george grombacher 0:02
Gabe to get us started, give me two truths and a lie, please,

Gabe Rissman 0:06
absolutely. And I’m going to give you a story about this first Okay, so you asked me for two truths and a lie in advance of this discussion, right? And I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I haven’t done this since college, so it was really racking my brain, and I was talking to a friend, literally a half hour before this call, and I was telling him, like, I I don’t know what to say. I’m still thinking what to do. He was like, Gabe, you’re about to talk about AI. You should ask chat GPT to give you two truths and a lot. And I thought, there’s no way that that’s going to work, because it, it doesn’t know anything about me, right? It can give me two truths and a lie, but it can’t be my two truths and a lie. But I said, What the What the heck? Let’s just see what it comes up with. Yeah, and it came up with actually, great answers, because I guess the new memory feature allows it to remember all the conversations that I have had and talked about it, and it came up with an amazing two truths and a lie. So this is your AI generated personalized to me, two truths and a lie, all right. Number one, I enjoy creating silent disco mixes. Number two, my favorite movie of all time is Legally Blonde. And number three, I have a tattoo of a bee pollinating a tree on my arm.

george grombacher 1:21
Wow. What was the first one you enjoy creating silent disco mixes

Gabe Rissman 1:26
silent disc. So that is where everyone puts in headphones and listens to the same music at the same time and dances around, usually public areas. So everyone thinks they’re crazy because they’re dancing to silent because it’s all in headphones. Okay,

george grombacher 1:42
that’s, that’s a lot of

Gabe Rissman 1:44
detail for a potential lie, unless I’m trying to mess with you.

george grombacher 1:49
Legally Blonde is your favorite movie and you’ve got a tattoo of a bee on your arm. Wow. These are, these

Gabe Rissman 1:58
are really, really pollinating

george grombacher 1:59
a tree on your arm. I don’t even, I don’t even know what, what that means. My goodness, all right, I do not think that. I do not think that the first one is true. I think that’s the lie,

Gabe Rissman 2:16
that one is true.

george grombacher 2:19
You got me. All right, so

Gabe Rissman 2:20
I don’t have the tattoo, no tattoo, but I’ve talked about it with the AI as a potential. So that’s so cool that it was even able to know that a great lie for two truths and a lie is something that’s close to the truth. Yeah,

george grombacher 2:35
yeah, yeah. So it’s almost a matter of time till, yeah, until it all takes over and and we won’t be necessary. Or maybe not Gabe, maybe not. We’ll talk about today. So Legally Blonde is your favorite movie.

Gabe Rissman 2:51
It is, it is Elle Woods. I think is a great role model character. I don’t know if you have you seen Legally Blonde,

george grombacher 2:59
I don’t think that I have, and that’s sort of weird. It’s such a popular movie. Yeah,

Gabe Rissman 3:04
she’s a lawyer who’s not a very traditional Lawyer by personality. And what I love is she embodies, you know, total independence, where she stands out like a sore thumb, but doesn’t care at all, and just does her thing and is kind to people and doesn’t succumb to any peer pressure and try to conform.

george grombacher 3:26
Well, that’s that’s certainly awesome. So that makes sense. Those are all really positive things. I’m going to check out Legally Blonde, alright, so tell me about the the silent disco, solid

Gabe Rissman 3:37
disco. Is it something that I started doing in college? First, I was just a dancer, because my friends would make mixes, and it was actually during finals period we would, we would dance through the library and kind of distract people, but also give them a little bit of a smile while they’re, you know, really stressed out during finals, and not be just not be too distracting, because there’s no loud music playing. And then I loved it and and recently made my first mix, and want to keep doing it. Well,

george grombacher 4:06
I think that that is that. I think that that is super cool. So love it all right. Well, great job. You got me excited to dig into everything. What is, what is top of mind for you right now? Well,

Gabe Rissman 4:16
last question, do you know what your success rate is on these? I’d be so curious to hear.

george grombacher 4:20
Yeah, I came, I got out of the gate, hot. Now, I think I’m probably about 50%

Gabe Rissman 4:24
so it’s pretty good. It’s better than one out of three. It is.

