No one wants to say it out loud.
The firm is growing. Clients are happy. You’ve invested in the right systems. Reporting is faster. Communication is tighter. In theory, everything is working exactly as it should.
So why does it still feel like… a lot?
We hear the same thing from advisors again and again.
Individually, these moments are small. Together, they define the day.
And over time, they start to change how the work feels.
As Jamie Stapf, Senior Partner at Ethos Financial Group, put it:
“My entire life is notebooks. I have notes upon notes because everything is a follow-up, and one dropped task could mean a missed wire or upset client.”
Jamie is one of the key people we spoke to when creating Praktikant. Because she’s living the problems we want to address every day.
“When Prak is working alongside me, I have a buddy keeping track of it all, surfacing what still needs to happen so I don’t have to carry it myself.”
We’re not here to replace your tech stack–we’re helping it work as one system so the right information shows up when you need it, without the search.
So, if your firm is doing everything right and the work still feels harder than it should be, let’s find out where the friction is hiding. Take our 2-minute Efficiency Survey.
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.
Feel familiar? We built a way to measure the actual cost of workflow friction in your firm → https://www.praktikantai.com/efficiency-survey/ .
If your AI use isn’t standardized and documented, it’s difficult to defend.
By Bill Lane, Ethos Financial Group
AI is already inside many RIA workflows.
The question is whether you can clearly explain how.
For CCOs and IT leaders, that’s where the pressure is building. It’s no longer enough to say a tool improves efficiency or helps advisors move faster. Examiners want to understand what the tool does, how it’s used, and what controls are in place around it.
If that answer depends on a mix of vendor language, internal assumptions, and advisor interpretation, it’s not a strong position.
Because from a compliance standpoint, AI introduces a familiar challenge in a new form. If you can’t demonstrate consistency, oversight, and documentation, you’re exposed.
Right now, many firms are operating in a gray area. AI tools are being tested, adopted, and layered into workflows, but governance often lags behind. Policies are still evolving. Usage varies by advisor. Documentation is inconsistent.
That gap matters.
Without a clear framework, it becomes difficult to answer basic but critical questions:
And more importantly, can you show that process in a way that holds up under scrutiny?
This is where structure starts to matter as much as capability.
Tools like Praktikant are designed with that reality in mind. By working within existing systems, they help standardize how AI is applied across the firm while creating a clear record of inputs, outputs, and actions taken. Instead of relying on individual interpretation, firms can point to a consistent, auditable process.
For CCOs and IT leaders, that creates a more defensible position. Governance is easier to define. Oversight is easier to demonstrate. And conversations with examiners become grounded in process, not explanation.
Because the goal isn’t to avoid using AI. It’s to be able to stand behind how it’s used.
To assess where your firm stands, download the RIA Operational Efficiency Grader. It’s a quick way to identify gaps in governance, workflows, and oversight.
Too much advisor work starts with catch-up. Here’s how progressive RIAs are using AI to front-load preparation and create leverage.
By Bill Lane, Ethos Financial Group
An inbox fills overnight. Follow-up from the day before still needs attention. Notes need reviewing, action items need tracking down, and documents sit in different systems waiting to be pulled together. Before the day’s “real work” begins, a surprising amount of time can be spent simply organizing the work itself.
That creates a challenge many firms quietly live with: highly skilled advisors spend prime hours piecing together context instead of using that time with clients.
The issue often is not a lack of information. It is that information lives in too many places.
Progressive firms are addressing this less by adding software and more by reducing the amount of manual organizing advisors do before the day really begins.
Rather than asking advisors to toggle between systems, Praktikant helps organize information already moving through the firm and turn it into action. It automates routine reporting, keeps communications and tasks organized, surfaces documents when advisors need them, and connects client files, policies, and prior activity so advisors begin the day with a fuller picture.
What does that mean for late nights in the office or Sunday evenings spent prepping for the week?
Less catch-up. More carry-forward.
In some ways, Prak is the support that keeps working after the day ends, carrying forward action items and surfacing what needs attention next, so there is less to reconstruct tomorrow.
That is not just efficiency.
That is leverage.
How much of your team’s day is spent organizing work instead of doing it?
