Ep 1: 1. Rethink: Change is Coming

Episode 1 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (26:57)

Episode 1 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Adam Holt and Derek Notman open the series by explaining why they started it. Both spent years as practicing financial advisors before founding financial technology companies, and both concluded that the profession was operating on assumptions built for a different era. In this first episode they trade origin stories, including the failures rather than only the wins, and set the format for the show: every episode is built to end with two to four steps an advisor can act on immediately, because both hosts found that conference takeaways rarely survive the trip back to the office. The conversation closes on a question they say advisors rarely ask themselves. With no financial or mental constraints, what would you actually build your practice to look like? Holt argues that nothing gets built that was not first envisioned, and that most advisors never do the envisioning step at all.

What this episode covers

• Why both hosts left advisory practice for financial technology, and what that move revealed about the profession
• The case for treating professional identity as a business decision rather than a job title
• Why conference takeaways rarely translate into changed behavior, and the format the show uses instead
• The constraint-free practice design question, and why most advisors skip it

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holtz. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. Derek, I have to ask you a question. Have you ever considered that it’s time to rethink the financial advisor? Been thinking for quite some time, Adam. I think we’re on the same page here. Tell me a little bit more about what you’re thinking.

I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking maybe we should start a podcast about rethinking the financial advisor. What do you think? I’m all for it. I think that we are given our background which we’ll get into here in a moment. We are in a very old industry that needs to be rethought to be challenged to be explored with first century. It’s funny, you and I grew up in this business together and not actually working together but we discovered each other right through industry. And immediately we felt a kinship because we were saying the same things maybe a little differently but I really am excited to do this project with you.

Yeah, it can almost refer to you as like my brother from another mother. It’s odd how it all works but it’s brilliant at the same time. So I think this is gonna be a ton of fun to share our past experiences and how they’ve intersected now many years in as advisors and CEOs. That’s true. I actually have been needing to talk to our father about that and actually bring up the fact that he never let us know that we didn’t have separate mothers but now that we know that’s really great. I think when as we’re talking to financial advisors and having been advisors for many years we’ve both experienced a lot of growth.

I call that experiential growth that hopefully has shaped us and shaped our clients experience and we’ve learned a lot, we failed a bunch and I know I’ll speak for myself. I’m really excited to share with advisors what we’ve put together because we are literally going to rethink this live with our community. I’m excited. What’s your motivation for doing this? Yeah, I’m super excited as well. I think at the end of the day advisors as a whole, we serve our clients and wanna do what’s right and best for them and rethinking what it means to be an advisor is rethinking things from the advisor’s perspective. And what I wanna be is a voice for advisors where we can help them improve everything it means to be an advisor, to improve their processes, everything, we’ll get into that but by improving their life and the way they do things they get to improve the lives of their clients.

So there’s just that much more impact. We just want, we wanna give, that’s what we wanna do. That’s true, that’s true. I know for myself, I’ve been a bit on my pulpit talking about how we can change the whole planet one by one, I tend to be very strong on the vision side. A lot of the things that we’ve thought about and envisioned years ago are now actually coming true because we had the willingness to take the leap, both of us, not knowing whether it was gonna work out at least on the FinTech side or building our own practices. We’ve been very lucky, very blessed to have some great outcomes and surround ourselves with really strong people, but it is true.

It’s time for us to give back. We don’t have to wait till we’re our boomer ages. We can do it now and we can hopefully help grow with you and of course, learn from our community. This whole program, as Derek and I have kind of taken the time to really put it together for you as financial advisors is to not only rethink the specific industry challenges, but also rethink how we can all grow and do and be more. Whether it’s thinking about our technology stack or thinking about what we should be doing around staffing or how we’re gonna deliver advice or what really needs to be integrated.

How do we do with compensation? You have brought up so many things, Derek, over the years that we’ve known each other that really we’ve gotten into debates, full on debates. We said, gosh, we should have recorded that. And I think that’s really what we’re gonna do. What else do you wanna make sure we touch on in the early stages of this podcast? I think it comes back to challenging the status quo, to challenging the mindset of, hey, this is just how it is. You and I have talked about that a lot and I think both of our paths as we’ll explore here show that we may have initially come into the industry just we drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak and did what we were supposed to do.

