Wes Coody — The Vetted AI Stack Giving a Wealth Advisory Firm 12–15 Hours a Week Back

Transcript

Wes Coody: You know, after we, we realized what we really had, uh, we were saving 12 to 15 hours a week.

Kai: Mm-hmm.

Wes Coody: Uh, it's pretty easy for everyone else on the staff- Yeah ... to, to have the buy-in. No more taking notes in meetings. You know, that was a pretty big thing. We could be present, we could listen, and so it helped, it's helped us. And then quite frankly, it gets a lot more details than we would ever take down- Yeah ... on a, on a notepad.

Narrator: This is AI with Kai: Practical AI for real business leaders. We break down what matters, talk with people using AI in real businesses, and share one idea you can use right away.

Kai: It's another great day to talk about AI. I'm your host, Kai Gray, along with producer extraordinaire Tim Scott.

Tim: Hey, Kai.

Kai: If you're new around here, this show is for small business owners. No tech degree required, which is good. I don't think we have a lot of tech degrees. We just talk about AI, share what's working, and give you stuff you can actually use in your business this week. Real quick, before we get into it, we've got a free guide over at aiwithkai.com. Link's in the description, and if you hit follow whenever you're listening, that helps us a lot. This week I had someone come up to me, this was, uh, maybe our youngest listener. Uh, he came up to me and he made a goat noise- ... and I knew exactly what he was doing. Turned out he'd listened to the episode where we had, uh, we had ChatGPT or Claude, I forget, uh, try to make a goat noise, and he thought that was great. So, uh, for him, I would like to try that again. Okay. Um, but with a different animal. It was,

Tim: it was ChatGPT. I remember

Kai: that. It was ChatGPT. Yeah. So let's give this a try. Hey, Chat, can you make the sound of an elephant?

ChatGPT: All right, here comes my best elephant impression. Think of those big trumpeting sounds. Trumpeting elephant call. There we go.

Kai: All right. I, I think it did okay. So Gavin, that one's for you. I wanna hear your best elephant the next time you see me.

Tim: Kai, this week I put AI to work on our own YouTube channel.

Kai: Oh, cool.

Tim: Now, I know listeners are probably shocked that, "W- wait, what? They have a YouTube channel?" Yeah. If you haven't figured it out yet, Kai and I like to spend a little time riding around the golf cart, usually Sunday afternoons.

Kai: It's very silly, everyone. Yeah. I can't believe we're doing it.

Tim: So the trickiest part of doing these is not talking about AI, it's, it's how do you hold a beer and the camera at the same time? And so this week I had Claude dig in to the YouTube analytics. Ooh. I think we've posted about 12 short... 10 or 12 shorts now. Okay. The question was: why do some of our shorts take off and others just flop? 'Cause there's a few that have, like, 20 views, and- Yeah, yeah ...

Kai: and-

Tim: And they're

Kai: the ones that are just me. That's the best part. If it's just me, it'll be 20 views. If it's in a golf cart and it has you in it- ... 1,000 views right away. Oh.

Tim: Yeah, well, I don't know about that. Here's what it found, Kai. It's not the title, it's not the posting time, it's not even the topic quality, it's the first three seconds. The winners kept about 70% of viewers past the opening. Flops lost half instantly. Once people swipe away early, YouTube just stops showing the video.

Kai: Oh, interesting.

Tim: If you own a business and you have a YouTube channel, um, I thought that you might find this interesting. So if you're putting out some shorts, you gotta keep 'em the first three seconds.

Kai: Interesting.

Tim: So apparently, Kai, some, some of the content-

Kai: Give 'em- ...

Tim: lost people in three seconds. Hm.

Kai: Wow. That's a new, uh, maybe a new record for me. The good news is, for me, I thought I was gonna have to take my shirt off. So now I find out that I don't have to do that. I can just be more interesting in the first three seconds.

Narrator: The Rundown: AI stories you need to know right now.

