Why AI is Turning Advisors from Reactive to Proactive

• Beacon Strategies, LLC
• LinkedIn: BeaconStrategies
• LinkedIn: Chip Kispert

RJ Malyk 0:04
Well, welcome to the BPN Insights Podcast with your host, Chip Kispert. 

I’m your producer, RJ Malyk. 

Chip, as always, it’s great to see you. So let’s get to it. 

You’ve got a guest. Tell us what you’re going to be talking about on this BPN Insights Podcast. 

Chip Kispert 0:19
On today’s episode of the Beacon Insights Podcast, I am so excited to have Mark Gilbert, Co-Founder of Zocks. 

The Zocks platform streamlines a number of administrative processes for advisors and wealth management firms, really giving them more time back so those advisors can talk to clients and prospects. 

Super excited. 

0:42
In this episode, we’ll be touching on advisor and wealth productivity trends, learning how Zocks is using AI to reduce administrative tasks, along with allowing advisors to dedicate more time to their clienting prospects, and what the future of AI enhancement to productivity has on the horizon. 

Mark, welcome to the Beacon Insights Podcast. 

Mark Gilbert 1:04
It’s really great to be here, Chip. Thanks for your time and great to spend time with your audience. 

Chip Kispert 1:09
Well, I know that I, as I said before, super excited for our conversation. 

And you know, AI assistance are really revolutionary, revolutionizing the wealth industry today. 

And really I, I see them enhancing customer experience and really at the bottom line, increasing advisor productivity. 

1:29
Zocks is certainly at the forefront for both advisors and firms, and I look forward to learning more and hearing your thoughts and what the future holds. 

So let’s get right to it. 

1:41
I’d love, Mark, I’d love for you to to share briefly your background and what led you to start Zocks. I know you have a very interesting background. 

Mark Gilbert 1:49
Yeah, I appreciate that. 

It’s, you know, I, I, I would say grew up professionally and through school really on the technical side. 

1:56
So as a software engineer for a long time, a product manager was at a few little startups and then really spent most of my time actually at Microsoft building on a lot of the enterprise platforms to got exposed to a lot of just different systems that are scale and frankly what’s power like what’s possible towards the end of my time there, and I was there for a while, I’ll just say without aging myself, we had pulled together Azure and essentially launched Azure. 

2:20
And so, you know, kind of the big shift into the cloud wholesale in the platforms.  

After that, I was at a company called Hearsay Social for a while. I built up the product and design team and then became the CTO. 

2:31
For those who don’t know it, the important thing for the story is that it’s a it’s a vertical SAS companies specifically focused on financial advisory firms and a lot of the wire houses and things like that. 

And then I was at a company called Twilio, which actually handles a lot of the communications on the Internet. 

So if you’re ever talking to an Uber driver, get a text message from Airbnb or WhatsApp, that’s actually all Twilio underneath. 

2:51
And so in that role and through a lot of the things I think we’ve seen and my Co-founder has seen, we started to really stitch together this idea of communications, right, which is such an important part of the industry, like one-on-one communications where people are, you know, talking and really getting to know each other personally and frankly, AI and how we can take that in data systems. 

3:10
And so that was what we started Zocks with a few years ago, and it’s been both growing like crazy, which is great. And frankly, some of the things we can do now, and the speed at which AI is moving has even surprised us. 

And we spend all of our time in it. So it’s been really, really interesting. 

Chip Kispert 3:27
Yeah. I can’t believe, you know, it’s interesting. In 2024, we’re talking about what AI could do. 

Compliance officers were terrified of it, right? And now they’re like, what can it do for me? What can it do for me as long as it keeps me out of trouble? 

3:43
So one of the things you’re you’re right in the driver’s seat when it comes to seeing what trends are going on in the industry. I’d love to hear kind of a handful of the trends that you are seeing out there. 

They’re really impacting advisors and their their wealth firms with their Home Office staff. 

Mark Gilbert 4:02
Yeah, you know, there’s a lot going on. And I think a lot of these trends, you know, are not going to be surprising to anybody, especially your listeners.  But as you see them come together, they do have some really interesting impacts, right?. 

4:12
So we see, you know, definitely a lot of people wanting more and more personalization. 

