Jake Gardner, CFP® - Defining Wealth - $65M

Happy Thursday,

Jake Gardner recently posted their tech stack on LinkedIn (34 tools!!!) and I thought it might be fun to slice it via 2 frameworks.

Will it be fun? Will be it useful?

We shall see.

So what are these two frameworks?

NOMAD - Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

and

MSOF - Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance/HR

As you can see, they have way too many tools with duplicates in around 6 categories (sorry, guys :)

3 of them also started a Skool community - you might recognize these fellows from LinkedIn:

Now after seeing their tech stack… would you really take their advice on scaling? :)

On to those frameworks.

Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

I’m going to try to figure out their niche from their website and LinkedIn’s.

The hero text doesn’t spell out a specific group of people, more about outcomes (the O. part of the framework)

Scrolling down a bit… this is still very broad: stock options, business owners, pre-retirees:

Ok, the homepage isn’t super niche-y as in narrowing down a specific list of people… it might resonate with some folks though.

The About page is feeling a bit “Root Financial”ly (oh, I see Objective Brand was involved!):

Well now, look there under “Process”, seems three specific categories, albeit very broad ones:

Ok, let’s check out the LinkedIn’s:

Kyle’s is focused on “early retirement”.

⬇️ Early retirement again:

So there’s a pretty clear “early retirement” niche with tech employees and business owners in the wings.

As far as tech for reaching their niche, LinkedIn & YouTube seem to be the main ones with Kit for email:

Oh, and it looks like they have a Typeform to RightCapital onboarding form:

Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

The outcomes seem fairly straight-forward:

• Helping millennials and millionaires retire early

• Feelings of Certainty, Clarity, Freedom

Ok, small rant on the “early retirement” part. I feel like I’ve seen many of the FIRE crowd have gone back to work and I recently finished reading “What to Make of a Life” by Jim Collins where he talks about the post-retirement fog. If early retirement is your goal, it would seem significant thought/planning would go into what to do next to avoid the fog/depression post-retirement.

Could be a good book for early retirees to read…

As far as tech for “outcome”, this is actually where I see a pretty big opportunity - i.e. “When we started working together, here were your goals… here’s the progress we’ve made, the pivots, the new priorities…” with centralized meeting data, it seems like a UI/deliverable around Proof of Outcome would be doable.

A goals/timeline/milestones deliverable whether it’s been 1 yr or 20 years… hey, maybe even a photo book!

Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

Is mechanism the tech required to deliver the outcomes to clients? Or maybe it’s the process, the meetings… Well, let’s start with the tech:

(duplicates galore!)

• email/calendar/docs: Google & Microsoft

• phone: CurrentClient & Google Voice

• meetings: Zoom & Meet

• scheduling: Calendly

• CRM: Slant & Wealthbox

• website: Wordpress

• branding: Objective Brand, Canva

• accounting: Quickbooks

• file sharing/eSig: Dropbox

• custodian, billing, reporting: Altruist

• admin AI: Hazel & Slant

• tax planning: Holistiplan & Hazel

• financial planning / data gathering: RightCapital, Typeform

• compliance: Greenboard

• estate planning: Wealth.com

• niching/prospecting: LinkedIn Sales Navigator

• email newsletter: Kit

• copywriter: TakeActionCopy

• video: YouTube

• cashflow/budgeting: Monarch Money

• RTQ / proposals / analysis: YCharts

• health ins. planning: MOVE Health

• 401k management: Betterment

• peo/payroll: AdvisorHR

• automations: Zapier

• passwords: NordPass

It takes all this to help people retire early and help them feel certainty, clarity, and freedom?

How about some Certainty, Clarity, and Freedom in your tech stack!!! (i’m jesting of course)

Ok, some SaaS-y suggestions:

• Wealthbox and RightCapital were cool 10 years ago when XYPN started… it’s time to move on.

• Drop Voice and go all in on CurrentClient

• Zoom is better than Meet, everybody knows that!

• Ai, yi, yi… you’ve got AI mixed up in Wealthbox, Slant, Hazel - can you go all in on Slant or Hazel for meeting notes, prep, etc?

• Is Slack necessary when you have Google Chat and Microsoft Teams? (Jason Pereira of course would say yes!)

Now maybe you have Zapier stringing all this together beautifully, but it seems like an overly-complicated foundation to scale quickly on. You might have to simplify some processes/deliverables, but the sooner the better methinks.

But… maybe the mechanism is more about the process and less so the tech that supports that process…

They do have this process “mechanism” outlined on the website:

As more and more advisors’ “mechanisms” look alike, it seems like creating a specific process to solve specific problems for specific people - i.e. sub-sub-niching… will be important.

Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

Authority, social proof, testimonials, case studies…

They do have lots of LinkedIn followers and YouTube subscribers - they have a very “objective” brand, from my following of their LinkedIn strategy, using client/similar examples throughout the content is “proof”.

Here’s a situation we faced, here’s how we solved it…

Their social proof game is strong.

Niche, Outcome, Mechanism, Authority, Deliverables

With RightCapital, Holistiplan, Wealth.com, YCharts, Monarch Money, and MOVE Health… surely there’s a splattering of deliverables.

• “We help you build a plan…”

I suppose these are the deliverables:

A plan, a collaborative plan, an executed plan.

DIY, DWY, DFY… makes sense.

This industry seems quite simple - we make plans… we manage money, and yet - it takes a small miracle to make it all work together and get it done. The marketing, sales, meetings, operations, deliverables, billing, COMPLIANCE!, and the massive mess of options on HOW to do it all:

Thank goodness for Kitces… the glue that holds it all together :).

The skills, the advisors, the tech, the outsourced offerings, the operators, the conferences, the books, the consultants, the podcasts, the LinkedInfluencers.

And now AI is here to make it all that much worse! Or better…

We shall see.

Ok, framework 2… I might make this one quick.

Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance/HR

I got this idea from the EOS accountability chart - dividing a tech stack between the four main functions of a business… thought it was a useful way to see which tech is involved in each function.

Some of this might seem redundant, but here goes:

What tech is Defining Wealth using for marketing?

• LinkedIn / Sales Navigator

• YouTube / Loom

• Copywriter - TakeActionCopy

• Website - WordPress / Canva / Objective Brand

• Maybe Kit for email sequencing

• Typeform to RightCapital for data gathering

• Calendly for scheduling

• Zoom/Meet for meetings

• Not sure what planning might be part of the sales process, maybe YCharts, RightCapital…

• Dropbox for eSignatures

All of it

Google, Microsoft, CurrentClient, Voice, Slant, Wealthbox, Meet/Zoom, RightCapital, Holistiplan, Altruist, Greenboard, Wealth.com, Slack, Dropbox, Hazel, Monarch Money, MOVE Health, Betterment, Zapier, Nordpass

• Quickbooks

• AdvisorHR

• Greenboard

On the HR note, one thing I’ve noticed about super-fast-growing RIAs is a big focus on talent acquisition, training, management, culture…

Root Financial using tools like Ashby and Rippling

Peak Retirement Planning does a lot of marketing to their “talent niche”, financial planning students - recently hiring 19 interns from 1,000 applicants

Ok, well there ya go.

Cheers,

Joe

P.S. I know I haven’t written in a while - I’ve been in a creative slump.

P.S.S. For comparisons to other firms’ tech stacks, check out:

P.S.S.S. To order my 2026 book: