The Rise and Fall of Trust

Trust Begins Where Assumptions End

• Cashflow Podcasting • Episode 18

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0:00 | 31:58

What actually earns trust: expertise or evidence of care?

In a world full of information and increasing complexity, the real tension is not access to answers, but confidence in who is giving them.

In this episode, Anne sits down with Eric Ludwig, a retirement income specialist, researcher, and advisor who operates at the intersection of practice and academia. His work centers on helping individuals deal with increasingly complex financial decisions with clarity and precision.

At the core is a simple but often overlooked idea: trust is what makes information possible. Expertise alone is insufficient. It must be paired with care, curiosity, and the willingness to revise assumptions. In medicine or finance, specialization can help you feel more confident, but only if it is based on listening instead of being sure.

Tune in to learn where trust in your own decisions comes from and whether it is rooted in credentials, care, or something deeper.


What You’ll Learn:

  • Why trust determines whether information is accepted or ignored.
  • How specialization signals credibility in uncertain decisions.
  • What happens when incentives shift from people to metrics.
  • The cost of treating clients as accounts instead of relationships.
  • Why asking better questions builds more trust than giving answers.
  • How AI changes access to information but not the need for human trust.
  • What distinguishes expertise from perceived expertise in practice.


Ideas Worth Sharing:

  • “Trust is… the oil in the process. If there's no trust… there's no way of really transferring information.” - Eric Ludwig
  • “There's 252 different designations… How the heck do you know who to go to?” - Eric Ludwig
  • “If you and I are client/advisor and there's no trust, it doesn't matter what either one of us has. The information isn't going to land.” - Eric Ludwig


About Eric Ludwig:

Eric T. Ludwig, PhD, CFP®, RICP®, is an associate professor of Retirement Income and Director of the RICP® program at The American College of Financial Services, where he also leads the Center for Retirement Income. He is the CEO of Stockbridge Private Wealth Management, bringing over a decade of advisory experience into his academic work. A nationally recognized researcher and speaker in behavioral finance and retirement planning, Eric focuses on helping individuals achieve long-term financial security through specialized, evidence-based advice.


Resources:


Connect with Eric:


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If you enjoyed this episode, follow The Rise and Fall of Trust wherever you get your podcasts. And if you’re thinking about launching a podcast that builds trust and drives results, that’s our jam. Schedule a free call at Cashflow Podcasting to lear

SPEAKER_00

There's a saying something like, I won't care what you have to say unless I you care what I know. It's like something like that. I someone can can fact check it, but it's it's just exactly what you're saying, right? Like I'm not gonna listen to whatever your advice is unless I know that you actually care about me and and know enough about me.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the rise and fall of trust by Cashflow Podcasting. Here we explore how trust is built, broken, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_02

Which is amazing. Researcher as well. So I'm super excited to chat with you today. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you so much for having me in.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so tell me more. What role does trust play in your life, in your professional life, personal life? Yeah, how important is it for you?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's super important. I mean, I feel like especially so by way of background, I I have a couple different roles. Like you said, some have referred to me as a pracademic, which I think is a good term. It's I'm a both practitioner and an academic. So I have a uh financial planning firm that I run called Stockbridge Private Wealth Management. And then I also am the director of the RICP program. So it's a designation, the retirement income certified professional at the American College. And then I also direct the Center for Retirement Income there, which is really more the research arm of what we do. And so trust is huge, right? I mean, from both, I feel like trust is the kind of the fuel, if you will, for transferring information from one person to another. So maybe that's an academic explanation of that. But I feel like if there's no trust, it's trust is sort of like the oil in the process, right? If there's no trust and there's no way of really transferring information. So if if you and I are client advisor and there's no trust, it doesn't matter what either one of us says, right? Like the the information isn't gonna land. So it's super important. I feel like it's it's truly the key to everything.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, 100%. And I mean, also before people become a client, right? Because before handing over all your money to someone, it's a big thing, it's a big thing for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I you know, I feel like especially in in today's digital world, even though there's a lot of, and that's true for our firm, all of our referrals come from current clients, at least that's the way it's been. But because of this digital footprint that everybody has, no matter who it is, right? Like, everybody's gonna Google your name. Like you did that, like I did that with you, right? Like it's like, hey, do you want to be on the show? Sure. Like, who is this, right? Like everybody is and so on. And that I think that's a good thing. I think it's a net benefit that we can all kind of get background stories, if you will, on everybody. But yeah, for sure, without having the trust in the first place, and yeah, then there's nothing else really happens good after that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean you can you can leverage that as well, right? Like if what people find when they do Google you of or what you have on your LinkedIn profile, how active you are, like, can people even find you? Right? Like, I I know some people, some professionals, they they're just nowhere online, which you know can be can be a strategy, but can also I think be difficult for people who are looking for for background info and they find absolutely zero, then that might be like, ooh, I don't, I don't know. Could be, you know, little little minus. So I'm also really curious about the stories that you brought to the show today, Eric. So to kick things off, let's, you know, keep it positive, let's keep it a little bit light as far as as we can, you know, talking about trust. What is your story of rising trust that you want to share with us today? Where, you know, positive story where trust was built successfully, where it played a big role. What's what's the success story?

