AI, Algorithms & Advisor Success: How Wealthtender Wins in the Age of AI Search

In this Only Human episode, Yohance Harrison talks with Brian Thorp, founder of Wealthtender, about financial advisor reviews, SEO, AI, and the future of advisor tech. Brian shares how Wealthtender helps advisors collect compliant client reviews, improve visibility in Google and AI search tools, and streamline prospect journeys. They also dig into automation with Claude and Zapier, the role of domain authority, and which advisor software may survive the AI shift. The episode closes with a fun “marry, divorce, date” tech segment and practical ideas advisors can use right away to stay visible, efficient, and human.

Linkedin-https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancthorp/

Website-  https://wealthtender.com/

https://wealthtender.com/advisors/marketing/how-financial-advisors-appear-in-chatgpt-ai-search/

Transcript

Yohance: Appreciate you being here. I'm just curious. Why, why, why, why wealth tender? I mean, what, what was the. I mean, I am a member, so thank you.

Yohance: What made you think that this was an idea that needed to be done?

Brian: Well, very much appreciate you being a member and hopefully a happy one. One of the things that I really saw back when I was still working in my corporate career at Invesco was the way that people, when they were looking for an advisor, was really shifting. And naturally we saw more people looking to utilize technology to find an advisor, but at the same time, truly looking to find an advisor who really specializes in what's most important to them. So that was a big part of it, was trying to really evolve that online search to help people find not only an advisor in some cases that might be near them, but really for them. So increasingly, as people were realizing they could work with an advisor potentially anywhere, they were recognizing that they don't necessarily have to just work with an advisor down the street. And of course, many people still do want to work with a local advisor, but we saw that we were able to help them, really introduce them to a broader swath of advisors. And then one of the other things, of course, that you're very aware of, because I love seeing all of the incredible reviews that people write about their experience working with you, was that up until recently, the regulations prohibited financial advisors from being able to have online reviews. And that certainly was a game changer because the other thing that we know to be true consumers ourselves is that when we're looking to hire anyone, we want to be able to read reviews to see what that experience has been like for others. And so naturally, that was really an exciting opportunity from my perspective, with the experience I have in the industry, to introduce Wealth Tender as the very first online review platform for financial advisors to help consumers be able to make more informed and educated hiring decisions.

Yohance: So on this review, take us back, because there may still be some advisors, especially those that are, I'll say, trapped inside of some of the wirehouses that still don't have the ability to utilize reviews that don't have five or six paragraphs worth of disclosures at the bottom. Can you take us back to when reviews, when the decision came from the SEC that said that reviews are, I mean, okay, yeah.

Brian: So to the SEC's credit, back in 2019, at the end of the year, they put forth a news release indicating that their intentions were to modernize their rules because they recognized after having a prohibition in place for a very long Time, multiple decades that the world had changed. And it was long overdue for the SEC to modernize its rules and permit financial advisors to be able to invite clients to write reviews, display those reviews online, all for the benefit of consumers, which is what the SEC marketing rule was really all about, to help consumers be able to make that more informed and educated decision just as they would in any other industry or profession, being able to read online reviews.

Yohance: So that was 2019, but. So that made it for SEC registered advisors to be able to utilize reviews. But it's been a slower process for a lot of the states to catch on. I know here in Texas, I think we just, I think we were, what, last year or something like that? Tell us a little bit about that, that journey.

Brian: Sure. So 2019 was when the SEC first proposed modernization of the rules, and then it was 2021 by the time everything was settled and the rule first became effective. And then to your point, a lot of states, for advisors operating small businesses who are typically registered at the state level and not at the federal or SEC level, weren't necessarily able to get started with online reviews until state regulators caught up and modernized their rules as well. To your point, Texas last year did the right thing. It took a little bit, but to their credit, still ahead of the curve. A number of states still have not modernized their rules. But the good news is there's been increasing pressure on the states to move in this direction. And happy to say that we now have about 40 states that have either modernized their rules or are in the process of doing so, which should be putting enough pressure on the remaining holdout states like California, who even as I reach out to regulators, I feel like there's been a very subtle shift in their tone. So maybe we'll actually get some good news from California and a handful of those remaining states later this year as well.

Yohance: So you played a role in pushing these states to modernize their rules.

Brian: I've done my best, you know, as one individual and certainly have a self interest in not only helping more advisors be able to come to wealth tender, but naturally just leveling the playing field and, you know, certainly want to ensure that advisors, whether they're large or small, have the same ability to invite their clients to write reviews as firms that now with the SEC rule, larger firms typically have that ability to do so. So it's actually been a lot of fun being an advocate. You know, I like rattling cages, especially if it's for the good of humanity. And it has been fun reaching out to regulators and being A little bit of a chirping in their ear to make sure they know that they need to do the right thing. In the case of Texas, where, you know, I'm proud being in Austin, you know, like you being in Texas, we're just generally proud of the state we live in. And the regulators, to their credit, reached out to me and actually more or less apologized for the fact that it had taken so long. And I had an opportunity to go to the Texas State Securities Board and actually present and be there as they were approving the modernization of the rules. So it has been a lot of fun. And then also working with local financial planning association FPA chapters across some states like Arizona, where we've worked in conjunction with them to help put more pressure on the states as well.

