About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 121: Connecting Advisors and Investors to the Innovation Economy with Mark Buffington. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Mark Buffington · December 2, 2025
Next Mile Episode 121: Connecting Advisors and Investors to the Innovation Economy with Mark Buffington. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
I think next year is the first time where advisers will surpass broker dealers, the Maril Lynches, the Morgan Stanley's, etc. in terms of assets under management. And I think when you see things like that in the marketplace that happen over long persistent periods of time, what it usually means is one party has a superior value proposition to the other. In other words, people are voting with their dollars every year, every day.
And you know, we've been a great beneficiary of that. >> [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 Mark Buffington.
This is a fun one for me. Mark's in my backyard here in Atlanta and he's built an incredible firm. He's the CEO at BIP Capital and he is a worldclass wake surfer. Mark, thanks so much for joining the show.
>> Yeah, thank you. My friends will love hearing that, by the way. [laughter] >> Hey, on this podcast, you're world class and I'm always happy to meet somebody who has a cool hobby like that. So, I got to ask you, how did you get in for that?
>> Well, we bought a lakehouse many years ago and I just watched other people surfing and I said that, you know, a looks like a ton of fun and b would be easier on the joints as you age. So, I just got into it. It was tough to start, but once you get rolling, you just build on the skills and I'm pretty accomplished. I wouldn't call it world class now.
And as we were talking about a little bit, I I can get air and off the wave and but I can't quite nail the 360 with consistency, but yeah, it's a lot of fun and affords us the time to spend a lot, you know, a lot of quality time with family and just on the boat away from everything. So, we that, you know, that was one of the main reasons. >> Yeah, I love it, man. That's awesome.
My daughter, my daughter is a world-class wake surfer. So that's fun. It's always fun to watch her. >> That's so cool.
I love it. All right. So Mark, one of the first questions I love to ask people when they come on the show, and I've had over a hundred of these conversations, is about your path to the space, right? So what I've found is a lot of people their path to this industry is pretty unique.
Maybe some people followed in family footsteps or it was a traditional path. Other people I've spoken to didn't even know this industry existed and they came in through the side door after spending some time in different careers. But whether your path is traditional or untraditional, I found everybody has what we call a money moment. That's that moment in your life where the light bulb clicked on and you decided this is it.
This is what I want to do for my career. So Mark, for you, what was that money moment that led you to sitting in that chair having this conversation today? >> Yeah. So as you know, Kyle, we're in, you know, really three businesses.
the wealth management business that we own, the private credit business, and the venture capital growth equity business. But the the way all that came together, there actually was a money moment. It's an interesting question. My background, academic background is in econometrics and you know, quantitative studies, decision science, etc.
And I was working for a hedge fund on the west coast. And I started making as I started to accumulate a little wealth, I started making investments in early stage startups. So I didn't even call it venture, you know, I realized I was, you know, kind of in the center, the epicenter of kind of startups and and venture capital. This is in the early 2000s, but right on the on the heels of the dot, you know, bubble and bust.
I started making investments in private companies that had high growth prospect. And um you know, I always say this, but not to be boastful, but my first one was like a 65x return. So yeah, that uh that that works. And you know, I started thinking like, gosh, this was way more fun than, you know, in a hedge fund, you effectively just stare at a computer screen all day trying to to find arbitrage opportunities or at least the way we approached it, we did.
And it's kind of a weird existence. And I I really liked the idea of you could affect your own, you know, or or kind of beat your own path in, you know, business building and in venture. And so that that was like the aha moment of like, I really want to do this for the rest of my career. I think other things along the way.
So, we did I did four more investments before I left the Bay Area and then two or three early here while I was in transition. One of those, you know, that people know if they've been around the the venture scene in Atlanta for a long time. The first three that I did when I got back to town or was getting back to town was a company called Vendor Mate. Great group of founders and managers and that exited for a really nice number in a relatively short period of time.
And then Ingenious Med, which was also a really nice exit, you know, multiple or double digit MO return. Um, and then Play on Sports, which you know is still ongoing. There's an article about Playon in the Atlanta Business Chronicle this week, but you know that and then plus the five that I did in the Bay Area were successful. And Kyle, for some reason, I started thinking, okay, I'm really good at this.
And it's much harder though. That's, you know, in hindsight, it's kind of you get a string of luck and it worked out to get me started. it. And the reason we ended up with a wealth management firm is I started going out saying, "Okay, look at all that we've done.
I've done these five investments on the West Coast. I've done these three in Atlanta. Here's the either the exits or the momentum. I should be able to raise capital easily.
I don't know how many institutions I got in front of. It's in the like midund like 150 or so. I was zero for 150 or whatever the denominator was. " you know, I started asking why at the end like h how can I put up these returns and you know that I can't even you know get a chance to man some money and there were a lot of a myriad of excuses but I I kind of realized quickly that a I didn't go to an Ivy League school b I didn't like cut my teeth in a at a Kleiner at Sequoa or one of the greylock or one of those and I just you know I had kind of a grit story that didn't necessarily appeal to the institutional investors So, I started figuring out how to try to solve that problem.
Okay, great. I'm pretty sure there's somebody out there that would want the types of returns we were generating. And sure enough, like every time I would go to an institution, we'd get the, you know, the polite no thanks. But every time I would see a high net worth individual, they would pour capital into what we were doing, like really high batting average.
And so we built a wealth manager management firm centered on that integration of highquality private market assets. And Kyle, that was really the money moment. The I really like this and I'm motivated and this is how I want to spend my time was the first big exit and comparing the two careers. The money moment was wow there is massive demand.
And by the way, it's still true. I mean there's there's you know I think the numbers are roughly this. There's about 12 trillion under management in the institutional space today in the United States and you know about 30% of that 40% of it somewhere in between depending on how you slice that up is managed in the they invest in private markets the university endowments pensions etc. They've been doing it for a long time.
Again, depending on how you slice it, there's about 15 trillion being managed by individuals or that you owned by individuals, managed by others, and only about 3% of that is allocated to private market. So, we didn't realize all the data at the time we were doing that, we just kind of recognized a market need and the response. But it was clear the minute we built that wealth management firm, the business went up and to the right. And um I don't think my partner Bill Harris and I don't think either of us understood the power of that idea and connecting individuals to the innovation economy.
But, you know, 20 years later, we're, you know, if not the one of the fastest growing wealth advisers in the country organically and really by a factor of like 3x when we study our competition and they're just not able to do anywhere near the type of organic growth. Now, there's a lot of inorganic growth that they do buying other advisors, but uh which we're doing as well, but I think our organic growth is unmatched and a lot of it is because of the value we provide in the private markets. So, that was the money moment. Oh, that's amazing.
I mean, there's a part of me that wants to just congratulate you because most people after a 65x return on their first one would say, "Hey, all right. I think we did it, everybody. Uh, let's go find something else to do. " Um, but you not only did you stay back in, but you you found success over and over again.
And I love the story about kind of finding another way. You know, we were talking a little bit off air about Georgia Tech football. I know you went to Georgia Tech, and you were talking about the identity of their new coach, Brent Key, and how that that fits in. I love that it was like, you know, hey, we're going to find a way at VIP to connect individuals to the innovation economy.
I think that's amazing. And so, I wanted to ask you a little bit. I mean, there's a lot of paths that I want to take based off of that money moment, but the first one is why do you think that it was so hard to get individuals connected to the innovation economy? And before you answer that, I kind of want you to to put this as a seed as well because something I've I've thought about it for a long time or whatever is, you know, it's hard to get allocation into the Kleiners and the Sequoas and all of those right now.
Most of them are oversubscribed even for the funds they raise. So even if you are an individual who wanted to be connected to those, you know, worldclass firms, it was really hard to get money into it. Then the question becomes, how do you find the VIP capitals to get your money into the ones that are actually winning because there's so much out there. So, I'd really love to hear you talk a little bit more about what that looks like and why more individuals haven't been connected.
Is it that is it hard just to get allocation or is it hard to find a good managers? >> Yeah, the uh there's a couple pieces to that equation that make it difficult for individuals to get into highquality private market investments. The first is the regulatory framework in the United States. So in the wake of the great depression we passed the 1933 and 34 act the securities and exchange act which effectively made it very difficult to invest in non-listed so non-publicly traded assets.
So the way that you know this is a crash course in kind of regulatory framework but the way that works is if you are a qualified investor. So in other words you have 5 million of investable assets or more liquid. The law allows you to get 499 of those into a fund. If you are a accredited investor so a million in liquid net worth or higher the law allows you to get 99 of those and no more in a fund.
So point being is you know, let's say if somebody has, let's say, two million of liquid net worth or on average you run into a group of people that have that, it's probably not appropriate to do more than 10% but probably more than 5% of their net worth in one single fund in one single asset. And so if you said, you know, 10% it's 200,000 times the 99 investors, you're at 18 million, 19 million, that doesn't allow you the opportunity to really play in the markets and be competitive. And so that's that's the biggest reason. And so that's one of the reasons we've launched our equity BDC, which is much harder to manage, much more expensive, etc.
, etc. It took us a long time to get to, you know, kind of earn the right, if you will, to a fund it and b manage it and know how to manage it. But it's effectively a publicly traded fund >> and that has an unlimited number of accredited investors, but to my knowledge, nobody else is doing that on the equity side. There are plenty of BDC's on the private credit side, but nothing like we built on the equity side.
So that's one reason, Kyle, is it's just really hard to aggregate capital given the regulatory framework. >> Yeah. which you know now that we figured out a product that works I mean in a weird way that creates a competitive moat for us so we are raising capital fast and it allows us to take advantage of in a world at least today you know 5 years ago or four years ago the markets were a wash in capital but now it's there's a real glut there's just not a lot of capital in the market and you know if you're the you know kind of the only fund around with capital it gives you a great advantage so right now it's a you know the regulatory framework is serving us But in the past it was very difficult to aggregate a lot of capital. So that's one reason.
I think the other is education. Traditional investment managers and warehouse brokerages you know they spend hundreds of millions if not billions a year on marketing and they've kind of trained the US public how to think about taking risk. And so I think to most people it doesn't occur to say gosh you know I need a healthy amount and to most advisers even I need a healthy amount of private market assets in my overall allocation for on behalf of my investors. You know the warehouses and the broker dealer framework that's different than an advisor framework.
They can't do it. They can't really invest in private market securities on their platform. Um there are products being built to try to access private markets. But you know that's one of the main reasons I don't know if you know all this data but brokerages have consistently lost business for the last 20 years.
And I think next year is the first time where advisers will surpass broker dealers the Maril Lynches the Morgan Stanley's etc in terms of assets under management. And I think when you see things like that in the marketplace that happen over long persistent periods of time, what it usually means is one party has a superior value proposition to the other. In other words, people are voting with their dollars every year, every day. And you know, we've been a great beneficiary of that.
So I think it's really those two things. So you know, we end up doing a lot of education, Kyle, on to to you know, clients, advisers, you know, adviserss come and ask us how do I do this? How do I get my client into private markets to do it efficiently? It's not just about good returns, you know, it's also about great service, integration with their workflow, integration with their reporting, you know, to clients, their returns and their performance reporting to clients.
All those things matter if you're an adviser and you know, it's you could have great returns and you generate two or 300 basis points a year, more than a let's say a public market equivalent or even more than that. But if it's a pain for the adviser to do and it creates a bunch of operational frictions, they still may not do it. So we've worked very hard to to provide a holistic value prop, not just the the alpha generation or the higher return generation. But but those are the reasons why there's a lot of frictions for individuals to to enter the private markets.
So I want to connect that back to uh the RAIA as a whole or or RAAS as a whole in the market. And I love that you're saying they should be thinking more about private markets and alts. You know, a lot of the data that we see is that you're going to start to see allocation to alternative investments growing. You see platforms like I Capital and Case and these other ones are growing like crazy, but that's that's only tells one part of the story.
There's still a ton of dollars flowing into directly subscribed deals or private placements or things like that as well. So, I'm happy to see that. But in terms of education, like you were talking about, if I'm an RAIA listening to this, which is a majority of the audience, and saying, "I want to figure out how to connect more with the private markets or alts," what would you tell them rather than them saying, "Ah, Mark, maybe we're just going to stick on the the path of we'll do some sort of uh ETF strategy. We'll do bond ladders, you know, we'll do treasuries, they're paying good, like this all seems to work.
Why rock the boat? " And by the way, that mentality I think persisted for 30 or 40 years. I'll give you a simple example. If you were an adviser in a small town in Georgia, let's say Mon or smaller town, you know, Mon or or Dalton or something like that, for years, there was really no innovation in the service offering.
And when Bill and I first started VIP Wealth, other adviserss ridiculed us and said, "You guys are nuts. Why would you mess with the magic? " To your point, like things are good. Why would you take that risk?
And we understood that. We didn't see it as additional risk. We saw it as what we would call alpha generation. So reduced risk, higher return.
But >> you know, and that that's probably the subject of another financial science debate. But that's how we started. So we would go in to try to either acquire an adviser or win an account in let's say a min or a Dalton or something like that, Columbus Augusta. And you know what we would hear back is gosh, you know, I really I like your value prop.
