The AI-Augmented Advisor with Jonathan Michael

Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. I keep reading articles about artificial intelligence, AI, I hear it’s the new, new thing. But rarely do I learn much from the articles I read. Lots of noise about how it will rock our world, that it will be a bigger advance than the internet, that it’s going to be, it’s our future, it’s taking over the world. So for today’s show, we’ll have an opportunity to talk to an expert, a practitioner, a builder, and a coach of AI. Someone who works with financial advisors and firms on how to take advantage of AI now. A lot of what I hear about AI is in the future. We’ll talk to our guest in a moment. And that would be Jonathan Michael, who is the CEO of Wealth I/O. We’ll talk to Jonathan about what he is learning and what he is doing and how he is helping advisors do more and better business. So, Jonathan, welcome to WealthTech on Deck.

Jonathan Michael: Thanks for having me, Jack. Appreciate it.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, I look forward to our conversation. So. So, Jonathan, let’s start with defining AI. What is it? What can AI do? What can’t it do? So describe it. I think there’s lots of noise on the topic. But why don’t you, we chatted recently, and you sort of explained it in very understandable terms. So share, please share with us.

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, there’s lots of definitions for AI. And I wouldn’t say that my definition is probably the the most accurate one or the you know, the best definition out there. But I think what I can do is define it in the context for advisors. And so I’ll start with a non technical definition for what AI is, and also a somewhat technical definition for what AI is. So the best way to think about AI is a set of tools that can augment your own capabilities for certain tasks. That’s the best way to think about it from a non technical sense. A somewhat technical sense to think about AI is to think of it in terms of autocomplete. So I’ll just pause there for a second. But if you look at Chat GPT, and if you interact with Chat GPT, and all these AI bots, it feels like the bot is thinking and analyzing and really understanding your prompts before it responds. But really what it is, is it’s just glorified autocomplete. It’s just predicting the next best word, it’s making its best guess. So that should give some comfort for advisors, when they worry about if AI is going to replace them or take away their jobs and their roles. It’s far from the truth. It is, a bit of it’s making its next best guess.

Jack Sharry: Yeah.

Jonathan Michael: So we don’t want AI could be making its next best guess when it comes to providing advice, right? So AI augments your own capabilities for narrow tasks. And really, you know, I would say that the current state of AI, we can expect for advisors to start functioning like super advisors, like having a bunch of superpowers, to kind of augment their own capabilities. So that’s how I would define it.

Jack Sharry: So describe what you do and how you do it. I’m gonna get into your background in a little bit, which I found fascinating when we chatted earlier. But before we do that, why don’t you explain a little bit further and a little deeper around what you do. I know it’s around marketing, it’s really around enabling the advisor to be more effective and busy bringing in net new assets.

Jonathan Michael: Yeah. So, we do a bunch of things here, and the way I’d like to define us as a company is that we are an AI marketing copilot for advisors. And it starts off by identifying quality leads and collecting a lot of rich data points about a prospect before you can begin the follow up process. A lot of problems today around lead generation is the fact that a lot of leads are really a bunch of names and email addresses with no context. So what we do is we have proprietary questionnaire software that we offer to advisors so they can use that software to generate rich data points through these fun, interactive digital experiences. So we call it financial lead magnets at the top of the funnel.

Jack Sharry: Explain that if you, if you would, Jonathan. When you say lead magnets, what, what does that mean? You’re obviously identifying people with money that need the help of the advisor. But if you’d go further as to what, what that means.

Jonathan Michael: Yeah. So, typically, in the financial services, in our, in our industry, specifically, a lead magnet would be subscription to a newsletter, or an ebook, or a white paper. The problem is that people don’t have time to really sculpt through pages and pages of words, right. So by offering a digital experience, like a financial lead magnet that can compute quickly what your retirement shortfall is going to look like in a fun and interactive manner, that presents clients with what we call a clear financial vision. And that’s what really the average client wants. Everyone wants a clear picture of their financial lives. And so these lead magnets present advisors with a pool of rich data points. And it presents clients with a clearer picture of where they want to go. And it also brands the advisor in the process, which is kind of the core problem we were trying to solve for. Right? Why should I work with this specific advisor? Is he just another advisor on another matching website? What sets this advisor apart from other advisors, right? So that’s what we try to do is we try to provide value on both sides of the spectrum, both on the advisor side and also on the client side.

