Wealth as a Service: A New Era in Financial Strategy with Doug Fritz

Jack Sharry: Hello everyone. Thanks for joining us on this week’s Wealth Tech on Deck podcast. As uh, I think you all know, I’m a born and bred trend watcher. Over the course of my career, I’ve tried to keep a keen eye on where the industry is headed. My friends at EY recently came out with a white paper where they coined the term I’ve been talking about for a while now. They call it Wealth as a Service. In fact, uh, we will have one of the authors of that paper, Justin Singer, on our podcast soon to talk about all this. So whether it’s the confluence of digital and human advice, or the convergence of workplace and wealth, these are all expressions you’ve heard me say. We’re having conversation with people who are leading the way to the future of financial advice. I’ve been reading, writing, talking about the dynamics of why and how and where we’re headed as we see to help consumers, advisors, and firms achieve better financial outcomes. And of course, they pay special attention to the leaders who are at the forefront of the rapid change. We’re all living through. Today we’re fortunate to have one of those leaders, Doug Fritz, join our podcast conversation. Doug is the founder and executive chairman of F two Strategy. He has worked across the spectrum of firms and advisors around tech solutions for many years. And today we’re gonna get an update from Doug on what he is seeing and hearing and doing. So Doug, welcome back to Wealth Tech on Deck. It’s good to have you here. It’s great to be back. Terrific. So, Doug, for those who may not be familiar with your work, please uh, provide us with an update on what you and your firm have been up to. I know there have been a, there’s been a lot of change and growth all positive, so please fill us in.

Doug Fritz: Yeah, thanks. I think, uh, probably the biggest thing right now is just the business expansion. It’s not surprised to anybody listening to the podcast that technology in our industry is more and more important. It’s more critical. It’s more of a competitive lever for firms that are growing, they try not to fall behind. It’s definitely a. A more critical part of the business valuation from private equity coming into this space. So we’ve been very, very busy, increasingly busy. F Two’s, been acquiring other firms and bringing them into to our offering really with the intention of having. The technology strategy and implementation work we’ve always done in the RIA and the bank trust space. We’re just tucking in other capabilities, trying to be more useful to our clients, give them more things where we can be helpful marketing systems, implementation specific technology implementations, and adding more to that space. And, uh, it’s been fun, I would say. Uh. As a born and bred technology guy in our industry, it’s like every dog has this day. It’s really fun to be in this space where technology in our, in our industry is getting more and more attention. It’s like the. You know, like the cool kid in school for not being cool, just, you know, somehow nerdy glasses and nerdy haircuts are cool. Like, I’ll take that.

Jack Sharry: I get it. I get it. I get it. Yeah. Your day has come and, and deservedly so you’ve been at this for a while and you know what the heck you’re doing and from what I’m gathering, as we’ve talked, you’re growing and expanding and bringing on additional capabilities ’cause . Things get more and more complex and more and more challenging as firms seek to grow. So, so as I was looking at your website, something caught my eye and I’ve, I’ve always known you as a, a technology guy as you indicated, and, uh, maybe it’s, uh, was there before, but I, I noticed you incorporate marketing as you position F two on your website. So. We frequently have guests on our podcast from the marketing side of things, but it’s rare to have that combination of marketing and tech together. So fill us in on the vital role, I assume by what I read, the vital role of marketing alongside the, uh, critical importance of technology.

Doug Fritz: Yeah, it’s uh, I think it is super critical. I think even the concept of organic growth in our industry right now, it is similar to technology is getting its day. Yes. I mean, people are realizing, hey, we’re really not good at growing this business. Why is that? What do we need to do? Who is good at it? And then as they look for answers, this is what we found. This is why we acquired a marketing agency. There are two versions of marketing. There is the marketing that is the standalone division of your firm. Often works sort of in and around the sales, uh, group. If there’s a sales group and creates content. For the world is publishing that content to the world. And that’s fine. That’s the majority of what marketing does it. It publishes content out to the world, but when it, what it doesn’t do and what the other version of marketing is and is what we’re trying to, to build for our clients is it doesn’t integrate into the advisory desktop. And so advisor being able to take action on that, know when their specific clients have logged into the website. Checked out content when they’ve shared or liked content, social and social media, some of the people that have come from that social content back to the website listed as a prospect, get that into the CRM and have that advisor have given them an opportunity to reach out or double down on some of that interest with more content that we call MarTech. And that that’s really F two calls that that’s MarTech, right, that’s the, the confluence of marketing. Skills and technology as MarTech. I think that’s for real effective growth and to make it a better investment than the traditional, which is still very powerful, but it’s harder to track its efficacy, efficacy and impact. MarTech brings it real and brings it home for advisors, and that’s, we knew that our clients needed it. We knew the industry unit, and so we’ve been . Actively working on expanding out of that two for just over a year.

