Jordan welcomes Abby Morton to the show to introduce a soon-to-be-released feature—Elements AI Assessments!

You’ll get Jordan’s raw reaction to this feature as he and Abby explore the importance of data confidence, focusing on comprehensive assessments, and the value of conversational client deliverables.

If you want to attend our webinar introducing this new feature, click the graphic below:

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Transcript

Jordan Haines: Hello friends, and welcome to Elementality, A show where financial advisors explore modern and relevant client journeys.

I am Jordan Haines, and today I’ve asked our very own Abby Morton to give me an update on what’s cooking at Elements. And boy did she deliver, because within the next month or so, elements is going live with drum roll please. The Elements AI assessments. So during our conversation, you’ll get my raw reaction to this feature, this tool, as someone who’s never seen it before, who knows a lot about elements and advisors, and is generally pretty skeptical about the integration of AI into literally every technology product on the face of the planet with no regard to its relevance to users.

So if you wanna learn more about this amazing feature. I’ll include all the details and links to register for the upcoming webinar. Introducing this in the podcast description below, but with that, let’s get at it. 

All right. Welcome to Elementality, everyone. [00:01:00] Um, Abby is with me today. We’re gonna be a little bit more, we’re

gonna be more self-promotional today. We don’t usually do that. I’m thinking back. I listened to every episode of Elementality. Have we ever talked about the technology that we built, like.

Features and stuff. 

Abby Morton: yeah, we, we definitely have, but I do agree, like no one wants to listen to a bunch of people being self emotional, time in sales. So we try to not, but today 

Jordan Haines: We’re gonna break our rule. Let’s, 

Abby Morton: you come along in this journey with us.

Jordan Haines: this is my idea, so you guys can get mad at me anyways. Don’t get mad at Abby. Um, the reason I think we wanna go through this, Abby started showing me something a little bit before and we thought, Hey, let’s record this. I think that that would be a really fascinating thing to do. There is a, um. I don’t wanna say feature. Feature makes it sound lame. There’s like a new thing that we’re building here at Elements in the actual technology itself. And so I am gonna ask Abby to kind of give us a brief explanation of it. We’re, we’re gonna be doing a lot of exploring in like webinars and things like that in the future.

So I’ll let you talk to that, Abby. And then, um, I’ve spent a little bit of time [00:02:00] looking at this and I, you have questions for me to ask me about this feature and things like that. So let’s just dive in. I’m gonna hand it off to you.

Abby Morton: Yeah. Yeah. So I think Jordan’s question coming in today was like, what’s new at Elements, Abby? Like, what’s new? Like let’s give our listeners kind of an update. And so I. Um, for those of you who are customers, it definitely has been quiet for a while. Like probably not a ton and to a ton of things like being released like it used to be.

Uh, I feel like probably last year, maybe you’re noticing more then. And the reason why is because we’ve been working on basically implementing and integrating AI into our product. Uh, we felt like. Mean, I think everybody is talking about AI right now and I think the companies that are not figuring out a way to incorporate it into their products are going to be left behind and we didn’t want to be left behind.

And so that’s what we’ve been doing heads down, trying to figure out, you know, what value add can AI give, um, to our [00:03:00] product and to our advisors and to their customers. Ultimately, 

Jordan Haines: I make a quick comment on that?

Abby Morton: go ahead. Yeah.

Jordan Haines: Um. I feel like there are two things in the last four or five years that I’ve been with Elements talking to advisors, that I hear from people. AI is most recent, right? So that’s one of the big things that it’s like everyone’s asking about ai. Um, they wanna know what’s going on with ai.

It’s everywhere. Before that, I feel like almost every conversation was about integrations. Like that was the thing that everyone talked about. Like what are the integrations? And those seem to be the two things. And I think that like our philosophy and our, our principles around those things has always been like, well, does it actually. Solve or do a job that’s meaningful and valuable to people, rather than just like, Hey, we threw an AI because we thought it would be helpful, or, we built out this integration because we just wanted to push an email address over. We wanted to build something that is actually meaningful and valuable to people.

Is that fair? Is that a fair assessment of how you guys have approached this?