It is better, but yeah, I go to church with with my adviser and I we're members of the country club, but that adviser, I don't know. It's not not time to do it. The way I saw that equation, Kyle, was then the value prop is not differentiated enough. They acknowledge it's differentiated, but they're not willing to move because the relationship still has great value to them.
I think over time that marginal calculus if you will has changed. I think the value prop between what we call strategic platforms or strategic advisors has so outsurpassed the relationship that now we're going into those towns these satellite towns to Atlanta and winning business consistently almost like we get in front of one of their clients almost 100% of the time. And that's it's not just the private markets though. all the things we're doing with AI and service capabilities and expanding the value proposition.
So, you know, to that adviser that says like, hey, you know, I'm not going to rock the boat or mess with the magic, I would be surprised today. Now, seven years ago, I think there was still, you know, a decent percentage of those in the overall pool of adviserss, >> but there's been tremendous amount of innovation and VIP Wealth is one of those firms doing that. That's expanding the value prop. We're doing more than we've ever done for our clients before, including bill pay and other services.
>> Oh, wow. >> Yeah. That just make their lives easier. and all the way down the planning spectrum, retirement planning, financial planning, estate planning, tax planning, charitable planning, you know, all of those things.
And we've, you know, built a lot of technology around it to make it seamless and uh or what we say is frictionless for our clients and for adviserss. I think when you see that value prop or your client, you know, let's say you're another adviser and comes up against it and you lose a client and it's not just us. I mean, there are other strategic platforms out there. There's probably, I don't know, seven that that I really admire out there and there's probably 20 that have aspirations to do it and they might do it, you know, they probably will do it eventually.
>> Yeah, >> that's the trend. The adviserss are being asked to do more and more for their clients in an increasingly complex world. I think that old model and you can see it. That's why the consolidation wave is taking place.
It's the three acquisitions we made. Each adviser said, "I want to round out my value prop and be able to deliver more of what you guys are delivering, but I can't invest the millions of dollars it would take to do that in the time and to start growing. We just want to grow. " Yeah.
>> So that would be my answer is I think the market shifted and you know that now the competitive positioning of that you know kind of traditional advisor that provides you know basic asset allocation and some basic planning. Um that's just not enough to win business and to keep business consistently. And so that would be point one. And I think point two, you know, flipped the question.
You kind of said, why would advisers consider this? Our the BIP Capital, we're a separate registered investment adviser from VIP Wealth. >> And we did that on purpose. A, it just made a good sense to separate the two, regulatory and conflict reasons.
>> But when we did that, we set about trying to be a platform for growthminded adviserss, any growthminded adviser, not just BIP wealth. And we took our learnings from years of doing that at at BIP wealth and you know how did we generate mid20s growth and this year again will close at at 22% organic growth. >> Wow. >> Firm with a $5 billion base.
So earlier when I said in general we're you know roughly 3x the bestin-class industry growth rate. You know, I mean, we hear that from everybody, Charles Schwab, DFA, whomever it is that has purview to the growth rates and the money's flowing into a lot of adviserss and that's the way we've positioned ourselves is in a world where advisers are increasingly under competitive pressure. How do we give them an advantage technologically with AI and with private market products and really in ways that integrate with their workflows? They don't have to start hiring a bunch of people to take advantage of it.
So that that's a long-winded answer, Kyle, but that >> that's a great answer. No, I love it. Your answers are providing these offshoots for opportunities to talk about other stuff. >> 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.
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Visit milemarker. co and mention the next mile podcast and I'll personally [music] make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and scale your practice. because your time should be spent building your business, not [music] buried in spreadsheets. >> I know you've done a lot of investing in technology companies and that was kind of part of your money moment that led you here and then you've mentioned a couple of times, hey, BIP, wealthy capital has invested in technology to make this better.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about what have you learned from the companies you invested in that then you kind of take and you're like oh let's apply that to our own business to make this better because most RAAS are are building and trying to integrate tech at mile marker our value prop is get all the data into one centralized place and build portals and unique technology on top of it. And it sounds like you guys have done a little bit of that, too. But what have you learned from all of that tech experience and helping build those businesses and investing in them that you said, "Let's take some of those nuggets and apply it back to our own business and eat our own cooking. " >> Yeah, it's a really insightful question, Kyle.
I mean, I wish I could say like from the outset, it dawned on me that we would have this kind of intangible asset, this hidden competitive advantage, but having had the privilege of investing in multiple unicorns, multiple great companies, what you learn is there are some amazingly gifted and talented people out there. And as I watched that unfold, we've been in business for about two decades. The first decade I, you know, I I really kind of felt like was I was learning at a exponential pace. But figuring out how to put it all together and how to bring those learnings into our own organization, like anything is challenging.