SPEAKER_00

Sure, yeah. So this is super recent. It's it's fun to talk about. I I just had a book released. So the book, the idea of the book is on having specialists in an area and less about being a generalist. And so this was kind of cool for me to like actually experience. So the what actually happened is this was a couple weeks ago. I felt like I had something in my eye over the weekend, and then it didn't really get better after a couple days. So finally, on like a Tuesday, I decided to luckily just go to a local optometrist. And I didn't realize that this guy ended up being the specialist that I needed. So what happened is he started asking me a bunch of different questions. He's kind of running through his his mental checklist, and he lands on this idea that I have dry eyes, and he thought it was from having LASIK surgery, which was actually 22 years ago for me. But he he had this kind of hypothesis going, and it made sense on paper. Then he actually put me under the the little machine, right? Where they like they they can magnify your eye, and all of a sudden he goes, Oh, this changes everything. And I go, What? What is it? And he goes, You have a piece of metal in your eye. Wow. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_02

That's it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like he's he's that starts asking me, is there any reason why that might have happened? And so there was, it was over the weekend that and don't judge me for this. We went to a monster truck show. I have a I have a daughter, and and then we went with some neighbors, and we think that that it happened from that, like you know, the monster trucks are like spinning their tires and and whatever, but I it just really stuck out to me is because he had he was kind of going down this path, the the the optometrist, right? He he was pretty sure it was this one thing until he had kind of more information, right? And so I there's this thing I've heard people talk about having strong convictions loosely held. I really like that because he he kind of had that, he had this hypothesis of of what the issue was, but then he had this other skill set to say, wait a minute, let me actually look further into this and see what happened. And then he also had the skill set to actually do something about it there instead of just you know passing me on to somebody else to take care of it. So I it was cool, and you know, as consumers in a lot of different areas, we rely on these expert opinions, we don't know even really who to look for, right? Like I like I said at the top of the story, I just got lucky. I just happened to go to this person that didn't have to pass me on to somebody else. He could he could do it there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, awesome. I mean, I'm glad to hear that he figured it out though, because it's what you said, right? I think there's there might also be people who think that they know what's going on and they're just so caught up in in their conviction and they just keep going down that route and they might not even look for you know the different options. So I think I think that's really good that he did like what you said, right? That he was open to changing his opinion and and his conviction, which is which is I mean, especially in this case, super important.