Jack Sharry: So I’m gonna take a step back here. When you were on, on our podcast, it was a while ago, I can’t remember exactly, a year or two ago you talked about this.  So I’m gonna ask you to, if you could go back to the way back machine, the memory bank, and uh, talk about how you work with firms to help them kind of get their strategy straight around technology. A lot of firms figure they should, if they, well, they don’t like to throw money at technology, but if they’re gonna. they’re not always clear. And I think one of the things you shared last time we talked on the pod, you were talking about how important it is to really get straight, get clear on what it is they’re trying to achieve and why. And that sounds like it’s, that’s the prelude, the precursor toward then doing what, what you just described as MarTech. so I’m kind of going back a little bit so we can go forward. So if you recall that conversation, I’m sure this. Part sounded like it was part and parcel. What do you do? Talk about that.

Doug Fritz: It sounds very familiar, Jack. It sounds something I would absolutely say yes on a podcast with you,  No. So I like everyone that’s, I would hope everyone that’s listening to this is growing up in our industry and there are certain themes in our industry that just makes sense. Inherently. It’s like drinking the water. You know what it tastes like in an investing asset allocation and product selection for a client portfolios. You’re very clear when you build a portfolio for a client. Are you, are you sort amending a. Every individual sector, fund, strategy, stock, or bond you’re putting in a client portfolio has an intended purpose, right? It is designed specifically to correlate to other assets in that portfolio to affect an outcome. Yep. You’re reducing a risk, generating cash, generating alpha, whatever. It’s, it’s got an intended purpose. If you take that same philosophy and you bring it to how you build and construct your portfolio of technology in your firm, very few people have great portfolios, top performing portfolios because they don’t know. They don’t, and they never stop to think. Sure. Like, why is my C, how much effort and energy should put into my CRM? What do I want out of that? Why is it here? And then can I measure? The effectiveness of my investment and my ongoing spend. I’m just using CRM because most people have one, or my planning tool, my portfolio construction tool, or my automated AI note taking and task management next best action tool. What is it doing for me as an outcome? When we take that sort of portfolio construction mindset to technology, a lot of things get easier. It, it takes some time. It’s harder. You realize like, oh my gosh, I’m . I’m like over concentrated in Tesla and Nvidia and it felt really good for a while, but boy that sucks right now. Yep, yep. That’s how people feel about the technology. I’ve invested so much money in this reporting solution. Why is it not delivering? What I kind of theoretically thought but didn’t really Sure concretely write down its value so anybody can do this. You know, a brand new team breaking away with $50 million to invest. Can think about the technology that way. As could a $50 billion wealth management organization’s acquired other businesses. It’s not specific to a type of firm. It’s what do I expect outta my technology? What am I paying for and should I spend more or should I spend less? Should I, should I change my vendors to get the right outcome? Or can I really live with what I’ve got and not incur? That sort of, if I sell my stock and have a big capital gain, yeah, maybe the portfolio’s better, but I’m not gonna sell that stock because I’ve got a huge capital gain coming similar to investments our clients demand and technology, in some cases, actually most cases we just optimize what you got so that that concept of strategically thinking through what tools you need and how much it should cost and what the outcomes should be for your business is really the starting point for a lot of what F two does. When we engage on strategy and road mapping of technology. Mm-hmm . We also built the team that helps you go through the implementation process. We’re not like the OCIO of many of our firms. We do that level of just road mapping and, and strategy, but we’re really built to be like an advisor would be, we’re gonna help you build the portfolio of technology and then we’re gonna be with you forever as your partner and execution and implementation of that when you need us. That’s the core of who activist.