And I would say the outcome of that is that we are starting to see firms, you know, really take kind of what we think of these services that frankly only ultra high net people would have had 10 years ago. 

And you’re starting to see that kind of move down the chain. 

4:30
But the ability to have very personalized service, self-service when they want to and mix that with a very, you know, I would say personal and deep relationship with their advisor. I think everyone knows this, right? 

Like the industry doesn’t have enough really advisors, you know, going. And so there’s just like, how do you continue to grow that? 

4:46
And we’re also seeing firms, I think for a few different reasons, but firms really starting to offer more and more services, partly, frankly, because they can kind of monetize beyond, you know, just assets under management, but also because their clients want it, right? 

Like they don’t want to be having like 8 different people they work with. 

By the time they have their financial plan, their taxes, their estates done, they really want to do that, and so we’re seeing a lot of that come together. 

5:09
And then, you know, for anybody with children, I’m sure, you know, all those people are seeing, there’s just a, you know, the, I would say the big brands, if you will, and financial services are changing very quickly, right? 

You know, and people are getting educated earlier and they’re getting attached to brands a lot earlier. 

So I would say at a high level, those are the big things that we, you know, there’s a lot of different things going on, but that’s really kind of where we spend our time. 

Chip Kispert 5:33
That’s that’s true perspective. And it’s interesting. 

I spent some time yesterday with a wealth firm here in Boston and they were really talking about that personalization and utilizing AI to build their portfolios and, and, and the like. 

And, you know, again, I go back to you guys are really at the hub of this. 

5:52
So, you know, how is your work at Zocks affecting advisors and wealth firms? It’s fascinating to me. 

I can’t wait to hear the answer. 

Mark Gilbert 6:01
Yeah, it it’s interesting, right? Because I think when any of these technology waves come in, they always have like initial effects and then there’s like secondary effects and, you know, tertiary effects and they keep going. 

And as we look at it, I’m, you know, pretty far in my career, I’ll just say. 

So you know, we went through the Internet wave and we knew right, like just the different things that were happening early on versus later, very different. 

6:21
So it’s a, for us, the biggest thing that we see at the start, which is a huge pain point in the industry is, is you’re, you’re essentially getting rid of like, you know, what a lot of people think of as administrative work. 

We think of it as really reactive work, right? Like things where someone is asking for something, it’s important, it needs to be done. 

Sometimes it needs to be done for compliance, sometimes it needs to be done because you know, you just, you need good data on your clients and all that by by being able to automate that. 

6:47
And really we think of it as accelerating it because the people are still involved in everything. 

But you know, if you have a really good associate or you have a really good admin staff or you know, yourself to all of these things, it allows you to kind of just supercharge yourself and get a whole lot more done. 

And so that immediately has an impact. 

7:02
And we, you know, we’ve done very large rollouts across very large firms. And you will see, you know, over 10 hours, which is like a huge amount of time, right? 

Like that’s over 20% of their time coming back to them every week. 

And so that, that’s kind of the first phase. 

7:16
And that’s one of the reasons I think that you’ve seen, you know, the space just grow so quickly as it’s a, it’s a, you know, it’s a painkiller, frankly, right? 

Like everyone’s in pain, they’re not doing as much as they want to, they feel guilty about it, all of those things. 

7:27
And then the second thing that we’ve noticed as people are really pulling it into their infrastructure though is once you’re doing all of that and we’ll talk, you know, a little more later as we talk about some of things that I think are coming up. 

But they start to have data and be able to do things that just frankly weren’t feasible before, right? 

Like kind of theoretically possible, but nobody can ever scale this across the client base. 

And so, you know, we are seeing some of them start to offer additional services, as I mentioned, right? 

7:52
Like, you know, take a Zocks and connect it in with like a, you know, wealth.com or something like that for, you know, for estate planning and all of these different things. 

And also they just frankly have better insights on their business and how they operate, so they can operate in a much more efficient way, which ultimately allows them to do more for their clients, which is really what they want to be doing. 

 

Chip Kispert 8:11
I love your how you explain you took administrative to reactive. I thought that that’s a real interesting take away for me. 