Kai: In today's Rundown, I really wanna focus on one thing and one thing only. While there's been a lot of news going on, I think the big news for everyone is that OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have rolled out GPT 5.6 after they received the green light from the government. So we've entered this era where these new frontier models are getting government oversight and government review. Um, and just like Mythos before it- ChatGPT, um, GPT-56 went through the same process, but it is now out. Um, if you update your apps, you will see it as the default model, and it's extremely powerful. In the same way that Fable 5 on the Claude side is very powerful, GPT-56 is, is in that exact same bracket. So if you're a ChatGPT fan, this is the model for you. There's a lot of the usage restrictions around it, meaning that, um, depending on the plan you're on, um, y- y- you may run out of, of usage allocation after, you know, a, a certain amount of time.

Tim: I, I have a couple of questions that come up, like, do I need to be using the latest and greatest model if I'm just doing basic tasks? And then the other thing that, that happened to me this week that was so freaking annoying, and, and this was more on Claude, but it goes with what you were just saying there, which is, so I, I pay for the Pro plan.

Kai: Yep.

Tim: So normally I just never have any issues. Like, I just use it, and I've never had it, like, stop me or anything. But this week it's like, "Oh, you've reached your limit."

Kai: Were you doing more?

Tim: Yeah, I was digging into our YouTube analytics.

Kai: Good.

Tim: It's like, well, you've used up your credit or whatever- Yeah ... until, like, 4:20. Yeah. And that was, like, an hour from now.

Kai: Right.

Tim: And so I don't understand how that works.

Kai: Well, within a model, there are different tiers. So... And right now I'm, I'm talking specifically about Claude and ChatGPT, but they all kind of work like this, where there's usually three tiers, and they have their sort of heaviest hitter at the top, the sort of everyday model, and then their f- you know, quick and dirty model at the bottom. And i- you know, what you're effectively paying for is just compute time. And so the heavy- the heaviest models take the most compute time, um, and the, the smallest models take the least amount. And, and if you think of these in terms of, like, cellphone minutes, if you go back to the days bef- when we used to think about cellphone minutes, that's where we are right now with, with AI. And so w- a lot of people default to the heaviest models or the most powerful models, and that's the one that's going to consume the most usage, and you're gonna run out of usage if you consistently use only the heaviest models. In Claude's world, Haiku is their, their quick and dirty model, and it, it's almost instant, which is very nice. And it, for me, it does a tremendous amount of work, and I don't really notice the difference. I will say that I, I basically default to Sonnet, which is their middle, their, their middle tier for most things, uh, and then I use Opus selectively. But I definitely... You know, if, if you're in the apps, you can select what, you know, what tier you're on. You wanna be on, you know, Sonnet or Opus or, or Haiku, um, or Fable now. I guess in, in Claude's world, they now have four. I actually think about this depending on the kind of the work that I'm doing, right? If it's something very complex that I need real strategic thinking on, I will pick the heaviest model. In this case, it's, it's gonna be either a GPT-5.6 Sol or it's gonna be, uh, Fable 5 on, on the Claude side, and I know that that's gonna eat a lot of usage, but that's where I want the, the time spent. I have a friend who's, who's going through a large coding project i- in Claude, and he ran into this And my, my advice to him, which seems to have worked, which is have Sonnet 5 do most of the coding, have Opus and Fable do all the planning. Mm. Right? So put most of the emphasis on the planning. If it writes a really good plan, then Sonnet can implement it without any issues. And I'd say for us, you know, and for, for you, Tim, like analyzing the YouTube analytics, Sonnet will do a great job with that.

Tim: Mm-hmm. And so if I'm using the middle tier, I get more time basically. Yes.

Kai: Yeah. That's right.

Narrator: The Spotlight, how real businesses are using AI.

Kai: Today we're, we're interviewing Wes Coody. Wes is the founder and the CEO of C Squared Wealth Strategies, often referred to as C2 Wealth. Wes is a great guy. He is at the forefront of technology when it comes to his industry. Um, I've always been impressed by the, the thought that he puts into the technology that he uses, so it's no surprise that, um, he, he's a great guest for us to have on. So without further ado, let's, let's get to it. Welcome, Wes. Thanks very much for coming in.

Wes Coody: Thanks, guys, for having me.

Kai: As you know, we, we talk a lot about AI, that's the purpose of, of the show, and we talk about how businesses are either implementing AI or how they are thinking about AI. And I, I would love to get your, your take on where your business is at with AI.

