Happy Thursday,

AI isn’t slowing down—and neither should we. This newsletter is your shortcut to practical ideas and smarter strategies to grow, lead, and adapt as tech reshapes our industry.

To take it one step further, I’ve launched a new YouTube series. Each month, I’m sharing quick, tactical videos showing how advisors can use tools like ChatGPT to save time, think better, and scale more efficiently—starting with the work you're already doing.

Watch my latest episode here

The AI Edge

AI Application:

Fonic

Overview:

Fonic is a tool designed to convert messy inputs — documents, transcripts, data — into polished, interactive reports. The pitch is compelling: take something rough and transform it into something a client or team member can actually act on. The interface is clean, the onboarding is straightforward, and you can connect other apps or drag in files directly. For this demo, I uploaded a meeting transcript as a PDF and asked Fonic to turn it into an interactive dashboard I could use with clients.

It built something. Action items, key topics, meeting highlights — all organized and clickable. On the surface, it looks like exactly what a busy advisor would want.

But the demo took a turn I wasn’t expecting.

How to apply Fonic to the business today:

How to apply Fonic to the business today:

• Upload a client meeting transcript (from Fathom, Fireflies, or any recording tool) and generate a structured summary with action items, open questions, and key takeaways in minutes

• Use the client-ready report format to create a leave-behind or follow-up document after annual reviews or planning meetings

• Build team-facing call summaries that new team members or associates can review to get up to speed on a client relationship quickly

• Test the interactive dashboard format for internal project tracking — onboarding checklists, service timelines, or compliance workflows

• Experiment with different report templates (snapshot, update, summary) to find the format your clients actually prefer to receive

Advanced:

• Combine Fonic's structured output format with your existing CRM workflow: use it as a middle step between raw transcript and CRM notes entry

• Use the interactive report as a training tool — let junior advisors review client meeting outputs and identify what follow-up actions they would have prioritized

• Build a repeatable process for quarterly reviews: same template, same structure, every time — then use the consistency to identify what's changing in client priorities across the relationship

• Explore using Fonic's format as a prompt model inside Claude — study what works in the report structure and recreate it as a reusable prompt template you own entirely

• As Fonic develops its app integrations, watch for connections to calendar and task management tools that could close the loop from meeting to action item completion automatically

What could this application mean for the future of our business?

The honest answer from this demo is that Fonic may not be the tool, but it pointed directly at something that is. What it illustrated is that clients and families would genuinely engage with a well-structured, interactive summary of a meeting. Not a wall of notes. Not a CRM entry they'll never see. An actual document that says: here's what we talked about, here's what's happening with your accounts, here's what we're doing next. That's a client experience upgrade.

The implication is that advisors who figure out how to deliver that consistently — whatever tool they use to build it — are going to feel meaningfully different to clients than advisors who don't. The barrier to doing this is lower than it looks. You already have the transcripts. The question is whether you're turning them into something.

The other takeaway here is worth keeping in mind as new tools keep appearing: not every tool deserves a paid subscription. Some of them are most valuable as proof of concept, they show you what's possible, and then you go build it with what you already have.

See Fonic (& Claude) in action:

The most interesting moment in this demo isn't what Fonic built, it's what happened when I opened Claude in the same session and ran the exact same transcript through it. I walked through both outputs side by side, and the comparison changed how I think about evaluating AI tools. If you want to see a practical test of whether a new AI application is actually worth adding to your stack, or whether you're already sitting on something better, this one's worth watching.

-Matt