So thanks on that. Incredible that the kind of the work that you’re doing, it’s expanding so fast as you’re talking. 

And yeah, we are going to touch on a few things a little bit later. 

8:30
But one of the things, yeah, listen, every round table we had last year, oh, we like AI was central. 

AI was central to every to the point where like my head was ready to explode at our year end, year end round table. 

I’m sitting there and I’m trying not to get AI until the end. And it just permeated right in first discussion. 

8:51
But, you know, how is AI shifting really from a nice to have right to a mission critical for advisors and wealth firms in 2026 and going forward? 

Mark Gilbert 9:06
Yeah. So I think there’s a few reasons that it’s really, you know, is making this shift. 

The one that I think is the most obvious to people as they look at it like, I’ll give you a simple example.
In our world, right? 

9:16
You can now have a a discussion with a prospect. It’ll feel like a very natural conversation if you’re a good advisor. 

And at the end of that, you kind of like frankly, you know, dugout all the info you need to put like a plan together and start to figure out what’s going on. 

You know, that person can now walk out of that meeting. 

9:32
You can click a few buttons and literally in 10 minutes, have a plan for them right out of a planning system, like any money or you know, right capital and, and have a personalized follow up to be like, Hey, Chip, here’s what I heard from you. 

Here’s what we would naturally go do, right? 

And the reality today is that’s typically like somewhere between four days in a week or two for people to get back to, you know, the prospects coming in. 

9:55
So at at a very baseline, the expectation is just going up in the industry and that’s going to happen very quickly, right? That’s the reason we see people just closing a lot more businesses. I think everyone knows this in the industry. 

If you follow up in a very personal way very quickly and you look very diligent, you’re just going to frankly do more business. 

 

10:13
But the other thing that I think is under the hood that a lot of people don’t see is that the data that these firms are getting is extremely valuable. 

And what it’s allowing them to do is start to anticipate needs that, again, like, you know, if I told, you know, an advisor, let’s say my life story and everything going on, they would probably be able to anticipate the needs, you know, fairly well. 

10:35
It’s just very hard to go do that across 100 households, right? Just because you have so much going on. 

And now, you know, with these systems, they can start to surface the right data to the advisor. 

The advisor’s always kind of like, you know, in the cockpit, if you will, and in the driver’s seat, but they can start to just scale. 

And so you’re going to see this, you know, again, the first thing is that the expectations are are quickly rising. 

10:56
But the second thing is going to be that these firms that have been essentially capturing this information are just going to be able to anticipate a lot more for their clients. 

And, you know, that’s, I think almost every advisor’s dream at some level. 

Chip Kispert 11:09
Absolutely. 

And you know, it’s interesting too, because, you know, what started out really is advisor focus. 

Now it’s, it’s kind of permeating into the back office, so to speak, you know, and that that’s pretty interesting some of the things you’re doing. 

I look forward to chatting about that. 

11:29
So I always have a lot of questions, but I’ve heard Zocks in some of my conversation has started assisting wealth firms really in capturing and organizing unstructured data to help them make their structured data better. 

And, and you know, it is interesting when I talked to some of your folks earlier, they, they talked about document intelligence. 

11:55
Could you share a little some context on this, some thoughts that you have? 

I, I think it’s fascinating and quite frankly, hugely transformative for wealth firms. 

Mark Gilbert 12:05
Yeah. 

So I guess maybe just to back up, even when we started the company and we don’t really use these words externally a lot just because they’re kind of computer sciency words, frankly. 

But you know, we were always about capturing what we think of as structure data. 

And for the average person, just to think about this, right, Think of like 3 paragraphs in a note in a CRM system and then think of like whatever a plan in E money or the data you have in Orion or something like that. 

12:31
Like it’s just you can query the ladder, you can start to look across, you can aggregate. There’s just all of these things you can do. 

So the latter in kind of computer science terminology is structured data because there’s a structure to it. We know what each section is. 

12:44
One of the things we started doing early on was we we do capture this. 

And so this is why now we can do these like amazing, you know, basically like kind of analysis or queries across, you know, a customer set, right? 

So we can do things like say, you know, who has their own business and doesn’t have a solo 401K or who has, you know, who has their own business in the state of Texas and has a certain amount of free capital like whatever it is to look for products. 

