Humanizing Wealth Management Success With Shannon Rosic

Shannon Rosic is the Director of Content and Solutions for the Wealth Management Group at Informa Connect, a global provider of events, media, and research for financial professionals. In her role, she leads the omni-channel growth and development of WealthStack, one of the leading events focused on wealth management technology. Shannon regularly represents the group through webinars, podcasts, and video series. Known industrywide as the Gadget Girl, she brings a passion for creative brand storytelling and innovative marketing.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:27] Shannon Rosic discusses Informa Connect and its role in wealth management

• [4:42] Shannon’s journey into wealth management and WealthTech

• [10:35] How advisors stay informed and future-proof their businesses

• [13:22] Breaking through the noise with consistent digital presence

• [17:42] Importance of authenticity and human connection in media

• [19:17] The story behind Shannon’s Gadget Girl persona

• [23:14] The reality of AI-built companies with minimal human staff

• [29:31] Favorite AI tools for data, compliance, and engagement
  

In this episode…

Financial professionals face the challenge of keeping up with rapid technological change while still nurturing strong client relationships. With AI tools, compliance demands, and shifting client expectations, it can feel overwhelming to decide where to focus. How can advisors and firms adapt quickly while staying human-centered in an increasingly digital world?

Shannon Rosic, an expert in content strategy and wealth management media, shares how embracing technology as a co-pilot rather than a replacement helps advisors stay relevant. She highlights the importance of adopting simple AI tools like note takers, building a strong digital presence, and showing up consistently at industry events. Shannon emphasizes the need for authenticity in branding and communication, encouraging professionals to showcase their human side while using technology to streamline workflows, improve compliance, and enhance the client experience.

In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Shannon Rosic, Director of Content and Solutions for the Wealth Management Group at Informa Connect, about the future of wealth management and technology. Shannon discusses how AI can empower advisors, why authentic storytelling matters, and the importance of consistency in digital and in-person presence. She also shares insights on client-centered experiences and her favorite AI tools for compliance and engagement.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quik!

• Richard Walker on LinkedIn

• Shannon Rosic on LinkedIn

• Wealth Management

• The WealthStack Podcast

• "[AI Series] Transforming Client Services and Advisors’ Workflow Using AI With Mark Gilbert" on The Customer Wins

• "Revolutionizing Tax Advisory With David A. Perez" on The Customer Wins

• "The Future of Investment Management With Ryan Eisenman" on The Customer Wins

• "[AI Series] Harnessing AI for Strategic Leadership With Geoff Woods" on The Customer Wins

• The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions by Geoff Woods

• Wispr Flow 

Quotable Moments:

• “AI is not meant to replace the advisor; it's meant to be your co-pilot.”

• “If you aren't utilizing AI within your practice, you're unfortunately probably going to become a laggard.”

• “Humans want to work with other humans. They want to know if they pick up the phone.”

• “People can sniff that out immediately if you're robotic and just saying all the industry jargon.”

• “If you're not out there on multiple platforms, on a consistent basis, that builds credibility.”

  
  

Action Steps:

1. Adopt AI as a co-pilot, not a replacement: Using AI tools for efficiency helps advisors stay competitive while maintaining valuable client relationships.

2. Show up consistently across digital and in-person platforms: A steady presence builds credibility and ensures multiple trust-building touchpoints before engagement.

3. Focus on client-centered experiences over products: Shifting to solving client problems creates stronger loyalty and keeps businesses aligned with evolving expectations.

4. Emphasize authenticity in communication and branding: Avoiding scripted messaging builds trust and helps differentiate your brand in a crowded market.

5. Invest in compliance and data strategies early: Clean data and reliable compliance tools reduce risk while enabling firms to scale responsibly with AI.

Sponsor for this episode...

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.

Richard Walker: 00:16

Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Mark Gilbert of Zocks, David Perez of Tax Maverick, and Ryan Eisenman of Arch. Today, I'm speaking with Shannon Rosic, director of content and solutions for the wealth management group at Informa Connect, and today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik! using our Form Xtract API.

Simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of a thousand submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. So I'm super excited to have today's guest on! Shannon Rosic is the Director of Content and Solutions for the Wealth Management Group at Informa Connect. You may also know it as Wealthmanagement.com.

She serves as the market-facing representative for the group and regularly hosts webinars, video series and is the host of the WealthStack Podcast. She also helps drive the growth and success of the group's premier events, Wealth Management, Edge and Ria Edge West, with a specific focus on Wealth Stack, the fastest growing and most credible event dedicated to technology and the wealth management industry. I love this about her. Known in the industry as the Gadget Girl from her time at Investment News, her passion is brand storytelling and designing a cohesive experience through creative marketing efforts. Shannon, welcome to The Customer Wins.

