Inside Modern Practice Management with Will Hoffman

In this Only Human episode, Will Hoffman joins the show to talk about how AI is changing financial advisor workflows, client service, and firm growth. He shares his path from insurance to independence, how Hoffman Wealth Management uses Jump and Claude, and why better tech can make advisors more human, not less. A standout moment comes in the show’s “marry, divorce, date” segment, where Will names the tools he’s committed to, leaving behind, and exploring next. This episode is a strong listen for RIAs, wealth managers, and advisors thinking about AI, scaling, and modern practice management.

Linkedin- William Hoffman

Instagram: @hoffmanwealthmanagement

YouTube: @hoffmanwealthmanagement

Facebook: Hoffman Wealth Management

 Website-  www.hoffmanwealth.com

Transcript

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Yohance: Will, so happy to have you. It is. We've been trying to do this what for almost a year.

Will: Did we do it here in September? Right.

Yohance: A year in September.

Will: But hey, we stayed before afternoon on the golf course in California.

Yohance: Oh man. I'm actually golfing tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

Will: Good.

Yohance: I'm doing the Tour 18 here in Dallas. So it's some specially curated course where like every hole is from somewhere in the world or something like that. Awesome. Awesome. Inexpensive. But it's my birthday weekend, so happy birthday.

Will: That's awesome. I just had my 20th wedding anniversary was oh, two days ago. So busy week for all of us.

Yohance: Indeed. Indeed. Happy 20 years to you. We are coming up on 15 this year. We're trying to catch you probably won't get.

Will: Hopefully we keep.

Yohance: We keep the same to keep. Let's keep the same distance. So Will, I appreciate you joining us on Only Human. I know that we were of course like you said, vibing on the golf course and that was a year ago for was that future proof or was it all.

Will: Yeah, future proof.

Yohance: That was future proof. Future proof. So yeah, I know we, we were

Will: AGC put that golf event together.

Yohance: Yeah. And back then, oh man, there were so many AI things that didn't even exist right. A year ago that exist now. I mean everyone and their mother has a. Has a note taker now.

Will: Yes.

Yohance: I guess a year ago was maybe just one or two. What else we have. We have different AIs that will now talk to CRMs, that'll talk to custodians, that'll talk to a bunch of different tools. You can zap your just about anything.

Will: Yeah. Have their own AI tools inside.

Yohance: Yeah, man. It's a pretty amazing world out there now. But before we get into what you're doing in your practice, tell us a little bit about your journey into financial services.

Will: So I am celebrating my 23rd year actually in November. It'll be 24 years as a financial advisor. I started with a insurance first firm in downtown Pittsburgh and then it was. They had the best training program in the business. I don't hesitate to say that they gave us two years of salary so we didn't have to go out and sell and sell haphazardly to try to eat. Of course we had goals that we had to meet, but that was to me, that was the best way to learn because I didn't have to either starve or go out of business before I learned how to stay in business. And when I finished their training program, I was very Lucky. My dad has had had a property and casualty insurance agency in our hometown for he just sold it last year after being in business for 52 years.

Yohance: Wow.

Will: And he had a building. He had an empty desk, he had a computer. He had an existing book of business that during the training program. You know it didn't seem right at the time but he, he didn't let me have access to his clients because he wanted me to learn. He wanted me to go learn to sell and learn to struggle and learn to be resilient. And I finally said to him dad, there's no sense in me driving into the city every day when I'm coming back here to where my natural network is. So why don't we explore independence? And I did and found a broker dealer that would work with me being so young and so new with no assets under management and immediately went independent from that point created a financial division of his firm with his partners and we're off to the races. And then like most partnerships do, they went their separate ways and gave me the opportunity to take Hoffman Wealth Management and pull that out and create it on my own. So in 202011 I established Hoffman Wealth Management from that and have been off to the races ever since. It's a. We're a RIA with private advisor group in New Jersey. So we are fee only assets under management style firm. There's four of us right now. Myself, Nico who's our director of financial planning, Katie who's our director of operations and Bryn is our director of marketing. And we are, we're having the time of our lives right now. At least I'm having the time of my life. Hopefully they feel the same but a great team with, with great people. I don't feel like I come to work ever. I. I really enjoy the folks that I work with. They have become like family. Ironically Brennan, Nico were in my wife's fifth grade class. So we. That's the pipeline to Hoffman wealth management is Mrs. Hoffman's fifth grade class. Harvard and Yale have their pipelines to Wall Street. Hoffman Wealth Management has their pipeline from Mrs. Hoffman's fifth grade class.

Yohance: That's awesome.

Will: So we are. We. We are having a great time. We're. We have to be careful because the four of us get along so well that some days we have to remind ourselves that we're here to, to work and not just hang out. But, but it is, it's. It's been a really great 23, almost 24 years in this business. I don't know what else I'D be good at or what else I would be doing. And you know what they say, if, if, if you enjoy what you do, you never go to work a day in your life. And, and I don't, I don't, I don't feel like I'm working. This is a job I get to do in a business I, I get to run. And it, it's, it's really is a pure joy to do it.

Yohance: I love that. The fifth grade pipeline.

Will: That's it.

Yohance: You got to start thinking about,

Will: tell her Start, start getting me resumes in fifth grade.

Yohance: Yeah, exactly. My daughter's going into the fourth grade, so I, I, I do teach a financial literacy class in her classroom each year. So I guess I should start building my pipeline.

Will: There you go.

Yohance: Fourth grade class.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: I want to interview that kid. I actually, I did interview. I have a client who's, I knew when, that the son. I knew him when he was in the womb. Okay. And so now he's a junior at, at Texas A. No, UT Arlington. University of Texas Arlington. And he's in business. And his dad said, hey, would you be willing to work with my son? I said, hey, heck yeah. I've known him his whole life, so.