And then all of a sudden we’re like, wait a minute, there’s gotta be a better way. Then we rethought things, we challenged them. So I think advisors need to know that like, we’re gonna have some pretty honest, transparent conversations around everything that it means to be an advisor today so they can get the truth, so to speak, the straight answers that maybe we would have liked to have a little earlier on in our journey. And this actually does not happen to be just a two-way discussion between Derek and myself. This is an opportunity for those of you listening to get involved. We’re actually gonna create an outlet for you to submit questions that we can hopefully address.

We’re gonna keep this program to a real thematic approach. So each episode, we’re gonna tackle different topics. So the format for this is not gonna be like many podcasts that you’ve listened to or are part of. We’ve also been invited as guests on podcasts. We’ve had some great experiences. So just in addition to being consumers of this form of media, we also have some great ideas that we wanna rethink the podcast to. Why not just rethink everything, right? But one of the things that we’re gonna also do is we’re gonna create opportunities because both of us have a fantastic network of other CEOs and experts.

We’re gonna actually bring them on for real speed interviews. We call this the rethink tank where we’re gonna actually really get right to the core of it and then debate their answers without them present so that they can really, almost like a traditional radio interview, bring their ideas to the table. We can hopefully take them apart and understand what they’re thinking in their specific industry. I’m curious, Derek, you have some ideas of people that you’re excited to interview in this? Yeah, I think there’s gonna be a nice hit list of other FinTech folks, CEOs, people that are well respected. I’m not gonna hint at any names just yet, but I think we’ll be doing some outside of the box thinking here as well on just rethinking who we’re actually going to interview for something like this.

I think there can be some complimentary industries that we bring in to challenge things because that’s what it’s all about. It’s very easy to get stuck in the silo of financial services and then be done with it and not rethink it. And I think some of the best growth can happen when we bring people from outside industries in to help challenge what’s going on. Maybe it’s applicable, maybe it isn’t, but that’s what we’re here to do. We’ll talk about it. I’m just sure. Well, we do have lined up, as you said, the FinTech CEOs. We have several, we have consultants. We have names that you guys all know that you’ve wanted to hear from.

Maybe not a 40-minute interview, but a seven-minute speed interview. We know we can get a lot done. Our ADD won’t kick in too fast. We can keep focused on really what are they trying to say, but we’re also going to be giving you some actionable steps. One of the things that Derek and I have been continuously passionate about is when we go to these conferences, we’re participating in study groups. We have mentors and maybe even mentees at this point. We’re actually giving them opportunities to grow. And I know when I go to conference, Derek, I don’t know about yourself, but I look to try to get one or two things that are really actionable that I can come back to the office and say, okay, let me delegate this.

Let me execute this. Even though my notes might be 15 pages of nonsense, I can’t read. There’s one or two things that I got to take away. For this program, our goal is to also do the same thing. So for every episode, you can expect that we’re going to give you two to four actionable steps that you could implement in your practice exactly today. In other words, right now, because we know that value proposition is really missing in our industry, especially as we’ve all been separated because of the pandemic and the distancing. Yeah, I love it, Adam. I think that’s so important. I’m a big fan of concept and theory and idea.

I think we all need that to buy into something, but at the end of the day, show me tactics. Show me something I can run away with right now and implement to make my day, my business, that much better. And it doesn’t have to be earth-shaking, but a lot of little things add up to some pretty amazing changes. Yeah, I’m stoked. We’re going to come up with a lot of really great things that you and I are currently using. We’re going to learn from others and just really drive the whole industry forward this way. Well, I think a lot of people are probably, if they don’t know us already and if we do know us, hello, it’s good to not hear your voice, you’re hearing our voice.

