SPEAKER_02 0:00

So utilizing tools that are ultimately helping to systematize, automate processes on the back end to reduce costs, I think is a big lever. And using cutting edge technology to do that is a major opportunity for advisors. And then also using technology to help you with sourcing new business, whether that's referrals or providing incredible experience for your clients and prospects to help with conversion, expansion of AUM opportunities. There's lots of those things that can be delivered using data and insights that you have on your existing customer base. And if you start doing those things of, you know, simply asking questions or finding out when their birthday is or if they have children or those things that you're probably doing automatically, when that data gets in your systems and you utilize a technology, whether it's Quinn or something else, can then take action on those in a way to give you an insight and then not only give you an insight, but then draft a communication with educational resources and a proposal for you to come in and offer value to them that then increases your AUM and more revenue back into your business.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the show where financial planning meets human understanding. As an exceptional financial advisor, you know that financial planning is about more than just numbers. It's about giving clients the clarity they need to align their money with what matters most, which is why each episode is designed with that goal in mind. You'll learn how to uncover the psychology behind client decisions and gain insights and behavioral strategies needed to create deeper, more meaningful client relationships. You'll discover techniques for navigating emotional client situations drawn from conversations with leading industry experts in behavioral finance, psychology, communication, and more. Whether it's mastering discovery meaning, handling sensitive client conversations, or understanding what is truly keeping your client stuck, you'll walk away with not only strategies that you can use in your next client meeting, but also the confidence to do so. Oh yeah, hi. I should probably introduce myself. I'm your host, Ashley Quallmy, a therapist who somehow wandered into the world of financial behavior and kind of decided to stay. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between financial planning and human understanding. Because remember, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Let's dive in. Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the podcast where financial planning meets human understanding. I'm your host, Ashley Kwamey, and today I'm joined by my new friend Gabe Caldwell, co-founder of Quinn. We're gonna talk about AI today. We're gonna talk about tech, but we're gonna talk about it in a way of not how to be more productive, more efficient, like in your practice. We're gonna talk about it in a way that helps you understand where and how tech can be useful from allowing you to reclaim presence in your business and your life and in your client relationships. So I'm excited to have Gabe on here today so that we can dive in. Gabe, thank you so much. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, yeah. Okay, Gabe, before we talk about all the good juicy stuff, let's start a little bit at the beginning. This isn't your first business. You've had a few of them. Let's talk a little bit about how you got here with creating Quinn and creating this product, this business, this tech in service of not, I know it's for others, but we're gonna say for today it's just for financial advisors. I know others can use it. But tell me a little bit about this journey. How did you get here?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah, absolutely. So classic entrepreneur, you're always solving your own problem and then you're you're solving it for others. Um, I didn't get my start in technology. I actually had a business that was in waste recycling, logistics, even had a mining company and a porta pot company. We it was based in the Midwest.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I'm like, my mind's blown. What? Things are things that I would not have thought you would have said. Okay, yeah, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah. But like every business owner, we had processes, we had systems, and that business we built up to about 40,000 customers that we served around the Midwest. There wasn't really a software product off the shelf that we could use for all the different business units. So we did a lot of very manual things. And when we sold that business to waste management back in 2016, we got a report card as business owners, and there was a lot of good scores on there, but there was a D minus in tech. And the reason for that, that was the opportunity they saw with purchasing our company was they were gonna implement their technology that really scaled and automated our manual processes and was gonna increase margins for them about 10 or 12%. So that was a learning lesson that was a bit painful. We had a very successful, profitable business, and it was good for everyone, but I knew going forward that I needed to kind of figure this out to become a better business owner. Since then, I partner with Still Now, my business partner with Quinn and our venture studio, Plainside Ventures. He had a software product that automated document creation called WebMerge. We partnered, we built that up and served customers around the world automating document creation and the workflow of those documents, saving 10 or 15 minutes for every document you created. We sold that business to private equity back in 2018 and got brought on top of their leadership team to buy other synergistic software products that really kind of automated processes and digitized processes. So we we had at the end of those purchases, we had tools that could help with data collection through online forms and surveys, assemble documents, get them signed electronically, and then it integrated with about 400 different databases that were CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, project management tools to really kind of help data get into systems, data out into documents. And that business we were running during COVID, many bad things for COVID, but for our business, it required businesses to adopt technologies like ours to really stay in business. And so it helped our business grow. Um they were built for financial services, healthcare and higher education were three of our biggest verticals, and they were all SOC2 compliant, PCI, HIPAA. We had subject matter experts uh for all of these different industries, and our business took off in a very big way. We ended up selling that business in 2021, and we set up our own kind of venture studio here to find new worthy problems that we could build software to ultimately streamline and automate. And we built several several products since all in that theme of streamlining and automating processes. And that's really where we came across, you know, we can get into more of what Quinn is, but we solved our problem internally of getting data into our CRM, drafting communications at scale, um, whether that's on the sales side or the back office side, we could never get our teams to do it. We struggled to find the time to do it ourselves. And that's where we kind of built this tool. And with a network of financial advisors, we found that that was a very big problem for them. That they were, they basically said, if you could solve this, we will, we will be your first paying customers. And that was several years ago. Since then, we've we've scaled the product, features, capabilities, and integrations and are now serving over a thousand different uh advisory groups here uh around the world.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, that's fantastic. One of the things that I like that I've you know seen you talk about is you know the use of AI and tech and how a lot of we'll say financial advisor, since that's who we're talking to here today, that they're using it wrong, actually. You know, like they're using AI to write LinkedIn posts, they're using AI maybe to brainstorm like ideas, but that is really not like best use of it. And it's not leverage. And ultimately it doesn't give them back what I saw you also write about was that advisors spend 22 hours per week like administrative tasks. I think that's what I think it was. And my well, first of all, I was mind blown by that because I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't even want to think about how many hours per week like I'm spending on that, that stuff. But also just this framing around, okay, how do we leverage AI maybe to give us some of our time back? And what would happen if we did? And could we, what would we do with that time? Could we utilize that, you know, to be more maybe present like with our clients? So I would love to hear just more about your thoughts just around this idea of leveraging, you know, AI or tech like correctly and really what can it do for advisors?

