Three Crowns Mixtape: August 26, 2022
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Important financial industry news + marketing insights + good music.
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Our office bonding this week included takeout from Qdoba and that TikTok corn song – and we’ve never felt closer. Now we’re here to share the love. Here’s what we’re covering in today’s mixtape:
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Ezra Group’s new scoring model
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A podcast duo of our dreams
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SmartX and Flyer’s new collab
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And more!
Must-Read Financial Industry & Marketing Articles
EZRA GROUP SCORES INTEGRATIONS… AND YOU’RE GOING TO WANT TO SEE THIS
Back in the day, advisors were positively giddy about their favorite fintech apps integrating with each other. Everyone had visions of data utopia—where information flowed freely between apps and manual data entry was a thing of the past!
Unfortunately, that utopia still hasn’t arrived. And many advisors feel like “integration” is now a dirty word full of broken promises and broken syncs.
But, that doesn’t make integration any less important for advisors who go with the “best in class” approach to building a tech stack from many solutions, instead of selecting an “all in one” solution.
So Ezra Group has come up with something to help guide advisors as they look at apps for their tech stack by scoring the breadth and depth of each software’s integration capabilities.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best) the median score is—wait for it—only 4.5. Ouch. WealthTech clearly has a long way to go until data utopia arrives.
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s an Oof.
FINANCIAL LITERACY WITH ALEX CHALEKIAN AND DANIEL CROSBY
It’s not a secret that we have major professional crushes (it’s a thing, we promise) on Daniel Crosby of Orion and Alex Chalekian of Lake Avenue Financial and Futurvest.
So when the two of these guys got together on Daniel’s Standard Deviations podcast, it was an immediate “click play” moment.
We recommend this one if you’re an advisor who wants to learn from someone who’s built a successful firm, and to get up to speed on Futurvest and the important role Alex hopes it will play in building financial literacy across the country.
SMARTX AND FLYER FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGIES PARTNER UP
Speaking of integrations, Flyer and SMArtX have teamed up on a partnership of their own to enhance broker and custodial connectivity, and trading services, for advisors using the SMArtX platform.
For those that don’t know, Flyer is a major power behind the scenes for trading technology and this collaboration brings real-time data and advanced control over order instructions, routing, and post-trade processing for advisors.
SMArtX, too, has been making major waves for a while now, and it’s been named a finalist in four Wealth Management Industry Awards categories and two categories in the ThinkAdvisor Luminaries.
(For those curious, SMArtX gets a 5.9 integration score from Ezra Group. There’s no ranking yet for Flyer.)
DID MATT DAMON TALK ANYONE INTO INVESTING IN CRYPTO? (SPOILER ALERT: THAT’S A HARD “NO”)
Cryptos have dumped tens of millions of dollars into advertising the last couple years. Whether it was Will Hunting himself telling us that “fortune favors the bold,” or that ad where Tomele (that’s my catchy celeb nickname for Tom and Gisele) call all their friends to hype the digital currency, crypto ads were clearly expensive – and they were everywhere.
Time for a check-in: How much did all that marketing push the needle? Not even a little bit, according to Pew Research. Last September, 16% of people said they had invested in crypto in some way. Pew just ran the same survey again, a year later, and found that the number of people who had invested in crypto was still 16%.
Think about that for a second. The biggest names behind crypto forked out mountains of money – look at Crypto.com arena, for crying out loud – and have absolutely nothing to show for it. What is the deal?
Turns out it’s not just Warren and Charlie who think this whole Bitcoin thing smells a bit fishy.
FEWER THAN HALF OF CEOS TRUST THEIR CMOS
I mean, I get it. CMOs can be a little…headstrong…but still, come on, guys. Can’t we all just get along?
Don’t Be Suspicious, Don’t Be Suspicious
Here’s what we’ve been listening to this week.
Zach McDonald, President & CMO
“This is my jam of the week.”
Johnny Sandquist, Founder & CEO
“Like a soundtrack for life.”
Connor Brandt, Graphic Designer
“Can’t get enough of this band.”
Justine Young, Content Writer
“bringing those back to school vibes to the office:”
Amber Froendt, Project Manager
“I am starting to think this song is not about cats.”
Sidney Snyder, Account Manager
“The perfect song to remind me of home on a rainy day.”
Keep up with all of our picks of the week over time with the Three Crowns Mixtape on Spotify.
Click here to check it out and favorite it to add it to your collection.