Wes Coody: Yeah, sure. So I, I, I guess we probably would start with, with our meeting note taker. We've been using, um, a specialized software, uh, for the last couple years called Zocks.io. From a meeting perspective, we don't no longer have to have two advisors in every meeting. We've always been having two advisors so that we don't miss something. As well as, you know, it- it's taking all our meeting notes a- and it's templated, uh, with follow-up emails and, and things that we direct link, directly back to our CRM for, for outstanding tasks in, in the meeting follow-up process.

Kai: I'm interested in that. Did that come sort of out of the box, or was that stuff you had to build on top of it, sort of that automation?

Wes Coody: Uh, it came kind of out of the box. Oh, cool. Um, so we're with Cambridge Investment Research is our broker-dealer. A lot of the tools that we w- we use in the AI space have to be vetted by them.

Kai: Yeah,

Wes Coody: I was gonna

Kai: ask

Wes Coody: about that. Yeah, yeah. And so it was one of three tools that they had vetted, and we, we chose, uh, Zocks, um, over, over the others. It just fit our business a little bit better- Yeah ... than the others.

Kai: So now is everyone in the company using that?

Wes Coody: Uh, yes, yes.

Kai: How was the process of getting people on board? Was that, was that easy for your company and you, or was that something you had to continually remind people to do?

Wes Coody: Yeah, that, that was really easy. You know, after we, we realized what we really had, uh, we were saving 12 to 15 hours a week.

Kai: Mm-hmm.

Wes Coody: Uh, it's pretty easy for everyone else on the staff- Yeah ... to, to have the buy-in No more taking notes in meetings. You know, that's a pretty big thing. We could be present, we could listen. Um, that's one of the... Our main job is to be a, to be an active listener, and we need to be really, really good at that. And so it helped, it's helped us. And then quite frankly, it gets a lot more details than we would ever take down- Yeah ... on a, on a notepad.

Kai: Taking notes is very difficult for people in meetings, and you either take notes or you listen.

Wes Coody: Yeah. And the other for us is the PII information. Like it has to be vetted. Like we, we have to know how that information's to be retained.

Kai: Yep, yep.

Wes Coody: Um, and so that, that's also the, was one of the-

Kai: Yeah ...

Wes Coody: um-

Kai: And, and Zox does that for you?

Wes Coody: It, it does. Okay. So, you know, um, you know, it's never put on, on a server anywhere. Yep. And so... And it's our data too. Mm-hmm. We, we wanna know whose data it was gonna be. That was very, very important. Yep. It's always been important to us.

Kai: Let's take a s- a, a step back. Tell everyone a little bit about C Squared Wealth and, and about the company. When did you guys start? What do you do?

Wes Coody: I'm in my 22nd year of being a financial advisor.

Kai: Wow.

Wes Coody: Moved to Mobile, 2006 as a partner in a very small firm. Um, I was able to buy out the partnership in 2010, and we rebranded at that point. Since then, we've added a few other entities to C Squared Wealth, C2 Insurance Group, C2 Accounting and Tax, C2 Network Holdings. But really it's dr- driven around the financial planning and investment management.

Kai: Where's the C Squared come from? What's that mean?

Wes Coody: When we founded, um, I was looking for a name, and I didn't want Coody Financial Group or, or something that was tied to my last name.

Kai: Hmm. Ah.

Wes Coody: But family is very important to me, and so we had a, a little 2-year-old- ... uh, little boy, and then we had another boy on the way. And so-

Kai: Oh, cool ...

Wes Coody: so I saw C Squared somewhere, and that's kind of how we- ... founded the name of the business, you know, so. That's

Kai: great.

Wes Coody: We have a little girl now, and she always asks, "Dad, when are you gonna be C3?" And I told her, uh, "We're, we're just gonna stay C Squared."

Kai: No C squ-

Wes Coody: Yeah ...

Kai: C Cubed.

Wes Coody: If you come work in the business after you graduate college, maybe we'll go to C3, so.

Kai: That's, that's a great story. It's a very int- interesting industry, especially when it comes to AI. Wh- where are you s- seeing things happen in respect to AI i- in your industry?