Will: Well, that's how Nico came to us. I've known his parents for a long time. I mean, both, both of them. I've known their families for, for a while. And it makes it easy when, you know, the value system is there that exactly. Everything else can be taught the value system was there. So that I think that's what makes them so easy to get along with. Hopefully that's what makes me so easy for them to get along with. And we do, we have, we have, we have a blast.

Yohance: And what we have. A lot of listeners of only human that are took similar paths as us where we were in some sort of captive or brokerage type wirehouse and eventually sought some sort of independence and chose the RA route. But we also have a large section of listeners that are very young in their career.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: That they are. Either they're at, they're at that first step, they're at the wirehouse, or they're a junior at a larger institution or they're just getting through college trying to figure out how they could start their own raa. And I'm getting questions from those advisors around, as the phrase likes to go. But this time it's different.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Because we've been in this secular bull market for what seems like ever. Because if you pull out Covid, the market's Only gone up except for what, two years I think. Right. That was the only recession, the real recession that we had. Other than that there's been nothing since 2009. I mean that's a, a long track where we were talking 16, 17 years. How does this feel for you as someone that's been in the business for 23 years? What are some of the things that you are thinking about in your client conversations and more importantly in how you're doing your own business planning for Hoffman Wealth Management.

Will: I even go back before I was an advisor to, to the, the sensation and enthusiasm that's existing right now around tech and AI. I, I go back to when I was in college in the late 90s and every time you turned on your computer there was a new website, there was a new tool or trick or way. And then we were so thrilled to be watching video over the Internet or getting a ridiculous email forward from our parents. That was dots and dashes. And to me that, that is what this is like when we were evolving so quickly on the Internet front that, and then, you know, I remember getting a Palm Pilot when I was in college and thinking have all of this little stylus. Yes.

Yohance: Yeah.

Will: And could download a Tetris game. You still have to plug it into your computer to download things. But that, that's where I'm racing to is okay. Now we're have cell phones and texting and Palm Pilots and AI. It sort of feels like that, but again because this time it's different to me. There's more substance to it. There's, there's this time or this time. Yes. There's more, there's more usefulness for it. Yeah, it was cool to have pets.com and stamps.com and the stocks ran like crazy but they didn't know how they were going to be using it. To me now it's, there's a lot more practical use both for our business in our personal life that didn't exist then. And that seems like to me it's more, it's, it's feels the same but it's more exciting. It's more evolutionary. It's, you know, there's things that we need to be teaching our kids because you know, the Internet gave them that gateway. But now these tools teaching them how to use them responsibly but still use them and to be effective because if they don't learn to use them, they, they are going to get their doors blown off.

Yohance: They will.

Will: So, so that's where I go back. You know the market. Listen when the market hits a peak, it's always going to feel. What's, what's the phrase that a lot of economists, frothy or euphoric? Right.

Yohance: Irrational exuberance.

Will: Right. There's always a term for the, this stage in the market. I don't know what this one is yet. Is it the top? You know, we won't know until we know.

Yohance: I mean, it was yesterday.

Will: Yeah, so. So to me it is. I, I'm not, I'm not nervous, I'm not pessimistic. I'm also not a economist or a stock picker. So by all means, there are smarter folks than me that may think differently, but I'm still looking forward with so much enthusiasm and optimism when it comes to where we are in this stage. Maybe looking forward with a bit of fear, both from a market standpoint and, you know, an AI standpoint or a usefulness standpoint. But you know, the guys that were sitting on the rocket pad in 1969, we're looking straight up with a lot of fear and went to the moon. So, you know, sometimes that fear is, is a healthy skepticism that that leads to greater things.

Yohance: How are you incorporating the the or how are you integrating the new technology into your practice?

Will: So there, there are a lot of ways and a lot of tools. The biggest impact has been through, I don't know if you use jump AI, but jump, which is, you know, not just a meeting recorder or note taker for us, it allows us to record, document and retain these notes quicker. It ties into our CRM which we use Wealthbox, so immediately puts us in action after we have a conversation with our clients. But in the preparation, it allows us to look ahead, prep JUMP for what meetings are coming up, gives us that scorecard that can tell us, hey, you forgot to bring this up. Make sure you're checking beneficiary. So it's making us ultra compliant and keeping us on task. And you know, the irony is folks are worried about AI replacing humans. To me, it's made me more present in all of my client meetings because I'm not sitting there jotting everything down. It's made me, you know, Katie my, my operations director, she used to sit in our meetings and take the notes and then start to start workflows and execute tasks when she doesn't have to do that anymore. So now we can have her working on a lot more growth oriented things than taking notes and scheduling tasks in Wealthbox. So it's allowed her to be more present, she can work from home a bit More. She has a young, a young son. So it allows her to be, you know, a better mother and still a very active member of our team. That allows us to really allow her to accomplish the best of both worlds. So for us, it's made us more human and more involved and more present in our meetings. The other thing I like that JUMP does, I just, I didn't realize this until the other day. It keeps track of who's talking in the meetings.

Yohance: I like that. Yes. So the red, green or whatever color you choose. Yep.

Will: You know, so, so if we're not listening enough there, there's immediate feedback. We don't have to wait for our clients to say, you're not talking to us, you're not listen or you're talking too much, you're not listening. Jump's telling you, will you, you spoke for 60 of that meeting. You got to try to back that off and, and ask more questions and listen more. It's a great resource for teaching young folks this business because you don't have to sit there. You can go back and read the notes and see, hey, you want to ask more questions and listen more. So to us it's been a time saver, a game changer, a relationship builder. I can't talk about the positive impacts of jump AI for us enough for

Yohance: our more tenured listeners out there that tenured advisors, business owners, um, many of us do a pretty good job of doing some form of business planning.

Will: Yes.

Yohance: And I personally like to look out five years. So every year I'll review my business plan and I'll change the number on that five year goal to be the next year. And then I think through revenue, client acquisition and headcount. Is that something that you do in your business?

Will: When you say you mean advisor, headcount, advisor or just.

