I'm in Glastonbury, Connecticut this week, spending time with friends and customers. And I did something this week that I suspect you've done too.

I jumped into my rental car, directions pulled up on my phone, but my phone never really connected to the car — no CarPlay, no voice in my ear. So there I was, glancing down at a little screen while I drove these winding historic streets, half on a phone call, floating between two mediums and missing turn after turn.

I was in no hurry. So I just watched what happened.

Here's what struck me. I had the answer the whole time — right there in my hand. But I was never fully connected in the context I actually needed to get where I was going. I was content enough with the workaround, and knowing all along I should be doing something better. The information existed. The integration didn't.

I think that's true for most of us, most of the time.

We've spent years in this industry obsessed with whether we have the data. We almost never ask whether it reaches people in a form they can actually absorb. Decades of research on how people learn points to something most of us get backwards. It isn't that each person has one fixed "style" you have to match. What actually moves the needle is repetition and range — saying the same thing more than once, in more than one form, spaced over time.

Learning science gives us three ideas worth knowing.

It’s the same truth, in five forms, spread out over time. That's the opportunity in front of us, and it only works when the data underneath it is clean and connected.

For most of our history, we couldn't do that. Information was disparate. You got the deck, or you got the statement. That was it. And if it didn't land the first time, in that one shape, you got left out — not because the answer wasn't there, but because there was no alternative.

Today there is.

We've entered an age of plurality. We can finally communicate what we mean, in more than one form, to the person who needs to hear it — and do it at scale. That is one of the most revolutionary shifts I've seen in my career.

And it matters most for the busiest people in the room. The C-suite folks and team leaders doing exactly what I was doing in that car: four things at once, the answers all around them, none of it reaching them in a form they can use in the moment they need it.

And this is where plurality stops being a concept and becomes a discipline. We have to become genuine students of how our clients consume information today — not how we did it a decade ago, not how we'd prefer they do it. How are they actually taking things in? Where do they already spend their attention? We have to understand how they prefer to communicate, and then bias hard toward the most common retail forms — the places and formats they already consume — instead of asking them to come to ours.

So think about the statements going out this quarter. Every one of them reflects a real relationship — a client's plan, their portfolio, where they stand. And if you're honest, you already suspect that a good number of the people receiving them won't connect with what's inside. Historically, you had no alternative, but today you do.

Your firm won't win by having the most data. You’ll win your clients hearts, minds and wallet share by taking the steps, with intention, to communicate the same truth in the forms they can actually receive. Your firm wins when you build it to scale.

What's in front of us is remarkable. Are you ready to make it reality?

Thanks,
Jud

Episode 165: This week on Next Mile, Kyle Van Pelt is joined by Grace Balestrieri, Senior Director of Client Experience Operations at Brighton Jones. Grace began her career in software, where her work spanned implementation, customer experience, and operations. She now brings that playbook to wealth management, building the systems, processes, and technology that let advisors focus on clients.

Kyle and Grace discuss what "scaling with soul" means in practice and why growth can't come from simply adding people, tools, and complexity. Grace unpacks how Brighton Jones' Centralized Administrative Office brings custodian expertise to high-volume work, and why firms building one should plan for a learning runway and staff ahead of demand. She also shares how the firm's training program is evolving into Richer Life University, what advisors can borrow from B2B sales about activity and referrals, and why she believes technology will make relationships the real differentiator.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:19) - Grace's money moment

(03:05) - Bringing a software mindset into wealth management

(05:13) - Why firms shouldn't overlook talent from outside the industry

(06:36) - What it means to scale with soul

(07:56) - How centralized operations help advisors scale

(10:17) - Building expertise you don't have yet

(13:46) - Inside Brighton Jones University

(14:54) - Expanding into Richer Life University

(16:01) - Finding the right career path inside a firm

(17:23) - What wealth management can learn from B2B sales

(20:58) - Grace's outlook on the future of the wealth management industry

(22:48) - Staying human in an age of AI

(24:30) - Grace's Milemarker Minute

Milemarker has announced a new integration with Betterment Advisor Solutions, giving RIAs a way to bring Betterment account data into the same data environment as the rest of their technology stack.

Accounts, positions, transactions, and balances can now be normalized alongside data from other custodians and systems—helping firms build unified reporting, analytics, and automation across their entire book.

Read more →

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

Jud Mackrill