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a we're living in a really exciting time, but also pretty confusing time here with all the different tools that are out there. I don't think there's necessarily a wrong way to use AI out there, but I think there is right ways that can leverage your time and give that back to you and help you have insights to take action to grow your business, whether that's reduced costs, which can be translated into time savings, or give you insights that you can take action on that can drive revenue for your business. So, you know, maybe AI 1.0 would be, you know, replacing your search engine. You know, most people aren't going to Google anymore, they're going using ChatGPT or maybe Gemini, and that's giving them more of a mentorship relationship where they can chat back and forth with that search as opposed to looking through things. So that's great. That is a nice convenience. Helping with authorship and creative ideas, whether that's creating images or drafting LinkedIn posts. I think those are all great. But when we're thinking about running our business, I kind of think about it from a PL perspective of okay, what are my costs? What actions are generating revenue? And how can I leverage AI in a way that can either reduce my cost or my time or increase revenue for me? And so that's where we can really get into these really interesting processes for financial advisors here of that stat of they spend about the typical advisor spends about 22 hours a week of admin typework, which can be taking notes, sending a follow-up email, entering data into your CRM, responding to emails, prepping for meetings, all of this type of processes, which we really kind of derive down into jobs to be done or workflow items, um, take time, clearly 22 hours based off the stats. So, how can you leverage AI to do those for you? So some of the table stake things would be maybe using tools to help you take notes, then comprehensively enter data into your systems, use AI to help you author authoring and drafting responses to emails so you can spend less time on that, but then also get back to your clients quicker, which they're gonna like, which then will maybe help with that conversion rate of prospect to customer or build trust and rapport so that you can expand revenue opportunities, whether that's referrals or AUM. If I'm getting great service from my advisor, I'm gonna be feel more drawn to them to do more things with them and whether that's referrals or more AUM. So that's kind of how we kind of think about things is what is the actual job to be done? What is an advisor actually spending time on? And how do we list those out and say, let's leverage AI to take these off your plate and do that with accuracy, which is really hard to do with technology these today. Chat GPT, Claude, these things are really great tools. Uh, but doing things with accuracy into the systems that advisors are using today, they're not built for that. And that's where folks like us can come in and write about 50,000 lines of code around these things to build these for advisors with safeguards in place to make sure things are done accurately, because this is very sensitive information. We're talking about people's livelihoods, dollar amounts, things like that. There's very little risk for error. And so there's a lot of build that needs to happen behind the scenes. And that's really what we've done with Quinn is building that infrastructure in a place so it's safe, it's secure, it's compliance, approval ready, and it's very specific with the use cases. So an advisor can come in and almost search from the menu and say, This is what I want my assistant to do. Click a button, click a button, turn on these workflows that then run behind the scenes. And they don't have to do anything. They can just sit back and see that these things are being done for them, and they're effectively getting some of that, if not all of that, 22 hours per week back into their day, where they then they can determine what do I do? Go find more business or maybe go read a book or take a nap.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting because there can be a lot that gets lost, as you're talking about here. Like there's a lot that can be lost in the advisor-client relationship when the I'll say mental load, but in this case too, like that I think is inclusive of administrative load. Like when that load is very high, there's a lot that gets lost on the relational side of things. And we can quantify that from a time standpoint, like it's 22 hours spent here, but there's, you know, some relational equity, I think, that can diminish when we have a high administrative or you know, cognitive load because of these other tasks. I'm curious, like maybe what you guys are seeing or what you're hearing from advisors about where are they finding relief? Like, where are they talking about, yeah, like now I can show up a bit more presently? I'm not having to think about like, let me capture these notes and also half listen. Or I feel good knowing like the follow-up stuff is like, who, and and I'm going into the next meeting feeling less stressed. Like, what are you guys hearing on maybe the relief side that from lightening this load, it's helping advisors do better?

