Knowing Me, Knowing You

You cannot “move fast and break things” when you’re responsible for someone’s retirement, their kids’ education, or the business they built over 30 years. So why are so many advisors still borrowing playbooks from tech without asking what actually fits our industry?

In this conversation, Jason Pereira pushes past the surface-level AI hype and gets honest about what changes and what doesn’t.

Yes, large language models will eat the busy work. Yes, automation will reshape workflows. But the differentiator has never been speed. It has always been judgment, trust, and your ability to understand the human sitting across from you. Jason talks about the tension every firm feels: profit versus service, efficiency versus intimacy, growth versus depth. He makes a compelling case that you can hold both, if you design your business on purpose instead of stacking tools and hoping for magic.

In an industry facing advisor shortages, generational wealth transfer, and rising client expectations, you cannot afford to keep guessing what drives action. Discovery has to get smarter, more structured, and more human at the same time.

Connect with us! 

• Jason Pereira on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pereirajm/
• Woodgate - https://www.woodgate.com/
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlasofer/
• Knomee - https://knomee.com/

Advisors are trained to solve technical problems, but most client relationships don’t strain at the technical layer, but at the emotional one.

In this conversation, Marla sits down with behavioral finance expert Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D., to explore the subtle difference between doing what’s efficient and doing what’s effective. Rules of thumb like the 4% withdrawal rate or six months of savings help simplify complex scenarios, but they also create anchors that can shape expectations and even create conflict.

Together, they go through what happens when the advice becomes paternalistic and how small shifts in the meetings’ design can change the entire trajectory of a relationship. Because as investment management becomes more commoditized, understanding how your client wants to live dictates how they want to allocate. Behavioral finance becomes the differentiator in your practice.

This episode is a reminder that portfolio construction may power the engine, but trust carries the relationship forward.

Connect with us! 

• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlasofer/
• Knomee - https://knomee.com/
• Meghaan Lurtz on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghaanlurtz/

Clients walk into meetings informed now. They’ve read articles, run scenarios, and heard opinions from everywhere, yet many still leave unsure about what actually fits their life. That moment reveals where advice either deepens or flattens. In this conversation, Marla talks with Alex Potts, visionary CEO who scaled Loring Ward and Buckingham Strategic Partners to over $50B in assets, all while keeping the human side of wealth front and center. 

Through personal stories and hard-earned perspective, Alex explores how advisors earn trust when technology speeds everything up, but understanding still carries the relationship forward.

Main takeaways

• AI raises client expectations, which makes empathy, judgment, and context the parts of advice clients notice most.
• Advisors who grow without burning out keep learning about their clients over time instead of treating discovery as a one-time task.
• The strongest practices expand by paying attention to tension in a client’s life and responding with care, not by pushing more solutions.

Connect with us! 

• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlasofer/
• Knomee - https://knomee.com/
• Alex Potts on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-potts-5aa2792/
• MCAP Ventures - https://www.mcapventures.net/

Think about how often growth introduces distance in the client-advisor relationships. More clients, more systems, more noise, and suddenly the conversations feel thinner even when the service is strong on paper. Advisors rarely lose clients because of performance, but they often lose them if context slips through the cracks. In this episode, Marla speaks with Jim Roth, a longtime leader in wealth management and fintech, about why this moment feels like a true inflection point for the industry. As AI becomes unavoidable, the question is no longer whether technology belongs in the advisory relationship, but whether it can be used to protect what matters most. Jim shares how firms can use AI to remove friction, surface insight earlier, and create space for more meaningful conversations, showing that scale and humanity no longer have to work against each other: they work together.

Key takeaways:

• AI is most powerful when it removes the operational noise that keeps advisors from showing up fully present with clients.
• True listening happens through patterns, behavior, and timing, not just what clients say in meetings.
• Advisors who scale trust do it by carrying context forward, so clients never feel like they are starting over. Context and personalization are not trade offs anymore.

Connect with us! 

• Jim Roth on LinkedIn
• Ascentix Partners
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

Whether you're acquiring a firm, merging teams, or preparing for succession, the thing that tends to crack first is trust.

In this solo episode, Marla unpacks what really causes client relationships to weaken during transitions, even when deals are clean, teams are capable, and the messaging is polished. The first signs? Diminished engagement. Missed growth targets. Clients saying they’re fine while quietly disengaging.

This episode goes beyond operations to address the behavioral risk that acquiring firms often overlook: how client confidence falters when the person they trusted most steps back, and the firm doesn't have the emotional insight to pick up where they left off.

