In the Suite

EP 99 Reinventing Wealth with AI, Empathy & Financial Identity with Marla Sofer, Founder & CEO of Knomee

• Tina Powell • Season 3 • Episode 99

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In this episode of In the Suite, host Tina Powell sits down with Marla Sofer, fintech founder and visionary behind Knomee, the AI-powered behavioral finance platform helping advisors uncover their clients’ financial identity.

With 25+ years across JP Morgan, BlackRock, and Lending Club, Marla shares how she turned industry experience into innovation — building technology that connects advisors and clients at the human level.

We explore:

  • The birth of “financial identity” and what it means for personalization in wealth
  • How AI enhances trust, empathy, and client connection
  • The vulnerability gap in women’s wealth conversations
  • How to build women’s networks inside financial firms
  • The transformative power of imagining your “future self”

Resources Mentioned:

⏱ Chapter Markers:
00:00 – Welcome + Why Marla’s story matters
01:08 – From JP Morgan & BlackRock to founding Knomee
04:29 – What Knomee is and who it’s for
09:00 – Behavioral finance and risk redefined
13:24 – The idea behind “financial identity”
17:35 – How often clients should re-engage with Knomee
21:43 – The role of AI in creating connection
26:26 – The vulnerability gap for women and wealth
33:03 – Building women’s networks inside firms
36:26 – How to start a women’s initiative that lasts
39:15 – Advice for women aiming for the C-suite
43:06 – Launching the “Knowing Me, Knowing You” podcast
46:45 – Nomi at Future Proof and Wealth Leadership Roundtables
48:47 – Best health + wellness tip: find your posse

🤩 Thanks for listening, we appreciate your support and 5-star reviews of our show!!!

❤️ Please follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/inthesuitepod/

📧 Want to get in touch? Email me at tina@growintentionally.com


On this week's episode of in the Suite with Tina Powell. The thing that I think is really critical in terms of advice to women is to get very uncomfortable in thinking about what future you is going to care about. Hi, this is Tina Powell, host of. In the Suite where I sit down. With top women leaders and some of the biggest names in the financial services and the wealth management industry. Together we'll discover some of their best secrets and top strategies to grow great business, build a strong brand and lead teams in the 21st century. I hope you'll enjoy hearing their amazing personal stories of triumph, trepidation and transformation in hopes of becoming better leaders ourselves. The time for you to lead is now and you're in the sweet. Today. I'm beyond thrilled to welcome a fintech founder, visionary and true game changer in the suite. That's Marla Sofer, founder and CEO of Knomee. With more than 25 years of experience across firms like JP Morgan, BlackRock and Lending Club, Marla has seen every corner of financial services. But instead of climbing the traditional ladder, she listened to her inner voice and future self and leapt into entrepreneurship. The result, nomi, an AI powered behavioral finance platform that redefines how advisors connect with clients by uncovering their financial identity. In this episode, Marla opens up about the realities of being a fintech founder, the future of wealth management, the critical role of behavior data, and the importance of surrounding yourself with with the right people, including, as she says, a core posse of girlfriends who keep you grounded, accountable and strong. But that's not all. Marla's story is one of courage, innovation and deep purpose. She's built not just a company, but a movement, helping advisors serve women, next gen investors and diverse communities with empathy and intention. And along the way, she's also launched not one, but two women's networks inside leading firms, amplifying voices that too often go unheard. So whether you're an advisor looking to future proof your practice, a woman ready to claim your seat at the table, or a fintech leader reimagining what's possible, this episode will challenge you to think differently about money, identity and the power of leadership. Get ready to be inspired by a founder who is rewriting the rules of wealth management with courage, conviction and heart. This is Marla Sofer and this is her story right here in the suite. Wow. Marla Sofer. Take a seat in the suite. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Tina. I'm so happy to be here. As I share with you, I'm so inspired by you always and love what you're doing here on in the suite and love how vulnerable you are. So thank you for having me here. Thank you. Really, really looking forward to this conversation today because here at in the suite we are approaching the 100th episode. This is episode 99. Thank you all so, so, so, so, so much. What we love to do is we love to shine a light on incredible women and voices. So we've had CEOs, we've had founders, we've had leaders across financial services, but it's rare that we get to sit down with a fintech found an amazing, amazing vitae. We're going to get into some of your backstory but I want to kick us off with Knomee. So you launched Knomee. I'll spell that to everybody. K, N O M E E. You launched Knomee three years ago as both founder and CEO. So let's start at the beginning. What is Knomee and who did you create it for? Awesome. Thank you. And woohoo. 