There’s just all of these things you can do. 

13:10
When we started this, as I mentioned, it was all around the conversations, right? 

We then started attaching into other systems, like obviously the CRM system and you know, the calendar and stuff for the first ones, but also the planning systems. 

Now the the reporting systems. 

We’re doing a lot of work with the custodians right now. 

13:26
But one of the big, I’d say pieces missing of data was documents, and as you know, like there’s just a lot in documents, right? 

And you can think of a lot of documents coming in, whether those are PDFs or, you know, whatever the heck they are, they’re, they’re photos of like policies, you know, all of those things.  

What we can do now with document intelligence is take those in a funny way. 

Those all came from structured data, right? 

13:48
Like if you look at a, let’s say a Fidelity statement, you see the account name, you see all these transactions. 

That’s, you know, it’s structured data, it’s a big database. 

So we can actually take that document and turn it back into structured data and then take that and apply that context to that, you know, to that client again, right. 

14:04
And, and I think what we’re seeing is even with the same advisor, right, based on the on the way the client likes to work, sometimes there’s a huge amount of data in e-mail. 

Sometimes a lot of it’s verbal conversations, sometimes it’s documents because they have a big dump that they want to do. 

Sometimes it’s not that right? And it’s pretty much all conversations. 

14:20
And so what we want the system to do for advisors and for the firms is essentially be able to grab data from any of these systems wherever they want, give them the insights they need, and then also go back in and fill out those systems, right? 

14:31
Because like there’s a lot of power in the planning systems, there’s a lot of power, you know, you know, holist a plan for tax, you know, you know, all of these things. 

So the more we can put data into those systems too, frankly, like the better, you know, the advisors life’s just getting kind of across the board. 

Chip Kispert 14:45
You know, it’s interesting because I find, you know, firms like Zocks and specifically Zocks is really becoming almost the data hub and, and really moving data back and forth from what traditionally was, you know, a data lake or something like that. 

And I find it fascinating. And as I said, transformative, absolutely transformative. 

Mark Gilbert 15:08
Yeah, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting shift. And I think just the architecture in that world has changed, right? 

Like we don’t actually store a lot of the data that we use, right? 

Like I think with AI, we can analyze it. 

15:18
And so it allows us to do is say, look, instead of having one data store that has to be kind of the master, you know, there’s certain data in all of these different systems. 

That’s good. And it essentially allows you to, you know, query across it, get insights across all of these things, which is, which is one of the, as I was kind of mentioning, kind of like secondary and 3rd effects of AI that, you know, wasn’t obvious at the beginning. 

Chip Kispert 15:42
Got it, got it. 

Shift gears a little bit.  

And I was, I’m fascinated by firms roadmaps. 

What do you see coming in 2026? 

15:55
What I’d love to hear more about kind of your approach to integrations and scaling at enterprise. 

I’ve had a lot of conversations with your people about kind of enterprise work that you guys are doing. 

Mark Gilbert 16:05
Yeah, there’s a lot. 

And I would say, you know, in the AI space, it’s hard to frankly go out that far just because the systems are moving so quick. 

And as we dive into each area, but we really look at it in three kind of different, you know, or three, what we think of as work streams. 

16:21
So on the integrations, like as I mentioned, a lot of our value is being able to, to look at data from different systems and put data into different systems.
And so I think we did a little over 20 integrations, like different software systems that we integrate with. We did hundreds of firm level integrations last year and that’s going to continue, right? 

You’re going to see more and more of those systems. 

16:42
You’ll see a bunch announced actually in the next 4 weeks, especially around that, you know, if you just think of like the systems that an advisor is going into or the firm’s going into, like those are, are definitely top of the list. 

And then the other ones are just where they spending their time. 

So as an example, like, you know, one of the larger broker dealers, you know, we, we announced account opening with them. 

17:04
And then, you know, you can see things like money movements and stuff like that. You’ll see that with a lot of the custodians as well. 

And a lot of that is just, you know, there’s a huge amount of time going into like, Hey, I’m going to open an account for you Chip. You know, it’s a rollover account. 

Like there’s a lot of typing, right? 

