Only Fee-Only
This podcast interviews fee-only financial planners to learn about how they are helping their clients and serving their specific niches.
Only Fee-Only
#131 - Cutting Through the Tech Stack Noise with Joe Moss
Choosing the right tech for your advisory firm can feel overwhelming. In this episode, we talk with Joe Moss, COO at January Capital Advisors and founder of Connector, about how to build a tech stack that actually improves your client experience.
Joe shares his story from mowing lawns to helping advisors cut through the noise of outdated and overpriced software. He explains how to evaluate tools based on ease of use, real value, and what people actually use—not just name recognition.
Joe also talks about why your technology choices shape your client experience and why human connection still matters in an AI-driven world. As someone who is building community and creating content consistently, Joe brings a mix of practical tips and big-picture thinking.
Whether you are just starting out or looking to improve your current setup, this episode will help you make smarter tech decisions and stay focused on what matters most: serving clients well.
Connect with Joe on LinkedIn (Joe Moss 🔥) or check out advisortechbook.com for his top picks.
Joe's Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemoss-xyz/
Music in this episode is brought to you by Bensound.
How's it going everyone? Welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and, as always, we appreciate you being here. In this episode we're talking to Joe Moss. He's the COO at January Capital Advisors and he is the connector at Connector, which is gathering people, gadgets and dreams to shake up the RAA world. You might have seen some of his lists, some of his solutions lists, tech lists. He's got a lot of really cool stuff that he puts out there, so enjoy this episode with Joe Moss on the Only Fee Only podcast.
Speaker 2:What's up everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast. I'm Peter Travlo. I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles, and today so excited to have Joe Moss on from the Connector. Really have loved seeing Joe come up on LinkedIn and grow his content, so really excited to have him on as I think he has a great outlook on everything in the RIA space. So, joe, welcome to the show. Thanks.
Speaker 3:I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Yes, you bet. So for those who don't know who Joe Moss is, do you want to give a quick overview of who you are and what you're currently working on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I have a full-time role currently as COO of an RIA, so kind of all things. Ria operations and that's a lot of my background has been in RIA operations as well. On the side I also run an email newsletter which is Connector, and Connector is also a community. So the email newsletter, the community. I have a couple other communities that I run, but I like to stay active in the industry. I call myself a fractional industry troublemaker, which my father-in-law was like. What the heck does that mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, For someone outside of the industry. You're like I don't know how to explain this to you. Do you have like three hours to sit here and listen to me talk? No, that's cool, man. So let's start from square one. I mean, how did you learn about this stuff? How did you get interested in finance? And then, ultimately, how did you end up in the spot that you're in now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I'll start from the beginning and then I'll fast forward and then I'll slow down as I get closer to where I am now Sounds good.
Speaker 3:So my brothers had a lawn care business in the neighborhood and so I was like I want to make money, let me mow lawns. So around 12, 13 years of age I started mowing lawns. When I turned 18, I was I don't remember how I got interested in the stock market, but I started trading stocks, had a TD Ameritrade account. It was a really bad time to be trading stocks because it was like 2008, 2009. So I did lose a bunch of money then, but I learned a lot. So then I was a real estate agent, property manager, tried to flip some houses and anyway ended up in a role where I used Microsoft Excel a lot in a staffing company. So I got really good at Microsoft Excel. Liked Dave Ramsey, liked financial coaching, decided to try to be a financial coach.
Speaker 3:I had a rude awakening that it's really hard to get financial coaching clients and then I ended up working for a financial advisor. So let's kind of fast forward from when I was 12 to 27-ish or something. So I started working for a financial advisor. I thought I wanted to be a financial advisor originally but eventually realized that I enjoyed the operations side of things. But it was a rude awakening because I had a commute at the time and I would listen to Michael Kitts' podcast. I would listen to the XYPN radio podcast back and forth to work every single day and I was like hardcore fee only, which is the name of this podcast, but also the people on those podcasts are generally the more successful of financial advisors and they kind of know what they're doing.
Speaker 3:So the first advisor I worked for it was just the money was at like 17 different custodians and insurance companies. The tech stack was hardly being used, it just was. Uh, it was super interesting to see like how much could be optimized for a financial advising business. Um, so I that was, I actually printed out the Kitsis map at the time, like three foot by four foot, and put it on the wall next to me. Um, cause I was like I'm going to learn about all these companies. Um, so that was kind of the beginning of my whole interest in advisor tech in the in the ra operation space. Um, I'll stop there, see if you have any questions I think, uh, I think that's a good introduction.
