Mark Wickersham, Host 0:01

Adrian Johnson, welcome to the Wealth Tech Podcast. I am happy to have you on the show. Adrian, you are the CEO of Practify and a self-proclaimed AI realist. I am looking forward to getting into this conversation today. There is so much activity. It's like basically the intersection of CRM, note-taking, AI, advisor productivity. There is a lot going on. But before we get into all of that, would you mind giving yourself a brief introduction and an overview of Practifi?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 0:40

Yeah, for sure. So as you say, uh Adrian Johnson, CEO of Practifi, actually uh one of two original founders of the firm. And um it's interesting if I go back, you know, almost 15 years ago when uh when Practify was founded, uh the question then was would CRM remain dominant as a part of an advisor's technology stack? And uh we sit here, you know, almost a decade and a half later having the same conversation. And I I don't believe for a second it's less dominant. Um uh so why Practify started uh it's kind of an interesting one. We we saw as we looked around the world that advisor technology had really skewed very heavily and understandably, uh given where things were way back then. Uh, but it had skewed incredibly heavily to market performance. And consumer technology had begun to skew incredibly heavily towards every piece of technology that you interact with, knows you as a person and makes personalized suggestions. And we could see this great split between consumer expectation and what advisor technology was helping advisors to deliver. Uh, but we knew, just as we know today in an AI era, that foundational to that, absolutely fundamental to that, was just good, clean, structured data held in an easily retrievable way. And uh so hence we went down the path of building the CR.

Mark Wickersham, Host 2:12

Yeah, it's amazing how true, you know, good clean data, or you know, the axiom garbage in, garbage out, or AI getting you know garbage out quicker that maybe even sounds more plausible. Um is is so true today. Um tell me a little bit about Practifi's AI journey. What has been your approach to AI and tell me a little bit about your uh soon-to-be-launched AI native product?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 2:44

Yeah, so we were an interesting, as you uh said in the the intro. I call myself an AI realist. Uh and I, as is true in many aspects of my world, I do my best to avoid being caught in the hype cycle. Uh, and I think the hype cycle describes what AI has looked like in the advice space or in the wealth management space more broadly over the last 12 or 18 months. Uh and that's that's good. You know, there's advisors who want to experiment, and there's but you know, against the backdrop of regulatory uncertainty and all those sorts of things. And it was around uh mid-year last year, I guess, so maybe 12 months ago, that we we started to read the tea leaves and understand that that regulatory frame was getting clearer, uh, that the tech was getting more stable uh and maturing. Like, you know, uh, I I don't want to work with Claude and I think about what it looks like if I were working with the models of 12 months ago versus the models of today. You know, it's it's chalk and cheese. The capabilities are so far different. Um and we could see that trajectory really tightening. And so as we we looked at that, we said, well, what does the market want right now? What what are the things that, from a use case perspective, sit on the right side of regulation, on the client experience perspective, uh additive, not just noise, uh, because there's certainly been a lot of noise. And where do we see that advisors have moved beyond acting just out of FOMO, uh, which has been a huge portion of the industry noise? It's like, oh, I have to have one of these because I know someone else is using it. But when you ask that other person, they're like, well, I'm experimenting with it because someone else was using it and no one's actually getting any value. And that value started to really coalesce around some of those early use cases. So things like note takers and transcription and meeting preparation services and some of that generative AI capability. Um and just as a little tangent here, I I think a lot of people have short memories. You know, machine learning, the kind of the raw form and kind of heavier lifting form in a lot of ways of AI has been around in this industry for multiple decades.

Mark Wickersham, Host 5:04

Yeah, workflow automation, these things aren't very big.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 5:07

