On this week's episode of the Financial Planning Podcast, Robert Sofia explains that when it comes to modern marketing, advisors have plenty of opportunities to work smarter and not harder.
But to make the most of those opportunities, financial pros will need to step out of their comfort zones and try something truly unique.
Sofia, founder and the CEO of
"There's an intersection of data, AI and communications that have the potential to absolutely transform how advisors communicate and market themselves," Sofia said. "Because we can hyper-personalize things with AI based on data and then send one-to-one communications, it changes the reception of those communications. It changes the impact they have.
"Those are the things that, with technology, we are trying to help advisors do. Which also gives them more scale. It helps them to move faster, reach more people and help more people. And that has never been possible the way it is today."
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During his conversation with FP Podcast host and lead editorial producer Justin L. Mack, Sofia talks about how he went from not knowing what financial services was to having an 18-year career in it, some of the practical ways AI is being used in advisor marketing today, and why video is such a powerful weapon in an advisor's arsenal.
Listen to the new episode — as well as to all future and past episodes — by subscribing to the FP Podcast on
Transcript:
Justin L. Mack (00:03):
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to the Financial Planning Podcast. I'm your host, Justin L. Mack. And it is my pleasure to introduce this week's guest, Robert Sofia, founder, chairman and CEO of Snappy Kraken. Robert, thanks so much for stopping by the show this week, man.
Robert Sofia (00:19):
It's awesome to be here, Justin. Thank you for inviting me.
Justin L. Mack (00:22):
Absolutely. Now, if you don't know Robert, first of all, you should. But if you don't, that's all good because his focus is making sure the world knows you. Over the past decade, Robert has supported thousands of companies across the spectrum of financial services, including solo advisors, ensembles, family offices, broker-dealers, custodians, TAMP, insurance companies, you name it, with their marketing efforts. As of 2023, Snappy Kraken serves more than 6,000 advisors, 200 enterprises and more than 6 million individual investors. Their goal? Create a complete digital marketing system for financial advisors who care about making meaningful connections. And I have had the pleasure to connect with Robert a time or two before, both in
Robert Sofia (01:34):
I will.
Justin L. Mack (01:35):Alright. As a newbie, you don't have a choice even if you said no, but anyone who's new to the show has to start at the beginning. So tell me, how did you even get into the world of financial services in the first place? Was it something you always wanted to do? Did you end up here some other way, like a lot of folks have, what's your background?
Robert Sofia (01:51):
No, man, I didn't even know what financial services were. I mean, I think I turned 18, got my first credit cards, maxed them out, ruined my credit. I grew up in a family where finance was not ever a discussion. It was just hand to mouth like, "Hey, do we have enough for groceries and tennis shoes?" So financial services was not something I looked forward to. However, I did pursue education around marketing. I did pursue a career in marketing. I ended up at Ford. I had a lot of great success there in my early career right out of school in my early 20s. And what happened is a friend who worked at an RIA said, "Hey man, our industry is really far behind, and the stuff you're doing could revolutionize this space." And I was intrigued by that. And he ultimately brought me to the leaders of the firm, and I was 23.
(02:46)
They were growing really fast and they offered me a VP role, and I was like, man, 23, I can be a VP, I can run marketing. And as soon as I got into this industry, I saw the opportunity. I also loved it. I started learning so much. I got securities licensed, I learned about finance, I learned about everything from budgeting to credit to investing. I saw the benefits of that quickly in my own wealth-building activities. And I said, this is really meaningful work. It helps people, it's fun and there's an opportunity to really improve the marketing. And I've been here ever since. It's been almost 20 years now. It's been 18 years.
Justin L. Mack (03:24):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the reasons I love asking that question is because so many people, as you've mentioned, said I didn't even know what this was and now I've been in it for nearly 20 years seeing success. And I think it's important to point out, and what you laid out was the fact that you were inherently interested once you figured out what it was. Because, yeah, kids don't grow up saying, "I want to be in financial services when I grow up." That's not on the homework in kindergarten when you turn it in, but there's so much that is interesting once you start to peel this onion. Problem is, it's hard to get through that outer layer and really show people what's interesting about this business. I'm going to poke you throughout the show about the marketing work you're doing for firms. But for the industry, I don't know if you have any thoughts on how the heck we can let people know what this is really all about and kind of change the perception from the outside looking in? Because I feel like there are folks with skillsets who don't think that they're good for this, who are amazing at this. Again, folks like yourself. So how do we let them know that the onion is worth peeling in the first place?