Yohance: So for those that just don't know anything about Wealth Tender, can you walk us through what the platform is and what it does and how it supports advisors?

Brian: Absolutely. So first, from a consumer perspective, we are consumer facing platform. So if you go to wealthtender.com as a consumer, we have a lot of directories and resources to help people find financial advisors by location specialization and then of course being able to read online reviews as well. So if you're familiar with a platform like ZocDoc that helps people find physicians, really analogous to the experience from that perspective for consumers. And then of course for financial advisors, we have that platform that provides us the opportunity to offer digital marketing services, to provide that compliant approach for advisors to be able to collect reviews compliantly, display them on Wealth Tender, put them on your website. And then also importantly, because of the domain authority that we've established, which is just a search engine optimization nerdy term to say our domain authority, our website essentially ranks well in search engines like Google as well as AI search tools like Gemini and ChatGPT, which means that as an advisor, where you wouldn't be expected to necessarily have a website that gets a tremendous amount of traffic or has strong domain authority, but by having a presence on Wealth Tender, you can essentially piggyback on ours. And so that means your Wealth Tender profile, those reviews that you're gathering are going to be that much more likely to show up and help you show up more prominently more frequently in search tools, whether it's Google, ChatGPT or Gemini.

Yohance: So does this help the independent advisor that may not know a lot about SEO and AEO and eieio is, is Wealth Tender like a, a step in the right direction? Even if they are, maybe they're utilizing one of the out of the box websites. So again, they don't have a lot of control of the, of the back end. Does, well, tender help? I don't want to say replace it, but does it, does it help stand as. As a, as. As something better than nothing, so to speak?

Brian: Yeah. Beyond being better than nothing, there's two things to really think about when it comes to SEO. Search engine optimization and AEO Answer engine optimization. And both again, just kind of nerdy terms. How good.

Yohance: By the way, I just learned AEO two days ago, so I just, I just wanted to say it and I was like, let me see if this term is real. And I guess it is because you repeated it. So thank you.

Brian: Absolutely, absolutely. So we want to help advisors show up more frequently in search and answer engines. And the way to do that again is to think about two things. One, on site SEO and aeo and then off site. And what I mean by that on site would be as an advisor, your own website, all of the things that you're doing to position your business, your practice yourself online. And then off site would be everything from your social media accounts like LinkedIn or Facebook, could also be directory listings if you have your cfp and maybe again you're a member of the Financial Planning association and you have a listing in their planner search directory. Those types of resources, along with being featured on Wealth Tender, all fall under the bucket of off site SEO and aeo. And importantly, with regard to a lot of the off site SEO aeo, the benefits there are generally that that domain authority on each of those platforms is often significantly stronger than most advisory firm websites. For again, the very reason advisors you do your job, that's what you're focused on. And having the strength of a website with a ton of traffic coming in isn't really the intent. Now of course you want to have a modern experience. So when people do come to you and they land on your website, they can clearly see that you're credible and that you're somebody they want to work with. And you've got all of the appropriate language to help them understand who you are, your experience, what you do, and why they may be a good fit to work with you. And then from an off site perspective, especially on a platform like Wealth Tender, having those reviews. So now you're not just talking the talk to convey why you think you're a good advisor for somebody, but you're letting your clients effectively walk the walk because they've lived it with you and they're saying yes. In fact, Johance does a tremendous job of working with me to help me achieve my goals.

Yohance: Now, what's the difference between a wealth tender review and a Google review? Because I hear that some states are still saying that you're not allowed to have the Google reviews, but then the wealth tender reviews are allowed. Can, can you walk us through that?

Brian: Sure. So there's a couple of nuances, really a number of nuances on this front. One with regard to the SEC marketing rule. And when it comes to state registered advisors, the states are essentially all following the SEC marketing rules. So I'll typically just speak to, to the rule in itself across all advisors. And effectively, what the regulators expect is that any published reviews, testimonials incorporate disclosures to clearly help individuals when they're reading a review, understand the context around it. Was that review written by somebody who's a current client of the advisor? Was that reviewer compensated by the firm to write the review? And are there any conflicts of interest? And that's one of the things that Google, Yelp, other review platforms weren't really designed to accommodate. So you don't have an ability as an advisor to tell people, hey, go look at my Google reviews for the very reason that they lack the disclosures that the SEC wants to see. In addition to the fact that Google reviews coming in unfiltered, you have no ability as an advisor to address reviews that may have problems if they have promissory language or prohibited or they're just not real.

Yohance: I've got one of those.

Brian: Or they're just not real.