Yohance: No, no, team. Just of the team.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: Advisor staff. Staff count, employee count of the firm. Yes. Have you found that tools like JUMP are making an impact on some of that future headcount planning? And if so, how?

Will: I, I think it's going to give me more capacity to add more than I would have thought five years ago. Because I don't, I don't have to be in every meeting, especially if we're training a new advisor versus acquiring a new advisor.

Yohance: Interesting. So.

Will: So I can, I can allow them to run on their own. And I remember back to my days early was always sitting there, which was great. Manager in this business was awesome. So. But you're, there's always, it seems like there's a governor when you have somebody else in the room. You can't be yourself. You're trying to perform for your manager, not be human.

Yohance: And then the manager's trying not to take over. Right. Not to rescue you. Like, let me bail you out of this situation.

Will: I can, I can listen to the meeting, I can read the notes, I can see all the statistics. They don't need me in there reminding them we can build that scorecard ahead of the meeting so they know I need to make sure I'm asking these questions. And if I haven't, there's a red light that says you haven't asked them about retirement date or something and had that conversation. So it's going to allow me to immediately hire more people and, and build a, a broader firm and be able to do it with, with newer advisors then, or advisors that maybe aren't getting this training where they are right now.

Yohance: Hmm. You're the first I've heard say that. That is because a lot of these conversations that I've had, and even me personally, I've had to think more from a service staff perspective where I thought I'd be as far as how many team members I'd have to support the size of the financial planning practice. And I came into 2026 expecting that I would probably add at least another part time member.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And then I lost a full time member earlier this year.

Will: Oh, geez.

Yohance: But then I found myself with everything that we've been doing with not just, not just AI tools like Jump, like Hazel, like Zox, but also with all the other automation that other tools now offer. So for instance, how Calendly can send out an infinite amount of emails pre or post a meeting, Right?

Will: Yeah, that's, that's huge.

Yohance: When I knew it was there, but didn't know it was really there until about a month ago, I was like, wait a minute. And, and it came from doing an exercise of after this team member left the company, doing a brain dump of what is everything this person does and then just started asking my AI tools, here's. And I said here's my tech stack. From what information is publicly known about what these companies can do, what steps that this person was doing can now be automated.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: And it just started spitting things. I was like, wait, I didn't know Wealthbox could do that. I didn't know Calendly could do that. And it was there the whole time. You kind of get stuck in your ways, you know, go looking for. Because you know they're always giving you some pop up when you Log in and tell you, look what we can do now. And you're like, that's not what I'm here for right now. And you dismiss it and you move on. Well, I dismissed something that I probably could have implemented a long time ago. And who knows, maybe I contributed to the burnout of my own number by not finding these systems and tools earlier. So I started thinking about, okay, well wait, maybe I don't need another full time person. Maybe the answer is even though I lost a full time, a part time is the answer. But now what are all the tools or services or that person that comes in, what if their sole role is to help improve my technology? I started thinking about what would a. Maybe not a chief Technology officer. I'm not really ready to pay that level of money for a full time person. But what if, what if a fractional technology person could come into the practice and find more of those ways of using the jumps, the Zapiers, the Zox.

Will: That's what we gave that project to Katie and. Okay, have you built yourself a master prompt yet?

Yohance: Oh, yeah.

Will: Okay, so I, we build a master prompt for all of our roles.

Yohance: Yep. I just, I just tweaked it last

Will: night so Katie can now put that in and look against our tech stack. And look, Katie and I, her and I work on a project for our firm called. It's called the moat project where we're trying to make sure we build a moat around Hoffman Wealth Management to protect it from all sorts of issues, somebody leaving, somebody, you know, unfortunately passing away, you know, market fluctuations, all of those things. And we build that moat around there and we ask Claude all the time, what are we missing? We've built this. If, if for some reason our marketing director were to leave us tomorrow, what do we need to do to make sure that our marketing doesn't miss a post or a, a video or a podcast or something. And build that so that if or when it ever happens, we're not sitting there like deer and headlights saying, now what do we do? We've already know what to do. We have the Playbook. Open it up and let's go.

Yohance: Did you see Will Steiner shout out to Will did a workshop for Claude for financial advisors.

Will: I did not.

Yohance: Yeah, so he did a whole. It's like 350 bucks, it seemed. I mean, it's Will. I was like, i probably have bought more beer for Will last year. But yeah, so we did. So I'm probably about a third of the way through it and. Okay, about a third way through I got stuck on the video. I was like, whoa, this is a game changer. It's about creating. I forgot what he called it. But it's. It's in Claude making sure that when you go to ask it to create something for you, it goes through the same process every time. So think like if I want to explain to a client the difference between a. A Roth IRA or shooting a. We'll do the super mega backdoor Roth IRA and just the backdoor Roth ira, which it's a nuance that I've probably explained a hundred times. But if I just wanted to have. Here's a quick, you know, video that I can attach it to of me explaining it. Here's a quick little PDF on it where now I don't have to ever explain it again.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Because now my team member can say, here's the information you're looking for on that. Or if I wanted to ask it a different question, it would still format the answer in the same way.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: Because I let. For instance, when a client asked me What's a Roth IRA? I like to go back to 1997 before they existed, and say, this is how it came into play. It used to be, you know, $2,000. And over time it's grown. And then there were rules about conversions, et cetera. So I kind of like to give them the whole history and not just, hey, it's an account. You put money in, you get, take it out tax free and you can do 7, 500. I don't know. That's just the way I learned. So. But if you could teach Claude to any explainer that you want to do, it gives it that same format.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: Like I said, I got. I've been stuck on that video for two days because I started building. Yeah. The classes.

Will: Claude is. Is. It's my preferred.

Yohance: It's mine now too. It's mine now. It is thanks to these podcasts. I had some other advisors tell me that I needed to.

Will: But start so I've.

Yohance: Further away.

Will: I don't know if you follow Dan Martell on.

Yohance: Yes, I do. Oh yes.