Like, you know, it's uh everyone's excited by generative AI because it's tangible to a user as opposed to sitting embedded in a piece of technology. And so what we did was we looked at the challenges with those uh those solutions that were gaining in traction. So we looked at the note takers and the meeting prep and those sorts of things. And we immediately began to see two things emerging. One was there's a real disconnect between the advisor's experience and the rest of the team, because the team is operating in a point solution, uh, or sorry, is operating in the core system and the advisor is operating in the point solution. And so you've got this shadow record being formed that no one else can see. Uh and that's against the backdrop of, you know, over a decade of the industry saying we need to get to a single source of truth. And all of a sudden, that source of truth has been bifurcated by role. Uh, and that's a real problem. Uh and we still hear people say, oh, but it pushes data to my CRM and it pushes data to my uh planning tool. And it does. It pushes a small portion of the data that it has to each of those places. But those point solutions are building their own record, and that's part of their own desire to protect their longevity. Um, and then directly related to that, we saw and continue to see a very rapidly emerging risk uh for firms. So there's a compliance risk, for example. Your record is now bifurcated. So there's a chance that you get different answers depending on who you talk to in the firm. Um, the attack surface has gone up at a point where the number of attacks on the industry has exploded. So, you know, there's this big challenge that started to emerge. And so our vision then became well, we don't want our clients exposed to either of those challenges. We don't want them to have to deal with the segregated records, and we don't want them to have to deal with that attack surface problem. So we launched our own products in those spaces, but in the same way that the industry was looking for them. So we we said, all right, well, for some of you, you want to experiment. So let's give you solutions you can plug in, uh, but natively built by us. So they're they're more wired in. Um, you know, we don't want you to have that risk exposure. So let's make sure that those access controls and the way that you gate data and all of the security layer you have in your CRM applies equally in the AI product, something that you don't get if you have a point solution. And so we delivered those late last year. Uh, and now we're on the journey uh to say that model is right and true and good and will work perhaps for the long term for a lot of the industry. Uh, but for those who want to embrace what's possible from an AI perspective, agentically, generatively, you know, all of the capabilities as they evolve rapidly, that we should turn it up a notch and we should deliver what you know, what we would consider a new class of CRM, a category that we uh coin the phrase an intelligent CRM, a genuinely agentically powered. You can't separate the AI from the capability uh style of tool. And so it's a product we're bringing to market.

Mark Wickersham, Host 8:27

So it's not a situation where you're you're you're layering an AI layer on top. It's a truly ground-up agentic AI layer.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 8:36

It it is, yeah. So uh we recognize the the challenge that a lot of uh smaller kind of, you know, uh we're AI native, and and I love that term because it seems you can define it as to whatever best fits you. Uh but um we think that uh given the regulatory environment, given the complexity of data, given the broad technology ecosystem, we continue to use Salesforce as the core platform. But we have designed and built from the ground up a genuine Agentix solution that that uh uses that Salesforce infrastructure and database as a as a slate. Um, but we don't use Salesforce as AI solution because it's not the strongest in the market.

Mark Wickersham, Host 9:22

Yeah, it is interesting uh how AI, even though it's so transformative that it's kind of repeating the technology mistakes of the past with the with the individual point solutions, siloed data. I mean, it's if you've been around long enough, right? You've seen this playbook, and and here we are again. So it is an interesting uh take. I'd love to get your take on the you know, the CRM versus the the note-takers. Obviously, note-taking has been one of the areas that's had one of the highest levels of uh adoption, one of the most rapid levels of adoption, and there's talk of note-takers eating uh their CRM and CRMs becoming note-takers. How do you see that that shifting out and and what's your take on on those two classes of systems and and how they're going to evolve?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 10:14