Wes Coody: You know, eventually it's, it's going to be present, um, in all three phases of, of what we do. When I say all three phases, I'm referring to a new prospective client meeting. So we always prepare, conduct, and follow up the same way for every meeting. And so we think it's really, really gonna help us on the prepare side, talking to AI, telling it exactly what we need it to do- Right ... you know, within our structure, within our workflow. Obviously, you know, we talked a little bit about how we're using Zox. That's, that's in the, you know- conduct part of the meeting, and then, and then in the follow-up, it's, it's a combination of both, quite frankly. Um, we think right now it's just really, you know, helping us with adding the right tasks in, in the workflows back to our C- current CRM. Yep. But also helping us get out a, a follow-up email really quickly. So we're, you know, I can get a follow-up email out to a client within 30 minutes of our, of our meeting, which is really, really important. And so, you know, I think we're gonna see a variety of different providers in the prepare space helping us update financial plans and give it the parameters of how to update that rather than us physically going in and, and updating a financial plan.

Kai: Do you see AI being used in, in financial services at a At a higher level, I mean, within the industry, not just your company, are there... You know, when you go to conventions or sort of trade shows and things like that, are, is there a lot of conversation about

Wes Coody: AI? It dominates the conversations- Really? ... when- whenever I'm away from the office. Um Oh,

Kai: really?

Wes Coody: It, it dominated our, our group meeting two weeks ago in Chicago. It dominated a, you know, NAIFA conference- Mm-hmm ... up in Washington, DC. Uh, it's gonna dominate our national sales meeting, uh, with Cambridge coming up in September.

Kai: Hmm.

Wes Coody: Things like helping us get statements out on a monthly basis, right? Instead of having to go to a portal or, or, um, last year during s- our tax season, April 15th, was during our spring break, right? So we're pretty light that week typically, and so, you know, getting statements out and getting 1099 tax forms out to people that h- don't know how to go onto a portal and download it.

Kai: Yes.

Wes Coody: So, you know, we spent a lot of time that week doing that. But just being able to prepare the emails, you know, that says, "Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Client, here's your 2025 1099 form," right? To, to put it, um, where, where we can still review the email, right? To make sure everything is accurate, but, but have it ready to go for us, and I think we're pretty close to, to having that done.

Kai: Wes, you're also the president of the Alabama chapter of N- NAIFA. Can you tell everyone just a little bit about what that is?

Wes Coody: Sure. National Association of In- Insurance and Financial Advisors. We really advocate for, for insurance, uh, agents, licensed insurance agents, mostly life and health, but it can be property and casualty, a- and, and independent advisors, advisors in general. But we need to add more value. A- and AI is, is one of those spaces that we started to look at, and we found a solution, and it's called AdvisorListen. Essentially, AdvisorListen is a AI application that goes and scans Reddit, BlueSky, Google every day and gives us a sentiment of what's being said around financial services.

Kai: Yeah. Uh, and I'm, I'm actually a subscriber to it, so, um, from an objective point, it's, it's become something that I look at every day, which is very interesting 'cause it's not something that I thought I was gonna l- look at every day. But, you know, it shows up in my, my inbox every day, and it's actually really interesting. So Wes, are there other tools that your firm is using right now when it comes to AI?

Wes Coody: We use a tool called Holista Planned, and what we do is we take a client's tax return and upload it into the, their software, and then it s- it essentially goes through the tax return and gives us a two-page output of what the tax return is saying, the, the inputs that we have put into the software that we want to extract. So that's saving a lot of time. Um, it- You know, it'll save us a lot of time coming up in September, October, November as we're doing tax planning.

Kai: Yep.

Wes Coody: Um, you know, a- as we get more and more tax returns, we get, we get to see more and more of a story, too, so we get more trends. You know, can also use that to illustrate different things like Roth conversions or, uh, how to use a donor-advised fund, how it really works, and how it's gonna affect your tax bill. You know, as you move up, a- as you move up in net worth, really the estate and tax planning is where, it's where advisors really are gonna-

Kai: Mm ...

Wes Coody: prove their worth.

Kai: Yeah.

Wes Coody: Uh, and I believe that, that... When I say that, I think the net, the net worth of where that matters has drastically come down for AI, to be honest with you.

Kai: Mm.

Wes Coody: You don't have to be ultra high net worth to use some of these tools going forward.

