00:02
Dasarte
Welcome back to another episode of the Advisor Journey. I'm your co host, Dasarte Yarnway. This is the episode of Episodes because these individuals have done so much for my financial services career and it's just crazy how the world works. My co host, Jason Wenk and I speak with Nyle Bayer and Matt Middleton, two of the people behind Future Proof Conference, Citywide conference. And if you haven't heard of those conferences, please look into them. They throw some of the best events that our industry has seen. A big shout out to. Nyle now was the first person that told me to pick up a microphone and start a podcast. You'll hear sort of the inception stories of my podcast journey and how Nyle was influential to me, which led to meeting Jason Wank. 

 00:47
Dasarte
And everybody kind of shares their stories in the beginning of this podcast on how we all met and how we got to this point. It's one of those conversations when you get to learn more about the person behind the business while learning about business trends, technology and the future of finance in between. You're going to enjoy this episode. Stay for the whole thing and thank you for being here. We really appreciate you listening to this podcast. If you'd like, go ahead and share it with a friend and enjoy the show. Welcome back to another episode of the Advisor Journey and I have to say, this one is the one I've been waiting for. I'm so grateful to have these two guests on the podcast with me today. Jason, let me. Let me just do sort of a backstory to these two gentlemen. 

 01:32
Dasarte
I have stories about both of them. Okay, we'll start with Nyle. Okay. I want to say this has to be like 2018, but Nyle and I, I was in Sacramento at that time. I think I might have still been in the east coast or in San Francisco wandering around. And I met with Nyle at, I still remember it to this day, Temple Coffee Shop. I actually have the coffee cup here in honor of this moment. But I met with Nyle at Temple Coffee Shop on K Street, not too far away from my house now. And Nyle was the first person that was like, Dasarte, you need to start a podcast. And I got home, I emailed Nyle, like, man, it was so great to meet you. How do I start the podcast? 

 02:20
Dasarte
You know, I'm an athlete, so if you give me a playbook, I'm going to run the play, right? So now sends me this bulleted list of. For all the listeners listening today, bulleted list of things to get, like, get this microphone, get this mixer, get this pop thing. And I think out of, like, the seven things, I got three things connected to my laptop and that was the start of my first podcast. So I would never be here talking to you, Jason, if it wasn't for now. So now respect to you, thank you so much for being on the show. Second story, Matt Middleton, you remember the other conference? I won't say it, but in 2019, were all in Phoenix, Arizona. And Jason, you were there as well. I was on stage with Tyler Ross, Justin Castelli, both friends of the podcast. 

 03:04
Dasarte
And I got off stage talking about, like, social media growth. And Jason, you might not remember this, but you walked up to me, he was like, hey, this okay, when you speak, people listen. Keep talking. And then you just vanished into thin air. I don't know if you remember that. 

 03:22
Jason
I mean, I remember chasing you down because I was. I honestly, I felt bad. I hung on every word because I just thought, man, this dude's, like, incredibly smart in the way he communicates is crystal clear. So you made a very good impression. So here we are. 

 03:39
Dasarte
Right? So I want to let you guys know that you both are super special to me and thank you so much for being on the podcast here today. 

 03:46
Matt
Hey, before we get in, can I just connect the dots further to this? 

 03:49
Dasarte
Please do. 

 03:51
Matt
So that other event we're not going to talk about, it was actually the launch of Altruist, I believe, officially right to the. To the wealth management public. And so I get. It's somewhere around July 2019, 2018 maybe, and I get a random call from this guy Jason, cooking my kid dinner. It's after hours now, East Coast. He's like, hey, you don't know me, my name's Jason Wank. I'm about to launch something that's going to be really big in this industry. Do you have 10 minutes? And I'm like, sure. I'm like, you know, cooking burgers or something, whatever I was doing. And Jason came at me so fired up, talking about what's wrong with the industry, what's needed and how he plans to solve it. 

 04:41
Matt
And I remember in 10 minutes, I remember like, okay, well, the agenda is kind of set, but I think we need to find a place to it. So part of me was like, this guy's absolutely crazy and he's on a mission, and I'm just so fired up talking to him. And the other side of it was like, oh, we have to have this as a platform because this is going to be groundbreaking. And so for all of us here today, now, many years later, connected in so many different ways sharing these stories. It's just like, it's so funny how this industry is really so great because Random encounters could like propel businesses and all of that. So we're blessed to be here as well. And Jason, I don't know if you even remember that. 

 05:15
Jason
Oh, dude, I remember it super well. So it's funny is in the early days of Altruist, we had this office on Abbot Kenny in Venice beach. And in this place it was pretty epic. I mean it's like this hundred year old building and had all this character, but the AC would constantly go out and there wasn't really any beating rooms and the roof would leak. And you know, there's always some crazy person in the streets outside the windows. So if I had to take a call, I would step into this like it was a closet that we retrofit into like a little like, you know, like a phone booth. But it had no like heating and cooling at all. And so it was like 100 degrees in there. 

 05:54
Jason
I probably always get the amp because I was also like sweating profusely in this little closet, you know, this like old building in la, you know, it was. But I, I, yeah, I, I forget a lot of stuff, but I remember that well. I remember some. We could keep going with stories, you know, I mean, I, I don't, you know, I don't want to get us off track here. But again, I also just say, like, huge fan of we both. I tried getting Nyle to come work at Altruist once. He, he may or may not remember that. And so like, there's just like a lot of full circle stuff here. I'm super proud of the work you guys are doing and it's real honored to have you joined usarte and I. 

 06:32
Dasarte
Well, let's jump into it. 

 06:33
Nyle
I got one more dot. That's that same event, Matt, is where I met you as well. 

 06:38
Matt
Yeah, absolutely. 

 06:39
Nyle
So it's all coming full circle. Absolutely. 

 06:41
Dasarte
Let's jump into it. For those who don't know you and I don't know who those advisors are, why don't you both introduce yourselves. 

 06:48
Matt
Nyle, you'd like to go? 