Jack Sharry: So, give me an example. I know, as I understand it, you got started with this whole idea with your father in law, who’s an advisor. Why don’t you just tell that story, and then may be about how it applies, or how to apply it to your father in law’s case, because I gather, you actually found a bunch of money and things… it worked out rather well. So why don’t you describe that, if you would?

Jonathan Michael: Yeah. So we started in a non typical fashion. So my father in law and I, we would, you know, get on calls just for fun, you know, as family members, and you know, he would call my wife up every now and then. And so, you know, we ended up talking about business every now and then because of my background in marketing and sales. So I had a significant background in marketing, specifically. I grew my first business just through using Facebook ads. And he was coming from a different background, right, in financial services and wealth management. And what he was struggling with was offering a unique value proposition to clients to work with him, and also being able to recruit newer advisors, like he was really struggling to find newer advisors to join him. There weren’t enough marketing tools that he could use. And so we began talking, and I volunteered for fun, honestly, it was supposed to be a simple project. We were supposed to build a simple digital experience that would help clients calculate their retirement shortfall. And so it started off as a simple fun project, and then slowly evolved into a pilot test, beta test, we started testing the product, we had about 10, 20, 30 advisors or so, and then we saw a pretty significant success rate among those advisors over the next, over the following six to twelve months. So it was a prolonged pilot. But it really helped us to tweak out certain things, get really clear on the wording, get really clear on, you know, what the user interface design should look like. So it was an interesting experience working with him, it was a new experience for me delving into the world of wealthtech. And I found it extremely interesting. And, so the rest is, the rest is history.

Jack Sharry: So, talk a little bit more, if you would, a little more detail in terms of what was the content? What does the content look like? What is it that your… what’s your offer? How is it then made available? And then also, what are the results? Because I understand the results are rather remarkable.

Jonathan Michael: Yes. So at the top of the funnel, we have a tool called the financial intelligence number that helps a client you know, quickly realize what the retirement shortfall is. But then the next step is around, around what we call advice driven marketing. And what it does is it sets up the advisor for their very first appointment. So it saves them time on the discovery process, saves them time on, you know, presentation software, and creating DVD slides and whatnot. And so, it’s really important for clients when they jump on their first call, to really understand how this advisor can add value in their life, right? So it removes the advisor from the selling process, and really kind of catapults them into the advice process. So our tech, in the second layer, we have another questionnaire software called FiN-Path. And what that does is it categorizes financial alerts in three different categories: what are you doing well, what are some checkpoints, and what are some high priority alerts? And we’ve sandwiched, we have sandwiched video marketing in the middle of that. So think about augmented referrals, think about advisors who can use that questionnaire as a sort of lead magnet. Now, when prospects go to the questionnaire, they know who they’re giving this data to. It’s really important, right? So by sandwiching video marketing and the questionnaire software too, we enable advisors to communicate a unique value proposition why the prospect should even consider working with them. And also, it enables the advisors to send prospects to a specific call to action, like, say, an appointment booking. So typically, that’s done through Calendly, or some of the appointment booking software, but you’ve got to provide prospects with a lot of value and give them sufficient reason for them to show up on the Zoom appointment. And then finally, when they show up on the Zoom appointment, the presentation is already done for you. The advice is already there for you, you just go in and edit, make some changes, and now you’re ready to begin the call. And so you start the call, you go through the call, you download the report, you send it off to them, and then the AI copilot will also create customized emails around those unique data points. So it kind of streamlines your follow up process. And then finally, to continue on that cycle of marketing. We help advisors create really rich newsletters and blogs and white papers and social media content. So long form content, specifically with built in compliance. So that’s kind of how the cycle works. Starts with identifying leads through a sharp digital experience, takes them on to advice driven marketing through a little bit more of a long form questionnaire where all these alerts are categorized and it automatically presents, presents all those alerts in a slide, and then helps advisors to continue that cycle through really accurate and rich newsletter content and blog content and whatnot. So it’s kind of a combination of, of tech and content.

