[00:00:00] Speaker A: We don't ask like for account numbers, we don't ask for your date of birth, we don't ask for your address. We don't ask for like how much money you have because none of those are relevant until you know that you can trust the person you want to share that information with.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Well, today on Innovate and Overcome, we are going to have an incredible conversation with Derek Notman. Now Derek is a self proclaimed rebel dad on a mission to repair our relationship with money. As a world traveler and an award winning financial advisor, he's got some great stories to tell. Now recently he became a fintech founder and the CEO of an incredible new company called Coupler AI. He's really going to be changing the game when it comes to consumers and advisors and making connections with them. It's a really fascinating thing. We're going to talk about that a little bit later. He's also the co host of Rethink Financial Advice podcast. We question everything about financial advice because sometimes the best way to fix things is to laugh at them first. Love that tagline. Really appreciate it. Derek, excited to have you on the program today.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Thank you very much Richard. Awesome to be here with you and excited to have a fun conversation with you. Hopefully we get a couple of laughs out of this one too.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: I think we probably will. Now for our listening viewing audience, there's some really incredible things that transpire in the world of being a financial advisor and you've again, as an award winning individual, I'm sure you've seen a lot in that timeframe. Certain things around economic changes and challenges and so forth. But before we dig in and unpack some of those, I'm really curious. You know, before we hit the record button today, you mentioned there was this, this experience that you had where you moved all the way kind of across the country for an opportunity and then that opportunity fell flat very, very shortly. Now that could be really devastating for anyone who's gone through something similar and I suspect some of our viewers have had that experience before. So. So walk us through what transpired and how much of a disruption that was for you and your family.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: It was a massive disruption. But you know, out of the fire came some good things. So at the time we were living in northern Vermont and we had a new kid at home, like less than a year old, you know, and so trying to figure out the whole like parent thing. And um, at that point I was a producer at New York Life and ended up meeting another producer at a industry conference where, long story short, he had gotten a program approved from New York Life on a national level, and he was looking for others to be involved with that.
We got to talking, you know, at that conference and the numerous calls later. And he lived in Wisconsin, by the way. And long story short, he's like, you should do this with me. 50 50. And let's make a run of this thing. We've got a heck of an opportunity here. Let's go. Like, this sounds good. So I borrowed some money, I started traveling a lot. And then ultimately the conversation was like, you should probably move to Wisconsin so we can work on this together. And that's our national headquarters, if you will.
Like, okay, talk to my family about it, you know, because I had office buildings, I had staff, I had my business in Vermont. We had owned a home, like, our whole network. Everything was there, and we decided to make it go. But we're risk takers, so we were willing to give this a shot because I could see the upside potential, and it was stroking that entrepreneurial itch that we tend to never get rid of entirely.
And we moved, sold our house, uprooted the family man to a new place where we didn't know anybody other than my. My wife's sister lived nearby, but was not in the same area. It's the only family, no friends that we had.
And funny story, so we got. We were invited to this other professional's wedding in Germany. And I will never forget this, Rich. We're sitting there, actually. We just had breakfast. We're at this little beautiful hotel, and it was either Austria or southern Germany. It was just absolutely stunning in the mountains.
Wedding ceremonies already happened. So now we're just spending a couple days enjoying, you know, with time at the wedding party and exploring. And my wife and I are on our way out in the parking lot to go explore for the day, and this guy comes up and he's like, hey, by the way, I want to talk to you. I'm like, yeah, what's up? You know, because we'd only been in Wisconsin three weeks at this point.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So super fresh. You haven't even settled in and unpacked boxes yet, and you're in Germany.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like, we had just bounced, you know, that quickly because we had been led to believe it wasn't a great opportunity and we should make this happen.
He comes out into the parking lot, and I want to talk to you, Derek. Want to let you know that now that I'm married, I'm moving to New Jersey.
I'm like, what?
I was so dumbfounded my wife and I didn't even know what to say or do. And it kind of put a damper on the rest of the trip.
It was really frustrating and all these what ifs and initially got back and tried to make it work. It's not working. It was adversarial. It was not what I signed up for. And then the conversation was, all right, do I move back to Vermont or do we stay in Wisconsin and try to make a go of it? And we had gone into debt for this whole thing.
And you know, as an advisor, like at least back in those days especially, it was all belly to belly. So all my clients are in New England, I'm in Wisconsin. So now I'm traveling back to and forth to, to Vermont. Every two to three weeks. I'm on a plane, missing time with my family, sleeping on couches or spare bedrooms.
And that got old pretty quick. And that's what like my wife and I are like. We can't keep doing this. What are we going to do?
