Ep 41: The News Hidden Behind the Headlines featuring Cindy Taylor Episode 41

Episode 41 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (28:28)

Episode 41 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

Cindy Taylor joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman on a frustration Holt names directly: that the top headlines across every outlet he follows are effectively identical, which suggests he is not seeing what actually matters. The conversation treats media as a business under revenue pressure rather than as a neutral pipe, and Holt offers a rough estimate that only a small fraction of genuinely newsworthy activity reaches the outlets advisors rely on. Taylor’s advice runs in two directions. She argues advisors need to educate themselves on developments they have dismissed on surface impressions, using her own initial dismissal of Web3 as the example, and she makes an unexpected case that wealth managers now need media training, because video calls and social platforms have turned communication skill into a client-facing competency rather than a marketing one.

What this episode covers

• Why headlines converge across outlets, and what that hides from a professional audience
• Treating media as a business under revenue pressure rather than a neutral source
• Dismissing developments on surface impressions, with Web3 as the worked example
• Communication and media training as a client-facing skill rather than a marketing one
• Automating records so that a staff departure does not take knowledge with it

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holt. 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, are advisors missing news that matters in lieu of what’s hot today? Adam, that’s a really interesting question. And I’m guilty of sometimes paying attention to what’s hot today because it’s an easy way to get some of your content to go viral.

But there is or are a lot of stories and a lot of things happening behind the scenes. I think of the movie, Wizard of Oz. You see one thing, but you’ve got this curtain thing going on, like what’s going on really behind the scenes. And I suspect there is, Adam. I mean, even you and I, we hear and see things based upon what we’re doing with our businesses and the conversations that we’re having with potential partners, that’s not public knowledge. And we see trends that maybe others aren’t seeing. So I think they are missing news in lieu of what’s actually just being promoted today because it’s the next hot thing.

What do you think? Well, this came from my own personal frustration because I’ve been following the news, very mindful of pay to play. I’m very mindful of public relations and our own efforts there of getting the story that we wanna tell in front of the audience that we want to hear it. And there’s no question that the media outlet has been and is a significant business. And as a business needs to create revenue and opportunity. And what I tend to get jaded about, Derek, is that many of the media outlets that I tend to be reliant upon are all telling the same story. It’s a top three headlines are the same in all different outlets.

And it seems to me like it’s somewhat curated and I’m not hearing what’s behind the scenes. I would agree with you. There’s a, shall we say pay to play? Yeah. Absolutely. I don’t know if that’s necessarily bad, but I suppose those with bigger budgets can push one thing versus another. But ultimately, if we’re trying to help the advisors and other folks in our profession grow, I think it’s important that we make them aware of like, hey, there are other things going on here that you really should be paying attention to. There are undercurrents that are very important that should be on your radar. Well, and actually I think we have a guest today that’s gonna talk about some of those and has a pretty cool perspective given their past.

Yeah. No, that’s very true. You know, we were trying to think about how do we filter or get beyond the filter before the filter, perhaps. That’s a lot of filters. Right. Get before the coffee filter, get all the grinds and everything of what’s happening in news as opposed to what makes actually the front page or at least might be my news feed, right? So introduce us to Cindy, because I think she’s been willing to tell us what’s really going on. Yeah, she has an interesting story. So this is Cindy Taylor. She is the founder of Digital Wealth News, but she’s been in the media space within our profession and industry for two million years, as she says.

Two million. I don’t know how she figured that one out. So she’s been doing media for a long time. She launched another company called FinTech News in 2016 that covered a whole spectrum of different FinTech, crypto, hedge funds, wealth tech, the list goes on. And she did so well, she actually sold that company. But then like any serial entrepreneur, she got bored and decided to do it again. So she now has Digital Wealth News that she has launched and is pushing out and really brings an interesting perspective to what she hears, what she sees, and you’ll hear about this in a second versus what we actually hear in the media, which is pretty cool.

So yeah, I think we should have a listen to what she has to say and then we’ll tell you what we think. Okay, let’s hear from Cindy. Cindy, thank you so much for joining us. What’s your unique perspective of what’s going on in the financial advice marketplace today? Well, it’s very interesting. Being in media, we get pitched constantly on new products, new offerings. And I think right now is just an incredibly exciting time in the wealth tech and wealth management space because there’s so much innovation occurring and there’s so many new products coming to market and they just keep getting better and better. I will say, we check, like I said, so many media pitches and some of them are like, what the heck, what is this thing?