Abby Morton: I mean, I honestly think that’s one of the, I mean many, many, many things Reese has [00:04:00] brought to the table, but I think that’s where Reese’s greatest power lies is being, uh, really intentional about what he’s building, why he’s building it. Because we talked about, yeah, bringing ai probably last Jan, you know, 18 months ago we talked about it, and I don’t feel like we ever could really settle on the right thing, the right use case for it.

And so it takes time, right? It takes time to kind of figure that out. And I feel like I would agree with you, like we’ve wanted to be really intentional and make for sure it’s placed well. And I think, I mean, alluding to a little bit about Jordan, what Jordan said earlier is I’ve been telling Jordan, Hey, we’ve been building ai.

We’ve been building ai. And he has actually hasn’t seen it. And so today he pulled it up before he started recording, and I’m like, wait, don’t tell me what you think. Let’s get your real, true, raw, unfiltered thoughts. So. That is coming, uh, his, his raw thoughts there, but I, I hope that’s what you get from this Jordan is like, you do feel like.

It is correctly placed. And, and let’s see, so, uh, [00:05:00] maybe a little more diving in deeper as to what we’ve built is we feel like the, the best place that AI can help is in two places. Number one, training advisors and helping them know I. You know, what am I missing? What, what areas in someone’s financial life might I not be thinking about?

Do I have the right data to analyze? And if I don’t, like, how can I get the right data for this particular client? Right? And then number two, how can a client better understand their financial situation? How can a client know what all these colorful boxes on the screen. Mean, how can we hopefully use AI to create action or motivation from a client?

How can AI even potentially help? The client even have a better conversation with their advisor about their financial life because the power of AI has maybe put some ideas or some thoughts into their mind as to like what they could talk to their advisor about. I think oftentimes I felt like this as an advisor is, especially as we’ve [00:06:00] done these coaching models and I’m like, what’s, what’s on your mind today?

What financial questions do you have? And I feel like people often are crickets. Like they don’t know. And I’m like, as an advisor, I’m like, how do you not know? But the more I’ve thought about it and the more I’ve talked to people is some people just, it’s not really on their mind and they don’t really know.

And, and so I think oftentimes just putting something in front of someone and having them consume it gets those wills turning in their mind to help create a better conversation. So, um, I’ll stop beating around the bush, but ultimately what we’ve built is, uh, what we’re calling right now an AI assessment.

So when your clients finish onboarding, they will be, um, you as the advisor will get that information back and be able to review the scorecard, review the AI assessment, and you’ll be able to edit or view that assessment before you put it in front of a client. So it’s basically, um. Uh, it’s not the one page plan, but it’s kind [00:07:00] of like another version of the one page plan in a different way, right?

It has more detailed information. Uh, so the assessment’s gonna go over like kind of A-T-L-D-R too long, didn’t read, like kind of a high level overview of their financial health and how they’re doing, and kind of two or three quick sentences. Then it will go into strengths. What is the client doing well?

Areas for improvement. Uh, those areas of improvement also tie to goals for that client. And then below that, it’s going to break down each individual element of the scorecard. So instead of the client like seeing the periodic table version of the scorecard, they’re gonna see the element tiles kind of broken out with a little description about how they’re doing in each of that area of their life.

And so we feel like this AI assessment just helps. Number one, break down their finances into bite-sized pieces. Helps them know what they’re doing well, so they feel like encouraged and motivated, but also gives them some tips about what they can do better. So that’s kind of like what we have built and you know how it works overall.[00:08:00] 

Any thoughts? Or like before I go on, sorry, that was a long

Jordan Haines: I have too many thoughts. Let’s see. Um, I wanna go back to what you said earlier, like what’s, what’s kinda the point of this, um, and I don’t remember the words that you used, but what came to mind is input versus output. Um, so, so in any sort of planning software, any tool that you’re getting information from clients and then you’re presenting something to them, elements included.

There’s, there’s an input side and there’s an output side.

Um, and there’s something called that that I’ve. Said recently is that elements is not input sensitive. Meaning it’s okay if I don’t have perfect information. It just means that the output isn’t going to be absolutely perfect, but I’m still gonna be able to have a meaningful conversation with people.

Abby Morton: Right. That, well, that’s a point that we’ve had to really harp on with advisors is they’ve, they’ve often felt like, well, I don’t have every tiny detail. And we’ve tried to teach them and educate them of like, but what’s the best you can give them with the information you do have? Right. I.