george grombacher 4:28
It is not bad. So,

Gabe Rissman 4:30
yeah, so what’s on my mind? I mean, definitely ai, ai, generally, it’s societal impact. Just, you know, as a person, and in terms of my professional life. In my professional role, we’re working with AI all the time, and thinking specifically about how it fits into financial services, how it can help financial advisors provide better service with less errors and a lot less manual entry. And then I’m also just thinking about, you know, I. So that example of this two truths and a lie thing really blew my mind, and is so relevant to the potential for AI for financial services, because a huge aspect of what’s needed to for a financial advisor to be a good financial advisor is to understand your complete, holistic financial picture and understand your financial and non financial goals, who you are as a person, what you care about, how you like to interact, what plans you have. If you want to get good tax advice, you know you need to know about the portfolio, and you need to know about your cash flows, and you need to know about all these other things. So the fact that it had those memories and was able to take those memories and just be able to reference that and bring that into the context of the conversation. That’s something that I think is going to totally revolutionize financial advice. I think the way that it’s going to do it best is actually empowering financial advisors to provide you with better service. And you know, a lot of people are worried. You know, does my financial advisor really know me and understand me? I think this is going to make financial advisors much better. Financial advisors to be able to provide better service, using AI as a companion to, you know, save them time, allow them to provide better service and more have a more holistic view of who you are.

george grombacher 6:19
Well, I appreciate that. So AI as it stands right now, and I guess that doesn’t necessarily matter what. So you see AI as a companion, helping you provide better service, make less mistakes. How is it? How is it actually going to work?

Gabe Rissman 6:36
Yeah, so it’s funny. We, our team put together, like, six buckets of how financial advisors are currently using AI. I’ll give you a quick rundown of those, and then I’ll also talk about, you know, tying it all together. How is it actually going to work? So the six things are first, I mean, financial advisors, and everyone that I’ve talked to is using AI, at least as a writing assistant. You know, help you create better content, either by I say, Hey, can you give me some ideas for a first draft? I want to talk about electric vehicles in China. What can I write about? Or it’s tax season. What’s it? What’s an article? Or I send it my blog post and I ask for edits. So the first is, you know, content generation. The second is using AI, actually, as a compliance assistant. So being able to use AI when I take a look at I want to make a post, I want to make my blog post that I used AI to help me generate. AI can kind of flag that for Hey. You can’t say this. You should look at that. It saves, saves a ton of time. There. Another use case is using AI as an analysis assistant. So feeding AI a portfolio, asking it questions, looking for insights, recommendations. Another kind of in a similar vein, is using AI, kind of like what I talked about in this two truths and a lie, of using it for, in a sense, predictive analytics and next best, next best actions. If you are an advisor and you have a roster of, you know, 200 clients who needs to do what and where and when and how, and that’s something that it’s able to do. And then another big one is document extraction. So that’s actually what my company specializes in right now, is document extraction. So much of the financial world is based in PDFs. And to be able to analyze your mortgage statement and your cash flow and your brokerage and your holdings and your insurance and all these things, that’s, you know, a whole ream of really long documents that, especially, you know, estate planning trust and wills can be really complex. So automatically extracting the information and generating insights. And then the last one is using AI to help you as a note taker, transcribe meetings come up the next steps. So those are happening right now, with people using many different tools for that in market right now. A lot of times it’s point source solutions. You know, all these tools are so new companies have only had time to build one of those things. But where things are going holistically, we think, is a tool that helps advisors with all aspects of the financial planning picture so financial advisors, I’m your financial advisor. I say, Hey, George, send me all your documents that you have, everything that you have, and I’m going to take all of our meeting notes that I’ve ever had with you that’s been transcribed, feed that into an AI system that is able to parse out. What your risk tolerance is, what your financial goals are, understand what your current financial situation is based on all the documents, and then be able to put together a financial plan and recommendations customized exactly for you with the financial advisor. Then able to obviously look over that, review it, make tweaks and approve it before or sharing it, but it will, we think, allow advisors to provide better advice, more comprehensive advice, and to a lot more people. One of the aspects of technology that’s really great is, you know, democratizing financial advice, this will really allow it to scale and allow advisors to serve more people and with less of a cost barrier,

george grombacher 10:47
and probably pretty fast too.