And why did you just get $5 million for it? Because I can’t see where this is a viable product. So what I will say is that I think there’s a lot of chaff being brought forward as well. So it’s just an interesting time. It’s really interesting, but there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there creating really interesting products and providing solutions for wealth managers and financial advisors, broker dealers that they meet. I do read our competition. I consider Michael Kitschy’s competition and he does an annual directory of wealth tech firms and there’s over 200 right now. So it’s just phenomenal. Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s so overwhelming actually how many different companies are on that fintech map.

We just had this conversation with Craig Iskowitz of Ezra Group that participated in that fintech map and we commented that it’s been overwhelming and we’re actually lost again in the terms of how many different companies are on there, almost like it’s become a massive diner menu that you just can’t figure out what you’re looking at anymore. I’m curious, what’s the missing opportunity that advisors just don’t see coming or that’s really present from all the media work you’re doing behind the scenes? Well, I think there’s three things. Number one, like you said, if an advisor doesn’t have a tech stack that’s in place that’s cohesive and understandable and that’s where the value of consultants come in, ironically, where they can help you create just what that exact special stack is because you have to have a technology stack that makes sense.

If you’re not functioning with a cohesive stack, you’re behind the eight ball, you really are. We, from the get-go, as I mentioned before we started, with fintech news, we were covering the crypto space in 2016 and a funny story, after we sold to FMig, they kind of hated our crypto content and they actually asked us to do less. And so, quite a bit, but now, of course, everybody covers crypto because it’s become mainstream, it’s become institutionalized, et cetera. But that said, I still think there’s so much space for advisors to really get better informed on how they can assist their clients and get paid for it with their digital asset holdings.

And I think people still need to get their head around that they’ve been resistant. I know a lot of advisors are still resistant. I just think that’s dumb. Like, people are investing in it, don’t you wanna participate when it, don’t you wanna help guide them? So I think, you know, if you’re resistant to that, I think that’s just dumb. I’m gonna just say it, it’s just dumb. Done the same space. Thank you, thank you for that thumbs up. Web3, I was resistant to Web3 because I perceive it as, you know, these headsets. Well, Web3 is more than headsets. It’s non-fungible tokens. Those tokens can be used in all kinds of institutional investment products.

And again, people have to get, you know, educated on what this is. And so I guess the third thing, so those are, I’m off my soapbox about crypto, but thank you for letting me go on about that because I think it’s really important. I think too, is that, you know, because we’re doing Zoom interviews, because there’s so much social media, I think people just have to get really, really honed on their communication skills. And that might require some media training. Ironically, even if they’re a wealth manager, they might need some media training to just make sure that they’re presenting in the right way. So that’s what I think the opportunities are.

That’s great. Those are actually some good tips, things that I suspect most of them don’t think about. One ten general question to that though is, I agree, there’s all this talk about crypto, it’s going on, clients are investing in it, and there’s all this other digital stuff going on and marketing and et cetera. A lot of advisors, and this was myself included until I finally kind of broke out of it, but a lot of advisors tend to be a little bit more old school, right? You know, I would argue that our profession, our industry is a bit slower to evolve than others. So when you’re coming at it from an advisor, you’ve just maybe been around 20 years, 30 years, and they still have paper filing cabinets, they have the traditional brick and mortar office.

What’s one tip you could give them to say, okay, here’s how you get more into what’s going on in the digital world today, whether that’s crypto or marketing or something else. What’s one thing that they can do to help them get a little bit more comfortable? Okay, so last year we did an eight webinar series with Sarsen Funds, and that content is available on the Digital Wealth News site. It’s no longer CECO credited, but you can do an eight hour educational series on Digital Wealth News, which was sponsored by Sarsen, that will take you from A to Z in crypto. And you know, if you take that time, I know it’s hard to take that time.

Listen, it’s hard for me to take half an hour sometimes, but if advisors will just say, I’ve got to learn this, set aside a day, log on, look at that content, get marginally, you know, educated, and then go from there. Start by educating yourself so you can at least talk comfortably and knowledgeably. And that information is out there. So, I mean, you already kind of, you know, threw a good mic drop controversial moment out there. I’m wondering, is there anything else you want to add to that? Do you think, is there anything else that advisors need to hear? Controversy is welcome, obviously, you know, polite and respectful, but you know, is there anything else that just bugs you that you think advisors need to hear and think about to rethink?