Jack Sharry: So what kind of results did the, the young advisor… I’m assuming it’s young…?

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, he’s really young. He’s in his like 20s, early 20s. And it really catapulted his revenue. And we’ve been using him for all our product development. And we’ve seen the success rates, like I look at his dashboard, I have unique access to his dashboard, and I can see all the clients that he’s generating using FiN-Path, specifically.

Jack Sharry: And what do the numbers look like? What, what is the outcome in terms of the dollar and cent benefit for him and his clients?

Jonathan Michael: Right. So the last time I spoke to him, he mentioned that, Jonathan, I’m experiencing like an 85% conversion rate on clients. So that means people who’ve gone through the assessment, eight out of ten of them convert into paying clients.

Jack Sharry: Wow. Any kind of asset results that you can share?

Jonathan Michael: Asset results is in the upper single digits for sure.

Jack Sharry: As in single digit millions?

Jonathan Michael: In the millions, for sure, yes. Five to ten million in new assets under management. Because his father would also refer him new clients. And he would take those clients through FiN-Path as well. And I think the the fact that FiN-Path generates all these unique alerts, and makes it so simple and clear, makes it easy for a new client to take action and start working with an advisor, that dramatically improved his selling rate, his been conversion rate, because it removed the selling process from it. And it just presented people with a clear path, which is what they really want.

Jack Sharry: So Jonathan, fill me in a little bit, in concrete terms, if you would. How do you identify who to talk to? And then once you identify who to talk to, or who to reach out to, what do you say to them? And then how does it go from being what’s, I’m hearing, warm lead in here… How does that warm lead turn into someone that ultimately becomes a client and as you’ve indicated, is willing to, to turn over millions of dollars in assets to be managed? So take me through that.

Jonathan Michael: Yes.

Jack Sharry: If I’m a, I’m an advisor, what, what does the process look like to me?

Jonathan Michael: Yes. So once you use the financial intelligence number, and a simple retirement shortfall is computed, people have an idea of how much money they’re going to need when they retire. What the tech does is it kind of continues on the process by directing clients to what we call FiN-Path. So that is the call to action as well, on the final screen of the FiN. And what FiN-Path is, as the name suggests, it’s really designing a path towards the prospect’s financial intelligence number, right. And as I mentioned before, what clients really want is a clear financial vision. And when they spend the next five or ten minutes on FiN-Path, it’s going to quickly categorize their current financial life into three different types of alerts. And so the way it helps the advisor is that coming from a very high level scenario where you compute a retirement shortfall, you quickly translate them into FiN-Path. And also give them extra reason to submit all that data. Because why should a client who has no idea who you are spend the next ten minutes of their life submitting all this information to you? And that’s where video messages come into play, and your own firms, your firm’s branding, and being able to see what you do, what you are, who you are, what you do, what your firm does, that’s what FiN-Path really enables the prospect to do and the advisor as well. So it’s a two pronged process there, you get the FiN, you go on FiN-Path. And then finally, follow up is where the rubber meets the road. And so being able to craft personalized emails with AI can really help increase an investor’s confidence with an advisor.

Jack Sharry: So, essentially what you’re doing is you’re getting a good sense of the client’s situation, you’re winning trust along the way, a good part of that sounds like it’s the video, and I’m assuming that’s the person that’s doing the outreach. And so they have a better sense of it. And then you’ve also got ongoing content that’s geared to them, I’m assuming. And so over time, you’re speaking to their concerns about issues. They’re not sure what to deal with, but probably makes sense to them. Am I onto this thing?