You can have a great idea, but you still got to execute it and I needed to have the team for that. So over time, we built on the capital side something called performance engineering. But every one of our portfolio companies goes through that. And what we've done is effectively we share the best of the best practice.
Whether it's top of the funnel lead generation, whether it's social media strategy, whether it's serendipitous discovery and bringing hand raisers. In other words, they read an article to you. You're not selling anything. You start positioning yourself as a thought leader.
all of those strategies, you know, if you do this for decades on end, you run into extremely talented people and you see what works and then you can share the best of the best across the platform and across our ecosystem of companies. Sometime about seven years ago, I think it was seven years ago, we woke up and said, "Wait a minute, why wouldn't we, you know, put our own two companies, BIP wealth and capital through performance engineering? " And we ended up doing that and it had a radical impact on our own business. Like I'll give you an anecdotal story.
We just acquired a a wealth management firm about a billion dollar firm out in East Atlanta. Great guys. And you know when they started saying like you know they were interested in growth and in growing their platform and when they said show us your your process. How are you guys growing so fast?
What's going on? I think they were blown away that we had implemented a full-blown software as a service sales process. Meet every morning, go through every lead. Really, real discipline on having customer action drive the pipeline in the funnel.
When we started to do that, I was then leading the wealth side of the house. When we decided to do that, I realized I had a very deeply ingrained service culture, which is what an adviser, an advisory firm should have. >> So the challenge was how do I build a sales culture on top of the service culture? In other words, don't lose the service culture, but augment a sales culture.
That was actually really challenging. It took us about a year to figure out how to do that in a way that advisers would digest and really put into practice. But that's an example. And Kyle, almost immediately when we started that discipline, when we started the content strategy to explain our value prop in more detail, when we started arming our adviserss to be successful, the numbers shot up into the right.
And it's really been that way for, you know, we started seven years ago and then by the end of the year, we got it right. So for six years, we've had increasingly record growth on a nominal basis and we've been able to maintain 20% plus in every year. And so that that's an example. But by the way, all of those techniques I went and took from the QA symphonies of the world, the playons of the world, the ingenious meds of the world and you know because they had just tremendous leaders in various functional areas.
I think it's so insightful and I think it is a commonality from the firms I speak to that are growing a lot is that I loved how you said how do I build a sales culture on top of my service culture because it does seem to me that the trepidation is well if we start getting too salesy we're going to lose that service aspect and our business is service right and and almost everybody I talk to says we grow through referrals if we do a great job they're going to refer us and that's great I mean at my business I you know I want referrals by doing a great job right but we still have that culture of sales on top of it. It just makes me want to ask you, why do you think more people are not doing this? Is it investment? Is it hey, you know, I've got to invest in the marketing technology.
I've got to invest in all of this stuff. I've got to invest in the sales process, etc. , etc. , or do you think that there's a a rejection of it as a strategy for growing a business like this?
>> The rejection, I would put, is a dimminim, it's a small reason. I think the the first issue is time constraints for adviserss. And I think the second is knowhow and right I mean we you asked the question we have the advantage I didn't come into the world as I told you at the beginning my background's is in quant you know quantitative and math >> I didn't know the first thing about running a sales process and so I went and sat with really talented people that had done that you know Christy Johnson who leads our performance team Jordan Raky if you know him locally >> oh man a leg he's a local legend >> a local sales legend and Andrew Samoza who you know who's run multiple sales teams you know with great success Willilifford who ran ingenious met for us and I literally just broke down every element of their goto market strategy and did that that knowhow is hard to acquire and I think if you're an adviser and you've spent your entire life as you should focused on how do you provide better planning how do you provide better service how do you provide better asset allocation the notion of becoming a kind of worldclass go-to market sales sales leader with top of the funnel lead generation and conversion to qualified lead and then middle of the funnel conversions all the way to closing skills those don't come naturally and you know we used to say well gosh you know we're looking for a great service great adviser who has sales skills our experience is that's like hunting for unicorns I mean there just not a lot of them out there and you have to build that so that that's the knowhow I think the time constraint issue that we see and that you know we tell other adviserss this is what we help you solve olve is the time constraint is I don't know how many Kyle advisers I've talked to but it's in the 500 range in my career about their business and how they're growing it. What I hear from them is once we hit roughly 90 clients give or take unless you're at a wire house but that's why the service is so diminished.