SPEAKER_00

Otherwise you kind of need your eyes.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. Cool. So I think it's also interesting you didn't like necessarily look for someone with you know a certain expertise, but it was just like the the local person that was there, you know, just like probably the easiest, easiest person to go to. I think that's also do you think it also helps that you were kind of like surprised that it was like a pleasant surprise that this person was actually so good? Do you think that also helps with the trust building where you know the expectations were maybe not even that high?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I should say this too. So as we were speaking and he was kind of dead set that it was this dry eye issue. And then what I thought was kind of cool, he was doing this sort of social proof, like credentialing signaling thing, where he was telling me he was a younger guy, he's probably late 20s, early 30s, if I hadn't guessed. So again, from my perspective, I was like a little bit nervous because at first he said, Yeah, I've been at this office for two years, and I was thinking, like, oh my gosh, has he only been an eye doctor for two years? And then thankfully he was telling me, he's like, No, I actually specialize in dry eyes. He's like, You just you he told me this. He's like, you just kind of came to the right person. He started to tell me that he was gonna be presenting at a conference coming up specifically on on this topic. So I was like, okay, cool. I feel like I've been good hands, right? He was like making me feel better that whatever diagnosis I got, which again, I I had no idea, uh, but it made me feel like whatever it was gonna be that this I was just fortunate to have found this person as the person that I went to. Yeah, so I I as opposed to I can tell you uh kind of the flip story of this is that it I'm a I'm a runner. I've I've I don't really post much about this too much, but today was actually number 1,890 days where I've ran consecutively, haven't missed a day. And at some point I developed I'll spare the details, but I developed like a toenail issue, and so I kind of a similar thing to where I first went to just the the normal primary care, you know, doctor. And it was just the just the opposite, where he was like, Oh yeah, here, let's treat the symptoms kind of thing, right? Like, like take this medicine or or whatever, and then it just didn't feel right. So I I thought I'm gonna go just see an actual podiatrist, right? Like the idea of a specialist that focuses on foot issues, and his was different. He was like probably late 60s, and right away he's like older guy, kind of a totally different demeanor. He's like, Oh yeah, I've seen this before, this is what we're gonna do. You know, was able to rely on his experience and just go like this is this is what we need to do. And so it was different experiences like that that kind of tied into why I wrote the book. It's the same thing in in financial services. I feel like there's credentials, and most consumers don't even really know what these different designations mean, right? But like the idea that financial planning has become so there's all these different facets to it, whether it's estate planning or income planning or insurance or whatever it is, there's different ways to specialize in that. And but you know, a lot of consumers still don't really know, right? Like it's it's not just easy for us to figure out. A kind of an interesting fact is that if you go to FINRA's website, so the financial industry regulatory authority, they have a list of these different professional designations. There's 252. Wow, there's 252 different designations, and then what's kind of cool is you can they're sorted by alphabet on there, and if you look by the ones that start with C, there's half of them, so like 130 of them, start with either the word certified or chartered. So again, if you're a consumer, how the heck do you know who to go to? What do these different ones mean?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a it's a like it sounds cool, but what does it really mean, right? As a consumer, we wouldn't know, absolutely a hundred percent. Yeah, so that's really interesting. So then a different way of building trust is to really specialize and be the person for this one thing, right? I assume that that is kind of the what the book is about, is is that correct?

SPEAKER_00

Right. It's the idea that retirement planning has become so there's just so much nuance to it, right? Like even in the last few years, Congress has passed these different rules. They passed the Secure Act in 2019, and that which is the setting every, I forget what it actually stands for, even, but like there was a bunch of rules that came through in 2019, and then they came up with Secure Act 2.0 a couple of years later. And again, the idea is that there's it really benefits Americans, like the different tax benefits that were put in there, but it also complicates it. Like there's all these different tax laws that changed as part of that. So again, if you're sort of the what I just refer to as a generalist financial planner, maybe you're up to speed on those things, but maybe not, right? Whereas the person that, whether it's through continuing education requirements or whatever it is, that person that you know is really stayed up to speed on whatever these different tax laws are that again, they they benefit people, but you like the individual needs the the advisor kind of needs to keep track of what those changes are.

SPEAKER_02

Important expertise to have for sure. Yeah, 100%. Okay, well, I think, you know, already some interesting, interesting ideas about trust, but I also want to learn, you know, what is the other story that you brought, which is usually like the more juicy one, right? Where did it go wrong completely? Where was trust lost, had a negative impact on a situation or a relationship? What what story do you have for us for your falling trust story?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I like the way that the the question was phrased at like, hey, let's protect the innocent, so to speak, here. So I'll do that to the best that I can. So I kind of a weird backstory. I had growing up, I always wanted to be an airline pilot, and I did, but then I made a career switch when I was 27. So I got hired at a bank to be a financial advisor there, and really was excited about, you know, like a lot of financial planners, they're excited about this mission of helping people with their financial lives. And early on, there was a lot of latitude to to do that. Over time, what I realized is that there was a different impetus of the firm, right? It was in the bank. It was more like the language that was used was more about like less about clients and people and more about accounts and revenue and products.

