Next Mile · Episode 134

Building Resilient Firms in the Age of AI

with Chip Kispert  ·  March 3, 2026

About This Episode

Next Mile Episode 134: Building Resilient Firms in the Age of AI with Chip Kispert. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.

Full Transcript

Full Transcript

One of the things that we see when we're talking at our roundts, most firms don't have any AI policy and this is an area that we see firms starting to dial in a little bit on, right? But first, they have to have an AI vision and AI policy to lay out what's our plan, what information do we need to have so we know our data is protected. >> [music] >> Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Next Mile. I'm your host Kyle Vampelt, co-founder at Milemarker.

And today I am joined by the honorable Chip Kissford, founder of Beacon Strategies, and he is also, despite what's behind him, a self-proclaimed failed guitar player. Chip, thanks for joining the show, man. >> Kyle, I'm happy to be here. Yes, I am a failed guitar player because I have too much work.

Kind of sad, isn't it? >> That is sad, man. We got to find the seessaw for you to let you play some more guitar. >> That would be lovely.

But not today. >> Not today. All right, Chip. I asked everybody the same first question on this podcast.

You're not going to be any different. So, I've had over a hundred of these conversations, probably way more than that if you include off air. And I found everybody has a unique path to our industry. Some people follow traditional path like family footsteps.

Other people didn't even know this was an industry they could get into and they come in through the side door. But what I've found is whether your path is traditional or untraditional, everybody has what we call a money moment. That's that moment in your life where the light bulb kind of clicked on and you said, "This is it. This is what I want to do with my time.

" So Chip, what was that money moment for you that led you to having this conversation today? Do you got about eight hours? [laughter] >> I do. I don't know if the audience does, but >> you know, it's interesting because I came right out of school, actually during college, I interned for a number of financial services firms all the way through college.

and I got out and kind of went down that route of trading, went down the route of portfolio management and then really kind of out of the blue I got a inquiry about some things within the RAIA space, >> right? Didn't know anything about it, nothing. I was always I was institutional, right? >> But I'm like, this is interesting.

I think this is a growing area. And so I had the opportunity to work for Fidelity right when they had started just after they had started their RAIA group. It was called FiAG and basically learned the business. And for part of that time I was traveling the country talking tech with advisors and one week I'd be on the East Coast, another week I'd be in the center of the country, another next week I'd be on the Pacific.

And I really found that I love the tech side. >> And so as that progressed, spent time with Advent software where we actually were acquired by Advent software. We had built a portfolio management vehicle and again this is at really the advent of data management and aggregation. We were the first SAS to hit the market for data aggregation.

You laugh at that, right? And but that was a thing. And then ultimately, Kyle, I hit a point where I'm like, I want to help be a bridge between wealth firms and provider firms because I felt that they spoke a different language. Guess what?

That hasn't changed. M >> so the really the time for me where this all triggered was my time at Fidelity and then really kind of being kind of done with working with corporations honestly and I just wanted to do my own thing. I've always been entrepreneurial when a [clears throat] kid I had my own lawnmowing business and did quite well with it but I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I also love gathering intelligence and knowled about the marketplace. So, here we are.

>> There you go. >> Too many years later. >> Yeah. Well, and that leads us to where we are today.

So, for those who don't know, you tell us a little bit about Beacon Strategies because I think when I think about Beacon, it's what you just said. It's about gathering intelligence and then sharing that intelligence with people who are at a point in time of their business where they really need to cut through the noise and make strategic decisions. And that's a lot of the times when they would call you. But in your own words, like you know, what are you doing at Beacon right now?

>> Well, great question. Some days I don't know. Um, [laughter] but anyway, getting to the point. So, it's interesting because we started the firm as a consulting firm back in 2006 and the work we do in consulting hasn't changed a lot.

Typically, wealth firms will bring us in to help them align their strategy with their infrastructure. Make sense? So we go through that. We say, "Hey, you're doing these things well.

You're not doing these or these things. You have some room for improvement and you're not even thinking about these things. " And then that morphs typically down into taking some looks at different providers in the marketplace. We focus on the enterprise side.