So it's interesting. I mean, I hear and and listen to both sides. And uh, you know, as I said before, I think the danger with point solutions, white note-takers, or or any other point solution is if one part of a team within an RIA dedicates all their time to living in one system, they always have a fraction of the story. Um but that aside, I think if you if you strip down why uh is the thing I like to do. I think all technology fits in two buckets, depending on who you are and your role in the firm. And those buckets are real simple. It's either a giver or a taker. And so I think note takers exploded with the advice community because they see CRM as a taker. CRM, I input information into it, I have to update it, I have to start a process, I have to do all those things. And a note taker is here's your preparation, let me come to your meeting and I'll transcribe it for you. Let me pass a subset of that data off to the downstream system. So the the tail as old as time for an industry is that advisors don't want to swivel chairs, they don't want to move from system to system. And they don't generally, and this is a big generalization. So to your listeners who are uh who are tech nuts, but uh, I apologize, but for most advisors, they don't want to spend a lot of time in technology, they want to spend time talking to clients. So CRM for the longest time, a taker. Flip that round and live in compliance, operations, client service, or management, and CRM is a giver. It gives you structure, it gives you control, it gives you insight, it gives you activity, it gives you reporting, it gives you all of those things. It doesn't ask much. Yes, you need to update tasks and do those things, but it doesn't ask a lot. And so it's a matter of perspective. A note taker, if you're a compliance officer, is a taker. Now I've got to split my time across two pieces of technology. Now I've got to consider the risk attack surface in two. I've got more vendors to manage, I've got more risk to control management, I've got two pieces of technology to update, compare, pay for, all those sorts of things. So it's all about perspective. Um, so I think that's where the the challenge is. So when I hear the note takers will replace CRMs, it's always interesting to me that that conversation is universally a pool of advisors, and it's often advisors in smaller firms because they're also the executive layer, and they're like, I can live in this. And they're not yet thinking of the bigger picture for the firm. As soon as the firm grows in complexity, and certainly when I talk to practifice clients, they're like, yeah, the note-taker will never be a core piece of technology. It will always be on the periphery. And if we can get that tech, that same capability from a core system, we would do that in a heartbeat. So I think it depends. I don't think either will die off. I think we've been down this road many times. Uh, there'll always be an audience for the peripheral system, just as there'll always be an audience for the core system. Um, but I do think that people aren't thinking about the risk attack surface, the fragmentation of the client record, all those sorts of things. They're looking at the giver-taker as the whole conversation.

Mark Wickersham, Host 13:32

It is uh, I mean, it it definitely is an interesting development. You look at the amount of time that it's saved um people, I in it's real, it's a real productivity gain in an industry that has a real talent shortage. And it's good that that clients have the ability to have choice. Uh, I think that's always important in the marketplace. Um and I think it's great that when you when you see more competition, when you see more choice, I think that's good overall for the industry. Um you know, we talked a little bit beforehand about agentic AI, how workflow automation has actually been around for a long time, certainly. Um how do you see uh agentic AI in reality versus AI theater? And kind of what is the difference between the traditional kind of workflow and and really kind of true agentic execution?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 14:29

Yeah, and it's I think theater is a is a great term there.

Mark Wickersham, Host 14:33

There is theater, it's a great one.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 14:35

Man, that there is just if you if you look at words that have had their meaning metamorphized by by any audience to try and make it say what they want, uh agentic is going to be up there. To me, I think great automation still solves for a huge portion of the industry need. And that's uh that's true whether you're CRM or in the portfolio side or a planning tool or whatever. Just great automation and connectivity, cross-system connectivity uh is the big deal. And I think the thing that people are hoping for from genuine agentic solutions is cross-technology behavior. Uh and the closest to that really today is computer use agents. Because a lot of what's happening in the agentic world today, you know, people say, you know, my note taker pushes data from System X to planning tool Y, and then planning tool Y does something with it. Okay, that's not an agent. That's just triggering a workflow from an API call. That that technology is decades and decades old. So when we start to get into true agentic technology, firstly, it's got to be a uh a piece of technology that operates uh unprompted. Someone doesn't need to take an action that lands a piece of data somewhere that triggers something to occur. Uh so it needs to be monitoring for signals within the system. And then it needs to be able to parse multiple signals into something coherent and either take a direct action, dangerous, in a regulatory environment, or, and this is where the human in the loop model comes in, it needs to make a recommendation that is cited with all of the facts and cue that up so that the friction for the person consuming that advisor, operations, leader, doesn't matter, that that person is able to quickly assess a lot of information of things that they would otherwise not have gone and seen and take an action based on the quality of the recommendation that they've given. And the reason that there's not lots of that is that it's really hard.