 06:49
Nyle
Sure, I'll jump in. Nyle Bear, Chief Marketing officer at Future Proof. You know, a little bit of my backstory. Started out my career working on the broker dealer side, kind of just doing everything from emptying the trash cans, just taking notes and eavesdropping on everybody. Eventually worked my way up to become an advisor in that environment. Then switched over to the rea world about two Years into that, was lucky to kind of be in the initial stages of when RAs were kind of going mainstream as it wasn't something that everybody was doing left and right. Was able to work on both corporate retirement plans as well as traditional wealth management. Really had no interest in coming into finance originally. I think our age group more to start A and myself. There was, you know, that great financial collapse that happened. 

 07:39
Nyle
There was a lot of kind of bad press around finance. I become a father at that stages. So initially it was I was working graveyard shift for two, three years. Got an opportunity to go into an office and I would take anything at that point. So jumped into finance and then really fell in love with it because as I became a very young father starting at 20, had to get very disciplined with my own money. Learning about personal finance and thinking how can I transfer this knowledge that I'm learning about how the wealth get wealthier to the everyday blue collar worker that I'm working with on the 401k side. So, so really fell in love with communicating and helping people out at all stages of their life and helping bring access to that knowledge and education that comes with taking those small actions. 

 08:23
Nyle
You know, starting with the 401k plan and then expanding out and learning about wealth management, learning how to build a practice, doing all those things. So kind of fell in love with the process. Had a great opportunity to roll my sleeves up and start, you know, building out my center of influence as well as my clients. And about eight years into that, you know, we built out the client service model, everything that goes with the ria, you know, got headhunted by a quant research firm and thought this might be my opportunity to learn more about systemic investing strategies, learning about rules based investing, really rolling up my sleeves and going into building out a full marketing function within an asset manager. 

 09:04
Nyle
So got that opportunity and I'd say there I learned really to go to the source material and figure out what's happening underneath the hood. That's probably my biggest takeaway. When I was thinking before this, what I learned from that experience there, I think getting into kind of the database and seeing the trends that are happening directly in the data as opposed to reading analysts and research reports that you might get at the end of the funnel as an advisor was an amazing opportunity. Also was able to build a couple software tools, which is where we all met at that conference, not to be named, that were speaking about earlier. And then after that, you know, got some experience working in software for both, you know, bootstrapped and Venture backed companies was able to go through a series, a raise right before I met Matt. 

 09:50
Nyle
And then during that time, you know, Matt and I had met a few years prior to that and had just stayed in touch and we're discussing all sorts of things about what's wrong with events, how to engage, what's happening on the retail side, what's happening with all of these cool apps that are popping up left and right on personal banking and things like that. How do we connect kind of this direct consumer approach with what's happening on the B2B side and the institutional side in finance? And so when he rolled out the festival, we had been staying in touch during that time and it just seemed like something that was a really fun opportunity to do which has led me here today. 

 10:25
Nyle
I'm kind of addicted, I would say, to building startups from the ground up and kind of building out the framework and the team and creating a brand and all those amazing things. And you know what's interesting with events and the first time at the first festival that we launched was as a marketer, you see a lot of things in the digital world, especially in software, and that was the first time where it was really like, wow, we created this city in Huntington beach, you saw everything in the Figma files or the Illustrator files, et cetera. But to see it come to life and be erected like that, I was instantly hooked. So fast forward two and a half years later, here we are and it's been a great journey. Awesome. 

 11:01
Jason
Yeah. 

 11:01
Matt
And I'll just be quick. Yeah. Matt Middleton CEO Founder of Future Proof I started my career in the event space. So at a company in Forma, I'm like many people who are in the event space and many people who go to events like you don't really consider it a real industry. So I went to school for finance before that. Grew up pretty. I grew up there poor, you know, my parents didn't really have much financial education. They moved in at 16, had my brother at 20, me at 22, my sister at 24. Great family, a lot of love in the house, but really no advice, no mentorship, no guidance. So we did the complete opposite of what many financial advisors guide we learned through mistakes. 

 11:44
Matt
And so as a young kid I just remember watching this happen and it's like some things that seem very basic and obvious weren't so obvious then. And so I went to school for finance as a more like a passion, like I want to understand this, I want to learn. Also I was excited about, you know, I grew up in New York. So I was excited about the, you know, what the financial industry could be for me and my family. And then I graduated. Rude awakening. Realized it was very insulated industry and to really get a high quality job, you have to know someone or be connected or do, you know, this internship and, you know, have someone vouch for you, et cetera. 

 12:22
Matt
And so I found myself at 22, just really struggling with, you know, did I just waste the last four years very turned off by the industry. And as luck would have it, you know, a buddy of mine from college worked at this company in pharma and so he was like, hey, just come here. They have great benefits. Like, figure it out. And so I started selling like event attendees to come to an event in like the biotech and pharmaceutical space. I kid you not, guys, there's like words I still can't pronounce, like these clinical trials. And I was always gifted at talking to people. And so I found my way to like be successful at that. And so people started to take a liking to me, which brought me into the financial services arm of media and events for Informa. 

 13:05
Matt
And then from there I just rose, you know, got the chance to kind of create my own thing at Informa. So had all the upside of being a kind of an entrepreneur without the downside risk, which led us all, you know, to kind of meet each other. And then Covid hit and, you know, the industry pretty much came to a screeching halt. So I had a few ideas on what I thought the industry was going to be part, because I think there was a generational shift and the types of folks that, you know, of our kind of age were kind of tired of that old school, you know, 1980s, 1990s event model. 

 13:41
Matt
And the other side of it, I was staring at, you know, this independent advisor space which I've kind of studied over the last four years prior to that and really just saw that there was a huge opportunity and a shift that's about to occur. Part inward, right? There's a lot of workforce that are getting ready to retire. And so that's going to, you know, put change of control into young Gen Xers and older millennials. And the other side of it is the clients that they serve is also going through a transformation. And so I just looked at the industry events that were supporting the, let's call, tech and innovation areas of this, and they felt like there was no tech or no innovation in them. The ones that were focused on the investment side and how to connect Better with clients. 

