In this episode of The AI-Native Advisor, Mike Shannon sits down with Alan to unpack how he built a solo practice serving small business owners approaching a liquidity event, and how his tech stack lets him deliver a family office experience without a family office team.

They cover:

• Why starting solo before AI existed gave Alan a massive edge when the tools finally arrived
• His full tech stack: Impruve, Wealthbox, eMoney, IncomeLab, Wealth.com, HolistaPlan, and Altruist
• How he uses eMoney as the master plan and IncomeLab to simplify retirement income for clients
• The marketing gap AI still hasn't solved — finding the right client at the right moment
• Why getting in front of entrepreneurs at Series A (not at exit) is the next frontier for advisors
• The one thing AI will never replace: human accountability

Whether you're a solo advisor, an RIA operator, or just curious about what an AI-native practice looks like in the real world, this one's worth your time.

🎙️ Guest: Alan Rhode, Founder & CEO of Modern Wealth 

Brett works with equity-compensated tech professionals navigating complex stock options, tax decisions, and liquidity events. In an industry flooded with new tools, he shares a grounded perspective: the problem isn’t a lack of technology. It’s that none of it truly talks to each other.

They unpack:
• Why data fragmentation is the biggest bottleneck in advisory tech
• How AI is helping streamline meeting prep and scenario analysis
• The realities of serving busy, tech-native clients
• Where AI meaningfully saves time and where expertise still matters most
• What the next evolution of AI in wealth management could look like

This episode is a practical look at AI from someone building on the front lines, balancing complexity, client expectations, and an increasingly crowded tech stack.

If you’re an advisor, founder, or operator thinking about how AI fits into your workflow, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of AI, wealth management, and firm building.

Joel shares his journey from working inside traditional advisory models to launching a flat-fee planning firm designed to serve clients more holistically. The two explore why tying revenue solely to assets under management is becoming less aligned with the real value advisors provide, and how technology is making new business models possible.

They dig into the practical realities of using AI day-to-day: from automating meeting notes and follow-ups to freeing solo founders from administrative work. But the conversation goes deeper than productivity gains. Joel explains why the next wave of AI won’t just make advisors faster, it will help them become more proactive by surfacing insights, tracking life events, and strengthening client relationships over time.

It’s a grounded look at how AI is enabling a new generation of advisory firms: smaller, more agile, and deeply relationship-focused. If you’re thinking about the future of wealth management, entrepreneurship, or how AI changes the way professionals serve clients, this conversation is a must-listen.

Aditi shares her unconventional journey from wealth advisor to AI builder — teaching herself to code and developing a proprietary “money mindset” assessment tool to better understand how clients think about financial decisions.

The conversation dives into how AI can strengthen—not replace—the human advisor relationship, and why the future of wealth management will belong to hybrid professionals who combine empathy, behavioral insight, and technology.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• Why traditional wealth advice often fails to serve mid-level high earners
• How Aditi built her own AI tool from scratch with no technical background
• The role of behavioral psychology in financial decision-making
• Why AI should act as an assistant, not an author
• How AI can enhance client relationships between meetings

If you’re an advisor, founder, or leader curious about how AI will transform professional services, this conversation offers a practical look at what’s coming next.

Subscribe for more conversations on AI, advisory innovation, and the future of work.

Takeaways

• Content strategy and AI
• Connecting music and finance
• Authenticity and creativity in content
• AI integration in content creation

Nisiar shares his journey from the traditional banking world to launching a modern RIA focused on athletes, entertainers, coaches, and entrepreneurs. These are clients with demanding schedules, complex needs, and no time for fluff. He breaks down what it takes to stand out in one of the most competitive advisory markets in the country, where trust isn't given and has to be earned through consistency and presence.

The conversation dives into how Courtside is using AI today, including onboarding, meeting prep, client communication, and internal workflows. Nisiar also lays out his vision for what comes next, including fully integrated systems, AI co-pilots that understand firm philosophy, and a model where the back office runs efficiently so the advisor can focus on relationships.

This is a tactical and thoughtful look at what it means to build a high-touch firm that uses AI as leverage rather than replacement. For any advisor thinking about trust, growth, and how to scale the unscalable, this one is worth a listen.

David shares his path from Northwestern Mutual and Goldman to joining Continuum as the long-term successor to a 35-year rainmaker adviser. The two dig into what it actually looks like when decades of client knowledge lives inside one advisor’s head, and how to thoughtfully pull that institutional memory into systems that can support hypergrowth.

They get into the early wins with AI like note takers, but also the real constraints: fragmented data, messy CRM habits, legacy processes, and the tension between efficiency and keeping the human relationship intact. David lays out his vision for a future where an advisor can speak to an interface that updates plans, triggers trades, and pulls from a unified data layer, without ever losing the personal touch clients rely on.

It’s a grounded look at AI strategy from someone scaling an RIA in real time, navigating rapid growth, succession planning, and the next wave of advisor technology. If you’re building a firm for the long game, this one hits home.

For decades, the advisor’s edge has come from trust. The ability to remember the details that matter most: a client’s dog’s name, a birthday, a question asked three months ago. But with books of 400 or 500 relationships, keeping that personal touch has become harder than ever.

That’s where Relationship Intelligence comes in. Mike and Danny share how Impruve is building Relationship IQ, a system that catalogs rapport, key dates, and past questions so AI can surface the right touchpoints at the right time. The goal is not to replace human connection. It is to strengthen it.

From designing trust-earning moments to filtering signal from noise, this episode pulls back the curtain on how AI can help advisors cast wider nets, stay personal at scale, and build stronger relationships that last.

In this episode, Mike and Danny unpack the tension between authentic creativity and AI-generated writing. The conversation explores how advisors can use AI to compound context, scale their impact, and stay differentiated, without falling into the trap of AI garbage flooding inboxes.

If you have ever felt torn between writing from scratch and letting AI do the heavy lifting, this one is for you.

For RIAs and ops leaders who want signal over noise, this is a clear look under the hood at how Impruve is turning inbox chaos into accountable workflows.

In this episode, Mike and Danny pull back the curtain on integrations, the quiet but critical infrastructure that makes an AI operating system actually work for advisors. From APIs that act like drawers you can only open if you’ve earned trust, to security audits with Google and Zoom, to the “rat’s nest” of data in Salesforce, they unpack what it really takes to turn unstructured chaos into structured signal.

This episode is for advisors and RIA leaders who are ready to turn scattered data into usable intelligence, reduce time wasted in messy CRMs, and understand some of the technical foundation needed to scale with AI.

• Why the AI notetaker is today’s “light bulb” moment, but not the endgame
• How advisors should think about transcripts as raw inputs, not finished products
• What it takes to transform meeting notes into an operating system that actually scales trust and efficiency

If you’re an RIA leader, a financial advisor building for the future, or simply curious about how AI will reshape advisory workflows, this episode is for you.