Will: Everything puts out on. On YouTube. I've. I've built master prompts for not just me. As founder and president of Hoffman Wealth Management, I built a master prompt for my house. So if I want to. You know, if we're re. For example, we're working on the landscaping right now. So I can put that master prompt in. It knows it can help me do what a landscap landscaping architect would have done. And design knows the climate that our house is in, knows what's going to work and give, tell me what, what plants, when to plant them. Did the design work. Nico did the same thing. Nico was actually her who turned me on to that. I built a master prompt for me as a marathon athlete. So now it is helping me with my, my diet, my training program, my meal prep. And I will actually. So if I'm trying to figure out something with my calendar and I'm looking at my calendar and saying I, I don't know how I'm going to have the time to do this, I can put my marathon master prompt and my CEO master prompt in and say room.

Yohance: Yep.

Will: And say listen, I need to run this many miles this week and I need to run this office this week and plus my kids have lacrosse and track in the evening. So can you help me budget my time and it'll do that and still find time for date night?

Yohance: I did, I did do that last soccer season. I was trying to figure out how because I started coaching soccer and yeah again I got to figure out my schedule with soccer. And it's not just as a parent coach. I can't just coach the team. I also have to coach my daughter solo. She wants the solo time. So we wind up doing soccer four nights a week. How am I going to do this? And I sure enough allowed my AI tool to help me think through. It's like you can see my calendar, you know, all those things I have to do.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: How do I do this? And I want to be able to keep it fun for her so it doesn't become mature. And he gave me some ideas on that as well.

Will: And yeah, when I built my master prompt for, for me as founder and president, I ended up going through Claude on like an hour and a half long business coaching. It just kept asking questions and I would answer them and direction we wanted to go and some, some certain niche markets that we want to create for to add a new advisor to. And it was, I couldn't stop. It just kept taking me through this process and some eye opening stuff and it was, it was. I don't know what a business coach would have charged but I, I definitely got my money's worth out of Claude for that.

Yohance: That afternoon I did plug in all. So I hired a business coach. Oh gosh. 2019 hired business coach. And so I put all of that material into Claude because I built my a master prompt. It's called the chief strategy. AI is its name.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And so I put everything that I did back then gave It My P and L for this year gave it. So we use E Money. You know, E Money has this analytical page which breaks down all the analytics of your practice. How many are baby boomers versus Gen X, Gen Y. You know, average client information, etc. Something I learned from Will, how to anonymize information. So I plugged it in one place, anonymized it, then put it back into Claude.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And then I just told it straight up what my goals were and told it to roast me. And it's also. So I also downloaded everything. So calendly gave me a spreadsheet that had all the amount of meetings, how many hours I spent each meeting, how many times I see clients each throughout the year. Except it had so much data. Who. When I tell you, it tore me apart.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: Because part of the workshop that I did with this coach was today you get an email, 8 o' clock in the morning and the board has ousted you at CEO. You have to the end of the day to get your job back. So you had to critique all the reasons you got fired as a CEO.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: Why did they let you go? So you basically just write down all your worst qualities as a business owner and then you start working backwards to fix all the things. Okay, they're going to give you a job back, but you got to fix all this stuff. You've got 90 days go. So that was the workshop I went through with them. So I had Claude do the same thing. Man, it'd be painful.

Will: Yeah, eye opening for sure.

Yohance: I it roasted me about not increasing my fees over the last eight years.

Will: Oh, wow.

Yohance: So I've increased them for new clients, but I don't have an increased existing clients. Okay, anybody just said, what are you scared is you're going to lose them? I was like, calm down, Claude. I was like, claude, relax. It's a conversation. And then still, even if you did, even if you, you know, if you didn't increase by 25, you could lose 10, whatever number was and still have net more money. It let me have it.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: And then when we finally, again, it was that long rabbit, you know, rabbit hole. And then finally we get towards the end, I was like, okay, I'm not going to do all of this stuff, but where should I start? And it gave me some things to start on. Talked about my client calendar should start there. But when I see people prioritizing, you know, my clients need the most attention, making sure they're getting on the calendar early. What else did it tell me? It did tell me that I should consider a va, a virtual assistant.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And because it knew that we lost an assistant and how to close that gap, which led me to interview with some of the VA companies. We have interview with Nifty next week. I interviewed Belay last week and then there's another one whose name I can't remember. But they, they said, sorry, we're full. We can't interview you until August. I was like, good for you. But yeah, like, like you said, it was very eye openening stuff that, that, like I said, I could have paid a business coach a few thousand dollars and probably come to the same conclusion. And I'm not taking anything away from business coaches.

Will: I mean, sure, right, right, right.

Yohance: I'm sure there may be another point in my life where I want to hire a business coach because I want that human connection going back to only human. But as a CEO, just to sit down and be able to take an afternoon and dissect the business and come up with strategies to implement over the next 90 days and do it in a matter of hours for something that I paid. I don't know, what was it? $400 for a year's long subscription.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Not bad.

Will: Right. And it's more than once a week and it's on your time. Not. Not a combined schedule. And that's, you know, as fathers of young children, being able to do things on our time with something like Claude is invaluable because it frees that calendar up so much.

Yohance: Yeah, i get, I get kind of excited when my wife says she's got something to do. My daughter's got something else to do. She's like, I don't know what you're doing, but you got to figure out dinner on your own. I'm like, claude, here we go, let's go. And dinner's easy. Like, that's easy. But I'm alone. I turn on whatever I want on television, have my laptop, and just start having conversations with Claude and then say, okay, schedule me. Time for me to do this. Put this on my to do list. And actually now I look up and like, wow, these things are getting done. I had a list of 10 things to automate. Eight out of the 10 have been automated.

Will: Nice. Now you use altruist. Right? Altruist. How is the experience with Hazel been? We don't have a resource like that. We use LPL as a custodian right now. But how, how has that impacted your business?