Gabe Rissman 10:48
Yeah, exactly. That’s what one of the things I’m most excited about.

george grombacher 10:54
Everything that you’re talking about makes a lot of sense. And why wouldn’t it be able to take all that available information and then say, Hey, you said that you wanted to retire at this age. Here’s exactly what. Here’s an optimal way to do that, the amount you’re saving, the investments that are, you know, germane to what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and appropriate to your risk tolerance and and all of it. I think that that’s really exciting. So do you view this as a replacement for financial advisors a couple years down the road? Or how do you think about that?

Gabe Rissman 11:26
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I I think that this, these tools, will be most useful superpowering financial advisors. Now, I don’t want to stick my head in the sand. I’m sure there’s already 10 companies that are trying to replace financial advisors with this technology, because there is a big profit opportunity. But what we’re seeing now actually being successful, and what I think will continue to be successful, is kind of the human sorry, the AI powered human advisor, the AI assisted human advisor. 50 years down the road, that could be a totally different story, and maybe sooner, maybe later. But you know, in everything that we’re seeing and anything that would be on the short term roadmap, advisors, being in the loop, will still be able to provide a lot of value. Now, the advisory role is going to change a lot too. Doctors, I think were very different. Before web nd existed, you know, the doctor would tell you something you couldn’t really verify or validate that or get your own second opinion. And the world has changed now that you can go online and put in your symptoms, and you can kind of validate and and ask your doctor more informed questions. I think that’s going to happen with financial advice as well is not only will advisors be aI powered to operate more efficiently and scalably and comprehensively, but their clients are also going to be aI powered, and they’re going to come up with better, more informed questions, and they’re going to be able to back check and make sure everything’s going going well. But I think more information in the market is a strictly good thing.

george grombacher 13:06
Yeah, I think that that’s really interesting, that the doctor analogy corollary is it certainly makes a lot of sense, and the more tools that you could put in consumers hands, certainly I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. I have a good idea of what I need to do to get out of debt and start saving and to be able to actually stop working at some point. Why wouldn’t I be able to take advantage of that? And as an advisor, I view that as just like you’ve been talking about, freeing me up to do more things that I’m probably really better at and better suited to do, to have the tough conversations with with the client, versus just spending time crunching numbers exactly

Gabe Rissman 13:46
the value add of the advisor. You know, a lot of times financial advisors at really large firms outsource all that information anyway to a home office, and the the client facing advisor is doing different things. Some still crunch the numbers. Probably most still crunch the numbers, but it’s not required in the job. And I think the value add of the client facing advisor is exactly what you talked about that emotional conversation, making sure people stay the course, explaining things and being able to be that interface so the AI can power and really assist and help, just like you know, hiring a junior advisor or other staff members can also be really helpful. So it can just help you scale them that way.

george grombacher 14:35
So the recommendations obviously that the AI needs to be trained. And so if I train the AI and say, okay, the correct amount of life insurance somebody should have is XYZ, say, 20 times their annual income, and then I say that. So how will that work? As for an advisor, can they personalize it? Do you think, yeah,

Gabe Rissman 14:56
that’s a really good question. So I think the. Are certain questions that have pretty standard responses. And the amazing thing about, you know, the gpts or clods or Geminis of the world is that they are pre trained on the internet. So if there’s a blog post about, you know, here’s a particular rule of thumb. The AI knows that rule of thumb. The AI can also see, you know, publicly available CFP questions or other, you know, other questions like that, or whatever textbooks. But right now, it’s kind of not at that level where it can really do all of that, but I do think that in the future, it will basically know all of the generalized knowledge that you need to have. That said, every advisor has a different take. You know, some advisors are have a more conservative investing philosophy. Some advisors focus on this or that or the other, and being able to put in essentially your like, your firm views, you know, your own thesis as an overlay on top of the AI will allow for customized output that fits what we’re going for. So that’s that’s certainly doable.

george grombacher 16:15
When did you become interested in in AI? What is, what is your background?

Gabe Rissman 16:20
Well, the fully, fully honest answer my background was, I was a climate change activist in college and was focused on, you know, threats that I thought could be existential or global catastrophic. And I first got interested in AI because of the potential for existential or global catastrophic threats arising from AI, and then also just kind of from there. It’s just so fascinating, so interesting and so applicable and so helpful, and has so many dangers. You know, I can see it just taking up more and more of everything that we do as we continue to live, but that’s initially what got me passionate. And I had a background in astrophysics and data science, so I immediately, you know, went in and messed around with it, and was already using, you know, what was called AI then and now, people say, Oh, that’s just machine learning. AI is different. Goalposts keep changing, but, yeah, I’ve always been following kind of the frontiers of AI developments and just realizing how powerful it is. And a lot of the people on our team are also really excited about all the frontiers and the new developments. So we all talk about the new things that are coming out and how we can use it to solve problems.

george grombacher 17:38
And you have chosen to obviously start a company around this. How do you go about making decisions on what areas that you think that you should focus on, try to see around corners and see where the opportunities are?

