every software system that people use today will have AI components in it, you know, if not already, like, in the next

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Mark Gilbert: 6, 12, 18 months. And so, you know, our view is that we can make the whole ecosystem stronger and better, and stitch it together, like, better value for the advisor, and frankly, make the applications more valuable.

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Mark Gilbert: And so that's how we're approaching it. I think other people are taking different approaches, where they may try to replace some of these systems, but we don't really see that as a…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, as a big focus right now. There's so much opportunity in green space ahead of us, and frankly, areas that advisors want help, and that we can help grow their business, that

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Mark Gilbert: You know, that…

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Mark Gilbert: Doing that is really where we spend all of our time, not trying to, like, replicate features out of another system that is already there and is frankly doing pretty well.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think a lot of people, don't like their CRM because the data is incomplete or inconsistent. Like, is it, you know, being involved in the sales function? Like, if it didn't happen in the CRM, it didn't happen at all, right? Yeah.

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Mark Gilbert: Different firms have different levels of adoption, and if you don't have full adoption of the product.

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Mark Wickersham: then it's… you're second-guessing the data, and then once you second-guessing the data, then you lose all the automation benefits of it, whereas if you could have that data reliably updated and populated, like you said, then the CRM has certain workflows that it can kick off, like…

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Mark Wickersham: you're now getting the full benefit of the CRM, because, you know, you have a proper care and feeling of it, which is…

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Mark Wickersham: Which is great.

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Mark Wickersham: Tell me a little bit about… because you sit on this kind of really big data set, right? And obviously, AI and data are really interrelated, but what are some of the unique insights that you're able to kind of provide that go beyond just the, kind of, the meeting note process?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, there's… there's a lot there, like, I think,

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Mark Gilbert: this is probably gonna get a little more technical than people want, but I'll go there just for 30 seconds. Like, you know, in the industry, if you look at what an advisor does, right, like, everything they use and what we think of as the middle and back office, like the custodians, all that, like, those are all big databases, and they're very structured. They can query them, you can say, which of my clients

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Mark Gilbert: as Apple stock, which ones, you know, like, whatever you want to go do.

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Mark Gilbert: On the client side, so if you think of everything kind of between an advisor and their team and their clients, that is frankly just completely unstructured today, right? Like, people maybe have notes, they may… and it's very hard, like, without reading through a ton of notes that you hopefully took.

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Mark Gilbert: Right? It's very hard to go see these things. And so we… the nice thing about it being structured is you can start to query across things. And so we see everything, like, the example we use a lot, frankly, because it's important for a lot of people.

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Mark Gilbert: are, like, you know, you can then start to go in and see, like, you know, who has a child or a grandchild and no 529 plans, right? And seems like a good reason to go reach out. You know, we can also now detect things, like, really between meetings. We find advisors are great, kind of, meeting to meeting. So let's say I'm meeting with my advisor every 6 months.

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Mark Gilbert: But, let's say my… my… whatever…

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Mark Gilbert: son is getting married in two months, right? Like, we don't have a meeting for that, but we can start to nudge them, right? And have these insights, which is, like, you should reach out and say congrats on whatever, is there anything I can help with for the wedding? Or whatever it is, send them a present. All that. And they want to do that. Advisors love to do that. They just can't, like, do that across 80 to 120, you know, different people, and keep track of everything.

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Mark Gilbert: On the other side, we see things, like, you know, as we're starting to do more, more people, like, kind of using our data to put into trust and estate planning systems, like, everything from, like, you know, who doesn't trust… this is a more negative one, but, you know, who doesn't trust their…

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Mark Gilbert: child spouse, right? In the sense of, like, from a financial point of view, and all this stuff. And so you can start to really see into things. And, like, I think most, if not all advisors, at least most for sure, know what to do in these situations if they know that situation is there.

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Mark Gilbert: the real trick is, like, am I following up? Did it get detected? Am I actually doing the right things, right? Like, you know, did I… did I tell the estate attorney that they may want to consider something that's more contained for them because, you know, like, there may be some concerns on the family trust, you know, like, things like that. All of these different types of things, and so the really nice thing for us is that you can start to get these insights, even topics, right? Like, how many people are worried about tariffs right now, right? Start of the year, nobody

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Mark Gilbert: We really want to put that on the list.