Yohance: I have a fake review. I have a fake review. It's one star and it is not real. And I've asked Google to remove it. They removed it. And then whoever this troll is, they put it back on. I'm like, yeah, you got to be kidding me. And I, every time I go to Google review, I say, please remove. Every time I'm there, every time my team, every now and then when the team's all together, I'm like, everyone go to review. Go to Google and report this review to see if you can come down. And it's, it's, yeah, it's absurd.

Brian: Incredibly frustrating for sure. And that's, you know, something else that we've heard. Now with that said, we do have quite a few advisors and wealth management firms that choose and have operating a little bit in a gray area, but taking a chance to invite clients to write a review on their Google business profile. And then we have a tool so that if you have the review on Google, you can now import that to wealth tender it's going to go through our workflows to add all of the appropriate disclosures so they become compliant testimonials. And what we're waiting for the SEC ultimately to chime in on is if that is in fact, okay. So when the marketing rule first came out, a lot of the compliance consultants said, nope, no way, don't touch Google. And that continues to be the case with a lot of compliance consultants. With that said, there are some that have instructed their advisory firm clients, we're comfortable with you inviting your clients to submit a review on Google. As long as you don't tell people to go look at your Google reviews, you basically ignore and disregard that the page even exists. Don't reply to a review, don't do anything that would risk adopting or entangling yourself with that content. And the hope among those compliance consultants is that that will provide sufficient distance from that Google Business profile so that if the regulator comes in, you can disclaim that and say, no, we don't consider our Google Business profile an advertisement. Now, of course, that raises the question, well, why are firms so eager to go and get Google reviews? Well, probably because they feel it's a suitable advertisement for their firm. So we'll see how it all plays out. But again, one way or the other, we want to make sure if you're comfortable with Google reviews, once you do have them on that platform, you now have a way to import them, turn them into compliant reviews that you can truly promote. And importantly, the other thing with Google Reviews is that they really only show up if somebody is googling the name of a particular business or if they're doing a local search on a map. And for many advisors, it's very likely that a prospect is not necessarily googling the name of the firm they received the name of the individual advisor. And that's what they're going to go see is, are the reviews about this individual advisor. And those reviews aren't going to show up if they're only sitting on a Google business profile. So that in the fact that when we talk about answer engines, AI search tools, Google doesn't allow unaffiliated AI search tools to really ingest or understand those reviews. So when you import the reviews from Google to Wealth Tender now, those reviews can surface in tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity Claude, etc. But Google reviews won't get picked up and ingested for inclusion in AI answer engines because Google's not letting tools that aren't affiliated with Google to actually be able to read the reviews.

Yohance: I just have to selfishly say thank you for all the work that you've done in this space. I've actually played a game in my local area when I'm out, you know, having conversations mainly with friends, not so much with strangers. I'll ask them to pull up chat GPT or pull up Gemini or even pull up Google and then tell them to just Google Financial Advisor. Now I will give them a couple hints to make sure I pop up. I'll say financial advisor for physicians or I'll do Black Financial Advisor. And in my geolocation, if they type those words into their chat gbt, their Gemini or their Google search, I'm top three, if not number one, love it. And I, I didn't do that. I just, like I said, I just learned SEO and AEO like a week ago or over the weekend I was doing some SEO and AEO work on my website that hadn't been done. Thanks to Will Steiner. Shout out to you again. I took his, his Claude course and it tells you how to use Claude to optimize your website. And there were, there were some things that had not been done by the team that I hired to do my website. And I was like, huh, that was a couple missed marks on that. Now it's going to take two weeks for all this stuff to happen because it takes that long for Google to crawl index and some other terms that I don't know. So you nerds out there to know what I'm talking about. But even before I did that work it was because of, well, tender, because what pops up is my wealth tender site. What pops up are the reviews. I mean I've had a friend do it and in his chatgpt and the next question asked, it says, would you like to hear what some people are saying about me? And he said yes. And then it was just pulling stuff straight from the wealth tender site of what clients. I was like, oh, that is pretty darn cool. I didn't know that I was that famous, at least in my geo metro area. Now that story is in direct contrast with Brian before we started working together. I think I shared this with you is if you searched Black Financial Advisor in my area. So in Grand Prairie or Cedar Hill of Texas. So my office in Cedar Hill, live at Grand Prairie. If you were to search that, what would come up is a gentleman by the name of Jeff Black who is white who lives in Dallas. So that's where we started. Now if you're in this geographical area area, you put in Black Financial Guide again, I'm going to be in the top three. Jeff Black is still on there. Shout out to Jeff Black. He's just further down the page and he is black. Just a different kind of black, if you know what I mean. But that work came from all of the help from your team. And like you said, doing the pointing to my site and pointing to the fact that I exist versus me just waving my flag in the sea of everything that's out there where it's kind of hard to be seen. The whole. If you build it, they will come. Yeah, that was when there was nothing else built but you. But now you build it and you still have to point people and tell them where to go. And, and I would say I was looking at some numbers just over the last year. So last year and for my website I was looking at my Google Analytics, whatever it is. Yeah. Where it tells you everybody that's coming to your site and so it'll go up to a year. And I looked at the one year numbers. All of the percentages were in the thousands. All of them. Now mind you, it was going from 2 to 70. But still I'm like, I'm getting 70 hits a day on my website. Who are these people? I don't know where half of them are coming from. And some of them are ending up onto my schedule and setting meetings and things of that nature. And when I asked where they find, where they found me, they're saying ChatGPT, they're saying Google. Actually one of my top clients now. Well, soon will be slowly approaching probably the top, you know, 10 of my clients. She found me on Chat GBT and she lives in the neighborhood across the street. She was trying to figure out her stock options one day and she was like, I just need to find a financial advisor. She went chat GBT and said financial advisor near me. Gave her a few names. I was one of them. She tried to get appointments and I was the first one that she was able to get an appointment with. Which had nothing to do with me because all she did is went to my website. She took my financial literacy quiz. It took her to my calendar. The other people she had to request information, wait for them to get back and things of that nature. So it does advisors, if you have a method where you can make it so people can get directly to your calendar. Now I put a bit of a wall up. I want them to take that financial literacy quiz first. Because if they don't score high enough or if they just ask a bunch of questions about Crypto on it, then I'm like, I'm not your guy. But if they can get through that, that screener, then yeah, they'll get access to the calendar. Next thing you know, might be in a zoom session with me. So yes, I know that was a long winded. Thank you. But thank you. I want to, I want to talk about AI a little bit more because as you know, we're on the only Human podcast and our intention here is to help advisors find ways that they can distinguish themselves with AI with the tools that are out there to help us help more people be more efficient and just improve our own quality of life. Because that's the biggest thing that I hear from advisors that implement AI is the time that they're able to get back and then what they're doing at that time. Tell us at Wealth Tender, what are you finding with the implementation of AI? Or tell us how you're using AI as well to help advisors get more time back.