Speaker 1:so you kept going, decided what, what was the thing that kind of made you realize, because I think you brought up a good point. You're like kind of in an advisor capacity in the beginning, and then I realized I enjoyed the operations side more. I want to take it like a second to dive into that, because I think there are people that go into that, but there's I don't know if it's like a feeling of regret or like I've done something for a while. Have I wasted my time Right? Should I have been doing this from the get-go? But what was that aha moment? And then, as you started to make that switch over to the operations side, did you feel a lot more fulfillment from doing that type of work?
Speaker 3:I think I mean when I started in the industry I was making 40 grand and I think that I thought that the way to make a lot more money was to be a financial advisor, because you know, if you're charging on AUM like there's not really a limit, you just you just add more AUM and I thought on the operations side that the income was pretty limited. But eventually I realized that you could actually make pretty good money on the on the operations side as well. So I think I think eventually I realized, hey, you know, I can reach my income goals working on the operations side of well. So I think I think eventually I realized, hey, you know I can reach my income goals working on the operation side of things. And then more recently, like adding an email newsletter, community, like other sorts of MRR to my income has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, like, what are some like general themes that you're seeing in the financial advising space, Right? I mean you mentioned that when you first printed off the Kitsis chart, which, of course, has probably grown exponentially since then.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Like what were your thoughts then, what are they now, and like you know what's your main goal behind it.
Speaker 3:Because I know you're also writing a book too, because I know you're also writing a book too, yeah, so I think let me just talk about some of the early software. So, like we were using eMoney and eMoney was, I don't know, like 500 bucks a month and we were barely using it. So one of the things I did is I moved us from eMoney to WriteCapital because it was like a quarter of the price and just a whole lot easier to use, easier for the clients to use. So I think, ease of use and value of the software. There's also something called utilization rate, which is like if you have access to something, how much of it you use is the utilization rate. It's like if you're paying for, if you buy a sandwich and only eat like 10% of it, you'll feel like you wasted 90% of the sandwich. So if you have an advisor tech tool and you're only using like 10 to 20% of it, you're going to be like, well, I'm wasting 80% of my money on this tool. Basically, Exactly.
Speaker 3:So I think value is really important to me. Ease of use. We were using Riskalyze, which, honestly, I really loved. I just thought it was so cool that you could get a score for a portfolio and a score for a risk tolerance questionnaire and then try to match them up. I hadn't heard of that and I thought that was super cool. But yeah, I think then I just was.
Speaker 3:So a huge thing was the process of opening accounts. So we had a broker-dealer and then our custodian was Pershing, and so between the advisor's paperwork, the broker-dealer's paperwork and then Pershing's account opening process, the entire thing was just a horrible experience for me, who was used to opening accounts like Robinhood or Wealthfront or stuff like that. So I was kind of shocked, honestly. I was like, seriously, this is what it takes to open a financial account. As a financial advisor, you could like go over on the consumer side and do it in like five minutes, right, yeah, so that was something that really stood out to me. And so then when Altruist came into the picture, I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I think Altruist has into the picture. I was like, wow, this is amazing. Um, and I think altruist has done a really good job, capturing market share um and delivering on the promises that they made early on so what is like your product and service offering?
Speaker 2:because I know you're building an audience, you're doing a lot of research on different tech stacks, different vendors, you know, but, like an advisor, they know that they need help, they know that they're under utilizing their tech. Where's Joe Moss come in to?
Speaker 3:help. More and more I'm thinking of myself as a writer. Um, so I started a sub stack and like sub stacks can be free or paid, and I like turned on payments and then people just started paying and I was like, even when I didn't put content behind a paywall, people would like upgrade to paid. And I was like this is very interesting, Like people can pay me to write, even if even if I'm not like preventing them from paying or preventing them from accessing something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So really enjoying getting paid subscribers on the subsec platform. Also, the school community I have a school community all about lead gen for financial advisors using LinkedIn and niching down basically. So that's, that's another paid thing, that just like an MRR monthly recurring revenue paid thing. I do some consulting, like hourly consulting here and there, but I don't have a lot of monetization on that side yet.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's kind of a fun hobby, right now, yeah, so the COO would be like your main thing that you're doing, and then the connector being the connector is kind of like a passion project that's on its way to doing really well is what you would say. Possibly, yeah, okay, that's cool, man, that's cool. How do you find the time? Because I, I mean, I look at michael kitts's map and then, like even you were showing us the website before we hopped on here, it would make my head spin, I think, to try to like learn all of these tools, understand the nuances of them all, like, how do you become familiar with them? And then how do you actually, you know, look at them and compare them and decide which ones that you're going to recommend, because that seems like a job all on its own to me. Correct me if I'm wrong there. No for sure.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, I think. I mean you know the phrase follow your passion or be obsessed, I think in some cases you just if you are truly curious about a topic and you are kind of obsessed with it. I mean I work. I work from when I wake up to when I go to work, and then I work typically like after my kids go to bed. I usually work a couple more hours too, so I I'm working basically all day, you know, monday through Saturday, so I just really enjoy it. I mean I enjoy doing the demos, I enjoy testing out the tools, doing free trials.