99. I love being 99. This is fantastic. So happy to be here. Knomee is AI powered behavioral finance that helps advisors be the best they can be and offer the most differentiated service that they can. It is helping wealth really create incredible value for its clients. It is a differentiated data platform based off of verified behavioral finance data. It's designed to help advisors. So we are very focused on people who work with the financial industry to get the support they need from professionals who are qualified and understand how to help them align their money with what matters. So we want to help advisors extract in a consistent way people's values, their goals, their transitions, what is happening in their life? What do they want their money to help them achieve? What does good mean? What does retirement mean? What does that living your best, most fulfilled life actually translate to? As. As it relates to every single financial decision we make along the trajectory of our life. So what we do is we create these, we call them adventures in Knomee and enable people to share insights. And we use AI to synthesize those insights so advisors can act on them immediately. They can pull them into conversations, into conversion, into upsells, into how do I understand what really matters so that my client feels understood and known? Particularly, we're interested in advisors who want to grow. Not every advisor wants to grow. And that is okay. There are those that are kind of coasting into the sunset and I've spoken with them and they've even said, yeah, this is awesome, but I'm not growing my business at all. And that's Great and fine. We're also not for advisors who are not looking to expand into diverse or next generation clients. We're really great for advisors who recognize that demographics are changing, women are controlling more and more money than ever before. And the way that we connected with our prior clients isn't going to work with a lot of the new clients that are coming in to wealth through this wealth transition that we are experiencing right now. So we are all about building trust, retention, scale, understanding what's happening in a client's life and, and helping an advisor do that consistently and efficiently. I wanted to make the distinction here, so let's carry this theme a little bit further. So this is for advisors who are targeting women, correct? It's no, not necessarily for those that are only targeting women. It is for advisors who are targeting anybody with whom they want to understand more deeply what does this client care about and want to generate that data consistently so that they, the advisor can connect more deeply, have much more retention and longevity through that relationship. We are distributed through the advisor. So our business model is we are sold through the advisor. So in the first couple of years of nomi, we did a lot of testing with consumers and the target we tested most with was high net worth women. And so a lot of what we built was informed by the needs of high net worth women. As I started going through the, the, you know, ups and downs of a founder and learning, I realized everything we built, we started getting attention because we were, it was a different business model, but we were focused on women's networks and we got interest from Latino groups, veterans groups, black groups, high Henrys in the tech industry that were not women. But they wanted to have a different conversation about money. They didn't want to talk about allocation. First they wanted to talk about for what first they wanted to talk about how are you meeting me with the menu that I want. And the menu might include private equity and real estate and things that you're not generating AUM based fees on. How are we going to address that? And so I would say that while we started with women, what we realized is that different approach of getting to know somebody, which does resonate very strongly with women, is relevant to a much broader group. Mm, I love how you just distinguished that. So I did create my, my own Knomee profile and I could feel that the questions that you were asking me felt very intuitive. It felt very like fluid. I would use the word fluid. And we should also too, we should make the differentiation that this is not the information generated from Knomee is Not used for an investment policy statement, for example. Right. This isn't a risk profile tool, but one that you could use in addition to profile tool to really, really, really get to know, get to get. For a financial advisor to really understand where that, where that psyche is. Would that, would that be correct? Not necessarily. In fact, we do have a client right now that is pulling from Gnome and putting it directly in the performance statements. Great. What they want the client to be reminded this is what it's for. Could that be part of the investment policy statement? Eventually, maybe. As it relates to, kind of. Here is the guiding principle that is helping us make better decisions for you as it relates to risk. The answer is we do have a risk module and we have a very different approach to risk. It goes beyond risk tolerance and assessment, and it's not static, it's dynamic. It's asked at multiple points in time. Because risk tolerance questionnaires are very, very flawed. And they're flawed because they're very dependent on your mood. They're dependent on what's happening in the market that day. And so what nomi's approach is if we have a direct interaction with your client, distributed through you, where you can gather information about their approach to risk, what they've done in the past in response to volatility and their capacity for risk, there's a lot of different parts that need to come together when you think about risk assessment. And so we are. Our risk module is much more multidimensional than a traditional risk tolerance questionnaire. I'll be honest with you. Tina and I will tell you, we have spoken with a lot of advisors who have said, all right, Marla, what you built for risk tolerance is effing great. We can't use it. Why? Because it's not with our existing clients yet. Because it's so much stronger and better than what we have. What are we going to do with all these portfolios that have mismatched risk? And so we'll need to grow into it. It's like saying, okay, there's a better mousetrap on there. Can I just put head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist? Because I've built on the prior version and that's how tech works. And so maybe we start with the net new clients and we help them assess