And that's where I decided to make lemonade out of lemons. And I cut ties with that other guy entirely and start like basically reinvented myself and created a, A, a virtual practice for myself. So ended up, and we can go into all those other details, but it, it almost bankrupted us. Very stressful, A lot of sleepless nights.
But looking back on it, it helped me get where I am today too. So it's kind of a bittersweet thing if you, if you, if you think.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: About it, it's so common that again, our, our greatest challenges, the moments of strife, those lessons, you know, the idea that there's something on the other side of that is always the case. And looking for the lesson, some people look for it and some people don't realize it's there until many years later looking back. But they're often these experiences that create such incredible growth in our life because it's not until that you're tested that you can actually experience that type of growth. There's a saying that one of my good friends, James Nethery, likes to say, which is that iron sharpens iron. And being around the right kind of people, right organizations, the people around you, helps you do that a lot, which is probably one of the reasons why you set up the Rebel Dads group, which we'll probably talk about a little bit later.
Now this is a really incredible experience, Derek. I mean, just really eye opening that something so incredible could happen in such a short period of time and such a massive move and having made a move like that myself somewhere recently, about four years ago, upended everything, moved away from all family, didn't know anyone, moved to another community, did it for a different lifestyle. So the reason being different, but still having gone through a similar experience, I can resonate very much with what you're sharing. How about, how many years ago was this when about how deep were you into your financial career at that time when this transpired for you?
[00:08:05] Speaker A: I had been a producing advisor for, I think, seven or eight years at that time already. So, you know, I had the same year my son was born. We ended up buying an office building on Main street in Vermont where we lived, you know, like we were Main street usa. That's, you know, you came in and you had your meetings with us and we did the whole nine yards, so to speak. And so this, this was now, what is it, 20, 24? This was 13 years, give or take a go.
And I definitely got more gray hair because of it.
It was one heck of an experience, man. I. I just lucky that my wife stayed with it through all that because, yeah, I mean, it was tough. It was a. It was a real challenge. It tested us in ways I'd never thought I'd be tested before. And it also showed me that you can't trust everybody. There are people out there that do not always have the best of intentions, unfortunately.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, very interesting. And, you know, you mentioned, you know, approximately 13 years ago. I'm just doing some kind of quick math. I mean, that's really in the aftermath of the financial crisis, really. It's in a short kind of timeframe of that very impactful scenario that was a global situation. And here you are having a successful practice, probably had to deal with some stuff because of that and being able to resolve those things and then still having to pack it all up and shift it. And so 13, or going back to a period of time when you just made the decision to become virtual, I imagine that if you go back that far in time, the adoption rate and the. Even today, for a lot of people, it's a little bit more. It's still foreign. It's less so because of the aftermath of COVID But going back over a decade to starting a financial practice that is virtual is virtually unheard of.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: There really was. It was all unexplored territory. There were one or two other advisors around the country that had done something similar. So I, I definitely tried to follow what they were doing, but there was no roadmap. There was no do this now, do this There was no, hey, this is the webcam you need. Well, what's a webcam? Like, even stuff as simple as that.
It was all of these unknowns that I had to figure out. And I had to figure it out in an environment that was not conducive to virtual advice.
The most of the companies before COVID wanted nothing to do with virtual advice. You have to meet in person with people, you have to go to their home at night, that kind of thing. And so I was just, it was against the, you know, the tide the whole time trying to figure it out. But it was so worth it because I got my time back. I didn't have to travel as much. I had more time with my son, my wife. We got to travel the world and I still got to work. And I was a top producer at New York Life nationally and was able to do it virtually. And then after a couple of years, other advisors and management, like, how are you doing this? You know, like, well, I challenged the status quo. I got a lot of licks on my, on my, my rear end, but I finally figured it out.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely fascinating. Well, and I think that there's, there's so much to learn from that and being an early adopter of that type of technology and how you're able to get your time back. And really, you were in preparation for things. Like when Covid hit, you were so much further ahead of the game than everyone else.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: It was business as usual for me.
It wasn't any issue. It was just, let's keep on going. It wasn't a problem. And what's funny is that I found out that even before COVID clients liked it.
Like, oh, you don't need to come to my house at 6 o'clock at night and spend two hours while I'm trying to cook dinner. You walk the dog and, you know, wash the kids. Yeah, I'd love to meet with you over my lunch break and say it was, it was such a refreshing thing because I had been taught a certain model, which, let's, let's face it, the model had worked for a very long time and was very successful. But times have changed. And even in the time that I had, like when I started, I was a cold caller, door knocker, all of that kind of stuff. But email became more prevalent websites. We had Skype. My first virtual meetings were on Skype. That's what I was using.
