First Friday Feedback: January 2026

Happy New Year! In January's First Friday Feedback episode, Phil is kicking off the year reflecting on the state of the wealth management industry and why it is entering an important period of change. He touches on the growing influence of technology and AI, shifting client expectations, and the importance of how advisors engage with clients, particularly business owners. Drawing from recent research and listener questions, the conversation weaves together themes of relationship building, professional growth, and learning from both success and failure. Overall, the episode encourages listeners to approach 2026 with clarity, curiosity, and a renewed commitment to meaningful client relationships.

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Transcript

 Hi, I am Phil Buchanan with Cannon Financial Institute. We produce the podcast series Monday Morning Mojo, the Cannon Curve, and Cannon Connect. Each of these podcasts invites listeners to email or text their feedback, comments and questions. They are all answered right here on First Friday feed. If you're new to our podcast, go ahead and subscribe to all of four and get engaged by sharing your perspective. Life is about the journey, so let's go for the ride.

Welcome to First Friday Feedback for January, 2026. 2025 was an outstanding year by almost every measurement when it comes to the business of wealth management, and the prospects for 2026 are strong. But candidly, we believe the financial services industry is a unique inflection point.

Technology and partnerships now allow even the smallest boutiques to match up effectively with the largest wealth management firms. While capital and scale are definitely an advantage. Technology has really reshaped the game. Technology and AI will continue to transform how firms can deliver unique value.

At the end of the day, it is all about the client and client expectations have definitely migrated towards a more integrated, holistic approach. Now many firms will tout the different products and services and their technology stacks as competitive advantages. But at the end of the day, it is all about the relationship.

It's about the conversations, it's about the engagement, and we need to be focused as an industry on ensuring that we are speaking the language of our clients and not the language of the industry. In late 2025, uh, we produced a research white paper that, uh, I've been working on for the past 12 to 14 months.

In this research paper, we identified a unique challenge that the wealth management industry faces today, and that comes from the massive amounts of wealth that are being generated through small to medium sized businesses, and those businesses are being liquidated, sold, and merged. It is ironic that in many instances the very institutions that helped to create the wealth, primarily through lending, cash management, FX services, et cetera, are not the institutions that are earning the right to manage that wealth long term.

Now, every financial institution that I speak to touts that they have a process internally to direct introductions from business bankers, commercial lenders, to the wealth management part of the organization. Every organization has a process. But only a select few organizations are incredibly effective at culturally inculcating into the organization, this generational approach, this lifecycle approach of working with business owners throughout their lifecycle and for generations to come.

If you're interested in reading the white paper, that could be accessed via our company website, cannon financial.com. Now, here's the synopsis that I'll give you on that paper. Business owners do not look at their life in a compartmentalized focus. They don't look at the lending side of their life. They don't look at the treasury management side of their life.

They don't look at the cash flow side of their life. They don't look at the personal wealth side of their life as separate and distinct entities The way. Most financial institutions are organized. They think of the the lifecycle issues that they're dealing with. If we were starting banks from scratch today.

Without the regulatory system and the framework that we have, I would like to think that organizationally we would look more at a lifecycle approach on clients and ensure that we are meeting clients where they are, as opposed to organizing ourselves around the unique business channels, uh, that banks provide.

Banks have some tremendous natural advantages when it comes to the approach of serving a client throughout their lifecycle, but again, through technology and partnerships, even the smallest of boutiques have the ability to follow that lifecycle approach. Now I do want to address some comments and some questions that arose from podcasts that we did near the end of the year.

Episode 726 of Monday Morning. Mojo is entitled, where are You from? We highlighted that success comes from applying what you learn and building authentic client relationships through discovery and listening, and not just pitching, asking the right questions. Because that deepens trust and reveals opportunities.

Again, this gets back to the conversation and we had a particular listener write in and ask, you know, what should she do to be more effective conversationally? With her clients. She is deeply knowledgeable in the industry, has a law degree, has her CWS certification, and she was posing the question from a genuine perspective of, Hey, I am, I am technically solid in, in what I'm doing, but still she felt that she was missing some opportunities.

One of the things that I encouraged her to do is to be a student of her client's business. How does, how do the individuals generate their wealth? What businesses are they in? And research the industries so that when she is in a conversation with those individuals, she can relate concepts and ideas in a language they relate to.

I'll give you a a a classic example of this. I was working with. A team several years ago in the Northeast, we were pinpointing some, some target opportunities they had. One was an individual that owned a road construction business, and so I did a bit of research and uncovered a publication called Asphalt Contractor. It is an online publication by literally spending 30 minutes the night before that meeting. I came in the next morning and made a case example for how an individual could approach that road construction professional individuals were taking copious notes to this situation. They were like, where do you find this?

It, it wasn't difficult. It just took a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of research to be able to do it well. Now with the advent of artificial intelligence, all of us have the opportunity to develop acute knowledge, uh, very specific knowledge about the industries, the businesses of our clients. So that we can identify ways that we can take our profession, our concepts, and communicate them effectively to our clients.