But if you're an adviser and you're meeting with an investor or a f family or a household quarterly and those meetings tend to stack towards the end of the quarter and you know you have just call it 60 to 65 days in a quarter, business days in a quarter and you know maybe half of those days are available two meetings a day you're still only getting to 2/3 of your book and right if you have 90 households and so what we see is when advisors hit about 60 to 70 households, they start to experience time constraints and they're juggling schedules and trying to deliver the value. When they hit 90, they're that is a very impressive juggling act to do that. >> So, [clears throat] one of the other problems we help them solve is the time constraint problem. How do you deliver more value efficiently with more time and to solve that?
So, I think that's why you don't see it's less that they kind of reject sales in general. I mean, to your point, they said, you know, hey, we're going to get referrals if we do a good job. Well, that's a sales motion. That's kind of the way we started.
But the more we leaned into knowhow in the sales process, the more our adviserss who probably had some of those latent thoughts like I don't know if I want I don't want to turn ourselves into a sales. I don't want to lose what I do for a living that's so motivating helping families and and that that intrinsic motivation was something we didn't we wanted to make sure we maintained. But I think you can do both. And so, but I I think there's a little bit of that that you mentioned to overcome this kind of rejection of, you know, we're professionals.
We're not salespeople, but most of it is knowhow and capacity. And we've spent a lot of time solving those problems for our advisor partners. I love that. I love that.
Okay. I want to talk about technology a little bit more, but specifically Raia technology, wealth management technology. So, how much of what you guys are using to run BIP Wealth is homegrown versus stuff that you're buying off the shelf that's made for advisors that you're plugging into the business? >> Kyle, I want to get I want to say 100% is homegrown.
>> Oh, wow. There might be an integration here or there like we're using Plaid, so if you counted that, but really we retool a lot of stuff in Plaid to our, you know, to deliver our own value proposition. So um but again one of the I think interesting decisions we made early on in the company's life and it really was born out of pain. So you know if you hear like a theme here when we encounter pain our instinct is not to yell louder yell at vendors it's to solve the problem and to really go dissect the problem deconstruct it and then rebuild a solution.
And we decided early on, we ran into like a bunch of performance reporting issues in kind of year two of the wealth management firm's life. Then when we went to the core and said, why is this data not good that we're getting into? It was portfolio center we were using at the time, which is now kind of not necessarily a top tier product, but it just they couldn't, you know, and then when we looked at the root cause that, you know, the poor data and where it was coming from, we realized that problem's not going to be solved by them. So we made the determination to solve it ourselves and it set us on a course of building our own technology that you know and so again Kyle I mean when I say not just externally other advisors you're doing what you guys are ridiculous with everything you do right but internally we were fighting our own advisors why are we wasting money on that we could just use you know x y or z in hindsight you know now we have a fully integrated solution that combines all the different softwares and software platforms that are needed.
A CRM, a rebalancing tool, a general workflow and portfolio management tool like a Tamarak or an Orion or a Black Diamond, you know, Plaid integrations, integrations of money guide pro and e-oney that all come into a holistic, you know, a a data lake, but then we layer software and AI on top of that to deliver increasingly AI, I should say. We're still in the early innings of that. But what we woke up and realized is A, we control our own destiny. >> B, we control all of our own data.
And most advisers don't. And in the AI revolution that we're just in the first or second inning of, if you don't control your own data, then somebody else controls you. So that is a, you know, a big area of focus. And now we're in a position where a, it's much less expensive.
It wasn't to start, but we made all this capital investment in a fully integrated holistic platform for our adviserss that is working for them all the time. I just simple example this just came up but I had an insurance renewal on one of our actually on the boat that we were and it's not something I think about that much and it was like oh you got to renew the insurance policy and most advisors that are really busy would not catch that and say hey you've got a an insurance policy that's renewing we would have gotten it because we would have gotten a notice as it's coming due but you know BIP wealth because of its technology was able ble to say, "Hey, this is coming due in a few months. You need to go ahead and contact them. If you want time to shop it, then let's go ahead and do that.
" But it's thousands of things like that, Kyle, that clients expect you. They don't necessarily expect you, but they're really wowed when you do that, right? And you help them. >> Yeah.
>> And that's the type of stuff we've been able to do because we control all our own data. We can, you know, the Plaid integration lets us see data on their insurance policies and everything else. which really positions us nicely with the client really as almost their outsource CFO family CFO and >> and that's been a I wish I could say we had that clear of a strategic vision when we started building our own technology we didn't we were really just solving problems in front of us but you know then you wake up and realize like oh my word we're perfectly positioned for AI where others they have to go piece together and integrate and bring all this stuff together to really expand their value prop and especially with pace. So that yeah, it's all it's really all homegrown and and again there's still detractors you know but for the most part I think people realize like wow that was a brilliant decision.