Take the RIA Operational Efficiency Grader, a six-question diagnostic that benchmarks your firm’s AI readiness, supervision posture, and workflow automation maturity against peer RIAs in the $500M to $15B AUM range.
What happens before a client call matters more than ever. Here’s how RIAs are simplifying prep without sacrificing oversight.
By Bill Lane, Ethos Financial Group
It used to be simple: Open the CRM. Pull performance. Scan notes. Maybe check in with a teammate.
Now, things are more complicated. Asks are bigger. Expectations are higher.
And the 10 minutes before a client call? They carry more weight than most firms realize.
10:00 You open the client record.
8:30 You toggle between performance reports, meeting notes, emails, and a planning tool, trying to piece together the full picture.
6:00 A question comes up. Maybe it’s about tax exposure, concentration risk, or a recent transfer, but there isn’t time to fully chase down the answer.
4:00 You start drafting talking points, pulling from what you have in front of you.
2:00 You double-check names, numbers, and recent activity.
0:00 The call starts. You’re mostly ready—but not as ready as you’d like to be.
At most firms, this is still how preparation happens: fragmented, time-constrained, and heavily reliant on the advisor to connect the dots in real time.
That’s where things are starting to shift.
Instead of pulling from five different systems, advisors are beginning to ask a single question and get a synthesized answer—complete with relevant context, recent activity, and even suggested talking points.
Tools like Praktikant are built around that moment. Not as another system to manage, but as a way to bring everything an advisor needs into one place, grounded in the firm’s actual data.
It connects to platforms like Addepar, Orion, SharePoint, and Redtail CRM, pulling the right information for the right client without the back-and-forth. Instead of toggling between systems or manually filling in gaps, advisors can focus on preparing for the conversation itself.
It also changes what happens behind the scenes. The inputs, the context, and the outputs are captured automatically, creating a clear record of how information was gathered and used—without adding extra steps to the advisor’s workflow.
That matters. As preparation becomes faster and more dynamic, it becomes harder to see. And for firms, visibility is what turns a useful tool into something that can actually be supervised, reviewed, and trusted.
The way advisors prepare for client conversations is already evolving.
The firms that keep up won’t be the ones that slow down that process. They’ll be the ones that make it easier to do well—and easier to stand behind later.
Take the RIA Operational Efficiency Grader, a six-question snapshot of how your firm is handling AI readiness, supervision, and workflow automation compared to peer RIAs in the $500M–$15B AUM range.
AI is already in your workflow. The question is whether you understand where and how.
Ask anyone–across industries–and they’ll tell you AI is here. And it’s here to stay.
Even in firms with compliance standards and sensitive data, everyone is using AI for something.
It might not be formal. It might not be firm-wide. But it’s there. Maybe you use it to draft emails, beef up your summarized notes, or speed up routine work before your next call.
Instead of fighting the giant, why not make it work for you?
As we know, most firms aren’t struggling to use AI, but they are struggling to see where it’s being used.
A quick summary tool here. A note-taking app there. Maybe an advisor pastes something into ChatGPT or Claude to save time.
Individually, none of this feels risky. But together, it creates a lack of visibility.
Do you know who on your team is using AI? For what? Can you answer where that information goes afterward?
When we built Praktikant, we talked to people in firms from the ground up. We work in the industry every day. We learned the answers to those difficult questions.
No one is actively trying to cut corners, but we are all interested in saving a little time.
AI is awesome at that–it reduces manual work and speeds up repetitive tasks. But without a defined process, everyone ends up using it a little differently.
One advisor documents notes one way. Another does it differently. Follow-ups might be captured in one place or not at all.
That inconsistency creates risk over time, especially when firms need to demonstrate how work is handled.
We made Praktikant standardize workflows–all our notes, tasks, and communications are captured and organized in a consistent way, without requiring advisors to change how they work.
For compliance teams, the concern isn’t just that AI is being used. It’s whether that use can be explained.
If an examiner asks how your firm uses AI, would the answer be clear?
Or would it depend on who you ask?
We know who to ask–our developer. That’s right, even though we’ve developed an AI product, we can go right back to a person to ask how things work and where information is stored. (Hint: securely.)
By organizing activity and creating a clear record of what happened and what followed, Praktikant helps firms move from uncertainty to clarity. That makes it easier to answer questions, demonstrate consistency, and move forward with confidence.
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