So we've done so many RFIs and RFPs. We're very sensitive to procurement needs of the larger firms and the mid-market firms and all firms now because according to our regulatory environment but we go through those and then beyond that we do as I said we do a lot of RFPs we do a lot of schedule a negotiations in terms of with clearing custody ultimately that's the consulting part of the business the other side is our roundt business >> right and our roundt work is at this point 15 16 years old and we started very humbly in Sonoma with one round table that I had some help with in terms of folks that were involved and then it evolved into beacon really running all those for really the last probably I don't know 10 years where we've been you know we run a compliance round table for CCOs and CLC's, those types of folks. We run an operations for heads of operations. We run an RAIA, which we brought together probably about four years ago, where we're bringing goodsiz raas as well as BD raia, affiliated RAAS.

Then we move into innovations, which is really I I look at that as desktop and also data. And I look at that also being now AI and a lot of that work. And then in the fall we do marketing recruiting and our big one's the round table where it's all CEOs, presidents and chief operating officers. In terms of our business, we've really spent the last couple years really focused on the roundts while doing some consulting work.

So we're here to help people who have day jobs. And if we look at wealth firms, right, they have responsibilities, but they also know, and I think we're at an apex in terms of how tech looks these days, but they also know the folks that hire us, they have full-time jobs. We're going to go out. We're going to basically understand the requirements and we're going to help them >> and we're going to help them at least get to the point where they can make decisions about a transition or a series of transitions to new tech or evolving existing tech.

It's really an exciting time and place to be in the marketplace right now. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, but the first one I want to actually ask you, and I don't know if I've ever asked you this, you know, on mic or off, why roundts, right? Why not a conference? Why not kind of more of the traditional type of event or or something like that?

Why did you zero in on roundt discussion, which is a lot of times what people will add as maybe a content track at an event, but you said, "No, this is the whole event is we're going to do roundt discussions. " Why? [laughter] It goes back to high school days. I went to high school.

We sat around big wooden round tables and you had the teacher professor facilitating the discussion, driving the discussion, but you couldn't really hide. >> And I always thought that was a really engaging way to have discussions. And then the other reason for that and so you understand now why we took that roundt format right the second part of it is when I look at the industry and I've attended uber amounts of conferences right and kudos to those folks it's hard work putting a conference together but what I always kind of struggled with at the end of the day was if I go to a conference and they're 500 to 1,500 kind of people that are there. Am I really going to have good conversations or am I is it kind of the bounce off, hey, we'll catch up later?

I wanted to create an environment that really enabled rich conversations where people got to know one another >> and they also were able to ask questions of their peers. They're able to create case studies where everybody gets involved in interaction. We wanted that interaction that I just don't feel a panel gives or those types of events provide that interaction, that discussion. The crazy thing is we have a pretty good record going.

We run surveys for every event. We have 100% that said they would recommend our events. >> I think it's pretty cool. And there's a lot of, you know, I got to call out to my team who puts these together.

We believe in white glove service. So, you know, our events are at at pretty special places, but we put together detailed books for people in attendance. There's no audio. There's no recording, right?

We create an environment where there's just are a great opportunity to step back for our attendees and learn. >> Yeah, I love that, man. And as somebody who's attended, I can echo a lot of what you're saying that it is a depth of conversation. It's easier to get to know people there.

You don't have that experience where people are kind of wondering whether or not you're somebody they should be talking to. You know, when the room is smaller, it's like you have a chance to get to know everybody there and what they're up to, which is pretty cool. >> You know, I love them because I get to sit down and talk to people, right? But, >> you know, you go to a large conference, you can't really do that.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well said.

All right. So that leads into one of the bigger things I wanted to ask you about. So part of what you were saying that you do at Beacon is people come to you and you will tell them, okay, here's what you're doing. Well, here's maybe where you can improve and here's, you know, what you're not even thinking about and then they will want to to decide things and then you'll help run RFPs, RFIs, or if it's not required, just help people make strategic decisions about tech.

>> Right. But what I wanted to ask you about is in a world where tech is evolving. so quickly, right? And people have day jobs.

It's hard for them to keep up. Where I actually want to start is for the longest time, it was always sort of the safe choice to pick the the incumbent or whatever it is, right? The proverbial no one ever got fired for buying IBM and then whoever the IBM is of our space tended to do really well in those evaluations cuz it's like, yeah, we need to do something. Let's upgrade there.

Is that still the case or is the status quo been shattered so much now that people are saying, "Hey, I know it might be safe to go with that more incumbent player, but we really might be missing out on some transformative functionality if we just go status quo rather than really evaluating potentially taking a little more risk with some of these upstarts or midstarts or whatever you want to call them. So, we are definitely seeing firms that are much more curious about what I'll call upand cominging wealth tech, compliance tech. We're seeing a lot of interest there, especially the ones that are utilizing AI to drive efficiencies. And I I I despise using that term, but um that are able to basically stretch their resources, right?