Jordan Haines: Yeah. So I’m, and I remember, um, before I worked with dentist advisors, I was a lowly support advisor, um, at Sound Financial [00:09:00] planning up in the Northwest. And I remember, so my job there, one of the big projects I worked on is I migrated all of our clients from Finance Logics, an old school financial planning software, which frankly, to this day, I love is one of my favorites. Um, I don’t think it even exists. Two um, e-money. So I brought over, I think it was 90 or so clients over there. And what I remember is every time I’d sit in front of the advisor and say, Hey, I’ve completed this profile. We’ve migrated everything over, I’ve taken all their documents, I’ve put it in, we just then would spend two to three hours combing through that information just for the sole purpose of figuring out if this is accurate or not. So the very, the reason I share that is ’cause when you pulled this up before, the very first thing that I noticed is. It gives me like an update date and then it, and it gives me a data confidence where I can click on that and, and really quickly audit that data and say, these, these are the things that may be a little bit off

or that are older or that maybe we’re missing information on. That. In my mind as a financial advisor is one of the, like this input sensitivity and trying to understand what I have, [00:10:00] like I. I have a hard time finding a tool out there that allows me to really quickly audit my data to know is this super accurate and is it not? But also not hold me up, like have it be a required field, like you have to have everything in order to get the output.

We’re saying, no, the output is generated either way, but we’ll tell you how confident we are in the input. And anything that you’d

add on that. 

Abby Morton: No, I, it’s, it’s interesting to me. So again, this is the first time Jordan and I have ever talked about this AI tool that we just built. So I am like kind of giggling inside that you are pointing that out because we actually, that was one of the last things we added in. We kept just working on the assessment.

Working on the assessment, but we kept saying, but it’s not right if this, it’s not right. If that, if like this is a situation then. I don’t know how accurate that is. And we finally got to this idea of, you know, we need a way for the AI to audit the data and tell us what’s right and what’s not right, and still give the assessment, but help them know what information is missing or what might they be able to do in a quick checklist [00:11:00] format to further allow the AI to give them better information, right?

Because sometimes it’s giving you crap. Output, but the input was crap, you know? And so it can only do the best it can with the information that it’s given. And so I’m, I’m so happy to hear you say this thing that we literally added in. Honestly, it was one of the last things we’ve added in, but to me too, it’s like kind of my favorite thing to go look at is what are we missing in this list?

And, and actually I think I ran it, um, I ran it on a client recently and I was like. Holy crap. Like it’s bringing up that and that, like I was surprised at how deep it even went into things that like I didn’t even think, like it wasn’t even on my radar about it. So 

Jordan Haines: Yeah, I I think that, um. The nice thing about, so I use elements in prospecting a lot, and the, the listeners know this already. Um, and so a lot of times I’m dealing with just like round numbers, big guesses, and often like missing [00:12:00] information and I know elements well enough to be able to look at like an element scorecard.

And one of the reasons I really like Elements as a, as a tool and a system is that it allows me to really quickly diagnose which things I need to comment on.

And, and I always preface almost every conversation like this is only relying on the, on the information that you’ve given me. Maybe, I know for sure we’re missing this.

That’s why this is showing up. But I like this because it’s just quick bullet point. It gives me some talking points so that when I do go to the client missing information, I can say, or the prospect, I can say, here’s three or four things that I, I’m not a hundred percent sure on. I’m not super con, and I like that you use the word confidence, right?

Like, I’m not confident in this data. I have medium confidence in this, or I have high

or low confidence, but here is the output. Either way, let’s still have a conversation ’cause the value to the client and the prospect. This goes back to like, what is the core value proposition of something like elements.

The value to them is orienting them to orienting them to their financial situation. Right? Like,

this is how things look for you. And even if I don’t have everything perfect, that’s okay. I can still tell that story [00:13:00] and show you

what’s going on there.

Abby Morton: Totally. Exactly. Okay, so question for you Jordan. Now give us your feedback. We talked about data confidence, that’s one aspect of it, but that’s not the actual assessment. That’s a piece of it. So as you’re looking at the overall assessment as you first saw it, you know, in your first five minutes, like where do you see this adding value for our customers and for their clients?