Jonathan Michael: Yes, correct. The alerts that FiN-Path computes gives enough reason for a client to start working with the advisor.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Michael: So we don’t do the planning process, though. I just want to be clear about that. Right. So we do the grunt work on the top of the funnel to make an advisor interesting enough for the client to start working with them. So once the client starts working with them, that’s when we pass the baton on to the financial planning softwares of the world. So it’s that top layer which is the most difficult part to solve for is like, why should a new client work with this advisor? It’s because this advisor deeply understands who you are, where you’re coming from, your needs, wants, and desires through tech, and then they get on the call, and they’re able to offer you value as a human advisor. So it’s this combination of high tech and high touch, which is, which is what we’re really trying to shoot for.

Jack Sharry: Yeah. That’s one of the things we talk about here on WealthTech on Deck quite a bit, the, the confluence of digital and human advice. And essentially, what you’re doing is you’re using the data, you’re using the AI processes, to basically customize an experience for the investor, customize the way the advisor approaches them, customize in terms of… in line with what that investor has questions about or concerns or issues or what have you. And that AI is enabling it along the way. Am I… is this all part of what…?

Jonathan Michael: Yeah. So, a better way to summarize it is to say that we have these rich digital experiences on the top layer, that, combined, collect about 60 to 70 different data points. Once you have these rich data points, you’re able to use AI to kind of craft what that follow up process should look like by generating rich emails and, you know, hyper personalized content and whatnot. So the important key that’s been missing in marktech, in marketing automation, is that rich, top of the funnel data points. And so that’s what we try to get first. Once we get that, then you can streamline the follow up process a little bit more better for that specific prospect.

Jack Sharry: Gotcha. So the big question, and I know a little bit of this story, because you’ve not been in the US all that long, you kind of tripped into this. So talk a little bit about your background, how did you get into this whole AI thing as you find yourself in a new world, in a new country?

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, I’m pretty fresh off the boat, as one would say. But I, it’s been about two years now since I moved to the US. March of 2022 is when I moved to America. And it was a unique experience like, it was I mean, it’s amazing. I love being here. And it’s been an awesome journey so far. I must admit that when I was flying into the US, I assumed that things are going to be pretty smooth. And I’m going to fly in, I’m going to have this amazing enterprise deal. And I’m going to coast off into the sunset. And you know…

Jack Sharry: The American dream.

Jonathan Michael: My American dream, right? But needless to say, that’s not what happened. In fact, what happened was a very steep learning curve, adjusting to a new culture, adjusting to a new industry, new terminologies. But then the advent of AI really put me at an advantage because I’d been studying it for the last three years, three/four years. And so I feel like I was uniquely positioned to be able to take advantage of this new frontier. At the same time, there were lots of learning curves. And I learned a lot about myself as well coming in, I thought things were going to be simpler and easier. So I feel like I’ve grown a lot though, and this is the greatest country in the world. I can fully, confidently say that without a doubt in my mind. And, people who complain about living in America, you should do a little world tour, and, before you have your conclusion. So that’s what I would say.

Jack Sharry: So, I’m a big fan of Chip Roame, who runs the Tiburon CEO Summits. And he also does a good bit of research. He’s been talking a lot lately about the digitization of marketing. It’s just, essentialy what you’re, you’re talking about. And he’s really talking about what the opportunity is. But as he points out, if you don’t execute, you don’t, you’re not going to succeed. So how do you go from capturing this data, which I’m fascinated by how you’re able to do it so effectively, and I guess that, to our audience, if you’d like to check it out, I’m sure Jonathan will share a demo of what that looks like. But the whole idea is you, you are able to capture information, capture data, use AI to pull it together, and then come up with a customized presentation around what, how they might benefit from, from what you’ve ,you’ve discovered. All consistent with what Chip talks about and his team. But the question is, how do you get folks to execute? It’s one thing to have a process, it’s like a diet, you know. I know exactly what I should or shouldn’t eat. I know how much, actually, I know the whole nine yards, I know all of it, but then doing it is different. So talk a little bit about how you help advisors embrace this and then make it happen, make it real.