Learn how leading firms are de-risking advisor transitions, retaining relationships, and creating scalable continuity by embedding behavioral awareness into onboarding, handoffs, and team expansion. Whether you're in M&A, building for succession, or onboarding acquired clients, this episode offers tactical insight to preserve trust and drive post-transaction growth.

Connect with us! 

• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

Every year brings new tools, new language, and new promises about growth, and last year was no different. Advisors adopted AI, expanded their services, and refined their processes, but many firms still felt a sense of sameness creeping in. The question became harder to avoid. If the offerings look similar, where does differentiation actually come from?

In this solo episode, Marla shares a simple three-part playbook shaped by conversations with hundreds of advisors. It starts with rethinking discovery as a relationship, then moves to capturing insight in a way that travels across the firm instead of living in someone’s memory, and it ends with turning those insights into timely action that clients can feel.

This is less about reinvention and more about intention. Small, repeatable shifts that help advisors show up with more relevance, more consistency, and more humanity, even as their businesses grow. 

Connect with us! 

• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

After an exit, money stops behaving like a simple scorecard and starts to carry a different weight, one that brings freedom and pressure at the same time. That tension runs through this conversation with Sriram Gollapalli, as he reflects on what it means to suddenly hold responsibility for capital, choice, and long-term consequences all at once. I

That experience is exactly why he founded Long Angle, a private, peer-driven community of nearly 7,000 high-net-worth individuals who wanted a place to talk openly about the things money creates but rarely makes it easier. What started as a few friends comparing notes after liquidity became a trusted space for real conversations: how to invest, how to spend, how to give, how to think about purpose, and how to live with confidence when there’s no longer a clear playbook. While the community spans every topic wealth touches, the most active and resonant discussions center on money itself, not as a product or strategy, but as a lived, emotional, and deeply personal experience.

Our discussion explores peer conversations, longer time horizons, and self-direction once familiar structures fall away, especially when access to information alone doesn’t guarantee confidence, and when even well-resourced individuals find themselves questioning whether the decisions they’re making truly fit their lives. Community, trust, and perspective surface again and again, not as strategies, but as anchors, shaping how risk, spending, and purpose are approached when the stakes feel deeply personal.

Join us and leave with a clearer picture of how people tend to think after liquidity.

Connect with us!

• Sriram Gollapalli on LinkedIn
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

This episode will challenge everything you've been taught about pitching your services. It’s not about what you offer, but about how clients feel. If you’re still leading with your planning process, it’s time you realize that your clients don’t care…until you speak to their emotions first.

If you've ever fumbled through the “what do you do?” question or watched a prospect's eyes glaze over mid-pitch, this one’s for you. Kathleen Kingsbury brings the mindset shift advisors must make to connect with what clients actually want.

Kathleen cuts right into a challenge most advisors have faced during their career: the words they use to describe their value almost never match what clients are actually looking for. Advisors lean into plans, deliverables, and process, while clients come with anxiety, uncertainty, and the hope that someone will help them feel confident. She explains that you bridge the gap by reflecting the client’s concern first, and not on the fancy words you would like to use to describe your service. The doses of humbleness and reality we all need. 

Connect with us! 

• Kathleen Burns Kingsbury on LinkedIn
• KBK Wealth Connection
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

Emily Rassam has spent nearly two decades listening to people talk about their money, their fears, their dreams, and the hidden stories that shape their decisions. Over time, she began to notice something: the most transformative part of planning had nothing to do with the spreadsheets or the calculation, but with the moment someone felt understood. That moment changed their comfort, their clarity, and their willingness to move forward.

In this conversation, Emily shares the path that shaped her as a planner, from thousands of early 401(k) conversations to building a fully virtual practice where tech creates more room for connection instead of replacing it. The best part? She opens up about the clients who have changed her, the conversations that stay with her, and why documenting emotional data is as essential as holdings and transactions to helping her business grow.

Connect with us! 

• Emily Rassam on LinkedIn
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee

Peter Renton, fintech pioneer, founder of Fintech Nexus, and host of the industry’s longest-running fintech podcast, has seen the space grow from peer-to-peer lending experiments into a force reshaping financial lives. But it was a personal moment of uncertainty, not a business milestone, that revealed what most advisors still miss.

In this episode, Peter shares why behavior remains at the core of financial decisions, and why today’s clients expect more than product advice. He recalls the advisor who stayed close, even when he didn’t meet her minimums, and how that simple act revealed the real drivers of trust, timing, and lasting loyalty.

For advisors, his insights offer a roadmap for how discovery, technology, and human understanding must now work together to meet rising expectations.

Connect with us! 

• Peter Renton on LinkedIn
• Renton and Co on LinkedIn
• Marla Sofer on LinkedIn
• Knomee