And so I just started putting the pieces together. I'm like, oh, there's some pretty cool ways we can start to speed things up, make them more convenient, efficient. The list goes on.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, we're going to talk more about this when we come back after this commercial break.
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[00:13:10] Speaker B: Welcome back. We're talking to Derek about his journey and having picked up everything, moved across multiple states, trying to revive his practice, all the extra work, finds himself now in a position where he's created effectively a virtual business by necessity. And had this not happened, he might not have been able to have that experience. And you know, during the commercial break, we were talking, Derek, about how this is something I, I myself had a similar experience with and I've been virtually running a virtual insurance practice for the better part of approximately almost 13 years. Did used to meet with people here and there now and again. Certainly love those, always love the physical connection, being with somebody knee to knee. But you know, there's just a lot of lack of efficiencies for it. And you mentioned something before we went to the break around having the, you know, the, the idea that this was a benefit to the people you were serving. They could meet you on a lunch break, they could save time. They didn't have to clean up the house. So you could have to have a clean kitchen table with all the clutter moved around when you came over. And, and I was reflecting on my own journey and it's like, you know, being from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where, you know, it can get a little cold and there tends to be snow for a good chunk of the year. One of the most dangerous things that my clients would do would be driving on a road.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: During that time frame and like, well, if I can keep you off the road and I can stay off the road, you can get home with your family, you can do all the things necessary. And we can hop on a Zoom or a Skype or, or equivalent technology call.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: We, we're actually safer and better protected and we could probably be more focused because you're not thinking about how bad the road condition is to go home.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: You got it. That's 100. Right. There's all these conveniences that happen all of a sudden and let's face it, you don't go to the dentist at 6:00 at night, you know, or they don't come to your house at six o'clock at night. Right. You don't go see your attorney or your accountant.
So why are you having your life insurance or financial advisor person come over at night or a weekend or driving there at night? It just didn't make sense. So it's, it's a mindset shift.
And the, the, the biggest roadblock I saw, which I got over very quickly because I just wanted my time back, was that the advisors thought it wasn't possible. No, I have to drive two hours, I have to see them in person to do this review or to close this business. I'm like, why?
Why do you have to do that? Who says you have to do that? And so overcoming that, there are still today advisors that I, I think are struggling with it. In fact, my friend Adam Holt, who's another FinTech CEO and advisor, we just hosted a continuing education session for the Fearless Investing Summit. And we asked, there were maybe 50, 60 advisors in there. We asked them how many of you are still doing almost all of your meetings virtually and only like two or three raised their hand. Everyone has gone back to in person. I'm just like, wow, how, how is that possible? Do you really like driving to and from an office every day and making your evenings, you know, at someone else's house for dinner instead of your own?
So it's just, it's super interesting that, that that dynamic still exists today.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I've experienced people who've gone back a little bit and I think to some degree there's also like a, there's the joy of meeting with people in person that, that we all, I think have a connection.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Of course, we love that. Yeah, it's natural.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: But from a, from a, from an efficiency standpoint and being able to properly serve, really, truly serve people in a way where you, you have everything necessary. I've got, you know, I've got all the tools that I need to do everything effectively. You know, it just, it just makes things a lot easier. And then the result of that I feel personally is I'm actually able to serve my clients better from that vantage point. Yes, you, I suspect you found the same.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Very much so I could spend more time on being the best advisor I wanted to be instead of spending all that time in the, in the car. Like for example, let's say you drive, what is it, 200, you know, was it an hour a day, five days a week, take two weeks off a year. So it's 50 weeks, that's 250 hours that you've driven. In another way, Richard, 250 hours is just over six 40 hour work weeks. You were in the car not being productive. So if you can get that time back, you can use it to be, spend more time with your clients, you can spend more time with your family, hobbies, whatever. So there are a lot of efficiencies and quality of life type of things that happen and the results are better for everybody.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Now when you had to, you know, you were really forced into a position of doing this. And, and so it was by necessity more so. And they say that necessity is the mother of all invention. And so with that, I would imagine, you know, initially there was probably a little bit of pushback here from some of your existing client base and maybe some of them didn't, didn't join you on the ride, but the ones that, that did, obviously it probably became easier for them. What were some of those initial hurdles you had to go over and how did you find you were kind of making, you know, I guess for lack of better term, you were selling this concept of the virtual meetings and that you were going to serve people who had been accustomed to something different. You know, what was that like in that period of time?
[00:18:27] Speaker A: You know, it's funny, so I only lost one client because of the transition and I never told my clients I was making the transition. It just did it. And I just, you know, I started setting up like autoresponders in my email and embedding a calendar link and saying, hey, let's meet virtually. I will save ourselves some time. I don't have to bug you at night.