Shannon Rosic: 01:55

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I was going to say in your intro, when you're mentioning other guests, I'm like, do I belong in this lineup? Because between Mark and all those other folks, I'm like, that is quite the list.

Richard Walker: 02:06

No, absolutely. You have a perspective that everybody needs to hear, which is why I'm so excited to talk to you today. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. So, Shannon, let's understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?

Shannon Rosic: 02:27

Absolutely. So for context, Informa is our parent company. This is where it kind of gets a little complicated because people will say Informa. What's that? They usually know us by our events.

So Informa actually is a massive global company with their hands in several verticals, not just wealth management. We are just this little piece of their portfolio if you will. So most of the folks in our industry will know Wealthmanagement.com that is our distribution engine for everything that we do. But Informa itself, Their mission is really to empower just the entire. In our case, wealth management ecosystem.

So, you know, whether that's through education insights and meaningful connections through our events, you know, we serve advisors and asset managers, tech providers, and really any professional in between. And we offer what I would say a multi-platform experience from daily editorial and research. We send a ton of newsletters, so hopefully you subscribe to those. We have all of our research that we put out into the market. We host webinars, virtual summits, and then as many of you may know, our in-person events like Wealth Management Edge are smaller, more intimate regional events.

We now have our edge, LA and Nashville, and we are launching a private markets one now at the end of the year. And the part that I love about all of this is getting to be involved in the custom content that really just, I would say, drives the brand and business growth. Because our goal at Wealthmanagement.com is not only to help folks, you know, stay informed but hopefully stay ahead. So we do that by, you know, surfacing relevant trends, showcasing innovation and, you know, creating spaces both digitally and physically, where the industry can come together and learn and grow and hopefully collaborate.

Richard Walker: 04:10

No. That's awesome. And honestly, the thing I'm excited about in talking to you is so I have fintech providers on here, the CEOs and founders, I have advisory firms on here, the Aria head or broker dealers. I get some outside perspective as well. But you have this like umbrella view of the whole thing, right?

You know, probably everybody in our industry or know of them at least you're you're researching and reporting on them. So I kind of wanted to get the sense of how do you see our industry like what is going on and from your view?

Shannon Rosic: 04:42

Absolutely. So it's funny because when I actually first started in this industry, I started my career at Investment News. I had zero intention of going into finance, let alone wealth management, let alone wealth tech. Wealthtech the subsect of our industry. But here we are.

And I wouldn't change a thing because honestly, it's the network that's kept me in it. And the people that I've met along the way that have not only helped me shape my career, but it's also super interesting. Usually you hear wealth management and you're like, womp, womp. But there's a lot going on in our space that I just continue to be impressed by because you often hear like, look, oh, finance, wealth management, you guys are behind with everything. And sure, that can be the case a little bit, but I've continued to be impressed, especially on the technology side, because that is really where I'm entrenched, right?

I've been covering Wealthtech in some capacity, and caveat I'm not a true journalist or reporter. I just have the fun job of getting to sit on these content sides and, you know, help people showcase and tell their stories around their technology. So I have been, like you said, been very fortunate that I've gotten to speak to all sides of wealth management, whether you're a custodian, whether you're an AI provider, whether you're a CRM, whatever it may be in the tech space I've probably talked to you. And obviously the biggest thing that's that's changing right now is I, I think we can look back and laugh a little bit about the robo scare that we had, you know, a little over a decade ago. And advisors were panicking and saying they're going to be replaced.

And, you know, we're we're in that with AI a little bit right now too. But the biggest thing I hear is that AI is not meant to replace the advisor. It's meant to be your co-pilot. And so I think there's still some, some fears that we need to quell a little bit there, right on on the AI space. But for the most part, if you aren't utilizing it within your practice or you're not dabbling at least with the low hanging fruit like an AI note taker, for example, that's an easy thing to implement.

At this point, you're unfortunately probably going to become a laggard. So it's not even about, you know, growth at this point. It's just being sure you're up to date on these things, because that's the experience that clients are expecting. They don't necessarily care what solutions you're using. They just care about the experience.

And I know we've heard it all before the Amazon effect or Netflix effect and that it's all about personalization and that it just works. And so clients are expecting that as well. So wherever you can kind of embed solutions to streamline and increase productivity and efficiency. It's not about us becoming robots. You know, we hear a lot about that.