Gabe Rissman 17:52
Yeah, you know, you know that saying, If Henry Ford asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. I always think that a faster horse would be pretty sweet, too. So I like to ask people what they want. We talk to customers all day long and find out what they want, and then try to build that, and then talk to them again. And you know, maybe we’ll miss out on the car, but, yeah, that’s usually how we develop things.

george grombacher 18:21
That’s really funny. I’m just guessing, just throwing stuff out there, you know, no, you actually ask the people what it is that they want. Yeah, that’s a crazy idea. Gabe, slow down, buddy. All right, so, astrophysics, mathematics and Legally Blonde. I think I think that that’s just fantastic. Now I don’t know why I didn’t ask the question. So are you considering getting the tattoo of a bee? I am. Okay,

Gabe Rissman 18:55
yeah. I a lot of reasons. But some of the good ones are, you know, it’s a reminder to just be, which is a good one for sure. Fantastic animals, super helpful for ecosystems. I still have some of that, that climate activism in me, yeah. And also, I, in a sense, see myself as a B on A, you know, an A through F. You know, pretty good, but I can always improve. And so my favorite quotes start with the letter B. So it this keeps going. There’s a lot of reasons

george grombacher 19:30
these are all very, very compelling. Just be see yourself as a, b. When are you getting the tattoo? Gabe,

Gabe Rissman 19:37
well, I missed my big opportunity. I just turned 30, and I was thinking about maybe doing that, but 31 maybe who’s

george grombacher 19:46
who’s who’s to say, Well, see,

Gabe Rissman 19:49
I still don’t have the design fully worked out. I think that would be, once I get a design that really sticks, that would, yeah, that’d put me over. Don’t

george grombacher 19:59
need technology. Just to to help you with such a thing.

Gabe Rissman 20:01
So my, my ex, actually is an illustrator and is super anti AI art, um, and actually is part of a class action law. I don’t know if I can say this, I’m part of a class action lawsuit, and they said, like a Class Rep where, essentially AI models stole the artwork and use that to train custom models. And so I have some some moral quandaries around AI generated art because it’s a lot of times using illustrators and artists work without compensating them. So that one I won’t use AI for, but fair

george grombacher 20:41
enough, but that’s awesome. Well, Gabe, we’re ready for your difference making tip. What do you have for us?

Gabe Rissman 20:48
Sure, a relevant difference making tip is that, I mean, AI can be useful for so many different things. Even when you’re using it a lot, there’s always ways that it can help out that you’re not thinking of which I just experienced today. I use it every single day as a coding assistant. It’s actually really phenomenal. Of that good for writing too. But my my general tip is to be wary of advice.

george grombacher 21:24
Be wary of advice.

Gabe Rissman 21:28
I think a lot of times advice is what worked for the person giving the advice, and it usually doesn’t translate, in my experience, so be wary of this advice too.

george grombacher 21:41
I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets a con. All right, thank thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage so

Gabe Rissman 21:51
my company is called your steak. Your steak.org, y, o, u, r, s, t, a, k, e, not the food. My email is [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn. I’m Gabe rissman. My company helps financial advisors save a bunch of time on manual entry using AI tools, generate portfolio analyzes and extract information off of PDFs. So reach out if you want to talk about that or or anything that we covered today.

george grombacher 22:18
Excellent. If you enjoyed as much as I did, so Gabriel, appreciation, share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to your stake.org, y, o, u, r, s, t, a, k, e.org, and check out all the things that Gabe and his team are working on and making life easier and more efficient, and all of those good things just be, I think that that’s, I think that that’s excellent advice too, even though we need to be wary of that. So thanks again. Gabe,

Gabe Rissman 22:50
thanks so much, George. Love this conversation.

george grombacher 22:53
Finally, a friendly reminder, it’s never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are, so act accordingly. You.