And it was just this subtle but profound shift.
And it again, this was what was surprising is that so many people really actually liked it because I wasn't showing up at night, you know, or forcing them to drive through a snowstorm to come to my office.
Yes, the belly to belly, the human connection is important, but I mean, how excited do you really get to go to your doctor or your accountant or your attorney's office? It's probably just the same excitement level. You get to go talk to your life insurance agent or financial advisor. So if we can make their life easier, help them get XYZ done faster and I can benefit from that too. Like that's a win for everybody. So there really weren't that many challenges. I think the, the hurdles for me were how, what tech do I need to use?
Who Do I need to get me involved? So I hired a virtual assistant that I had never met for, you know, as. And I've gone through a couple now. The one I have today, I've had Karen for five years. Never met her in person.
Right. But I had to start to find some other who's to come in and help me do the things that I didn't want to do so I could focus on whether it was learning the marketing, the tech, all of that kind of stuff. So it, those were the challenges or the hurdles because there was no roadmap on how to do them.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And when you, when you transition to the online space, of course you, you still need to be able to meet and create new, new clients. And so that was part of the transition as well. So there's a whole different skill set there. And like any business, a business has a front stage and a backstage. You know, what are all the operational activities in the background and then how are we getting to the people or having the people get to us aspect of the business? And that, that doesn't really change fundamentally for any business structure, but it's, it's. There's some uniqueness to it in the vertical of the financial space.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: There truly is. And how do you automate all this stuff that needs to get done still?
While also how do you find those new clients? And so originally for me it was things like on the, on the backstage, metal filing cabinets, yellow pads, you know, photocopiers, you know, all of the physical things, conference room table, you know, all of that stuff.
And so I got rid of that. I went totally paperless with my files.
So that made it a heck of a lot easier. I got rid of my office building. I sold my office building.
And then on the marketing side, instead of cold calling or seminars or door knocking, I started blogging and search engine optimization for the website and social media profiles and putting stuff out there and all learning curves, all, all challenges to figure out. Just like when I started in this industry, I didn't know what cold calling was. I had to go through those scripts and learn all that. And that was a hurdle. So these were just new hurdles, but a different medium, if you will. Right.
So just had to have the mindset that, yeah, we're going to have to go through some struggles, but we'll figure this out. And it was where the puck is headed isn't, you know, didn't. Isn't that Wayne Gretzky who said that go where the puck is headed. Right. You know, that's where you want to go. And that's was like, that's where I'm going.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Well, and in the process, you developed a whole huge skill set of activity. And so leading up to that, I mean, that takes us a little bit more to the current day where you find yourself with that entrepreneurial itch and you're, you're founding a new company, but of course you're also having to deal with, I'll call it the old guard, the, the system of the, of the, of the industry, of the financial machine and how it runs and operates and, and the way it's been doing things is a certain way. And so there's a little bit of, for people who are initiating a different path and want to forge ahead something new, sometimes there can be some battles around that. So founding your new company, wanting to create Coupler and do something very unique and different, what were some of the hurdles around making that, making that business come to fruition?
[00:23:00] Speaker A: So you're right that our industry globally tends to be a very slow moving ship. It, it changes course gradually and after much, much thought.
And I don't, like, I don't, I'm not saying that's bad. There's, it's okay to sometimes go slow.
And I have nothing bad to say about New York life. I had a very good career there. They were amazing people I consider family. But the entrepreneurial side of me, it, it just wasn't able to thrive there like I needed it to. And when I came up with this idea with Coupler, I was essentially said, you cannot do that while you're here.
And I understand, I can understand their perspective. But I was like, well, that, that doesn't work for me. You know, like, I've got this itch and I, I, I have to itch it, I just have to. And so I had to figure out, well, what is that process like? Because I've been there for 16 years, how do I leave, where do I go, what do I do? And all of those unknowns. So I'm essentially, I essentially started two companies at the same time. I started Coupler, but then also had to start my own registered investment advisor and hope my clients would move with me once I left New York life. So I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. I wanted as much stress as I could I could handle. So those were the challenges of just like, I, I have a path in mind. Maybe it's not completely there, you know, like ironed out. It's, it's not tarmac yet, but there's a dirt path there that I think I want to go down and I'm not. I'm being told I can't and I don't like that. So I'm going to go down it now and I'm going to figure it out along the way, even if that causes me some stress in the process.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: You'll hire some people to lay pavement behind you.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I'll blaze the trail. You guys clean up behind me. Make it smooth for everybody else.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Fantastic. Well, we're going to learn all about Coupler and what it does for families, for consumers and for advisors when we come back after this commercial break.