Robert Sofia (04:24):
I see so many people doing that. I'm really excited when I look at young advisors with different perspectives, fresh approaches, breaking away from the traditional style. I think there's a lot of things about this industry that are ingrained from the '80s perception of Wall Street stockbrokers, or even the '90s and 2000s. Oh, it's tech stocks. Oh, it's Goldman guys in blue suits. And now I think because there's been so many up and coming firms saying, "Hey, how do we serve the mass affluent? How do we reach the mass affluent? How do we help them see the value that it's actually having an impact?" The way we do that, of course, is through amplifying those voices. How do you make those advisors more visible? How do you make their message more palpable? How do you make them more interesting and attractive to people who think that financial services are inaccessible to them or they don't have enough money? That's usually one of the biggest things. "I don't have enough money. I don't make enough money." And once you can start to help people to see that there are services for them, that it can benefit them, that they need to understand these principles and start early, it has such a big impact. So I don't think that's anything that any one of us can do by ourselves, but as an industry, everybody being out there vocalizing that, amplifying that is going to have an impact over time, and it already is.
Justin L. Mack (05:48):
And you guys are absolutely out there, vocal, keeping busy at Snappy Kraken. And I feel like I'm always taking a look and you guys are announcing something, changing something, partnering with somebody, trying something new. So before we get deep into the weeds of this week's conversation, what's new in your world? What are you cooking up for advisors? What are you most excited about right now as far as new offerings from Snappy Kraken?
Robert Sofia (06:09):
Yeah, this is a tough question because I have all these things on our road map that we're working on and we try to break the news later, and I don't like to spoil my own opportunities to do that, but I'll share a few things with you. There's an intersection, I'm going to be a little vague. Hopefully the principles will still resonate. There's an intersection of data, AI and communications that have the potential to absolutely transform how advisors communicate and market themselves. And I'll give you a couple examples of that. Historically, if you want to do marketing, and even most advisors today still do it this way and think of it this way, you create something and then you blast it out to everyone. That's basically how it works. But now because of predictive text, because of big data and data aggregation, we understand where people at different points in their life, in the cycle of their financial decisions, and just life in general, need help and advice from an advisor.
(07:19)
And because we can hyper-personalize things with AI based on that data and then send one-to-one communications, it changes the reception of those. It changes the impact they have. And so I think of the difference between sending a thousand people a message that says, "Hey, you might consider these five investing principles," which are general, versus sending one person a single message that says, "Based on your situation X, you might consider Y." And how much more uptake that gets. And so those are the things that with technology we are trying to help advisors do, which also gives them more scale, helps them to move faster, reach more people, help more people and that has never been possible the way it is today.
Justin L. Mack (08:11):
Absolutely.
Robert Sofia (08:11):
So we're cooking up stuff to do that, I guess is what I'm saying.
Justin L. Mack (08:14):
For sure. For sure. Build that anticipation, build the hype. But I want to stick with you on the AI topic a little bit longer because you make a good point. It's something I wanted to talk to you about because I feel like AI is such a hot topic. It has become the new small talk. It's like, have you seen the game? Have you seen the weather? It's like, no. Have you seen the newest AI news? That has become the new small talk and it's not going away. We know that. So you've already mentioned in one really practical way that AI can make marketing efforts smarter, a little more targeted, more specific for advisors. Talk to me about maybe some other ways that AI might emerge as a way to help with the marketing challenges that advisors face, but with that, all that new capability, I imagine there's some compliance issues that we have to keep mindful of as well. The SEC is just as interested in AI as we all are. So with that regulatory environment in mind, how can AI help?
Robert Sofia (09:09):
Yeah. What do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about compliance or do you want to talk about opportunities?