SPEAKER_02

The numbers.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, exactly. And success was really measured in like the top rank, the what they would consider the top ranking financial advisors were based solely on revenue. So it wasn't like number of financial plans run or like how successful your clients were on track with their targets, like things like that that had nothing to do with it. Like their top 10 was literally just who made the most money in the firm, right? Which is understandable at the end of the day. I mean, I understand it's a profile, you know, pro for profit business, but I became disenchantized with the idea of this. Kind of the twist of the story is that I got promoted, if you will. There was a another advisor in a different city that was about a hundred miles away, and she we had known each other for the last five years, and she was like, Hey Eric, I'm gonna retire. I really want you to take over my practice. And I was like, wow, this is this is fantastic. It just happened to be that these two markets were a hundred miles apart. So, what I would do is once a week, I would travel from the one city to the other, and I would do appointments there once a week, and still did really well. But the way that the bank looked at it is, man, if we had somebody here five days a week, maybe they would do five times better. And so this was my original client base, right? These were people that I've known for for years, and all of a sudden to them, they decided that, hey, we're actually gonna, we're actually gonna, you're not no longer gonna serve these people. And they didn't refer to them as people, you're gonna no longer service these accounts, we're gonna hire somebody else. And to me, that was the last straw, right? Because these were these weren't just accounts to me, these were households and people and people that I'd, you know, lived within the community. And so that was when I decided to start, decided to start my own firm, which was back in 2014. So it's been a while. But what's kind of crazy is if I needed an extra reason for starting the firm, the day that I actually called my my sales manager at the bank to tell him, hey, this is my last day, I'm gonna start my other firm. What he actually said to me was, I hope you fail. I hope you fail.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So if I needed any more reason, it was like, okay, I'll redo this.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, like literally, it's your last day. Why would you say that?

SPEAKER_00

So it was like seven years that I had been there, right? Like, and I this guy was very much like a father figure to me. He was you know, about the same age as my dad. I really a mentor, like I said, took me under his wing. I was an airline pilot. I had no reason that I should have been a financial advisor, but he took a chance on me. But it really was like over time, I was like, oh gosh, I don't and for me, it was kind of this gets corny, but it's like that golden rule. It's like, how would you, if you were a client, how would you want to be treated? And if I was honest with myself, the way that just that bank environment was when I was there anyways, and maybe it maybe it's improved, but when I was there, it felt like the experience was more on making sure that we were hitting our numbers, and I I felt like that kind of came through in some of those client experiences.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. I think you know, obviously, I I think about trust quite a bit, you know, with this podcast and all. And one of the things that that come back quite a bit and that I I learned is that I think to build trust, a big part of that is showing that you care. And what I'm hearing from this story, the bank so clearly showed that they did not care. They did not care about the humans on the other end, right? The clients were referred to as accounts. Like, oh, someone is not here five days a week. Okay, great, we'll just transfer them all to a completely new peop person who they don't know, they they have never met, they don't have any say in it, there's no conversation. And then even, you know, when the day that you're leaving, that a person would say something like that. Also, like I don't understand why, right? Right? Like, what is what is the goal of saying that? But it's also showing that you don't care, right? Because if this person actually cared about you as a human, they would have probably not said that. So I just think this is so in line with with what we talk about on this podcast in many episodes, right? Like showing that you care, but also on the other on the other side of that is if you show that you don't care, the trust is gone. It just gets broken.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's what is there's a saying, something like, I won't care what you have to say unless I you care what I know. It's like something like that. I someone can can fact-check it, but it's it's just exactly what you're saying, right? Like, I'm not gonna listen to whatever your advice is unless I know that you actually care about me and and know enough about me. Just like the eye doctor thing, right? Like, I would and I'll admit, I was a little bit pissed when at first he was like, I think you have something wrong because of legs. Like, I'm like, I don't think so. That was 22 years ago, and honestly, I was like, I don't know if I trust this guy, especially given he was a little younger, and I was like, I don't know if I trust this, but then as soon as he was like, Okay, let's do this deeper dive, and then was like, okay, now I have the information I need to to adequately diagnose and then treat, like, okay, I yeah, absolutely. And I think it's the same thing with financial services. I'm sure you see it too on LinkedIn. I I get really disgusted actually when you see people pitching products on LinkedIn, like and it's these annuity type of products or or uh insurance type of products, which is just absurd to me. It feels like really we've evolved past that. That plan, you know, planning is it's it should be planning first, and then whatever the products are, you should be agnostic. Like, I who I could care less what products I end up recommending at the end of at the end of a meeting. It's more just like let me understand where you're at, where you're trying to get to, what's the best way to do it. And maybe I'm not even gonna give a specific recommendation about a product. It could be a planning thing, like, hey, there's Roth conversions, or it's claiming social security at different ages, right? It has nothing to do with product, but I feel like again, it's how do you get to that point if you have it listened to what the person's goals are and and where they are currently?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think it's also like showing that you care by by investing time with that person, right? The eye doctor doing the deeper dive to confirm what he thought was, you know, the dry eye issue, and then it turned out to be something else. And then in terms of financial planning, you know, finding out what the goal is of your client and then seeing how they get there, it's also like investing the time shows that you care, right? Because it's it might not be in theory the most profitable, you know, especially thinking from the bank's perspective, there's just like numbers, numbers, numbers, you know, we gotta sell, sell, sell. But then I I personally think it comes back to you. And I do think that it can be a profitable business, you know, while building trust, spending time with people, caring about people, and yeah, like showing that you care and then building relationships that way. Because I do think, you know, when when you show that you care, you build up the trust. And relationships, like especially client relationships, they're just longer when people actually trust you, see you as the expert, right? Like what you also said. Like now, this eye doctor, he is the expert for you. So next time you have an eye problem, you're probably gonna go to him, right?