Speaker 3:A huge part of my experience has been working with the Kitsis directory and the Valvera surveys, because I think they do a really good job identifying, like the categories, the market leaders, the market share and then satisfaction scores. And I think something that's very fascinating is that often the market share leaders do not have the highest satisfaction scores. It's the newer players, the up and coming people, that have the higher satisfaction scores, um, so that that's always fascinating to like toggle those two, like who who's leading the market share and then who actually has the best tool you've got to get a little bit more creative right, because it's like if you're the new guy, you better be bringing something, or else you know you're not going to be around for very long, yep exactly does kit says have like an interactive chart or something he?
Speaker 2:does yeah he does, he okay, because I've only seen, like the big screenshot that he'll put as his thumbnail or whatever. But I was gonna say there's definitely something to be said about who the up-and-comers are, you know, even just like I'd say just to shout out one space, because we had them on the podcast recently, like, instead of uh, using fathom or zoom, ai, right like um, jump in that category. They're absolutely killing it and growing like crazy. Um, so, and I know it's like on that little chart, it never does justice of like who's leading? Um, and there's a lot of competitiveness with it too. Right, like, even as a vendor on our side. People know, when the t3 list come out, yep, all right, you'll start seeing like a list of plan. Uh, right, capital, I mean you name them. They're like hey, give us a shout out in the t3 survey. You know, make sure you're on page 24 of the, you know, whatever, however many pages it was this year, you know, give us a shout out and give us 10 points.
Speaker 3:Um, so it is important yeah, no, and the I hope at some point someone starts a review site for advisor technology specifically like a G2 or Capterra, something like that, because Bob Varis does his annually. So between when the last survey came out and now there's 20 or 30 new players probably. So it's like sometimes you don't you know if you're. If you're only looking back at the last survey Kitsis survey I think it's even further apart, it's like two years apart. So it would be really sweet if the Kitsis direct. So the Kitsis does have a directory it's fintechkitsiscom where you can see all the categories and the tools and the market share and all that. Um, so where am I trying to go with this? Yeah, so it'd be really cool if it was like a live with real advisor testimonials and maybe even some peer-to-peer interaction between the users of the technology, like a G2 or Capture or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure Now one interesting thing that Brock and I have seen recently just with tech stacks in general, like a lot of people, they go to X5PN in the beginning. Just with tech stacks in general, like a lot of people, they go to XYPN in the beginning. You know, one for community, a lot of it's the tech stack and getting discounts, but then there becomes an interesting crossroads where people are starting to do the math on if it's worth sticking there. And I think it's interesting, just like you said, in the marketplace with FinTech right, like there used to just be XYPN and they're one of the first to be an aggregator, if you will, for fee only rias, but they're starting to be other organizations who are coming out or trying to build their tech stack out too. Um, so it is an interesting space and, uh, you know, more and more value from people like you will be even more critical.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think, I think most of my audience is the smaller RIAs and the independent shops that that do want to like individually pick each, each piece of their tech, because your tech stack becomes your client experience. Maybe you prefer an element, maybe you prefer a right capital, maybe you prefer an asset map, but, like, each one of these tools becomes how you deliver financial advice. Um, so I I think I do enjoy working for the people that can pick their tech stack, versus some of the rollups, like they pick the stack for you and you don't have a choice. This is what you get, this is what you're going to use.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Now, when it comes to it comes to your consulting giant. I know that you said you did some one-on-one consulting. Is that part of it? I mean, because in my brain, when I'm going through this right, I don't think there are necessarily rights or wrongs when it comes to technology. I think it's more so like what do you prefer and how does your brain work? No different than asking someone do you, do you have an iphone or an right? Most of the time, when people have an iPhone, they prefer like a seamless, very easy experience. It flows da, da, da, da da. The people that want the Android, they want the customization, the open architecture, all of that right. So when you're doing those one-on-one consults do you talk to people about? Like you know, what kind of person are you Like, how are you getting?