 14:22
Matt
They were stuck in ballrooms and lifeless. And so there's this opportunity that I felt during COVID Well, you know, it was like a calling almost. It was like there was an industry need. There was also a desire to do something new from the events. And then from a competitive advantage standpoint, it was like, if not now, then when? Because everyone's starting back at zero, right? There's no budgets that. There's no events that are fixed into these budgets. And so, yeah, 2020 launched. At the time, it was called Advisor Circle. We had a different model. We then used that to launch Future Proof. Future Proof got big really fast. And so this time last year, we just decided, let's not get lost on all those other things. Going back to Jason's point earlier of just focus on that one thing. 

 15:05
Matt
And we decided to turn what was a kind of fun, dynamic, productive event into a business enterprise. Slowly announced the Future Proof retreat, which we ran earlier this year. We announced Future Proof Citywide, which is a new event and format that we're pioneering in March of next year in Miami. So, yeah, super excited. It's been a fun journey. Learned a lot. But, yeah, I kind of look back and you see how everything connects very intentionally. And I think the story of my career is just like, knowing when to take that, to make that move. And so far, I've made the right moves, at least the ones I like to talk about. 

 15:42
Dasarte
Let me ask you a question about that before we dive into Future Proof and Advisor Circle. First of all, incredible job with what you've built. I do not go to a conference without other advisors talking, asking if they'll be at Future Proof. Right? It's like, oh, you're here. Nice to see you. Will you be a Future Proof? It's almost like this is okay, but, well, I'll see you at the big dance, right? The granddaddy of them all type of thing. Everyone wants to be there. Everybody looks forward to it. It's something that has quickly become an industry staple. So congratulations to you and the entire team at Advisory Circle. But you mentioned something to me that stands out, which is not on the run of show, but I think it's important for advisors to know, Right. 

 16:26
Dasarte
As an entrepreneur, you mentioned something that speaks to me, hits me as intuition. Right? How did you know? Right. Like, this was something that was needed, and this is something that would either serve a lot of advisors or really help them in their practices. Talk to me a little bit more about that before we get into the nitty gritty. 

 16:44
Matt
Yeah, I mean, look, I, I don't want to sit here and be like, I, you know, I knew right away, like I got kicked in the ass by many people that, you know, I consider friends and mentors that were like, you got to go do this. Right? And so, you know, for me it's, you know, always be a student of whatever you're doing. And I'm just naturally curious on many things. So I have many quote unquote hobbies that I go really deep into. Often, events just turned out to really work well for me because it allows you to go really deep on a certain sector or area and then go deep enough to be able to hold conversations. But more importantly, think about how you might structure a community around that. 

 17:27
Matt
And so like I said earlier to start this, the events are like, it's an industry that no one really thinks about. Right. And frankly, that's why there hasn't been a lot of innovation in them. But to me, it's like, I think I found my calling because I could go and, you know, there's, oh, there's an interesting trend here. Well, let's see if that trend has potential to be big. Let's see that trend has a potential to be an industry. Does that industry need a community? Does that community intersect with another community? And you start seeing really this transformation where most people operate in certain product areas or they serve certain functions and so they have this narrow view or they spend most of their time in an echo chamber. Right. They're talking to their peers in that. 

 18:11
Matt
And so they actually never widen their aperture. And so I would say it's a little bit of, I think, my natural, like, instincts. I like to learn a lot about a lot of things and so I can connect the dots only when they're coming at me. And then the other side is like just knowing when. And I think I'm, I have a high tolerance for risk. So I think that makes me, you know, good at these types of things. But the one thing I would say, just, it's not about intuition to me, it's more like the thing that I've learned in this journey. First time founder and I, Jason, I think we talked about this is like no. The things that I thought were going to be really hard actually weren't that hard. So they were just intimidated in the beginning. 

 18:49
Matt
The things I did not even think about are the things that were really hard, which is like the dynamic. I'll say there's this three legged stool that you always have to be managing, which is I got to take care of my employees and their families and the bigger you get, more responsibility and weight that sits on you. Take care of my clients and always think about what's best for them. It's not just a feature tool, it's embodying that through the company. Right. And so for events, you get to see that for three or four days a year. And then more importantly, the thing that I don't think gets a lot of attention, which I've had to struggle with over the last couple of years, which is how do I show equal parts to my family? 

 19:29
Matt
And like there's only so much that you could pour in to your team, to the industry and to your family. And so there's never like this perfect, like perfect life and work balance and it's just not. I never believed that to be the case. But you also have to be really self aware as to when have you over. You know, I had to give everything to this right there and then ensure you come back. Because the one thing that I think most entrepreneurs don't talk about is the struggle they have at home. Whether it's, you know, spousal differences or just, I'm too busy, I'm distracted, I'm not all engaged kids, I miss this, I'm traveling or doing that. Like it's this level of guilt. 

 20:11
Matt
And that's the one thing I think we've done a great job at Future Proof, which is, you know, we could talk about all the bells and whistles. It's outdoor, it's fun, people get to dress down, it's cool. All this stuff is really great. But at the end, I think what really makes the magic is the people coming to there feeling comfortable to talk about their life. Not, I'm talking about you and my, you know, this is my title at my job. It's like, no, I'm presenting myself as Matt Middleton for all the good and all the bad that it is. And now I'm finding more people that are like me in the industry that I could connect deeper on. And I think that is actually the secret to why we've been successful. 

 20:46
Matt
Because if you think about our industry and most industries, like business gets done on the strength of a relationship. It's not, oh, this person's a buyer, this person could allocate. It's like, how do I, how do they associate with me? Do I want to work with that person? Can I see myself being a partner of that person year in, year out? Well, then you're Going to need to know a little bit about them, their background, their family makeup, what's their interest and not to sell them more but just to relate to them more. And I think that's we make our industry future proof makes the industry more relatable. So I'm sorry if I didn't answer your question but I just went on like a tear on how I thought about that. 