So none of these firms want to add resources particularly, right? And I think the industry's proven that just by adding people to the roster doesn't necessarily enable you to scale better. And we see a lot of this new, especially when we look at enabled versus native AI and how those are progressing. I think we're at a tipping point >> honestly and this this dubtales to your question in that yes the traditional firms that are out there are going to be some people that choose those just because they're they're going to go down the safe route but I think that more than half are super interested in those firms and what comes next.

And the reason I say that is we're, you know, we see a lot some of the old iron that's out there, they just can't move fast enough, >> convert and be able to create the agents, be able to create the different tool sets that a lot of these very dynamic >> kind of what I'll call AI first firms are doing. Right? this I will say in the last year in my opinion two years ago two three years ago you know at our roundts everybody's like hey AI it's going to solve all my problems and I'm like give me a use case tell me what use case it's going to solve >> today I look around and the amount of use cases that it's starting to solve is incredible I can reference your solution right I there are compliance solutions out there that are really driving if I look at compliance specifically, they're driving compliance teams to look at them, right? Either they were running, I'll call it old iron, and I'm not going to mention the company, but they have options and those options are cheaper >> and they're better.

And if they want a new rule, it doesn't cost $80,000 for a rule, right? Which I've always thought was asinine anyway. But I to answer your question Kyle, I think that we are trending into a zone where I see a a lot of the wealth firms from top to bottom really looking at this next generation of fintech, wealth tech, compliance tech, whatever you want to call it. >> Yeah, I love it.

All right, so you said something in there that I just don't want to gloss over and I don't want to assume the audience knows what it is. So you used a phrase which was native AI versus enabled AI. Can you unpack the difference for the audience on what what is what? >> So when we're looking at it, when we look at enabled, traditionally that's something that's been pre-built, right?

It's something that's there and AI is being built on top of it. It's almost a secondary layer. When we look at native, it's all built in one chassis. We look at it as the native being smoother both in theory and practice.

And we just see kind of that enabled is they have teams on it. They have to work with their data. They have to do a lot of different pieces of the puzzle to get where is faster. >> So >> yeah.

>> Would you agree with that answer? I do think I agree with that answer and I think it leads to the next question which is a debate I've been seeing now for a while that I actually think is very fascinating which is I think I saw some statistic that over 11% of enterprises moved from one of the core you know large language models last year so for example they moved from a chat GPT to a claude or from a co-pilot to a you know cursor or something like that showing that maybe there wasn't as much moat or lock in around the the large language models sort of thing. But then you also have people who have 15 years of customer data, for example, they have the data and they're trying to quickly build AI on top of the data that resource they have, right? So basically it seems like the race is to who's going to effectively meet in the middle faster, right?

who's going to allow you to either extract the data and let AI talk to extracted data or are these model creators or whatever you want to call it going to be able to access the data without having to have the longevity of it and I think I just as a com on that I think I saw something too that the stock market's not being very kind to the legacy SAS players but all of these tools they need access to SAP they need access to HubSpot or Salesforce or Workday or whatever because that's where all the data lives So I feel like there is this sort of tension right now on oh hyper growth technology native AI stuff but wait all of my data is over here what do I do about that? Yeah. And one of the trends we're seeing, Kyle, are firms are going to, you know, the snowflakes, they're going to any, you know, the Microsoft platforms. Either they're creating or the partners they're choosing have these underlying data sources >> where all the data can be drawn in.

You guys are an example of that, right? Where you can draw this data in. And you know, when I talk to my RAAS that we're working with, they're moving in that direction, right? And you brought up another point, Kyle, that you you said firms change models or change, you know, they'll go from >> Claude to to co-pilot to whatever, right?

As the Claud Geminis progress, >> that's an arms race in of itself, >> right? And we've talked to firms that they bump around, right, in terms of what they're using in terms of the of the miles. So, I don't know if I answered your question. >> No, you did.

It's great. >> So, on that note, talking about native, talking about enabled, but then I want to kind of go back to people who traditionally move slower, whether that was fear, whether that's whatever, right? Are you encouraging or are you seeing people kind of, for lack of a better term, loosen the reins a little bit on their processes to move faster to make decisions faster on this? Or do you think they're at risk of being left behind if they kind of run their traditional sort of older process that might even be a little bit more fear-based?

Might be let's not rock the boat. Let's, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. >> So, there are couple things I think about. I think people are scared that AI is gonna take away their jobs.