Speaker 3:how are you going deep with them to try to decide how to design the right tech stack for them? Yeah, it's interesting. So I worked for a CRM consultant for a year and a half and we saw people move from Redtail to Wealthbox, from Wealthbox to Redtail, from Redtail to Salesforce, from Salesforce back to Redtail. Like I saw crm transitions in every single direction and realize more and more it's not like it's not. Wealth box is the newer, cooler, red tail, like they're almost equivalent. Um, yeah, so I think that, but some are. But like red tail is better at seminars. Red tail has a whole section on like doing seminars and tracking attendees and stuff that wealth box doesn't have. So for someone that runs a lot of seminars, maybe red tails a better fit. So I think it depends how they're going to use the technology and how they run their business, and sometimes they're just tools that work better for for different kinds of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Did you have something beat?
Speaker 2:No, I was going to say Brock. Well, yeah, that's fair, did you? Have something pete. No, I was gonna say bro, uh.
Speaker 1:Well, we do every podcast man yeah, no, I was just gonna say so. Like, where are you going with this? You have the book, you're. What is the book going to entail? Walk us through, like, what people can expect when they want to buy your book. Because, um, it seems to me like you have a brilliant mind, like you really think this stuff through, and a lot of people say it's not work if it's passion. Although there are some grueling hours, right, you definitely find yourself at the computer some nights like, all right, I've got one more piece of software I have to go through, or whatever. But you seem to truly be passionate and enjoy what you do, which I think is awesome about you, joe. But tell us what we can expect from the book, why people should buy it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So last night I was up past midnight adding solutions to my website. So so, exactly no, and it wasn't, but I do enjoy it. I mean, you enjoy it, but there's still times when you have to like force yourself to do the work because the work is gotta get done, but at the same time, like I don't have to be writing a book, I don't have to be making a website, like I could be perfectly fine without any of that stuff. So sometimes I stop and ask myself, like why am I doing this?
Speaker 3:A lot of people are starting to say, like the best niche is you, and so, in a way, you know what I'm doing with a book, and taking the kids's directory of like 500 tools and trying to pick the best one in every category is, for my own sake, like it's just so. It's so overwhelming and confusing to be like, okay, there's 10 different crms to pick from which one one should I pick? Do I demo all 10 of them? Do I go ask other advisors Like how much time are you going to spend trying to figure out which one's best for you? And, beyond, the cost of the technology like implementing technology costs more than the SaaS cost itself. Like the time it takes to set it up.
Speaker 3:So I think my goal was, like it just was an idea. I was like, all right, if I was going to build a tech stack from scratch with like exactly the tools that I would want to use personally, what would I use? And so, combination of looking at the surveys, my own experience from demos, just looking over the websites and the features um, I also am super sensitive to price. I feel like some tools are just like massively overpriced, um, and so even if it's a good tool, like if it's three times the price that it should be, I'm like it's just it's not, it's not cool. So, yeah, that and the not to interrupt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that and the not to interrupt you, but that and the thing that drives me nuts. I understand why they do it. Tech companies, right. Like everything is innovating, you don't know how long you're going to be around, so you always have to be adapting. I get it okay, but one of the things when we were deciding on our CRM in the very beginning that drove me nuts is like the websites, where it's like okay, now for the sales division, you have to pay this, and for the marketing it's like just give it all to me, tell me what it costs. And then the other thing would be like and for every thousand contacts you import, you're going to pay another $20 a month. It's like, come on, man, just like make it a price.
Speaker 3:So I'm with you on that. Yeah, no, I think, treating people the way you want to be treated. So there's a community platform called School I really like and it's $99 a month for a community. Your community can be 200,000 people or it can be 10 people. It's still $99 a month. There's not different features for different prices. There's not like once you cross 10,000 members the price is going to double. Just Circle and Mighty Networks I I don't know I feel like their pricing is different. But school has like super simple pricing, um, and they're also like super focused on their users. They have a 40 affiliate auto affiliate, meaning if you start a community and then some of your community members go start communities, you'll make 40 percent of whatever they're paying school for, as long as they have a community. And that's like super incentivizing to build a big community, because the more people in your community, the more of them might go start communities, and so it's kind of a um, it kind of just grows. It's pretty cool I love it.