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, that’s a difficult problem. And we’re still learning about different things that we can do to help streamline that and you know, help advisors really take full advantage of these data rich products. One of the things that we’ve tried to do of late is try to go direct to the client. And so that’s being able to keep things a little bit more simpler. And you know, launch Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, and use these lead magnets as a call to action. And the reason why we decided to go down that route is because, not to take a dig at any specific matching websites. Like, I think they’re great. I think some of them offer real value for larger RIAs, I think. But the problem is that the advisor really doesn’t have control over the kind of lead quality that they generate, right? It feels like they’re kind of vulnerable to, you know, work with whatever leads are thrown their way. But how can we put the advisor back in control? And so what we’ve tried to do is tried to use the lead magnets as tools that can be used on a Facebook ad or a LinkedIn ad, and see what the results look like. Now, we’re still at the early stages of that, we don’t have all the results. And we’re still looking into that to see what that might do for advisors. But we think that’s a really interesting way to scale, you know, helping advisors go direct to clients. And the other approach is an augmented referral marketing strategy. Most advisors I talk to, when I asked them, do you have a referral…? Like, what’s your strategy? Like most of them, you know, as you know, a lot of advisors work through referral markets, and that’s okay. But all of them, almost all of them also want to grow at the same time. They’re like, yeah, I want to grow. But I kind of grow through referrals. And that’s great. And, you know, I’m on the camp of let’s work with that. Let’s work with that. But let’s also work with a more scalable approach. So let’s work with ads. But let’s see how we can augment your referral marketing through a tech enabled approach. That makes them think a little bit more. That makes them think, what? A tech enabled approach, what do you mean by that? I just send emails to clients asking them to refer me to more people. I’m like, no, you can augment your referral process, like what if the 100 clients you have can become 200? Right? How about we think, a little small, and then also think a little big at the same time? So that’s kind of how I like to present it.

Jack Sharry: Any results you can report on how that’s going?

Jonathan Michael: Well, it’s still in closed beta. So I don’t have phenomenal, over the top results about, especially with the ads dynamic, because we’re still trying to, you know, weed out the details there. But hopefully soon, very soon.

Jack Sharry: But it sounds like what you do is you come up with an idea, you’re trying to solve a problem, and then you test and see what works and what doesn’t. Correct?

Jonathan Michael: Correct. And, yes, as a startup, that is extremely important that we get to test quickly. And move fast.

Jack Sharry: One of the things that, it dawns on me, we’ve had a couple of guests, Reese Harper, from Elements on who has a similar but different kind of approach, and also a client of ours, Playbook, where they used Facebook ads as lead gen. So…

Jonathan Michael: Yeah.

Jack Sharry: I’ll connect you guys. You guys should know each other. But what’s interesting is you’re taking advantage of AI, taking advantage of all the data that’s out there, looking at the problem and analyzing the problem, the challenge, and then starting to put together ways that you can be effective in being more customized.

Jonathan Michael: Yes.

Jack Sharry: In terms of how you approach a prospect or how you might approach a client in terms of referral generation. Correct?