It's it's all about streamlining and this and that. But it comes down to the fact that our industry is still very much relationship and human oriented. And so we've seen this shift over the last couple of years where advisors are now forced to, and they should be thinking like this anyways, of putting their client at the center of everything. It's not about pushing the products or anything like that. It's about what can you do to deliver that great client experience.

And that obviously starts with your culture and that starts with your technology. And so you've seen this shift now where it's you need to have your tech stack in a, in a good place to be able to deliver that experience. And it's funny I back when that kitzis, you know, fintech map first started, there were a couple couple providers, a couple categories. Now that I think there's over 450, excuse me. And it's like the shiny object syndrome is getting everybody a little bit.

And so now, you know firms are and advisors have had to take this mindset shift of being like okay, you know what's my business model. What's going to drive growth? What is going to serve the client the best way? And it starts there. And so, you know, we've kind of pulled back a little bit from, oh, you just need to throw some money into mutual funds a couple stocks bonds here and then save for retirement like it's more holistic now too, which has been a really cool shift to see.

And so that's why you're seeing this proliferation of things like estate planning tools or specialized planning. You know, I'm talking to more and more folks when it comes to, you know, charitable giving. Folks want to have access to that, and advisors don't necessarily need to be experts in all of this, if you will. That's what the technology is for. But they need to be able to speak to it because that's where we're headed.

I mean, we're even seeing folks, I just attended the LPL focus conference for for the first time, and it was really insightful because even just talking to their execs and IBD like them is headed in that direction to, to to trying to make it the one stop shop, you know, for advisors and their clients to be able to look at, at their, their financial lives in a holistic way. So I think that, you know, coupled with the AI and the holistic view of, of financial lives has become just front and center for folks. So long answer there.

Richard Walker: 09:29

No, it's great because you're making me think it's almost like the the robo advisor kind of panic that we felt is a good thing. It made us kind of check ourselves and say, hey, what would this mean? And how should we act? So now that AI is here and it could have the same panic effect, we're more mature about it as an industry, I mean. I mean, I'm not an advisor anymore.

So I was never threatened by robo advisor personally. But but I think it kind of gave us that check and balance and the growth of of things. And so we can look at this more maturely. And I do think it's about centering on the client. I want to ask you a totally different question, though.

You have not come from this industry, worked through this industry. You're in this role where you see all this stuff and so you're obviously super well informed. Your answer was super well informed. And I know this is part of what you're trying to help people do, but how well informed do you think the actual audience that we serve is? How well are people keeping up to be able to articulate exactly what you just said?

Is this common, or is this really because you see the whole world through your media world?

Shannon Rosic: 10:35

You know, I would like to on the side of being optimistic and that people are relatively plugged in. I mean, you see it like you've been on the circuit with me to at events like there's no shortage of information out there. And so I think the folks that are really looking to stay ahead, to grow, to to take it seriously and be able to compete and future proof their business. They're out there. You know, on the conference circuit, they're tuning into webinars that are resonating with them, or they're trying to showcase their brand in a way that that resonates with our audience and keeping up with the times.

So my opinion is that the folks that are hungry for it are out there and putting the work in, because, again, we do a study every year, the well stack study, and we kind of break it down into, you know, the laggards, the operational folks and the folks who are really excelling when it comes to to technology in particular. So the ones that are excelling are investing in it. They're training their people. They they get it. They they understand that business strategies and technology strategies have become really one and the same and intertwined.

But the the folks that maybe aren't making it a priority, that's fine. You know, you have various practices out there for a reason, right? You have your solo practitioners, you have your ensemble business. Then you have we're probably going to see multiple trillion dollar arias in our lifetime. We're already seeing it with the aggregator of cap trust.

That's not slowing down. So I think, you know, the I'm hopeful that the majority of folks in the space get it. If they want to maintain relevance and just stay up to date with everything that's happening, because the landscape is changing so much faster than I think a lot of us anticipated, especially with the advent of AI. You know, that train has left the station. It's it's here.

It's impacting every part of our lives. Right?

Richard Walker: 12:25

Yeah. I mean, look, even as a technologist, as a founder of my company, I find it hard to keep up. And honestly, like, my favorite tool is TikTok.

Richard Walker: 12:36 

You're better than me. I downloaded it and said.

Shannon Rosic: 12:38

Oh, no, I have to learn something new. I'm sounding like my parents. I'm like, I'll just stick to Instagram. Ram.

Richard Walker: 12:43

Oh it's hilarious. If you ask people like, what are you seeing on Facebook? And they're like, the food. I love, the sports I love and the funny cats. And I'm like, yeah, I see cars, I see bodybuilding, and I see I like I follow all sorts of people on I and I learn tons.