Justin L. Mack (09:13):
Let's go bad news, good news. So compliance and then opportunities. [laughs] No, I love compliance. But let's jump into compliance first.
Robert Sofia (09:21):
Yeah, it does scare off a lot of firms and I understand why. The bottom line, if I strip away all the noise, is just that it still needs two-minute intervention. I mean, that's really what it comes down to right now. There's a lot that AI can do when it comes to marketing communications, especially for analysis, but it still has hallucinations. It still doesn't always have complete context. People or machines are still not always prompting it properly. And so it's somewhat of an experiment in a lot of ways, and that scares compliance away. They don't want experimentation, they don't want incorrect information, they don't want hallucinations. So at the core, when you use AI, somebody has to be reviewing it, and firms will struggle to scale that. Thankfully, there are companies coming out now that do a really amazing job, and we're exploring integrations with them of training AI specifically for compliance.
(10:22)
And when that's done, now they are analyzing keywords, analyzing expressions, making sure that it is generally compliant. The other interesting thing about it is when you prompt AI, in fact, I would challenge anybody listening to this to just go to a free AI tool like ChatGPT and give this a try. Ask it a personal financial question, "How much should I invest in the stock market every month?" Almost without exception, the first thing it will spit out is something like, "That depends on your personal circumstances. This is general advice. Past performance in the market doesn't indicate future results." And the reason is because where is AI getting its information? From information that's out there. And most of the published financial information was published by big companies with disclosures or even small advisors with disclosures. And so the language models, even if they aren't specifically programmed for compliance, do tend toward more compliant language. So the good news is if you create something with AI and then you review it as an individual with a compliance eye or run it through your firm's compliance, most of the time the lift is not big to make it compliant. So it's still very beneficial and saves a ton of time.
Justin L. Mack (11:38):
Right on. Right on. And after the compliance, I promised we would talk about opportunities. Give me a quick opportunity that you might see emerge. Really light lift with the capability of these large language models to really adapt the very deep and specific disclosures that are already built into so much of our industry's language. So what are some of the opportunities on the other side? Once you get that right, how does that kind of open you up as a firm or as an individual advisor?
Robert Sofia (12:09):
Yeah, I think a few of the things that are most powerful right now, and there's future things, too, but just to keep it in the present for advisors who might want to use this, I think one is in ideation, one is in creation, and the other is in analysis. Those are a few big ones. So I'll just take ideation for a minute. When you have an idea, for most of us, an idea is a flash of inspiration that requires a lot of work to translate into something logically developed, something that fits the right audience. But now you can take an idea as simple as that and you can ask AI to expound on it. So I'll give you an example of how I'm using it personally. Right now, I'm working on a new keynote for the Nitrogen conference coming up in October. I had an idea for an introduction because I'm going to be talking about growth flywheels and virtuous cycles inside of advisors' businesses.
(13:07)
And I said to myself, "These things are everywhere. Virtuous cycles are in nature, they're in the economy. I need some good examples." I asked AI, give me some examples of virtuous cycles in nature in the economy and business. Pretty soon I had a list of like a hundred concepts. Now that's ideation. It took my work effort way, way, way down. I was able to pick a couple of them and then go build on them. Another example, this is one I used for an advisor recently. We were actually working with them. They have a unique niche. I didn't really fully understand their niche. So I went to AI and I asked about it. I said, "Here are some things about this advisor's unique niche. Here's the audience. Here's some lifestyle needs. Here's some concerns." They have things the advisor shared with me in less than five minutes. You're talking about notes. I dumped the notes in. I said, "Write a persona for this individual I just described." Now it spit out a page and a half full marketing persona, targeting persona for that individual ideation. Very, very powerful. That's number one. Do you want me to keep going or do you want me to pause? I can go. I just talk for hours. And that's a problem. Justin.
Justin L. Mack (14:12):
You know what? I'm going to give you a break and let you catch your breath. We got a lot more to get into in the second half. This is actually a perfect time to take a beat, hear a word from our sponsors, but when we return, we'll jump right back into our conversation with Robert Sophia, CEO of Snappy Kraken. Stay locked. We'll be right back.