Jonathan Michael: Correct. Like our goal is to streamline marketing workflows for the RIA. Right. So repetitive tasks, like let’s look at some of the things that RIAs do repetitively, right? Like writing newsletters, like deep, rich, newsletter content, email content, ebooks, white papers, right? Now, different audiences may subscribe to different types of content, maybe a simple digital experience is not enough for your most sophisticated investor, right? They may need to pour over several pages of content, for example, like the, you know, we’re probably going to see lowered interest rates this year, right? How can that, how might that affect the way an investor thinks about their portfolio, so for an advisor to be able to craft all that content, while pulling in live data feeds, while being compliant, while being uniquely personalized around their firm’s investment thesis, that is what we’re trying to nail down. It’s not like a generic like, to advisors listening in, the word GPT, rhe first word stands for generic, it is trained to be a generic model, not a narrow, specific model. So the best way to get output from AI models is to really fine tune it around your firm’s unique investment philosophy, thesis, compliance requirements. That’s what we’re doing. And we’re gonna see some really interesting releases from our company in the next few weeks. We want to make that process of converting advisors into sophisticated thought leaders more and more feasible, because that’s what they should be doing. They should be able to save tons of time writing rich content, being able to post consistently, and then spend majority of their time understanding needs, wants, and desires. Because the advisor of the future is if you think that your unique value proposition is portfolio building, I don’t think so. Because if you look at robos, what robos did was, 10-15 years ago, with the advent of robos, it made advisors who pulled together baskets of ETFs kind of made them a little irrelevant, right? And they slowly went out of business. To translate that into today’s world with the, with the new wave of AI. What are some things that you’re doing repetitively? And how can you be more creative in your advisor approach, in the way you provide advice. And then try to you know, scale that.

Jack Sharry: Yeah.

Jonathan Michael: So that’s what, from a marketing standpoint, we’re trying to do everything we can to make advisors super effective.

Jack Sharry: What I find fascinating about this… term, I take some, it’s overused and misused is hyper personalization. But essentially what you’re talking about, what AI will bring, is it will identify clients. And I’m assuming you can also identify the type of clients that an advisor wants to pursue, but you’re pursuing clients that are maybe more inclined to work with that particular advisor. You’re also really understanding that advisor’s approach, philosophy, way of operating, thinking, and so forth. And you’re trying to find a match. Is that fair to say?

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, that is absolutely spot on. And I use the word hyper personalization too, I must admit, but it is hyper personalization around your firm’s unique compliance requirements, new marketing rules, your firm’s investment philosophy pieces, your ideal clientele, it’s around that. And so as long as we can create content that’s going to be around that and sounds a little bit more like you…

Jack Sharry: Yep.

Jonathan Michael: Now we’re getting closer towards real productivity.

Jack Sharry: And another critical piece is that you’re then, it’s targeted to the interest of that particular client. So it’s a match of what the advisor, how they think and how they operate and then matched up against a client or prospective client, in terms of what their interests are, it’s really a match made. And then it sort of is a very customized kind of experience. Yes,

Jonathan Michael: Yes, correct. It’s a two pronged approach. So one is like you can create firm level hyper personalized content that you can put out on social media, blogs, white papers, whatever. And then the other approach is using the prospect data that our lead magnets are generating to create follow up email content. So there are two ways for us to add personalization, hyper personalization. One is a client approach, and other is more of a cold market approach.

Jack Sharry: So as we look to wrap up, where are we headed? Where is AI leading us? What’s your, what’s your view on the future of AI in marketing and beyond?

Jonathan Michael: I think the future is, the way we think about it as a company is reducing learning adoption. I’ll explain what that means by that like, making it extremely simple and easy for advisors to engage with technology. Because in the past, historically, there’s been a lot of friction with using tech, a lot of learning curves, tutorials, knowledge bases, videos. Advisors shouldn’t be trying to watch tutorials, and figuring out complex integrations and knowledge bases and whatnot. It’s too cumbersome. Conversational AI and the ability to just simply engage with a piece of tech through simple natural language prompts, like you’re texting someone, and get the AI on the backend to go and actually do that, like send an email campaign this week to my 401k clients about X, Y, and Z. Bow, done. Compiles everything together, creates it for a compliance review, and it’s right there, right. Being able to do things like that is where I think it’s heading towards, you can engage with a single user interface, our conversational AI agent, and that conversational AI agent will go and talk to all the other AI agents in your marketing vertical. So you have an AI agent for email marketing, an AI agent for social media, an AI agent as a compliance assistant. And they all work synchronously. That’s where I think it’s heading towards, a little bit more futuristic. But I think we’re like two or three years away from that. The other thing is to help advisors think about augmenting their own capabilities. That is the most simplest way to define what artificial intelligence is in the context of the advisor. You can truly augment your capabilities using tools today for writing, and for several other uses, especially compliance as well, being able to automate compliance, marketing reviews, all of that. So that’s kind of where I think it’s heading towards. And, yeah.