But for those of you that are just meeting us for the first time, it’s probably important for us to find out what we’re made up of. So, can Derek, tell us your story? How did you get to this place we are right now? Understanding you were an advisor first and tell us that journey, how you got into the business. Yeah, so my background, actually, my bachelor’s degree is in archeology and anthropology. So I studied dead people. Not clear. For the life insurance business. Yeah, it sure is, or at least a part of it. So I was going to be Indiana Jones and that job ended up being taken and I really enjoyed working with people.

I actually was, my first job out of college was working as a counselor at an at-risk treatment center. And I really wanted to combine those two passions and I got into this industry and now it’s been 15 plus years. I’ve been an active advisor and as part of that journey, that’s a long story which we don’t get into today, but I saw a need as far as just really trying to build an advisory practice in the 21st century. That’s what really pushed me and motivated me, inspired me to create Connector, which is my fintech company that I’m currently running now. So that’s the short and long of it, I guess.

And Adam, I’d be keen to learn a little bit more about your story. How did you get in? What’s the journey been and how did AssetMap get put into all of it? Well, maybe that really speaks something. So I went to, if we’re gonna go all the way back to undergrad, I did environmental planning and design as an undergrad, but I did a business. I did two majors because I obviously, I can’t make up my mind about anything and I did a minor. You’re a smart guy, though. You’re a smart guy. Sometimes, it depends. Maybe I’m book smart or one of the, what’s the other thing that you could be?

You look smart. Street smart. Oh, thank you. That’s great for a podcast. That’s a wonderful trait. I love your glasses. You look good for a podcasting. You got a face for podcasting. That’s it. You really do. That’ll be the new moniker. Thanks, buddy. But I’m not sure I’m gonna grow a mustache like you. So I think you’ve done a great job for those watching and following Derek and his unbelievable social presence here. Yeah, I also did, I believe it. I did a minor in satellite imagery sensing and understanding how the planet was shaped based upon satellite imagery. That’s fascinating. That’s what I did. Got a job for the USDA Forest Service out of college and it took the first job I can get because they hired me the day after I graduated and I have to answer to my parents as to what was I gonna do?

I was like, I got a job. I didn’t know what I was gonna do, but I realized I really love people like you and I was behind three computer screens working for the federal government. Realized that wasn’t my path. I’m entrepreneurial. So I went to a job fair like everybody does and what did I do? I went to a job fair and there were some really great companies I knew and I really liked these people that were financial planning people or something like that and I got hooked up with them and I think I wound up working at the company because I just liked the people and then when I barely passed the exams to get in, not the math ones.

I did okay at the math ones, but it turns out I wasn’t necessarily ideal for being a life insurance agent, which I later found out instead of being a financial planner, I was a life insurance agent. We’re gonna totally unpack that later for one of our episodes, by the way. I have to tell you, I had many different preconceived notions about what being an agent was 23 years ago, believe it or not. Yeah, it makes me sound a lot older than I feel. But you’re only 42, so. And clearly how old I look, but. Right, exactly, at least we’re keeping to our theme of looks on a podcast.

I think the short of it is I learned and found financial planning as an outlet for me to actually win at the life insurance game and I realized I came to understand that the life insurance profession was a fantastic way to help you sell the problem and help you profile and do fact-finding because you really need to understand a family and their real inner workings before you can actually get to a place of where does this fit or is this appropriate? And along the way, I got into financial planning and as a result, one of my buddies and I got together and we started investment management together.

And so I did the planning and insurance and needed the investments and we joined another firm and kind of the rest is history. We grew that firm significantly. It still exists today. It’s about 25 people and AssetMap was something I created from my old mapping days. I just needed to draw out what was going on in people’s lives. So AssetMap kind of went viral in 2012. I showed it to somebody in the best practice sharing. I said, I’m doing this. They said, let me do it too. So AssetMap has now taken over my life like many ways the way Connector has been so influential in your life.

It’s allowed me to travel and start my second career as a CEO for the last five years. See the other side of being an advisor, right? Cause we don’t usually get that insight. No, we don’t. That’s a really interesting story. I’m sure we’re gonna get more nuggets of that journey as we go through all of these podcasts. But I think you’re right with what’s fun and interesting as being on the FinTech CEO side. Now we are serving other advisors as well as being one. And there’s some interesting insights that we gained from that. So hopefully we can unpack some of that as we’re going through all the different episodes and things that were challenging.