>> Yeah. >> So, if I get this down to a behavioral view, there's fear there. There's fear that I'm gonna be replaced. And then, you know, if you can get over that fear and get them involved and say, "Hey, no, this is going to you're going to be be able to do more right than you're doing today, >> then there's buyin, right?

" I think at at a management level, there's absolutely buy in. >> Yeah. that hey we got to move this thing we got to move this forward. If you look at just the pure cost of of the operational side of the compliance side even we're getting to the marketing and recruiting side right need to do it faster better and in a automated way than systematized but there's a caveat >> it's got to be personalized.

>> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> We're still working with Right. We're still not really there, but we're getting closer.

But again, yes, I I think management absolutely. I think kind of the mid level can be a little bit and and bottom levels can be really nervous about this. And >> yeah, >> it's incumbent upon that leadership to drive the team where they see the vision going and kind of help those people understand better that are in the middle. >> That's great.

>> This podcast is brought to you by Turncast. We make gamechanging content for fintech and financial services companies. Learn more at turncast. com.

>> Hey Next Mile listeners, Jessica here from Milemarker. You know we talk a lot about reaching that next mile in your business journey. But let's be for real for just a sec. If you're an adviser, how [music] much time are you spending wrestling with data instead of actually advising your clients?

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Instead of spending your evenings pulling together client reports, imagine having that data automatically organized and presented exactly how you need it. Instead of guessing about your firm's performance, imagine having real-time insights that help you make strategic decisions. If you are ready to stop being held back by your data and start using it to fuel your growth, I'd love to have a conversation with you. We're offering Next Mile listeners a complimentary consultation to explore exactly [music] how we can help you transform your advisory practice.

Don't let outdated processes keep you from reaching that next mile in your firm's growth. Visit milemarker. co co and mentioned the next mile podcast and I'll personally make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and [music] scale your practice because your time should be spent building your business not buried in spreadsheets. All right, I'm going to ask you something that people would probably traditionally have to hire you for.

So maybe they'd have to hire you for this, but maybe we'll get a little insight. So one other thing that I keep thinking about Chip is that of course all of the tech providers are adding or building or doing something with AI at this point right like nobody wants to have a story that is not AI something but then that leads me to okay if my planning system has its own AI and my portfolio management system has its own AI and my custodian has its own AI and my CRM has its own AI and then I'm using chatbt or Claude or Gemini or whatever, how do I integrate all the AIs, right? Because it's not sort of one unified AI structure or AI layer like everybody wants to be that AI tool you use. And then furthermore, like well my a my financial planning AI is going to have more specialized like it's going to be better at planning stuff than if I just go ask Claude or Chat GPT and all of these types of things.

So, how are you seeing people navigate this world, too, which is, "Oh my goodness, forget trying to evaluate the new players. Everybody I currently work with has me on the phone telling me about all the cool stuff that they're doing and they're building and they're shipping and I don't even know how to bring these things together today. " So, that almost muddies the evaluation of is it new, is it existing, and if it's existing, how do I tie it together, and what do I do with all of this stuff? Chip, >> I actually have a a little different take than how do you pull it all together?

One of the things that we see when we're talking to at our roundts or just in the calls I take in a given day, most firms don't have any AI policy. And this is an area that we see firms starting to dial in a little bit on, right? But first, they have to have an AI vision and AI policy to lay out what's our plan, right? Yeah.

>> And oh, guard rails. what information do we need to have so we know our data is is protected right so to me that's layer one is getting an AI policy in place >> now layer two absolutely right and beyond that Kyle you got to do due diligence right either annually or if it's new you got to do it annually so I'll just leave it at that but once they approved right being able to bring that together and go off of that AI policy has to drive the relationships that they have with all these AI tool sets whether it's CRM whether it's data aggregation you I can go down the list but they need to have their guidelines and guard rails which drive their decisions on how they interact with firms and part of the problem is and I'm not being malicious or anything like that. There's a lot of talk about AI, but kind of true understanding of it. It's not rich.

It's not deep. So, one of the things I think that would be absolutely valuable for the wealth space is is really to have some AI learning, >> right? >> Let's get into it. You know, everybody can say large language models and things like that, but truly understanding it, it's another world.

