June 18, 2025 • 17 mins
I know AI can help but where do I start?!
The conundrum of many a small business owner.
With so many tools, it can be hard to know where to begin, but good old experimentation is still the best way to find the right ones for you.
In this episode I am joined by Alasdair Walker, Chartered Financial Planner and Managing Director of Optimum Path Financial Planning. Alasdair shares the surprising tool that has been a life saver for him in creating cash flow reports: Copilot!
He also shares the problems he has faced using AI and how note takers like Fireflies make his meetings more efficient and enhance the time he spends with clients.
There is a lot to learn here from Alasdair for any small business owner looking to find the right tools to start on your AI journey!
"Copilot made life so much easier!”- Alasdair
You’ll hear about:
- How AI significantly enhanced Alasdair’s business efficiency.
- Transcription tools like Fireflies save time in client meetings.
- Experimentation is key to finding the right AI tools.
- AI can assess client vulnerabilities through data analysis.
- Why automation allows for more focus on client interactions.
- A Copilot success story in automating data management tasks effectively.
- AI is not about replacing humans but enhancing their work.
Connect With Alasdair:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/financialwalker/
Optimum Path Financial Planning - https://optimumpath.co.uk/
Alasdair’s Linktree - https://linktr.ee/financialwalker
Connect With Me:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/accessible-ai/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/heather_aifnt/?hl=en
AI for Non-Techies - https://nontechies.ai/home
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@aifornontechies
Join my Academy - https://nontechies.ai/ai-academy
Produced by Between Tracks Media Productions - https://www.betweentracks.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alasdair Walker (00:00):
When it works
(00:00):
well. It works really, really
well. So I needed to make a
short term cash flow for the
business. And we get a load of
data from our back office
software. We use Xero, so we get
output from zero. I needed to
draw these different bits of
information together, and I
started sort of manually
grabbing and copying pasting. I
thought, if I can do this
better, so with on a chat with
copilot in Excel and saying, you
(00:22):
know, can I sort of ingest this
data in a way that's been easy
to manage? Effectively created a
data source and basically brings
it out in the format, style and
whatever that I need, I wouldn't
be able to repeat that without
copilot. You know, that isn't
something I now know how to do.
It did it for me, and it made
life so much easier. I foreign.
Heather Murray (00:53):
Hello everybody,
and welcome to how I use AI.
This is a super casual, 20
minute podcast that's just
introducing me to some of these
real stories that happen in
happening in AI. And there's a
lot of people currently talking
about, wow, AI is wonderful.
It's amazing. But where are
these real success stories? And
I want to share some of the
(01:13):
people that I've met, their
stories, their successes, the
tools they're using, the tools I
think are rubbish and and, yeah,
and just get really digging into
the actual, real stuff. Um, so
I'd really like to welcome
Alistair Walker, uh, today,
who's a certified and Chartered
Financial Planner. He's managing
director of optimum path
financial planning, and he's
also co founder of the next
(01:34):
wealth AI Lab. I'll put all the
all of those links below, of
course. Um, so Alistair, a very
warm welcome to you. Hi. Thanks
for having me lovely stuff. So
let's get straight into it. We
don't have much time. Is a short
podcast. Tell us about the tools
that you've been using in your
in your everyday what's working,
what isn't?
Alasdair Walker (01:51):
Yeah, sure. So
a financial planner spends most
of their time either in meetings
with clients or after meetings,
writing up things that they've
spoken about with clients, or
planning for meetings they're
gonna have the clients. So it's
like a super client meeting
centric role. And the kind of
(02:12):
thin end of the wedge for us,
for AI, was getting getting an
AI transcription bot into the
into the meeting, and it was
absolutely transformative. We
started off using Zoom, zoom
just sort of through, throughout
a free transcription service.
Started using that, and then we
realised it wasn't very
(02:33):
flexible, didn't have very many
features. Start looking around.
We've settled now on fireflies,
which is an off the shelf, you
know, low monthly cost, easy to
set up solution, and we've
really just tried hard to
leverage it in everything we do.
So an obvious thing to do is to
(02:53):
kind of write up meeting notes,
which is great. It means that
I'm spending less time writing
my own notes and more time
speaking and listening with the
client, which is what they pay
us for. But it does much, much
more than that, if you start to
sort of look at dig into the
surface a little bit. So we're
using it to assess potential
vulnerabilities for clients, for
example, as maybe a bit of a
(03:15):
novel use based on sort of
sentiment and the way that
questions are answered and asked
and those sorts of things that's
really helpful. We're using it
to kind of assess how successful
a meeting was from the planners
perspective. You know, did we
interrupt the client, for
example, you know, did we answer
all the questions that were
asked? Did we miss anything? So
that kind of, that kind of
(03:36):
assessment of that one thing,
which is a, you know, the audio
of a meeting. Basically, we can
slice lots of different ways and
largely automated as well.
Heather Murray (03:44):
That's amazing.
I love that kind of AI note
taker and AI chatbot combo.
There's so much you can do, like
you say, in training people to
be better in delivering client
services and also in kind of I
find it really useful for
marketing purposes. So people
will come onto calls and they'll
talk about their pain points.
And there's nothing stronger
than real pain points and
details of them to create
(04:05):
content, to attract more people,
like that as well. So you can
use that to generate leads, too.
I think, yeah, it's definitely
one of the most powerful combos.
So fireflies also a really good
security choice as well. With
fireflies, they've got SOC, two
level security. It's one of my
favourites when it comes to that
brilliant. Okay, have you used
any other kind of have you used
any specific tools designed for
(04:27):
financial planning or financial
advice? I know there's a lot
that are on the market. Are
there any that are sticking out
to you as particularly good, or
are they just repackaged chat?
GPT, yeah,
Alasdair Walker (04:38):
that's a really
interesting question. We my
default choice is, is off the
shelf because I like to have the
control. I'm a bit more techie
than a strict non techie, so I
don't mind sort of digging,
digging into the behind the
scenes a little bit, and writing
prompts and automating things
and that sort of stuff I've
(04:58):
spoken to. So I run this sort of
conversation community around
AI, and I've spoken to people
there who just don't have any
interest or inclination to do
that. And there are some really
great for example, meeting note
processing software that
fundamentally, probably doesn't
do anything that differently
than I've got fireflies to do,
but it's packaged in a way that
(05:19):
allows it to scale quickly.
Doesn't need somebody like me in
the business who can, who can do
it all, you know, set it all up.
And I know firms are having real
big success with with a few of
those. So, so probably the
standouts that mentioned a lot
of company called Saturn and a
product called Planet pal. So
they're all around, sort of
meeting notes. But actually, the
(05:40):
area that I'm I'm really
interested in, and one that we
are looking to adopt, another
bit of what we do is sort of
taking quite sort of complex
details from paperwork that
people give to us and or
paperwork that's provided by
product providers. And it's
basically somebody's job to sit
and read through one form of
document and sort of crunch the
(06:01):
information in there and put it
into something that sort of
makes sense. Everyone gives you
a different format. Everyone
gives you different information.
And there's a growing sort of
number of tools that the most
successful so far that I've seen
is something called Real away,
and that's got a fascinating
backstory, because it was
developed originally to help
document, I think it's the
(06:23):
German nuclear power station
documentation, super technical,
lots of, sort of like
handwritten notes added on top
and, you know, really deep, sort
of complex stuff. And so this,
this, this company built an
algorithm that interpreted that
and turned it into a sort of
digital knowledge base. And they
went, Oh, what other sectors
have got really technical, you
(06:44):
know, very, very deep, sort of
complex concepts. Oh, financial
services. And so they've
effectively pivoted that
software into into a completely
different area, and that just
helps us reduce the amount of
time someone's got to spend, you
know, crunching through that
data and floating it up in a way
that that's kind of easy to,
easy to interpret.
Heather Murray (07:03):
Yeah, I think, I
think that's something that
people worry a lot about with,
with the data, with analysing
data as well, is hallucinations
when it comes to sort of off the
shelf tools. I think it's
something, how do you think
these tools get around that
hallucination issue, and is
that? Is that a better reason to
use them than the likes of, say,
chat, GPT, data analysis mode,
(07:23):
yeah,
Alasdair Walker (07:24):
yeah.