Well, there’s, yeah, there’s a couple of things. And again, I don’t mean to be purposely putting in plugs for our clients, but you know, we’re in a recession. And the reason I don’t care, you know, you hear, maybe we’re in a recession, maybe it’s next year, we’re in a recession. And then the reason I say these things with conviction, I’m married to a guy who was in the financial markets for 40 years, he’s an original member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, held seat to the CBOT, CME, and we co-founded a hedge fund. So I do know a bit about markets myself personally, and I’m not afraid to be controversial about that.

People are going to have to lay people off because we know I’m seeing this with people in the wealth tech space where there’s layoffs going on. And I don’t mean to be Debbie Downer because I always think there’s opportunities in recessions. But I think this is an opportunity where advisors are just going to have to get more comfortable automating, automating certain processes, whether that’s the input process, document vaults, whatever, they’re just going to have to get past that file cabinet and get automated because they’re probably going to have to lay a few people off. So, you know, got to get comfortable with that. If you’re not, you’re screwed, I think.

Thank you for that. Well, we’ve talked about this a couple of times on different episodes, Adam. There’s this wave coming, things are changing, and you’re just reiterating that message, Cindy. So thank you. For sure, for sure. I will say too, there’s such a plethora of investment products. And so we talked about crypto. I get pitched a lot by investment platforms. So that it gives us sort of a front row view of what is going on in the marketplace. And there’s things you have to be careful of too. I got pitched yesterday on a new company that claims they’re a platform and they claim that they offer tax savings for people if they invest with them through their platform.

And then they keep those holdings until men are 70 or women are 75 and that there are tax advantages, et cetera. And I saw three layers of fees in that. I thought that’s ridiculous because what they’re investing in is S&P 500 ETF Vanguard. Those guys are already charging a fee. Then you’re asking a financial advisor who’s charging some fee structure to their clients to invest in that. And then they’re getting an investment fee for passively managing a damn ETF. Give me a break. So there’s three layers of fees. Think about this, right? And they’re pushing that out. And I’m thinking, I have done spreadsheets and I understand how fees feed into returns for clients.

So I just think that people have to be really cognizant of the types of investment products they’re putting out to their clients and aware of these fee structures that they don’t eat into the client’s returns. So that one bugged me. I went and ran to my husband and I said, is this as dumb as I think it is? There’s three layers of fees in here. So what, and again, what if the markets go down? I mean, now you’re down and you’re down three layers of fees when a client could buy a simple ETF themselves. So if you’re gonna have, as an advisor, you gotta have meaningful portfolios.

I’m telling, this is to me self-evident, but maybe it’s not. That was a lot there, Adam. I love her passion and I love she just pulls the gloves off and says some things that maybe some of us were thinking, but hearing. So brilliant. What are some takeaways from her thoughts there that now that you’ve had some time to think on that you’d like to share or comment on? You know, it’s funny, Derek, because when we did this interview, what I heard the third time I listened to it was, I had this vision in my head that the garbage person in our community probably knows more about the bigger trends that are happening in household utilization of let’s say products, than we have any insight into.

In other words, they see who’s buying mac and cheese basically, they know who’s buying big stuff because there’s boxes. You know what I’m saying? When you’re getting that much data across your screen, you start to see the trends. The reason why I think that is relevant here is because in media, the media outlets are getting pitched obviously by a whole bunch of, hey, put my media up front, put this story up front. Also, oh wait, news jack on all the big stuff that’s already popular because I want people to come to my site. So I think only like 2% of the real stuff that’s going on in the world is actually getting into the media outlets that we all rely upon.

And what she has the opportunity is she sees the bigger trend, right? She gets, there’s all this news and stuff going on that’s probably newsworthy around crypto, digital assets, web three, but I don’t think it’s popular. So it doesn’t necessarily get the attention of advisors. And I think that’s the missed opportunity. Unfortunately, media has become like an entertainment outlet. It’s, you know what I’m saying? I don’t know if it’s- That’s a good analogy. Well, to your other analogy, that’s a lot of analogies. Yeah, I got more of that. I got more. How often do you ask your garbage person what trends they see? You don’t.

You don’t. So I think you’re right. I bet there are a lot of underlying currents and she mentioned some. Yeah, I’m not saying that news is garbage. I’m just saying that here’s an unfiltered environment where she’s seeing a whole bunch of different things, promoted and not promoted and has to, of course, as an editor and a publisher, make a decision as to what does the audience actually wanna hear? I tend to think that so much of news is fake news because we’re subscribing to the channels that say the things that we believe in, right? Whether it’s political, religious, environmental, et cetera, right? We subscribe to these channels and then we consume more of it and we become more and more fervent about it.

