Jack Sharry: Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. Our guest today is Adam Holt. Adam is the founder and CEO of Asset-Map. Asset-Map is used by thousands of financial advisors across multiple currencies and languages. To help families focus on what matters, and that is to make more engaged and confident decisions so families can reach their financial goals. It all started as Adam started in this industry as a financial planner who was frustrated by financial planning, so he created the Asset-Map tool and his wealth planning business became the first major success story of asset map. He grew revenues 300%. Three years in a row while achieving nearly $1 billion in a UM in under a decade. Adam, welcome to WealthTech on Deck. Good to have you here. Great to see you, Jack. Yeah, so this’ll be fun. I’ve admired from afar. Now I’m gonna get the real story. So Yeah, the truth, right? And it’ll set a free yeah, we’re anything close to, it’s fine. Okay. So Adam, please. Share, uh, your story. How did you wind up in the financial planning business and how did you evolve into Asset-Map? Hmm. Uh, in a little bit, we’ll talk more about the business today, but talk about how you got started.

Adam Holt: I think by, by accident, Jack, I got into this business. I always thought I was gonna be an architect, an artist, a designer, a and of course I worked for the government for a couple years outta college and realized I, I think I need people more than computers here. So I wound up going to a trade show and I was really enamored by these, this company was doing financial planning. I just thought they were so cool. So I, I applied and I, they gave me a job. Little did I know, Jack. I was a, a life insurance agent. I found out that I was expected to sell life insurance as a 22-year-old and 23, I think I was in. Back in 98. Yep. Yep. That’s the business I started and learned how to sell insurance and do, I got into financial planning and, uh, then I got into asset management. Then of course, uh, you know, the stories, how it unfolded. I loved working with people and I of course used my artistic side to constantly draw relationships for people. I was the back of the napkin king. Yeah. And of course, I, I got into tech real early, so that’s the roots of my, uh, entree into the business.

Jack Sharry: So talk a little bit more about that. One of the things I found interesting, just doing a little bit of homework on your website and elsewhere. Mm-hmm. You are a visual learner. I think you indicated in one of your, uh, pieces of content you just talked about back of the envelope. I share that if it isn’t visual, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So talk about that, how you’ve sort of uncovered, discovered that, how that then got applied to the arcane world of life insurance sales and later asset management sales. And talk about that evolution and how what you figured out that created an asset map. So fill us in on that.

Adam Holt: I think like all of us in financial services, you gain a lot of information. I, I was just obsessed with becoming the most educated in the room. When you’re young in the business, you don’t have a lot of relationship currency. You don’t have a network. If you don’t come from assets or money, you know you’re struggling. And so, you know, you do your classic, in the old days it was cold calling, it was networking, it was going to charity events, it was volunteering. However you get business, you didn’t care. I found I wasn’t actually a great salesperson. What I was a good communicator and I was able to really try to take these complex concepts and then educate people about it. And I would draw all the time. So I found if I educated my customers, they became more empowered, they built more trust, I earned more business. Uh, then of course I got referrals. So it’s a classic meet the customer where they are. And what happened is, is I had a lot of success with that, and then I joined two of my mentors. Which is a, something I think is really missing in our business. But yeah, there are a lot of, uh, I think people that have created a significant amount of success. They’re now in their seventies. They built a massive estate planning organization. I joined them and I started seeing instantly very, very wealthy, ultra-high-net-worth clients. And guess what? Their problem was, Jack. They weren’t worried about whether they could have meet their retirement goals. They were worried about the complexity they were leaving the world, like their spouses and their kids and their trust that they set up, and all these machinations that they created, that their advisors told them to create in order to reduce taxes or create flow or protect their assets. And now it was so complicated they didn’t know what’s going on. And of course, here we come to the table with this 80-page report trying to explain what’s going on. And they’re like, Adam, I need an executive summary. I’m paying you to basically Right. Gimme complexity. So, yep. I started designing asset map in those days, 2004, 2005, to help them understand their own life visually and explain it to their spouse. And that was, that was the real pain point I was trying to solve early on. Could I come up with a, a visual way? That wasn’t too much information, but not too little information to help people really get a treasure map. And that literally had so much demand for it that people just said, Hey, you gotta, you gotta get one of these treasure maps from Adam Holt.

Jack Sharry: Yeah.

Adam Holt: Allowed me to just gather assets like crazy.