 21:23
Jason
It's all good man. But I will say I think it's very beautiful that you shared some of that entrepreneurial kind of pain because it is tough. I just saw this morning I was reading you pull up Google on your iPhone. They always feed you like hey, here's a few articles we think you might like. The first one on my feed was like some aerospace founder in Hawthorne that basically was like, yeah, I've got zero work life balance. Like I work, you know from 6am till dinner, I come home quickly for dinner, go back to the office, work till I can't work anymore, go home. I've got constant paranoia and all this stuff and I'm like what a way to start the day. But there's a high amount of like relevancy. People don't talk about this stuff enough. It's a tough journey, parts work. 

 22:09
Jason
I'm super glad you've done what you've done and you didn't mention it but your family's always involved. I see him at you know, a lot of your events which I think is really beautiful. I think it's pretty darn cool too when you have kids and they get to kind of see your work. Little moment varity. My son is my 3 year old, has never been to my office before, doesn't really know what dad times. He's coming today, 3:15pm Pacific, going to roll in and see all Trist HQ for the first time. So if you can get the family involved it does make it a little bit easier and also I think helps them kind of look up to you more like wow, you did this dad, like taking a kid to future proof is actually kind of nuts like because it's a big production. 

 22:50
Matt
I mean there's a reason for that. Like you know guys, my, my wife like she came here as an immigrant from Egypt at the age of nine. You know she pretty much was homeless for the first five years we got together and so we have big, very different but connected backstories of like struggle. And so like my parents, great parents, you know, hard worker, blue collar and so like they never attended any of even my Sports stuff as much, right? Because they were busy working, supporting our family. And so when I look at this as, like, yeah, this is hard work, but, like, this is a privilege. And what I do is actually fun and dynamic. And so, like, our. I don't think our. His teachers like it as much, but we take him to. 

 23:26
Matt
We're both in the events industry, so we take them to all of the events. And every time it's like, why is he out a week? And we get these, like, letters in the mail. It's like he's engaging and learning more. One, about our family, but two, about other things than he ever could in a classroom in third grade. And so there's just like, there's a part of, like, oh, we've never had it, so we want to deliver it. But to your point, Jason, there's a part of, like, if you see it, then you can believe it. So, like, our hope is that he could see us on stage, us, you know, networking with people and see other things happen. 

 23:55
Matt
And it's like, wow, now I could get a sense of, like, who I am and what I could be versus just learning in the classroom. And I know there's a balance between the two, but, you know, that's our view is like, we never even had the privilege to even think about a conference. Like, I don't think my parents know what a conference is until I started working in the industry. And so the fact that he could come here and see thousands of people talk shop and like, what is this? And to your point, like, wow, wealth management seems pretty cool now. 

 24:21
Jason
It's definitely different than if you took them to, like, conference in 2010, scare all young people from ever wanting to get into this industry. It's you 180. All right, desert. I'll let you get us back on. On schedule. 

 24:35
Dasarte
I wanted touch on Future Proof a little bit. Nyle, as a Chief Marketing Officer, I know that you probably interact with a lot of advisors indirectly and directly. What do you think? One challenge, Lauren, repeating challenge that you hear from advisors that's keeping them up at night. And how does Future Proof kind of give them those solutions? 

 24:53
Nyle
I don't know if I was aware of how many advisors I would interact with before I came to Future Proof. Now, it's insane. I think something that people don't realize is almost every single application that comes through our registration system, I'm looking at, and through that, going to almost every single advisor's website, looking at how they're communicating, looking at their LinkedIn might even go all the way to check out everybody's adv. So there's probably a ton of data that's inside of my brain that I wish I could get rid of. But I think it totally depends, unfortunately. 

 25:28
Nyle
And the way I would think about it and where I see consistencies are what stage of the business that they're in, the problems that you see at a firm or things that advisors specifically are thinking about, let's say below a billion in assets, or even if you cut that off, below 500 million in assets or 100 million in assets. How they're serving their clients are completely different than maybe how an enterprise firm that is trying to attract new advisors to come to their firm. And they might be thinking about how do we have a unified client experience across the country when we have 50, 100, 200 advisors versus you know, the conversations that I love to have the most are probably with advisors that are sub a billion in assets, that are really growing a firm in a way that they want to. 

 26:15
Nyle
They're entrepreneurs at heart, they left probably a very large firm, are trying to build it in a way that they feel like they weren't able to connect with clients at a deeper level. And so through that I feel like the forces that I hear most often are how do I have this really bespoke personal connection with each client and get deep into the planning side, have an emotional connection to what we're doing and ensure that this is the path that they're going to stay on so that I feel like I'm delivering that value that I left my previous environment for speaking for that environment or that advisor who left. And then how do we do it in a way that scales? 

 26:53
Nyle
And so through that I feel like that's where tech is helping them become more efficient to serve more and more clients with a similar amount of hours in the day. And so that's where I feel like the trade off is as well as figuring out how to continue to keep their pipelines flowing of additional new clients that fit the criteria of what they're trying to serve. And that seems to be like the constant question that comes up. And maybe it's just my own bias because of my seat. And so people are always coming to me like, hey, let's talk marketing. Hey, let's talk marketing. But that's what I hear a lot. 

 27:27
Nyle
The farther we scale up, I'd say the more conversations are closer to practice management and a unified client experience or trade offs between, you know, bringing in a firm who does something a completely different way that is how we've traditionally done it. Maybe they do it the right way. Maybe we need to blend this and create a hybrid model. So those are kind of more broader conversations, I guess, at the institutional level. Matt, what do you feel? 

 27:49
Matt
I think it's strictly around recruiting and retention. And you said it before, it's paranoia. Look, at the end of the day, most operators in the space, they're small business owners. And so, you know, you look at these events and you know, we wonder why there's so many wealth management events in the market. It's because like the peer to peer engagement really is important one to like understand, like, am I keeping pace? Right? And the others is like, what can I learn from others that isn't readily available online? And you know, and I come from a big corporate, so it's like I understand the resources that you get from, you know, a big organization. 

