Happy Friday!

Welcome to this week's edition of Connected, where we bring you the latest insights, trends, and opportunities to optimize your firm in a modern way.

This week, we look at how we work, how we analyze and how we can better shape the future of our industry.

This week’s Connected walks you through the following:

1. Can’t Miss Workshop to Optimize Your RIA Without Maximizing Your Org Chart 
   

2. Finding Your Firm’s Rhythm
   How can thinking like a technology company transforms your approach and impact? I break it down with the help of the Caribbean’s favorite winter Olympians.
   

3. Salesforce goes AI
   With its latest announcements, Salesforce has joined the AI era. What does it mean for you?
   

4. The New Class of InvestmentNews’ 40 Under 40
   

5. Upcoming Technology Integration Workshops in Atlanta and Los Angeles
   Our team is taking the road with several of our friends to help advisors forge their future.

So please sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and let's get started!

Upcoming Workshop: Optimize Your RIA Without Maximizing Your Org Chart

Looking for innovative ways to scale your financial advisory firm? In search of expert guidance to dive deeper and provide more value to your team and clients? Your search ends here.

We are thrilled to invite you to our upcoming workshop: "Leveraging Fractional Partnerships: The Pathway to Growth, Expertise, and Enhanced Value". This high-impact event is exclusively designed to offer insights into how your firm can tap into the power of fractional partnerships and truly transform your business.

Register by clicking the link below.

Embracing an Organizational Rhythm: A Guide to Organizational Success in Wealth Management

Most people likely have a favorite Olympic-themed movie. Miracle, Munich, Chariots of Fire, or I, Tonya.

For me, the movie Cool Runnings stands apart.

The movie has all the sappy things you could ever want and ultimately comes together with a moment of agony, conquest, and a story of overcoming.

What if Cool Runnings was just another business story?

If you think about it, it is.

You have a wild-eyed leader, talented but unguided team members, and a massive challenge.

The team had to learn to become a team, and along the way, they had to ultimately blend who they were with the mission they had in front of them.

The key for them was to find their rhythm. They took their unique culture with the need to synchronize their process and found success.

I have had the unique experience of working with several of the top companies in wealth management over my career.

The key distinction that sets the fastest-growing firms apart is the rhythms they have built into their business.

We have to look no further than today’s most successful brands. Apple, Adobe, Tesla, Samsung, and Google all use annual events to reflect a broader daily set of activities leading to a global launch.

Next week I am anticipating Figma’s Config conference as they annually announce enhancements that can massively impact how my five-person design team creates new work for wealth management companies. As a customer, I am confident that we will evolve because of all the work that started long ago that will massively impact our design operating system.

What about your firm?

What key rhythms set the tone for you, your advisors, and even retail clients?

Is there a sense of anticipation the people come to have from this event or series of events?

Is there something that sets a fire in your belly as a leader to get better, be better, design, and lead better?

If not, you’re certainly not alone. And you certainly don’t have to stay there.

At Milemarker, we get the privilege of working with wealth management firms creating their new structure and schedule while enhancing their existing framework.

We have engineered a system we call Waypoints. Rather than starting with some presupposition that you will be able to jump into success right away, we know it’s a progression.

Waypoints start with a critical one-year vision and then work backward to help you correctly identify the critical path you need to take to deliver on your shared vision.

Between now and the end of the year, you will go through many key evolutions; we believe you should do this in a simple, no-nonsense manner that isn’t overhyped or undersold. Its objective is clear and results-driven.

When you draw closer to the launch, all the key players on your team should know their roles and be able to run through their routes or progression on demand.

The momentum gained from these exercises is palpable and transformative.

If done well, it compounds into massive success and begins to guide your organization and an entirely new level.

What is your rhythm, and how do you plan to make it more robust over the next year?

Highways and Byways. Quick Takes on Industry News.

Salesforce Goes AI.

One of the most influential companies in the world has flipped the AI switch this week.

One of their most notable updates was about the Tableau product. Today Tableau boasts nearly 14% of the market and just a bit more than its rival, PowerBI.

Tableau GPT emerges as a powerful tool that allows users to leverage generative AI to interact with their data in a trusted and secure manner. This interaction can be conversational, with users surfacing insights by simply asking questions. This approach can power more imaginative data experiences, enabling users to understand their data better.

In the context of wealth management, these features can be quite useful:

1. Conversational Interaction with Data: Financial advisors often need to extract insights from complex financial data. The ability to ask questions to the system in a conversational manner and get answers can simplify this process.

2. Real-Time Visualizations: Financial data is dynamic and changes frequently. Real-time visualizations can help financial advisors stay up-to-date with the current financial situation of their clients or their own firm.

3. Goal-Oriented Recommendations: The system can generate recommendations to help meet specific financial goals based on the data. This can benefit financial advisors as they set and strive to meet goals for their clients.

However, the specific benefits and applications would depend on the exact functionality and capabilities of Tableau GPT and the particular needs and use cases of the financial advisors.

For advisors looking for connectivity, the team at Milemarker is now working on more and more Tableau-related enhancements - helping you visualize, analyze and work with your data as easily as possible.

On the Road: InvestmentNews 40 Under 40 Celebration

This coming week I’m headed to New York to welcome the next class of 40 Under 40 Alumni. I am most excited to welcome my friend Nick Engelbart, CFO of Carson to the club. If you’re also attending, let’s catch up.

The awards are meaningful because the future of our industry truly does matter. With fewer advisors to clients, our industry will have major capacity needs that the right leaders need to rise to address.

Save the Date: Upcoming Technology Integration Workshops

The Milemarker team is taking to the road to help guide advisors as they look to Forge the Future of Advice. Stay tuned for more details in the coming days with dates, the program, and the friends joining us for this future-driven workshop series.

August 8: Atlanta
September 12: Los Angeles

That’s a wrap for this week.

Have a great weekend!