their risk a lot more effectively and then we grow into. What does that look like over time to bring everyone back up to speed with a much more accurate human centric, client centric approach to what they need. And we should also mention that Knomee isn't even just three. You're coming upon your three year anniversary. So I think like any fintech founder I'll, I'll use my business partner Kelly Waldrick, an advisor brand builder that also too uses AI. Any fintech founder right now is like the product evolution is a constant, is a absolute. Like you're never, we're never ever done and the way that you launch and the who you are now. What I really like is that you're very involved, you understand this industry. We're going to get into a little bit of a backstory but there's been such intentional effort and then I think that you're like broadening our understanding of risk. The risk conversation is so different than how I remember it back in wealth management. You use this concept of this financial identity platform, really helping people to uncover their values and align their money. Again, I took my own no me. I felt that it was very fluid. The questions that you're asking me were very akin to how I'm living life now. If I take my know me now versus how I took it five years ago. It's much more dynamic. But let's kind of get a little bit deeper in that financial identity. I think you might have like inadvertently coined a whole new term. How did that idea first take shape for you? How it took shape is very linked to kind of the story of, of me, my career journey. And I don't know that it was inadvertent. I think that a lot of what I'm building toward is a very strategic view of looking at where the industry is going and how it's going to get there. And so my background is over the last 25 years I've been a licensed advisor. I was a private banker in Manhattan. I then worked in the guts of global custody at JP Morgan serving asset managers. And then I worked at BlackRock for five years. And so that was the first 15 years of, of my career kind of in the, in the deep guts of investing. And then I worked in fintech for the last decade and had this bird's eye, you know, firsthand view of where are we as an industry and what is holding us back and why do we keep talking about personalization and we're not able to get there. And so I recognized we have this kind of Grand Canyon size at least abyss that is holding us back. It is the knowledge of our customer. So what is a financial identity? The story of what brought me there is that I worked at a lot of these big companies and realized we Keep talking about the same problems again and again and again. We are hiring consultants for a hell of a lot of money to help solve them. But they can only work with what they've got in the toolkit. And what they don't have in the toolkit is consistent, dynamic, real time data about each client to help drive engagement, to help keep them aligned and excited about where we're going and trust building like help them understand this is what we're here for, this is what your wealth is going to help you achieve and do. We don't have the data. And so what the financial ID is, I think the easiest way to describe it for the business, for the Advisor is it's a rubric of accountability for financial decisions. It is the context. It creates for the Advisor an opportunity to give your client agency and an opportunity for you as you build your business to differentiate. I'm not just selling you the same five things on the menu as everyone else with a little bit of sprinkle of estate planning and a little bit of sprinkle of private equity allocation and a little bit of real estate here and maybe I got a buddy as a vc. It goes beyond that. It goes into. Every single engagement you have with every single client is a differentiated experience. They are getting something different from you. The conversations you're having are not the script about here's how the market's performing and the Dow Jones and the S and P. It is actually getting deep into what is going on in your life and helping each client understand that that is the rubric for the meeting. It is a differentiated meeting each and every time, every single time you meet with a meeting. And that's what we help advisors do for the client. When we talk to the client, we kind of say and this is through the Advisor. It's distributed always through the Advisor. But the narrative is how do you know what financial choice is right for you? How do you know if this advisor is right for you? And the answer is it depends. What does it depend on? Well, it depends on all these things that knowmi is helping you gather. It depends on a known set of variables. That known set of variables, when you clump them together, is your financial identity. And so in my experience at Microsoft and at a lot of the big fintech companies, I learned a lot about knowledge graphs. These are these multidimensional data frameworks that help us understand a client in a much better way based off of several different moving variables. If you can kind of imagine a machine with lots of things changing all around, it that is a financial identity. It's a knowledge graph. It is this broad set of multidimensional data that answers the question, what is right for me? So then how often? Along those lines, then how often for advisors that are utilizing KnowMe for their clients? How often are you taking that assessment? Is it on every meeting? I. I love your question because I think it reflects how we want to think about this as an industry. It doesn't reflect how life actually operates as a client. And so the answer is, should it happen before every meeting? Yes. How often are those meetings? I don't know. How often does your client need to meet with you? It's not necessarily every six months. That's how we kind of have to. We have to do it once a year. That's regulatory. We have to kind of. We have to meet with our clients once a year. Are their lives changing significantly? More or less