17:17
And there’s, you know, the fat finger problem where people may mistype and everything else. 

And we can just do all, all of that and again, save a lot of time for the client. 

That also just frankly makes it a lot, a lot faster, right? 

So if you can get accounts open in minutes instead of many, many days with DocuSign, you know, all of those things are great. 

So you’re going to see a lot of AD. 

17:34
And I would say for those that are a little deeper in the area already, the systems that you would think of, like all of the systems that you would normally want to put data into, but you’re also going to see us taking a lot more actions, again, with the advisor and their team in the driver’s seat downstream. 

So they can just kind of click and go. 

So that’s one big area for it. 

17:50
The second thing that you’re going to see is we are and we’re already doing this with a few of our clients kind of under the hood. You’re going to see a lot more what we would call kind of like insights and actions coming out. 

18:02
So not just like analytics and things like that that we have now, but like this specific client this week, this situation, this opportunity, this, you know, and that can be anything from, you know, like, you know, a firm asking us like, hey, who likes pickleball? 

We’re going to do a pickleball tournament all the way through to like, you know, who has a personal event going on this week? 

You know, like maybe they’re, I don’t know, their daughter or family is going through something as a ballet recital. 

Like things that are important to them that they want to reach out and kind of warm up on all the way through to, you know, like, you know, required withdrawals that aren’t happening, anything like that, that can kind of end and you can really do the gamut. 

18:36
And so you’re going to see this additional kind of push towards now that people have this information like how can we help you again, go from reactive to really kind of getting, you know, not just proactive, but really anticipating the client’s needs. 

And you’ll see a big shift there. 

18:53
And then as you mentioned enterprises, we’ve done a lot of work with a lot of enterprises, especially in the last 6 to 9 months, like the very largest firms that you, you know, you can kind of think of a name and they are moving from thinking of this is more of like a utility that’s helpful for the advisor to that and something that the firm needs to really operate. 

And so they have very custom systems, they have very custom work flows and they frankly have very custom insights. 

19:21
And so there’s a lot of under which a lot of advisors like never need to worry about frankly, but it’s there, there’s a lot of kind of programmability under the hood, right? 

So that people who have very good ways of, you know, managing clients, working with clients, following up, growing their business, all of that, like all of that can basically get institutionalized like the end of the system itself to run. 

So you’ll see it across all of all of those. 

19:43
And then the the last piece is we, which is a bit of a, a nice gem is, you know, we are seeing a lot of people just voice AI has has moved forward very quickly, not just in comprehension, but also being able to like actually mimic and speak. 

And so there are a number of things around just getting information from clients and things like that where they don’t necessarily need to talk to an advisor. 

e-mail may not be secure or may not be the easiest thing to go use. 

And they actually just want to call and talk. 

And you’ll see AI start to even help with some of that basic kind of data collection and things as well. 

Chip Kispert 20:14
That’s fascinating. It really is it, it’s just it’s changing the industry. 

And you know earlier you mentioned. 

The fact that, you know, we have, you didn’t mention it outright be an aging population of advisors, right? 

20:29
And there aren’t a ton of advisors coming into the space, but the things you’re doing really will enable them to serve more, more customers more effectively. 

And I love, I love to hear that. 

So good stuff. 

20:44
This is one of my favorite questions. 

I always like to to as we’re starting to wrap up, what experts and companies in the well space do you currently follow or find inspiration from? 

Mark Gilbert 20:57
Yeah, it’s really interesting. 

Like, you know, I think as a lot of people look at a lot of the larger, you know, what we think of as heavyweights kind of in the industry. 

21:05
You know, I think a lot of people as we are look at them and like some of them I think are going to struggle a little bit with the movement to kind of AI and new technologies. 

And some of them I think are doing it pretty well. 

And it’s hard, right? For those companies that have cuz they have these large user bases and everything else customer bases. 

21:22
I would say some ones that are interesting for us just kind of like scattering across Orion recently announced essentially like a data. 

It’s it’s more advanced than this. 

So apologies, to any Orion people listening, but like, you know, it’s essentially a large data schema underneath their systems so that we, you know, as a partner can put in data, we can get our data, we can run agents on that data and it’s very both well thought through, but also forward thinking. 