Speaker 2:So what are the big, lofty goals? I mean, I've I've seen you post a little bit about school, um, but like, what are some goals? Where do you see this all going with your newsletter, your content, everything?
Speaker 3:um, I mean, there's, there's the numeric goals, which are fun, like this past year I crossed 5 000 followers and I was like I want to get to 50 000. Um, which is like you know, if you, if you read the book, 10 is easier than two X. It's like practically, what would it take to get from 5,000 LinkedIn followers to 50,000? Um, another one is is just revenue. I mean, I, I, I talk a lot in MRR, which is monthly recurring revenue. It's like a whole bunch of people think if they get to 10 K a month in MRR, they've made it. But it's like, what would it take to go from 10 to a hundred thousand a month?
Speaker 3:Um, so, just trying to think big like that, like get to 50,000 followers, get to a hundred thousand a month in MRR, um, and but more and more practically, like, how do you do that? You do that by helping people, you do that by solving real problems, and I can almost feel my brain changing. Like, instead of thinking, okay, how am I going to sell 10 of these for a thousand a month, start thinking what can I solve so incredibly well that people are like, absolutely, here's my thousand bucks. Like they don't even think about it Take money, yeah, exactly the more I think like that, like not know what offer can I put together to try to get somebody to buy this thing. It's like how can I solve something so fantastically well that they don't even think they're just like, yes, here. So it comes down to helping, helping people and helping people get where they want to go it goes hand in hand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, was there, uh, any golden nuggets or anything you were thinking of before you jumped on the podcast that you wanted to share to the audience?
Speaker 3:um, I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about ai recently. I think everybody's thinking about ai and and just I didn't really have a strong opinion, but in the past few weeks I've I've come to quite a strong view that, like, podcasts should not be AI personalities talking to each other. Like, actually having real humans talking to each other is the way podcast should be content as much as possible, you should, you should write from scratch in your own voice, using your own personality, your own unique self. Um, cause, like, the purpose of content marketing is for someone to get to know you so that they want to work with you. And like, if your AI is writing your marketing, do you want your prospects to want to work with your AI? No, that's like. So you have to, you have to be yourself, you have to be a human, you have to be creative. Um, so I think I'm I'm getting more and more passionate about, like, human creativity and the value that that that provides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I mean, hey, it can be a, it can compliment what you do, right, like I think that you've got to adapt in ways because it's going to be around. I think we're seeing that everywhere. We look from intake forms to everything else. But we should never lose the ability to like, truly embody who we are and show people who that is because people like other people. Right, like there's nothing wrong with having the assistance. Or if you're not great with grammar, grammatically you struggle, like sure, have something, proofread it and make sure you put a comment where you should. But at the end of the day, if you're not coming up with the ideas, like you said, we're all just like we're making our robots talk to other robots and I don't think that makes any sense. So I love that you said that. Man, I awesome to have you on the podcast. I think people should definitely follow along and keep up with you. So for those that want to follow along, what are the best places to do that?
Speaker 3:On LinkedIn it's Joe Moss and there's a little fire emoji at the end. I can explain that if you want me to. And then the website is advisor tech bookcom. Love, love to have you check out the website. I've got all my recommended tools listed there and you can pick, go through the categories and look at what I'm recommending um so the the fire emoji is from school, so the platform school.
Speaker 3:If you do 10 things a day 10 likes, comments, posts per day you get a fully green activity square. So then, after 30 days of 10 activities, you get the fire emoji at the end of your name. And I know I don't know if you read atomic habits or familiar with the concept, but like an anchor habit. So just having that goal every single day of like doing the 10 activities on school is leading to like being more consistent in other areas of my life as well. So that's why I have the fire emoji across like all my socials now. It's like daily consistent action gets you to your goals.
Speaker 1:I love it, man. That's so true. And yeah, I was looking back because I have a bookshelf behind me. I was like I think I have that. James Clear is a great book. But that is so true. It's like if you can't make yourself do the things that you don't want to do or maybe you do want to do them, but some days you feel like doing them more than you do other days right. But if you can make yourself doing it, it's like hey, even if I don't feel like this is fun, like this is a commitment that I made to myself and this is what I'm going to do. It compounds and the progress that you can make from that is.