That’s really cool though, that you were at the forest service. That was your first deal. I actually applied. That was the first place I applied for a job right out of college as well. Well, since I’m older than you, I probably blocked your employment. I heard that my father’s other son from another mother was applying. I was really back. I’m gonna use this theme now forever just so you know. Well, it’s good. In all reality, I actually do have a brother from another mother. I’m living it every day. I have too. That is super random. Let’s find out who their father is. I like that.

That’s awesome. It’s true. Well, I think that I’m really curious because one of the things that in being authentic, which is really not just a nice cool buzzword you see on Google these days, but we, if you haven’t gotten to know us or starting to get to know us at least and have not hit the pause button or moved on, thank you. Congratulations. You’ve won. What you’ve won is actually the opportunity to spend more intimate time with us because I think for us to be in a position, just like when we’re advising clients, I found that sometimes one of the most revealing and connecting ways is for us to also share our own personal experiences, not just the good ones, right?

Not the ones that worked out, but also when we had individual challenges, right? We’ve gone through personal challenges that required financial advice or guidance or legal or tax advice. We’ve all gone through ups and downs in investing and sometimes we’ve lost people. We’ve had to make tough decisions. And I think, I’m curious, Derek, are there memories that you have or kind of big milestones that you experienced where you saw either major growth shifts or changes or questioning being in the business in the first place that you can recall or share with us? Oh, definitely. There’s so many there. One was making that transition from being, because like you, I started basically, I called myself a financial professional, but I was a life insurance agent.

I’m not saying that’s bad, but that’s what I was. And making the mental shift. I mean, day one, I was always a planner at heart. That’s how I walked. And just like you worked with my clients, but making that actual business decision to go more of a planning oriented comprehensive nature was a massive shift for my practice and growth. Quite honestly, that my income and my lifestyle. And then also there were some bad ones. We’ll have to talk about this at some point, but one where I ended up partnering with an advisor that it didn’t work out. Cost me six figures. I almost went bankrupt and put some pretty tough pressures on my family.

So been through a lot of really interesting ups and downs as you put it as an advisor, but I think a lot of us do. And it’s just not talked about. Yeah, that’s so true. I mean, for me, you can’t be in this business long enough and not go through, I think making a lot of people happy. And then of course, finding out that the one person, one client, they weren’t happy and it tears you up, right? Because you try so hard to deliver. We’ve had, when you have as many people as we’ve had in our firm, you have turnover, right? You have, you’re dealing with that we’ve had different situations where staff members made bad decisions and we had to answer for it.

We had to step up and learn what that was like. There are plenty of situations, I think all this in financial advice, regardless of how long you’ve been in the business, the challenges we’re gonna deal with. I can’t say that we’ve dealt with all of them. We’ve dealt with a bunch. And I know that we’re gonna share elements of that for both of us, because it’s gonna come out. We’re taking off, if you will, the wig. Not, I don’t know about you, but I don’t wear a wig. But my analogy is that we’re gonna try as best we can to be as revealing as we’re capable of for this program.

Because we know that for most of you in the field, one of the bigger challenges, I think that’s missing. And I also admit this, I’m curious your opinion on this, Derek. What we think is really missing is mentorship. Oh my gosh. What I’ve been searching for, and I’ve had been blessed enough to have some really amazing mentors, but I don’t know that everybody has that same outcome. Right, do they? I don’t think so. I think people are screaming for it. I know that day one, I was looking for one, and I just couldn’t find one. And believe me, I tried. Thought I found one that didn’t work out.

And I don’t think I actually got a true mentor until I was about eight, nine years into the business. But absolutely, we talk about moments that helped shift our business. And that was one of them, was having an awesome mentor. So if this podcast can be in a way, like almost like a miniature mentor, I don’t know if that’s even a good term. Mini-mentor. But I think it’s crucial. Advisors want direction. They want help, they want support. They love the work that they do, but they need guidance. And they don’t need just like, hey, here’s this product, go sell it guidance. They need comprehensive guidance on how to build an amazing practice for themselves.