Jack Sharry: So does that mean you do the build? Uh, if that’s what’s required or if they prefer to do it themselves? The advice both. How? Talk about that, that alchemy, if you will.

Doug Fritz: Yeah. If you don’t have the tech team or the marketing team to get it done, we have the people that you need to get it done. We. Priced and organized the, what we call a product. It’s and it’s software Guy Jack, you can appreciate this, but like really delivering advice at scale for F two and we’re the largest pure play wealth tech consulting firm. We have to be scalable. We’ve built that scalable mechanism to do it really well repeatedly. But if you’re large and you’ve got a team of 20 technology people in your own CTO, you might not need us in that capacity. Sure. We just come in where you need us and everybody has. Either periods of time where they need extra bandwidth and expertise, or even just arms and legs to go onboard that sixth or seventh advisory firm they bought. We do a lot of that work as well. Mm-hmm . Or they need to get through a conversion. They need to think through contract, implement, configure, deploy, train. And then they need us to go away, and we do that as well.

Jack Sharry: Tell me a little bit about what that might look like. What, you don’t have to be obviously specific with firms, but the sorts of things that you work and what are some of the issues that you’re seeing that are common? I would imagine there’s ah, yeah. A fair amount of commonality. So fill in on sort of the, what you’re seeing and what you do to help these folks, uh, be more efficient and effective to become organic growth machines, which I’m sure is, uh, more in the dream state at this point, but nonetheless, they’re on the right path. So what, what does that look like?

Doug Fritz: So on the tech side, it’s usually starts with a roadmap. The most common thing we do, which not everybody does this, but I don’t know like 40% of our clients are this. We have what’s called outsource, CTO. We actually trademark the term Octo, OCTO, and it’s a. Evergreen technology strategy, implementation and marketing strategy, implementation, relationship with F two where we are running your technology and your strategy, your vendor, configurations, implementation, training, everything for you over a, basically an infinite amount of time. It’s roughly commensurate with hiring a top end CTO. You get the entire F two team. Yep. In a cbo, right As you get the entire F two team fractionally. So it’s less expensive and you get the top quality talent and, uh, that, that octo. Call it product, but it’s the Octo relationship. It’s the one that, that firms that are suddenly at two or 5 billion and find themselves really struggling with technology, like they’re having a hard time keeping clients and advisors happy because they’re basically architected for the $500 million shop that they were.  It’s a really good solution for those firms, or it’s the firms that are looking for, you know, going out after a capital partner that need to have the infrastructure. Ready to take on capital. If I wanna start buying new firms, I’ve gotta have the scalability to be a 20, 30, $50 billion firm. And they don’t, A lot of these firms go after capital and they have the infrastructure of a billion dollar firm, and lo and behold, there’s a lot of struggle and pain and lost opportunity by not having it. Mm-hmm . On the marketing side, it, it really starts with what’s your messaging, your brand, getting consistent sim similar type profile. Uh, an aggregated firm that’s coming together from five different brands and different backgrounds and experiences and client sort of . Expectations really needs a unifying message about who are we, not just the brand and the identity, but the value proposition and what is our messaging to the world? How do we take five or 25 disparate brands and experiences and just ways of working with us as a firm and consolidate that down into something we can talk about. What is unique about us? Who are we as a firm now that we’re 25 firms coming together under one That’s really hard and that’s really, really hard, and we have the right. We really brought in the right marketing talent in our industry to help our clients through that and then create the content, engage in social media channels, and then integrate that into their technology stack so that it is this MarTech solution.

Jack Sharry: Interesting. How long have you been doing that? ’cause I, I think last time we talked that, I don’t recall us talking about that. Does that, is that recent?

Doug Fritz: Yep. It’s about a year now. About a year in on really deploying marketing into our, our clients. And we’re, I would say we’re just getting going. Yeah. Honestly, it’s one of the. I mentioned it’s fun to be at F two right now in this, in this space to have the conversation with someone who thinks about us as the, oh, you’re the techno, you’re like that really good high-end technology strategy firm that we’ve heard about and you know, like, we know your clients and we’ve heard about your stuff. And then we have our marketing team on the phone and saying, actually we also do this in conjunction with the technology architecture. And it’s sort of, uh, it’s rewarding to see the industry respond as well as it has to that type of an approach.