Oh my gosh, I learn a ton. But I just kind of wonder, like, how do you how do you really keep up with that stuff when there's only so many newsletters you can actually consume only so many events. You can go to webinars, same thing. But let's let's kind of reverse the role. How does a company like mine break through all that noise?

And what's the role your company is playing to help me break through that noise and, you know, be some be seen essentially.

Shannon Rosic: 13:22

Well, this is a purely self-serving and selfish answer then, because I'm like, well, just work with Wealthmanagement.com.

Shannon Rosic: 13:27

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Shannon Rosic: 13:29 

But in all seriousness, you do need to be out there in in some capacity and people need to see you on a consistent basis because, look, it goes back to even the customer journey. And I know we're getting into probably what a lot of folks talk about regularly on your podcast is that actual journey? Because, as you know, it takes several touch points for somebody to even, you know, engage with you. So if you're not out there on multiple platforms, you know, say, let's use the financial media world as the example, right? If you're not showing up on Wealthmanagement.com or Riabiz or investment news or financial planning, whatever it may be, on that consistent basis that builds your credibility, that's building your trust.

So when people are googling you or searching you or ChatGPT or whatever they're using, you have touch points all over, especially your digital footprint that people can access before they even reach out to say, like, hey, I'd like to learn more. So that's one element of it, right? Is your digital footprint. And then I like I already said, I'm a firm believer that in-person is still number one because that's where I have. Just look online is great and everything.

But when you have that face to face time with somebody, you really get to know them. You can read their mannerisms much better and you can create that connection, right? So it's twofold. You need to be showing up online and you need to be showing up in person. But the biggest thing is ensuring that your story is consistent.

Like where are you bringing value. So I know you asked about kind of breaking through the noise. Well, the number one message you should be beating that drum about then is, is the value that you bring. And what's that pain point that you're solving for? Because people don't really care about anything else.

Like, can you help me? Can you solve a pain point I have? And if not, like, I'm I'm out of here. Right? And so the number one thing you should be, should be hammering home is that.

And then you can get into the deeper side of things more. Look under the hood of, you know, how you service those clients. What else what other value adds that you have. But the number one thing to cut through the noise is do I know immediately off the bat how they can help me? And so whether you're telling that story and I'm a big proponent of digital media, you just mentioned TikTok.

But you know, in our media world the things that resonate are are those webinars are video, whether it's short form, long form, our podcasts like this so people can recognize you and you have something that's differentiating you in the industry and you're building that credibility, trust. And really it's consistency at the end of the day, because if you're kind of just popping up here and there, like you need a strategy around it at the end of the day, and it goes for anyone, whether you're a tech provider, whether you're an advisor. It's the same thing because everyone has those cookie cutter canned answers on their website. You go and you see, you know, if you help with retirement, you see a sailboat, you know, with an older family. Jeez.

Shannon Rosic: 16:14

Yeah. So you need yhat.

Richard Walker: 16:15

Everything looks like Paradise. If I.

Shannon Rosic: 16:17

Work with this advisor, I'll have absolute.

Richard Walker: 16:19

Paradise.

Shannon Rosic: 16:20

Right? I'm like, man, I can't wait to retire if that's the case. I know.

Richard Walker: 16:24

And yet nobody wants to retire. Actually, when I meet, my fellow entrepreneurs and CEOs are like, what would I do? What? Seriously? Like, where's my purpose gone?

Shannon Rosic: 16:31

Please. I'm dealing with that. My mom just retired from being a long-time educator. And to keep herself busy, they just got a border collie puppy. but that's a whole other thing to deal with.

But it's interesting because I. I even worry about that too, because, you know, I don't have kids yet, so no, no grandkids in the picture. It's just a plethora of animals in our household. But it's it's interesting, the whole retirement thing because now she's, you know, crazy, wicked smart and but now she's out of that scene, I'm like, what are you going to do to fill your time? I love you, mom.

But besides calling me.

Shannon Rosic: 17:05

I know, right? You can only talk to me so much. That was a total tangent. I apologize, but No, no, I love tangents.

Richard Walker: 17:12

But to bring it back, I just had Joshua B Lee on my show who is the founder of Standout Authority and he's one of like top five LinkedIn amazing experts. And he helps people humanize themselves in media and LinkedIn especially. So I'm kind of curious. I mean, part of what you do is you interview people like, I was on your show and you you have articles and things like that. How how important is that from your standpoint, to show the human aspect of who's behind the products or the services out there?

Shannon Rosic: 17:42

So it's it's paramount. It's number one, right? Because again, humans want to work with other humans. They want to know if they pick up the phone that it's not going to be someone automated. And so I even though I'm somebody that loves to prepare for interviews or you got my outline when we did our podcast, I love a good outline and or I'm moderating on stage, like I kind of have everything laid out, but that just helps me kind of keep things on the rails.