And welcome back to the Financial Planning Podcast. I'm your host Justin Mack, and we are diving back into our conversation this week with Robert Sophia, CEO of Snappy Kraken. And had a chance to let Robert catch his breath. He's thrown out the ideas fast and furious. You got to catch up. So we're going to jump right back into it. We kind of talked about some opportunities that come from AI, ideation being a huge one, and then some examples, some real examples of how someone like yourself is using it.
(14:57)
I want to stick with those opportunities, and then want to get into another opportunity. Something a little more familiar, although still uncomfortable. Video. But sticking with AI, just to pick up our conversation, give me another example of a tangible way that AI is being used right now. Because I think the reason this is so important, and I want to make sure we give good examples, is because I feel like so much of it is still "what if." Because the interest in AI is very high. General adoption, however, is still low across our industry. It's still very much waiting and seeing. Seeing what's going to be the killer app, what's going to be the right way. So while the interest is high, that adoption gap shows that people need to hear more examples. So I'm going to put you on the hot seat. Give me one more so we can kind of connect that bridge and see what might actually take hold as far as practical application in our industry.
Robert Sofia (15:47):
Yeah, we've got a bunch of them that I could share with you that are built into our platform, but I want to share general examples because I think what we do inside our platform only applies to our clients, but we're talking to the industry. So here's another example. Let's take a tool like Midjourney or DALL-E, created by the creators of ChatGPT, OpenAI. They're image generators. Now, when we started Snappy Kraken back in 2016, we hired very expensive seasoned illustrators to create custom graphics for all of our campaigns. Why? Because custom graphics are differentiated. Custom graphics can be unique to the theme of the campaign. We wanted our content to stand out. We didn't want to use the same stock images as everybody else. Well, now with AI, you can prompt the image you want, you can tell it what style, you can tell it what colors.
(16:44)
You can actually indicate the brand colors by their hex code or Pantone name that you want to use in the illustration, and you can generate a variety of those illustrations instantly, which means now all of your marketing can be completely unique and on brand. Now, I used to have to pay $500, $1,000 for custom illustration on a single campaign. And now I can do it in seconds for virtually free for the cost of the person to operate the AI and give it the prompts. Recently we created an illustration of the Federal Reserve Building, hyper-personalized in a variety of colors for each advisor's brand. And every example of that image was different. It was even a little different style. One was in an impressionist style and one was in a psychedelic style and one was in a modern style. So what it allows you to do is drive your content costs way down, but your uniqueness way up. And these are just a couple of examples, Justin. There's just so many.
Justin L. Mack (17:48):
Alright, let's gear up and jump over and talk about video as well with the time we have because I know you guys recently had some news on that front. But also seeing more people understand the importance of getting in front of the camera, which is breaking into another comfort zone. Not really something, even though many advisors and just people in general are great in a room, in a meeting, it's really different when you sit down, put the lens on, hit record and have to go. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys are helping in that regard. Why is video so important, and how are you trying to make it a little more comfortable for folks who … this isn't what they do. They're not here in this business to be on camera, so now we push them in front of the camera. How do we make that work?
Robert Sofia (18:27):
Yeah. Well, before we talk about how, let me address your first question, which is why. And if you think of the most valuable thing an advisor can possess by and large, I think most would probably admit that it's trust, influence. So if you think about building trust and influence on a spectrum, way over here is high trust, high influence. Way over here is low trust, low influence. On the high trust, high influence side, what do you have? Personal interactions, eye to eye. Handshake. As they say, look in the whites of the eye. Now you start to step down from that. What's before that? On the other end of the spectrum, way over the other side, it's probably text. Text, especially now people know it's generated by AI, it's written by a ghostwriter, it's just text. People don't read like they used to. So it's like you've got that on the other end of the spectrum, you want trust and influence.
(19:28)
Usually text is on the opposite end. What comes after that? Well then maybe you have an image, and then maybe you have audio. Now they're hearing your voice. What's right before person to person, face-to-face? One notch down is video. So on the ability to build trust and influence spectrum, the next best thing to in-person is video. In-person doesn't scale. You can do events, but how many people can be at an event and it be effective? If you want to build a really big scalable practice and you have an interest in also vetting and qualifying people, you need to start with a bigger net. You need to focus on the right group, of course. But you want to start with hundreds or thousands. And the best way to reach hundreds or thousands when you can't look at every one of them and have a single conversation with every one of them is with a video.