Jack Sharry: So talk a little bit, why don’t you describe Asset Map. I know it visual, so probably a little bit. I’m sure you’ve done it before, but describe it. What is it? Why is it have the salience? It clearly has. Talk about that.

Adam Holt: I think. I like to think, Jack, that. Myself and my team are very empathetic. We’re very, we try to be very thoughtful as to what people’s real needs are. Mm-hmm. When you think about financial decisions. What’s the most important thing? It’s not the finances, it’s the people. Yeah. And so it turns out that while the rest of the business is talking about, well, let me give you a statement based upon the registration of this account, that is not the way humans think. Humans think about who’s in the car with them. Me, my kids, my partner, my spouse, the people, my employees that are responsible to the. My parents, maybe relationships that I have injured my family. If we have businesses or other real estate together, those people have interdependencies. And so we started by saying, let’s look at everything like a complex household first, not a registrant. So if you look at an map at the very top of the screen is always the people that matter. Then those people are surrounded by the financial decisions that they have made. They come in four forms, as most people know. They come in the form of. Income sources. Yep. They come in assets, they come in liabilities, and they come in insurance policies. Those four instruments of finances all are equal in our mind. They’re no one better than the other. They’re just decisions of where to put capital and what I cared about, what turns out the client’s cared about is what is it? Where is it? What’s it worth? Who controls it? What do you call it? For example, I have a 401k at Fidelity for a hundred thousand dollars owned by Bob, and it’s got a tax wrapper around it. Okay? That’s the level of information I need to know to build a treasure map, and once you show this visually to somebody, you can engage in conversation. By the way, do you realize how much of that stuff is haphazard? Haphazard? It turns out that a lot of people’s financial instruments are not intentional and we can do more to just help them organize their lives as opposed to getting stuck in whether they have too much Apple or Microsoft. Mm-hmm. That’s not the debate that high net-worth people wanna have. They wanna understand, am I structured in such a way, Jack? I can now communicate all the stuff we’ve done and ask and question whether it’s still relevant.

Jack Sharry: Gotcha. And are you still an advisor and have asset map? Do you have both?

Adam Holt: Oh, once you’re an advisor, Jack, you’re always an advisor. But I am no longer a registered advisor. I gave up my licenses in 19, mostly associated with running the business and needing to unshackle myself from compliance. Yep, yep. But, so yes, I did sell my business in my team.

Jack Sharry: And so do you still have clients or are you an RIA or just not? You’re just doing asset map?

Adam Holt: I gave up all asset management, RIA, I still have my insurance licenses because there’s never a good reason to give up your insurance licenses because that business is designed for longevity. Gotcha. But yeah, so I still have interests in all these firms, but I’m no longer a, we’ll call that a, uh, an investment representative. Gotcha. Gotcha. And that’s a great thing, by the way. There’s something freeing about not having to, to do your, your CE for your investment license.

Jack Sharry: Oh, I get it. So talk a little bit more about asset map. I, I go to enough conferences. I see you everywhere. I only hear good things. I’m not an advisor, so I don’t use the tool, but I hear somebody that do and find it to be an important part of how they do business. How is what you’re doing different than a. Plan, financial plan, classic financial plan, need money or money guide or one of those or do they work together? How does that work?