SPEAKER_02 14:24

The biggest thing that we hear from our advisors is that they're sleeping better at night, they are feel more refreshed when they go meeting to meeting every day. Stress levels are lower, and that's felt human to human. So when you show up to that meeting, because you have less of a cognitive load, because you're you're having these things taken off your plate, then you're able to show up more refreshed as opposed to exhausted. And that's everything from being present in the meeting and truly listening, actively listening and running the meeting, because you're not having to take notes, your data, worry about all the next steps. You you know that's off your plate. And so you can truly just connect, actively listen, get deeper in conversations because you're focused on one task versus three or maybe even four during that workflow. You had less of those things that built up throughout the day. So even that meeting you had at four o'clock or the evening, you were drained less throughout the day. Uh, so you show up even to those meetings with more energy there in the evening. And maybe for some of some advisors, they're able to get to the gym because of this and take care of their health, or I have to eat fast food, better, better food because they had actually had a lunch break here, which just leads up to that how you show up with someone because you're taking care of it, you got more time to take care of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think that from advisors that I see that are really adopting tech tools to help with, you know, taking some of this load off. I think that there's a risk. And what I see is that they're like, well, I'll just book two more meetings. I can take on, not like clients. And that might be true. Like, that's not, I don't, and I don't mean to say like that that's bad. Where from where I sit, like my worry is like, well, are you doing the things like you just mentioned, like eating lunch, going out for a walk, like finding ways to decompress and like take care of yourself. From your perspective, like what's the risk there for advisors that just keep adding more and more and more to their plate? Like they're getting these hours back, you know, because things are moving better, faster, uh, like more efficiently. Like, what are you seeing from your end?

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Yeah, I I think that's that's a different problem, right? Yeah. Than than kind of what Quinn's leaning into, and that they'll eventually see, oh, I need to restrict my calendar here to even though I can do more and I'm growing my practice faster, I'm I'm still working 70 hours a week. I'm just doing more in my week. So that's just kind of a dial dial back at that point. But I think Quinn can do both kind of automating some of the workflows on the admin side, but it also can help with driving more revenue by taking data and you have about prospects and clients and centers of influence and putting that into action based off of data points and triggers or helping you focus on revenue generating activities or referral generating activities that grows your practice there as well. So I think we all have a number that we want to hit from an AUM perspective. Queen can help you kind of get there a bit quicker and more scalably to where that takes a bit more pressure off because you you have a strategy with some of these workflows to do that. But for someone that's extremely driven and they're gonna work 80 hours a week, no matter what, that's probably just gonna lead a burnout, regardless.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Well, dogum it, Gabe. I was kind of hoping that maybe you'd have a solve for us there around that.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

So oh man, wish that you had solved that crisis for me. So maybe I'll give you a little bit of time. Maybe you can come back and tell me that you found the solution. You found the answer for those folks. Okay, let's talk a little bit about maybe for advisors. And I hear this come up like there's some concerns around the use of like AI tech in like automation in some of their process. They're like worried or concerned, like maybe giving up control, you know, of those things being removed from it. Or maybe there's some concerns around like compliance is another piece, like, you know, a sensitive information. You know, how do you respond maybe to some of those concerns if advisors like are worried about like, well, what will this do for my business? But also maybe what will it do for the client relationship as well?

