It all started with a problem…
Bill Lane was running a firm. Growing fast, serving more clients, and doing everything he could to meet the moment.
“We launched with 20 clients and $1.4 billion,” says Lane, a financial advisor and co-founder of Ethos Financial Group. “Strong markets and demand for independent fiduciary advice pushed us to 35 clients and $5 billion–we added one intern.”
On paper, everything was working for them.
They increased reporting cadence.
They offered full balance-sheet transparency in near real time.
They leaned into the power of having a tech stack.
Then the pandemic hit.
“Meeting frequency doubled,” remembers Lane. “And it never really came back down.”
The stack grew with them. And so did the cost.
“About 20 percent of revenue was going just to run our systems.”
But the real issue was not cost. It was time.
“Most days, we were grinding from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. just to make all the tools work for our clients.”
That’s when it clicked.
It was not a talent problem. It was not a discipline problem.
It was workflow friction hiding in plain sight.
Lane and his team built a system where doing great work required stitching together multiple systems.
They didn’t need more software–they needed a way to bring everything into context, automatically, before the work day even started.
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