Yohance: Oh, everything you said for jump minus, they don't have the, they don't have the score. Yet I can tell it to give me a score. So I, I did put that in my prompt, but they said there's an update coming soon, that I'll be able to do that. But the. What I found is that all of these AI tools have a one up on each other in some area, but only for a short time.

Will: Maker after haymaker.

Yohance: Exactly, exactly, exactly. So this was like. Let's just talk about that. Kind of like watching a final NBA finals game. Like 3.3 pointer. 3 pointer. Half court, half court. Like somebody dribbled a ball further in first. Anyway.

Will: Right.

Yohance: But yeah, it's, it's been absolutely phenomenal. So similar to. As you were mentioning with Jump. I can. It's prepping us for our meetings. The one up that it has on Jump is that it can see the client's accounts at Altrus.

Will: Right.

Yohance: So I can build into my prompts. I want to know the you know, average annual returns or the concentration, whatever it is that I want to know. And usually I'm asking for. They get their return statements. I'm asking for concentration. You know, if there's any concentration that I need to be aware of. I want to make sure I bring that up because I work with a lot of tech clients that have some big positions at Google or Meta or that sort of thing. So I like being able to just look at the meeting notes and not have to go open up all the statements and Right. Pour through it to find that information. It sends the email automatically afterwards for the meeting. Syncs all the notes to Wealthbox. Use Wealthbox as well. Syncs the task. They have an email feature that had a couple of bugs so they've turned it off temporarily to kind of work some of those bugs out.

Will: You can use Hazel as a, if I understand it correctly, as a quasi virtual assistant also. So it can. You can tell it to get you a change of beneficiary form for this client.

Yohance: And it's not yet. That's. It's. It's coming and not yet. Okay, so there's. There. Yeah, that is still. What's the word? Beta. But yes, that is you will be able to read and we won't say write pre. Write for anything you want to submit on the Altruist platform.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: They haven't quite got to the point they're not quite ready for it to write fully. But it's. It's just a matter of time, right? It's just a matter of time. So yeah. And so that's why I've, I've decided Because I'm. I've got 70 of my assets at Altruist. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and go all in on this. I still have subscriptions to Jump in Zox because I like to go and play with them a little bit, and just. Because I do a lot of industry stuff. Sure. But I was early. I was. I was one of the betas on Jump, so I was there early, and it was.

Will: As soon as it was available to us, we jumped all over. Pun intended, I guess we jumped. We were all over it. Never looked back. And, yeah, again, like I said, it's been. I mean, think about, you know, as advisors and as CEOs, we are thinking about our firm's capacity all the time. You can only. There's only one you. There's only. There's only so much you can do. While we would love to take on every client that crosses our path, we. We. We can be a lot less selective now, I guess is a way to say that our capacity at least. I noticed that our capacity limits have increased because I don't need to be doing as much pre or post.

Yohance: Oh, my goodness.

Will: So. So we can. We can increase our capacity, which. Listen, we're. We're all running businesses as well, so the. The idea that we can now grow beyond where we thought five years ago for us is. Is really exciting.

Yohance: Yeah. And I'm learning that my clients take more action because I'm more active.

Will: Yes.

Yohance: Because in the past, I mean, let's. Let's go all the way back to the old days where we started in the early 2000s, where clients would bring us their statements, and we're trying to create the financial plan on either some desktop software or what have you. And then it may be. Don't let a client miss a meeting, because it's not. Zoom. If they're driving into your office, they may not come to another meeting until six, seven months from then.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Just because of the efforts that we put in.

Will: I don't know what you're. I was driving to meeting or driving to them.

Yohance: That too.

Will: Yeah. I did that, too, sitting at dining room tables. Because, you know, my office was in Pittsburgh and my natural market was about 25 or 30 minutes outside of the city. So I was spending more time in a car than I was doing financial advisor work.

Yohance: But now we can have a. We can have a much bigger impact much earlier in the relationship thanks to things like note takers, where. I mean, I remember, I look at some of the notes after Meeting. And I'm like, when did they say that?

Will: Right?

Yohance: And I'll go back. I'm like, I thought I was listening, but I didn't pick up on that. But the notes did great. Or my assistant will go in behind me and I shouldn't call my assistant. One of my team members, my account specialist, she'll come in and she'll say, hey, she's got two rollovers. I'm like, no, there's only one. No, it clearly said there's two. There's this one. There's another small one that's here. I was like, oh, i guess there's two.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: And so now the hey, client, we need this for this rollover, this for that role. The paperwork showing up because all the links are. We put the links where they need to store stuff directly into their follow up email. So there's no, hey, what's the link? Or how do I log in? Everything is there. And I sell clients all the time. You're paying me so that you can get better results. And not just results from the market, meaning results in your ability to take action. Because you're taking action.

Will: Results from purpose you're expecting me to deliver, which is high quality, timely advice based on the direction you want to head. Right. You're absolutely right.

Yohance: Or as, as Justin Costelli says it, I'm not just trying to help you with a return on assets, I'm also trying to help you with a return on life.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: So let's check these things off. Let's get these things. And clients are getting stuff done.

Will: Like, wow.

Yohance: The time it takes to go from initial meeting to implementing financial plan has gone from six months down to like 90 days.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: This is the time it takes for someone to do an estate plan has gone from never to it's done. You know, but a lot of that is because of these tools that we have that can hold not just us accountable, but the client accountable.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Because gone are the days. Like, oh, did you send me that email? Yes, actually I did. Hazel sent it. John, whoever sent it, it went, it's a machine.

Will: If you wanted to ruin my day, you asked me to send you an email of our meeting notes and now it's done.

Yohance: Can you send it by the end of the night? Can it be there by the time I get home from your office?

Will: I mean, I remember when talk to text became available and how much of a game changer that was for me that I didn't have to type every email. And now I don't. I have to Go in and, you know, check its spelling. That's about it. Of course, if I'm doing spell check, that's that we're all in a bad place.