 28:29
Matt
And I think most people if, especially if they broke away and gone independent, like later in their life in their career, I think they're like hit with a wake up call, which is like, I'm a little bit paranoid, like, am I building something that's meaningful? Am I building as fast as I should be? How do I keep my, do my employees like me? How do I keep my employees engaged? And then once they're engaged and successful, it's like, oh my God, now they're a threat to leave. How do I keep them? Right? And so I think there is a little bit of just paranoia that I see all the time. And it is very much all over the place. It's a scattered brain. It's my team's this and that. I want to figure out what the right equity plan is. 

 29:10
Matt
I have, you know, to worry about getting younger recruits because I'm targeting this group. I don't know how to solve my tech stack because everyone's spending more time talking about technology than what they actually need as an outcome. Right? There's the. Everyone else is, you know, doing strategic acquisitions. Should I look at that? And then of course, the biggest buzzword in the industry, organic growth, right? Like it's hard. So I wouldn't say there's one particular thing. I would just say it's a series of things that are constantly on the minds of the people that at least come to our events, which are, you know, tend to be like the, you know, the executive suite of RaaS, which makes these types of platforms, I think, more meaningful and peer to peer. Like, less about the stage time, more about the engagement amongst each other. 

 29:58
Matt
Right. And so I look at it as, you know, there's a lot to solve here, but there's nothing but blue ocean. And so it's more of a. We're not talking about an industry in decline, which is a great thing to be a part of. 

 30:10
Dasarte
You know, when I want to Future Proof, I take copious notes in my brain, and then at the end of every night, I try to write it out in my little app. Right. And I went back to those notes and looked at my notes from day one, and I had the word cop. And three things that I got from Future Proof were connection. So advisors feel like they're on the island because not many people can understand, like, what they're going through. It was a lot of fostering of connection at Future Proof. So that's the first thing people have questions on retention, all of that stuff. It's really just a signal for, like, I want to connect with my employees. I want to connect with the right vendors. Right. I want to connect with other advisors that know how this feels. Right. 

 30:52
Dasarte
Number two is opportunity. I think the first year there was like an MLB advisor managing on professional athletes, and I walked away from that feeling like, there's opportunity for me to create whatever type of practice I want to create. Right. So everybody's going there looking for a bit of inspiration, but opportunity to believe that they can go back home and build the thing that they'll feel lucky and fortunate and grateful to wake up and build every day. And then the next one is practice management tips. Right. How can I run my practice more efficiently? Both of you mentioned innovation and technology. Are there any tech companies, any tools that you feel like are redefining financial advice right now? 

 31:35
Matt
Man. You ever heard of this company called Altruist? 

 31:38
Jason
You have to exclude us from this conversation. Naturally. 

 31:45
Matt
Why don’t you go first? 

 31:46
Nyle
Yeah, I don't know. I feel like it's. I mean, if you look at the Kitces FinTech map, it's absolutely exploded. So there's no shortage of a new login to be able to take care of things. I think people are thinking about how do we move from this environment. That is, you have an isolated piece of technology for each different thing that they're doing, and how do we consolidate it into a world that actually makes sense for the end client? I think something that I constantly complain about is that every piece of tech tool that wants to get in front of the client, which is a huge risk as an advisor, and people say advisors are slow to adopt, but I think it's a little bit of a step further where when they introduce this to their client, there's a lot of risk. 

 32:28
Nyle
This is their livelihood, and so they should take a little bit more time to introduce something to their primary revenue source. But all these tools look extremely different. So when you think about your brand and you know, you're introducing it to your clients and your estate plan looks this way, your tax planning looks that way, your client portal looks this way, your risk tolerance questionnaire looks this way, everything is kind of disjointed. And I think a good brand and its consistency builds trust. And I think they're starting to see that if I have every single shiny tool, it actually might erode trust with my clients because there's no consistent experience that I have with them. So that's something that I've found that is not consistently said. But there's this undertone that I grab from the conversations that I'm having. 

 33:15
Nyle
And so they're trying to figure out how do we bring it all together in a way that makes sense, in a way that represents my firm well and, you know, leads to better client outcomes? Bottom line. 

 33:25
Matt
Yeah, I have two views and I'm not sitting here because I'm on your guys’ pod saying this, but I think, really, I think it should be said like it's dizzying looking at the kids, this map, right? And all of the categories and then all of the companies. And so what I really think is innovation in our space related to fintech is like something when you all are doing, which I think as like category killers. And not in a bad way, but like there's companies and categories that effectively are features and what you guys have done, not in a zero sum way, but just thought about like, what do clients need to operate their business more efficiently? And you've created a journey of this product roadmap where you're incorporating things more seamlessly than what Nyle was just sharing, which is like Frankenstein's monster. 

 34:17
Matt
And you would need a whole team just to figure out integrations. And so you never have what the full vision of that solution is meant to because it doesn't work perfectly with other platforms. And so I think again, like, what you guys do is great. And I spend a lot of time speaking to advisors that, you know, custody with you and custody elsewhere. And like, it's just different, It's a different conversation. So, you know, I want to give you guys your flowers because I think it's amazing what you guys are, have done and are doing. You know, the area that's most exciting for me that I don't feel like anyone has cracked truly yet is legion and like figuring that out. And so I don't want to say there's like an innovate, there's an actual tool out there that I'm most jazzed about. 

 35:01
Matt
I think there's a lot of companies playing for that area. But if we look, just look at trends, great wealth trends we talk about all the time. Right. You think about, you know, women being more of the, you know, financial decision maker of their household or the majority of the U.S. Right. You start to think about there are there the, as we've talked about previously, like the face of wealth is changing and the decisions around that are changing. And you could sit here and say like, well I'm going to be in business for another 10 years and so it's not going to be a material change to my practice and fair enough. 