frequent cadence? Of course they are. Like, their lives are. Maybe they go three years and they don't have a major change, and then in the next three months they have a lot of. Lots of different changes. And so the cadence is something that as an industry, we have been trained to structure around. Can Knomee help you in a regular cadence? Absolutely. You can come into every meeting, if it's every quarter or every six months, knowing exactly what is top of mind for your client. What we're also doing is teaching your client, we are training your client so that they are communicating with you in real time. When something's actually happening. Is it going to be just before the review meeting that they get a health diagnosis? Or when, you know, maybe they have a windfall and somebody offers them a bunch of money for their business and are you going to be their first call? Maybe, maybe not. But if we are getting some behavioral training saying, hey, when you do these things, when you communicate and articulate what is happening in your life in real time with your advisor, what you get as a client is more value out of that relationship. You are extracting more from your advisor when you articulate and communicate in real time when you need them. Clients don't know that. Nobody's been trained to kind of help them communicate in that way. And so I know that we like to think about a regular cadence. There are several use cases of nomi. Yes, it should be done. It could be done as part of prospecting to help explore. I was about to. You took the words right out of my mouth because, like, from a perspective client. And then also too for different differentiation. That's right. Yeah. And it's so easy to use. Tina. There is no onboarding, no integration whatsoever. You literally can take a link and put it in your social post. You can put it on your website and just be like, hey, what do you want to get out of wealth management? Here's a quick quiz and if the if that client chooses to share that with the advisor. The advisor. There's no guessing. I know exactly what to say in that first meeting they've told me you. Not only have the words right and again this lends itself to you being at Invesco and Gen Step and all of the other places that you've been is the UI and the UX is designed for a 2025 world. Thank you very much. Because on the marketing side we've seen fintech platforms and products really try to position themselves as something like new and novel and something that we've been using that we should be utiliz. Hey friends, let's take a minute to talk about growth. If you're in financial services and wondering how to move the needle on metrics that truly matter pipeline revenue, profitability, you need a marketing partner who gets it at intentionally. We're not just any other marketing agency. We are the go to growth consultancy for fintechs, reas, custodians, broker dealers, asset managers and more. Our team of cross functional growth specialists work seamlessly across your firm to accelerate results. Ready to get intentional? Email me@tinagrowintentionally.com for a complimentary strategy call that starts transforming your growth engine today. Now let's get back to the conversation. I would love to learn a little bit more about how you are leveraging AI. Is that just like behind the hood? Is it something that you like intentionally led with when you formulated Know Me? Yeah, AI was always a part of our strategy, but I would say as a tool, not as a shiny object that will distract you and give you the same thing in a different package than what you're getting today. So if you think about what Knomee is, Knomee is better data, period. We could do it. We can offer it up without AI. What AI introduces is how am I incentivizing the client, how am I helping the advisor? So it is creating delightful experiences. So there is delight through the journey that a client goes through. We create engagement. There's a lot of gamification, there's education, there is AI imagery, there are things that are keeping the client excited. What we've done at the client end, like for the B2B2C component, the interface that a client goes through to actually construct this financial identity is modeled after non financial examples. Everything we've built is modeled after. And if you go through it, you'll see it looks a lot like Hinge or Duolingo or Noom or a lot of these apps that we know clients love. It feels like Strava. It feels a little bit like I'm doing something that is wellness related, that is exciting and delightful and I get to talk about myself. It's kind of like more like a horoscope or something that is creating excitement and delight and an engaging journey along the way. Now, when we first started talking to advisors and we shifted to being kind of a pure B2B SaaS platform for advisors to distribute and really understand their clients, we had reams of data about their clients and they were like, like, Marla, this is a lot of data. I don't know what to do with this data. And then the light bulb went off and we were like, okay. We worked almost two years on all this data and our advisors who we thought were going to fall over themselves saying, thank you for this great data, we're like, we don't know what to do with the data. And so there was this tiny little inch on the mile. We kind of built a mile, and we needed the final inch. And the final inch was the AI synthesis of all of that data. Help me make this data usable so I can act on it. So I know exactly what to say going into a meeting. So I understand retention levers. I understand contextual cues. I'm reminded in real time about how do I connect with Tina Powell before I go into this meeting and what Tina wants to hear. What is going to differentiate me based off of what Tina cares about? And so that is how RAI is pulling out from everything that Tina went through in her experience to tell the advisor, say this and say this and say this. Now, what we're not telling the advisor to do is how to give advice. We are