Adam Holt: Yeah, great tools and, and I think once you’re an advisor, you realize that you have your core tools that you use for everything, right? You have your CRM, you probably have your portfolio management ’cause you have to standardize how you exercise the practice. But the analysis tools, I think are a little more fluid, right? So depending upon how you approach the business, you’re always gonna need a strong analytical engine. Something that’s gonna give you forecasting ability. You know, modeling ability. You know, what we used to do on Excel has come so far in the traditional financial planning tools. I mean, you mentioned a couple that are really strong. E-Money money Guide really dominate the marketplace. I have to tell you, my firm has both of these tools and they use them differently for different environments, different clients, and different attention capacity. Mm-hmm. The irony is we have asset Map for a hundred percent of our clients. Whereas we’ll typically use one of those tools maybe for 10 to 20% of our clients that need it, warrant it, care about it, and are gonna value it. So I tend to think of traditional financial planning tools as a back engine requirement. I wouldn’t take my car to a place that that can’t do a diagnostic on the engine, but that’s not the problem all the time. But what is the problem is I need a full family x-ray. And I think of those tools as MRIs that you’ve gotta have in your back office. Right. And interestingly enough, eMoney is actually probably the highest crossover complement use with Asset Map. MoneyGuide does have an, uh, direct integration to asset mapping and can push. So, you know, you’ve seen that kind of adoption We’re we’re seeing where. I think a bifurcation of the experience, right? Advisors are usually, when they’re with their clients, they’re in presentation mode. That means I need highly consumable digital first ’cause it’s in a screen sharing environment now, or on a big screen on the conference room. Sure, I need to have a great presentation, make me look good, but also. Compelling and consumable by the client. That means I can’t overwhelm them with 80 pages on the back office. My paraplanner and analysts, they need Morningstar and Y charts and E-money and the newest kind of cool tools for giving an analytical function, but I gotta be able to use it. So asset map is very much a front office experience. Yep. Right. Let me get everybody engaged. Including the Under-engaged spouse who’s barely paying attention half the time. How do I get them involved? How do I get the kids, the adult children involved? If they’re gonna be executors and trustees? How do I get aging parents who are likely gonna be giving us a bunch of complexity at some point? How do I get everybody on the same page? And so we tend to focus on the engagement part.

Jack Sharry: And so it sounds to me like it’s a high level strategy document, x-ray, MRI, so you can get what’s going on with the family, but it’s very much a family conversation. Am I here and there?

Adam Holt: Right. Right on. And that’s the core of what we do. Don’t get me wrong. We actually have full analytical capability for the advisor. Says, well, I, I wanna model retirement. Okay, 30 seconds, press the button. Boom. That is a commodity. Today I wanna find out red light, green light, whether we need more life insurance. Boom. Click a button. That should, we can do all of that in asset map to get us to gotcha. Conversation faster. But the bottom line is, it always comes back to, okay, well what are we gonna do? What are we gonna change? What are we gonna do differently now that we have this information? Let’s spend the time talking about strategy and tactics and so forth. So I, I think we’re, you’re seeing where we really live is in this financial planning conversation actually. That is really where the trust is earned and it’s really where. I think the market’s going because, I dunno if you heard about this thing called ai, right? This AI that’s coming into our state. Heard that. Yeah. We think that that’s gotta highly, I think commoditize the analytical function, math function, financial planning. Traditional. Yes. Right. Should you convert your Roth? Uh, lemme just ask AI, should I take this distribution this year? Should I rebalance AI? Should I, what’s my retirement look like? Monte Carlo AI. But what about the decision-making process? Can we actually. Apply what I call the original ai, our advisor intelligence to the client’s life in real time and help them make a decision. And that’s when I need a tool that’s gonna help me facilitate conversation, not for me with the spreadsheets. I really need. I need to have, get deep into the why, the meaning, and of course, what are we gonna do?

Jack Sharry: So I think you’ve come up with the answer, and you may wanna expand on this. Hmm. You’ve come up with the answer today and all the people that say, oh, the AI is gonna take the place. I’ve always been a firm believer. Yeah. I didn’t thought of it as advisor intelligence, but that’s what’s critical. ’cause not only do you ask the questions that come up as any conversation would suggest, they come up as well, what about this and what’s your priority there? And if this versus that, and it’s more of a conversation, a dialogue. That goes back and forth. So I’m assuming you’re very much thinking the advisor’s not going away in the age of AI.

Adam Holt: You know, I don’t think they’re going away. We, I mean, we talked about this and this came up even at Tron recently. We were there in San Francisco together and there’s no question that AI is gonna force game changing decisions in the business environment, right? So I don’t think that the future is gonna look like the past. I do think that there’s one thing, and it’s interesting ’cause I just interviewed Joe Duran on my own podcast and, and he said something in 2014 that I, it just stuck with me and he said, when financial decisions are made, there are two constructs that determine whether a human gets involved. Number one, if it’s complicated. You want a human, if there’s a high cost of being wrong, you want a human ’cause. You need to validate your decision. You need the confidence that comes with someone who has some experience, a k, a advisor intelligence so that you don’t feel like you’re making that decision in a vacuum. It may be the wrong decision. The problem is most clients get into a paralysis mode, and where I think technology is now pushing the limits, it’s giving me more confidence to make that decision. I think AI has the power to do that. The question is whether an advisor is going to use these tools. If you don’t use these tools to elevate your game and put yourself into a higher revenue producing activity mm-hmm. Then don’t be surprised if it takes away the base of your revenue. Mm-hmm. I think that there, the advisors who are gonna kind of stick with the old school model and not. Innovate and not use these tools to leverage them themselves. I think they run a big risk and the advisors who start to adopt these tools and find ways to deliver more of themself to their customer, deliver more of the AI I was talking about. I think they’re gonna dominate and I, they’re gonna gather way more assets. They’re gonna scale. They might have margin compression, but I think they’re gonna still win long term.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, my experience, I fully agree with what you’re saying, and I’ve thought this for some time, Matthew, you, you’re articulating it very well. But, and this gets to my next question, which is, where do you see the world going? But I’m gonna assume you see it going as the advisor’s importance, only the increases if they’re doing it right, and that they, they’ll rely on AI for the commodity aspects.