Again, in language they relate to. You know, while we're on this issue of, of ai, we accountant very much are leaning in and adopting multiple AI learning platforms, client engagement, working to improve our process efficiency, just as I trust all of you are doing. Now, when you, when you think about ai, and I, I heard this, you know, initially AI is gonna take all of these jobs.

It hearkens me back to the days when Lotus 1 2 3 was introduced. Now some of you who are listening don't know what Lotus 1 2 3 is. It was actually a, a forerunner of a spreadsheet application. Not totally unlike what we have today in Microsoft Excel, but when Lotus 1, 2, 3 came. The public accounting community was, was really in high state of concern for this because they felt that it would take away a lot of the bookkeeping business that they were doing for businesses.

Well, businesses did bring much of that bookkeeping in-house, not only through spreadsheet applications, but of course today all of their, their accounting software. But we've got scores, more CPAs in the business today. Then when Lotus 1 2 3 was introduced, because these individuals are doing higher levels of thought work on behalf of their clients.

Something similar happened in the financial planning world when financial planning software like Nava Plan and, and other tools. Today we've got Money Guide Pro and E-Money and Right Capital and all of these tools. Well, initially, so many people were concerned, geez, this is going to take away the value of-of me being a certified financial planner. We've got scores more CFPs out there today that we did when the first financial planning software was, was introduced because it allows planners to move through from a, a technological standpoint of encoding and, and. And doing the analysis, do the planning, and to spend more time face-to-face with their client.

Well, the same thing's gonna be true with ai. AI is not going to replace you. It will replace people who don't adopt AI and develop their own proficiencies and efficiencies with how they work. We've got an opportunity to have. Much more engaged conversations to be much deeper in our perspective of our client's wealth and how that wealth is generated and what the challenges and issues are that come with that.

And so, again, whether it is is something as simple as watching online YouTube videos about AI to delving into AI and, and learning to prompt effectively. I really do want to encourage all of our listeners to be active there. Now, another. Issue as we look ahead to, to 2026, the, the different challenges and different things that we see coming up.

Obviously the, the Secure Act 2.0, the updates and their impact and planning and compliance, the one big beautiful bill, the BBB, the implications of that as we move into 2026 are, are certainly being realized. All of this calls me to reflect on episode 7 28 of Monday Morning Mojo and a listener posing the question back.

How do you let things go that are just so? Critical to your psyche, how are you able to get past the big mistakes? This particular individual had some personal challenges in his life. It had some professional challenges in his life, and it was, it was really weighing him down. And again, I, my, my note back to him was, was very simple.

It said, you know, reflect. Score on your wind. Let the mistakes build your emotional intelligence and and resilience. Be honest in your self-assessment. What that allows you to do is to be much more intentional. Rarely, professionally do we make career ending decisions that that is rare. Yeah. We, we'll make mistakes.

We will, we will screw things up. We may lose a client relationship. Occasionally we may do something that that causes our organization a bit of money. On occasion, yes, those things are going to happen. But to, to loathe the self pity, to let that be the, the, the item that defines your future really is nothing more than self-sabotage.

Putting our mistakes behind us, forgiving ourselves is absolutely critical to our long-term success. So I want to encourage all of us as we proceed into 2026, to, to go back and examine these, these kind of four big points from today's conversation. Number one, bear in mind that from a competitive standpoint, it is not your products.

It is not your services. It is the conversations, it is the client experience that you will have that is going to set the tone and define your unique differential. Number two. Be acutely aware that there is a huge opportunity with business owners and maintaining business owner relationships from the inception of depository and lending relationships all the way through generational wealth management.

But it's a cultural issue. It is not a process issue for most financial institutions. Most financial institutions have processes in place that should happen, but culturally do they carry through incredibly effectively? It begins with setting the stage and the expectations for clients at the onset of the relationship, not simply after the wealth has been created.

Number three, AI artificial intelligence. It is going to be a huge game changer for those who are highly adaptive to it and utilize that to be more efficient in what they do, but also to be more knowledgeable so that they and their conversations with clients can be more intentional with that dialogue.

And then finally as we look ahead to ensure that we learn from both our wins and our losses, but that we, we forgive ourselves for those mistakes that we'll make, none of us intentionally go out to ever make a mistake that that's just, that's not how the, the human psyche is designed. Don't let your past.

Define your future. Be a learning individual, be a growing individual, be an impactful individual in 2026 to each of you. We look forward to a great year. We look forward to seeing you on the road, uh, either at a Cannon school or projects that we do. And of course, you can join us every week for Monday Morning Mojo, once a month for the Cannon curve, and of course, the first Friday of every month here on First Friday feedback.

First Friday feedback is a production of Cannon Financial Institute, executive producer of First Friday. Feedback is Sarah Jones. Editing and mixing is done by Danny Brunner. Until next time, I'm Phil Buchanan thanking you for being part of the Cannon community.