Field guide · Licensed Professions
AI for Financial Advisors
Advice is not about to be free — but the chair across the desk arrives having already read three tidy pages. This book is about everything you write around the advice.
Words for this work: financial advisor, wealth manager, financial planner, CFP, RIA, investment advisor, retirement planner, wealth management, practice, annuities.
The short answer
For financial advisors, the writing an AI chat tool is genuinely good at is the writing around the work rather than the work itself: meeting prep, agendas, and follow-up letters, client letters — volatility, quarterlies, check-ins, onboarding, meeting notes, operations writing, coi outreach and referral materials, reading, translating, and study work, and the marketing you keep deferring. Chapter by chapter that is about eleven and a half hours in a normal week — That’s eleven and a half hours in a normal week. Your first week will be slower — you’re learning a tool, and everything client-facing still goes through your compliance process, same as always. By week three, the numbers above are realistic. Chapter 12 gives you the 30-day plan to get there.
What it does not do: your job. It does not meeting prep, agendas, and follow-up letters for you without you reading it first. And it has one dangerous habit worth knowing before you type anything into it. The AI’s one dangerous habit: stating false things (limits, rules, statistics, “historical returns”) in a confident voice. The industry calls it “hallucination.” The fix is the 60-second check: numbers, promises, rules.
Where the hours go
Six blocks of writing, largest first, as the book counts them. The chapter each one is worked through in is on the right. These are the figures from this book's own promise page — the same table for all twenty-five books is on one page here.
- Meeting prep, agendas, and follow-up letters~3 hoursChapter 4
- Client letters — volatility, quarterlies, check-ins~2.5 hoursChapter 5
- Onboarding, meeting notes, operations writing~2 hoursChapter 6
- Reading, translating, and study work~1.5 hoursChapter 8
- The marketing you keep deferring~1.5 hoursChapter 9
- COI outreach and referral materials~1 hourChapter 7
That’s eleven and a half hours in a normal week. Your first week will be slower — you’re learning a tool, and everything client-facing still goes through your compliance process, same as always. By week three, the numbers above are realistic. Chapter 12 gives you the 30-day plan to get there.
The eight kinds of writing
The 150 prompts in the book are grouped the way the work is grouped. It is the shape of a week for financial advisors, whether or not you ever buy anything: if your week looks like this list, the tool has somewhere to start.
- 1–15Setup & Voice15 prompts
- 16–40Meeting Prep & Follow-Up25 prompts
- 41–65Client Communication in All Weather25 prompts
- 66–85Practice Operations20 prompts
- 86–105Referrals & Centers of Influence20 prompts
- 106–120The Knowledge Work15 prompts
- 121–145Marketing & Growth25 prompts
- 146–150Admin & Momentum5 prompts
All 150 titles are listed free, and twelve are printed in full.
Three of the prompts, in full
Not a sampler: these are the three the book itself rates highest. Its promise page values six blocks of writing in hours, and these come from the three worth the most — one prompt each, printed as they stand. The bracketed parts are where you type; everything else is the wording. Nine more are printed in full on the prompt page for this book, and every one of the 150 is listed there by name.
“Draft a one-page educational framework for a client facing [EVENT: retirement transition / sale of a business / an inheritance]: the key decisions ahead in rough order, the questions each raises, and which professionals are typically involved (CPA, attorney, me) at each step. Generic and educational — no recommendations, no numbers, no tax or legal conclusions; note that specifics depend on their situation and their tax and legal advisors. Under 300 words. Label DRAFT for compliance.”
“Markets dropped [X%] this week; headlines are about [THEME — general]. Draft a short letter to my clients: acknowledge plainly what happened and that feeling uneasy is normal; remind them their plan was built expecting markets like this (plain English, not ‘stay the course’ clichés); state what I’m doing ([reviewing plans / watching rebalancing bands / available by phone]); invite anyone who wants to talk to call or reply. No predictions, no ‘markets always recover,’ no performance numbers, no urgency language. Calm, plain, warm. Under 250 words. Label DRAFT — this goes to compliance before it goes anywhere.”
“Draft a plain-English explanation of my fee for clients and prospects: I charge [YOUR STRUCTURE, e.g., 1% annually on managed assets, billed quarterly / a flat planning fee of $____]. Cover: what the fee is, how and when it’s billed, everything it includes ([MY LIST]), and what it doesn’t ([fund expenses, custodian fees]). No defensiveness, no comparison to other advisors, no value hype — just clear. Under 200 words. Note where my Form ADV / fee schedule applies. DRAFT for compliance.”