21:47
Like I think a lot of people might not understand, like what is that? 

Is it an agent? 

Do I ask it stuff? 

But what it really is is it’s starting to get all of the information that you would run these agents across into a spot where now like, you know, we may be very good at certain things about automating certain things are helping. 

22:03
Maybe Orion’s very good at some things. 

Maybe another startup I’ve never heard of is very good at other things and allows you to kind of like almost mix and match. 

I think that’s been really interesting and impressive on the firm side. 

You know, there’s a few interesting things, you know, that would better come out. 

We’ve we spent some time, I think they’re, they’re very public about this. 

22:20
But like RFG, which is an RIA that’s very forward leaning, is doing some very interesting things all around, You know it, it’s kind of like, what does the firm of the future look like? 

But it’s really around what do the clients want and need and how do they best help their people do that, right? 

I think they’re very interesting for us outside of the Fintech space. 

You know, obviously the AI providers themselves are interesting for us. 

22:48
For those who who have never heard of them, Anthropic is one of those. 

They’re essentially an open AI competitor. They have a large language model. 

We work with a lot of the different LLMs, but they’ve gotten very deep. 

They’ve actually got very deep into software engineering and how AI can help that. But they’re also starting to do the same on the finance side, right? 

23:03
So how like like LLMs are frankly not great with numbers is probably the easiest way to put it now. 

So they’re doing all of these great things there and it’s really about like, you know, how can they strengthen certain things so that we can use it more, so advisors can use it more and everything else and kind of get more out of them. 

23:21
So I would say those are really biggies for us that are that are interesting, but there’s so much going on right now like it you really have to be, you know, thoughtful about kind of almost where you spend your time reading the news, you know, but but those ones definitely stand out for us is quite interesting. 

Chip Kispert 23:35
Yeah, it’s, it’s a full time job trying to keep up with these and and you can’t do it. They’re just, it’s moving so fast. 

23:42
So again, I’m going to change gears and this one’s more kind of introspective. 

What wakes you up at night, you know, when as you think about wealth management and the work that you and Zocks are doing? 

 

Mark Gilbert 24:00
Yeah, I would say a lot of it for me is, you know, the industry as we’ve talked about is going through a large transformation. 

And we’ve been very lucky, you know what I mean, to be in in kind of a driver’s seat there and have a front row view. 

And a lot of it is really around like, how do we help shepherd that transformation and not leave people behind where possible, but also not push, you know, like not not push too hard, not, you know, push forward and just kind of what that balance is, right? 

24:29
Like we spend all of our time in technology. We love it. 

I can sit here talking to you for hours about like all the cool stuff we’re trying things that work, things that didn’t work. 

Most advisors for very good reason, don’t care or don’t don’t care to that level. 

24:41
And so it’s really like, you know, these things that we talked about about, you know, like, again, all of my kids have Robin Hood accounts, right? 

They all started investing in high school, which I, you know, like, you know, I think my grandmother gave me stock when I was young and that’s like, that’s kind of what I do was there. 

But like, like this, this learning is going earlier and earlier. 

24:59
I, I think the industry has the ability to serve a lot more people than it does today. And it’s been somewhat restricted just based on the model, right? Like there’s a lot of human effort. 

And so at some level, like someone with $50,000, it’s really hard to, you know, help them and, you know, and make a living doing that. 

And so it’s really like, how do we do that? 

25:18
How do we get more people into kind of like the, you know, I view financial, I would say, you know, health almost the same as physical health, right? 

Like it’s just, everybody should have access to it. Everybody should understand it. 

It’s it’s, you know, as you get older, it’s, it’s very important for your well-being.  And so the more we can kind of get, you know, clients in and how do we scale these firms together? 

That’s really what I spend most of my time with. 

25:39
Like how do we get as far ahead of that as possible and move it quickly? 

And it’s not just technology, right? 

It’s people, it’s there’s a whole bunch of different aspects to this. 

Chip Kispert 25:47
That’s, that’s fascinating to me because everything you’ve talked about are things that when I’m talking to to wealth firms, we’re just how do you make it better for the client? 

How do you do more with with less? And so to me, it’s interesting. 