But I when I'm interviewing people, I say, please don't script things if you don't have to, because people can tell when you're trying to nail them like a, you know, a marketing point or you're trying to say things a certain way for compliance. It's like, just be authentic because it comes through and people can sniff that out immediately if you are not right, like if you are kind of robotic and you're just saying all the industry jargon, but you're not able to actually Connect and understand what people really want and what they want to hear. It comes across whether you're on camera or on stage. You just want somebody that you can say, hey, I can relate to that, or I've heard that before. Like, they get what I'm going through.

So to me, being able to come across in that authentic way, that is number one. And that's why I always laugh because I am certainly the creative type. I know you mentioned the Gadget Girl in the intro, and that's where I really fell in love with this industry and all things digital media, because that's when Wealthtech was, you know, really bursting on the scene that like 2015 to 2017 run, when I was doing that Gadget Girl stuff, it was Carmen Sandiego meets Inspector Gadget. Purple door.

Shannon Rosic: 19:17

Purple trench coat. I had a whole persona, but the tech firms loved it because it was something different. It was very much my quirky, weird personality and we were doing these campy, fun but educational looks under the hood. I mean, I was doing things like renting taco trucks to talk about data aggregation. I went to Red rocks out here in Colorado to scale it and talked about annuities.

And so I've done some wild things to get these points across. And that, you know, when it comes to storytelling and being authentic really resonated in the industry. And it's the same thing with you've just got to bring your personality to it, right? Like, and there's ways. To I think it's. That, you know.

Richard Walker: 19:56

I think it's part Of the customer experience that we love the most is the connection we have with others. And you get to learn about how people are working and doing. And I'll give you an interesting example. From time to time we have system challenges, errors or rollout goes bad, etc. and so the systems can not be working as well as they should. I'm trying to be kind to myself and say they didn't just crash or went down.

And what people don't realize is how much work is going on behind the scenes. When that happens, they just think, you're not answering my email, you just don't care. And so we've now taken a practice to show people, I mean, I'll get on the zoom and show you our 911 channel and how many people are jumping in to solve the problem. And I'll take this. And no, we don't have any answers on that, blah blah blah.

It's amazing. And I think showing that to people has not just calmed them down, but made them feel like, wow, you really, really care about what we're doing. And to me, that's part of the experience. So, I mean, I'm glad that you have this role to help see that experience with people.

Shannon Rosic: 20:54

Oh, well, I love that you say that. And it's firms like yours and others that I've seen who actually take the time, space and have the patience to put something like that together. Like, for example, I was just at United Planners Company retreat. They brought us in to kind of shoot some really fun videos out in Washington state all about their culture. But the number one thing that they always talk about when they talk about culture, and every person I talk to in that firm is that when you call, somebody will always pick up the phone like they have the highest answer rates, like within the industry for an independent broker dealer.

And if that person can't get you the answer, it goes all the way up to the CEO. So going back to that customer. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty wild. So to hear that you have a process in place to kind of quell those fears, that's a differentiator in and of itself, especially in today's day and age where again, everything is streamlined or automated or you're kind of getting those canned responses. So that is so encouraging to hear that.

Richard Walker: 21:51

You are place. We did it out of necessity, and we just never showed it to people. And we realized we should show people this because there's a lot going on behind the scenes and we really, really care about this. I used to joke and it's a terrible joke, but I used to joke, I have this really strange superpower. It's the ability to anger 100,000 people, which means turn off my systems. 100,000 advisors can't use my systems now, and they're all upset.

Not a superpower. I want to flex. By the way.

Shannon Rosic: 22:16

With great power comes great responsibility.

Richard Walker: 22:21

Yes, yes. Shannon, you know, you said something really interesting to me about how people want to talk to people. They want the human connection with the advent of AI. I. I have been watching stories of entrepreneurs, starting businesses, building products, being like one guy I can't remember. The company built a company all by himself.

Solo entrepreneur sold it for $80 million. I just saw another guy. He's a famous guy on TikTok. Alex Hormozi, and he was talking about an investment he made into a company, and the guy said, look, I'll only take your investment if you allow me to build this company with no other humans. Like I'm never hiring anybody.

 And Alex says, yeah, now he's up to $1 million a month in revenue. So my my kind of question is, is that wrong? Do you think it's possible to build with AI, these tech companies that have no humans involved, except for the founder who's kind of pulling the puppet strings? Or is that bad?