Mark Wickersham, Host 16:53

Yeah.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 16:54

You know, it's um it's when people people are conflating LLM to equal agent. You know, if I go to Claude and say, where should I go in Italy for my next holiday? Claude isn't doing something agentic, it's being a really powerful search tool. It's when I say, I'm this kind of person and I like these kind of things. Here's my past travel life, here's everything that I've experienced, here's all of those things. I want you to constantly look for the best possible deals of places I would like to go, given the parameters that you think I would like to experience. And go and do that every day, with you know, every minute of every day. And just pop in, pop back when there's something relevant to tell me. And that's it. You know, the it then goes and operates unprompted. It learns when I reject a trip. I don't want to go to a war zone, don't recommend any war zones to me, you know, whatever. Um, it can factor in new information and it can make new and informed decisions. And we don't see a lot of that. Uh, we definitely see a bit of it, but we don't see a lot of it. Uh and so that's the path we've taken with our new product. Uh so we are uh going to be launching a product to market that comes with a lot of agents, uh, genuine agents built within it. Uh, so that everyone within the phone, regardless of their role, is leveraging all of the history, but with all of the record sharing controls and all of the security layers and all of those things that you expect from a core system.

Mark Wickersham, Host 18:32

Yeah, respective of the user permissions and things that that might not automatically be built into an off-the-shelf um AI model. I I do think it's it's an interesting development. There's a certain level of context, there's a certain level of decision making that these agents make that that's way beyond uh just a simple, like you say, a simple search or um basic queries or even basic workflows. Um let's talk a little bit about um obviously more so than ever, the need for good clean data is so important to get good results from AI. I think there has been talk, uh, and we talked about this on our prep call a little bit, about Salesforce going headless. We could potentially see it at a set of with a certain group of firms being able to leverage our clean uh financial data. What does this mean for RAs and family offices and how how should they be thinking about their tech stack when it comes to this?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 19:38

Yeah, for sure. I mean, Salesforce at uh Salesforce's headless 360 announcement is kind of funny. It's taken on a bit of a life of its own and lost context. So it was at an announcement at a tech conference, uh, so purely directed to developers to say, hey, you you're no longer encumbered by the Salesforce UI. You can, you know, bring bring your own user experience if you choose to. And Salesforce themselves is promoting Slack as that layer as part of their acquisition strategy there. Um what that really means from a uh just from a um an RIA perspective is of course, if you're down the path with Salesforce and a user interface, I guess there's a question of will they continue to evolve that if someone doesn't do it for them? And and is that genuinely the long-term strategy? Um nothing is changing, uh, certainly for the negative, uh, nothing is changing in the database layer and the controls and all of those things. So I don't think firms out there need to go, oh my God, Salesforce is going to disappear. Not at all, quite the opposite. Um I think the real thing that firms need to think about, uh, and this kind of blurs into the whole, you know, I can vibe code a solution on the weekend. Um uh of course, firms have always it's another one where you know you give something a label and suddenly it's cool. Um, people have built their own tax calculators in Excel since Excel's spin around. Uh, you know, this vibe coded solution piece just has a label now, and it's more dangerous because it happens more quickly. But the the need for structure, the need for control, the need to consider permissions, uptime, reliability, hallucinations, all of those types of things has only gone up. And it's gone up for two reasons. It's gone up because the technology thinks more for itself now. So the control is more important because you're not just getting a deterministic response. So in a deterministic world, the value is in the field or it's not. So so it's fine. I think for for um for RAAs and family offices and the like, uh, or anyone in any regulated industry, actually, whether it's wealth or office. You've really got to start to ask yourself, how can I genuinely rely on the information being presented? And if you've built something yourself and you're not a technologist, you know, I think there's there's plenty of people out there in our industry who have actually entered the wealth industry, but with a really strong technology awareness and interest and those sorts of things. And uh I'm certainly not saying 100% of things that those people build are bad, not at all. Um but I think for for most firms, they need to come back to what do they need to be, what should they be, what can they rely on, and what can they genuinely trust? And if I'm a chief compliance officer and I've got to front the SEC and say, yep, you know, we're really confident in the generative AI capability because Sarah built it last weekend uh using Chat GPT and uh and we all tested it before we used it, um, I'd be pretty nervous. Um it doesn't sound like a conversation I'd want to have. Uh so I think for firms, there's a there's a real need to step back and go, hang on. If a vendor came to me and said, guys, I built this last weekend, it's fantastic. It's going to cost X dollars for you to use. You should absolutely put all your eggs in that basket. There's just no way you would do it. Right.

unknown 23:27

Right.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 23:27

You know, you would be like, well, let's go through procurement. Let's understand risk, let's do do proper due diligence. And so that same mentality needs to apply.