Brian: So a couple of things on that front. And by the way, I like the story you just shared about the prospect that came through and that relatively frictionless way for it to be very clear how they could create that appointment, set up that time. Creating a little bit of friction, of course, with the qualifiers that you mentioned. But what we do see with a lot of advisors is the, it's too difficult for that prospect to actually set up that initial conversation and it may be a form contact us and it's just creating extra time, extra steps and not having necessarily a lot of information to help that prospect fully understand A, if they self qualify and B, if they are a good fit to work with the advisor. So one of the things that really can save advisors time just in terms of that prospect journey is ensuring that they've got great information on the website to help that prospect themselves decide if they're a good fit and also try to eliminate what would otherwise be an elephant in the room for that initial prospect conversation. And what I mean by that is if you have transparency on your website so people know who you are, what you do, and what it's going to cost if you lay out what that experience is going to be like when they join the firm, you're already disarming that initial conversation, meaning they're going to come in preparing, they don't have to ask about cost. They've already determined, okay, I'm comfortable with what this is going to cost and the value that's being delivered. They've answered a lot of the questions. And so now that Initial conversation can be much more efficient. So the other thing with online reviews, we hear this from advisors where until they have online reviews, a prospect is coming in and saying, okay, well can you share contact information with a client that I could reach out to and hear?

Yohance: You know, it's been so long, Brian, since I've had to give out.