Adam Holt: Is that how you see it? Absolutely. And the commodity, I think is really analytical. Right? Help me make a, a mathematical decision, right? Are we still gonna have to apply our empathy and our knowledge of the dynamics of a family? And yes, I know that decision makes mathematical sense, but we know mom would never go for it. Mm-hmm. Right? So there’s a, you know, the AI might is not gonna know that, right? So it’s gonna force the, the human advisors to do two things. Number one, go deep on relationship currency. That means trust, that means delivering value without being asked. That doesn’t always come with an analysis. That means resources, that means bench, that means multidisciplinary, not just investment, and not just insurance, legal tax, banking, financing, alts, all of that stuff. You need to be able to bring that all if you wanna retain certainly ultra-high-net-worth, because everybody’s gonna have the capacity to kind of. Sell any of this stuff, do any of this stuff, or network it. And I think if you could bring a full bench to the table, you could work multi-generationally. What is every one of those people gonna need, Jack? They’re all gonna need an engagement strategy. How do we actually make sure when we get together and spend time, we’re talking about the stuff that matters? That’s why you have to start with the map, the family, and the financial decisions. Now, we realized this 15 years ago for our ultra-high-net-worth. That’s gotta be scaled now because. Everybody’s high expecting Gucci level experience. So the reality is I think we’re gonna start seeing this kind of mass market. Starting to say, Hey, can I get what a family office would’ve charged a hundred thousand dollars to do 15 years ago? Yeah. With technology, I think you can.

Jack Sharry: Yep. And so how are you preparing for that future where AI will play the role you’re describing, and then what you’re after is the big picture, the prioritization exercise, the engagement exercise at a multi-generational level is what I’m hearing.

Adam Holt: Oh, absolutely. I think this great wealth transfer is such an exciting thing. We’ve all been talking about it for years. The 80 trillion that’s gonna move from boomers to X and y, you know, millennial generation. And of course, what I recently said on our advice tech live conference, which is, let’s not forget the greatest I. Generation still has $20 trillion that they were gonna move to X generation in the next 10 years. And frankly, I think that it puts a position that the X-generation’s gonna have a hundred trillion dollars and is gonna be the customer of the future. And their expectations, interestingly enough, ’cause I’m one of them, is they were raised by the boomers in the great generation, which means they have patients by the way. And number two, they’ve also went to college during the digital age, which means they’re very digitally enabled. So you have this strange mashup that I think still values human relationship. Yes. Especially as things get complicated. So I think the market is really amazing, but it’s going to require for financial advisors to earn their salt. Now, here’s why. Mm-hmm. If X generation clients that are starting to. Create some level of financial wellbeing and actually want to engage a financial professional. They likely have living parents. They are also likely to be the executors and stewards of the family money that their parents are gonna leave them. And that means they’re gonna have to get organized. And likely if their parents are part of great generation, they haven’t told ’em anything. Nobody knows where any mom and dad stuff is. It’s in some drawer, in a box, in a file, in a whatever. So it’s gonna be incumbent upon us as advisors to help X Generation help their parents get organized. And asset map for us has been the least intimidating way to do it. I can’t go ex, I’m not gonna expect mom and dad to pop up to go do an E-money. No way. It’s never gonna happen. Gimme your accounts, gimme your no way. I can do a map in 15 minutes with pop pop, and I now know where everything’s buried. Can we now take structural decisions? Say, you know what we need to trust, we need to get this over to a will. We gotta avoid probate. And I think that’s gonna be where advisors can not necessarily monetize directly. All of a sudden I’m not gathering a UM, but they’re gonna monetize through relationship loyalty. And when that, as when those assets move, they’re gonna be there. And I think that’s gonna be really important. Yeah. Same thing is true for boomers. If, if you haven’t engaged their adult children, big mistake, those adult children are gonna move to this new Robinhood PMR thing. They’re gonna move to Vanguard because. They don’t know what you provided to my parents. Yep. Unless you engage ’em and bring ’em in now. So that’s when you ask, is Asset-Map going MultiGen? It absolutely is. We just rolled out this concept called relationship mapping, where you can create a visualized family tree of the entire family and now bring it to people and say, how are we gonna help all these people make better decisions?