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[00:25:52] Speaker B: So what exactly is this thing Coupler, this Coupler AI platform that Derek has been building and developing and how is it helping to serve the people? You know, that's actually how Derek and I first got connected to Mutual contact Jason Lowe. And you know, who's also been a guest on our show and our program before now, Derek. I'm fascinated by the platform. Earlier on today you were able to unveil and unpack some of the behind the scenes workings of the tool with me and the problem that we're trying to solve. And what I think is interesting, we've gone through your story a little bit and there's the thing that you've built Coupler to do is really solving for some of the things you recognize over the last decade in couple connecting with clients in the advisory space.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: You're right. So Coupler, I'm really excited about Coupler. This is, this is a more than a passion project, that's for darn sure. You know, one of the things that I learned early on as an advisor is that if you don't have new clients, you're out of business.
And in fact, about nine out of ten new advisors fail within the first three years. So I knew that there was a Terrible like problem there of lead flow essentially as we call it. But also I realized that people need help with their money.
Consumers have questions about whether it's life insurance, retirement, college, cash flow, you name it. But they don't have a very high trust for our, our industry and are, are very tentative about trying to go get that advice. It almost feels like a used car experience. They know what they're, you know, they kind of have this preconceived notion.
And so I, I looked back as, on my days as an advisor, I'm a certified financial planner and I looked at all of my successful client relationships and how long I've had them and how they started and they all had this common theme of that I connected with them and they connected with me based on shared commonalities, personality traits, experiences and so forth.
And I, I just asked the question, I'm like well why don't our marketing lead gen solutions do the same thing? It doesn't make sense to me. People are not wired to Connect based on 401k balance and postal code.
They're wired to connect on all these human things.
And I wanted to create a solution that empowered consumers to get hyper personalized financial guidance and advice from the right people at the right time and place. But I also wanted to create a solution that would help more advisors find success through warm inbound lead generation. And when we help both of them then the larger companies of the world obviously also will benefit. So I really was trying to look at how do I flip this script on lead generation, how do we do something differently? And I actually had the, I've had the idea for a very long time and I did a number. It's funny, I joke. I signed up for eHarmony and match.com and Tinder and all that with my wife right next to me, you know, happily married. But I wanted to do more research on like why are these tools so successful in connecting people?
Why can't we build something like that in our, our space?
And long story short, that's what we've done. We've created a really great connection or first date experience if you will, between consumers looking for help and advisors wanting to provide it.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean fundamentally, you know, you've identified a market problem and a market need that most people didn't even really know was a need. They probably did maybe intuitively to some degree someone who's watching this who maybe doesn't have a financial advisor or a person to help them in certain areas and, or they've gone through a Couple and maybe had some bad experiences or as an example, individuals leave the industry. As you identified, Derek? Oh, yes, the failure rate is very high. And the reason the failure rate is high is because of sometimes the way the compensation is designed. And there's, you know, people might be really exceptionally good at the act of financial advising, serving people in the ways that they need to be served, but they're maybe really poor at running a business and keeping the lights on because they need to constantly feed that funnel. And so you're kind of. It's like the tale of two masters. Fundamentally, it is who you want to serve, but the way you can serve them is only if you can keep your lights on, which means you need more people to serve. And it's very chicken and an egg kind of a situation.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: It really is. And if you're spending all your time on prospecting, you're focused more on just bringing in the new business than the relationship, because relationships take time, and prospecting takes a lot of time. And I'm like, boy, like, what if the lead contacted the advisor? What if we had a tool that did that? So now I don't have to compete over other advisors. I don't have to spend hours cold calling to maybe schedule one appointment. You know, what if we flip that around and also drove the cost of client acquisition down in the process? It's a great experience for everybody. I have more time back as an advisor because most advisors, Rich. Want to be great advisors. They want to help people with their money. That's what they're passionate about. They did not want to become marketing experts or seminar experts or any of that stuff. They just found out. Like, by the way, hey, you're an advisor now. You got to do all this other stuff. Like, whoa. Well, I guess I have to. I don't want to, but I will. And then it just. It's a bad experience for everybody. So we're. We're trying to get away from that as much as possible.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's amazing. And so walk us through just quickly because, you know, from an innovation standpoint, I think it's absolutely fascinating. And you've really taken the vantage point of this looking primarily through the consumer's eyes. And what is the journey? What has. What is the journey like for the typical consumer now and then, how is. With the power of the tool that you're building, built and are increasing, adding to, optimizing, what is the difference in that situation? I mean, there's the old world and kind of the. The coupler. New world.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So old world is, tends to be one of two experiences for a consumer. So most consumers are problem aware like hey I just got married, I just bought a house, I'm having a kid in six months, I probably should get life insurance. Like the problem, they have that awareness or I'm retiring in two years or whatever. Right. Kids going to college. And so they end up on a company's website like where do we go? And we look for anything best cheeseburger, pizza or life insurance. We're going to our phones to our computers to start to do some research.
