December is a stress test.

The inbox is full. The calendar is packed. Everything that "can wait until later" just arrived.

This is the moment that separates the organized from the overwhelmed.

I'm not going to tell you to slow down. You've got things to finish. Goals to hit. A year to close out strong.

But I will say this: don't forget to look up. The holidays are here. The people you care about are close. Both things can be true—the push and the pause.

Finish well. Rest well. They're not opposites.

Now.

I need to talk about Notre Dame football.

Not just because I love the game. Because what's happening with the Irish this season is a masterclass in how teams—and organizations—either rise together or fall apart.

The parallels are hard to ignore.

Here's this week's Rising Tide.

1. Take Your Ball and Go Home

2. Next Mile: Beyond Referrals — Transforming Advisor Growth 🎧

3. Replay: Milemarker Navigator - AI on All Your Data

4. Milemarker On the Road ✈️

Take Your Ball and Go Home

I spent last weekend at a kids’ flag football tournament in Tampa.

Watched a lot of football. Watched even more adults lose their minds.

Every bad call triggered the same sequence. Coach erupts. Parents follow. Kids stop playing and start feeling wronged.

The game shifts from “what do we do next” to “we’re being cheated.”

I drove home thinking about how early this starts. How quickly teams learn to blame instead of adapt.

Then I checked my phone.

Notre Dame—left out of the College Football Playoff after being ranked in the top 10 all season—announced they wouldn’t play in a bowl game at all.

Their athletic director called it a “farce.” Said the opportunity to compete was “stolen” from them.

The team’s official statement: they’re skipping the bowl and hoping to bring a national title to South Bend in 2026.

Translation: we’re taking our ball and going home.

This is the air we’re all breathing now.

Entitlement so thick you can taste it.

It shows up in youth sports. In college football. And it shows up in how we run our businesses.

The belief that your firm is the best and nothing can touch you.

The belief that you understand your clients while spending less and less time with them.

The belief that people are lucky to work with you.

These aren’t just blind spots. They’re the lies that prevent actual success from ever taking root.

Real success doesn’t get announced. It gets earned.

Every day. By showing up. By caring. By doing the work that makes you better.

Some firms try to buy championships. Throw money at the problem. Stack the roster with credentials. Build the brand before they build the substance.

But the best teams? They’re built by process and time. They’re the product of virtue and repetition. They taste different because they were made different.

If you’re running on the anabolic steroid version of success—pumping yourself up in the mirror, telling yourself you’ve arrived—deep down you know the truth.

You haven’t earned it yet.

The antidote is simple. Not easy, but simple.

Get grounded in reality. Your team should know your clients better than anyone. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you can improve. That’s not weakness. That’s the whole game.

Study the standard your clients actually expect. Not what your custodian allows. Sign up for Uber. Order food on DoorDash. That frictionless experience? That’s the bar. Your onboarding workflow held hostage by legacy systems isn’t impressive. It’s invisible friction your clients tolerate until they don’t.

Build a team that ships. We’ve entered the era of separation—people with ideas versus people who deliver. Find the ones who carry water. Who would do this work because they’re passionate about the problem. Who can actually reinvent how you operate.

And then show up. Every day. Wealth management is simple. Stay grounded in facts. Trust the process. Be in it.

Notre Dame could have played one more game. Proved something. Competed.

Instead, they went home.

Don’t leave early.

Play every down.

Earn the right to be a champion today.

______________________

On the Pod: Beyond Referrals — Transforming Advisor Growth

Episode 122: On this week’s episode, Kyle Van Pelt sits down with Eden Ovadia, Co-Founder of FINNY. Before FINNY, Eden worked on the private equity team at Boston Consulting Group, where she advised on major M&A deals across the wealth management space. Driven by her background in AI and engineering, and inspired by the wealthtech industry's shifting dynamics, Eden co-founded FINNY to help advisors build predictable, personalized, and tech-enabled organic growth engines.

Eden discusses why the wealth management industry is ripe for innovation and disruption. She also shares why referrals are no longer enough to drive organic growth, and how FINNY rewrites the marketing playbook using machine learning to create hyper-personalized, high-propensity matches between advisors and prospects.

(00:00) - Intro

(02:18) - Eden's money moment

(04:12) - Innovation in wealth management

(07:28) - Why referrals are no longer enough to grow organically

(09:25) - How FINNY rewrites the traditional marketing playbook

(16:16) - The power of niching and segmentation in organic growth

(18:14) - Introducing the F-score: FINNY's proprietary machine learning algorithm

(22:56) - What it takes to build an advisor-first tech stack

(24:18) - FINNY's future goals

(25:39) - FINNY's outlook on the future of the wealth management industry

(28:51) - Eden's Milemarker Minute

⚡️Bookmarks

Replay: Milemarker Navigator — AI on All Your Data

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the launch of Milemarker Navigator — the natural language AI built for RIAs who are ready to operate differently in 2026 and beyond.

We introduced a new standard for data access in wealth management: instant answers, secure processing inside Snowflake, no SQL, and no exposure of client records. For firms tired of waiting on reports, juggling systems, or relying on external AI tools that require sending sensitive data out of their environment — Navigator is what comes next.

If you missed the session, you can watch the full walkthrough below:

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

1. December 15-16 - Carmel, IN

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

Jud Mackrill