telling him how to make Tina feel heard, to make Tina feel known. So that every time you go into that meeting, Tina's like, this advisor knows me better than anyone. He's reading my mind. That's the experience we are creating with AI. We're synthesizing Tina's words and telling your advisor, this is what Tina needs to hear. This is the question she wants to be asked so that it's a deepening question. It's something that recognizes everything I've said. I've spoken with multiple advisors who have said to me one of the most Embarrassing moments is when I go into a meeting and I ask a question and the client says, I've told you this three times, that moment is unacceptable. I'm sorry, like, you know, you're paying, they're paying you a percent of their assets and the, you know, it's intended to be entirely built around them and their future. How do we help advisors avoid those moments? How do we make sure that every time they go into a meeting, they have data fed right in front of them on a screen or that they've been able to prepare with if they're at a meal or whatever it is so that, that every single time the client feels like, wow, he understood where I was then he's taken everything from every prior meeting and now he's also synthesized it with this new information I just shared through nomi. So it's that nuanced differentiation of like the data feeding the AI that makes the entire advisory experience different. Let's talk a little bit about opening up and specifically about this, this need for I, I feel like a safe space. Like, yeah, I'm. Right now I'm a, I'm an open book. There's a lot that's, that's gone on in my life, like, you know, health wise and there's been a lot that's gone on in my life. Like my kids are both parents now, I'm got three grandkids. But the way that I was raised, and again, it's no disrespect to the previous generations, we were just not as open as we. How do you think that women in particular, you know, we used to be much guarded, Marla, about what I'll call the other things going on in our life. Our relationship with our advisor has been, I think a really good advisor gets to the heart of your values and your legacy and really, really gets to know you in a way that KNOWMI makes possible. What do you think needs to change so that we as women open up and start really getting to the core of what we want our wealth and money to do for us? I don't think it's used to, sadly. I've interviewed now it's over 3,000 people. Way over half have been high net worth women. So these are women that probably have $2 million at least liquid and they are still very guarded. Nothing has changed that vulnerability gap that you talk about. I think there's a lot of women that are now starting to speak up and feel more confident. There's a lot that aren't and I'll be very candid with you and say, you know, I felt that experience too. And both my husband and I have been licensed advisors and we struggled a lot in our own relationship and talking about money. And I feel that every single woman I've met has a story. A story about. Let me tell you about when I felt condescended to. Oh, we all have that story for sure, right in our back. How many of those stories do you want to hear, Marla? Exactly. Let me tell you a story. In fact, I went on a hike with an executive in our industry this weekend. This woman manages thousands of individuals at one of the biggest fintech companies around. And both of us shared how we had been confused for like the administrative assistant who kind of gets the coffee in the meeting and where we've been confused for being kind of the junior person when the other person in the meeting reported to us. Right. And it happens all the time. So, yes, we all have those stories, unfortunately. Why? Because those are our societal biases. They're things that we were raised with. There's things that despite our best efforts, we raised our daughters with. And we're now trying to shine a light on them and change those things so that our daughters don't face the same things. And we say, hey, look, you know, I might have not guarded you enough from these things that pressured you to believe these things in the way that they are. Anyway, I think the long story, the short story here is women are more guarded. And they are more guarded because they all have a story. They have been educated by society to, you know what? Don't speak up. You sound stupid. You sound unsophisticated. You shouldn't ask that question because that question maybe makes me judge you and every woman. These are very high net worth women who have advisors. There's one woman I know who she has an MBA and I think even a cfa. She told me that she doesn't speak up anymore with her advisor and her husband has a degree that has nothing to do with finance whatsoever. And she said, I just don't. I. She's a founder as well. She's a CEO. They're extremely successful. Shouldn't speak up. And I keep hearing this story again and again and again. So let me go back to, Let me go to, like, how do we solution this? So our industry is an industry that has been positioned from it the get go as an industry of products. We sell things, we throw things at people's heads, even advice. We want people to pay for products. We are incentivized to sell products where Incentive, Even if the product is, you know, advice in return for a percent of your assets, we're still selling a product. We are not an industry of solutions. If you look at the biggest tech companies out there in the world, those that are, that are the most profitable companies on the planet, they sell solutions, they go deep into their clients problems and by understanding their clients problems deeply, they have a consultative sale. It comes down to caring and understanding your caring for and understanding everything about your client, understanding what good means to your client, understanding how to absolve and eliminate their fears, recognize their emotions, recognize their context and then adapt to constantly give them evolving