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. And then you think about that from a referral perspective. If anybody at any time is like, hey. I'm new in town or whatever. I need to get contacts. You know exactly who I'm going to refer to, right? There's no question about it. It's like, and I know other eye doctors. Like we have one as a client too, but I frankly would recommend this other person because he did take the time, like you said, to care and it and he had the expertise that I that I needed. It yeah, it was a great experience.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's I think that's a that's a really good takeaway that we that we can have from your stories. But I also I already mentioned before we hit record today, I'm also really interested that you do you do research on AI and retirement. And I know that, you know, in the whole AI world, trust is is also a big, a big topic. So if it's okay with you, I'm just gonna steal a few a few more minutes to talk about AI and trust and kind of your view on that. Do you think that people trust AI too much, too little? Can you share a little bit your perspective about AI and trust?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. When I go, I do a lot of presentations throughout the year, and it's been on this main topic, which is like AI, what is its use and how are how are people using it in retirement planning? And what does it kind of mean for financial advisors? I wrote one of the very first papers back in 2023 about this. It's in the journal Financial Planning. And even there, the the very first takeaway was hey, this isn't going to replace your you as a financial advisor. And that's what we've been seeing. So we keep collecting data on this over the last several years. And what even this is the very recent data that we got. If you look globally, or I should say nationwide at least in the US, about 30% of adults have a financial planner. If you look at we ask questions about have you used AI when we have to specify like what we what we mean by that, whether it's ChatGPT, Claude, you know, whatever, Gemini, have you used that for retirement planning? We're seeing only about 8% of people have used it for that. So to your point, there is a trust issue. Some of the other things that come up with that is from a factual perspective, to what extent does somebody believe that the advice that they're gonna get or recommendation that they're gonna get from an AI is is good or or better than what they would get from a from a financial advisor. And so it it is really interesting. And one of the key things that keeps popping up, and it's a lot of what we've been talking about, is asking questions. Like we all have that friend that is kind of a know-it-all, right? And that's really what AI is, right? Like you tell it to do something, and its default is just to respond. It's its default isn't to like, oh, good point, and let me ask you 20 more follow-up questions before I actually give you advice. Actually, cloud does that now, cloud is better at that, which is but still, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