Jack Sharry: Great. So I’ve learned a lot. I’ve been hearing about asset Map for a a while now. I have a much but more in-depth view, not only of what it is, where it started and where what it is today, but where it’s going. What haven’t I asked? Anything else you wanna make sure that our audience knows about what you’re, what you’re up to?

Adam Holt: That’s a good question. You know, one of the things that’s been interesting is. We’ve seen viral adoption of this thing overseas. You opened up by mentioning we have multiple currencies, multiple countries. One of the things that was really, really important to me early on was to create an environment that was not judgmental and wasn’t exclusive only to ultra-high-net-worth. Everybody has these challenges. We all need to manage our inventory best we can to the scale we’re capable, and that meant creating a platform that could be agnostic to tax, to family makeup, to jurisdiction, to currency, to language. I. And that was a decision early on that now is playing benefits because we have a whole unit in South Africa and now UK that are adopting Asset Map out of the box, and they’re showing the same preferences, which is people need to know where their stuff is before their attention deficit kicks in and have good conversations. And if you can facilitate that. You win because you show that you’re thinking about the big picture, not just about the money you can manage. And that’s gonna be an important aspect for all of us to remember is that this thing is growing in Asia and in North America and even the Caribbean because the need is the same. Find a way to engage everybody in the household, not just the one person who wants you to manage their money and beat the s and p. That’s not the future. Okay? AI will do that for you. Gotcha.

Jack Sharry: So as we look to wrap up, any key takeaways you’d leave with our audience?

Adam Holt: Don’t wait. One of the things for us that we’re seeing is that there are hundreds of firms signing up for Asset-Map every month. Inbound. That means they call us, which means they’re planning on asset mapping or mapping their existing customers and probably your customers too. You do not want to be bringing this second to your customer. So I’m trying to encourage all of those advisors who actually want to protect their business to go do this process without being asked by their clients, go do it. I take the liberty of creating this for you because I care about you and I want you to look at the big picture. Let’s have a conversation about it. Do that first before somebody else does that. So that’s the urgency I would put out there. Mm-hmm. I think we’re gonna start to see a massive explosion. We just, yesterday we just found out that Asset-Map one Benzing is financial planning, best financial planning tool for 2024. So that’s a great thing. We’re really proud of that one. And I think you’re gonna see more and more, I think, awareness around this. So don’t be second, be first and just try it. You’ll see if it’s right for you. But I think that’s, I think the real key. Gotcha.

Jack Sharry: So, Adam, this has been great. I’ve learned a lot. Thank you for all that. One last question before we part. Okay. My favorite Always. What do you do outside of work that you’re particularly passionate or excited about that people might find to be interesting or surprising?

Adam Holt: Well, if you saw behind me, you’d see guitars and basses, and yes, I play them. I play every day. Not those. I play, the easier ones to bring down, not on the wall, but actually what a lot of people don’t know about me is that I’m really into ceramics. I throw on the wheel, I make pots and bowls. That’s my therapy on the, on the weekends I spend three hours a week doing that, and I’m really getting into it. It’s like my pre-retirement job, so I’m finding a way to be artistic again. So, yeah, that’s my thing now.

Jack Sharry: Terrific. Terrific. So thanks very much, Adam. This has been great. I’ve learned a bunch. Love it. Thank you for all that you do. I think it’s important work and, uh, our industry benefits accordingly. So for our audience, if, uh, we appreciate you tuning in. If you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check us out on our dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All of our episodes are there, along with articles, perspectives, and curated content from many leaders around the industry. Adam, thanks again. This has been a lot of fun. Really enjoyed it.

Adam Holt: Thanks, Jack. Appreciate all you do.