I wouldn't call it brilliant. It's a kind of accidental brilliance. [laughter] >> Well and again I think I think you had this unique advantage of you were really surrounded by a lot of technologists that a lot of raas don't have that advantage and and you were able to see what it takes to do this. you were inside, you know, the investment that goes into this and all of that type of thing.
So, it's great to hear you say that and congrats on on making all of that happen because I know that was probably a long journey that required investment and time and pat a lot of patience to get to where you're at. >> That's cool. >> All right. You talked about AI, you talked about technology investment, you've talked about consolidation and everything.
I want to kind of bring all those together. I want to ask you to get your crystal ball out, look into the future a little bit, and tell me about some of the things that you are trying to position VIP Wealth and Capital for over the next couple years because I know in your chair, one of your jobs is to look around the corner a little bit, look and see what's coming and try and best position those organizations to be successful for the future. So, what do you see happening trends-wise, technology or non that's going to be impactful for RAAS in the future? Well, it it's probably cliche these days, but I really think we're, you know, if you study artificial intelligence, we've kind of moved through artificial narrow intelligence, which is machine learning and the ability of a machine to do one task into, you know, I think we're in what I would call the multimodal AI phase.
So that is the ability of machines to take voice, text, audio, visual, and we're doing that today, but we've really just started this in the last year because those capabilities have only come online in the in the past year. But I think if you're an adviser and you don't think AI is going to disrupt your business significantly, I think you're sadly mistaken. I cannot imagine a world, Kyle, where AI is not delivering a lot of the basic services that or even analytical services that advisers deliver today. And you know, when when I sit in front of advisers, some publicly will say, "Oh, they're never going to replace me in my relationship.
" When you sit with them quietly about what their fears are, they already see this. They already feel this pinch and they already see other advisers starting to do things increase capacity increase value prop provide more comprehensive and holistic advice and you know behind the scenes it's really the AI doing that but you know we've taken the approach of what we would you know what we call human machine partnership but in other words the machines are going to augment the humans >> yep >> to do more and we we're doing the same thing on the capital side like the same jobs that our associates and analysts did for really decades was do basic analysis, collect metrics and financials from companies, repurpose it into a framework so that the leadership team and the on the investment team could make decisions about other capital allocations or we need to step in, there's something that's not going well. All that almost all of that is now automated because we just take in suck in data straight out of their operating systems whether it's Quickbooks or Salesforce or whatever it is and then we repurpose it and give them their not that we're dictatorial about it but just you know if you ever talk to a founder one of the most painful things that they have to do is prepare for a board meeting and so we just you know and all the deck and they you know the whole staff kind of takes a week off of the core business to prepare for that board meeting. We just said to them, don't do that.
Let us take your data. We'll repurpose it to what we need, give it back to you in a presentation, and you can augment qualitatively or quantitatively the way you want, but let us save you a bunch of time, but also give us the visibility we need rather than chasing data. >> That eliminated about 40% of the work that our associates and analysts do. But you can imagine the same thing for adviserss when they're analyzing somebody's situation or their investment performance versus their retirement goals and how they want to retire and are you on track and are you not on track.
There's no reason a machine won't do that better, faster, um, etc. And so we could say, oh, we're going to take the approach to replace advisors. I think that's a mistake because there is something that's irreplaceable about the humanto human connection. >> Yeah.
Correct. But I think allowing our advisers and empowering them to do more, to deliver more value, to be more on top of their clients accounts is where we're focused. And so I think any adviser that is not thinking about that and doesn't have a solution. I think they're probably already feeling it mildly.
I think in the next three years they'll really feel it. in the next 5 years it's going to be my suspicion is it will be a significant competitive disadvantage if you don't have those capabilities. So I think that's one that may be all we you know we should talk about but that's a >> that's the big one that we're focused on now. >> Yeah I think that's amazing.
I mean I think even to your example before about how you guys caught that insurance renewal. It's like okay that's really cool what your technology already did but then you can see how AI takes that one step further. It's like, hey, there was a renewal opportunity. We actually went and found a couple of different quotes and we served that up and here's why we think this one is the best, but you can ultimately decide what you want to decide about that on the, you know, so it could just go and do a lot of that research, find everything, do all of those things for you, and then you give it to the person to make the qualitative decision around what's best for that client or let the client decide.