 35:38
Matt
But I think for the most part of the people we are all talking to and working with, they have a long term view on their business, on their role in this industry and the industry at large. I think we need to start thinking about how we make wealth management services more approachable to the everyday person. And I don't think we've done, I don't think anyone, one person has cracked that code yet. So I'm most excited about seeing continued innovation in that area. 

 36:03
Jason
By the way, I was going to ask, since you guys get close to a lot. I'm sure there's people that are applying to kind of present, you know, kind of their kind of latest and greatest. I met Eden, I forget her last name now so I feel so pat but Eden, the founder of Finney AI the other day. But I just going to share because I think it's cool like and I don't, I, I felt bad because at one point when were chatting I was like it's so cool to see young people kind of coming in. And she's like how do you know I'm young? I, I'm old. So when you're old everyone looks young compared to you. Yeah. 

 36:33
Jason
So like you know, if you're younger than me, you're young officially but which is lot like now it's becoming the majority of the industry it seems like. But, but I was encouraged because there are like these new innovators that are actually looking to solve that problem. I think, you know, they have a road map that will take some amount of time before it kind of really helps solve that. But it is really cool to see that there are people leveraging new tools, especially AI, to think about the discovery, the customization of messages, automation, follow up. It's almost like we need a Jarvis, you know, for advisors to Stark's AI, for those who don't remember. But you know, it's just like you start your day and it's like they've kind of done all sorts of things for you to help with, like cultivating. 

 37:18
Jason
I want to like, and this is a little bit off script, but I just, speaking of innovations, I just want to kind of just ask a little bit about Breakthrough because to me that was like this insane innovation for events. And I'll let you explain kind of what breakthrough is, but I'd love you to talk about it because I have an interesting seat. Because we have to sponsor different things, we're hyper data driven. I think Nyle can probably appreciate that. So we measure what's the output of every single thing we do and by far without question, biggest investment return. And it's like by orders of magnitude, you know, from events is future proof. And a big part of that is because of Breakthrough. 

 37:59
Jason
Like you're just, you're actually connecting with the attendees and they want to like, they're actually like, they show up to the meetings and they want to learn more about what it is that you're building. So maybe since we're talking about innovation, do you mind sharing a little bit about like the backstory there kind of what breakthrough is. And again from our perspective, it's incredible but you know, curious kind of, you know, how you see it working for others. 

 38:20
Matt
Yeah, for sure. And this goes back to the point like most people spend time talking about the technology, like let's talk about what it does and the pain point it solves, right? And you just alluded to it. It's like we go to these events, the bigger the event, the more attendees go, the harder it is to find the right people to help move your business forward or to connect, to recruit, whatever the use case is. So our thesis was, with future proof is how do we make this the most productive event possible for every single person? And now we have multi generational audience, the entire ecosystem coming together. So if you looked at it like what this person wants versus that it'll create this crazy web. 

 38:55
Matt
So ultimately it was like, let's not try to define that and like use AI to, you know, the secret matching of people. It's like, no, people just need the tools to then discover the right people and then they need to Remove all the friction and getting access to them on site. And if we could work to do those things well, then we could create a scaled model. And now what you have is a very productive, quantifiable event that you participate in. And so the way it works simply is there's three different programs we run through Breakthrough, all designed to create a kind of world class networking, live networking experience. So the Breakthrough meetings is what we introduced two years ago. Now we beta tested it at the 2023 festival and it's effectively a one to one meetings program. 

 39:44
Matt
We don't try to sound like it's more sophisticated than it is. What we really want to do is allow people to have 15 minute intro meetings with each other, but that the secret is that they both opt into it. So what happens there? Just think about like how we engage. If you go to an event, right, and I share this a lot. So you go to event regardless of if you're an introvert or an extrovert. You walk into a room and you see tons of people. It's the first thing you do. You look for something familiar, something that grounds you, something that makes you feel comfortable. Everyone does it. And so that's usually a familiar face. 

 40:17
Matt
So you're like, oh, I go see someone I work with, or I see, you know, a client of mine, or I see someone I saw at another conference. And so you gravitate towards that. Maybe you grab a beer or something and you start talking. And so then it becomes you're effectively your tribe, right? It's your friends, people you already know, your clients or the service providers that service you, depending on type of event, the people that you know from industry events or whatever, and then their first degree connections. And so you do meet new people, but it's really closed. And our view was the larger events get in the industry, frankly, the less productive they get, right? They become what everyone calls boondoggles. And it's like you have to be there because everyone else is there. 

 40:57
Matt
But then you walk away with like, did we get any ROI? Did I learn anything? Did I make any new connections? And that's why events get this negative kind of wrap in the industry. Not just with marketers, but just in general. It's like it's a huge time suck, huge money suck. And then you're left there with like unproven return. So for us it was more about let's create an atmosphere where we could help to change the optics of an industry. More importantly, like, let's make it productive. And then to your point, Jason, let's make it productive, but quantifiable. And so what we've done here is effectively have Breakthrough, which is a meetings platform. We provide everyone access to the platform three weeks before the event. 

 41:40
Matt
And anyone who wants to participate in meetings, not just buyer, seller, peer to peer, anything for any use case. Like we had people meeting because they both like surfing, right? So it's like anything imaginable. You basically give them a platform in the tools so that they can say, I'd like to meet with Dasarte. And I would click. And then, so the next stage is Dasarte sees that I requested a meeting and you decide is Matt worth my time or not? Click yes. And then through the whole algorithm, it basically schedules, based on your schedule and your availability, a 15 minute meeting for you on site. So really what we're doing is it's not just meetings, it's not just like group activities we coordinate. It's really changing the behavior of how attend events. 

 42:20
Matt
And our hope is that they could get more value out of it when we're not defining value for them. Right, because it's all different. But we're just giving them the tools they need to create a really, what is analog experience and using technology to deliver some value before you even arrive on site. So then what happens once you arrive on site? You could have up to 24 meetings for future Proof Festival. Let's say you could have signed up for, you know, dinners and group activities with your peers, both fun and, you know, for your business. And then really what that comes to is you go in there with a clear direction of here's the people I'm meeting. Whether I'm looking for new software, I want to do some diligence, I want to recruit people I'm looking to learn about. 