>> Yeah, I think that's right. And I think to that note, one of the things that everybody's dealing with is with how fast everything's going, I think it creates some paralysis because there is a lack of full understanding and then they go, "Well, I'm going to pick one of these things and then there's going to be a better one a month later. So, I guess I should just wait a little bit and maybe at some point this plateaus and I'll be able to feel confident in what I actually chose and that my AI policy makes sense because I feel like I'm going to write an AI policy chip and then it's going to be different a week later, right? And then I'm going to have to continue to stay on top of it.

>> Well, welcome to the real world, right? [laughter] >> And I'm not saying that aggressively, but it's one of those thing where I've never seen tech move this fast. If I look at my career and going back to the 90s, if I look at that whole place, a whole area and then I look at postcoid to now shocking the changes. >> Yeah.

Like >> absolutely shocking. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's enough to make your head spin.

That's for sure. And it does I my head spins on a daily basis. So, you know, hopefully I catch it, you know, as it goes one way or another. >> Yeah.

All right. So, in spirit of all of this, I want to give you an opportunity to plug something, which is the beacon provider network, right? So, the BPN. So, when I think about you were talking about due diligence, AI policy, how do I stay on top of people who are doing a good job?

Well, you're out there looking at this all the time because that is your day job. and you have compiled a network of providers that you believe are doing a good job at a lot of this stuff. So, you want to talk about how that came to be and what you guys are doing with it? >> Yeah, absolutely.

I'd love to. So, again, I go back to that bridge speaking the l you know, we got wealth firms, we got providers and kind of speaking different languages. We're blessed to be that bridge. We are looking at BPN as being an extension of that bridge.

It was interesting because probably three and a half years ago we had our advisory council came to us and on that advisory council we had six wealth firms enterprise wealth firms we had three providers right and those folks came to us and said hey we need some help and we're like >> thinking you know roundts were thinking about webinars whatever they said no we need a platform form where wealth firms can come in and you can prevet providers and then we have the ability to go see those providers within an ecosystem. So we over the past two and a half years, we've built out a way for providers to provide us templates, to provide us video, to provide us demonstrations, and they put it forward, we publish it all within a very private ecosystem. And for wealth firms, it's all about getting wealth firms basically sign a non-disclosure and then they can come in and and look at what's going on, right? They can see, hey, I'm really curious about compliance surveillance, right?

Or I'm really curious about data aggregation. And they can go see options that they have out there that we vetted already. And because we've done some ARFPS and RFIs, we're doing it at a high level. I'm not doing the full deep dive, but you know, we want to know certain infosc questions we want answered.

We want certain procurement questions answered, right? Because Kyle to your question back I don't know 10 minutes ago where we were talking about the different the future fintech some of these firms and I appreciate it because I've been there are on a shoestring budget they don't necessarily have the financing and maybe some you know don't even have a sock two or appropriate so those come in we look at it and we're like I can't do that sorry you can't be on but we can help you remediate this we can help you get to where you want to go. So, we're looking at a list that has we believe the most integrity within kind of that space of being able to provide providers and that's dialed more dialed in for enterprise firms. >> I love it, man.

That's cool. We'll put that in the show notes for people who want to go check that out because I think it just expedites the process for everyone and it it gives them some peace of mind on all of the questions they know they have to ask, right? So, >> and it's a lot of work, but I love it. And as we continue to roll this out, >> we're big about community, right?

And we love growing the Beacon community. We've done it with our roundts. VPN's going to be extension of that. So, we're really, really excited about it.

>> That's awesome. Awesome, man. All right. I want to move into kind of the final two segments of the show.

So, this one I'm going to adapt a little bit because we've been talking about the future a ton. So, here's what I'm going to ask you is if there was one thing that you could see the industry get better at, what would it be? Like, so if you had a magic wand and you could make the industry better at one specific thing, what would it be? >> Data management.

>> You're not just saying that because we're on the call, right? >> No, I it but it's the foundation of everything, >> right? So, you can have all this great AI tech, you can have great AI, you can have rules-based engines, whatever. If the data is not good, it doesn't mean anything.

That all the pretty stuff, the shiny metal fishing lures don't have that much integrity or integrity gets questioned by the the quality of the data. Does that make sense? >> Yeah, 100%. I mean, 100%.

Right. It's it is the equivalent I know it's an age-old concept, right? But it's the equivalent of building a beautiful house on sinking sand, right? It can look amazing from the road, but it is falling into the into the dirt as you stand there.

>> It literally is. And and guess what? This view of mine hasn't changed since 2005, right? If you don't have good data, I mean, that's feeding all your engines, then you get biased data if you really want to go into it.