value. Think about how Google operates, how Facebook operates. That is exactly what they do. They are companies of context. They are always gathering context to surface things that help you in your next iteration. Your next iteration. We're nowhere near that. Yeah, I think of Amazon in terms of like their recommendation engine. Like always trying to be solution oriented and recommending for me the right thing at exactly the right time because they really, really know me. I want to commend you on some of the work that you've done, particularly around Women's Network, because I feel that when we as women get together and we're around other women, that we tend to share more and really express like our true, true feelings. Now you have founded not one, not one, everyone, but two women's networks in financial services. So I don't want to gloss over this. I think it's phenomenal that you did that and it can be, I think, a gateway for us to share experiences and make each other better. So tell us about those networks, Marla. Thank you. I couldn't agree with you more that when women come together, we lift and empower each other to achieve more of what we define as purposeful, meaning driven kind of growth. I was very, very involved in the Women's Network at BlackRock and we had a lot of different incredible opportunities. Still very good friends with Amy Schuldegger. She is one of the founders of the etf. If people are not familiar with who she is, she was on the global executive team at BlackRock for a very long time. Started at BGI and was one of the very few incredibly powerful women and she started the BlackRock Women's Network. There were so many activities we did and those women, I literally met with them last week, are still my dear friends. They are all powerful executives that we learned how to create events that brought people together. Now when I left, I was at JP Morgan six years, also somewhat involved in their women's group. It wasn't as big of a thing back then. Then BlackRock, five years, when it really kind of went was was huge, like through the 2000 and tens, we'll say. And then I joined Lending Club. And Lending Club was this fast moving fintech, you know, hockey stick growth. It had just IPO'd and there was no women's group. And so I had all of these incredible experiences from blackrock. And there were wonderful women at Lending Club. And so we all got together and we put together this women's network to help women in fintech who came from all of these different backgrounds. They weren't all finance, they weren't all tech. They were kind of this hodgepodge of women that were looking for growth in their careers and having impact and how to really connect with each other. So we launched the women's network at Lending Club. And then later a couple years later, I joined jemstep. And jemstep didn't have a women's network either on the west coast. And so I launched our network on the west coast. It was fantastic. It was kind of pre Covid very much in this era where we were talking about. We were changing the conversation a little bit. Everyone, like I would say in the beginning, it was a lot of great programming around networking and confidence building. And we had a program called the art of the Ask. And then it just kind of got generic. Everyone had networking programming and everyone had, you know, how do I find more confidence and speak up in a meeting and everything else. And so we evolved it so it was a lot more deeper value for every single woman with much more unique, creative programming. We've got a lot of women who are listening in the suite who are. I think a light bulb just went off in their head and they said, well, we don't have a women's network anyway. Being that you have successfully galvanized two women's networking organizations, give us a little bit of advice on how to create that evolution. Is it starting with like a plan on paper and then having a conversation with your CEO? Is that you kind of assembling like a little mini board and then going to your CEO? How far evolved does the premise need to be before you approach someone within your organization and say, I have this vision for this women's networking event here? I love that you asked this. I don't remember if I shared this with you, Tina, but somebody here in this city in San Francisco did a ChatGPT search when they were looking to launch a women's network of like, who can help me. Did I share this with you and my. But I want our listening audience. Really sorry. Because you guys, it's phenomenal. Okay. You can't make this up. This. This group in San Francisco had all of the questions that you just asked. You know, we'd like to form a women's network. We're not sure how to do it. What is the right way to go about it? And they asked ChatGPT and my name came up and so they reached out to me and I ended up consulting them through the process of getting set up. And does that look like I would say everything you said? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They do. Should. There should be a little written plan. They should go out and find who are the other individuals in the organization that care enough and want to be the initial anchor steering committee that are going to drive it forward. But I would add one more key thing. And this is critical at every stage, at every step of the process. Why? Why make the why so crystal clear? Not why from the perspective of. Well, because our women just really need to like, have a safe space. Why from the perspective of the business, how is the business going to benefit when women come together and they feel that they're able to execute at their very best level, they are able to draw in and recruit the type of women clients and boards that care about diverse suppliers and diverse partners that they're working with. That is the why that your CEO will be inspired by. How are we creating a better product? How are we creating better client set? How are we making sure we're not going to get rejected because we're too homogenous