Hallucination is an interesting
one, isn't it? I, what I think
is, is kind of reminds me of the
of doing sort of maths at
school. You know, the teacher
would always show you, show you
working. Show your workings,
yeah. And the best tools that
I've seen show they're working.
So you can, for example, with
real away it effectively, you
(07:47):
upload the PDF to their sort of
thing that they interpret it,
and you click one of its
interpretations, and it will
show you where it's lifted it
from, right in the PDF. So you
can immediately see if it's if
it's messed it up. So it doesn't
mean zero human interaction. And
I think that's very often the
key thing. That's the message
that we see over and over again.
You know, you aren't going to
replace a load of humans with
this stuff. You're just going to
(08:08):
enhance the work that the humans
are doing. Because what they're
effectively doing is now sense
checking something and then
spending their time on more
productive work for them. That's
Heather Murray (08:18):
that's a thing
that comes up over and over
again, regardless of the sector
that I'm talking to, is that
exact same thing. So the people
and I have seen this, and I keep
on saying, this is people
saying, I don't need an X
because I'll just get AI to do
it instead. And it's just not
the case. You need to be able to
be need to be able to describe
what looks good, looks like, and
recognise it the other side.
It's really important. So what
(08:39):
would you say your biggest
success when it comes to AI has
been whether it's a process,
whether it's just a singular
result. What do you think has
been a real standout moment for
you with AI?
Alasdair Walker (08:50):
There have been
a couple of real sort of what I
describe as light bulb moments,
so just just one offs, and
actually they've been, they've
both been using copilot now,
copilot, I think, is one, one of
the biggest unfulfilled promises
of the AI world, right? Because
you watch the intro videos and
it's just like, wow, it's going
to completely change the way I
(09:10):
interact with everything. It's
going to be amazing. And then
you try and use it, and it goes,
oh, sorry, I can't do that the
moment, you know, it brings you
some like, I don't know, poem
from three years ago, rather
than the business document you
were looking at. But when it
works well, it works really,
really well. So the most recent
example of this was I was needed
to make a short term cash flow
(09:30):
for the business, and we get a
load of data from our back
office software, which is
effectively in proprietary
format, but they'll spit it out
into CSV files. We we use zero
so we get output from zero.
Again, they can do do Excel
format, but I needed to draw
these different bits of
information together. And I
started sort of manually
grabbing and copying and
(09:51):
pasting. I thought, if I can do
this better, so, so with on a
chat with copilot in Excel and
saying, you know, can, can I
sort of in. Suggest this data in
a way that's been easy to
manage. Effectively created a
data source where you drop the
those individual files you
downloaded into a folder, pulls
it all through into an automated
table, manipulates the data with
(10:13):
with a pivot table, and
basically brings it out in the
format, style and whatever that
I need. But most importantly, it
means in three months time, when
I got to do it again for the
next quarterly board meeting.
Rather than completely rehash
what I was doing, you just drag
three new files into that
folder, and it all flows
through. And that was done. You
know, I had zero I wouldn't be
able to repeat that without
copilot. You know, that isn't
(10:33):
something I now know how to do.
It did it for me, and it made
life so much easier. That's,
Heather Murray (10:38):
that's, it's
really nice to hear something
positive about copilot, because
I'm in that same sort of school.
Sort of school. Thought it's a
massive, woeful disappointment
in everything I try. The more I
use it, the more I think, ah,
actually, the email integration
is kind of okay. It's not that's
better than the others that I've
seen. But it's really good to
hear a positive use case that'll
be our that'll be our hook for
this, this, uh, episode of the
(10:59):
podcast, for sure, amazing. So
what would you say? What lessons
you've learned? What do you
where did you hope it would be
great and it hasn't been? Or
what sort of time can you say
for other people who are a few
steps behind you in their sort
of AI journey? Yeah,
Alasdair Walker (11:15):
I think I spent
a lot of time sort of, sort of
experimenting, spinning wheels.