Yohance: I did just. I had a client text me today and she said, she said, you're. I think your AI spelled my baby's name wrong. I was like, you're right. Did I miss that? I missed that. My bad. I. I'll fix it. So I know it wasn't you. I know it was your AI, but I'm gonna get my to do list done. Yes, you are.

Will: Well, when you think about. Because you, you spend a lot of time in the, the emergency medical.

Yohance: Oh, yeah, those folks.

Will: Time is so precious to those folks because one, their life is. They're living their life in seconds. And when they're not working, the last thing they want to be doing is this. They want to either be sleeping or spending time with their families. So now that. That you can speed up how effective you are for them has to be a life changing experience for them. On receiving advice from a financial advisor,

Yohance: I'm gonna share this text with you and everyone else because it's just so beautiful. So I get a text message this morning. This is after meeting with a doctor last night. And it's a screenshot of her net worth tracker in our financial planning tool.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And it says, happy Friday. Pretty sure you have other quick growth clients. But for your, for your book, 100k to 1 million in three years and you can say we were millionaires by 35, brand new doctor family, straight out of residency with two kids under two, blah, blah, blah, hashtag, hashtag. And this is also for your upcoming client targeting. It's a cute pitch. She all of a sudden is telling me to use her story because she knows I was telling her I was going to a physician conference.

Will: She was just.

Yohance: Just out of curiosity, you know, what's it like getting clients? And so I gave her some of the background of some of the work I'm doing with Claude and with Hazel to help me think about the business differently and scaling back on some clients and doubling down on existing clients and telling some clients, they're like, hey, this isn't working obviously, so maybe we should do something different to make more room. And I said it for people like you, and she was like, I like that.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: And so she was thinking about it the next morning and say, actually, we like working with you. Look what we've done. Like, use me as an example. Like, this is worth it. And I didn't Realize it. I was like, whoa, y' all did go from a hundred thousand in assets to a million in three years. That is pretty good.

Will: Yeah. That's awesome.

Yohance: And they were with me at the beginning, at the onset of using more of the technology.

Will: Okay.

Yohance: And being able to move very quickly from. All right, you signed your contract. You just do this 401k. Let's sign up for the HSA. Let's. All of the things were just there and the follow up was just immaculate to where and their clients would like to take action.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: I give her a to do list. Oh, she's coming to that meeting. My list is done. Nice. But. But it I'm thankful for again, the tools to help me stay more organized. Because that same client. Would they have eventually got to that net worth? Yes. Would it probably have taken us a little bit longer because of the time it takes for me to regurgitate everything that they said and make sure that I didn't miss anything. And they got their follow up email and their accounts are getting set up. No way. Oh, yeah. And of course, thanks to the market a little bit. So I guess the market had a little bit to do with it.

Will: Right. It's been a nice couple of years. Right. So.

Yohance: All right.

Will: I don't, I don't know if, you know, you spend a lot of time at conferences like I do. I do our peers that are resistant. So how do we move them along? Whether they're advice.

Yohance: Well, let's, let's separate them first. So first let's. First let's take the people that their broker dealer said no.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Let's put them over there. And to those people, I have a message to find a different broker dealer.

Will: Yeah.

Yohance: Okay.

Will: Or a couple months.

Yohance: A couple months.

Will: That's it. Yeah.

Yohance: Okay. Find. We're happy, Will. We'll talk you through it. I'll talk you through it. Start there. For the rest that are just on the sidelines out of fear. Out of.

Will: No, let's just call it fear myopic mindset or something.

Yohance: Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna say what I've said several times on this podcast. If this isn't your first time listening, you will not be replaced by AI. You will be replaced by someone who effectively knows how to use it.

Will: Yes.

Yohance: It's already happening. There's dozens of stories out there on LinkedIn if you want to find them. Go. Now that I sit down, once I say it, you're gonna see it on LinkedIn now. Where someone that either has a jump or a Hazel or A con. Was it Conti or any of those recording tools? Or they're going to boast and brag about how they were being interviewed as a financial advisor and the client had. Or the prospective client had seen multiple people, but you were the only one, or that person was the only one that was able to send up the follow up email within minutes of getting off the zoom or the person leaving their office. And that clients can say, how did you do that so fast? And they'll say, well, because as I mentioned, we use technology to help us integrate and work with the clients, whatever the story is. And they won that business because the person that is not using it is still sitting on those meeting notes and still trying to come up with the proposal letter or whatever it is. And meanwhile, yours is already out.

Will: Well, right, because you know, think about the second somebody leaves your office, they get in the car and what's the first thing they say to one another? They don't ask, what'd you think of that chart? They don't say, what did you think of his office? They say, do you like him?

Yohance: Do you like them?

Will: And when you're immediately following through in the middle of that conversation with everything we talked about. Yeah, well, geez, he already sent us an email with a follow up and what our tasks are. Yeah, I like them. Look, look at the results I have. You're right. You are light years ahead and you're not being replaced by a robot.

Yohance: No, no, that's just person that knew how to use a robot. That's it. So, so I say to those individuals, choose a tool and go for it. But go for it for at least 90 days. Yes, take 90 days. Whether it's Jump or if it's Hazel or if it's Conti or if, I mean you even. I can't believe I'm saying this out loud. You could even use the Wealth Box meeting recorder. No shame to Wealth Box. But hey, you guys talk about showing up at the party before the lights come on. But it's an option. You can use it. It's. And it's not bad. It's just not as robust as some of the others.

Will: I haven't, I haven't tried it yet because of.

Yohance: Oh, i did. Because. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. When you've already been on Jump or Hazel and then you go try that. It's just like, okay, it's kind of like going to your favorite sandwich shop and you're like, hey, yeah, I just want the meat and cheese. No lettuce, no tomato, no Secret sauce, just meat, cheese and bread. I want it dry now. It will satiate you. You will be full when you're done. But it's not going to be an enjoyable experience eating that sandwich.