Jack Sharry: Interesting, interesting. And it’s early days, you’re just getting that underway. Marketing doesn’t happen on day one. It happens over time. Uh, I mean, it starts on day one, but it doesn’t. And how’s that playing out? It seems super smart, but again, what are you finding as you’re putting it into practice?

Doug Fritz: Yeah. Honestly, Jack, I get my outta joint because sometimes they’ll say. Yeah, thanks for the technology stuff, but can we talk more about the marketing stuff? Actually that’s more important than the, so you’re like, wait a second… I thought I was the cool one on the call, but apparently…

Jack Sharry: I get it.

Doug Fritz: Back to being the nerd again. You know, back to being the tech guy no one cares about. Yeah, you wanna talk about marketing, which honestly it’s great ’cause it’s fun to be helpful to great brands and great people that we work with in new ways and go deeper. Those relationships are everything to us and they, they mean the world to us. So it’s just great to go deeper.

Jack Sharry: Well also, again, you, it’s a no from experience. ’cause we try to do the same with what we do at Life Field, but it really is about not only having a great product or great concept or great idea or solution, like call what you will, uh, ecosystem, whatever. But then you gotta play it out and make it real. You know, it’s one thing to have cool stuff, but if you don’t use it or if you don’t understand it, you don’t know how to position it. So talk about that. I’m, I’m sure there’s been some learning as you’ve, you’ve connected those dots. It’s, to me it sounds more thoroughly than I’ve heard elsewhere.

Doug Fritz: It’s hard because what we’re trying to do, and it’s funny, actually’s been around nine, can be going on our ninth year now, and, and, uh, but in a, in, in a, on a daily basis, and Jack, you probably feel like this way as well, like it always feels like you’re a startup and you’re entrepreneurial and you’re trying to.  To lead and to get ahead of problems in the industry. You always feel like you’re designing things from scratch, and I think for us, what we’ve set out to do, and I would never say . I’m done. ’cause we’re always trying to get better and better and better at it. We make changes all. It must be exhausting to work at F two because we’re always optimizing and changing to reflect what is needed and stand in front of where things are going.  But that concept that we’re gonna be your strategy partner and we’re gonna be your long-term implementation execution partner, those are usually different things in people’s minds. And so the, one of the challenges for us is, uh, I never want my clients to think about us. As strong in one and weak in the other. We wanna be known as the great strategy partner. We’ve got real reasons and a background to be, and a reputation to be great as a strategy partner, but we also wanna be the implementation and execution partner along the way. And that that getting people to, to realize you can actually be both. And it’s actually really helpful to have your strategy team along the journey. And I think about some of the consulting firms that I had to work with when I was at Wells or First Republic, they were great at strategy. The cost structure or just like the access to the professionals, I would never have them do implementation because mm-hmm . They were strategic, they weren’t implementers. And, and likewise they had great implementation consulting firms that I would never trust with my strategy because how could you possibly have strategic guidance and have like strategic ability? And so we, we’ve designed that too to really, to try to break that mold. And then having the expert through the project means, okay, we give you bad advice.  Give you the wrong strategy. I want F two to be there when that sucker doesn’t play out. I would wanna be accountable as part of the solution to fix it, not be on my third project with a different, with a different clients. And I don’t care that you were successful or not. I’m off. You know, I want us to be tied to the outcome. And I think our clients get that. We have, we have clients that have been in relationships with us for, for over five years. Like, I want to be part of . Success. Success and I want our team to be invested in their success.

Jack Sharry: I would think it’s no. I think I know if you’re there throughout start to finish and, and ongoing your strategy, inevitably you’re gonna a twist or turn here or there. You’re gonna learn some things both good and bad. You know, just, it’s what happens. You, you make a bet on, you make a decision one way and it’s didn’t quite work out or the whatever happened, inevitably things happen. It would seem that you could adjust and, and refine and get, get it on the straight and narrow. So . I’m sure that’s the case. Fill me in