Mark Wickersham, Host 23:36

Yeah, what's your uh SOC 2 type 2 audit? Let's see, let's see that. And you know, I I think this this DIY, this build versus buy type of of discussion, I I thought was dead. Obviously, it's come back with with AI. Um and I just think like some firms may be underestimating you, you may get something that gives you a good result uh right away, but it there's a long-term care and feeding. As you said, there's there's permissioning that needs to take place. The regulatory environment is constantly changing, and that requires these updates. And it's like there's a reason why you pay your vendor every year, it's not like a one and done because they're constantly working on their product. And uh, I really do get concerned with some of this DIY. I I do think there is a place for some sort of quick analysis or or taking information and and and using it in certain ways, but that to actually build systems uh yourself, I I do have some concerns with that.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 24:40

I um I find I have so many concerns with it because I I just would never do it. And I find sometimes the the way to help people understand is to move it into a medical context and say, well, like I can jump online and I can ask WebMD some questions based on what I think my symptoms are. I can give it a general description about me and what I want. Maybe I've got some old blood tests. You know, I don't want to put those up there because they're gonna go public. So I'm gonna give it summary level information and and what have you. And it can tell me what it thinks is wrong with me and prescribe medications I can take. They may kill me because something else is wrong with me that I don't understand that I can't see, or the information that I gave, the term that I used was slightly loose. And as a result, you know, it's going to conflict with some other medication, or it didn't declare something, or whatever. I'm I'm not risking my life to technology. Right. But, you know, I find that that so many people are quick to risk the life of their business. Because if you get that really wrong and your client records are wrong, and they go public or or whatever, it it can be pretty terminal in the wealth management space. And and sometimes sitting on the vendor side of the fence, we get the well, you, you know, you guys are too slow.

Mark Wickersham, Host 26:00

Yeah.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 26:01

You know, you, you know, I can do this myself in a weekend, and it takes you two months. It's like it takes us two months because we test it, we make sure that it's robust, we put it through all of the controls that you don't think about or know about or or understand, and and rightly so. Um, and then we make sure it's packaged and controlled and updatable and all of those layers of things. And so sometimes uh it's important for people to remember that those controls, just as with your health, are there to stop you killing yourself.

Mark Wickersham, Host 26:35

Yeah, it's a good point. You know, the problem with AI too, it makes the answer seem really kind of plausible. It's like, hmm, that that sounds right, yeah, you know, but and it's so polite.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 26:45

And it's like, oh, you're right, I shouldn't have changed that answer halfway through. My bad.

Mark Wickersham, Host 26:50

Right, right, right. Even though that could be like a terminal uh yeah um answer. So um what is the future of of wealth tech and and ai? I mean, obviously, I think the ground is still really unsettled right now. I think there are some signs of of where the direction directions uh sorting out and and where the technology can go. Um, but where do you see the industry and uh and where do you see AI going in the next, well, let's say 18 months. I think three years is even too long now to take a look out to.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 27:31

Yeah, man, 18 months even feels long. Um so so as I said before, I think with major technology shift, there's always a there's always a hype tackle. There's always a level of excitement that dies down. And uh unfortunately for the industry, I think the the first day of reckoning is coming. Uh someone's gonna get it badly wrong with something they built over a weekend or a risk surface they didn't really consider gets attacked and a vulnerability is exposed. So I think for for some that day is to come. Um but when we strip it back to a technology, as you said before, Mark, the the industry needs productivity gains. There aren't enough advisors, there's more people than uh than possible globally. You know, this is true in Practifise, uh operates in multiple markets around the world. It's true in every market. You know, there just aren't enough advisors, and and they can't deliver the service at scale to make it efficient to deliver it to to all of the possible customers. So growth for the industry is dependent on that efficiency uplift. And AI has a wonderful role to play in doing that. Um it is not the Q role. It's not gonna fix the underlying data issue. You know, if you as we've said a couple of times, if you don't have good data, both structured and unstructured, then you're gonna get limited value. If you've got good structured data but no access to your unstructured data, you're only seeing part of a picture. If you've got data stored in lots of silos, then you're only getting AI insight on a fragment. That all those things are true today with AI, just as they were true with a BI tool. Like that that hasn't really changed. So the the potential, the great potential that I see from an industry perspective, is to start to do uh a better job of fulfilling the functions that don't happen well at scale. So, you know, uh understanding across an entire client book where circumstances or sentiment or or uh behavior has changed, and to help steer a corrective action before anyone could possibly have known that it was a problem, uh, to take away the keying errors that happen because more meaningful uh integration becomes possible over time. I don't think it solves the swivel chair anytime soon, uh because in some ways uh it's worsened a problem. So, what I mean by that is over the last, again, I keep saying decade, but I feel like it's multiple decades. One of the biggest challenges for firms or problems in the industry has been that a lot of vendors put up walls. You know, you can't integrate, or I won't allow two-way integration. I'll allow you to push data to me, but not data back, or or whatever. Um and that started to resolve a little. Um, now what we're seeing with AI is well, data is power, so I'm gonna put up more walls. I'm gonna make them tighter, and I'm gonna build my own version of the client record alongside of my tax planning tool or my note taker or my, you know, whatever. And so everyone's starting to realize that the bigger the picture they have, the more they can do, but it's still a bigger picture in a silo.