Jordan Haines: have real beef with this word, comprehensive. Um, I, like I, I went through the CFP curriculum, I have no problem with it. Um, I think we’ve done a good thing in becoming more comprehensive as an industry in general. I don’t think consumers are looking for comprehensive financial advice. I think they’re looking for holistic financial advice, and I think those are two very different words.

Abby Morton: Yeah. What’s, define the difference in your mind to 

Jordan Haines: In my mind, comprehensive is just a bag of goods, right? It’s just like, here’s everything. Like I look at the whole thing. It’s all of it.

We looked at everything from savings to taxes, to investing to the whole thing, and ADV advisors understand [00:14:00] this. Like if I go through the CFP curriculum, I have estate planning, I have all these things, comprehensive is all of it. Whereas holistic is somewhat more focused, but understanding that there’s relationships within there. Right? So a holistic approach would would be comprehensive. Comprehensive in nature, meaning that like I know all the different pieces. All the things, but I understand that I. Savings is going to affect my liquidity and my debt repayment and my financial independence in the future. Um, the reason I like what I see here is, and, and I’ve talked to enough financial advisors, when they see our element scorecard, they see comprehensive, oh, look, there’s something representing every area of financial health. And oftentimes when I’m training them on how to talk to clients for the first time, they’ll often say, oh, I need like a bullet point for every single element. I always say, your clients don’t need that. They need like two or three things, the things that matter most to them. And so the first thing that my eyes were drawn to, um, in this AI assessment is it only shows me like three strengths, right? Like two or three strengths. Like here are

a couple [00:15:00] things that we are focused on, you’re doing really good at, and then the area of improvement aren’t like, here is all the bullet points for every single thing you should do in every single area of your financial health.

It’s like, no, you need to refine your investment mix. You need to focus on debt. You need to focus on insurance or something like that. So it’s only helping me focus on a couple things. So the reason I call out like holistic versus comprehensive is that it’s being holistic in that it’s saying like, if you do this, it affects all these other areas.

It’s talking about the comprehensive picture, but it’s being very focused on the thing that matters most to the client at that time.

And I really like that we’re leading with that.

Abby Morton: that’s actually like one of the biggest things that was really important to Reese in building this is that he almost was like, let’s just have one area of improvement. Like clients can only do one thing at a time. Like this is Reese’s really big thing. And I actually think I butt heads with him because.

His personality type is, give me one thing to do and I will do the one thing and then gimme another thing to do. And my personality type is, give me a list of things to do and I’m gonna check off all those things on the list. Right? And so [00:16:00] it totally goes back to like, and this is always my struggle as an advisor, is it’s like if we understood our client’s personality types and like what they wanted, we’d be able to do, do a much better job because.

Everyone works differently, you know, and wants to be handed a list or not a list of things to do, but I like what you’re saying is we’re just giving them the most important things and I think you, as the advisor can say, you know, I’m listing out three areas and at least in my mind it’s, it almost when the client sees it, they’ll see three areas or four areas of improvement, but then they each say like, generate a goal.

So I’m, how I envision it is the clients will hit, generate a goal for the ones that they actually want to take action on. For example, maybe buying life insurance is on the list, but maybe that’s not their top priority right now. And actually, I. You know, increasing their savings rate is feeling like a bigger priority to them.

And so I like that it’s a way to give them a, a shortened list. Like you said, [00:17:00] Jordan, it’s not every single element and everything that’s wrong in their whole entire life, which could be overwhelming, but then they can even almost pick. Within a smaller list, like what’s the one thing that is important to me?

Or if they’re like me and they want, they could generate three goal goals and pull that over to one page plan. You know, like it’s a way for them to kind of interact with their advisor and help the advisor know like what is important to them specifically.

Jordan Haines: in all, I think the way that this has been structured is that it’s very conversational.

Um, I re I reme. 

Abby Morton: Tell me more. Why do you 

Jordan Haines: Yeah. Let me tell you what I mean with this, and I’m gonna tell a story because it has to do with like. I remember I was an intern and I was an intern for Western Digital, uh, and I worked with a bunch of like marketing business people.

This was what got me through school and I remember like, they put me on projects and I had to ask follow up questions. And so I’d often send an email to like certain people in the company and I would send like four or five things in there and they would always. Forget the last three questions and only answer the first one.

And it drove me nuts. I was like, okay, I put four things in here, just answer all of

them. And [00:18:00] so then I did the same thing with clients, and it was the same way. Like if I had two or three things I needed from a client as an advisor, they would only answer the first thing. And then I experienced the exact same thing at Elements.

When I would talk to advisors, I would send ’em an email and say, Hey, these are the three questions I have for you. And they’d answer the first one because I was like you. I’m like, just give me the three things and then, um. I started using chat GPTA little bit more to have conversations. Uh, my neighbors probably think I’m nuts ’cause I walk around my neighborhood and I’ll plug in.

I don’t know if you’ve done the, like the pro version where you can like have a conversation with chat

GPT, 

Abby Morton: Pretty 

Jordan Haines: they changed something with it recently. Sorry, side note. It’s trippy, like I’m talking to a human being. You can hear the breaths and the stutters and the long draws.

I didn’t where that, 

Abby Morton: What? No, it’s stuttering and taking a breath.

Jordan Haines: Abby. Like, it

sounds like a human being anyway. So I have these conversations with chat, GBT usually to clarify my thoughts or like to solve a problem. And I’m, I’m trying to like, have it help me structure things. Um, and so oftentimes, like usually when I start, I say, Hey, I need you to be discerning. I need you to ask me follow-up questions. I don’t need you to just be accommodating. [00:19:00] Um, and yesterday I was on a walk I. Uh, having a conversation with chat, GPT and I got mad at chat because, um, the, I can’t tell it. Do we say it even though it’s a, it sounds like a guy I am talking to.

Whatever. I’m talking to chat GPT and it responds back with like, Hey, here are seven clarifying questions.

And I like got mad and I was like, no, don’t gimme seven. Give me one. We’re in a conversation here. I can’t respond to seven at once. Just give me one and then I’ll answer the next and, and hearing you talk about this and seeing this, the reason I say conversational is because like an email isn’t very conversational.

It’s very like, here’s a thing, read the whole thing. You can respond to the whole thing. Whereas this is like I’m asking you one question at a time or one thing at a time. It allows me to be a little bit more focused on the thing that matters at that point, and

then move on to the next, right? It’s not to say

that the other things aren’t important, it’s just that right now this is the most important, and then you

as the advisor can follow that up and say. Are some other elements. There are some other things in your financial health that we need to focus on. Just not right now. We’re gonna sequence this and [00:20:00] take it one at a time.

Really long explanation. But uh, there you go.

Abby Morton: I like that. I like that. I think the other value add that I see is that at least I heard from a lot of advisors, like, this feels overwhelming. Or my client, my client might think this is overwhelming, or I’m worried about them. And even the advisors that are like, no, my clients love this.

I’m positive the clients leave and they forget that that middle row means income. They forget that the bottom row means assets. They forget what LT meant like. Yes, they understood it when the advisor was presenting it to them, but we are just human and unfortunately we can’t remember everything. And so I love that we have a way now with AI to kind of break down each of those elements and to help the client have like a resource, a guide that they can look back to when they’re not sitting in front of their advisor that they can read it and digest it and like think about it more.

To me it’s like. It’s almost like the one page plan explained, right? It’s, I’ve never thought about it like that, but I’m [00:21:00] really liking that. It’s like it’s, it’s explaining what is on this one page. Like the one page is the action plan. But if you do need a couple more pages of details or information just to help you.

Feel more confident in what you were told in that meeting. Here’s, here’s a place to look back at and to, to further understand why your advisor was saying that your most important area right now is to increase your savings rate, for example. Right? And so I think that. It’s a way that we can do that, but that, that’s so hard to scale without AI because every client is different and every client is unique and everyone’s LT score does not mean the same thing.

And so with ai, we’re able to provide it in the elements framework and able to use it in a way that gives the AI the structure that it needs to not like go to the ends of, you know, like I’m just thinking it has bounds on it. Right? And so I’m not worried about the AI saying. Anything necessarily that it shouldn’t say.

And obviously every advisor before they put it in front of client will review it. But what I hope [00:22:00] is most advisors will take a quick look at it and just hit publish and say, this is great, and put it in front of the client. Right. Um, ’cause it’s just a way that instead of having all these colorful boxes, then they go and they meet with the client, the advisor, they understand it for the meeting, but then they leave and they, they, they just get busy and they just forget, you know?

So a month later they can come back and they still have something that they can review.

Jordan Haines: you said something, and I know this is probably a question of those listening to this right now. Um, we created an AI tool that’s client facing in a sense, essentially that, in that, like the output of this AI is supposed to go to the client. Um, but it’s my understanding with this one is this is more to empower the advisor to bring this in front of the client rather than us trying to steal that client relationship itself.

I can just feel advisors, ’cause I’ve seen this with other tools thinking, oh, is this element’s way of getting to my clients before I can, can you respond to that?

Abby Morton: Well, no client will see the AI unless the advisor has decided to put it in front of the 

Jordan Haines: Love it.[00:23:00] 

Abby Morton: So, no, we are not stealing your client because they won’t even know that feature even exists until the advisor has reviewed it. Because obviously it’s important, especially from a compliant standpoint, that the advisor approves and agrees with what the AI is outputting, you know?

Um, and so that’s, I think that’s the 

Jordan Haines: Yeah, my, and, and I’ve had some variation of these questions. Like, you guys have a really good, uh, design, or, I like the ux. And there’s always been like, what happens if you guys get so good at the client relationship? I don’t matter anymore. And I’m like, well, that’s not the point. Like the point is to give you the power to really own that conversation with the client.

Like

it, it is the conversation that’s gonna be the most powerful part of that interaction.

Abby Morton: I agree. It’s the conversation and it’s like the, it’s the buddy, it’s the accountability partner. It’s the human being. Like anyone can go to AI right now or to any other tool to figure out what to do. But it’s like, I mean, Jordan, at the beginning of this call, I kind of told you like I’m wanting to talk to another financial advisor about my personal financial [00:24:00] life.

Like I’m a CFP, I know what I’m doing. It’s like I want a second set of eyes to just like double check, to verify, to validate. What I should do next in my own personal financial plan. And so it’s like that’s the value that the advisors are bringing is, is you know, that person that’s gonna help you get it done or even do the tasks for the client depending on what service you’re providing.

Um, it’s that person that’s gonna be forward thinking and like. Catch anything that might be coming down the, you know, down the path for that client. I think it’s, it’s more than just what do I do? And I think when advisors realize that’s their potential, I think, you know, and, and it’s more about helping the client actually get that stuff done.

You know, that’s where the power is. 

Jordan Haines: Yeah.

I love it. Well, let’s, um, let’s wrap up here. We are looking at this, this is still in beta. We’re testing it, but we’re pretty close to going live with it and I think we’re going to do like a webinar or something. So, so tell us a little about that. I know we don’t have a ton of the details, but we can put that in the show notes when this does go [00:25:00] live.

But why don’t you tell everyone

about that? 

Abby Morton: Exactly. So yes. Well, we are, I’m so excited. We’re finally here ready to release it. Jordan’s right, it has been in beta, so thank you for those people who’ve been in our beta testing group. We always appreciate all the hard work and diligence and testing things before we bring it out to the larger audience.

But yes, we’ll be having a webinar where we’re showing you the features, helping you understand how to turn it on, how to turn it off, how do you actually use it. So just like the nuts and bolts of using the feature. But you know, the reasons why I think Jordan hit on Jordan and I hit on a lot of those today.

Uh, but I think just, uh, allowing you to know like, okay, I have this feature now, how do I use it? How do I implement it? You know, kind of what’s next. So, um, I think the biggest thing I’m thinking about this is it’s just empowering the client to better understand their financial life. Like that’s how I think this AI feature is going to be used is.

Is an an empowerment tool for the client, and so I’m really excited to bring it out to everyone. So stay [00:26:00] tuned for webinar details, watch your emails for that. Like Jordan said, we’ll definitely include the registration link in our show notes.

Jordan Haines: Love it. Well, Abby, thank you for coming on and, and sharing this with us. I know everyone’s like, well, what is this thing? So join the webinar when we, uh, go live with that, find it in the show notes. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any thoughts or questions.

I know that many of you don’t ever, when we say show notes, you don’t even know what that means.

That’s okay. You can email us, uh, podcast@getelements.com. We’ll make sure we send you all the information too.

Abby Morton: Yep. Okay. Thanks everyone. Always good to be here.

Jordan Haines: week.