Jack Sharry: So I’m struck by, recalling back to your 85% conversion rate of the early 20s advisor that works with your father in law. That’s a remarkable number all by itself, but I get it. It’s basically you’re finding out people that have certain issues that particular advisor and his firm or her firm can, can work with, and it’s just a matter of leveraging technology software to just have a good match and a good solution that’s highly customizable.

Jonathan Michael: Yeah, I agree.

Jack Sharry: I think we got this. So any, any key takeaways you want to share with our audience as we look to close our session here today?

Jonathan Michael: Yes, the first key takeaway that I want to talk about is being able to use small or large language models. If the SEC imposes new regulation on AI, and if you are considering to scale your advice, and scale your ability to recommend and recommend new portfolios or just you know, being able to scale the advice of your firm using AI, AI based recommendations, I would really recommend looking at smaller models because it’s going to let you really control what the model is able to do. Smaller models helps you bake in compliance faster, helps you train the model on your own proprietary advice, that is going to be a huge advantage. So large scale RIAs, mid RIAs, midsize RIAs, are really poised for massive growth there. If you’re able to train your own model internally, as opposed to just using the GPT APIs, that’s gonna really set you apart. The second thing that I would like to say is to be able to augment your marketing workflows. And I say this selfishly in the interest of my own company, but I really think that if advisors are freed up to become thought leaders on social media, and being able to track quality leads using rich content, that is going to be a key for advisors heading into 2024. Is that, stop wasting time trying to attract new leads on social media, without having a clear content marketing strategy. And to have a content marketing strategy, you don’t have to hire a specific content copywriter, you can use rich AI tools around your firm’s personalization. And the final thing I want to say and the key takeaway is around compliance. No matter how great marketing technologies are, it’s really important to do better due diligence around compliance, specifically. The final output should reflect compliant content and output. And that is something that we’re working on. And that’s what I was, this is something that I would recommend firms to look in as well, is that when you’re trying to work with different AI tools and softwares, try to understand what the different compliance protocols that are being built into it, because it’s not good enough to just have hyper personalization, it’s really important to have compliant hyper personalization.

Jack Sharry: Cool, very cool. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, learned a lot. AI actually is no longer this, just a couple of initials and a lot of baloney. I get it. I get where it’s going. Much more work to be done, you’re, you’re in the in the forefront of this effort. So I appreciate the time and perspective. So our last question before we part, what do you do outside of work that people might find interesting or surprising? I know you’ve got a very interesting background. But tell us a little bit about what you do outside of work and what you do for fun, or you’re particularly passionate about.

Jonathan Michael: Okay, so, different people might interpret this differently. But what I really enjoy doing, there’s really a system around it. And I do this almost every other day for fun. It’s fun for me. So it might be fun for others, it might not be, but I really enjoy going for long runs. So I run at least a 5k every day. And I finish it off in the sauna with my Wall Street Journal app. So, and my phone heats up every single day. So every single day, it heats up and warns me that my phone is getting too hot. So that helps me relax. And it’s, it’s fun for me. So, yeah.

Jack Sharry: Terrific. That’s great.

Jonathan Michael: And no headphones, no headphones on the run. It’s just me and the road.

Jack Sharry: Okay, cool.

Jonathan Michael: And my running shoes. So that’s important to know.

Jack Sharry: Very cool. So, Jonathan, thank you. This has been a great conversation. I look forward to our next. For our audience, if you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again, Jonathan. It’s been a real pleasure.

Jonathan Michael: Thanks, Jack.