26:07
So as we close, this is a question I’ve been thinking about for the last few months and it’s, if you take a look at like Kitces road map or you know, the, the number of firms that we follow, that number is pretty, that number is huge, right? 

It’s, it’s daunting sometimes within just the wealth management space. 

26:33
What do you see as a North Star for balancing kind of tech solutions, which we talked about and personalization, which we talked about for both advisors and the clients? 

Mark Gilbert 26:47
Yeah, so this is a fairly easy question for me. 

So like for me and I think our whole company and I would look at this for, you know, I would, I would give this advice to every single firm or advisor I talked with. 

The North Star is really the client experience, right? And you want to make that as strong as possible. 

And so instead of looking at like a large technology map and being like, what if this do I need? 

27:10
I would really turn it around and say what, what can or what do we want to do for the clients and what is going to help us get there, right. 

And so because we get people all the time, we’re like, Hey, what should I use AI for? 

And, and the real like turn around. 

I’m like, what do you want to do? Right? 

27:24
And, and it’s great at some things, inaugurated some things, But instead of me telling you that, like, why don’t you tell me what you’re trying to get done and then we can see if we can help it or not. 

But I think if you leave that as the North star, it’s very strong. 

27:36
A quick little story that may be helpful for for people in the tech space. 

So Airbnb, who I think most people know their founder came out of design school, their founders and, and they’re very design focused company. 

One of the things they do over and over again is really go in and they figure out like what’s the best 10 out of 10 experience? 

27:55
So like, if you ever listen to a podcast, we’ve ever talked with them, they’ll give you this example of like, you know, it’s like you land in the plane, you know, land and land in the city. 

You’re going to everyone’s waiting with the sign with your name. 

You go on a, you know, like whatever you get in with a bunch of locals, kick around town, go like that. 

This is their, you know, like 10 of the 10. 

 

28:10
And then, and then they just spend a lot of their time figuring out how do we get from, how do we get people from here to there with Airbnb, right? 

So they started releasing services and all these other things. 

And I think for financial, financial services and wealth management, it’s actually the exact same. 

What would you love to do with your clients, right? 

And you may be like, I’d love to do that, but I can’t do it. 

It’s just crazy. It takes too much time or whatever else. 

28:28
But I, I think it’s actually very helpful to be like, what does really, really, really good look like and then start to chip away at that and be like, can we get 70% of the way there, 80% of the way there? 

And I think if people make that their North Star and frankly, like, I’d be very questionable, any technology you’re using that’s not driving you there. 

And I would be like downright, you know, opposing anything that makes you go backwards there at all, right? 

Like if you lose customization, if you lose any of these things because the system is making you do it, that’s probably not the right system or you’re not, you know, you’re not set up with them properly. 

29:01
But that, that’s what I would make the North Star. 

That’s what we look at. 

And I, you know, I, I can’t think of a successful firm that isn’t going to be doing that. 

Chip Kispert 29:10
No, and that was, that was some great insight. 

We, it’s interesting because over the years we’ve just seen so many advisors and wealth firms kind of get, get caught up in a shiny metal fishing lure for lack of a better descriptor. 

And they, they burn money, they burn time and they’re, they’re not more effective. 

So I love that that concept. 

29:33
Hey, we’re just about done with with our podcast, but one of the things we always love to do is is give you our guest BPN Insights Flash, which is 45 seconds to freestyle and share some final thoughts with our audience. 

Mark Gilbert 29:52
All right, let me go. 

This is going to sound a little probably repetitive, but you know, for me, if I have 45 seconds with everyone, I would just tell them, you know, like AI is, is changing the way the industry is going to operate.  

It’s already starting to do that, and frankly, it’s changing the economics of the industry. 

30:10
And so I think where people think of it as helpful or not. 

Like the thing I would definitely tell people to do, whether it’s with us, whether it’s with something else or what. 

30:17
Again, whatever your North Star is, whenever you want to get done, start to put your foot in the water and just get used to it. 

Because we’re already starting to see the separation of kind of like the, I would say the have and the have nots on that side. 

And I think most people know this, but it’s not like AI just showed up and is here all of a sudden. Like it’s been building for a long time and it’s continuing to build and ramp at that, you know, at just an incredible rate. 