>> Why do you think this is such a struggle for people though? >> I don't think traditionally the plumbing has been able to handle it. So think about people used to download feeds, right? That was somebody's job.

They download a Persian feed. They download, you know, a national. Now that's automated, right? But even further, the APIs have gotten so that they can better parse that data where it needs to go.

>> Yeah. >> And I think we're looking at actually we're going to I think I see in the next couple years we're going to even go beyond the APIs. And then it's just data cleansing. It's a full-time job.

>> Yeah. >> Right. And I think also as we look at it, there are a lot of what I'll call cleaning agents out there that can better tune the data, highlight what's missing, get it back to the reps or the adviserss to make updates where they need to. Their their staffs can.

I see us making this nice progression to higher quality data which is actually going to be more valuable. I read a recent study and I'm pulling this off the top of my head and those firms that had their data and tech in order were two and a half times more valuable in an M&A situation. M yeah, we've seen similar stuff where it was more if you have centralized data sources like a mile marker and all of your data is in there and you're working to clean it that that can add anywhere from $750,000 to a million dollars of enterprise value to your business. So yeah, the ROI is there, right?

It might not be felt on day one, but as the the value of your firm goes, you know, getting your data into a good place, it's worth it. >> Completely agree. And I'll just tap into another area is succession, right? Whether that's firms acquiring, whether that's saying it down to maybe you have a team that's been working with you, they're younger generationally, you're moving it, maybe it's family, right, that's in the practice.

Everybody's got to get better with data because ultimately, you know, if you look at the numbers out there, it's a good market. It's a sellers market in many ways. >> Yeah, true. All right, we're going to move into the final segment of the show.

We call this the mile marker minute. It's a series of lightning round questions aimed to get to know you a little bit better outside of Beacon. So, are you ready for the mile marker minute? >> Let's have it.

>> All right, Chip, if you could travel anywhere in the world you've never traveled to before, where would you go? >> Greece. >> Okay, I love it. Are you a mountains person or a beach person?

>> Beach person. >> Even though you live in the mountains. >> I actually live on the plains if we really get down to it. I can see the food, but I live in the plains.

>> Live in the plains. Yep, that's right. What is the best flavor of ice cream? >> Mint chocolate chip.

No doubt about it. >> Okay. All right. >> At Christmas, I do like the peppermint stick.

>> Oh, peppermint stick ice cream is clutch at Christmas time for those of you who've never tried it. That's a good one. What's the best road trip you've ever been on? >> So, when you look at road trip, does that mean in a car or does that mean going anywhere?

>> Define it how you want. some sort of journey that you went on, right, that was memorable. >> So, this was a number of years ago before we had our daughter, Ella, and it was right when Advent was buying us for our company. So, we Tammy and I were like, "All right, it's winter.

We just had a blizzard. We got 28 in of snow outside. We're packing the car. We're packing the dogs and we're driving to Scottsdale.

" And and doing that, we went up over the mountains. We went literally out through Moab. Unbelievable beauty. Great time with my wife, Tammy, and the dogs.

We had the dogs with us. You know, we ended up going to the Grand Canyon and then we stayed down in Scottdale for a week. That was a pretty cool trip. Sounds like an awesome personal level.

I'll throw one other there in there. A couple years ago, we went over to Italy and with France and we went through Venice, Chinqitera, and Sienna, and we went to the Paleo, which is their equivalent of the Kentucky Derby, except it's full contact >> and we spent a couple weeks over there, and it was great. It was fabulous. >> All right, so my marker, our company, a milearker is a measurement of progress, right?

And we believe that your journey is never done here at Milearker. But I want you to finish this sentence and you can do it from a personal side, not a work side. But progress is blank. >> Progress is one step forward every day.

>> I love it. All right. Final question. There is an alternate universe.

And in this alternate universe, Chip has nothing to do with financial services. What is your career in this alternate universe? >> Oh, I'm going to be on the Champions Tour. [laughter] playing golf on the Champions Tour.

I love it. Awesome. Well, Chip Kisser, this has been a really fun conversation. I enjoy the insights you dropped and the way that you think about a lot of this stuff.

So, thanks for carving out some time for the audience to come and share your knowledge about everything going on in the industry, man. It was great to have you, >> Kyle. Thanks for having me. I enjoy being on.

>> Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody. That's been another episode of Next Mile. Please make sure you click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this.

And if you'd be kind enough, leave us a review so people who've never heard of the show before can find conversations like I just had with Chip. But until the next episode, enjoy every mile.

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