 43:03
Matt
Talk to my CEO at this stage of his career about this for mentorship, whatever the case may be. You get that. Then what you get is you get access to the fun dynamic of what every industry gets, which is called serendipity. Most people, their ROI is I hope I'm next to coffee. I hope the organizer does not serve food in that area and serves food here. Like, I'm sorry, that it just sucks. It's, it's inorganic. It structurally is bad. Another thing, sorry not to just about break there about behavior. It's like the other thing is, and I don't want to like knock everyone, we used to do it like attendee list sponsors, all they do is they, they sponsor something which is a live event to access people Live. 

 43:58
Matt
And the biggest thing that they believe is value is giving an attendee list in a static spreadsheet. Like how crazy that is. Because what happens then? What is the culture that is created there? 100 sponsors, 200 sponsors, as big as the event gets, they all receive a spreadsheet at the exact same day before the event. Even the best people, like we're not spamming, we're just going to send it to thing. Well, you only have a couple of days. So now you're like, oh man, we just spent a bunch of money for this event. We need to make sure we have some type of things going on, that we have some connection, some meeting scheduled because we spent a lot of money. So you send out, so you send out these spammy emails and a hundred companies send them out. 

 44:45
Matt
And then what happens to the advisors? They're like whoa, I was just having a client meeting and Now I got 100 meetings about, you know, come to this dinner, come to my booth, come to this activation, come to my session, all that future proof. And they're like, who are these people? What are these companies? And then people wonder why in traditional events that exhibit halls suck because there's no traffic, you've conditioned that individual never to want to visit you. And so for the most part they avoid you until they get to that last day and they're like, oh well my son, I told my son I get him something so let me see if I can. They got some cool tchotchkes here. 

 45:17
Matt
And we do this song and dance every month at every event and we never ask the question why do people behave like this? And so it's a long winded way of like answering what Breakthrough is. Breakthrough is a tech enabled networking platform for events. It allows people to do one to one meetings, group meetings, roundtable discussions, all with their peers. We track about 120 data points of every single individual data, firm data, and then personal like interest level data. And then we display that in a really seamless interface. No messaging, no other stuff, no distractions, simply meeting, yes, no accept meeting yes, no put in your schedule, show up. And that is really what it is. But the more important piece of why it's been so successful is we truly are changing the way people think and participate in events. 

 46:09
Matt
And sponsors love it because again, there's no distraction. It aligns their goals, allows them to quantify success or failure at an event. The attendees, the advisors love it because what it does is it allows them to focus on their job up until they get to the event and more so discover the right people, the right tools and technologies, the service providers that they want to actually meet. And so what it creates is time that is not wasted on site. It becomes one of the most productive times that you could have at an event. And so I'm more big on the behavior and I said it earlier, it's not like let's not we all get lost on talking technology, let's talk about the outcomes and what it would it solves for people. 

 46:50
Matt
And I feel like we've brought in, this really is a game changer for not only wealth management events, but most events because we connect people where they want to and how they want to be connected. They are no longer a product. 

 47:03
Dasarte
And Matt, you were ahead of the game earlier thinking in terms of how this could be different, the conference environment. And you are one of few conferences that make it beneficial for both sponsors and advisors to be there. So I'm going to ask you to put that sort of head of the game forward thinking hat on again and looking out five years from now right at the industry. If you were to make a headline, what would it look like? What does the industry look like five years from now? Now I'll have you answer that same question as well. 

 47:34
Matt
What do I wish it to look like? What do I think it's going to look like? 

 47:37
Dasarte
Either one. 

 47:39
Matt
All right, so what I wish it to look like, I wish it to be a more trusted industry when you think about brand. And I see a lot of the bigger firms now starting to, you know, put their brand in big places, important cultural places, which is exciting to see. But really for the most part we've been under the radar, at least in an independent space. Right. And so I wish in five years from now I could walk up to any person on the street and I could say, hey, what do you know about wealth management? And they could respond with something that doesn't make them feel uncomfortable. That's my wish now. 

 48:22
Nyle
Robots are taking over. 

 48:25
Jason
I don't know. 

 48:26
Nyle
Five years from now. I mean, it's amazing when I just think about my life in five year intervals, it seems like every five years is completely different than a I thought it was going to be and just generally a completely different lifetime from the previous one. So who knows what will be from now. But I do feel like the one thing that everybody is underestimating is the rate of change that AI is having an influence on all the way. It really hasn't gotten its tentacles yet. And what I've seen on near the Mainstream level into like the CRM data, into the real source data underneath the hood. And I think that's going to give people a lot of, hopefully their time back, better conversations. 

 49:05
Nyle
I would love to see, you know, going with Matt's theme, what I would like to see people get off their blue screens all the time and be able to have more connection points in real life because those are the areas that, you know, we can't be replaced by the robots. And so I, I'm hoping that's, that's what happens, that AI really makes us a lot more efficient, gives us better information, allows us to serve people better, makes them more confident in their plans and their investments so that they can go and live their life to the degree that they want to, to give them more meaning and purpose. So I'm hoping that is. Although there is this just tidal wave of the way things always were. So we'll see, you know, where those resistance points meet. But that's what I. 

 49:47
Nyle
One thing I think everybody is underestimating, including myself. I have no idea how far it's going to push us out, but I know it's going to. 

 49:54
Dasarte
Jason, I'll let you take a stab at it. I have a lot of thoughts. 

 49:58
Jason
Well, I, I actually, I love the way you explain that, Nyle. I do think, as we say, it's funny, I, I oftentimes share with our team here. You know, 12 months ago, I was still a little bit skeptical. You know, I was kind of like, it's novel, like, it's interesting, you know, but the error rate was really high. Practical application was relatively low. And so I kind of figured at that point, if you ask me the same questions, like in five years, AI will be actually pretty fundamentally useful. What I thought would happen in five years happened in one year. And so I think you're totally right. Like, what may happen the next five years is going to be very hard to predict. But it's probably like, you know, it's probably what we think will happen in 20 years. 