at the top? And that I think speaks volumes. As opposed to. We have a bunch of women who just want to kind of like have some panels about networking and supporting each other. Yes, lovely. But it's not nearly as powerful as the why for the business. You guys put that knowledge bomb on replay over and over and over again. Okay, speaking of advice, because I can't let you leave here in the suite without answering a couple of other. Other questions here specifically. Look, you've been in so many different facets of financial services. What advice would you give women specifically who want to elevate and position themselves for the C Suite? I. So I want to tell you a quick story and I also want to say it was validated by does anybody. I'm sure your audience listens to the Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam. Does anybody listen to that? Do you ever hear that? They are. We'll put it in the show notes for everyone anyway, including links to Know me and all things Marla and her podcast, which we're going to talk about in a minute. Fantastic. So for me, the, the thing that I think is really critical in terms of advice to women is to get very uncomfortable in thinking about what future you is going to care about. And the path that I took to know me really was it wasn't the very beginning, but what really catalyzed the huge risk and the shift was this coaching experience that I had with another woman who did this meditative experience with me and had me imagine 75 year old me sitting next to me and she asked me, what is 75 year old you feeling as she looks at you today? And I broke down Tina in like tears and I was so overwhelmed. I was like, like, she's so ashamed. 75 year old me, like looks at all of these accomplishments and how I've grown in my career and knows that I didn't actually do what I wanted, what I, my heart and my soul knew that I could do. I didn't even tap my own potential. And it was because fear was holding me back. This narrative of society was holding me back. Money and the security of money was holding me back. And that was for me, something I couldn't unstoppable. And so I think that would be the advice I would give to women in wealth is to be a little bit more comfortable with building that relationship with future you and then trusting her trust. Future you's vision of you and know that you're not here forever. You're not going to be here. You know, your time is very short. I was 46 when I launched Knowmi. And I knew for at least five years beforehand that I was, that I wanted to do. It was actually the meditative experience of my daughter who said, you've talked about it, when are you going to do it already? So it is those decisions that matter that are throwing you into the abyss that are the most fraught with fear and insecurity and vulnerability and judgment and, you know, societal shakeup that are the right decisions. Those are the ones that your heart is pushing you toward. And I think as women especially, we are so much more attuned to listening to our mind and our heart. We do what we think is smart. We're very good, polite servers, pleasers. We kind of follow a path because it's what we've been told to do. We have career trails that we kind of go up, rung by rung by rung by rung. And then A lot of my friends are in their 40s and 50s and 60s and they're like, yeah, you know, I'm sick of this ladder. Like, I don't want to be on this ladder anymore. I want to do something totally different. And I think that is the advice that I would give to women is like, recognize your time is limited. Do. Do what's important. Do what matters. You guys, this is episode 99 coming in with a bang. Mara. So for. Wow. Okay, let's listen. I want to ask you about your own podcast too, because you've been sharing the stories, highlighting, putting a spotlight on other women in the industry too. So let's talk about it. Knowing me, knowing you, I would expect nothing less but a great name in the podcast. What inspired you to, to, to launch it was that part of also too, that vision, that 75 year old self was that combined with the launch of the, of the fintech. I knew I wanted to launch a podcast for a really long time and I was just too busy trying to kind of like get a company going. And then at some point I realized it can help, it can help with my company. And it's also. Knomee is it is a rethinking thinking of how wealth operates. It is true client centricity. For the people who say they're client centric, we're talking to you. For the people who say it from a soapbox but aren't really that interested in changing their behaviors, we're not right for you. We are for the people who actually want to be client centric. So anyway, the podcast is about the future of wealth. It is an opportunity to listen to who are the people that are truly crafting the future of wealth. They want and are leaning very heavily into things that are a little bit scary. What does tokenization mean to the future of wealth? And if I think about AI and the role that I have as an advisor and how well somebody's own ChatGPT or Gemini knows them versus how well I know them, how am I addressing that threat? How am I going to actually be there for this future that's coming? We talk a lot about the intergenerational transfer of wealth. We always ask people what they're most excited about. We ask like their own relationships with money. At the end of the day, like knowing me, knowing you, why that name? Well, know me is the name of the company. And knowing me, knowing you is really what it's all about. It is about knowing and being known, feeling known. It's also really fun because like it it makes you want to sing, like, everyone's like, oh, I know. I love that song. It's like a fun, uplifting. It's just kind of about being there, being present, and playing a role in the future. And Marla's podcast, everybody is on all the major podcast platforms and you could also too, you could find it from the website know me.com. and if you're not already following, if you're one of