Brian: Yeah, and now that you have reviews, you don't have to do that. And that's a huge time saver. So there are some things, even as it pertains to that marketing and the prospect journey that I think are important to really streamline utilizing, you know, different tools, your presence online to mitigate some of what otherwise would take time. Now to your question in terms of different ways to utilize AI and the resources to save time, I think there's so many things that advisors can do and this is where we see. You know, it sounds like you spent some time you mentioned on a Claude course. I would encourage every advisor to at least spend some time, whether in a formal course or just spending time on the different AI search tools. And it doesn't have to be all of them, but to pick one and a familiarize yourself with how you're showing up, whether that's in Google. If you used to go and Google yourself, now you need to be going to chatgpt Gemini Claude, seeing how you're showing up, because that's going to help you be more aware of if you are or if you aren't showing up for the right types of prospects that you are looking to find. But then when it comes to really incorporating AI into your practice, a really familiarizing yourself with the different ways that you can put it to work. So we know that most consumers, you know, they're simply using it as a conversational tool to find goods, find services, you know, all the things that we as consumers use it for any given day. But it's so much more powerful and just as you mentioned with Claude, to identify some of the SEO opportunities to increase your website visibility. So many different ways that advisors can at least familiarize themselves with what these tools can potentially do to streamline different areas of their practice. But then the question becomes, okay, once you know enough to be dangerous, is this something that you really want to go down that rabbit hole of looking to do it yourself or finding a qualified vendor that can really help to bring that to life. But again, ideally, you do know enough to be dangerous that you can inform that conversation with the individual that you want to work with to see how they can implement certain workflows. Automations systemizations that can really streamline the things that you're doing. I will say within the walls of wealth Tinder, we're really leaning hard into Claude. So similar to you, it sounds like to identify different ways that we can automate or at least systematize different monthly workflows, processes, procedures, to really take a lot of what historically would have been work. It was much more manual and you know, always ensure kind of a belts and suspenders approach that you keep an eye on these things and even when they're operating, that you've got that kind of quality assurance. You know, you're going in and just making sure everything is buttoned up. But we continue to find, literally it feels like almost every day different ways to utilize the tools. Especially leaning into Claude and then combining it with tools like Zapier. And again, this is where that rabbit hole can get pretty deep. But just depending as an advisor, if you want to go down that rabbit hole yourself, or if you have a teammate member on your staff that you can really encourage to come up the curve and just start really documenting all the different processes that feel like that manual pain point that I'm not looking forward to that again next month. You know, those are the areas where you want to start because ironically, the very places that probably are the most painful are also those where you know, you're just going through a set of procedures each month. And that's why it's painful, because you're like, ah, this feels like something that should be automated or systematized. And that's exactly where a lot of the AI tools can help. So you can put that into some type of a system and take more of that off your plate or potentially delegate it with combination of the technology and a member on your team so that you can really spend more time focusing on your clients. And you know, as you mentioned, and as this show is all about, that's, that's really what it's all about. And I'll just kind of go on one quick tangent as well, you know, because we've now helped advisors collect more than 6,000 reviews. Over 90% of those reviews are not talking about investment performance. They're talking about the emotional side of that relationship with the advisor, the human side. How has that advisor helped instill confidence in the individual to feel more comfortable that they're going to be able to enjoy their retirement or have that education funding in place, or the student loan repayments to have a plan to be able to live more comfortably. And that's what this is all about, you know, utilize that technology to offload all of these different things that aren't really the value proposition that you're delivering so that you can be in that room, in that conversation with your clients to talk about all the things that they really care about. Which again ultimately is am I going to be able to live comfortably in retirement or you know, over the next 10 years, be able to take some time and have a good work life balance or whatever it is that's important to them at that stage in their life.

Yohance: Yeah, I encourage every advisor like you said. I agree. I encourage every advisor to take, if not a Gemini, a Claude, a ChatGPT, take a course, but take the course on the, the agent part of it, which in Claude is the co work is, was referred to in Claude. And that's where you are giving your AI the ability to do some things on your behalf. And the beauty of Claude is that it all lives on your machine so it will only have access to the things that you give it access to. You can give it permission to log into things for you, but it's going to ask you every step away, may I do this? May I do this? It'll give you the warnings to say, well, I can see if I go into, what is it? Google Chrome. If I go into Chrome, I can see any tab that's open like, well, let me close some of these other ones before you go in there. But there's a lot of things we do as advisors where, where the client's personal identifiable information isn't a part of the process, but we have to do that process anyways. And that is where AI can play a big role. There was a part of me that had a concern about an AI tool having access to my email. But then I realized that the amount of PII in my email is minuscule because I tell clients, don't email me personal identifiable information, don't send me account numbers, don't send me. And I even have my, my Google email set up to where it will quarantine a message if it's in there so that I can then go to the client, say, hey, don't do that. It's not because I'm not safe, it's because the world's not safe. So don't do this. Use one of our other tools. But Claude will also build zaps for you. So Zapier was this scary, scary tool for me. It was something I was just afraid it was, I'd break it, it mess up. And sometimes depending on who your Partners are. Some of the tools are already pre built and if you pay enough money Zapier to let you just have access to them. But Claude will not only build zaps, it'll troubleshoot them. So I now have Wealth Tender as a zap where it will send the client after a certain trigger the client will get their invitation to go on and give a review. I have my referrals on a Zapier where after something is triggered it will send a client to ask them for referrals. So I'm no longer manually asking client. Now I still talk about referrals of course, because that's part of the whole process of referrals. You're gonna have to talk about it. But the sending of the email, there's so many things, so many emails now and between using Calendly and Zapier and type form, those are all talking to each other. So that clients are getting through my onboarding process with a lot less human touch. And I went back and looked, there were so many reminders for this and oh, you didn't do this. And but now all of that has become automated and what's happening is I'm finding that clients are more prepared when they come to their meetings. And I go back and look, I was like, how do they know to do this? Like, oh well they got that email. They got that email. And the timeliness of the emails is important as well because think about today, one of my team members said, hey, I can't come to work today. So there's a list of things that she would have done today that's not going to get done. But if some of those things are automations, whether she's here or not, the client's going to get that timely nudge to then go and do the things that they need to do to prepare them for the next session. So no, I agree with you. 100 it has been absolutely life changing.

Brian: Yeah, I think if Zapier tripled their prices overnight, I wouldn't even blank and I hope they're not listening but you know, it just, you cut the check, it just cut the check. That significant. And Claude, I, I feel the same. And, and yeah, I wasn't paying enough for Claude.