And I end up on Company XYZ's website.
Oh, this company seems solid. I like their life. It looks like they help people like me. They have the right products. And this is where it starts to break down Rich. Because they're asked to do one of two things typically is one is fill out this form, what's your name, what's your email address, what's your phone number, how much money do you have and we'll contact you. You're like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second, I don't even know who you are yet. And you're trying, you're asking some pretty personal information, you know, so that's a pass. You know, most people will not do that. Or they're asked to, hey, put in your postal code. We're going to give you the 400 best advisors for you and your postal code. And so now the human brain is like super overwhelmed. 440, 20. I don't have time to sift through all these people so I'm gone. And so now either the consumer doesn't get any advice or help because they just punt. They're like I'll deal with this later, I don't have the time for this, this sucks. Or they go down the street and ask Uncle Bob for a referral to someone who's about ready to retire. Right? So it's just not, not a great experience.
Consumers giving up control, it just doesn't feel good. That's old world, new world.
Imagine a situation where the consumer is problem aware but now they get to interact with a tool, solution and experience that says hey, you're in control.
Go ahead and get matched with the right advisors for you at this company.
But take it a step further. Why don't you go review these advisors? Who are they? Do you have similar personalities? Check out, check them out on social media, their website, do they specialize in people like you, etcetera, etc, etcetera. And then hey consumer, when you're Ready, you initiate conversation.
Don't worry, we're not selling you any of that information to the advisor. They will never get to contact you. You have to make the first move. So now the consumer has this transparent, fun, good feeling experience that they are in control of.
And only until they are ready will then the actual conversation with an advisor happen. So great consumer experience on their terms. But if we fix it for the consumer, what happens to the advisor now as an advisor, right, like having a great time.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: So how does this work for the other party? It's gotta be win win.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: It's gotta be win win. So again, I used to, I had multiple phone clinics early on in my days as an advisor where we would have lists of people we would cold call and it took part of your soul, let me tell you. Or we would drive all over the place and stop into businesses. Hey, I was in your area, can I give you my business card? You know, lots of, lots of rejection and just a really bad experience for advisors. It's so much wasted time.
So instead if we flip the script on and for the consumer experience now, the consumer's happy, they're empowered, they're informed and they're reaching out to you. The advisor. Now as the advisor, you have a warm inbound lead that's already vetted you. Hey Richard, I know, I just got matched with you. You help people like me. We both love dogs, you know, whatever, whatever.
Can we schedule a meeting? So now the advisor can just focus on booking the actual meeting and getting to work. And that's what they are most passionate about. And if they do that, chances are the relationship's going to be deeper, it's going to last longer, more products and services will be sold, they will stay on the books longer, which means the advisor success rate goes up, which means the mothership of the company that they are selling products and services for obviously wins as well. Everybody wins. That's the new world. That's what we see. So we've built a couple of what's called a recommendation engine. We are learning at scale, when and why people connect, what makes a successful client advisor relationship and constantly evolving on that as we get more and more data.
It's never been done before actually in this space. That's what we're super excited about.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Well, fundamentally it does sound like basically what you've built is effectively, I think it's how you described it to me initially is the eharmony for the financial advisor experience and you really get to choose who it is that you want to work with. And, yeah, sure, it has to go both ways. The advisor has to also agree to that. But you get to have that initial conversation, and you're starting from a platform of common ground versus, you know, everything is just very, very cold and initiating. So I love the process. I think it's fantastic. We're going to talk a little bit more about how it's being implemented and utilized now with the AI tools in the background when we come back after this quick break.
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[00:38:14] Speaker B: So what exactly is a recommendation engine? And how can AI being implemented effectively, be able to start making the matching process so much greater, connecting people in ways that we just hadn't thought of before now? Derek, people often look at AI and they think about AI as this thing that's going to ruin human connection. It's going to. It's going to take away all the jobs and do all these things. Whereas I'm more of the belief in this thought process that we can utilize it effectively as a tool to actually enhance connections in a way that never could have been done before. I feel like you're going down the same path with that. So walk us through the vision of how you're utilizing AI to help incorporate these ideas as you build more and more of this out.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: It's a really interesting technology. It's actually been around since the 50s people, which a lot of people don't realize.