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Mark Gilbert: Now, it's there, right? And there's certain people that worry a lot, there's certain people that don't, and that's fine, but it allows you to do much more customized outreach, it allows you to make sure that when people are going through these life events, that you are giving them the extra support and understanding them, and frankly, even remembering that they're going through them, because I think

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Mark Gilbert: what everyone sees is if you take care of a client through these life events, which could be great, like, you know, it could be whatever, children getting married, buying houses, whatever that is, or it could be tough, like, you know, separations and things like that.

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Mark Gilbert: if you take care of them through that, like, they're with you for life, right? And frankly, the other years are pretty cruise control-ish, right? You just set it and you go, and things are going well. Yeah. So all of that information, which we think, and we just think is the…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, as financial management evolves, it's becoming a lot more about that, right? It's a lot more about, like, help me get through these things, not like, hey, what returns can you give me versus this person or anyone else? It's like, as I get to these stages of life, what should I be doing, right? To your point, like, if I'm a doctor or a dentist, and I have a bunch of debt.

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Mark Gilbert: what should I be doing now? What should I be doing later? And, you know, for a lot of people in a lot of states, taxes are a very big deal. What can we be doing to help those out? So it really allows you to just worry across quite a lot of those things and get specifics out, as well as kind of at a higher level.

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Mark Gilbert: start to see that. The other… the other big one, a little different, I think, from what you were asking initially, but for people growing their practice.

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Mark Gilbert: is there's a lot of data you can query on, like, how are your associates doing with clients, right? Like, how are they… like, are they engaging them? Are they not? All of that stuff. And, you know, I think what we find with advisors is, in order to grow their practice, they do need to hire people at times.

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Mark Gilbert: that's often not their forte. Like, they're often really kind of engaged, either on the planning side or with the client side. And so this is a way, like, with our scorecarding and our dashboards, that really just help them understand, like, okay, how can I coach this person more? And they get immediate feedback on it without having to sit through every meeting for a year.

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Mark Wickersham: How does that work? I mean, certainly you could probably tell how much they're talking versus the client is talking, which is kind of a key and basic…

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Mark Gilbert: Start indicator. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, so we do all the, like, all the basics of, like, who's talking percentages, but it's also things of, like, are there certain agenda items you want them to hit? Are they doing that? Are they asking for things? Like, a simple one that's very powerful is, like, which is a great way to help

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Mark Gilbert: grow people. It's just, like, what… what did you say that got the client talking the most?

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Mark Gilbert: Right? The other one is, like, did the client tell you

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Mark Gilbert: what their goals or problems were, or did you tell the client? Which sounds similar, but is very different. Like, you know, if a client tells you, like, hey, my family's doing great, I really want to retire at 63 so I can spend time on the beach, or, you know, whatever I want to do.

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Mark Gilbert: like, replaying that to them, keeping them when they, you know, maybe they're losing track, or thinking of other things, like, as you're working with that client, repeating that back to them is super powerful.

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Mark Gilbert: if you kind of tell the client what they should be worried about, then it's a lot less, it's a lot less meaningful, is the easiest way to put it. So all of that, we can go through in scorecards, and then even with that, they can customize. So some of the larger firms we work with have very specific, like.

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Mark Gilbert: I would say playbooks on how to make sure that they're understanding the client's problems and helping them with it. And so those can essentially get programmed in as well, from, like, are you spending the right time on these things? Are you covering these topics? Are you asking these things? How much time are you speaking? Is the client saying things? And also these, like, tips of.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, what is the most engaging thing that you're… that you're asking? And that helps people, you know, kind of give them a little bit of a toolbox, frankly, on, like, how do I get a client talking?

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Mark Wickersham: That's interesting. Not only is it helping with personalization at scale, but you're helping to kind of apply standards across the, the firm based on, on these things.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, yeah, completely.

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Mark Gilbert: Completely.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk a little bit about AI adoption, guardrails, privacy, these things that are,

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Mark Wickersham: Keeping advisors up at night, or should be keeping advisors up at night.

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Mark Wickersham: you know, product agnostic, stepping back and taking a look at it from the advisors, see, how should advisors be thinking about AI adoption? What policies and guardrails should they have in place, and what should they be thinking about in terms of privacy?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, so I would say, like, there's a few kind of guidelines that we give people, regardless of what, you know, they're doing, what systems they're using, or anything else. At the first, I would just start with, like.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, you need to understand why you're doing this, right? Like, what's your goal, right? Like, is your goal to save time? Is your goal to get better financial plans in front of people? Is your goal to… whatever it is, right? There's all of these systems, and there's going to be more and more coming out that are quite impactful, but you just kind of want to understand, like, why are you doing this?

