Tuesday Email: There is no one tool to solve it all

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

I spent a weekend building the perfect system.

By Thursday morning, I wanted to throw my laptop out the window.

It was 9:47 AM. I stared at my screen, cursor blinking in a project management tool I'd meticulously configured just four days earlier.

A client needed something—urgent, unexpected, the kind of Thursday curveball that happens every week—and I had no idea where to put it in my beautiful new system.

Monday had been clunky. I told myself that was normal.

Tuesday felt the same. Still normal, I insisted.

Wednesday brought more friction. I started adding workarounds.

But Thursday broke me.

Because Thursday revealed the truth I'd been avoiding: I hadn't built a system for my life. I'd installed someone else's system into my life and expected it to fit.

The book had promised everything. It diagnosed my exact problems—too many inputs, unclear priorities, constant context-switching—and offered clean, distinct solutions for each. I'd spent Saturday and Sunday following the instructions exactly. Built the folders. Set up the workflows. Created the tags.

It felt like finally finding the answer.

Except I'd forgotten something crucial: the author wasn't me.

He didn't have my clients, my brain, my way of thinking, my random Thursday curveballs.

His perfect system was perfect for him.

For me, it was a cage that forced my naturally chaotic, pattern-seeking mind into linear buckets that made sense on paper but felt suffocating in practice.

Here's what nobody tells you about "perfect solutions": they don't exist.

Not for systems, not for software, not for anything that touches the messy reality of how humans actually work.

But here's what does exist: principles you can make your own, ideas you can remix, frameworks you can break apart and rebuild to fit your weird, specific, utterly unique way of operating.

That Thursday morning, I made a decision. I opened a blank document and started writing down what actually worked.

Not what should work, not what worked for the author, but what worked for me. I kept two things from his system and ditched the rest.

I borrowed three ideas from another book I'd read months earlier. I built my system on the shoulders of other people's systems, which gave me something more valuable than perfection: ownership.

This exact pattern is playing out across wealth management right now, but most advisors don't recognize it. We are searching for the perfect technology solution, just as I searched for the perfect productivity system.

We're hoping someone has already figured out the answer, packaged it neatly, and made it available for purchase.

And we're finding the same thing I found: frustration instead of solutions.

The fear is real.

Technology is moving fast. AI is everywhere.

The lines between human and machine are blurring. Clients notice what tools we use, and that's become part of how they judge the quality of our investment recommendations.

The pressure to do more, be more, and adopt more is real. So we look for the easy button. The all-in-one solution.

The platform that promises to solve everything.

But here's the truth that took me a broken Thursday to learn: complexity doesn't get solved by a single tool. It gets solved by building something that's uniquely ours.

Think about the computers on your desk. Dell and HP both make perfectly good machines. They work. They're efficient.

They're commodities. The differentiation is price.

Then there's Apple.

They took a commodity—a computer—and made people willing to pay double by focusing on experience, design, and making the machine feel personal rather than just functional.

The wealth management industry is standing at that same crossroads. We can be Dell—effective, commoditized, competing on price. Or we can figure out what makes us Apple.

But here's where most firms get it wrong: they think the answer is buying different technology. It's not.

The answer is using technology differently.

Building an experience from multiple components that work together in a way that's specific to you, your clients, and your way of operating. Owning your system instead of renting someone else's.

My productivity system taught me something I didn't expect: the most powerful solutions come from ruthless standardization combined with radical customization.

Standardize the utilities—the stuff that needs to work, the non-differentiating basics that every business handles similarly. Standardize those hard. Make them disappear into the background.

Then radically customize the experience—the parts that make your clients feel something. The moments that surprise them.

The touches that make them think, "I didn't even know this was possible." That's where differentiation lives.

Not in having different tools, but in using tools to create something that feels unmistakably yours.

When I look at my current productivity system—the one that actually works—I can trace every element back to somewhere else. This piece came from that book. That habit came from this podcast. This workflow was inspired by something a friend mentioned casually.

None of it is original.

All of it is mine.

The same will be true for whatever we each build. We won't invent new technology. We'll assemble existing pieces in a way that makes sense for the specific way we want our clients to experience working with us.

That takes longer than clicking "buy now" on an all-in-one platform.

It actually requires thinking about what makes us different, what we want clients to feel, and how we want to spend our time.

It demands the hard work of looking internally before looking externally.

Of changing mindset before changing software. Of evolving our value proposition before shopping for tools to deliver it.

Most firms avoid this work. They buy treadmills when they really need to change their diet.

But the firms that do this work? They're building something nobody can replicate. Because it's not about the technology they bought—it's about the experience they designed.

That Thursday morning broke my belief in perfect solutions. It also gave me something better: the realization that I didn't need a perfect solution. I needed my solution.

The question isn't what tool will solve everything.

The question is: what are you trying to differentiate on, and what combination of tools—assembled in your specific way—will help you deliver that? The answer won't come from a book, a platform, or a consultant.

It'll come from the same place mine did: a Thursday morning when you realize the perfect system doesn't exist, and decide to build your own instead.

The best is ahead!

-Matt