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah, for sure. So I think two worries typically come up. Is this going to replace me, uh, which it's not? Two is is it going to am I going to lose control and it's going to do things that I don't want it to do? So I'd say those are the two that come up. The first one, this is not going to replace you. Really, why someone goes with a financial advisor is because they want to work with a human. They want to know that someone's working on their behalf, that understands things and that they can go to and they can make them feel good about this. And I don't think technology is anywhere close to replacing that. But what I would say is that the advisor that does use tools like this is going to have an extreme advantage over someone who does not. And it's already present here today. So it's definitely something you don't want to miss out on. The second would be compliance their concerns or kind of control of things. Really a good product in this space should always keep what's called human in the loop. So you don't want technology doing sending out automated communications, even though you're like, this is great. I don't have to do anything, that will get you in trouble. So making sure that whatever client communications go out are drafted for you, but they need your eyes on it to make sure everything is the way that you want it. It sounds like you, because you don't want the client to receive something that's like, ooh, this sounds like AI wrote this. That's hurting rapport and trust, which is not what you want. So what we do and what um a lot of other good products out there do is it it will keep the human in the loop. It will go find the information, it will draft a communication that's highly personalized in your tone. And the ability of technologies like Quinn to do that today is uncanny, matching your humor, your brevity, your conciseness, your writing style. You'll be very happy with that. And and then you're just simply reviewing it in your inbox like you normally do. It's not someplace else you have to go. And then you're hitting send and you're be able being able to scale yourself very, very quickly without losing that control. Last, I'd say, is the compliance in this industry, compliance is heavily regulated as it should be. And so making sure that whatever technology that an advisor looks at, it is SOC2 compliant or certified better yet, GDPR compliant if we're talking about folks in other countries, and none of your data is being used to train models in place and being very aware of what data is being stored or not stored, that usually takes care of everything. But SOC2, if you're if you're hitting that compliance and that certification compliance departments, I think are uh very happy with that.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