No, I I get your point for sure. They will never say I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Yep, yeah, or to say, like, I'm not qualified to answer that. Like actually in the earlier days, it was actually saying, Hey, I'm gonna give you an answer, but you should still check with a professional, and they get they got rid of that, which is kind of odd to me. And I do think that there's probably a segment of the population that have more, you know, kind of simplistic needs, if you will, right? Like maybe it's a college student with basic budgeting. Hey, I just got my first job, I don't really know what a 401k is. I think it's great for that, right? Like some super simple questions, but I think as the level of complexity goes up, that is probably, and I think a lot of people are doing that too. When again, with these same surveys that we send out, what we're really seeing is that very few people are solely relying on any single information source, kind of like how we started here, right? People are every there's a digital footprint, right? And it's the same idea when people are they might see something in a Reddit thread, they're gonna check with their advisor or they're gonna put it in AI. You know what I mean? There's like several different sources of information that people are seem to be relying on, and that increases actually with with income. So as someone's income or net worth goes up, we're seeing that there's they use more information sources, but when you really pin them down on what their number one source is, oftentimes that's where for for financial planning, anyways, that's where it goes back to the to the professional.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, I think you know, when you're human, I think trust building is a lot more easy than when is a lot easier than when you're a robot. I think the trust building for AI is probably a limiting thing. And then making such big decisions that have such an impact on day-to-day life once you are retired. I think it's you know, the level of trust needed, I can, I can totally see. You know, I I use AI for many things, and I've looked up what is this and this, and should I do this and this with AI. Also about finances, but I would never only rely on that. I I would always want to, especially when things are complicated, I would always want to speak to a human, an expert, professional human over AI. So it's really interesting the stat that you that you included there, that only 8% actually use AI for for financial planning. That's that's really interesting. That is a lot lower than I thought, actually.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And it depends on the survey, right? Like if we're looking at older adults, especially like the 50 and and plus crowd, then it's much fewer, but for sure that younger demographic, just like with any technology, right? We tend to see younger demographics and higher income tend to use it first. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I I you know, I feel like the other part of this is that you can use AI for even advisors, right? Like without it being just Chat GPT, I feel like we've now made this mental association of that, like, oh, when someone says AI, they mean this. And it's like, no, there's all these different AI note takers that are saving people time. Like, even this, like, we're recording on Riverside, it'll create a transcript for us, like all these different things. That's AI that does that, right? We don't even really necessarily think about it. So I feel like there's all these other use cases that when people get stuck in this argument about will it replace an advisor or not, I feel like it's the wrong conversation to be having. It's like, how are you using it as an advisor to improve your practice? Then it's like, oh, that's a much better question. There's so many different ways, right? And like even improving the client experience, there's all sorts of great tools out there.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely, 100%. Yeah. Even like just only thinking about marketing a practice, you know, using AI strategically for that little piece that's already such a huge, huge opportunity. Yeah, 100%. I think that's uh that's a really nice, like, not nice, but also a very realistic way to look at it because I've had conversations, you know, I talk to financial advisors a lot because of, you know, we help financial advisors launch podcasts. So we have that conversation a lot. And I actually recently spoke to an advisor who said, Listen, I think I might be out of a job soon because of AI. So, you know, I'm scared to, you know, make investments or, you know, work on my business. And I thought that was really interesting because that's not how I see it. I'm I'm more how you see it. Like, okay, there is this new thing. It will change, it will change things, but then how can we use it? And what what will change? How can we learn about it? How can we, you know, use it to our benefit, instead of, oh my god, my my job is disappearing and not panic.

SPEAKER_00

I'll say this too. The one thing that I really like how somebody phrased this, and I I'm gonna mess up the attribution, but they said that like if you think about any job, a job is really made up of individual tasks, right? And it it's and it's wrong to say that AI is gonna replace a job, right? Like like you were just saying, this this advisor was concerned that it was gonna replace his job. Well, that's not true, like they somebody still wants to go to another person to get that one-on-one advice, right? Even like you and I, like we're able to see how some like if I say something funny and you laugh, like, oh okay, cool, then that landed, right? Whereas But a job is really made up of these individual tasks, and I feel like if an advisor then thinks about what are the things I'm spending a lot of time on and things that I don't necessarily enjoy doing, how can I use these new technologies to to help that, right? Help solve that. And then that's a different conversation, right? It's like, okay, cool. Now we're thinking about efficiencies and how I can actually spend more time with my clients, which is at the end of the day, what they want to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. The relationships, that's something that AI can never take over. That's that's just how it is. The human relationships, and it's extremely important. 100%. Eric, thank you so much for coming on this show today. This was such an interesting conversation. I love the stories that you shared with us today. And also, you know, the little AI fees, just because I'm personally very interested in it. So, yeah, thank you so much for sharing your experience and knowledge with us today. If people want to know more and if they want to read your book, where can they find you and the book online?

SPEAKER_00

Sure, I'd say I'm I'm super active on LinkedIn. So, Eric Ludwig on on LinkedIn. If you want to check out the book, that's called The Retirement Specialist. Why retirement requires expertise and how to find it, it's on Amazon. Kind of a cool thing. It actually shows up number one currently on the hot new releases for financial services. So I'm kind of excited for that. But yeah, those would be two places I would I would send people.

SPEAKER_02

Amazing. Congrats on that. That's amazing. That's huge. What a milestone. Cool. Perfect. We'll make sure that those links are also in the show notes. Eric, thank you again for being here today. And thank you to our listeners for listening.

SPEAKER_01

Want to build trust at scale? Go to cashflowpodcasting.com and launch your own podcast.