 50:40
Jason
I mean, it's going to be pretty rapid and it is kind of interesting. Again, like the use case. Yeah. Like, I certainly hope that for the sake of humanity that it doesn't become like something that only a few powerful people and companies control. And then like the average person is kind of, you know, left out in the cold. It has the potential to actually be quite unifying because it could create essentially these massive fishing gains, not just intellectual efficiency gains, but actually the application for manufacturing, farming there's so many different use cases that are hard people to understand. So I'm pretty bullish on where we'll go. I know we're investing pretty heavily and maybe by future proof we'll have some cool announcements around, like, you know, but I do think it's a, it is an immovable force. 

 51:29
Jason
Like you better, you know, you better get on the train. Because I think anyone who's kind of like ignoring at this point is going to look really foolish in five years. 

 51:37
Dasarte
Yeah, totally agreed. My headline would be technology no longer optional because you're going to get left by people that are in the spaces and places that the industry is heading and using the tools that will ultimately accelerate their business. 

 51:52
Dasarte
So technology no longer optional. You got to do it. If you're an old advisor and you're still trying to get people out the house to eat a steak dinner, good luck because these people are everywhere all at once. But I just wanted to thank you both for. Go ahead. Jason, did you have. 

 52:09
Jason
I was just gonna say, you know, what's wild, this just kind of speaks to something that we talked about, like kind of the fintech map, you know, I think one of the most interesting things that'll happen with AI is tons of UI will go away. So like what Matt referred to as like companies that are features but even entire systems of record will just kind of go away. So we think about how AI works. You have structured data. This is like the stuff in our CRM. Like it's at your custodian, it's stuff maybe in your venture planning app, et cetera. You have unstructured data. This is like stuff in old PDFs and conversations that don't get reconciled, right? All of that stuff will converge into essentially a massively accessible database that can just be queried for whatever you want. 

 52:56
Jason
And so the need for even having front end application development is going to be largely unnecessary. The whole concept of a CRM is kind of not necessary. If you think five years out, you'll just have all this data that exists essentially and you'll likely use chat, whether it's voice, text, but it'll be natural language, right? You'll say, you know, hey, like what do I, what should be working on today, right? It's like, you know, and then it'll just tell you, well, here's what you should be working on today. You know, most commands will just be again, like, think about like this one use case we've been kicking around internally, which Is you're an advisor. 

 53:32
Jason
You get an SEC exam or state exam, they give you this document, 50 pages, all these things you need to do give get this done for us in 90 days. That'll just be like a document, unstructured data, right? Drop it into AI. AI will read it, turn it into structured data, will query essentially all data that exists inside of your hopefully private kind of database, and then just produce the report. Hey, looks like we can answer 17 of the 21 requests. And here's all the data. Does this look okay? Yep. Okay. Put it into a, you know, a zip drive to send off to my regulator. Like, those are the types of things that will just go away. So the need for, like, building screeners, like report builders. 

 54:12
Dasarte
Right. 

 54:12
Jason
Like, these things that kind of, I guess, like, just kind of go away because you just ask for what you need, and then what you need is delivered to you. So I just think it's kind of fascinating, you know, you think about, like, that giant map of, like, logos and services, you know, it's in many of these things. Like, the good generative AI models can already do them. Like Claude OpenAI gem. Like they can. Like, you could take those in a private environment, accessing data and actually do most of the work. Like, you know, tax return review, estate plan review. Like, these things are actually just broad. General LLMs can already do it. So starting about, like, the specialization, the proprietary models and all this other fun stuff. What a time to be alive, you know? 

 54:56
Jason
So it should be fun one of these days, you guys, you probably have transcripts of every session that you've ever done, right? I can't wait till you guys launch your internal tool. We can just be like, you know, I can't remember. I was at this one session Dasarte was on. He said this one super profound thing. It was epic. And. But what was it exactly? Like, I can just go ask, you know, the future proof, you know, AI, you know, chat agent, whatever, and boom, it delivers me exactly what I was looking for. And it's like on recall. So exciting times ahead. 

 55:26
Matt
Yeah, a PR nightmare for finance. 

 55:30
Dasarte
Why don't you take us, you know? 

 55:33
Jason
Yeah, I have a. When I get nervous, I swear a lot, which is weird. Like, if I'm at home, I'm not nervous. I don't ever swear. So if I'm on stage, I'm just brutal, you know, don't want. I don't want those things turning into. Yeah. To readable transcripts. Yeah. All right. Well, this has been fun. Honestly, I wish were all just hanging out in person. You know, I think I envision Nyle has like a beautiful like little fire pit like out by a river behind his house or something and we're just hanging out there. Maybe next time. But this has been a ton of fun. Really proud of both of you guys and what you're building, your broader teams. 

 56:12
Jason
It's been really exciting to see and couldn't be more proud to have you on our show and get to kind of expose you a little bit. To some of the folks who follow Dasarte and I in our random musings that wraps up this episode of Advisor Journey. On behalf of my partner in wealth, Dasarte, I'm Jason Wenk. Couldn't be happier that you joined us. If you liked what you saw, whether you're watching a video clip, you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform, please give this a like give it a share. You can check out this episode others at our website. So please make sure you go check out all the archives, make sure we get it right. And I want to say too, like, you know the industry, lots of change coming. 

 56:57
Jason
I always close out the same way, but if you think there's somebody that would benefit, maybe you've had one of those one one connections with someone and something said today seemed profound. You want to share it, like please spread the news. We make the industry better, more accessible if we have more people empowered with the best possible information, inspired by really great leaders like Matt and Nyle. And so please help us get the word out there. Thanks so much for joining us again, gentlemen. It's been an absolute pleasure. Can't forward going to see you in person soon. 

 57:28
Thanks for listening to the Advisor Journey. Each advisor's journey is different and your results may vary. While we hope you find this information helpful, success cannot be guaranteed. Also, Altruist and its affiliates do not provide tax or legal advice.