And what AI or machine learning and in training large language models can do is that it can help us look for. For patterns that we would never be able to manually calculate on our own because of the computer processing power that we have today. The amount of data that can be consumed, it's far superior than anything we've ever seen before. And it's only going to get faster, which is wild. But we're able to, through a recommendation engine, you can train a large language model, an LLM and you can put in there, hey, we want to know what makes a successful client advisor relationship. And you can start asking a couple questions and then you put a bunch of raw data in that you have data like we're collecting a coupler and you can ask this thing to now go to work. Hey, AI, help us predict, you know, train this model. Let's figure out what's going on and learn more and more about humans behavior. Why do people connect? When do they connect? What. What made that connection better than the last one, what's important to people and so forth. And we can do this at massive scale.
And so I think you're right. If we use AI and all the things that come with that correctly, it actually will enhance human connection instead of replace it.
I mean, wasn't it valuable if you get connected with the right advisor at the right time and place and technology can help us do that just a little bit faster and a little bit better than, you know, your postal code? I think so, you know, there's a lot of good things that can happen. And you know, we've talked a lot about this on our own podcast. But AI can also help do a lot of the mundane tasks, the backstage stuff that you were talking about. And when that stuff becomes automated, now I spend more time with my clients instead of less.
So we had coupler. We're just, we're enhancing human connection, human relationships, we're understanding why, and we're able to do it faster and bigger than we'd ever be able to do without AI. You just have to have it. It's an amazing tool that can enhance things.
So no, I don't think Terminator 2 is going to happen. I don't think Skynet's taken over. I think we're going to be okay.
But that, that's what we're seeing and that's why I'm so excited about it, is that it's a massive tool that we can use to, to just to be better, better at being human. It's kind of funny to say it that way, but that's what we're doing.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Well, the real question really should be is will you be able to match the Terminator with the right financial advisor?
[00:41:50] Speaker A: I need to ask our LLM that. We'll put it in our engine and see what happens. I should almost set up a fake profile of the Terminator.
Here's what's important to me.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: The first connection message will be, I'll be back.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: I'll be back.
That's awesome.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: So you could you could have some fun with your marketing on that.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: I think that's brilliant.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: What's really interesting. So you know, and I think for people, if they're again, they're new to AI, there's a little apprehension there and it's like, oh, well now we're talking about AI and my financial advisor and like, well, what about all my data? But in this, in the experience that you're referencing, this is really just around setting some preferences and some ideas as to who you want to work with. So you mentioned like, yeah, I love dogs. You know, I would prefer to meet someone in person. So you would want someone maybe who's a little bit more localized and who actually also wants to meet people in person. Like maybe you have someone who literally lives a mile down the road from you and they might be the perfect match, but they will only work with people in a virtual format. They won't even meet with you in person. Well, now that might not be a match. So you're using the AI to help segment those things and you're teeing up a recommendation list that isn't, you know, if I type into Google that I want to go and have a steak dinner, it's going to look at the places that are geographical and then I got to go through the reviews and I have to, I have to self assess those things. Whereas if I had a tool that you've built that would help me find the best steak dinner and I could ask for very specific things about what I like about my steak dinner. It's going to go through the reviews for me and it's going to recommend the top three locations that.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: That's exactly right. It's going to speed all of this up for free. Joe. I mean at the end of the day, Richard, why do people connect? You know, how is rapport and ultimately trust formed, shared commonalities, shared experiences, preferences, you know, similar interests. And so that's what we're doing. So like our tool, we don't ask like for account numbers, we don't ask for your date of birth, we don't ask for your address, we don't ask for like how much money you have because none of those are relevant until you know that you can trust the person you want to share that information with.
Really, really important. So AI is just speeding up this, this process of, of, of building rapport and trust. And it goes back to saying I've known, I've heard for years, I don't know who coined it, but people don't care how much you Know until they know how much you care.
We're, we're building that care connection, if you will. And then as soon as that happens, like, okay, Richard, I know you're the advisor for me. Here's everything. Help me. Right? That's, that's what we, that's, that's what we try to tee off for our customers.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Fantastic. Now, I mean this is something that you've developed and, and focused a huge amount of your energy in, in the last basically two years time, roughly speaking, that is the, is the initiation, the birth of coupler. And so a lot of work that goes into launching a new business startup phase. Tons of stuff that has, you have to get data to be able to prove concept and so forth. While that's taking place, somewhere along the line, as a global world traveler, you also decided that you wanted to enhance connections with dads who are entrepreneurs that are maybe not getting the quality of time that they want with their kids. And you decided to form this organization called Rebel Dads Lot to take on. You mentioned being a glutton for punishment earlier. So I'm sure somewhere along the line your wife said, sure, honey, go ahead and do that.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: The, the, the incredible spousal support that entrepreneurs receive I think is so, so necessary and so unbelievable. They don't get enough love and shout outs, I think for the, the, I agree necessity that they have to allow an entrepreneur to actually thrive in an environment of change. So you've definitely got that in your world. What's the inspiration behind this for you and what would you like people to be under, understand and take away from the Rebel Dads concept?