Yeah, it’s true. And I think if we can be so bold as to offer our opportunity to mentor you, but we also want to be mentored. We know we’re gonna learn a lot during this process. We’re gonna learn from you because you’re gonna submit. We’re gonna create an opportunity for the community to actually connect and keep these conversations going beyond this podcast. So for those of you that like to get involved and like to contribute, we invite you to be part of that. We’re gonna start that, we’re gonna use LinkedIn. So if you wanna reach out to us on LinkedIn, you can certainly do that.

We’ll make sure that the links to us are in this podcast text. And of course, you can just certainly search us and we’ll be happy to start conversations with you and our community as we build it together, right? Because the really interesting thing, Derek, is that the future of our business, financial advisory as a profession is really going to be driven by how you and I and the rest of our audience actually act. What we do is what we build is really what the next generation is gonna say, hey, look at the financial advice profession. It’s built upon the individuals that make things happen. I know that’s why we’re trying to be such catalysts for change, but we can’t do it alone.

So we hope that you’re part of this. And that’s really one of the bigger, we’re gonna expose some of the challenges in our industry. We hope to, and we’re also celebrate the areas where we can lift others. Yeah, I love it. We’re all in the same team. There’s more than enough business for all of us. So why not help each other push the industry forward and do that by questioning things and looking for the real answers and so forth. I think that’s how we all win. And have a lot of fun doing it along the way, right? We’re gonna, you’re gonna get some pretty ridiculous banter back and forth from two brothers from another mother here, sometimes known as Butch and Sundance.

So yeah, it’s gonna be a ton of fun. We just, the more that we can have a community here and your input and feedback, the better for all of us. It’s true, you know what’s funny? Someone called us Butch and Sundance once. What was that all about? Do you remember that? I think it was a LinkedIn post. I don’t know, but you and I were bantering back and forth about something and then someone dropped a picture of Butch and Sundance and the rest is history. Butch and Sundance, right? No, it’s funny. It’s disruptive, right? Like we’re challenging, we’re questioning, we’re kind of goofy. I’ve got an awesome mustache, you don’t.

So it just works, right? It just works. It’s true. I guess we have to get cowboy hats. We were thinking actually of naming this podcast Butch and Sundance or something to that degree. You never know what’s gonna pop up with us. We might actually go back to it. We’d love feedback from you guys. Tell us why you want. For a moment of seriousness, here’s some calls to action. I said to you early on, and we talked about this Derek and I before, our goal is to help lift you. And that means in order to rethink things, we need to rethink what we’re all personally doing, right?

That doesn’t mean, oh, look, the other guy’s gotta rethink it. We’re gonna listen to these schnucks talk about it for a while. It also means you could choose to be involved, right? And so one of the questions that we were really forcing ourselves to ask is what do you wanna build in your practice? What are you gonna be part of, right? When you think about the future, not just today, what are you doing? What are you building? You are an entrepreneurial professional. Unlike most others, you have an opportunity to create the lifestyle, maybe the compensation, what you tend to work with, who you work with.

And I think this is a fantastic question. I’m asking you specifically on this podcast, what do you wanna build? What would it be part of? I think it’s an excellent question. I would back it up with saying like, think about that question with no restrictions, no constraints. If there was a perfect situation, pull away all your mental constraints, financial constraints, what does it look like? What are you trying to build? Because that’s what’s so important. Because at the end of the day, it’s actually probably possible. It is. Well, we all know it’s not possible if you can’t envision it. It’s not gonna happen again. You can’t write it.

Now I know you’ve been a big vision boarder or you’ve been writing down. 100%. You are. What is that process like? Oh man, and I even joke about this with some advisors. It can feel a little hokey if you’ve never done it. And it was for me because I was not a vision board guy originally. I come from a very conservative family. We don’t talk about our feelings. And it was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, to be perfectly honest. And has been a game changer for both my business and my family. And having a tangible board that I can say like, man, that’s exactly what I’m shooting for in life.