Or we take the AI to say, "And by the way, we anticipated that you might want to shop this out. We took the liberty of going to shop the quotes for you, and by the way, we think you could save whatever, you know, $200 a month in premiums. Here you go. " I mean, that's real value.
And at some point, Kyle, we woke up and realized that we are in the advice business, but we're also in the worry elimination business. And real value to individuals with complex lives who are raising kids, trying to manage their own career is to take that worry and that concern off their plate or to organize it in a way that just makes it like, man, I am really thankful for this partnership and that's existed since the dawn of time. You know, humans providing those types of services, but now we're capable of doing that at scale and in ways that we've never been able to do it. And I think anybody who doesn't see that coming in the advice space is probably needs to sell their practice or hook up with another platform.
And I just don't see a scenario where AI is not going to be performing a lot of the functions in venture firms or private equity firms or wealth management firms. >> Yeah, that's great. Okay, we are going to move into the final segment of the show. I feel like we could keep going for hours.
We'll probably have to have you back on for a follow-up episode, but we're going to move into the final segment of the show, which is what we call the Milemarker Minute. It is a series of lightning round questions, a little more light-hearted, aimed to get to know you a bit better. So, are you ready for the mile marker minute? >> Yeah, bring it.
>> All right, Mark. If you could travel anywhere in the world you've never been to before, where would you go? >> Jerusalem. >> Oh, great answer.
Okay. What is the best flavor of ice cream? >> Chocolate, but from Argentina. >> Okay.
Argentinian chocolate. I like that. What is the best book you've read or listened to in the last year? >> I read Skin in the Game by Nim Talib.
It's outstanding both as a ethical foundation and also business foundation. >> Okay. So the the name of our company is Milemarker which is a symbol for progress. And here at Milemarker we believe progress never stops.
So for you personally Mark what does progress mean for Mark Buffington? Yeah, I think one of the most difficult things when I started I was kind of a venture capitalist or you investor in private companies but you know also an adviser. I mean I had a book of business as well as we built the firm much like our founders. I've had to make the transition from somebody who's producing to somebody who's managing and leading.
And that is a very hard transition. And anybody who says it's not is either a is lying or hasn't been through it. And [laughter] I find myself, I want to jump in and do things every day that I think could be done better. Learning how to trust your team, learning how to lead them.
You know, a lot of times I think I'm being articulate on what our northstar is, but figuring out ways to make sure that that's sunk in with the team who may not share the same vision or all the unspoken things that are left in my head that that are not clarified. I think those challenges as a leader are really complicated and some people have it naturally. Most people I see tend to be, you know, somewhat cerebral. They think about their businesses a lot.
There's a lot like contained in their head that their staff, you know, doesn't necessarily get and their leadership team don't necessarily get all that clarity. And I think I've had to work very hard on, you know, becoming a at least a good CEO. Even 10 years ago or seven years ago, I'd say I was still developing in that. And I I'm still developing.
I think about that all the time. And the more the business scales, the bigger the challenges are with leadership, communication, feedback. So to me, that's the the for me the progress is that I'm 55. I I got another 10-year run in me, and I'm hoping this is the best as a leader it's ever been.
And but I invest a lot in that. I have a coach. I have, you know, I read a lot about it. Look at webinars.
By the way, Tik Tok is kind of excellent for just about everything. And like I've learned a lot about AI. I've learned a lot about leadership. You know, D.
You wouldn't necessarily think like somebody 55 is hanging out on TikTok, but it's a great resource for learning specific topics. And so that's it, Kyle. It's it's really filling the shoes of a a high quality CEO. >> I love that.
I absolutely love that. All right. Last question. There is an alternate universe and in this alternate universe, Mark Buffington has a career that has nothing to do with financial services.
What career do you have in this alternate universe? >> College football coach. >> I love it. I love it.
Well, shout out to Brent T on this on this podcast already. Um, I think he's done a great job at Georgia Tech and I think you would make a great college football coach. So, you made it through the mile marker minute. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
I I really thought this was an insightful conversation. I love even some of the the oneliners you have connecting individuals to the innovation economy and a couple of others that you dropped in this. It was a lot of fun. I wish we had more time.
We're going to have to have you back on. >> Yeah, let's do it again. It' be fun. Maybe I'll have you on one of ours if you're open to that.
>> Hey, anytime, man. I would love to. I would love to. That's been another episode of Next Mile.
Please make sure you click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this and leave us a review so people can find conversations like the one we just had with Mark. But until next time, enjoy every mile.
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