the few people not already following, Marla Soer on LinkedIn, she's got 13,000 followers. Sofer is spelled S O F E R. Wow, 13,000 followers. Marla, how did you do that? You know, it's wild. I have always been in, you know, nice roles with a lot of big networks. And one time I downloaded all of my contacts and I know actually know a lot of them. Like, I know most of them. Like I would say 99% of those people. I remember working with them. I remember meeting them at a conference. Conference. I've actually, you know, crossed paths with them. We, we worked on projects together. They were my vendors, they were my clients. I covered 150 different asset managers and large wealth firms at JP Morgan. And I started early. And then at BlackRock, I was responsible for several different operational segments. And so it's important to cultivate and build a network and have people know you and your work. So, yeah, it's never too early. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, listening, not only connect with Marla, but connect with other people as well too. Making that you're bringing a vibrancy to, to LinkedIn in your social networks. I think that's great advice, Marla. Speaking of, you know, knowing people and conferences and events, I know that both you and I are going to be at Future Proof right now. We are recording this episode on a beautiful August day with our wind with a little bit of distraction with the people cleaning the windows on the. On the outside. But you and I will be in Huntington Beach September 7th to 10th. What can we expect from Knomee? I'm very excited to go. I've never been to Future Proof. I've heard a lot about it and about Knomee. We are going to be having all kinds of conversations about differentiated AI. The most differentiated AI for wealth today based off of real time, dynamic, consistent data for wealth. So we like to talk about these things not as buzzwords, but as filling the gap between where we are and where we want to go to be a truly client centric industry. I'm going to be listening as much more than I'll be talking. I'm very curious to hear how are other people, how is the industry looking at AI? How are they approaching things like segmentation, their future acquisition? These are things that firms are looking at. Everyone's talking about growth and organic growth, organic and inorganic growth. We talk about succession, the intergenerational transfer of wealth, wealth, wellness. I'm curious to hear a little bit of the nuance of how are we talking about it? And how does tech play a role in helping us get through those types of things effectively? Before our last question. What's the best way for financial advisors and other people who are listening right now want a demo of the product? Want to get to know me a little bit better? Find me anywhere? Definitely on LinkedIn. I am always happy to meet up. I also want to just make a quick announcement on September 17th. I don't know when this will be posted. Published. We are launching quarterly Wealth Leadership Roundtables with Knomee where we're going to be demoing the latest features of our product. We have clients and Dr. Megan Lurtz, who people probably know because she writes on the Kitsis platform, pretty well known in the industry. She's our chief Behavioral officer. And so we're going to be having these quarterly Wealth Leadership Roundtables where you can just sign up on our website in the events page and learn a lot more about what we're doing. So yeah, omi.com and via LinkedIn are the best ways to get in touch. Awesome. Wonderful. And you guys know the drill here. The last question is very near and dear to me. We're asking what is a best personal, health or wellness tip that has benefited you? So I don't know if you're looking at the notes here that I wrote. I'm going to change it up to Tina. Honestly, what's benefited me the most is girlfriends. I think having a core posse of girls that you respect that will speak truth to you, that will hold you accountable for your excuses and your bullshit and sorry for cursing and that will continue to push you toward being the best version of you. Comfortable, uncomfortable and recognizable. Recognize that you are. You have a lot of value to bring and stay with you through thick and thin. That that is. I think the best tip is like go out and find your girl posse. I freaking love that. Love, love, love that. And I could tell you from personal experience, especially when you have something significant happening. Anyway, you guys make sure that you're connected to Marla and follow her. Amazing work, Marla. Thank not only for being here, but for your amazing contributions to our industry, to women, to me, to everyone that is connected to you. I am really appreciative of your vision and your boldness and what's in your heart. So thank you so much for sharing it. Thank you Tina, so so much. Thank you for inviting me. You're listening to in the Suite, the podcast that brings you inspiring stories of women leading the way in financial services and wealth management, along with the men who champion and empower them. Our producers are Tina Powell and Kevin Hirshhorn. Our Editor at Large is Kevin Hirshhorn. Our content writer is Tina Powell. This podcast is sponsored by Intentionally, a growth design consultancy working with Fintech and Finserve companies to turbocharge their marketing efforts. If you would like more information, please email me@tinagrowintentionally.com and thank you so much for listening and subscribing. It really means the world to me. We've got listeners in over 127 countries and 1834 cities worldwide. Please consider giving us a five star review on Apple or Spotify. Spotify. It would mean the absolute world to me and help us to be found by more people. Also I would love for us to connect on LinkedIn and please follow inthesweet pod on Instagram. Thank you again for listening and subscribing.

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Tina Powell

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