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Mark Gilbert: So that's the first one, and that allows you to kind of answer the rest of the questions.

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Mark Gilbert: I wish there was kind of a… like, we always get questions on, like, you know, what's the one thing I need to ask to make sure it's okay or not? And the problem is, like, it's a little deeper than that, unfortunately. So there are some baselines, right? Like, I would say the very clear baselines are you, the advisor, need to be able to fully control the data. Like, you don't want a system that's keeping your data, you don't… you definitely, in the AI world.

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Mark Gilbert: don't want something that's training your data, because that, frankly, means that you're never going to really get it back. Like, even though they may delete the root data, like, your data's now, like, essentially stitched into all this.

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Mark Gilbert: There are standards, you know, like SOC 2 is a common one used in the US and North America. I would definitely ask for those. Those are, like, both very important, but also, unfortunately, not…

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Mark Gilbert: Like, they're necessary, but not sufficient in their own right. Like, you can have a company with a SOC 2 that operates in a way that you don't like. So I would make sure that you, you fully control the data and can erase it, and delete it yourself. Make sure that they have the security guards.

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Mark Gilbert: that you need, right? So, like, if you need single sign-on, if you need two-factor authentication, any of these things to secure it, because this data is very personal, make sure that they have that. They should be… make sure they do have a SOC 2 or something like that, and you should…

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Mark Gilbert: also be able to, frankly, just straight out talk with them about this, right? Like, if you ever can't get ahold of a vendor or a tool, or, you know, they don't really want to talk about it, they just keep sending you a SOC 2 and not answering detailed questions, like, that's a… that's a pretty big flag. I would say one of the nice things in this space

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Mark Gilbert: Is that there are a lot of different tools that are focused on the industry, and generally, like, at least all the ones that we've been really interacting with, like, even, you know, our competitors and some.

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Mark Gilbert: are following these guidelines, right? Like, it's much trickier if you're using more of a consumer product, like a chat GPT or something off the shelf, even in those situations.

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Mark Wickersham: Cherish nocake or something like that, right.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, even in some, like, you know, we always say if you're, you know, if you're not paying for the product, then you are the product, so watch out for that.

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Mark Gilbert: And then, if you… even if you are paying, though, like, some of them still can do stuff with your data, and so I… like, it's just, frankly a little easier. Like, anybody who's serving the industry directly will be able to answer the questions that I just laid out in, like, 10 seconds, right? Like, it's super fast.

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Mark Gilbert: And then, as just overall data hygiene, like.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, data's tricky, because as you mentioned, with AI, it's very powerful, and there's always scenarios that you may not think of. But in general, you don't want to be keeping a lot of copies of data around in different spots. You don't, you know, like, you kind of want the data you need to go do things, or that you know you may need in the future.

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Mark Gilbert: there, and not a ton else. So, like, if you, like, when we integrate with systems, as an example.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, like, we… we will query those systems to help with meeting preparation, we'll query to fill out forms and do all these things, but, like, we don't… we don't copy that data into our systems, right? Like, there's no…

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Mark Gilbert: copy of your CRM or copy of your, you know, custody data, and frankly, nothing should be doing that. Like, it's just… it's just risky. Even if it's a very secure company, like, you just… more copies is… is… is more risk.

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Mark Wickersham: I think those are good, good guidelines in general. Soc 2, Type 2 is a good indicator that they're following,

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, they have procedures.

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Mark Wickersham: There's a boy.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it.

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Mark Wickersham: It's certainly not the end-all, be-all to say, oh yeah, these guys are fine, but it's certainly a marker, a standard, a certain level that they need to have. I think firms that,

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Mark Wickersham: maybe have not adopted AI should have some sort of policy, but also to consider that, you know, if it's too restrictive of a policy, that there's gonna be some sort of shadow usage, right? They're gonna get on the… they're gonna get on the phone, they're gonna have ChatGPT on the phone, they're gonna be typing stuff in, they're gonna…

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Mark Wickersham: People are gonna experiment with it, they should be able to experiment with it, but in a way that's safe, in a way that's not revealing client-sensitive information, right?

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Mark Gilbert: No, totally, and I, like, that's a really important point that you made, where I would say the worst problems that we see is often that a firm locks down too much, and so you end up with this, like, shadow usage of a bunch of things, right?