Shannon Rosic: 23:14

I think it's honestly maybe a harsher reality than people want to admit. It's here. And so until there's some type of regulation around it, that's going to be our reality. So I don't necessarily see anything wrong with it. What is wrong is that we have a society that's not necessarily equipped for these types of changes, and this might get into some existential stuff.

Richard Walker: 23:41

Go for it.

Shannon Rosic: 23:43

Like you look at even our education system and our government. I'm not don't worry, I won't go into politics or anything like that, but we're not necessarily set up now to tackle this head on. Right. What I think is most interesting is what you're seeing too. Is this kind of like, cyclical, you know, idea, if you will, that things like trades are coming back in vogue.

So I'm kicking myself. My dad is an electrician by trade. Right. Family business.

Richard Walker: 24:10

Those trades okay. I've seen financial trades. Yeah.

Shannon Rosic: 24:13

And I'm like, oh heck, I should have like, invested or started an HVAC company because that, you know, whether you're a plumber or a mechanic like that is the kind of stuff right now that can't be replaced by AI. But I was so discouraged because I read this article recently about how all these recent graduates who got their computer science or computer engineering degrees, are having an impossible time trying to find jobs. In just five, ten years ago, that wasn't the case. That's all anyone wanted. Is somebody an engineer, a coder, things like that.

But now you have five coding and that people are into. I talk to advisors who are very entrenched in this and they love it. They're coming up with apps on their own. They sit there and let it run by code, and they've built something in literally 24 or 48 hours. So I think that's just the harsh reality.

 But it's we've got to go back and take a good hard look in the mirror, because we need to make some pivots within our society to even be able to keep up. You know, I even look at my role, I'm like, am I going to be replaced by a hologram or something like that? Am I going to need to be on stage?

Richard Walker: 25:13

You're not replaceable. Come on. I'd like to believe.

Shannon Rosic: 25:15

I'm one of one, of course. But, you know, the reality is, is, is that kind of stuff is coming, and then you, you couple in things like you're seeing even on the security side with deep fakes and and things like that. And so we need to be, as really a human species, need to be prepared to confront this head on, because it's like I said, it's touching all aspects of our lives. And so no, like if you have an idea and you're an entrepreneur, that's the beauty of living somewhere, like in America, where you have that flexibility and opportunity to do that, right. I don't think we should necessarily take that away from folks, but on a greater scale, we need to be taking a hard look on how we're going to be training our next workforce, like where our focus should be, because all of a sudden we're going to have a bunch of people with computer engineering degrees, and they're not going to be able to do anything with it.

So, you know, we sell this dream of do well in school, go to college, and you know, you'll you'll be fine. Just, you know, get plugged into the system that's changing. And so I think that is more so the reality than worrying about people that are going to build businesses around AI that's here. It's happening. That's not stopping.

What can we do before we even reach that point? Right. So total rant, I think.

Richard Walker: 26:28

No, no, I this is why I want to talk to you about this stuff, because I do think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. I also think that the people predicting the speed, well, first of all, I mean, it's Sam Altman at OpenAI. He wants the speed, so he's going to predict it to his benefit. I was listening to Eric Schmidt's talk about this, former CEO of Google, and he's predicting things. But I think the problem is the people in the tech world myself, I'm guilty of this.

We prognosticate too fast and it doesn't happen that fast. I mean, you can think about blockchain. Did that revolutionize the world? Not exactly. Robo advisors. We just Talked about That. Not exactly. And I think there's a lot of truth to look. There's a ton of efficiencies to build into your systems with AI. If if I can sit down and tell you how I just built a 1000 hour project in 20 hours with AI, it's amazing. But does that mean I don't need my engineers and I don't want any more software developers?

So I think there's going to be a pendulum swing back where all the engineers who are like, struggling are going to be like, oh yeah, they're getting jobs, but I'm going to I'm going to quote Jeff Woods, another guest on my show. He wrote a book called the AI Driven Leader. He says a job is a set of skills applied to a process, and I hope I said it right, but that makes sense to me. So the processes are changing. The skills are changing.

There's still going to be jobs out there is what I'm getting at. So these are the text, the imaging x ray techs who are finding that AI is doing their job faster, better. They need to be the human component. They need to be the one actually communicate the result of the test to the patient. You know, that's how I'm looking at it.

I think we just need to keep elevating the human component to all this.

Shannon Rosic: 28:09

We're seeing it in our space in wealth management. How many sessions or, you know, articles have you seen about, you know, bringing it back like the human element is the most important. That's what's going to add value. So you know, I, I am a firm believer that that's very much the case. And I I'll go back to saying it's it should be utilized as, as your co-pilot right now.