Will: Right.

Yohance: Oh, I can see that now. That's probably going to be one of the clips for this show.

Will: There you go.

Yohance: So yeah, I encourage pick one of them. And, and, and, and you, you are going to have to set aside. It's not all at once, but you're going to need at least a full two business days of time of getting it to do what you want it to do. In a way you want it to do it. And I would not encourage you to try to do everything at once. If you just want to use it. I'm just going to use it for my. Let's say you're someone that has at least one to two discovery meetings a week. Just use it for your discovery meetings for the first 90 days and perfect that. Or if you're someone that does, you know, an annual review and you're doing a few of those, you do it on something that you can get a fair amount of data from and that you can tweak and perfect to the agenda that you want. The meeting note style that you want and the post email that you want. And, and that's what I would encourage you do and just spend 90 days with it also. All of them have, you know, they'll give you 30 days of. We'll help you get through this and set everything up and sign you to, to a, to a tech specialist to help you. But give it that time. And I said this on the last episode. It will be. If you're of a certain age, it will be like that moment that you went from either typewriter to word processor or word processor to computer. Right? You never went.

Will: Right. You.

Yohance: Exactly. You never. Well, some companies still make us go back to the facts. Insurance companies. I'm talking to you. Why are we faxing? It is 2020, 26, right. Why are we faxing you? And you don't even have a fax machine. All your faxes now go to a computer. So don't act like someone's at a fax machine is actually spitting out paper. We can email you. I'm sorry, rant over.

Will: That's all right. No, you're, you're, you're exactly right. And they are the culprits. My. I told you. My dad ran a property and casualty insurance agency for 52 years. My dad was always pretty tech forward. He had computers in his office before most did back in the 80s. He. He was using email early, early on. And when he grumbles about AI, I said, dad, listen, you sound now the way your predecessor or your older colleagues sounded when you started using email. So don't. Let's not lose that enthusiasm for things that are new. Insurance agents aren't going to be replaced by AI, at least not yet. And let's. Let's keep that open mindset because just because the technology is different doesn't mean adoption has to change. The true and agreed. I like what you said. 90 days and. And then look at your business objectively 90 days later and say, did this help? Especially when it comes to jump. The answer is going to be yes. Yeah, the answer. The answer will be yes.

Yohance: All right, Will. It's my favorite part of the show. This is when we play a little game that you're probably not familiar with and you're not ready for. So it's going to catch you a little off guard. But that's why I love it. So it is known in the general public by some much more vulgar terms that we've cleaned it up a little bit. So it is called Mary Divorce and some tech on the side. So what I want to know. See you thought of the other version. I want to know. I want to know a technology that you're absolutely married to. I think I can guess what it is. But you are married to. The papers have been signed. There's no prenup. You're all in. Then I want to know what is a technology that you are. You know, you might be filing a separation agreement here soon because it's not quite working out. And then what is the tech? And this could be a tech, an app or a SaaS, whatever it is, what is the tech that you are starting to have a little side relationship with? Got a little side tech going on. So, okay, start with Mary. What are you married to?

Will: We're married to Jump. That. That's easy. Jump. Jump is a. An easy tool to. To be in that committed relationship with.

Yohance: I love it. I love it.

Will: Separating with. We have filed our separation paperwork with FMG Suite.

Yohance: Oh. Oh, my.

Will: No. We have. We have. Interesting Found a. That it is more important for our website and our marketing to be in our own voice versus a plug and play. Do it yourself. I understand the value in FMG Suite. We have used them for a while. We are in the process of building a website with a local firm that's going to be a lot more integrated and that. That was that was the, the whole motive behind hiring Brynn was the canned content that a hundred thousand other financial advisors just wasn't.

Yohance: It's not human at the end of the day.

Will: Right.

Yohance: It's not human. It's not.

Will: Right. It's, it's.

Yohance: And this is one of those places where we really get to put our own fingerprint on something.

Will: Yes. And, and that fingerprints is open 247 when you're asleep. Somebody somewhere who has seen your content is going to your website.

Yohance: Yeah.

Will: And saying, all right, this looks like the 10 other websites that I've seen. So yeah, we, we have filed our separation paperwork. And, and again, if you are a sole practitioner without the capacity or if you are a new advisor, starting independence FMG suite is perfectly, perfectly capable of handling your needs. But for us trying to go from sole practice to enterprise, that, that, that, that separation was necessary.

Yohance: Okay.

Will: Oh boy.

Yohance: Who are you dating? What tech are you dating right now?

Will: Claude. Cowork. Ah, so beyond just, just Claude is. But Claude trying to understand a little bit more about the projects and the co work and how we can start building our own agents a little bit. I know that from a compliance standpoint, we still have a while to go before those are going to be able to be fully operational. But the second they are, I want our firm to be ready to pounce. And, and building your own agent is.

Yohance: You're gonna love Will's workshop then. Okay, I'll send you, I'll send you a link to it. It's.

Will: Yeah, well, because all. Everybody in our office is going to be taking it. I mean that, that's. We try to learn those things and learn them together and you're going to

Yohance: see, you're going to do the same thing at it. You've got a third way through. You're like, I don't even know what's at the end. I just, I want to just do this.

Will: I get that way with Dan Martell's content. It's. Save it, take the notes, send it out to the team, man.

Yohance: But Dan, he is a fire hose.

Will: I know.

Yohance: Guy like. Yeah, I, I have to put him on my TV so I can listen to him talk for about eight seconds, pause and do something right. Or else I'm like, whoa, hold on. You. You lost me at step two.

Will: Yeah. But I, I make my kids watch them, especially my 15 year old.

Yohance: Oh, nice.

Will: There's a couple of guys that are. That may be a bit mature for them, but they're on the right. The school of hard knocks kid. Oh, i can't remember his name. James Dumlin, Dan Martell are two that I, I make my son have a subscription to and watch just to. Just to keep their heads looking forward when it comes to all of this.