(20:30)
Even with client communication. I mean, when I got in this business 20 years ago, when something would blow up in the markets, we were on the phone all day long calling clients. It was exhausting. And over the course of my first 10 years in this industry, went from calling every client individually to using call blasts, to using video, because you can record a message once they can see your face, they can hear your voice, you can send it out, and you add to that the SEO boost and all these other factors, it is just the next best thing to in-person. So that's why. That's the why.
Justin L. Mack (21:10):
For sure. That's the "why." So let's get to that "how," because [as the advisor] I'm still not any more comfortable. [laughs] You said all those things. That's great. I still don't want to get in front of the camera. How do I do that?
Robert Sofia (21:20):
Yeah, yeah. Well, the reason is because you're not comfortable with it. You haven't done it enough. Not you, Justin. But [advisors] haven't done enough. You haven't tried it enough. You haven't seen results from what you've done. If you haven't done it a lot, you're also probably not good at it because everything, you get better with practice. And so the friction of all that just holds advisors back. I don't have the right setup. I don't know what to say. I don't know how, I haven't had it compliance approved. I don't know how to distribute it. What technology should I use? Where should I host it? Host it? What does that mean? It just goes on and on. So what we've done is we've taken all those decisions away and we've done it partially with our platform, with a partnership. So the platform, what we do is we actually give them the script.
(22:07)
We have it compliance reviewed in advance. We give them the setup instructions, we give them the ability to just read the script and drop the link into our system to the video they've recorded. And then we automatically build the entire campaign. We build the emails, the social posts, the landing page, the ability for people to type below the video and ask a question that goes right to the advisor's inbox. As a lead, we built all that tech. Every month we release a new video, every big market drop, we release a new video script. And then we have a partnership with a company called
Justin L. Mack (23:11):
Very cool. Very cool. And love to hear the focus on that coaching aspect of it too, because I think there's so many times with something like video or broadcasting of any kind, people think you either just have it or you don't. And I would love to share with people, I've had the opportunity to work with some really great video folks and broadcasters over the years, and everyone starts somewhere. No one's good the first time on camera. They have no idea what they're saying. They don't know what to do with their hands. You're awkward. But with the reps, get in the gym, keep shooting. You know what I mean? It's very old school advice. But I think with something like video, it's just about finding your pocket. And sometimes even if your pocket is a little awkward, it can still be impactful. So I love hearing that. One of the last things I wanted to talk to you about was just getting the word out, marketing services, advisory services during tough times. We know right now the economy is doing what it does. I have no idea where we're going to be two months from now, three months from now, whatever recession, near recession, it's the word people are dancing around. Regardless of that, how do we spread the word about advisory services during tough times when people are already uncertain about their finances?
Robert Sofia (24:15):
Yeah. Well, first of all, I'll just say during these times, it is the best time to grow because people have a mental shift. When they face uncertainty, especially when they're concerned about the performance of their investments, recession, stock market drops where they start questioning if they're doing the right thing. Am I being defensive enough? Am I going to be safe? Am I going to be protected? And most advisors out there are not giving them that proactive level of support that they need. They're not out there answering those questions, instilling that confidence. So if you are out there saying, "Hey, now is the time to take a look at all of the risks that you're taking." Well, people are already wanting to do that. They're already thinking about that. Then all of a sudden they're like, wait, my advisor's not doing that for me. This guy's offering to do a free risk analysis with me.
(25:05)
This advisor's offering to help me analyze any market risks, inflation risks, concentration risks, economic risks I have, they're going to help me avoid them. They're going to help me transfer them. They're going to help me mitigate them. They're going to look at this opportunistically. And if you're out there saying those things, it's going to draw people to you. We actually have data to back that up, because we did a study at the beginning of this year when all the recession worries started flashing red, and we asked 800 high net worth investors that we surveyed. We said, "Would you consider hiring a new financial advisor?" And 52% said yes, 52%. Now that means half of the potential clients out there, these are already people who have money, they're already with advisors, would think about moving. Why? They're not getting something from their advisor. They're interested in a second opinion.