Like it is, it is truly compounding, right. At a, at a rate that, you know, is, is crazy. 

30:47
So that the thing I would say is, and whenever I talk with people, like you’ll get to these like detailed discussions on things, then I’ll be like, So what are you doing now? 

And the answer’s like, oh, we’re not really sure. 

And I’m like, just do something like it like, like whether it’s whether it’s work with us, whether it’s do something, I don’t know, like just do something. Yeah. 

31:00
It’s just, you have to, you know, it’s just like trying to, you know, it’s trying to like work, work with clients without e-mail or computers today, right. 

I’m like, it’s just, you know, you and this is going to happen. 

We see the inside. Like this is happening very, very quickly. 

31:13
And I think the more that like the people who are good are going to be able to scale beyond their dreams and the people who are stuck behind are going to feel like they’re going to pull behind the car. 

So hopefully everyone gets ahead. 

Chip Kispert 31:25
I think that’s pretty, that’s pretty good insight. 

Mark, I want to thank you for joining me on the BPN Insights Podcast. 

In my opinion, the work that you’re doing is the largest agent of change within what the wealth space that I’ve seen while I’ve been in the in the business, which is now into the decades. 

I look forward to seeing what you and Zocks continue to do as you grow and drive innovation. 

31:55
Before you go, how do people get in touch with Zocks to learn more about your office? 

Easiest is really just on our web page, zocks.io or zocks.com. 

Grab time, you can put time with us there. You can see some videos there. 

We’re happy to chat with you, love to give you demos, even if you’re not sure what you want to be doing. 

32:11
And, and frankly, very, very happy to answer just broad questions about AI, the industry, what’s going on. 

All of our people love chatting about this. So that’s probably the easiest spot in my LinkedIn as well. 

Chip Kispert 32:23
Great, Mark, again, thank you. 

I can’t wait to bring you back and, and talk about this in the coming months years. 

So thank you for your time. 

Mark Gilbert 32:32
Awesome. 

Thanks a lot, Chip. Thanks, RJ. 

Chip Kispert 32:37
You know, it’s interesting RJ, because you know, his thinking really made me kind of ponder some things I hadn’t really thought about. 

And it’s interesting because a couple of those is, I really liked how he kind of described how AI is helping advisors get better with their reactive work, traditionally originally known as administrative work, and so much more #2 how firms like Zocks are really expanding beyond helping advisors and are now helping wealth firm back offices with needs like account opening, gathering data. 

Absolutely fascinating. 

33:22
And then finally, Mark’s point that to continue to compete, wealth firms need to embrace AI to solve their different use cases and really become more efficient and be able to serve the end customer, give that end customer user experience that is above and beyond. 

33:44
Those are the three things I took away. 

What did you take away, RJ? 

RJ Malyk 33:47
Well, one of the things that really stood out and it’s, it’s a pretty simple concept, but you know, when he said it, it just really hit me about equating, you know, how we take care of our physical health or how we’re focusing on our physical health. 

And it should be as important and you should put as much energy and focus on your financial health. 

34:07
And that, that really that resonated with me at at at some point, but he just there’s, there’s a lot of lot of stuff. 

There was almost like a fire hose coming at me with all that information and I’m like, so, but it was great. 

Chip Kispert 34:22
All right, RJ, that kind of wraps up our time with this particular Beacon Insights Podcast. 

Again, we want to thank Mark Gilbert, CEO of Zocks. 

34:34
And in closing, we here at Beacon encourage you to join us in learning more about provider firms, their direction and leaders through our BPN Insights program. 

And to quote Walt Whitman and most recently, Ted Lasso, “Be curious, not judgmental.” 

34:53
Thanks for joining me on the Beacon Insights Podcast. Until our next episode, this is Chip Kispert. 

Be well. 

RJ Malyk 35:00
Thanks, Chip, and thank you for checking out the BPN Insights Podcast, which is brought to you by Beacon Strategies, LLC. 

For more information, visit beaconstrategiesllc.com. 

Until our next BPN Insights podcast for Chip Kispert and everyone at Beacon Strategies, I’m RJ Malyk.