Mark Wickersham, Host 31:04

Yeah.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 31:05

And you know, we see MCP connectivity as being something that will help to break that down a little. But just as API connectivity continues to be a problem, uh uh has never resolved with some players, that problem isn't going to suddenly go away. And computer use agents, so the concept of the system logging in as you and taking an action on your behalf in a system that triggers an outcome. So imagine a scenario where uh a computer use agent sees information that came in as an attachment to an email that was linked to the CRM that says a client wants to move money. Uh and it runs off autonomously, logs in as you at the custodian, and moves the money. And then you discover that the email was hacked and that the account details that it moved money to were fraudulent, and now you're on the hook. You know, you you you took that from a regulatory perspective, you took that action. I think the friction from a regulatory environment in most computer use agent scenarios that that move the needle far enough for it to be genuinely transformative within uh the industry is somewhere away.

Mark Wickersham, Host 32:24

Yeah, it is interesting that the capabilities that AI does present. I do obviously there is this talent shortage that has been in the industry for a long time. And you see, I think some of the use cases that AI is really good at is around some of these like you know, the painkillers, the ability to kind of stop people retyping information, to be able to get unstructured data into structured data that then can be used for other other purposes, is is really powerful. I think it allows the advisor to be you know more human, more present uh with their clients, uh, certainly. I I think which is probably one of the most important things um out there. I also think there's a chance for for more democratization of wealth management if we can push down uh the advisor to be able to handle smaller accounts people earlier in their life cycle and in terms of their earning years. I think that would be a powerful thing. I do get worried about AI in general, you know, society-wise, and even within the wealth management industry, I think it's tempting to take a look at some of those entry-level jobs or those jobs that maybe were better suited for people that are more junior analysts that eliminate those, and AI is good at that, but then you're not gonna have senior people five years from now, 10 years from now. What are we gonna do to uh replenish the talent pool so there are senior people 10 years from now? And I think that's a real problem across all industries. I think if you look what happened, you know, the playbook with social media was not great. Yeah, like I don't you know that that that's you know it's it's a push at best. Um, I certainly think AI is has the potential to be much more transformative, but I also uh concern about what it's doing. I mean, recent college grads and whatnot, they're coming out to an extremely difficult job market. And some of the ways you used to learn by doing, right? I mean, there is you you learn how to automate a process by doing it manually, and some of that kind of goes away. So I hope some of that kind of gets resolved.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 34:32

Yeah, look, I think there's uh there's a lot to work through in there. I think when you step back and look at the advice industry, and and you know, we see this, I talk about this with our time, uh, with our team all the time, including our our more junior, newer recruits and intern type people, is advice is a human industry. It's a relationship-based human industry. And so technology can free more time to make the human side of the industry more available, more scalable, and all those sorts of things. But I don't see technology replacing the need for the relationship. You know, we saw that with robo advisors. You know, we've seen we've seen waves of of this over time. So I think what what AI will bring the industry is scale. But to your point, the industry needs to continue to recognize that it needs to foster the next generations of people who will be the people in the conversation. Uh, you know, if it is purely the pursuit uh of how many people can I churn out advice that was purely only touched by technology, I think we've seen that customers will vote with their feet and that won't happen. And maybe in generations in the future it will. Uh you know, I'm a big believer that um people build their risk appetite around major life decisions from their parents, uh, as much as none of us like to admit that. You know, we're all a refinement based on our own experiences, but on, you know, those relationships that we built. And as a result, I think any major structural disruption to that uh advisor, human-to-human relationship with their client is possibly still, you know, it's maybe a generation not yet born away.

