This week I got to do something I haven't done in a while.

Stay put.

After a stretch on the road, I was back at my desk. Heads down. Cranking on new initiatives. Things launching for our clients. Things launching on the product side. Every day had something moving.

And as always, the studio was loud.

I had Quicksand on — a band I've listened to for most of my adult life. Three guys. Big sound. They just dropped two new singles ahead of a new album. One of them is called "Regenerate."

The word stuck with me all week.

It shaped how I've been thinking about the conversations I had — about how we work, how we lead, how we think about renewal. Not the airport-book version of renewal. Something more honest than that.

This week's essay digs into it.

Here's this week's Rising Tide.

1. Regenerate

2. Podcast: From Scale to Impact—Purpose-Driven Growth in Wealth Management 🎧

3. Milemarker Goes Live in Tamarac

4. Milemarker On the Road ✈️

Regenerate

If you go online right now — anywhere — you'll see it.

This is dead. This is the new thing. This is alive. This is over.

The hype cycle runs on declarations. Binary. Final. Absolute.

And it creates delusion across the entire spectrum.

If only it were that simple. An on/off switch of reality. Most of us know there is so much more nuance to everything than what meets the eye.

I was listening to new releases the other day from Quicksand — the New York post-hardcore band that's been making records since the early '90s. Walter Schreifels, Sergio Vega, Alan Cage. These guys helped define a sound and they're still going, still reinventing it. Their new single is called "Regenerate."

And the word just stuck with me.

Schreifels said the song is about finding new paths forward. That life will keep taking things away from you no matter how well you play it. And that we might be living the most when we're faced with having to get back up from a hard hit.

The Latin root is regenerare. Re- meaning again. Generare meaning to bring forth, to beget, to produce. The original usage was theological — a spiritual rebirth, a radical change from within. By the 1400s it had moved into medicine: the power to cause flesh to grow again. By the 1500s, biology. By the 1800s, forests.

The word has always lived at the intersection of something old being made new. Not replaced. Not killed. Not born from nothing.

Made new from what already exists.

That's a very different idea than life and death.

Naval Ravikant tweeted last month that AI coding agents can deliver custom apps straight to your phone — and that it's the beginning of the end for iPhone dominance. His actual argument is more nuanced than the tweet. He draws a parallel to Microsoft — still massively valuable, but they missed mobile and lost the dominant position. He thinks Apple missing AI is this decade's version of that. He also makes a bigger claim: that pure software as a moat is uninvestable. If your edge is "I build cool software other people don't know how to build," the genie is out of the bottle.

I don’t want to devalue any of this. The tools are real. The direction is real.

But here's where the framing breaks.

It's not that Apple is dead or alive. It's whether Apple will regenerate. Will they take what exists — the hardware, the ecosystem, the install base — and bring forth something new? Or will they let it calcify?

That's the question for every company right now. Including yours.

Here's what I know from operating inside wealth management for over two decades.

This week I talked to multiple firms that have acquired businesses and are now two or more years into the integration — still waiting on their legacy providers to deliver. Still stuck on old systems. Still unable to move.

Two years. Waiting for someone else to let them become what they bought.

The underlying providers are slow. They've cut staff. They're no longer as empathetic as they once were — back when they were being built, when they actually cared about helping you move. And the firms that depend on them? They're hostage to someone else's roadmap. Someone else's timeline. Someone else's priorities.

You want to know what death actually looks like in this industry? It's not a tweet. It's not a declaration. It's a two-year lag where your business can't become what it needs to be because you're waiting for permission from a provider that doesn't feel the urgency you feel.

That's the quiet death. Not dramatic. Not binary. Just slow. Erosive. The kind that happens while everyone's arguing about what's alive and what's not.

So how do we regenerate?

It starts with knowing what your sovereign future needs to look like.

It means understanding that you ultimately need greater agency over your data, your systems, your decisions. Not so you can burn it all down and start over. But so you stop waiting. So you have the freedom to bring forth something new from what you've already built — on your timeline, not someone else's.

Does that mean you go full doomsday? Off the grid? Build everything yourself?

No.

But does it mean you have the freedom to invent? The freedom to take advantage of what's actually in front of you — the AI tools, the new architectures, the workflow automation — and weave them into your existing reality without asking for permission?

I hope so.

Regeneration isn't about the edge. It's not about the hot take. It's not about being first.

It's about the progressive middle. The forward-moving part of the equilibrium.

Maybe they're fast followers. Maybe they're mid-range. But they're the ones doing something. Taking what exists and making it new. Not waiting for permission from a tweet. Not paralyzed by a declaration. Actually building.

That is the most interesting place to be right now.

How do we make decisions in this time? How do we build businesses in this time? How do we choose our adventures in this time?

We regenerate.

On the Pod: From Scale to Impact—Purpose-Driven Growth in Wealth Management

Episode 142: On this week’s episode, Kyle Van Pelt talks with Nate Angelo, CEO of Composition Wealth. Nate brings a diverse background spanning institutional investing and advisory leadership, with a focus on building firms that balance growth, culture, and client experience. His career reflects a commitment to thoughtful leadership and long-term value creation in the RIA space.

Nate talks with Kyle about how to grow with purpose in today's wealth management landscape. He shares how leaders can build purpose-driven careers, lead with conviction and humility, and navigate transformational change without losing cultural integrity. Nate also discusses how data, AI, and integrated technology can enhance client experience while reinforcing that real success still comes down to human connection, trust, and empathy.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:36) - Nate's money moment

(04:38) - Nate's early career development at Russell Investments

(07:44) - Why personal context should come before financial strategy 

(09:53) - Nate's transition from institutional investing to advising 

(13:05) - Foundational leadership skills: mindset, mentors, and risk

(19:40) - Building a brand with meaning and resonance 

(24:27) - Defining growth beyond traditional metrics

(30:33) - Maintaining consistency in inorganic growth

(35:19) - How accountability and rigor shape better acquisition decisions 

(38:37) - Differentiating through technology and client experience

(43:32) - Integrating tax services for seamless advice 

(47:46) - The move toward holistic client relationships

(51:19) - Using frameworks to manage uncertainty and client emotions 

(54:32) - Nate's outlook on the future of wealth management

(57:41) - Nate's Milemarker Minute

Milemarker Is Live in Envestnet Tamarac

Earlier this week, we released a new integration with our friends at Investnet that puts Milemarker inside the Tamarac experience. We've been working with Tamarac for years, but this release makes enabling Milemarker frictionless — right in the app.

If you're a Tamarac user, this unlocks the full power of a data lake with your Tamarac data. If you've acquired firms that run on Tamarac — a pretty common situation — we can help accelerate the work of bringing that data together.

Check out the link. Hit us up. We'd love to chat.

Milemarker on the Road
Catch my team on the road at the following events or cities:

1. Omaha, NE — May 4

2. Lincoln, NE — May 5

3. Nashville, TN — May 7

4. Columbus, OH - May 12

5. Indianapolis, IN — May 13-14

6. Phoenix, AZ - May 20-21

7. Boise, ID — June 2-4

If you would like to arrange a meeting time, please reply to this email, and we’ll schedule something on the calendar.

Jud Mackrill