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Mark Gilbert: that's why, like, you know, opening up things and doing certain things are just, like, you know, we see it where, frankly, firms will lock things down, then all of a sudden we have a bunch of signups with Gmail addresses, and you're like, oh, I wonder what happened there, right? And it's just, like, people, you know, people will naturally try to help themselves and help their clients and everything else, and so…

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Mark Gilbert: I would say the most important thing for two reasons, is to just

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Mark Gilbert: like, enable some AI usage and get people comfortable with it. Part of it is because, like, just as we said, if you don't, they will. You know, like, there's other ways of doing it.

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Mark Wickersham: Jurassic Park, it's getting out.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, that's it. Like, it's gonna go. And then the second one is, like, it is, you know, and again, not… this has nothing to do with our system in general, but just, like, in the world, right? Like, this is gonna impact the industry in a way that…

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Mark Gilbert: is, you know, is almost hard to imagine, frankly, right? And, like, the analogy we kind of tell people is, like, imagine running your whole firm without software. Like, it's almost… even though you may not love some of the software you have, like, it's essentially impossible to operate in that world anymore. And that really took probably about 30 years, right, to go through all of that, and you're gonna see the same thing happen in AI in probably the next 3 years. Like, it's just gonna be, you know, like, the

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Mark Gilbert: the client expectations.

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Mark Gilbert: are getting higher and higher, because if you can do these things, right, like, if you can leave a meeting and have a draft plan sent to you in 15 minutes.

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Mark Gilbert: people start to expect that, and when you're, you know, especially for people dealing with younger clients, or, you know, generational wealth transfers, or whatever, like, you know, they're on Robinhood, and those things you can go click and just do things instantly, right? Like, they don't want to wait 6 days to get a DocuSign to get permission to send them a folder. Like, it just isn't, you know, the way they operate anymore.

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Mark Wickersham: I think that's a good take.

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Mark Gilbert: Shh.

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Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about the evolution of AI. Obviously, we've had generative AI, you've had kind of this, kind of, first model taking unstructured information, changing in the structured information, which has unlocked a ton of value, saved a ton of time. Generative AI, which we've been talking about in terms of executing these tasks on the structured information.

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Mark Wickersham: Where… where is AI going in the wealth management industry? What's next?

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Mark Gilbert: It's always hard to predict AI, I'll just say. The way that… so we…

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Mark Gilbert: we, like, I often go in and talk with executive teams about AI, just kind of in what's going on in the industry. One of the things I almost always start with is a graph on AI improvements, and the key thing to know about this graph is it's exponential, right? Like, so it's improving very quickly, and it's actually…

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Mark Gilbert: like, I don't think people think of it this way, but it's actually a very just straight line on an exponential growth.

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Mark Gilbert: And the reason we say that is I think people were, like, almost like, well, there was no AI, or there wasn't much AI, and then all of a sudden ChatGPT came out, and then it just, like, shot up. And the reality is, like, the industry has actually just been growing at this crazy rate for quite a while. And what happens is whenever you kind of just hit the next threshold.

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Mark Gilbert: the next thing happens, right? So, like, we, you know, I live in San Francisco for over a year now, like, I, you know, pretty much am in Waymos multiple times a week, which are, like, fully autonomous driving cars, and it's just normal.

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Mark Gilbert: Right? They drive great, they're good, and, you know, like, 3 years ago, this would have been, like, very weird, and now it's just normal, right? We've seen, definitely, multimodal come in a lot, and, you know, so you can see it creating movies, you can see it analyzing movies, creating, you know… We just launched, what we call document intelligence, so you can basically take documents, drag it in. If you have document shares or attachments, we'll just take those and analyze those.

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Mark Gilbert: And it's amazing what data you can capture out of, like.

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Mark Gilbert: Frankly, images, or even sometimes pretty grainy images.

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Mark Gilbert: And so the multimodal piece, like, I don't think, you know, outside of maybe marketing, I don't think a lot of financial advisors are going to be generating a lot of movies. But, you know, this ability to now go take data from all of these different spots, like.

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Mark Gilbert: you know, when LLMs came out, it was all about being able to understand text, which was very powerful, right? Understand speech, and be able to, like, you know, from our discussion, know the high-level points, what are the follow-ups. Now it actually can do that across a lot more physical

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Mark Gilbert: goods, like images, you know, like any documents, paper you have around, all of that is… is frankly here. I think the next big thing that we see…

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Mark Gilbert: is that, you will see more and more, taking actions for advisors. Like, when we launched early last year, if we told you that we were going to automatically do something, like, to your client or, you know, for your client, like, every advisor would have naturally

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Mark Gilbert: looked at us very… with very nervous eyes. And what we're… what we're seeing now is as the trust builds, and frankly, the systems get good, right, there are things which are like, yeah, why don't you just go ahead and take care of that for us, right? Like, it's low risk, there's not a lot of compliance, like, whatever those are. Booking meetings, following up, changing things, all of that. And so you'll start to see more of this, like.