Doug Fritz: It is. I think that no one’s perfect. Sure everyone makes mistakes. Like we’ll lead with this. Like no one should ever take away from this podcast. That F two has all the answer and is always correct, but we have a methodology behind how we come up with the right answer. And I think that defensible, just going back to that investment approach about how. Asset allocation theory leads to better results over a long period of time. We have the same methodology there too, which is take as much of the insights from what peers have done. And we have our own closed research group, about 170 of the top CTOs and cos in the country for seven years. We have a very deep database and body of knowledge around what great looks like, as well as all the train wrecks and car accidents and stub toes that people have had along that journey. And we use that, that body of knowledge when we go into client strategy work. To at least lay down here are known. Successful ways that firms that look like you have gone through and been successful or ways to avoid problems other people have run into. And so we at least carve out, I don’t know what percentage, I hope it’s like at least three quarters of the risk around success on a project by being really thoughtful about collecting information and data and putting our clients on paths we know are successful and can be successful. It, it also means. I’ve been criticized in the past by this, we don’t put brand new untested first ever technology vendors in any of our clients because I can’t tell if it’s they’re full of bologna or they’re actually good. Mm-hmm . Because we don’t have any benchmark on whether they were successful or not. So our clients tend to get not cutting edge, not bleeding edge, but like the most immediate working technology that we can prove to. Has worked in someplace else, so at least we know it’s worked someplace else that it could work with you. And we try to use that as the tool for getting good decisions and getting good execution done. And we think that theoretically that’s a, a solid model.

Jack Sharry: So where do you see things going and how do you innovate if you’re get and respect the. Not wanting to be cutting edge or bleeding edge, but so how do you innovate? How do you move forward? Where do you see, where do you see F two and the industry going?  ’cause as you and I have talked about worlds going toward multi account and that’s more on the cutting edge, bleeding edge side, I would say. So fill me in. What, what are your thoughts there? Yeah,

Doug Fritz: I think, you know, for F two and for our clients, innovation means. Getting it done. It isn’t about theoretically picking a vendor that’s innovative, it’s actually getting it done and getting it into production. And I think our, because we hire exclusively F two hires, industry experts, people that actually lived and breathed and grown up in this industry. I think something like the average tenure in the industry of F two is like 15 years on average, has worked in this industry. And so, uh. For us innovation is, is getting people through to completion and getting it done, getting real value outta the spend they’ve made in technology.  There are areas like AI where there are really great evidential examples of where AI has started to deliver meaningful time saves to advisors, and we love that, right? We’re not trying to change. Who an advisor is. We’re not trying to change their value proposition, but ai, especially around meeting prep and call recording and CRM note taking and some of the automated client content that can come out of that as a phenomenal time, save and value add back to advisor that don’t need to change. Who they are, what they do, or change, really how they engage with clients. It just saves them the time. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . It makes them better advisors without having to spend time reading, documenting, compiling, et cetera. It’s phenomenal. We have evidence that that’s worked and we’ve been using that more and more with our clients based on some of that, some of the other stuff like large language models, and there’s some evidence that some of that is working, but it’s really hard to point to those and say, there’s a really good ROI on those types of projects that’s not gonna get you in trouble with the regulators. And so we, we’ve typically steered away from some of that.

Jack Sharry: So as we look to wrap up, what haven’t I asked you that I should be asking you?