Yohance: Yeah, I wasn't paying enough at first and I got to a point where like with the amount of work you're doing, you're going to need to get a bigger package. And I was like, oh, it's the next package, like 100amonth. I was like whatever, that's it. Yeah, I went from $26 to 100. Worth it for all the time that I'm getting back. Oh, now I have to be careful because go down the rabbit hole and wind up giving all that time to building stuff. But also I'm thinking, okay, well, if I build it, I only have to build it once, then just monitor it. I think of it like my dishwasher. I don't like washing dishes. I put dishes in dishwasher. But when I go to take the dishes out of dishwasher, or when I asked my daughter to do it, who's now nine, so that's one of the chores she's learning. I still tell her, you have to check to make sure the dishes are clean. Just because it's in the dishwasher doesn't mean it's going to get clean. It could have been arranged in a way where the water wasn't hitting it because someone else was. Something else was around, it would have you. Or the food was just too caked on before you put it in there and it didn't get clean. But still, to know that 90% of the dishes in the dishwasher are clean, that's. It's. I'm not going to stop using the dishwasher for the 10%. No, I'll hand wash those and keep going. But then I'll say, oh, let me arrange this a little bit differently next time so I can make sure that these dishes get cleaned up. I look at AI the same way. It's a machine and it's going to make my job easier, but it doesn't mean it's going to get it right 100% of the time. I've got a zap right now that is struggling because my, My old meeting link, Calendly. Shout out to calendly. They, they used to just have a name field. When someone's putting in their name. Sometime in the last, I don't know, two years, they made it first name, last name. Ah, what a good idea. Well, the problem was my zap was taking the name field. And because I didn't know what I was doing, I built my first zap. It wasn't splitting it into first name, last name. So in Wealthbox, I would have Brian Thorpe all in first name, even though Brian Thorpe already existed. First name, last name. So it started duplicating things. I was like, okay, this is getting old. Well, let me go in and fix it. So I asked, I told Claude the problem. They're like, oh, you easy fix. Why don't you just switch to the first name, last name. I was like, oh, that's easy. Did that switch to first name, last name. But the old link still exists out in the world. So now I started getting errors like hey, we couldn't upload Brian Thorpe because he didn't have first name, last name, he only has one name, so. Or it's all in, it's all in name. Excuse me. So they asked Claude, okay, well can we fix this? And said, well we could try to branch it and try to branch it and it failed. And I went, I left alone, came back another day, tried to branch it again, it failed again. And I just said, hey Claude, what do we want to do here? Because this is. And they said, well, how many people are still going to use your old link? It's probably a small amount of people now the new link is out there. I said claude, you're right, we'll let those fail. I'll run the report and just take those five dirty dishes, clean them by hand and keep on going with my day. So I don't know if dishwasher was the best analogy, but I think that's a good one.

Brian: That's a good one. It works.

Yohance: Hopefully everyone gets it out there. So what's next for Wealth Tender?

Brian: Yes. So the couple of things we're focused on, one that I'm excited about, probably in the next month or so we're launching what we'll call a Firm Focus page. Essentially you can think about it almost as a one page website, but sits on again our domain authority instead of an advisor's domain domain authority. So that means a lot more visibility, the opportunity beyond just a profile page to really personalize this Firm Focus in any number of different directions. One, it could almost be a digital twin foreign advisor's website. We see some use cases for that at firms that maybe have freedom to choose vendors like Wealth Tender to have a presence, but they don't have the ability to have their own presence through their own website. Maybe they're part of a firm, they've got a bio page, they're on a legacy website vendor and don't really have a great presence. They know it, they can't control it, but they're allowed to come aboard Wealth Tenders. So they're already taking advantage of the directory listings, the reviews and now to essentially have a digital twin website that's actually better than a twin, you know, do the redheaded stepchild twin where they've got a junkie website that they're not proud of and now they can have an Even stronger presence on wealth Tender to share that with clients and to really be able to tailor that page. That would essentially be that one page website that they want to have that they're not permitted to have. But we do see applications even for advisors that have a modern website, to either have that full digital twin, to essentially have the stronger domain authority. But also then if you have advisors who maybe have a particular niche and they want to keep their website a little bit more general, they can have a landing page for each of the particular audiences that they look to serve or segments that they're looking to target, and just providing more ways to leverage the strength of our domain authority to help advisors be that much more visible in the different AI search tools and Google for that matter still as well.

Yohance: Got it. I look forward to that. That's. I think I'll be interested in that. Because we should, by the time this gets aired, we should have two advisors instead of one.

Brian: So that would be your own digital twin. Nice.

Yohance: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look forward to that. All right, so, Brian, we're gonna play a game. All right, this game, you're familiar with it in probably much more vulgar terms, but for our audience, we're going to lower the temperature just a bit. The game is called Marry, Divorce and tech on the side. So what is one piece of tech you're absolutely married to was one piece of tech that you will probably be filing divorce paperwork or you're going to kind of let that subscription come to an end and then who is a piece of tech that you're starting to. To date on the side?

Brian: Yeah. So let's see. Zapier and Claude. I'm just going to put in that married camp together for the very reason, you know, zapier.