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Mark Gilbert: trusted, what I would call, full automation. Not on… not on huge things, like, you know, like the advisors for us are always kind of in the loop.

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Mark Gilbert: But you'll be able to see more and more of things where it's just, like, click and go, and things that are… the way we think about it is, like, these workflows are fairly complicated today, and more and more and more and more of that will be able to get handled by AI with, like, the advisor on both sides, right? Like, probably coming into it with a little bit of scanning and tweaking, and then coming out of it.

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Mark Gilbert: So all of that's gonna happen. I think everyone probably knows this, but in the… in the… or investing.

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Mark Gilbert: and planning world, like, AI has been going on for quite a while, right? Like, that's frankly where a lot of machine learning, I would say, between that and video games, like, those are probably the two biggest AI usages up until LLMs, and that's just continuing on and on. We're not super deep in that space, but there are some really cool

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Mark Gilbert: kind of planning and modeling-type systems that are coming out, and some of them are out already, that are, really interesting. And so I think you're going to see, a lot of things in those situations as well.

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Mark Gilbert: trying to… and then, for anyone at larger firms, AI actually should make compliance easier, should make compliance better and more natural. I think compliance, we've always…

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Mark Gilbert: you know, it's been challenging because there's, you know, in all these situations, you have a policy, you need to teach the policy, and then you need to, like, supervise it. Supervision has been very manual, and, like, AI will make that a lot better. It should make it, frankly, a lot smoother for advisors, and almost, like, seamless and behind the scenes without,

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Mark Gilbert: Without some of the challenges and craziness that people have seen.

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Mark Wickersham: That, those are… I think those are all good points. I think, you know, I love that saying, the future's here, it's just not evenly distributed, right?

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: A lot of these capabilities are in some sort of industry, in some sort of way, that maybe the financial industry, which tends to be a lagging industry in terms of some of these capabilities, just maybe has not experienced it. I do think, you know, the potential for

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Mark Wickersham: really being able to deepen the client relationship with AI, which I know sounds like an oxymoron, is there, because the advisor can really focus on what's important. Those important salient points can be brought up to the surface a lot easier. Personalization at scale, those type of things.

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Mark Wickersham: I do get worried when you take a, like, talk about…

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Mark Wickersham: AI societal impact, I just think the playbook that happened with social media, if we end up repeating that, is not great. I don't think…

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Mark Wickersham: social media, I think it has a much negative ramifications as it does positive ramifications for society, and it seems to be getting worse by the day. And I hope, you know, we don't certainly end up down a similar path with AI.

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Mark Gilbert: the area that we see that, that I, like…

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Mark Gilbert: I don't… I don't want to say I worry the most, but I think people need to be very cognizant of, is, like, a lot of this, like we talked about a little earlier, a lot of this…

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Mark Gilbert: manual labor, to be blunt, like administrative tasks, taking notes. A lot of people were using junior staff to do that, right?

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah.

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Mark Gilbert: you're like, do I no longer need junior staff? And then… then the question becomes that, well, like, how are you training your junior staff, right?

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Mark Gilbert: who are there, and how you train them, and all that. And that's where, for us, in a good way, like, the scorecarding and those types of things we have can actually, like, help them ramp more, but I think people do need to be cognizant of, like, you know.

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Mark Gilbert: how are we growing our team, and making sure that they're learning and doing the things that they need to do, so that you have a great workforce, and that, frankly, at some point, you're probably going to retire and pass it on, or do whatever else?

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Mark Gilbert: you know, almost before you were forced to do it, because there was just so much work, you'd be like, great, we'll just get people and they'll do the work, and then we'll see who learns the quickest and go. And now you need to be, you know, kind of to your point on social media, right? Like, you can imagine a situation where people get so efficient.

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Mark Gilbert: That it actually is no longer, like, a, you know, kind of like a self-growing industry, and that would be a big problem for us, for sure.

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Mark Wickersham: I mean, it should, open up completely new careers and capabilities that we… I can't even dream of right now, but the…

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Mark Wickersham: it is tough for younger people coming out of college these days in that workforce. I think you used to learn by doing.