But yes, you need to be be the one though maintaining that relationship, growing that relationship with your clients, because that's what they're going to remember at the end of the day is how did you help them? How did you make them feel? And can they can they ultimately trust you with one of the most sensitive topics in their lives?

Shannon Rosic: 28:46 

Yeah.

Richard Walker: 28:47

So I have a secret hope. I always want more entrepreneurs in the world. So I hope all these software engineers that are graduating say, well, I'm going to go start a business. I'm going to invent something else. I'll use the AI to my advantage and go build something.

I mean, why not?

Shannon Rosic: 28:58

It's funny you say that because I've actually had a similar thought about that of saying like, well, maybe this then kind of opens up that can of worms in the world where you then start seeing people pivot and having these new ideas and incorporating AI and maybe ways that we haven't even been able to think of. So I'm on your side with that, of being a little more cautiously optimistic. That side Of things.

Richard Walker: 29:21

All right, I'll pull us away from the existential crisis. And maybe this is tapping into your Gadget girl days. What is your favorite AI tool right now?

Shannon Rosic: 29:31

Oh, my goodness, my favorite AI tool. So it's funny because what comes top of mind is obviously these note takers that are pivoting now to be more all-encompassing kind of data gathering and client data gathering solutions, things that excite me. You know, I, I talk to Jump and Millie and Zeppelin and things like that. That all really excites me just because it all starts with the data. I think we've learned over the last couple of years that that is now the ultimate four letter word in our industry.

If you don't have your data in a good place and it's not clean, it's not connected properly. You don't you don't have that source of truth, right? And everything needs to be inputted properly to be able to even use it, because you can't even start dabbling with AI If you don't have, you know, a data strategy in place that's like a whole other conversation. So things like that that are helping kind of streamline that process and then being able to plug into your CRM and then create those automated workflows to help you become more efficient. I think that's really interesting.

 Other things I've always been a big proponent of advice engagement. So any solutions like, you know, whether it's even like an asset map or a nudge or a bento engine, all those that are kind of helping you be more proactive in your business with AI overlays and things like that are exciting. And this might be come as a shock, but AI and compliance is very exciting to me too. It's such a foundational element of a business, especially if you want to do it right and ultimately be able to grow. You have to have compliance in place.

 So you see solutions like an archive Intel, right, that are embedding AI in all facets of their business. And they can help you around things like that. SEC marketing rule that a lot of advisors are still struggling and grappling with. So I think, you know, solutions like that. And years ago we called it Regtech. So we still Do it to an extent. But, you know, I think areas of AI when it comes to compliance and cybersecurity are even more exciting to me than anything else because those are the biggest threats to businesses right now. So I think the stuff like I mentioned, the note takers and whatnot, I think are all great because they're a great place to start as you're kind of dipping your toes when it comes to AI. But the cyber and compliance side of things is where I really think we're going to, you know, start to streamline and see a difference and start getting rid of those manual tasks and headaches that it can, you know, can create because you hear compliance and everyone's like, oh, oh no. Because we all know it's funny. Manual uploading the back and forth. Painful.

Richard Walker: 32:10

You started this answer with the sexy, but you ended with the meat and potatoes like. The most Important. The most impactful. Yeah, the note takers are amazing. I love those guys. But honestly, who understands legal and regulation and who wants to?

And when you're trying to get your job done, if you have something that can just do it for you, that is amazing. That's why I started Quik!. Who wants to fill out forms? Just let it do it for you. I want to tell you my my favorite tool right now.

I don't know if you personally use it. It's called Whisper Flow. Have you heard of it?

Shannon Rosic: 32:44

No I haven't. Enlighten me please. Okay.

Richard Walker: 32:47

Whisper as in whisper. Whisper is shortened. Flow. Amazing tool. It's a dictation tool that works on your computer or your phone or both.

And what you do is like I hold down two keys on my keyboard. As long as I have a typing surface, whether it's a word document, a text box on a web page, a ChatGPT prompt, place, whatever, any text box. If I hold down two keys, everything I say it starts to record. Then it uses Llms or IE to correct for grammar. Figure out punctuation syntax paragraphs.

 If you're writing to somebody named Brian and they spell b-r-y-a-n in an email, it'll detect that and spell it correctly. It'll remember misspelled words like Quik!is always misspelled with the exclamation it's amazing. So it allows you to type 150 to 250 words per minute.

Shannon Rosic: 33:36

Wow. So it's a game changer.

Richard Walker: 33:38

I type 100 words a minute, like I'm already really fast, but it's still a game-changer for me. And I've been using it for 3 or 4 months, and I was just like, oh, I can't, can't wait to tell more people.