Mark Wickersham, Host 36:26

That's a good point. Yeah, I do think that that client-to-advisor relationship, that interaction becomes even more important in the era of AI. Um I like to end the podcast on a personal note, AJ. You are from Sydney, you do you do the ultimate bi-coastal commute from Sydney to uh the shore of Lake Erie with Chicago. What is compare Sydney and Australia in general to Chicago and the states?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 37:01

So uh Sydney and Chicago, which all uh this may seem, considering the weather may seem an odd statement, really pretty similar. Midwesterners and Australians have a lot in common. There's a there's a certain bluntness and matter-of-factness that that comes. Uh Chicago, uh when the sun is out and and people along the lake shore or along the riverfront, uh, it feels just a lot like Sydney with people being out alongside the harbor. Uh, you know, food and wine scenes, those sorts of things are very, very uh similar. Uh comparing Australia and the US is kind of interesting because you're comparing a population that's one-fifteenth the size of the other. And so uh more broadly, I guess I would say that there's pockets of similarities and there are pockets of differences. Uh, you know, if you look at uh the East Coast of Australia and the West Coast of Australia uh of the US, there's probably more similarities than there are differences, but compare East Coast to East Coast uh or west coast to west coast, there's more uh differences. So um I think each has real merits. Um yeah, I I I don't see bad parts of either uh uh in isolation. Uh I think both populations have their challenges, but it's uh it's it's just how it rolls.

Mark Wickersham, Host 38:23

Yeah, I had a chance to backpack throughout Australia and spending some time in Sydney. Absolute beautiful country with uh I think people the US can certainly relate to. Um you obviously do some long haul travel. What would be some of your better travel tips?

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 38:44

My uh probably my most controversial travel tip is uh people jump on long haul planes and they're like, oh, I'm gonna be on this for 15 or more hours uh on this flight. How will I survive? And so their approach is to line up the movies they want to watch or the TV shows that they want to watch. And I think that's a real mistake, uh, because each of those has an allotted time. So if you're gonna watch a movie, they average about 90 minutes. So if you're jumping on a 15-hour flight and you're hoping to get a little bit of sleep, but you're saying you're gonna watch seven movies, you suddenly the time, you know, the length of the flight is very quantifiable. Whereas if you grab a book and you stay away from the screen, then you just tip yourself into the book. And if you get to the end of the flight and you've read a whole book, well, I read one book. What a great uh what a great win. So I would say stay away from things that are very time-based because they definitely make the flight feel much, much longer.

Mark Wickersham, Host 39:47

I thought you were going to recommend Rodog at it across the uh across the ocean there.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 39:52

I uh I I do. Oh god. I find that the uh I don't I don't interact with the the entertainment screen at all.

Mark Wickersham, Host 40:02

Yeah.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 40:02

I often have flight attendants who are like, uh Sir, is your is your screen okay?

Mark Wickersham, Host 40:07

You're okay, yeah.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 40:08

Uh I I like to just you know you don't get a lot of time with silence these days. One of the one of the interesting pieces is the flight between uh the US and Australia doesn't have internet.

Mark Wickersham, Host 40:21

Oh, okay.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 40:22

So uh you you get genuine, it will, but but you get genuine quiet, uh, which is uh which is wonderful.

Mark Wickersham, Host 40:30

The rare case, right? That you have to unplug from the internet. Sounds great. So all right, AJ, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you spending some time with me.

Adrian Johnstone | Practifi 40:41

Uh thank you, Mike. I I enjoyed it a lot.

Mark Wickersham, Host 40:47

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Wealth Tech Podcast, brought to you by Esteta AI. Seta is on a mission to modernize the family office. I really appreciate you listening, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Talk to you soon.