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Mark Wickersham: I mean, some of the ways you used to figure out how to automate something is by doing it manually and then automating it. And likewise, you know, younger staff learn by kind of doing those tasks, and then they kind of appreciate the individual steps in it. When AI comes in and does it all, it's like…

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Mark Wickersham: You know, you know, the ability to think through problems, the ability to solve things when you can't deconstruct things? Like, that's.

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Mark Gilbert: Yeah, even the mentorship, right? Like, you kind of, you know, like, it's… I think it's gonna get back a little bit to almost kind of like the apprenticeship models, right, that a lot of industries have had for a long time, and probably getting a little bit more formalized in that world.

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Mark Wickersham: Alright, I love to end these podcasts more on a personal note, Mark, with 3 questions that have nothing to do with wealth tech. I am gonna throw one out that does still have to do with AI. What is one way in which you use AI in your personal life?

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Mark Gilbert: I use AI for a lot, so it actually has taken me,

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Mark Gilbert: it even took me for running an AI company to get used to this, but, like, I use, like, I use Claude a lot, personally, it's an anthropic product, just to, like, as things learn, I think it's a fantastic learning tool, right? And I think things where… I'm sure all of us have had these, like, you're almost sitting on the couch, looking at something, or reading something, like, oh, I'd love to know more about blah.

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Mark Gilbert: I now have it on my phone and everywhere, and I just start asking it questions, and it is… it is… it has, like, made me smarter, I'll just put it that way. It makes me smarter, makes it easier to learn, so…

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Mark Gilbert: I love that. I use it for that. You know, I also use my Alexa for different things, but that's probably the biggest, the biggest AI change and impact I've had in my world.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I can't even use, like, the traditional search anymore. Such a poor experience compared to…

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Mark Wickersham: using AI, and it really becomes that kind of co-pilot in your life around these things. You live in San Francisco, I love San Francisco. I think it's one of the great cities in the U.S, if not on the planet. What is one of your favorite spots in San Francisco that people might not know about?

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Mark Gilbert: The place that everyone should go in San Francisco, if you're ever there for more than a day, is actually the west side of the city. So, Ocean Beach, it's called Ocean Beach, it's a huge, long beach. A lot of people don't know, but about a year ago, that entire… it's called the Great Highway, it's the highway right next to beaches.

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Mark Wickersham: It's open to the public.

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Mark Gilbert: And there's stuff on there now. There's, like, a skate park, there's playgrounds, it's awesome. If you want to go walking, you want to go jogging, there's a bunch of restaurants on Terravall right there that are really easy. Just go over there. Take a Waymo over, you get to, you know, ride the driverless car over. It's great. If you're in the city, it's great.

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Mark Wickersham: This was the highway… did they shut it down during, COVID, and then they just…

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Mark Gilbert: during COVID a bit, then they just had a big vote, and it's essentially now a park. It's permanently a park, yeah.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I love that. Great. I think that was one of the…

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Mark Wickersham: positive things that came out of COVID. A lot of outdoor eating, as well. It was one of those things. What's a book that you've read recently that you'd recommend?

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Mark Gilbert: I'm gonna go way off the reservation here and tell you, for anyone who's doing long drives, which sometimes happens, or you have long commutes, Spy School. My kids love Spy School, it's a series of books.

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Mark Gilbert: kids' books, and my… my… both my kids are now… the younger one just went to college, and I still read. They just came out with the new one. And I read… take any spy school book and read it. They're great. Totally different.

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Mark Wickersham: Cool.

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Mark Gilbert: It is… it is not a, it is not a self-improvement book, it is not a business book, but they are great. They just… they kind of pop you out, and they're… they're really fun. They're great on Audible, too.

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Mark Wickersham: Well, if we're talking about spies and people are looking for a show recommendation, Slow Horses on Apple, oh my god, some of the best riding out there.

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Mark Wickersham: And then in terms of a book recommendation, I'm gonna throw out for April Rudin, Wealth Management with a Difference. Really, she talks about how firms should market themselves, getting away from the stuffy, smells like mahogany type of marketing, and it's a more modern approach.

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Mark Wickersham: So I put a recommendation out there for my friend April Rudin. I think it's a great, great book. But…

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Mark Wickersham: Mark, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing the time, and I love this conversation.

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Mark Gilbert: You as well, Mark. Thanks a lot. Thanks, everyone, for the time. Really appreciate it.

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Mark Wickersham: Alright, good stuff.

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Mark Gilbert: Bye-bye.