I was building front ends for
multiple chat bots. I was like,
Oh, I could get, I could ask the
same question to like, five of
them and see which answers
better. And, you know, there's
kind of free, open source
software you can do that kind of
stuff on, yeah, got a little
raspberry pi spinning away with
some some different stuff on it.
(11:37):
And after, you know, you look
back and you go, Well, I think
that experimentation was really
useful, because it showed me all
the things that weren't very It
showed me all the things that
weren't very weren't very
sensible, weren't very so I
think experimentation early on
in your journey is really
important, not being afraid just
to spend a bit of cash on some
of the some of the
subscriptions, if that's the way
you want to do it. There's some
great, I mean, you do some great
some great training stuff.
(11:57):
There's stuff on Coursera, you
know, open, aI have a big
training bank. They will.
They're all really useful. But
at some point, what I realised
is we've got to start asking for
an ROI from this stuff. So we've
got to say, right, how do we now
deploy this? It's got to meet a
name. So rather than treating it
as a as a solution, in search of
a problem, you've got to find
problems. You need to solve and
(12:19):
and deploy the right tool in the
right place for that. And so
that's the way I'm trying to
think about it now. And it's,
you know, this concept of sort
of shiny things syndrome, you
know, something comes up and
you're like, Oh, it's great. Oh,
this one. Oh, what about this?
You know, trying to, trying to
combat a little bit of
Heather Murray (12:34):
that. I suppose
it's hard, though, isn't it?
Even when I'm doing workshops, I
know can chat GPT team, there's
a new, a new pop up that, what
is it? What is it? I'm dying to
get into it. But they're like,
Yeah, that's very another.
Another thing that keeps on
going up is dedicating time to
experiment. I think it's so
important, isn't it, you, you
need to. Everybody's got their
own experience of this, because
everybody's got their own parts
of their job. They don't enjoy
as much of their own things to
(12:54):
optimise, or their own things to
innovate and ideas to execute.
So it has to be you. It can't
really be somebody else saying,
oh, use these three things for
these three reasons. So you have
to kind of find your way. And
that's the way I learned as
well. Was just pure
experimentation. And you know,
now it's, I'll do it probably an
hour a week, even though my main
job and I get plenty done in
that one hour, and I'm still
(13:16):
able to find lots of tools. I'll
just have this. I call it a
playlist, and it's just a list
of tools. As I go through the
week, I'll just put them quite
just in that, into my Asana,
actually, and I'll just work
through them at the end with the
free or I might it's for some if
I think it's okay, I might
invest in a subscription just
for that first month. And but
just making sure, of course,
other people like me, just for
who might be listening to this,
(13:36):
make sure you're regularly
reviewing that with subscription
list. It gets incredibly
expensive, very fast. Oh yes,
okay, fantastic. I mean that
that's that's brilliant. There's
a lot, a lot there. So what
would you say? Just finally, I
always ask these people at the
end, how would you advise
somebody in your position, a
financial a financial planner,
(13:57):
they're coming in and they have
not used any AI yet, where would
you advise that they get started
and get stuck in? What would be
your advice then? So
Alasdair Walker (14:07):
I think it's
easier to kind of let it meet
you where you're at. So if
you're spending your whole life
in your email inbox, you know,
maybe look at what copilot can
do to help you. Crunch a bit of
that. If you're in meetings all
day, you know, which is
basically what I do, then just
(14:30):
start inviting AI to those
meetings in whatever formats
easiest for you. So, so, yeah, I
use fireflies because it's dead
easy. One of the things I like
about fireflies is it's kind of
service agnostic, so I don't
need to be on teams or zoom or
or whatever. I I just put the
app on the phone record in the
middle of the room. It works out
for me. And don't expect it to
(14:51):
do anything magical early on,
you know, the but just getting a
set of decent meeting notes from
from, you know. A decent set of
outcomes from from a meeting
without having ever had to put a
pen to paper. You know, is
incredibly that that in itself,
got us going. So I think that's
probably the easiest thing
Heather Murray (15:09):
to do. Yeah,
yeah. I'd agree as well. From my
perspective, you've not been in
financial planning, AI note
takers. It really changed it. I
spend my day in meetings, as
well as a lot of jobs where you
do and it really changed
everything. It's almost that
kind of, oh, at first it's sort
of, what do I What do I do with
my hands? Okay? And then you
learn to start to listen more,
and it's a much better
experience. Though. I do have, I
have found that when they don't
(15:30):
show up, it's a it's a moment of
panic and a kind of random
because they do sometimes. I
don't know if fireflies has
these problems, but I test a lot
out, and I found some of them
may not go to every single
meeting. They might struggle,
and so it's a bit of a panic
moment. Then I recommend just
getting used to the manual
recording those in those
situations. Oh
Alasdair Walker (15:48):
yeah, yeah. I
mean, just, just on that. The
worst is when you realise you've
forgotten to hit record. So
you've got the app, you've
spoken to the client, you've
said, I'd like to record this
meeting. Is that okay? They say,
yes. You say, right. Here it is.