Yohance: Indeed. Well, listen, Will, I 100 appreciate you spending some time with us on Only Human. You gave us a lot of insight to not only your business and how it's evolved over the years. And I, I really loved your story about. With your father and how the. He, he, he did not open up the book to you early.

Will: No, no, that was. And he was, he was very forward about that. That he was not. You got to learn to do this. I can't train you and I'm not going to, I'm not going to make it easy for you.

Yohance: Yeah, I'm really excited about thinking a little bit differently about my growth in my business, especially around headcount. I think other advisor business owners need to think about that too. Is that if you came up in this, if you've been in this business 10, 15 years at least, and you started at a wirehouse or at a major insurance firm, you had those meetings where you had a boss of some sort or, or you were a junior to their senior and they were covering your meetings, as we used to call it. You know, nowadays if you can find the competent person that you trust, you can send a meeting recorder into that meeting to cover the meeting. And that helps build trust earlier on. Yes, builds confidence earlier on and the client relationship with that individual. Quick story, I'll tell on that. I had a. In 2004, three years in the business, I landed one of the biggest accounts that my office had ever seen. $6 million in 2004. $6 million for. Yeah, kid. That's been in the business for three years. And I'm young and black and dressed in JCPenney suits. That was a feat. Okay. It was a cold call. It just took a lot of nurturing. And finally they said yes. But when I moved from Texas to California, older couple, they said, you know what? We kind of want to stay with someone that's local. And they wind up transferring the relationship to that manager that was in that meeting for the first few meetings, which at the time was the right thing for them, the right thing to do. And sure, I feel it all worked out great in the end. I'm still here. But imagine if I could have built a deeper relationship with them one on one. Because guess what? That manager was not on the phone getting them to come into the office.

Will: Right.

Yohance: That was Me. But when they got in the office, they saw the other body. What if all they had was me? Is it possible that I would still have that relationship today?

Will: Right.

Yohance: I think. I think it is.

Will: And when you think about it, from being the manager at this point now, how. How damaging it can be to be immediately correcting somebody in the moment.

Yohance: Yeah.

Will: It. It starts to diminish that relationship, diminish the client's confidence in them, rather than just saying later on, hey, you were talking too much, or you should have asked the question this way instead of correcting them in the moment for the sake of the sale.

Yohance: That.

Will: You know, that. That's. And I think that's because we're not in those environments where we're selling to eat what we kill anymore. We. We have that. That mindset because we don't have sales goals.

Yohance: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, again, Will, if any advisors want to reach out to you for some support, maybe they're thinking about testing out jump or they want to just pick your brain on. On becoming an RIA. How can they find you?

Will: I'm very active on LinkedIn. Just. Will Hoffman AIF on LinkedIn. Always go to our website, hoffmanwealth.com new one coming soon. You can check out our podcast, wealth on the Move, with which we got to get you on here is. Is as soon as possible, because I think we.

Yohance: Let's get it.

Will: This was a lot of fun. We got to keep it going. We have a really robust YouTube channel for our firm where we put a ton of content out, but the best way to immediately get in touch with me would be on LinkedIn.

Yohance: Wonderful. Well, we appreciate you. Enjoy your weekend.

Will: Thank you so much for having us.

Yohance: I'll tell you all about Tour 18 after I play it.

Will: Yeah. Can't wait to hear about it. Can't wait to see you again at Future Proof in California. And hopefully we can tee it up again while we're there.

Yohance: Absolutely. We'll get it done. We won't make it take a year this time, though.

Will: That's right.

Yohance: All right, well, thanks. All right. All right. I'm gonna kick you out of the room, and then you.

Will: Okay. Okay. I didn't know if you wanted me on for the.

Yohance: Oh, no, I'll do the intro. No, I'll do the intro.

Will: On your own. Okay.

Yohance: So, yeah, Jessica will be in touch with you with all the post stuff. You're probably about two or three weeks out just for where we are as far as podcasts. And then, yeah, all I asked you to do is Be active with me on LinkedIn when we talk about it. We'll have some clips, they'll have some cutaways and little fun stuff with it.

Will: So, yeah, if there's anything that Bryn will dissect it when she sees it too. And if there's anything that she wants to do, I'll make sure she gets in touch with you or Jessica. Perfect. And then she'll be. She'll be in touch with scheduling you to get on the. The wealth on the Move podcast.

Yohance: Let's get it.

Will: All right, buddy. Have a great weekend. Thanks so much. See you.

Yohance: Bye. Welcome to the Money Script podcast. It's the only human channel where we are talking directly to advisors about implementing technology into your practice. I have a good friend joining me today, Will Hoffman. We got to know each other on the golf course in Southern California. It was my first time playing that course. It was Pelican Hill, which was. I'd never been. Amazing houses out there. I think they were telling stories about the Hot Pocket house or something like that. The guy that started Hot Pockets, I think Kobe had a house out there. I don't know, just a lot of big houses. You couldn't see his house, but I think that was the story we were told. Got to play with a caddy. It was great. It was amazing. Good, good times. But Will and I are going to talk about, of course, implementing technology into his business. He started from very humble beginnings as well. Been in the business for about 23 years, so we've been around the same time. So we've seen some of the similar stuff as everything got integrated with technology and as all the financial firms began to change and then also making that transition over to being a registered investment advisor. So excited about the conversation with him. You're going to get a kick out of his married divorce and some tech on the side. I didn't see that one coming. He shocked me on that. And I'm starting to think about things a little bit differently. He also made me think differently about the role that technology and AI and meeting recorders have in expanding your headcount, which was different as well. I hadn't thought about. I've really only thought about shrinking. Well, not shrinking, maybe just not fully replacing, if you know what I mean, or any. Having the people I have be able to do more and not be able to hire. Not have to hire more people. But he actually came with a reason to hire more people. Yeah, it's got me thinking about that differently. So with no further ado, let's get to my conversation with Will see you on the backside.