(25:53)
And that shifts when the markets are going up. We did the same survey a couple of years ago. It wasn't like that. It was like 30%. Why did it move so much? Because of uncertainty. So this is the time to be in front of your clients. Number one, with those affirmations, with that education, with video voice, emails, text messages, reassuring them, showing them that you're there being a face. And then it's also the time to be out there doing that for as many other people. In fact, we've seen a huge spike in referrals during this period as well. In fact, we've taught the advisors in our program that whenever they hear a client say thank you … you're on track.
(26:43)
We've taught them. That's the perfect opportunity to say, "Hey, I'm so glad. You know what? This is what we love doing for people." And unfortunately, a lot of people's advisors don't do this for them. So by the way, if you know anybody who is not getting this from their advisor, please, I can help them. Let them know. And if they're a friend of yours, I'll roll out the red carpet for them. And now people are like, "Oh, that's really nice, thank you." And pretty soon their friend's like, "Oh, I dunno what I'm going to do." And your client, you already seeded it. Your client's saying, "You know what? My advisor just helped me with this. And oh, by the way, they can help you, too." And so it's really a great time for prospecting.
Justin L. Mack (27:16):
Alright, we'll take advantage of this opportunity. People are interested, people are concerned. But that also means, like you said, people are thinking about it. So be present when they're very much concerned and focused on that stability that they seek. And if they feel like they're not getting it from somewhere, well they're going to find it. So really good advice there. And then kind of the last thing I wanted to get to, and I wanted to thank you again for making the time this week on the show, we're going to wrap up with something that's become tradition here on the Financial Planning Podcast, which is ending with some good vibes.
And we talked about your journey into the industry, which you've been doing for the past 18 years, the work you've been doing, helping folks at Snappy Kraken, getting the word out and really making that impact and making those real connections. So with all that considered, what do you love most about your job? What keeps you coming back to an industry that you didn't even know existed when you were 18 and looking for a job? What the heck is financial services? It's changed your life. What keeps you coming back?
Robert Sofia (28:09):
Man, it's all about people. It really is. I mean, this is an industry where you can have an impact. You have an impact on advisors. Advisors have an impact on their communities, and it has a lot of benefits. I think about, just for example's sake, I was just talking to an advisor. I was working with him almost 15 years ago in my agency, and I was helping him. And he was starting out in business and now he's had tremendous success. And he said, "Robert, I'll never forget what you taught me, and I'm still doing it in my practice." And that's incredibly gratifying to do that for advisors. To help them. I recently got an email from an advisor. We had written something for him. He had sent it out to his clients. He sent a handwritten letter back from a client. She said she saved it and reads it whenever she gets nervous, we got to do that.
(29:00)
We got to help his client. Something we created is on her desk and she reads it when she gets nervous, there's employees. I think about the people at my company that have come through. There's a young lady that worked at our company, very, very talented. I brought her into the business. I coached her on public speaking. I put her on a lot of stages. I got her on podcasts. I literally walked her through every presentation for hours. And now when she outgrew us, she started her own speaking and marketing company and she's doing great. She's making more money for herself than we could have paid her. And I'm so happy for her. This is like, you get to do stuff for people. This is awesome. If you get in this business to help people, you can, and you'll have a lot of fun doing it.
Justin L. Mack (29:43):
Right on. Well, I can't think of any good vibes better than those. So I want to thank you for sharing those as well as your time and your energy with us this week on the Financial Planning Podcast. It's been a pleasure.
Robert Sofia (29:53):
It was great to be here, Justin. Thank you for having me.
Justin L. Mack (29:55):
Absolutely. And I want to thank everyone for listening to this week's edition of the Financial Planning Podcast. This episode was produced by Arizent with audio production by Kellie Malone Yee. Special thanks again to our guest, Robert Sofia, founder, chairman and CEO of Snappy Kraken. Rate us, review us and subscribe to all of our content at