Yohance: Obviously you're polyamorous. I get it. It's okay.

Brian: Most of us are zapier. By definition is polyamorous.

Yohance: Right.

Brian: Like, you know, so we'll do those two.

Yohance: Okay.

Brian: In terms of ditching are divorcing, you know, looking at some of the legacy tools. And I'll just use like the contact management system. So. And I'll throw HubSpot out there because it gets so expensive the more you utilize the tools that you bake on top of it. But I've basically wound that back down to the lowest cost tier. So probably not fully divorcing, but effectively not really compensating them beyond just the basic core contact management. Now with that said, I do think it's a phenomenal platform. It just gets egregiously expensive if you take advantage of a lot of their marketing features. So for 30 bucks a month instead of 300 or you could easily get up to 3,000 on that platform. Stripping that back, paring it back is working just fine because to their credit, it does integrate very nicely with a lot of other platforms. And if they were to increase the cost even, I would probably stick with them for some of the different integrations and the things that they do there. But that was something I probably cut 90% of the cost out of that particular application by just pairing it back to truly the core infrastructure that I'm looking for, as opposed to all of the things they're trying to upsell for and pride themselves on, ironically. And then the other would be keeping on the side or what was the.

Yohance: Yeah, yeah, who you date? Who are you starting to date?

Brian: I think what's probably going to come next is, you know, looking at more Claude related extensions. And I don't know what that's going to be yet, but I'm going to the bars and hanging out with all those things that love spending time with Claude to figure out which ones could actually plug in neatly. Because one of the things as you do start utilizing Claude, it'll start recommending different tools and integrations itself to help facilitate a project. And I will say on that front, I learned a hard lesson or a good lesson probably six weeks ago where it recommended a tool somewhat analogous to airtable and I went down the path of taking its recommendation and spent a good Saturday learning all about this tool and realizing, no, Claude, I didn't need to go down that path. Like airtable works perfectly well. It's already in our tech stack. I'm familiar with it. What are you doing to me here? So, you know, you got to be careful. But do see that it's probably going to be more extensions or connectors to Claude that are allowing us to leverage the cloud AI within some of the different tools that CLAUDE can't do itself. But that could help streamline a number of the things that we do. So we'll see more to come on that front.

Yohance: All right, bonus question for you. Since you're an authority in the tech stacks, there was an article that, I believe it was Jason Wink and wasn't Josh Brown. It was his other partner there. I think it was called the Death of the Tech Stack or something like that was the article. So out of curiosity from you, what do we see death for first? Will it be the CRM or the financial Planning tool?

Brian: Okay, so I do think the, the CRM and the AI note takers, right, that's, that's going to be the interesting game to see which lives and which dies. You know, at its core the CRM it's really just this database of contacts, firms, activities. And again, just like I mentioned with HubSpot they can try and add all these different bells and whistles, but at the core that's what you need. So I think it's going to be interesting to see like for the CRMs, if they do survive, it's going to be at a, in my opinion, a very different price point that they're going to essentially be that layer that I just mentioned which shouldn't come at significant cost. Arguably probably could sit in a database tool like an airtable in a secure environment. But nonetheless I think the CRM will be around but play a much diminished role unless it's a CRM that incorporates significantly an AI note taking tools that's incorporating all of the things that are really kind of that next generation CRM. So they'll either survive because they've got all of the AI note taking and related features, or they're going to die and it's going to be the AI note takers that will essentially incorporate a CRM within them. And then with regard to the financial planning tools, I think we're going to see per industry, you know, that's such a core function and feature within our profession. I don't think they're going to go away, but the ones that survive are going to be the ones that really lean into solid AI, probably not developing AI capabilities on their own. But we see Anthropic again, the owner of Claude, really leaning into the financial services space and I think doing some tremendous work to where it's probably going to be a combination. And I don't know that Anthropic will pick a single horse, if you will. You know, I think they're going to try and be agnostic and probably multiple financial planning software tools will lean into that. Some might pick Anthropic, some might pick others, but ultimately I think there will be a brand recognition of a financial planning software that advisors already know today that's going to really lean into that and have a very tight and successful integration to continue to exist, but significantly be powered by a tool like Claude or Anthropic.

Yohance: Yeah, I feel like the financial planning tools are the last one to the dance when it comes to AI. Like they, they are the last ones and in even the Zox of the world and the, even Hazel, who's the other one, Jump, even when they're trying to integrate with the E monies or with the. What's the other one that I can't remember right now. Right. Capital. It's clunky. Like, it's, it's, it's mediocre at best. And, and I've had some conversations with the Zox team, with the Hazel team, with, even with jump. Before I kind of went to Hazel and left jump, I jumped to Hazel. But even when I asked them about it, they're just saying, yeah, it's, they're, they are pointing the finger back at the financial planning tools and saying they're not giving us the full access that we need. And it's, it's almost as if they're gatekeeping to protect themselves from, as Mr. Smith would say, inevitability.