It’s just, it’s amazing. Well, what are these tangible things that help us understand it? Paint a picture for us. It’s not just like, oh, I wanna retire or I wanna have a happy life. Those are very vague. How much money do I want specifically? I have a number of mine and I have a very specific date and when I want to have that money, buy. I know what type of house I want. I know what type of cars I want, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The things that I wanna do, the experiences in life that I wanna have. Like one of them is setting a Guinness World Record for traveling to all seven continents in the shortest amount of time.

And these are all things on my vision board that I look at multiple times a day just to remind me to say, what am I doing all this work for? Because as a lot of advisors know, sometimes in the trenches, things can be really tough. Things can be hard and we forget why we’re doing what we’re doing. Maybe you had that commission reversal. Maybe you haven’t had a new client come in the doors for a while. It gets tough. It really does. And Adam and I have both been there. So having that vision board has been a game changer for me. I think we can even talk about that in one of the episodes, we can do a nice deep dive into what that means and really challenging the foundational components of building a practice today, which I think this is one of them.

Yeah, that’s a great point. Now I’ve never done vision boards. I kind of kept it in my brain. I would make public statements about what I was gonna achieve in the next 10 years. Public statements being that all of a sudden, if I didn’t pull it off and I had to like eat crow, that’s kind of the things that I’ve done, which is my aspirations tended not to be around dollars. They tend to be around impact and time. Can I have time back? 30 no matter what? Yes. 100%. I’ve been doing it for 10 years now. No one messes with that time unless it’s a major fire and I let them know.

There are certain things that I’ve been really keen on. It’s not been easy. I’ve learned a lot from practice managers. I didn’t execute it very well all the time, but there are certain things that I’ve been really, maybe it’s speaking at event. Like I wanna speak on that stage in the next 10 years. I’ll make that announcement. So you’re gonna learn some of these techniques and granted, this is not just a, this is not a self-help program. This is a community, let’s get better at doing stuff program and making a difference. I know that sounds like pretty vague, I know for some people, you’ll understand what I mean.

We are going to hit on topics that are really, I think we’ll call timely. A lot of advisors have been asking us, what is the ideal tech stack? They’ve been asking us, well, how do I deal with compensation when I’m sharing with another advisor? How do I deal with succession planning? I’m bringing a junior in. How do I structure that? I’m thinking about working with another broker dealer. What are the questions I should be asking? We are gonna ask that stuff, the stuff that is taboo and doesn’t really get put out there. We’re asking it, sorry, that’s we’re gonna do it because Derek and I are committed to getting through to the real truth and so that you guys can all make better decisions about going forward and what that path is gonna look like because we want you to get there faster and sooner and it’ll happen because hopefully we’ll help you with that clarity and that’s the mentorship that we’re hoping to provide to you.

With that, I recognize we gotta kind of wrap this up. So Derek, are you prepared to commit to this? 100%, Adam, I think this is gonna be fantastic. I think you and I have actually been doing this on a one-on-one basis. I mean, I don’t know about you but I have conversations with hundreds of advisors a year. So I think we’re already doing this but to enable to help that much more, we have to do this, we have to commit 100%. So if you’re in, man, I’m in with you. I’m in, let’s do it, awesome. So for those of you who’s joining us, we hope to see you the next time.

You subscribe to this podcast right now, don’t forget. Do it now, if you could do it now, just do it now. Subscribe, check out some of the links we’re gonna put in our text components of these podcasts. Connect with us on LinkedIn or follow us and reach out and tell us the topics you want us to address. There’s gonna be some racy stuff in there. Let us know so that we can actually prioritize it. With that, Derek, thank you so much for being here and being my partner in this. I’m excited to do this with you. Likewise, brother, I appreciate it. I think we’re gonna have a ton of fun here.

Let’s make this industry that much better. All right, brother, talk to you soon. Cheers. Thank you for listening to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of AssetMap or Connector. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.