Kai: That's

Wes Coody: very interesting. You know, that's something that we would really have charged. You know, we'd probably charge 4,000 to 6,000 for do- the tax plan 'cause we're spending so many hours in there, in their tax return. They've really sped that up, so now we can bring that down market to, to everyday mom and pop, you know?

Kai: Yeah.

Wes Coody: Um, and another, uh, we're using wealth.com. We can upload wills and trusts into that technology. It tells us exactly what we wanna know from who, you know, who are the beneficiaries, you know, who are the grantors of the trust, you know, um, a lot of those things an- and build out... It can build out a family tree using that technology, too. So that's been really, really helpful. It's summarizing a 30-page legal document into a couple pages- Yeah ... or, or, or, uh, into a dashboard as well, too, where we can see that very easily. Um, and that's, you know... Those are the things that help us speed up to get us back to what we do, which is in the conduct part of our, our meeting. You know, I always said if I could outsource everything else and just conduct, ideally that's what every advisor likes to do, right? They like to meet with people.

Kai: Which is kind of what AI's gonna let you

Wes Coody: do. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Right. Eventually.

Kai: That prepare and follow-up Wes, thank you so much for, for joining the podcast. This has been, been really interesting talking to you. Uh, I appreciate it.

Wes Coody: Thanks, guys, for having me.

Narrator: The Playbook: One practical way to use AI right away.

Kai: In today's playbook, I wanna talk about voice recorders, and particularly for meetings. And I think a lot of our listeners are probably using this, and there's a number of different recorders that you can use. So if you're not using a voice recorder, um, now is a good time to, to do a little bit of research and experiment with this. Because once you integrate it into your workflow, I'd be very surprised if you go back. So I'm a, I'm a big fan of Granola. It's granola.ai, and there's no affiliation with the podcast. I think they, they just have a very good product. But Fathom has one, a- and they're being built into a number of things. Zoom has, has, has one. Um, Copilot has one. The key here is that you can stop taking notes during meetings. And the way I, I use it is when I'm on a call with someone, it's taking the notes, and afterwards it allows me to follow up with that person, whether it's putting together a proposal or just an email. And it captures details that I would never, ever capture, because most of the time when I'm in a meeting, I'm trying to listen to that person, and I find it very difficult to take notes and listen at the same time. I have trouble doing two things at the same time across the board. That happens to be one of them. Um, and so for me, voice recorders, AI-enabled voice recorders are really something that has l- has leveled everything up for me.

Tim: I use voice recorders even when I go to a doctor visit. I usually just, you know, ask to be nice. But I'm like, "Hey, can I, can I record this whole thing?" Because, you know, it's- That is a

Kai: great idea

Tim: they start ta- Well, yeah, they start talking and, like, in, in my case, we have young kids, and so I might go to the doctor with my, my wife is in there, and she's a medical professional. So once they start talking, I'm just like, "What, what are they saying?" Yeah. I, I don't even know these words.

Kai: I love this idea. Right? I'll come back from the doctor, my wife will always say, "Well, w- what did she say?" Yeah. I mean, she said everything's fine. Okay. She's like, no, she didn't say that. Yeah. Like, w- you know, and that's a great idea. Yeah. I'm gonna start

Tim: using this. So, so, a- and if your, if your wife is a medical professional- ... like anything that I re- respond to, what did the doctor say- Yeah ... is never good enough or the right thing. Right, right, right. So, oh yeah, so now I can just, I can just email her a summary of my visit and, and I'm not talking about the printout that you get- Yeah ... when you leave the doctor. Right, right. No, this is like a summary of everything we talked about and, and, and it really makes me look good.

Kai: I- that's a fantastic idea. Yeah. That even beats the voice recorder at work, um- ... because my wife is not a medical professional, but she plays one at home. So I have to answer the same questions. All right, that's gonna do it for today. If you got something out of this episode, a couple quick things. We're on YouTube at AI with Kai, and we post short tips over there every week, so go check it out. Hit follow on the show if you haven't yet, and if you've got a friend who runs a small business or is just curious about AI, send them over. We'd appreciate it. See you next time.

Narrator: For more episodes, practical tools, and business insights, visit aiwithkai.com. Follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and share it with someone building a business on the Gulf Coast.