The question is how do we, as advisors, become more aware of what’s really going on? And you asked me what I took away from this. Of course, we can’t help it being FinTech people saying, yes, the FinTech space is getting crowded. Everybody’s bringing their newest idea to the table. Startup capital required is really low and yet then you got VCs coming in behind it and putting huge evaluations behind these companies. They’re completely unvetted. So I think there’s a little bit of a freneticness that’s coming into the everybody can build an app and at enterprise grade security and roll it out and make millions of dollars.

I think that’s a joke and I think she picks that up really well. She totally does. You know, one thing that comes to mind is how can advisors sift through everything? I don’t know if we call it fake news, but it’s curated news for sure is follow more than one news source. Go to the leaders in the space and try to find ones that are almost are conflicting. Hey, listen to us. Yeah. We don’t think if you have us and then you have some others like Digital Wealth News, Kitsis, Craig Iskowitz blog and podcasts, you start adding all these in together because each of them are hearing all these underlying currents and they’re only able to promote and or comment on so much.

So if you start trying to get tidbits from all of them as an advisor, now you can hopefully see a little bit bigger picture of what’s actually going on versus just listening to one station or podcast or source all the time. I mean, I guess if you’re gonna listen to one podcast, it should be ours. That’s it, probably. Who has time for anything else? I mean, at this point. Yeah. But here’s the thing I think, Derek, right? And I’m thinking more about it as we’re talking about it, thinking live is that I believe the news is sharing with us what’s popular and promoting what’s popular.

So it’s self-fulfilling prophecy by talking to somebody behind the scenes and to talking to people in the field, you tend to get a different story from what’s being talked about in the main, we’ll call it mainstream. And I thought it was really interesting how much conversation there is going on at the consumer level around crypto still, but advisor outlets are really not talking about it. Why is it? Why is there such widespread ignorance about digital currencies? 0 with the VR metaverse concepts? And because nobody’s quite figured out how to distribute financial services experiences in that space. So it must be useless, but these are mega trends that are happening behind the scenes that are gonna affect our businesses.

And it’s funny how many people even look at virtual or remote advice as just screen sharing. No, that’s live streaming production quality TV. And people are not, are looking at, oh, I’m just got this zoom looking up my nose with the fan on the ceiling spinning around and the light is behind me and I’m not thinking about that experience. Looking at my nose. Why because I’m still working from home, right? Oh, it’s pandemic style. I’m like, no, dude, that is literally how people are experiencing you. Are you intentional about it or not? I think the advisors are just, but the media is not talking about that.

So it must not be popular. We actually interviewed someone just recently who’s gonna be a future guest on the podcast and they were talking about some of these things and how they see in the next five or 10 years what this virtual experience is actually gonna look like. So stay tuned for that. That’s a really interesting conversation with one of our friends across the pond. We’ll put it that way. Yeah, so what did you take from this? One thing that I liked, which was an undercurrent was she talked about honing your communication skills. I know, Adam, you’ve actually paid, I don’t know if it was for TV or radio or something, but you paid for a coach to help you get better.

And there’s a ton of value to that. I remember back when I first started as an advisor, we were taught how to communicate one-on-one belly to belly and how to communicate through our sales process, if you will, and felt super weird. But there was some coaching there, but now we have this digital medium that we’re doing this through. And I think it’s really important to hone those communication skills, whether you’re podcasting, posting, writing, video, whatever, you have to get really good at communicating your story. So that was one of the things I picked up on, which I thought was interesting. Also, and this is a current, you and I’ve been following for a while, we haven’t taken the recession angle on it.

And she is adamant that there is a recession. We could debate that one all day long. But I like her point about automating processes and getting away from the filing paper cabinet. We’ve been talking about that for a while because at some point, whether it’s because a staff member leaves, or you do have to unfortunately lay somebody off, how are you protecting your practice against these outside forces that can and will happen at some point? So I thought that was really, really important as well. Those are my main big takeaways. Did you have anything else that you wanted to share? Other, maybe some more analogies?