Shannon Rosic: 33:48

Oh, okay. Well, thank you for sharing your secrets. I will be checking that out immediately after this Podcast. Oh, man.

Richard Walker: 33:55

Okay, I just realized how long we've been going, and I love talking to you, but I do have to wrap this up before I get to my last question. What was the best way for people to find and connect with you, Shannon?

Shannon Rosic: 34:05

Absolutely. So you can find me. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So Shannon Rosic and same thing on X, or if you still call it Twitter, which I do, it's just Shannon Rosic. If you want to connect with me personally, if you want to learn more about Informa and wealth management, Wealthmanagement.com is where you can find all of our news, research, webinars, podcasts, anything you need in the media space.

So those will be the best places to go.

Richard Walker: 34:30

And if you happen to see her at an event, she's that bright shining star that you can't miss. You have a bubble of energy around you. It's just one of the coolest things.

Shannon Rosic: 34:38

Thank you. All right.

Richard Walker: 34:39

Here's my last question. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?

Shannon Rosic: 34:45

Oh, gosh, I don't even need to hesitate on this one because it's so easy. But Matt Ackerman and most people know him in the space, you know, as another just genius content guru. He's now at Integrated Partners, but I credit a lot of where I am at currently in my career to to having him as a mentor and a best friend. He's literally family. He was at my wedding.

You know, we're still best friends. You know, both personally and professionally, but I owe a lot to him because he took a chance on me. I was just like this chick right out of college, you know, on the marketing team at Investment News, and started tagging along their video shoots. And then I fell in love with it and basically just bothered them until they gave me the opportunity to be on camera. And he mentored me from, from really then on and was willing to take that chance on me and our best ideas, you know, like Gadget Girl, things like that.

Or we had a series called Practice Makeover. We, we had a we had a good time at Investment News just being extremely creative. And you know, still to this day, he's somebody that I can go to and say, hey, is this a good idea or can we make this work? What can we work on together? You know, he is somebody that is not only extremely approachable and has great ideas, but he's just willing to share information.

He's not somebody that's going to like withhold because he thinks you're going to get a leg up or something like that. He's just very Forthcoming. And we go back to authenticity, right? He he is who he says he is and shows up the same way no matter what situation he's in. And I've tried to really mirror that to because, you know, I want to be somebody that when folks walk away, they say, you know, I like working with her. Or, you know, she brought her authentic self and personality to this and I can trust her to, you know, get the job done or just have an honest conversation like that to me, if we're going to talk legacy, you know, that's what I, what I want it to be at the end of the day.

And he was the perfect person to kind of lay that foundation for me. And I am forever grateful because we are just two quirky people that love content and have kind of found our way in this space, and I owe a lot to him because of that.

Richard Walker: 36:49

Oh that's amazing. Okay. One of the reasons I love asking this question is it brings a totally different dynamic and perspective to this conversation. And you made me think of something that I think maybe the fifth foundational step in customer experience and customer success, because I was thinking, while you're saying this like, I would rather people like me or dislike me for who I truly am versus what they think I am.

Shannon Rosic: 37:09

Right.

Richard Walker: 37:10

And that's what we want in our products and in our companies. We want companies to like us for who we actually are, what we actually do versus what we're, what they think we could or don't do. So it's better to just be the I hate the word authentic by the way.

Shannon Rosic: 37:23

It's abused. I do too, but it gets the point. But that's actually what it.

Richard Walker: 37:28

Is, right? Genuine. Authentic. Real. Actual.

I'm going to think about this more. You've inspired me. I'm so glad.

Shannon Rosic: 37:36

Well, you articulated it better. Better than I could even, because that's such a good, good point. Because like titles and things like that, at the end of the day, it doesn't it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter. And I even said in the beginning of this conversation, that's what has kept me in this industry, is the the genuine people that I've met.

And everyone's just willing to help each other out in some capacity. And I've just created this irreplaceable network that I just, I don't see happening anywhere else. And for that, I am I am grateful. And yes, I will continue to show up to places and purple trench coats and fedoras fedora as if it calls for. It, because That's just who I am.

Richard Walker: 38:13

I love it, I love it. Oh man, I don't want to wrap this up, but I do. I have to thank Shannon Ross, director of content and solutions for the wealth management group at Informa Connect, for being on being on my show for The Customer Wins today. So go check out Shannon's website at wealthmanagement.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at Quickforms.com, where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion.

We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Shannon, thank you so much for being on today.

Shannon Rosic: 38:43 

Oh thank you. And this is always fun for me being on the other side of the mic. So this is a lot of fun.

Outro: 38:50 

Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.