Doug Fritz: I think, uh, you know, this kind of wealth as a service concept, I think that’s probably worthy of a little bit of a, the concept. I think that’s sort of our, definitely you in, in the social media and I think a few others have been talking about this, you know, wealth as a service. I think, uh. Really, if you haven’t read the the report for me and why it’s a good report, I think, and there’s a couple of areas there I think that are really telling to me when I read that report, the perspective of automation and consolidation into a streamlined set of workflows. I think that’s great. I think most of our clients have been on that journey or moved that journey for a while. There’s a couple of not errors in it, but I think things that just aren’t really mentioned, I think that are worth mentioning. One in the US. When we look at how technology is selected, there have been these all-in-one solutions that have been on the market. A lot of ’em coming from Europe or from Canada that have not been successful in the United States. And, and the reasoning for them not being successful is that, and I think this is a very US thing, being a US citizen, born and bred and proud of it. Like we. Especially in the advisor world, love the the best. We want the best, I want the best CRM and I want the best planning tool and I want the best performance portfolio, construction and, and uh, and reporting tool. And if one vendor magically had all the best, I would go with them. But if one vendor comes and says, well, I got like a b plus in portfolio construction, I got a C minus on CRM and I’m an a plus on reporting, most advisors we work with would pass just because. They’re not willing to give up on all a’s for the sake of integration and efficiency. And I think that could change over time. But boy, that’s like really baked into the culture of advisors and thinking about like, wanting the best tools for their business and their, and their clients. There is definitely a case to be made as every European firm that comes here and every Canadian firm comes here, tries to make, they’re like, well, yeah, but for, for the b plus, you know, you get like a lot better value for what you’re spending and you got a lot better outcome because it’s all integrated. I just thought Cino has been successful and um, so I’ve just cautioned the world that that’s moved in that direction. Like no one can be a plus at everything. And, and the other one is like, even with the wealth as a service, having more time to spend with clients is great. I think that’s wonderful, having more time to spend with clients to do things that you aren’t currently doing, like financial planning or less estate planning. I think that every time we’ve looked at a advisor efficiency. Paybacks on automation or like paperless or workflow implementation tools that take time away from advisors. We never math. When we look at this data afterwards, we never see changes in advisor behavior. We can see them deepening relationships and spending a little bit more time with our clients, but they don’t typically do other things. Again, they’re not good at selling and sort of organically growing their book. They won’t become great salespeople because we saved them two or four hours a week. Yes, they won’t. It’s like not who they are. That’s always been my observation. But they won’t become planners. They won’t, because that’s not why they got into the business. They didn’t go to college and take their CFA level three, three times. Be a planner. And so we have be realistic about the behavioral changes that we can expect from automation integration.

Jack Sharry: Let me throw out another thing. So this wealth as a service caught my attention. ’cause at the very same time as I was doing some work as SEI, light field, I was creating a deck for a particular client and I dubbed it. Again said this before, wealth as a service came out as a, as a paper really stood. I saw it. I had, uh, SEI Life Field as a service. ’cause one of the things that we’re heading toward is to have much more of a service offering than just a product or tech or what have you. And the way I characterize it, I’d love to get your thoughts on this as a concept. There’s the product and solution. You know, the way the various packaging of S-M-A-U-M-A advisory, all that kind of stuff, all the different products that firms offer. There’s the tech and back office. I kind of put them together. ’cause when I say back office, it’s kind of front to back, but it’s really all the mm-hmm. Processes. A lot of the work that you do. I know, but the one that I added and I don’t see in the, in the paper, and I don’t see this as, as an objection, a EY is not in that business. But the other piece is distribution. In your case we, you were talking earlier about marketing, sales, distribution and also again, I’m, I think at a B2B level just ’cause as a firm we serve large firms who in turn serve advisors. That’s just our orientation. But it seems to me, and I see you saw what Investa did with Fidelity and BlackRock and State Street Global and Frank from Templeton, and there’s many more of those deals in the offing. I’m, I know and we’ll see more of, but I’m curious your thoughts on that. Sort of missing piece, at least what I didn’t see in the wealth as a service paper and just that impact ’cause I think, frankly, ultimately, at the end of the day, back to your earlier point about organic growth, all this stuff is being done to grow organically to get a better return. So fulfill me on your thoughts on that.

