I’m a career shifter. I worked in leveraged finance initially when I got out of school. I always pictured myself as being a working mother. I had three children.
I was commuting from New Jersey into the city. Life throws you curveballs. It didn’t work anymore. So, I left Wall Street. I was working at home, but I’m one of those people that can’t sit still.
I fell into this industry [after] I started to get involved in the community where I live, Short Hills in Millburn Township, in Essex County, N.J. I ran for a seat on the Millburn Township School District Board of Education. When I was elected, the president of the school board was Jeffrey Waters. He made me chair of the [school board] finance committee.
He also came from Wall Street, having retired in the early 2000s. Afterward, he got his CFP and started OFC, which stands for “Order From Chaos.” The premise was that he was a high-level executive, an associate director of U.S. equity research at Salomon Smith Barney, yet his financial affairs were in disarray.
When I came along, he was well into the business as a solo practitioner. I was taken by the flexibility he had in his schedule. I asked if I could join him and learn the business. In 2016, I got my CFP. Now, we’re 50/50 business partners.
CRM, Rebalancing, Reporting & Portfolio Management: Advyzon
For CRM, we had been using Wealthbox. It was fine, but it didn’t have that performance reporting option. We learned about Advyzon and made the switch.
We give our clients quarterly performance reports on their portfolios. We started using Advyzon purely for that piece. Then, we decided to use the CRM.
When I came along, I said, “OK, we need to rejigger this. We need some technology.” He had just been using Microsoft Outlook and Excel. Very solo-y. Going from a solo to a partnership, there was so much that he just had in his head. His background on his clients was saved in his Microsoft Outlook. We used that CRM to get him to open his vault of information in his mind so that I could be more of a partner to him in servicing clients.
I’m just blown away by what Advyzon can do. It is fantastic. They keep expanding and reacting to advisors’ needs more in a way that other software doesn’t seem to be able to do so quickly.
We’ve expanded our usage of Advyzon. We use Advyzon’s Quantum rebalancer, which is new for us and our most recent adoption in the past couple of months. Before that, it was good old Microsoft Excel. I built a fierce model. Because of my background on Wall Street, I speak in Microsoft Excel. For me, it was no big deal. But then we started growing so quickly, and it was too much.
Trading: In House
We craft our own models. Schwab is our custodian. We take this approach having both had extensive experience at bulge-bracket firms in equity and debt capital markets. We are the traders.
Financial Planning: eMoney / Income Lab / Holistiplan
We’ve used eMoney Advisor for years. It is fantastic for cash flow. Once you get eMoney Advisor and know how to use it, it would be too much to go backward because it’s so detailed. Nothing else would be as good.
I have started using Income Lab to supplement eMoney Advisor. It presents information in a more digestible way. Instead of giving you a percentage of success, it shows how much money you’ll make per month in retirement. It’s more client-friendly.
We also use Holistiplan, which is powerful. I love that software.
Document Management: eMoney Vault
We use eMoney Vault to share documents with our clients. Advyzon has an integration with eMoney Advisor. We can generate performance reports in Advyzon, and they can automatically go to our clients’ eMoney Vaults.
Legal Documents: Family Law Software
One of the things I did to enhance my offering was to become a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. I use Family Law Software, which is cool. You can have a license as a financial professional, but mostly, it’s for divorce lawyers to generate the documents for cases. If someone hires me at the beginning of their process, I can coordinate with their attorney. I can take things like developing a statement of net worth out of the hands of the lawyers. That’s the pitch. It will save the client time and money. It is stressful enough when you’re going through a divorce. They can tell an attorney, “You don’t have to pay your paralegal to fumble through a tax return. I’ve got this.” Family Law Software produces the documents lawyers need for court filings and does financial forecasting.
AI Note-Taking Assistant: Zocks
Zocks has been transformative for my business. It can take notes on meetings in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. It generates a summary for you. It gets smarter and gets to know you. You can teach it how you like your memos and takeaways afterward. It was created for financial advisors. It already knows if you’re talking about a Roth conversion. The software understands those concepts. I’ve had to make a few corrections. It didn’t know how to spell “Advyzon.” It made it “Advise On.” That’s not a big deal.
They are also careful with compliance. You want to ensure that you’re not keeping clients’ information, making sure it’s secure and confidential. I am impressed with them.
It allows me to go to back-to-back meetings. I know I’m not going to forget anything. That’s been a way for me to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. That’s important as a lean organization.
We’re not just talking about numbers. We’re getting to know our clients as people. We want to know what is going on in their lives. A portion of Zocks does this family tree. It’s cool. As a working mom, I call myself a modern feminist. I want to do it all and should be able to do it all. I feel like a superhero to have that kind of backup in terms of never missing a detail. It’s like a superpower. I’m thrilled.
They tell me that the integration with Advyzon is coming in their next release. I hope it is. I don’t know what I’ll do with all my free time.
Editor's Note: Zocks is part of a fast-growing segment of advisor technology, which includes SIFA (now AdvisoryAI), Jump, Brightwave, AdvisorX.ai and quite a few other applications and marketing and communications platforms.
As told to reporter Rob Burgess and edited for length and clarity. The views and opinions are not representative of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Want to tell us what’s in your wealthstack? Contact Rob Burgess at [email protected].