Like, listen, you know me, I’m the analogy king, self-proclaimed. There’s plenty to talk about with respect to this recession. When a person who’s in the media and seeing a lot of the news and you can only print snippets because our attention span is just squashed, and you gotta come up with new content every five seconds that’s gotta be attractive and is gonna get your readership to engage, I don’t know that a lot of people wanna hear that there’s a recession. And yet there’s probably a lot of supporting newsworthy stuff out there that’s saying people are laying off individuals. This whole entrance of AI and people making it real with chat GPT and all these other things that are coming out from Google, they’re really starting to show how they’re gonna be disruptive and more efficient than humans at doing tasks.

So I think there’s gonna be a significant fallout from this idea of we’re in a recession or really retooling of roles to do more, even get more efficient, more productive. And I don’t know how that’s gonna affect advisors down at the field level, but it’s certainly something we should be aware of. I mean, we think about trends in investments all the time, right? What is the consumer desiring so I can invest in that product or technology in my own portfolio? We should be paying attention to these trends behind the scenes. And I think she makes some really interesting comments around integrating tech stacks and the digital stuff.

If I’m an advisor listening right now, what are things I should do? I think get better at your communication skills digitally that you just talked about, have a great tech stack, prepare for these bad events that can happen, be more efficient, be more effective, listen for the undercurrents and get educated. Those are things you can do as an advisor today. Don’t rest on your laurels. I’ve talked about that many times. Yeah, that’s the thing, right? This is this complacency risk that Aaron Klein talked about a year ago and learn, right? So I think we all need to go back and learn and really understand at least the digital assets.

And of course, what is the future of technology and this VR stuff? We have a friend, Panos, who literally travels around the world doing literally presentations in front of financial advisors with a headset gear and what he’s seeing behind him and showing them a new vision of how you could deliver advice. It’s crazy, but it’s possible, it’s possible. So I think that’s great. Thank you so much, Cindy, for your frank comments on what’s going on behind the scenes. We really appreciate what you’re doing at Digital Wealth News and FinTech News. Really great stuff. Derek, it’s time for our community question. We haven’t had one in quite a while because we’ve been so inundated about our own agenda and great stuff.

So this one came in here from Sebastian in Seattle. You ready for this? Do it. All right, so he writes, so many of us with boots on the ground advising clients are delivering the day-to-day advice and have been providing financial planning for years. I’m seeing most firms and executives just start talking about advice delivery before the products that they manufacture. Do they finally get it? Won’t this totally disrupt their business model? I mean, I think they mean leading with advice. Love to hear from an executive who’s in the know. Thanks, Seb. So thanks, Sebastian, for writing that. We always appreciate that. He does that through LinkedIn.

This is interesting, Derek, because we’ve been scouring for some executives that we feel are on top of their market. Or what do you have a gut response to this question? I think they are, but it’s still early days. And while we have a really interesting guest coming up that will be able to speak to this from the highest levels of a very large, well-known company in the US here. We’ll leave that one as a teaser for later. But I think Seb in general, yes, it’s finally happening. In fact, I just got contacted by another very large financial services company that wants to know more about how all of this works.

So it is on their agenda. They are thinking about it. But remember, these are large institutions that are very old and they move slowly. Good, bad, or indifferent, it’s just the way it is. But I am encouraged to hear that the leaders of these companies are promoting a different tact now with this battleship, if you will, that takes forever to turn. It’s happening. It’s never gonna happen as fast as us with boots on the ground want it to. But from what we’re hearing so far and what you’re gonna hear in an upcoming episode, yes. That’s great. And we do know when the big companies decide to get ahold of it, all of a sudden, just like the media, this thing becomes very real.

So I know for a lot of the RAA community and pushing to financial planning first, once the big institutions start, we’ll call it process or institutionalizing advice first before product, it’s a game changer, right? So I think we’re starting to see that wave hit if it’s not happened already, actually. So look forward to that conversation. With that, Derek, let’s wrap us up today. Thank you, of course, Cindy, for everything you’re doing. Thank you, my friend Derek. Any actions that our listeners need to take? Well, I don’t wanna sound like a broken record here, Adam, but if you haven’t given us a review yet, I think that we would really appreciate one, but it’s gotta be five or five and a half stars.

Can you get a five and a half stars now? Is that a new thing? Yeah, we’re that special, Adam. But Apple did that just for us. No, really, but please, you know, give us any questions or thoughts. We’d love feedback. We’d love for you to follow us on LinkedIn, both personally and the Rethink page. Leave us a review. Yeah, be part of this community. We’re all helping each other drive forward. And we do that by actually talking to each other. So let us know what’s on your mind so Adam and I can debate it. Thanks, buddy. I look forward to talking to you at the next podcast.

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.