Doug Fritz: It’s a strange and fascinating new world, you know, where you’ve gotta invest that infidelity and BlackRock in the working together in a way and it makes it far more difficult to be A-A-C-E-O or a president of a wealth management firm because what you historically would’ve thought of in terms of invest that is either that is my SMA platform and I’m thinking about them as a provider of investment ip, or they’re a tech platform and they’re both my portfolio construction, my reporting platform. Now they’re different. Now they’re sort of the, the power by. My Fidelity, it could be my power by UMA platform at Fidelity. SEI, isano. Good. Another good example of where most people probably think about SEI as a trust accounting platform, our industry and don’t even know that they have this whole middle office outsourcing capability. Like you don’t actually just have to think about. Technology, you can think about how much does it cost to actually service your business and do, are you really getting any alpha by having a bunch of people looking at performance data at the end of the month and reconciling and producing reports, is that really adding value to your business? What if you could get someone else to do that at a, at least as high of a quality as your own team for a third of the cost? That’s suddenly, that’s not tech play. That’s a whole outsourcing play, right? And the, the lines that are bleeding in our industry between traditional sources of investment ip, I’m thinking about like optimization, direct indexing, OCIO, the variables underneath this that are gonna come to play technology vendors, offshore, onshore resources. Like, oh man, this gets really, really complicated. When things get complicated as they’re going to get complicated and the competition increases, and people that historically been competitors now are partners in some cases, but still competing others, I go back to that same investment philosophy like what’s my North Star? What is it that makes me different and unique as a firm? What is it that I’m supposed to be great at? And everybody in my firm shows up because we’re great at this one thing. Let’s go back to simple. Make decisions based on what is really critical to our core mission. What is it culturally that our clients and our team members are gonna rally behind and go make decisions based on that? I think we can always be wrong. No one can tell what the his, the future’s gonna bring, right? We can make bad bets on the wrong partner, or technology happens all the time, but we make those bets based on like the core elements of who we are and how we win and the culture of our organization and sort of what people expect from us. Generally speaking, I. The arc of the future. Sort of tilts back towards you in success. ’cause you’re used to it, you’re ready for it and you’re gonna be more adept at dealing with that outcome. Great. How that for a philosophical answer,

Jack Sharry: Jack? You like that? Yeah, I like it. I like, I like it a lot. I think we’re gonna be talk personally, I think this is the topic at hand. This is what’s coming. I had a conversation with one of those large firms that was mentioned recently and uh, that’s a lot of what they’re trying to figure out is . How to gain an advantage in the way we just talked about. So more to come. I have more to come and I hope I’ll be able to have that conversation with you as we, as we look forward. So one last thing before we, before we head out. I asked you this before and I’ll ask it again, and I don’t recall exactly what you said last time. I mean it was surfing, I can’t remember exactly. But in any event, what do you do outside of work that you’re excited or passionate about that people might find interesting or surprising? I can’t remember what I gave the answer last time. I think it was surfing. ’cause I know you lived in Santa Cruz at the time you were moving to Chicago.

Doug Fritz: I, yeah. I ain’t surfing anymore. . How about snow shoveling? How about that one for you, Jack? No, I think, uh. This may the same man answer I gave last time. So if you’re reading this back, listen is back to back I apologize. No, I picked up sailing, I picked up sailboat racing when we moved to Chicago. It was sort of the replacement for my surfing habits in California. Yeah, and uh, we live a block from Lake Michigan. We live a block from the harbor here in . So. I picked up a a J 70, which is a, call it one design sailboat. It’s a four person crew. It just for racing. It’s not a picnic boat. You, there’s no barbecue on, it’s not even a bathroom on this thing. Right. It’s a, it’s a go fast. Cool. Be really like competitive. Guess, you know, not surprising anybody that knows me to learn to sail and, and I, and I suck. I mean, I literally stuck. I, I started Good for you Sailing. And instead of going sailing and then like maybe get into racing, eventually I did what I would totally be expected to do. Like I’m gonna race, I’m gonna learn to sail, and I’m gonna race against like fully professional teams in our boats in Miami right now we race in the wintertime out of Florida, and I’m not good and it’s, I have two little boys, right? So I have 11 and a 10-year-old. And I gotta tell you, like as a dad. The gift of sucking at something and showing your kids like, look, I’m at the bottom of the list. Like there’s like 40 votes, and I’m like, 37th out of 40. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Like, dad sucks. And he is learning how to get better like that. That’s the best gift is, is showing ’em that like, you know, you gotta put time in and it’s okay to suck at something.

Jack Sharry: Cool. Cool. Good for you. Good for you to be continued. I love this conversation. I look forward to many more. So thanks for, uh, for spending this time for our audience. If you’ve, uh, enjoy our podcast and, uh, enjoy conversations like Doug and I just had, please rate, review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at Walt Tech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcast. You should also check us out at our dedicated website. Wealth Tech on deck.com. All of our episodes are there, along with the blogs and curated content for many folks around the industry. Doug, thanks again. This is a real pleasure. Really enjoyed it.

Doug Fritz: It was a super pleasure, Jack. Thanks for having me back, buddy. Real good. Take care now.