I think that's really great feedback because one of the things that's come up recently is there was a client who actually asked the advisor, like, how is my information being used? Like I see you have a note taker in, like, just I'm just curious, like, you know, I want to know more about this. And so I think on the advisor end, like that's fantastic feedback, like an advice that you just gave around like what that should look like. I'm told, and you know, for advisors using that, like just knowing and understanding that can also, you know, clients are gonna start asking. You might not have a lot that are asking now, but as this adoption becomes just pretty standard practice, like there's gonna be clients that wanna know. And so being able to answer that, you know, in an accurate, like honest way is going to go very far. Terms of client trust and helping clients to feel safe, you know, there. You kind of touched on this a little bit, Gabe, but when we look out over kind of like the next three to five years, like in the advice industry, what do you think like from the advisors who do well in this space versus maybe those that get left behind? Like what are the differences there between the ones who ones are who are thriving and succeeding and the ones who are maybe not quite doing as well? I can't be mean. I can't say that they're like doing terrible. I don't know. I like want everyone to succeed, but the ones that maybe aren't doing so well, like what are the differences there from your standpoint?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Yeah, I I think it goes back to my original story that I shared when I was working in waste, recycling, and logistics, and we sold our business to waste management. They brought in software and tech and systems and processes to increase margins by 12%. Now that was pre-AI back in the day, that was just declarative software. So I think if you're wanting to run a practice that's highly efficient, that has you got two levers here. You can reduce costs or you can increase revenue. So utilizing tools that are ultimately helping to systematize, automate processes on the back end to reduce costs, I think is a big lever. And using cutting edge technology to do that is a major opportunity for advisors. And then also using technology to help you with sourcing new business, whether that's referrals or providing incredible experience for your clients and prospects to help with conversion, expansion of AUM opportunities, there's lots of those things that are can be delivered using data and insights that you have on your existing customer base. And if you start doing those things of you know, simply asking questions, finding out when their birthday is or if they have children or those things that you're probably doing automatically when that data gets in your systems and you utilize the technology, whether it's Quinn or something else, it can then take action on those in a way to give you an insight and then not only give you an insight, but then draft a communication with educational resources and a proposal for you to come in and offer value to them that then increases your AUM and more revenue back into your business. So if you can find a tool that can do both those things to systematize, automate processes on the back end to reduce costs and on the front end to help you with driving new revenue, that's gonna allow you to be successful and the different differentiator between someone who's gonna really do well and someone that's gonna miss the boat.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense to me. Okay, Gabe, for advisors who are listening right now and they're like, okay, like I understand where like tech is helpful in software like this, like it is gonna be like I'm not, I'm you don't have to sell me on that. Like I I get that, but like what's the connection between my workflow and like the quality of my relationship? Like, if there was one thing that you just wanted every advisor who's listening to like understand, like what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Yeah. So I think anybody who's chosen to get into the financial advising business has a big heart and they want to serve and they have probably an incredibly great set of skills of being able to build relationships. They probably didn't get into business into this line of work to do data entry, document form filling and things like that, right? So that can be draining upon them because they most likely don't like to do that. So utilizing a technology that can take those things off their plate while ensuring accuracy will allow them to have more energy, more time to focus on things to really do what they love, which is deepening that relationship with clients, finding ways to serve them more, find new clients and do those things. So I think if I just kept it very simple in those terms, why'd we get into business? Let's remove the things without pleading accuracy and efficiency so that we can serve our clients more, which is really what the clients want as well. That's is going to be, you know, the secret sauce here.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Yeah, I love that. I love that. That whole idea of stripping it away. Like, why are you doing this? I can tell you that when I started doing therapy plus 15 years ago, it was not to write clinical notes. That's not why I got into therapy. It was not to call and schedule the appointments or reschedule the appointments. That is not why I got into or what I wanted to do. And so I think that that just resonates like a little bit for me is thinking, pulling back and thinking, why did you get into this work? Like, what is it right? It's really called and like pulled you toward that. And how much of that are you actually doing? And is there a solution for the other things that you have to do, but maybe aren't tied to why you want to do them? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, Gabe, if people want more Gabe in their life, if they want more Quinn in their life or to know more about to know more about Quinn, tell us a little bit where can where can people find you? Where can they connect and learn more about you and about Quinn?

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah, absolutely. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So I do a lot of just posting and sharing of different things. So feel free to follow me there, just Gabe Caldwell. I'll reel free to shoot me a direct message there on that side. Uh, if anybody's interested in checking out Quinn, they can just go to our website. It is H-E-Y-Q-U-I-N.io, heyquinn.io. The website's chock full of different ideas, use cases, and things like that that you could just get a lot of value out of as you're thinking about different use cases and workflows. And then if anybody wants to try it out, it's uh there's a two-week free trial there, no credit card required. Uh, our team pours into you to kind of show you all these things. So happy to help anybody out there as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah, fantastic. We'll make sure that we include all of that in the show notes. Thank you, Gabe, so much for coming on and for being with us and for sharing your insights today. Thank you to all of you for allowing Gabe and I into your mind and into your ears. If this episode, if this content, if what Gabe and I were sharing, mostly Gabe, if what mostly Gabe was talking about, if it resonated with you, both of us would love to keep the connection and conversation going. So feel free to follow him on LinkedIn, as he mentioned. You can also find me there as well, where I share almost daily insights around the human side of planning. You can also check out our monthly newsletter at www.beyondthefp.com where we share insights around the human side of planning, how to be better engaged with your clients, how so how to be better engaged with yourself just as a human. You can also check us out on YouTube where we, Meg and I, my partner, where we share insights, uh, again, centered around all of the good stuff of financial psychology and how to show up in those relationships. But most importantly, do all those things, please. But most importantly, don't forget to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts so that you never miss an episode like this one. As always, my friends, remember finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Planning and Beyond. I hope you found today's insights valuable and inspiring for both your practice and your personal growth. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more advisors like you who are dedicated to making a difference. For more resources, tips, and to continue the conversation, visit our website at beyondthefp.com. You'll find articles, tools, and information about upcoming episodes designed to support your journey and practice. Stay connected with us on social media and never miss an update. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. And remember, the best way to grow is to keep learning and sharing. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond.