Money Matters Episode 335- Human Connection at Scale: Robert Sofia on AI, Trust, and Advisor Growth

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Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: What if I told you AI could make you feel more cared for by your financial advisor? Not less. That the best technology doesn't replace human connection. It scales it. For decades, the financial world told us you can't scale trust. That personal service comes at the cost of growth. But in today's episode of Money Matters. about to challenge that thinking and flip it on its head. I'm sitting down with Robert Sophia, CEO of Snappy Kraken, one of the most innovative minds in FinTech. Together, we explore how AI is quietly transforming relationships behind the scenes from personalized touch points and lightning fast lead response to scalable systems that actually feel more human. This isn't just a. Tech episode, it's a roadmap for any advisor or entrepreneur who wants to grow without losing the personal edge that built their business in the first place. And if you stick with us till the very end, you'll hear Robert break down the one [00:01:00] AI mistake most advisors make, and the simple shift that could change everything about how you serve your clients.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Whether you're AI curious or already experimenting, this conversation will change the way that you think about growth. Relationships and trust in the digital age. This is money Matters where Financial Wisdom meets the future of advice. I'm your host, Chris Hensley. Robert, thank you so much for joining us today.

Robert Sofia: Thank you for having me, Chris. Exciting conversation based on the way you teed it up.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: . Of the cool things that we were able to do because of future proof, so we've talked, I've talked about future proof on the show before, uh, but we co-author this, this article that's in my digital kaizen blog that I've been putting out as I'm researching my, my book. Digital Kaizen for financial advisors. Um, and we were able to actually meet in person right? Here we are in different states, different cities, and I was able, in between those networking meetings, I had like five minutes, right? So I came up and, and shook your hand. But you were in the middle of giving , a presentation about [00:02:00] ai.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: And the ladies from Finney were on stage as well. And so this was a big, a big event there. So let's start with that. So what did you think about future proof? One of the big things was ai. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Robert Sofia: Futureproof is an awesome event. It's a great industry. And what better than being able to network with your colleagues? Everybody, uh, that. I generally wanted to see was there and, and I got to meet new people as well. And it was, it a lot of energizing conversations and it was just, it's just a great event.

Robert Sofia: I love being there. And AI was obviously a big theme at Futureproof because it's so relevant and it's very future pacing. So there was a lot of conversations around AI and I was happy to be part one.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: . One of my favorite things is on Sunday when they had the AI drop, it was like a little demo of everything in the back of my head. The skeptics there. I was like, all right, they're taking a bunch of existing stuff and they're shoving ai. It's like, all right, everything's got AI now.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: So really starting from there and getting to to the roots here and where we can as advisors, it's [00:03:00] confusing because there's. So much that we, is trying to grab our attention and pull us in different directions. Now you've said when we go to that article, and I encourage listeners to go to my LinkedIn page and look at the article section because we did a really nice, I look back at that article, there's a lot of really good in information there, but you said in the article before that AI won't make financial advisors less human.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: It'll make them more consistently human. Can you unpack what you mean by that?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, well, it certainly can make them less human. I mean, there's a lot of tools out there that do that. They strip away the humanity and they, people tout AI as the solution to do all the work. So you don't have. To, and it's going to write for you and post for you and communicate for you, and then the authenticity is gone.

Robert Sofia: But if AI is treated not as a replacement for human connection, but as an enhancement to it, not churning out AI slop, but amplifying your authenticity, it can help you [00:04:00] to do things like. Find the right people. Connect with the right people on their preferred channel with topics that they care about, in a way that feels personal and with you in the loop to make sure that it's authentic.

Robert Sofia: And when it's done that way, AI just gives you more time, gives you more speed, creates more relevance for the people you're engaging with, and then it can be an amplifier of trust. So it really comes down like every other tool to how you use it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: love that. I love that for, I love your answer. And then I like that you started with the words AI slop. 'cause there are two juxtaposed things, right? There's a lot of bad content out there. I mean, we're kind of, you know, we're so far into to people using AI that you see those overused phrases that AI's putting in there, and we're seeing a whole bunch of this stuff over and over.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: So I love that because you're, you're pointing us in a different direction. You're talking about. Us being able to connect with our clients or our prospects and, and pointing, uh, pointing [00:05:00] us in a direction where we can do, you know, human connection at scale. In fact, in that article, one of the things that we talked about was human connection at scale.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: And it sounds kind of paradoxical, uh, for, for some people, but how can something like AI actually make relationships feel more personal?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, well that expression, human connection at scale. I, I shared that two years ago, uh, from stage at Jolt at our marketing conference as what I consider to be the definition of marketing. In this industry, human connection at scale, because this is a business that thrives on human connection. So if you think about the way any advisor has historically been able to, to win business and retain clients, it's all about that connection that they forge with somebody.

Robert Sofia: Now marketing has historically stripped away that connection. It's been focused on blasting messages to as many people as possible, hoping that it will resonate with the right person and will drive some results. And it's just, you know, gorilla marketing, blast marketing, interruption marketing. And that is, that is history.[00:06:00]

Robert Sofia: But. If you rethink marketing, and that is very much what we do every single day. As we think about how we help advisors with this, if you rethink of it in a lens of how does marketing strengthen my connection, you're gonna do different strategies and tactics completely. Your, your content is gonna be completely different.

Robert Sofia: So now, directly to your point, let me give you some examples. If you have a database of contacts. And it's only names and email addresses. You have no choice but to send the same message to everybody because you don't know who's in there. But if you use data enrichment to find out their age, their interests, where they work, where they live, their hobbies.

Robert Sofia: Okay. And then you use AI to analyze. That data, segment those people into separate groups and send them content relevant to their stage of life, their income level, their asset [00:07:00] level, where they live. Now, you queue up all that content. You review it before it sends to click Yes, yes. No edit. Yes, edit. Yes. No, no.

Robert Sofia: Yes. Right. You are now. Also inserting your personality into it. What's happening? You are sending hundreds of relevant messages to individuals from you, not blasted from you personally by text or email that you've reviewed that's tailored to them, but now you can do it in seconds or minutes. Instead of ours, you create human connection because it's you reaching out with a message that's relevant, that builds connection.

Robert Sofia: But AI is what empowered you to do that. It strengthened your own skills and abilities. It's like a bionic suit. It's like Iron Man, like he, he's still Iron Man in that suit, but now he's way more powerful. That's how AI can drive human connection at scale.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Robert, I love [00:08:00] it. So when I, so as you were saying that, I had my marketing hat put my marketing hat on, and so somebody who, who has used email marketing for many years, it's like, this is kind of the brute force attack of, of, you know, people who haven't asked for, haven't asked for it, and you're emailing 'em, right?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: But what you're talking about is there's some additional steps there that kind of gives us homework where, where we're reviewing it. We're, we're, we're putting our personality in it, and we're actually taking the time to learn about the people that we're sending, uh, marketing out to. So I love that. I like the idea that the Iron Man, The idea that you're still, you know, Tony Stark inside of it, but you're putting these overlays, these pattern recognitions, these uh, these systems that are helping us. Uh, implement in, in a different way there. So I really, really love that. Now I'm gonna pivot a little bit because one of the things that you mentioned when we were doing the article, uh, together here was that, uh, snappy Kraken has something called the Smart Growth [00:09:00] Suite. Uh, can you share a specific success story of an advisor who's implemented snappy Kraken Smart Growth Suite and saw measurable change?

Robert Sofia: Yeah, I have, I have thousands of examples. Uh, but I'll, I'll, I'll share a couple that come to mind and I'll, I'll share one. Uh, at the advisor level, and then I'll share one at the enterprise level. So, uh, we had an advisor come in. They had been doing marketing for years. They had a massive database and they were sending their newsletter to their database every single week.

Robert Sofia: That's all, that's all they were doing. And so they had thousands of contacts in this database and they didn't really know who they were or if they were gonna drive, uh, any measurable outcomes from it. They were just nurturing them. So instead we, we put them into the Smart Growth suite. The smart growth suite enriched all the contacts with data.

Robert Sofia: So now we knew their age, their address, their income level, their asset level, the value of their home, other, other things. Then AI [00:10:00] automatically segmented those people into separate groups. And then it recommended specific marketing campaigns for each group. So they were segmented into about five different groups.

Robert Sofia: They were sent special marketing campaigns for those groups. So the tech entrepreneurs were getting one campaign. The retirees were getting one campaign. The women were getting one campaign, the Henrys were getting one campaign and so forth. Each campaign was designed. For that audience and was intended to trigger a conversation.

Robert Sofia: So this advisor now deployed multiple campaigns to this list that were tailored because AI told them which campaigns they should use with this group of people, segmented them, sent the campaigns. Then as people were clicking and engaging, AI began to analyze this is all part of the Smart growth suite, analyze their activity.

Robert Sofia: What are they clicking on? What are they viewing? What are they opening, what are they clicking? And when their lead score got to a certain level and their asset level was in the range the advisor was targeting, [00:11:00] the system automatically triggered a task for the advisor. So it said, Christopher Hensley. Has a million dollars in investible assets.

Robert Sofia: Uh, he has been reading your estate planning content and we recommend reaching out to him at this time. And the system recommended, based on Chris's activity, whether he should get an email or a text message and proposed what that should include. The advisor merely said, yes, send that went out. As a result of this effort, they were able to convert about 10% of the total people on that lead list into active conversations.

Robert Sofia: Of those 10% of active conversations, about half came in for a meeting and they closed business with over 70% of them. They added hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenue to their firm simply by using AI to analyze data. And queue up the right communications at the right time.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: that. So I'm just hearing the metrics [00:12:00] there. So when you hear it's 10%, that may sound like a low number for, for people who are actually doing this 10 percent's high right. Conversion rate. Right. And, and doing one campaign is, is, uh, hard enough, right? an advisor. But what I'm hearing is that this thing is intelligently going in and then putting them into different categories and you're essentially creating multiple campaigns based on that. Prospect or that, that potential client, that's huge.

Robert Sofia: And lemme, lemme put it in numbers. Lemme put it in numbers just in case the 10% isn't meaningful. So we have an enterprise, they have 600 advisors using Snappy Kraken.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Wow.

Robert Sofia: They use this same functionality for 600 advisors as a result of, of running this strategy. In three years, they have grown a UM from 20 billion.

Robert Sofia: To 40 billion organically. Organically, they've gone from 20 to 40 billion in a UM in under four years, about about three. So that's, I mean, [00:13:00] that's an example at a larger scale in real dollars of how this kind of technology can empower better conversations and advisor, stronger advisor relationships.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love it. I love it. So if that's from a, from a marketing standpoint as, as, as an advisor to other advisors listening to this show, that, that speaks to us for sure. Um, something else that we fall, you know, uh. That happens as advisors. Now you mentioned in, uh, the article that one of the biggest mistakes that advisors can make is, uh, mistaking chat, GPT kind of tinkering, uh, for full AI implementation.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Right. Can you clarify the difference between an advisor just, you know, uh, monkeying around the chat GC versus having a full AI implementation in their practice? What's the difference there?

Robert Sofia: Well. Something like 80%, I think it was 86%. I don't know the exact number, but I saw it recently of advisors are using ai. But when you drill into what that means for most [00:14:00] of them, it means using large language models to do research or generate content. That is a very basic use case. It's not wrong. It's helpful, but it is basic.

Robert Sofia: If you go to Snappy Krakens website, you're not gonna see AI splashed all over it. But we have AI throughout it because AI is not the answer in itself. It's the strategies on which AI is deployed that make the difference. So for example, you need to think beyond just output of content and analysis of data.

Robert Sofia: You need to think about the layers of ai. So you've got, yes, these large language models, but then you have. AI agents and AI copilots and ways to actually perform tasks either completely independent of you, uh, or [00:15:00] in concert with you, where AI is actually programmed to, to run through specific workflows, trigger certain activities, and that's where the real value comes, because when AI goes from you initiating.

Robert Sofia: To initiating for you. That's where you start to really compound time savings. So I laid out some examples earlier. The data analysis that determines which campaigns and groups to put people in and which communications to send them. That's not something that the advisor has to decide. When a contact comes in from anywhere, AI will automatically parse all the data for that contact and create a contact record in the CRM.

Robert Sofia: Okay. Well, that an assistant historically would've spent 15 minutes doing that. No, no, not now. AI will do it. Then somebody would have to decide how are we gonna market to this person? Not now. AI makes that decision. Then somebody has to decide when do we engage personally? Not now. AI will trigger when to engage personally and how [00:16:00] what you're doing is you're shifting the paradigm from me thinking, oh, I'm gonna go use AI to do X to.

Robert Sofia: AI is now working for me to do X, Y, and Z, and it will tell me when I need to do X. And that is, that is a very different approach. And so I'm simplifying, and anybody who's advanced in using AI might say, oh, Robert, you know, uh, this is a really basic explanation, but for most advisors, this is the explanation they need.

Robert Sofia: They need to understand that if AI isn't doing the work without them having to think about it. They're not using AI to its potential yet, and that is available today. I'm not future pacing. You should have AI running business processes, marketing processes, client service processes. You shouldn't have to think about calling and scheduling a client review.

Robert Sofia: They should be getting a text message and an email at the right time. The information gathering should be done and AI should be serving up your meeting agenda for you at the time of the meeting. [00:17:00] This is how you create real efficiencies.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: it. That's a great answer, Robert. Um, you know, when I see my son using it like Google, I'm saying, Hey, you're doing it wrong. No, I'm just kidding. he is not doing it wrong. I mean that. You, you, it definitely can be used like that, but as advisors, if that's all we're doing with it, we're really missing the point here.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: And you talk about strategies, ways to look at ai. You talk about, you know, the agents, the copilots, the ag, they're doing work. For you while you're doing something else, right? That's a different use case than just using it like deep research, right? So a, a fantastic way to come at it. A fantastic way to look at it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: If you're thinking about AI integration in your practice, these are things that need to be on your radar. Robert is telling us, Hey, we need to look at this. Alright, I'm gonna switch a little bit and talk about if an advisor wants to start using AI tomorrow, what's the first system or area that they should address and why does it begin with compliance?

Robert Sofia: [00:18:00] Yeah, I, I mean, I, I suggest compliance always, and it's not the sexy answer. Uh, most people just recommend their own tools, uh, or some other tool, but the, the reality is that. Using AI does expose your business to risks. Uh, there are regulatory risks. There is accidental disclosure of PII. Um, there, uh, is there are questions about proper disclosure that you need to talk with your counsel about.

Robert Sofia: So, um, a if you don't have a compliance strategy and you don't have a data. Strategy is the other thing because AI is only as good as the data that's feeding it. So if you, if your data is really fragmented, you don't have a unified approach, uh, to how you manage, uh, store, you know, store and, uh, retrieve that data with AI and how it's readable by ai, you know, you're really not ready.

Robert Sofia: So what I say is, get your compliance house in order, get your data. [00:19:00] Strategy in place, and then identify the most repetitive, um, time consuming, uh, or impactful, positively impactful things in your business. And then ask yourself if AI can. Resolve any of those things. Can it reduce time, reduce manual labor, or can it accelerate growth and apply AI to those use cases?

Robert Sofia: Um, and then you'll be, uh, you'll be really off to the races.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love that. That's a very powerful answer that you just gave there. One, we started by talking about compliance and bringing them in and you know, an advisor who's been doing this, I've been doing this for over 20 years, so the idea of, of, uh, you know, I was the guy that raised my hand and said, Hey. Uh, LinkedIn's a thing when LinkedIn rolled out, can we get this compliant?

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: That kind of stuff. So, so, you know, advisors are, are, are, you know, [00:20:00] can be frightened by new technology because we don't wanna lose our licensing. We wanna make sure that we're doing it correctly. So something like snappy kraken. the idea that you guys are compliance friendly, that, you know, you've done some of the backend by working with, uh, you know, we're not just going out there going blind, so I love that you talked about a data strategy.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Oh, what's that? That for advisors, that's where we need to start. Right? That's huge. And then you talked about, you know, actual use cases and, and I love that you, you put two columns there, you put, uh, something that's repetitive. So sitting down and writing a list of what am I doing on a daily basis that's repetitive, and then what's positively impactful to my business, those two lists, and then putting AI on top of it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: I love that. That is a very, very strong answer. Robert, I'm gonna ask you that we're getting close to the end here. Uh, I mentioned I've been doing this for a long time, so this might sound like me here. So many advisors still rely on referrals or word of mouth, but hey, we're in [00:21:00] a digital age now. I mean, post COVID, post pandemic, everything's done remotely. How can AI help modernize their marketing without losing authenticity?

Robert Sofia: Well, I. I am not of the school of thought that AI is a replacement for those things. I, I firmly believe in the value of personal, uh, interaction, face-to-face, uh, getting introductions from your clients that that should never stop and. There are firms maybe that run a completely digital strategy, and that's fine, but, uh, for most advisors, the the relationships really matter.

Robert Sofia: And so what we encourage advisors to do is to use AI to enhance or supplement those things. Um, some of our clients use AI to ideate what events to have. They use AI to generate the content, to invite people to those events. They use AI to analyze all the registrants. And you know, if [00:22:00] you, if you go to an event, let's say it's a referral event, you have your clients there and you've got a few prospects, and before you go into that room, you know which prospects are probably most qualified because you let AI do some analysis and pick them out for you.

Robert Sofia: Um, and then they use AI to. Create follow ups for that event and the timing and the triggers and the cadence of campaigns to convert introductions or referrals into business and to, you know, all all of these things. And to analyze how is, how is an event actually performing? How do different events perform?

Robert Sofia: How, like we use AI to analyze every single registration, click, open conversion rate, uh, the amount of ROI or a UM that comes in from different channels. So now AI can do all this da deep data analysis for you. You don't need a data scientist on staff to do data science and really understand where should you be spending more money on events?

Robert Sofia: What are your best sources of referrals? What's the best way to go about getting them? And so, uh, I, it's not one or the other. It's, it's how do use the together to get [00:23:00] the best result.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: right, I'm gonna lead with that, not one or the other. I love that because you too often you'll hear, you know, advisors who are successful, they'll, they'll sit on their laurels and they'll say, Hey, I get referrals. But are they really tracking the r the, the conversion rate, the ROI? So all of the things, the answers that you gave were a database so that you're going back and you're, you're, you know, overlaying AI even to something as live events where we're doing. client events, right? That sort of thing. And you're going back and you're, you're sprinkling AI on top of it to, to add to it. And I love it because it's metrics based. Um, we are bumping towards the end of the show. I'm gonna give you a, a big question here. Looking three to five years out, how do you see AI reshaping the financial advice industry, and who do you think will win or lose in this shift?

Robert Sofia: You know, I get asked this question or a similar version of it pretty often, and you know, I'm not omnipotent, you know, I mean, [00:24:00] I, AI is doing things that we can't even comprehend. I mean, we, we are literally hu humans have figured out how to make sand. Think, you know, we've got. We've got super intelligence, super intelligence, more speed to access and create with information and data than ever before In human history, jobs are being replaced, more jobs will be replaced.

Robert Sofia: Um, the entire shape of many industries. Will change. And usually if you listen to people talk about the future of AI in this industry, if you listen thoughtfully, you will find that they have an agenda and so they will tell you that. Things like, you know, AI is the future. If you don't adapt ai, you're gonna go away.

Robert Sofia: You won't be able to be relevant. [00:25:00] Use our AI technology today. Or they'll say, oh, AI will never replace advisors. Because it's all about the human element. And the people want skin and they want, they need that, that deep expertise. AI can't do what we do, and that's self-validating. So, uh, what, what I'm gonna say, my answer in saying all of that is, anybody who says they know doesn't really know.

Robert Sofia: Because it's moving so fast. Historically, computing power has doubled every couple of years, Moore's law. But today a AI is doubling every seven months in its computing power. You, you blinked. It was seven months ago. AI is twice as powerful as it was then. And you know what happens when you double, you know, the power of compounding.

Robert Sofia: So I think it's anybody's game, but I will say this, if you won a future-proof business. Don't ignore it. Don't ignore it.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: it. I love it. I don't think we're gonna do a better question than that. That was a [00:26:00] fantastic answer there. In fact, uh, we've taught sand how to think so that one stuck in my head. I might steal that one from you, Robert. Good, one there. Good one there. Uh, so in the last few minutes of the show.

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: What have I forgot to ask you that you'd like to share with listeners today?

Robert Sofia: You know, I wasn't prepared for that question. Um, I, I don't know what you forgot to ask. Your questions were really good, but if anybody wants to. Talk about this or they want, they have questions about it for their, their enterprise, how they can help their advisors, you know, just reach out to me on LinkedIn, uh, send me a direct message.

Robert Sofia: Uh, I'd love to chat even just for 15 minutes and, and see if we can be helpful. You

Christopher Hensley RICP, CES: Robert, thank you so much for being on the show today. Have a great rest of the day There I.

Robert Sofia: too. Thanks Chris.