Brian: Yeah. And I do think that whether it's in our profession or others, you know, you have an entrenched player and they feel like, oh, we got this locked. Let's not let this new technology or whatever into our space. And that's the blockbuster moment, if you will. And Netflix, you know, there's going to be that Netflix come along, right? I mean, we've seen that with the note takers like Jump and Zox that are effectively, even though they may not yet admit it, displacing CRM tools in a significant way. Now, right now they are more or less integrating with a lot of the CRM tools, so playing nice. But I do think it's an ecosystem that will be interesting to watch and very likely maybe a Jump or a Zox acquires a Wealthbox or a Red Tail or maybe it goes the other direction. But in some way there's going to be this integration and I think you'll only see one exist and that will be your platform. It'll be a combined note taker and all those types of features along with the CRM. But with the financial planning tools, they're either going to need to integrate and incorporate that AI. To your point, kind of at least one of them open the door and then once they do, they're going to have a competitive advantage over those that don't. But if they're not careful, they're going to have that blockbuster moment and Netflix, if you will, is going to come into the financial planning software space and just disrupt it and they're going to be left holding the bag.

Yohance: Too true. Too true. All right, Brian, if advisors want to get in touch or want to learn more about wealth tender, where should they go?

Brian: Well, the great Thing with the strength of our SEO, they can just go to any browser. ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, put in Wealth Tender, put in my name. You'll. You'll see me pop right up. But you can go to wealthtender.com or brianealthcenter.com is the email address. And happy to chat.

Yohance: Indeed. Well, Brian, we appreciate you spending some time on Only Human, where advisors learn how to incorporate AI and stay human through the process. And again, thank you so much for all of the hard work that you did to get our state of Texas to say yes, it was okay to have reviews. I remember you sent me the. I believe you sent me an email personally, like, hey, I think we got Texas. I was like, wait, what? I was ready. The next day, I was ready. I was ready. So, no, this, this has been great. I appreciate it. And I really appreciate getting, having the platform for my clients to give that, that, that honest, candid feedback. And I've got, I've had some, as you. You've seen, they've written essays about the work we've done together, and some of them bring tears to my eyes. And so when I'm having a rough day, sometimes I just go read a couple reviews and like, okay, this is why I do this. And so I appreciate you creating that space for.

Brian: Yeah, my pleasure. Absolutely.

Yohance: Indeed. Well, I'm sure I will see you out on the circuit somewhere soon. And again, I appreciate your time.

Brian: All right, well, thank you so much, Johannes.

Yohance: All right, take care, Brian. All right, good stuff. I appreciate you, sir.

Brian: Yeah, likewise. Thank you. That was fun.

Yohance: Indeed. Indeed it was. So we're probably about two, three weeks out.

Brian: Cool.

Yohance: So Jessica will be in touch and yeah. Only thing I ask is once we post it, engage with me on LinkedIn as we talk about it.

Brian: Yeah, of course, of course. And who's the advisor you got coming aboard or top secret, are they?

Yohance: It's Alicia. It's my wife.

Brian: Okay, there you go. Perfect.

Yohance: On takes her test Wednesday.

Brian: That's exciting. Congrats. Yeah, so very cool. Fingers crossed. All right.

Yohance: All right, man, take care. Enjoy your week.

Brian: All right, thank you. You too. Bye. Bye.

Yohance: Welcome to Only Human. It's your host, Johannes Harrison. Today I'm here with my good friend Brian Thorpe. He is the founder of Wealth Tender. It is an amazing platform that allows you to compliantly get reviews from your clients. Now, he'll mention there's about 40 states that have jumped on, or if you're SEC registered, you can already get on there. But if you're state registered, there's about 40 states that have said yes. There's 10 that are still working on it. California, he's going to share, is a step closer. They're almost there. Can you believe Texas actually beat California to something? Yeah, we did that. Texas and Brian. So thank you. Shout out to the sec. What? No. What are they called in Texas? Texas Securities Board. Thank you. We appreciate your hard work in allowing us to have this method for clients to be able to give reviews about us. So if you're an advisor that's not yet tuned in to being able to get reviews and building websites where you have a compliant way to get reviews, this episode is for you. We're also going to, of course, dive into AI. Brian's going to talk about his thoughts around who's going to die a slow, painful death first. Will it be the CRM tools or will it be the financial planning tools now that AI is here to stay and is sticking its tentacles into all those platforms? So I'm interested to what you think. Do you think Wealthbox and Red Tail, do you think they make it? Can, can Wealthbox and Red Tail make it another 10 years? Can they make it another 5 years? What about E Money and Right Capital? I mean, and no disrespect to these organizations. I mean, I use them as well. And I'm very appreciative of my subscription with Wealthbox. Wealthbox, I love you and I do like your new AI tool that you've. It's, I mean, it's, it's cool, it's getting there. I can tell that you're working on it, which is good. But yeah, can they make it in this environment? Brian, I will talk about that and more and we'll see you on the other side.

Brian: Take care.