[00:45:59] Speaker A: So Rebel Dads, I created it when I again, I had a problem. I saw.
So being a entrepreneur is really hard. Right? Most entrepreneurs will fail at least once, if not multiple times.
There's typically not a playbook on how to be a good entrepreneur because there's so many different ways to do it. But being a father is also really challenging. And how do I make sure that I'm the best dad I can be for my kids?
And then how do you balance those two worlds? Because a lot of us will consider our business as another child.
And I started looking around for resources that really focused on the two all together. And I, long story short, I couldn't find it.
I'm like, well, maybe I'll just go create it, right? I got a free four minutes this week. I want to go do it.
And so Rebel R E B E REBL stands for responsible Entrepreneur Balanced Leader. And I wanted to create a community of like minded dads that help us become the best dads and entrepreneurs possible. And how do you balance all of it? And so that's what our mission is all about. We're trying to help as many dads as we can globally. We've got a bit of a fatherhood pandemic, especially in the states. There's over 18 million kids in the US that do not have a father at home right now. It's crazy and it's interesting because my dad left my life. He's still alive, but he left my life about the same time my son came into my life. So as a dad, I didn't have someone to tell me what to do or not to do. I had to figure it out on my own. I'm like, man, there's got to be other dads out there I can ask for advice and lean on during tough times and celebrate good times and all of that. And so to kick it off, I kind of like to do things in a big way if we can. I'm like, who's a really awesome dad? That is the epitome of what we're trying to do. I'm like, well, Sir Richard Branson's pretty awesome. Long story short, Rich, we had our first gathering with rebel dads on Sir Richard Branson's island, Necker island, at his home. And he was part of all of our things going on. It was absolutely epic. We're going back again now this, this next January for round two.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you guys got challenged to some kind of a, like a kite surfing or, or, or some sailing endeavor when you're there. Some kind of a race.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Yeah, a whole lot. So they had a whole bunch of Hobie Cat small sailboats that we were on and Richard was going to sail with me actually. He's like, you know what, I'm going to race you guys over to this other island. And he jumped on a kite, surf by himself and went all the way over there by himself. The guy's in his 70s and he's crushing it. So it was just so cool, just a surreal experience for sure. But this is how you and I got connected. That's how I met Jason Lowe. Through such just a wonderful community of dadpreneurs, I call them.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's incredible how things, connections can be made and what an incredible endeavor. The statistics about how many kids in the United States really are going through the experience of, you know, a fatherless experience, you know, just bringing light to that. I think is valuable and important. Derek. So thank you for doing that on the program today. And so, you know, thinking about closing this out. What are some key things that you would want to make sure our listeners can take away, whether it's about Rebel Dads entrepreneurship and just plotting forward to a bigger and brighter future?
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Well, I, you know, I don't think your path is, is in stone. Right. So you gotta follow your passions to take risks, challenge yourself.
You know, those are some of the big, big things that really helped me. You know, if you're interested in Rebel Dads definitely go check out our website. You can learn more. We're trying to grow that community and just get a lot of like minded folks together.
But pursue your passions. And I, I think a big thing for me that really helped me focus and crystallize all the things I've wanted to do in life so far is that we created a vision board as a family years ago and cut out pictures, wrote down phrases of things we want in, in life. And then we just go after those, you know, tangible but also intangible, business, personal, you know, health, all of those things. So if you don't have one, you should, you should get one. And then you should also ask who, who can help me make this possible? That was a big one. I learned this year on Richard, you know, Richard's home. Just learning about getting the right people to be on your team to help you do what you got to do.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: Amazing. The concept of who, not how. And if you have the right who's the hows will find a way to get themselves done.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Set yourself a clear vision, have a great intention and be willing to dream a little bit in the process and bring your family along for the ride. Did I summarize that? Pretty good.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Bingo. Yeah. Because my, I brought my wife and son to necker. They've been along the whole ride with me. They understand it's been amazing.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Fantastic. Derek, thanks again for being on the program today, for sharing so much value, so much about your journey, the ups and the downs and the foresight you have about creating and forging and something brand new that the market is asking for. And for everyone watching, make sure to tune in next week as we continue to unpack the incredible stories of the entrepreneurs that are shaping tomorrow.
