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

Helping advisors scale from 1 person to many people.

AI Application:

Prof.ai

I’ve done one demo of NotebookLM in the past, but so much has been added that I decided to show different features and a different use case.

Overview:

So here's what Prof.ai is: it's basically a structured learning platform that helps you actually use AI tools in your day-to-day work, not just learn about AI in theory. Think of it like Coursera, but specifically for AI implementation. The difference is it doesn't just teach you concepts. It walks you through building customized prompts and workflows for your actual business. Here's how it works: the platform asks you questions about your specific situation, then generates detailed prompts tailored to your role and what you're trying to accomplish. What makes this different from just opening up ChatGPT or Claude is the guided framework. You know how most people hit that blank page and don't know where to start? That's what kills adoption. This solves that problem. It walks you through defining your use cases, understanding which models work best for different tasks, and building a library of prompts you can actually reuse. No more starting from scratch every time. The other cool thing? For individual advisors and small teams, there's a free version that's actually useful. You get real value without needing to commit at an enterprise level.

How to apply Prof.ai to the business today:

• Build your prompt library for recurring tasks. Start with something you do weekly—client review prep or investment analysis. Work through Prof.ai's guided questions to create a detailed prompt, then save it. What used to take 30 minutes of context-setting becomes a two-minute copy-paste.

• Standardize team delegation. Use the delegation workflow to analyze capabilities, workloads, and dependencies. Get assignment matrices that show who should do what and why—avoiding overallocation and making your reasoning transparent.

• Improve alternative investment due diligence. The blind spot framework is especially useful for evaluating PE, hedge funds, or other alternatives. Feed in pitch decks and proposals, and surface hidden assumptions in valuations, market projections, and operational risks.

• Train new team members without overwhelming them. Instead of "go use ChatGPT," point them to Prof.ai's guided use cases. They'll learn how to structure their thinking, which models to use when, and how to iterate on responses.

• Document AI workflows for compliance. Structured use cases with clear prompts create an audit trail for how you're using AI in client work. This matters as regulators focus more on AI adoption in financial services.

Advanced:

• Create recurring projects for weekly processes. Build delegation planning or meeting prep into weekly templates that feed historical context forward. Each week's analysis informs the next, creating compounding efficiency as the system learns your team's patterns.

• Develop firm-specific frameworks. Take Prof.ai's base templates and customize them with your investment philosophy, risk parameters, and decision criteria. Turn generic AI responses into outputs that reflect your firm's unique standards.

• Build cross-functional use case libraries. Have team members develop and share use cases for their specialties—portfolio construction, client communication, compliance, operations. Create a knowledge base that makes your firm's collective intelligence accessible to everyone.

• Integrate with your existing tech stack. Use Prof.ai to develop prompts and workflows, then implement them through tools your team already uses—Claude Projects for client work, ChatGPT for quick analysis, Perplexity for research. The platform becomes your prompt development environment.

• Create client-facing applications. Once you've refined internal use cases, consider how clients might benefit from similar frameworks. Could your planning process use the same blind spot identification you apply to investment due diligence? This differentiates your service model.

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

The real insight here isn't about Prof.ai specifically—it's about the gap this platform is filling. Most advisors have access to powerful AI tools but don't know how to use them effectively. We're past the "AI is magic" phase and into the "okay, but what do I actually ask it?" phase. The firms that figure out prompt engineering and systematic AI implementation will pull away from those still treating it as an occasional novelty. What's interesting is how this shifts the skill set we need. Understanding finance and building relationships has always been the job. Now there's a third component: knowing how to structure problems for AI collaboration. The advisors who develop this skill can deliver more sophisticated analysis without adding headcount. That's the competitive advantage—not replacing human judgment, but augmenting it systematically. And it's not just about individual productivity. When you build a library of tested, refined prompts that work for your firm's specific needs, you create institutional knowledge that persists even as team members change. That's how smaller firms start competing with the research capabilities of wirehouses.

See Prof.ai in action:

I went into this demo completely cold, creating an account live and working through the platform in real-time. What struck me immediately was how it addresses the question I keep hearing at every conference: "When do I use what?" The platform walks you through defining use cases step by step, then generates detailed prompts that would take you significant time to craft on your own. Watch me build out two complete workflows—one for identifying blind spots in investment proposals and another for optimizing team delegation. You'll see exactly how the guided questions translate into sophisticated prompts, why the platform recommends specific AI models for different tasks, and how quickly you can build a reusable library of frameworks. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by AI's potential but unsure where to start, this demonstrates a practical path forward.

-Matt