What to check, every time
Four kinds of box repeat through every task chapter. Two of them are the reason this is a book for financial advisors and not a book about AI.
COPY THIS
a ready prompt. Copy it, change the [BRACKETED] parts, paste it in.
TRY IT NOW
a five-minute exercise using your own real work, de-identified. Do these. They’re the whole point.
WATCH OUT
where the AI gets things wrong on this task, and the 60-second check that catches it.
RULES CORNER
the compliance flag: what never goes into a chat window, what needs your compliance officer, and why.
The words, in this trade
The plain-English AI vocabulary is on the series glossary. These are the ones specific to financial advisors — where the tool meets the paperwork that already has a name.
- The standing workflow
- Drafted by AI, approved by you, reviewed and archived per your firm’s compliance process. Applies to everything client-facing or public, every time, no matter how small.
- Marketing Rule
- Shorthand for the SEC’s investment-adviser advertising rule (state equivalents exist; FINRA Rule 2210 governs the brokerage side). Plain-English shape in Chapter 10; your compliance officer has the specifics that bind you.
- Books and records
- The retention obligations that mean client communications and advertisements get archived and are examinable. The reason “it was just a quick post” isn’t a category.
- COI (center of influence)
- The CPAs, estate attorneys, and other professionals whose referrals build small firms. Chapter 7 is the writing discipline that channel runs on.
- De-identify
- Stripping names, account numbers, balances, and anything identifying before text goes near a chat window. Initials, [BRACKETS], and ranges survive; identity never enters the tool.
If you start on Monday
The order matters more than the effort. Chapter 1 is “Your Head Start”, and it is about what you already know. Chapter 2, “The 30-Minute Setup”, is thirty minutes of setup you do once. Chapter 3 is “How to Talk to It” — the one real skill, and everything after it assumes you have it. The last chapter, “Your First 30 Days”, is a dated plan rather than advice.
You can read the entire opening argument, The Chair Across the Desk, without buying anything: 2,201 words, about 10 minutes.
Questions people actually ask
Can AI do meeting prep, agendas, and follow-up letters for financial advisors?
It can write the draft; you still decide. This is the single biggest block of time in the trade — the book puts it at 3 hours a week in chapter 4 — and the prompt library gives it 25 worded prompts under “Meeting Prep & Follow-Up”. The titles of all 150 are listed free.
Will AI replace financial advisors?
No, and this series argues the opposite at length. It is a good tool for words: it does the writing around the job, not the job. The book's own line is “this book will not tell you AI is magic, and it will never suggest the AI advise your clients. The advice is yours. The AI drafts the communication of it — and you approve, and your firm files it. That sentence repeats through this book on purpose.” The whole opening argument is free to read, 2,201 words, no sign-up.
Where does AI get things wrong in this work?
In one specific way, and it is worth knowing before you start. The AI’s one dangerous habit: stating false things (limits, rules, statistics, “historical returns”) in a confident voice. The industry calls it “hallucination.” The fix is the 60-second check: numbers, promises, rules. Every task chapter carries a WATCH OUT box: where the AI gets things wrong on this task, and the 60-second check that catches it.
What should never go into a chat window?
That question has its own box in every task chapter — the compliance flag: what never goes into a chat window, what needs your compliance officer, and why. — and its own chapter: The Rules You Can’t Afford to Break. The short version is that the compliance line for financial advisors is not the same as the one for any other trade, which is why there are twenty-five books instead of one.
Do I need to pay for ChatGPT or Claude to do this?
Not yet. Free tiers carry you through this book’s exercises and your first weeks of real use. You’ll know it’s time to pay (about $20/month) when you hit daily limits during a normal workday — that’s the signal the tool is earning its keep. If your firm points you to an enterprise tool instead, even better: those come with the data terms Chapter 10 wants anyway. Chapter 11 covers what the money buys.
How long before it actually saves time?
That’s eleven and a half hours in a normal week. Your first week will be slower — you’re learning a tool, and everything client-facing still goes through your compliance process, same as always. By week three, the numbers above are realistic. Chapter 12 gives you the 30-day plan to get there.
The book this comes out of
AI on the Job: Financial Advisors Edition
Twelve chapters, 150 copy-paste prompts, a glossary that assumes nothing, and a thirty-day plan to get there. Every figure on this page is from it.