And you've not hit record.
You've had an hour speaking
away, having a really great
chat, then you're like, oh my
gosh, I'm not gonna have to
write some meeting notes for the
first time in the last three
months.
Heather Murray (16:08):
Yeah, that's
awful. Yeah. I mean, it's such a
something that's so happily left
behind, isn't it? It's something
I do not miss. I do not miss
paperwork as well. I'm trying to
reread my own writing as well.
But that's fantastic. Thank you
so much for your time. Alistair,
I really appreciate really
appreciate it. If people want to
get in touch about the next
wealth AI lab or about financial
planning themselves, what's the
(16:28):
best way to get in touch with
Alasdair Walker (16:30):
you? Yeah, so
you can find me. The easiest
place to find me is probably
I've got a link tree, which is
on financial walker.uk it's got
the business website. It's got
me on LinkedIn, it's got all
that sort of stuff. So that's
financial walker.uk,
Heather Murray (16:42):
excellent. I'll
put that into the show notes.
Believe beneath, beneath. Thank
you so much. Alistair, I really
appreciate it, and hopefully
we'll get a chance to chat again
soon.
Unknown (16:51):
Yeah, looking forward
to it. Thank you. Bye. You
When it works
(00:00):
well. It works really, really
well. So I needed to make a
short term cash flow for the
business. And we get a load of
data from our back office
software. We use Xero, so we get
output from zero. I needed to
draw these different bits of
information together, and I
started sort of manually
grabbing and copying pasting. I
thought, if I can do this
better, so with on a chat with
copilot in Excel and saying, you
(00:22):
know, can I sort of ingest this
data in a way that's been easy
to manage? Effectively created a
data source and basically brings
it out in the format, style and
whatever that I need, I wouldn't
be able to repeat that without
copilot. You know, that isn't
something I now know how to do.
It did it for me, and it made
life so much easier. I foreign.
Heather Murray (00:53):
Hello everybody,
and welcome to how I use AI.
This is a super casual, 20
minute podcast that's just
introducing me to some of these
real stories that happen in
happening in AI. And there's a
lot of people currently talking
about, wow, AI is wonderful.
It's amazing. But where are
these real success stories? And
I want to share some of the
(01:13):
people that I've met, their
stories, their successes, the
tools they're using, the tools I
think are rubbish and and, yeah,
and just get really digging into
the actual, real stuff. Um, so
I'd really like to welcome
Alistair Walker, uh, today,
who's a certified and Chartered
Financial Planner. He's managing
director of optimum path
financial planning, and he's
also co founder of the next
(01:34):
wealth AI Lab. I'll put all the
all of those links below, of
course. Um, so Alistair, a very
warm welcome to you. Hi. Thanks
for having me lovely stuff. So
let's get straight into it. We
don't have much time. Is a short
podcast. Tell us about the tools
that you've been using in your
in your everyday what's working,
what isn't?
Alasdair Walker (01:51):
Yeah, sure. So
a financial planner spends most
of their time either in meetings
with clients or after meetings,
writing up things that they've
spoken about with clients, or
planning for meetings they're
gonna have the clients. So it's
like a super client meeting
centric role. And the kind of
(02:12):
thin end of the wedge for us,
for AI, was getting getting an
AI transcription bot into the
into the meeting, and it was
absolutely transformative. We
started off using Zoom, zoom
just sort of through, throughout
a free transcription service.
Started using that, and then we
realised it wasn't very
(02:33):
flexible, didn't have very many
features. Start looking around.
We've settled now on fireflies,
which is an off the shelf, you
know, low monthly cost, easy to
set up solution, and we've
really just tried hard to
leverage it in everything we do.
So an obvious thing to do is to
(02:53):
kind of write up meeting notes,
which is great. It means that
I'm spending less time writing
my own notes and more time
speaking and listening with the
client, which is what they pay
us for. But it does much, much
more than that, if you start to
sort of look at dig into the
surface a little bit. So we're
using it to assess potential
vulnerabilities for clients, for
example, as maybe a bit of a
(03:15):
novel use based on sort of
sentiment and the way that
questions are answered and asked
and those sorts of things that's
really helpful. We're using it
to kind of assess how successful
a meeting was from the planners
perspective. You know, did we
interrupt the client, for
example, you know, did we answer
all the questions that were
asked? Did we miss anything? So
that kind of, that kind of
(03:36):
assessment of that one thing,
which is a, you know, the audio
of a meeting. Basically, we can
slice lots of different ways and
largely automated as well.
Heather Murray (03:44):
That's amazing.
I love that kind of AI note
taker and AI chatbot combo.
There's so much you can do, like
you say, in training people to
be better in delivering client
services and also in kind of I
find it really useful for
marketing purposes. So people
will come onto calls and they'll
talk about their pain points.
And there's nothing stronger
than real pain points and
details of them to create
(04:05):
content, to attract more people,
like that as well. So you can
use that to generate leads, too.
I think, yeah, it's definitely
one of the most powerful combos.
So fireflies also a really good
security choice as well. With
fireflies, they've got SOC, two
level security. It's one of my
favourites when it comes to that
brilliant. Okay, have you used
any other kind of have you used
any specific tools designed for
(04:27):
financial planning or financial
advice? I know there's a lot
that are on the market. Are
there any that are sticking out
to you as particularly good, or
are they just repackaged chat?
GPT, yeah,
Alasdair Walker (04:38):
that's a really
interesting question. We my
default choice is, is off the
shelf because I like to have the
control. I'm a bit more techie
than a strict non techie, so I
don't mind sort of digging,
digging into the behind the
scenes a little bit, and writing
prompts and automating things
and that sort of stuff I've
(04:58):
spoken to. So I run this sort of
conversation community around
AI, and I've spoken to people
there who just don't have any
interest or inclination to do
that. And there are some really
great for example, meeting note
processing software that
fundamentally, probably doesn't
do anything that differently
than I've got fireflies to do,
but it's packaged in a way that
(05:19):
allows it to scale quickly.
Doesn't need somebody like me in
the business who can, who can do
it all, you know, set it all up.
And I know firms are having real
big success with with a few of
those. So, so probably the
standouts that mentioned a lot
of company called Saturn and a
product called Planet pal. So
they're all around, sort of
meeting notes. But actually, the
(05:40):
area that I'm I'm really
interested in, and one that we
are looking to adopt, another
bit of what we do is sort of
taking quite sort of complex
details from paperwork that
people give to us and or
paperwork that's provided by
product providers. And it's
basically somebody's job to sit
and read through one form of
document and sort of crunch the
(06:01):
information in there and put it
into something that sort of
makes sense. Everyone gives you
a different format. Everyone
gives you different information.
And there's a growing sort of
number of tools that the most
successful so far that I've seen
is something called Real away,
and that's got a fascinating
backstory, because it was
developed originally to help
document, I think it's the
(06:23):
German nuclear power station
documentation, super technical,
lots of, sort of like
handwritten notes added on top
and, you know, really deep, sort
of complex stuff. And so this,
this, this company built an
algorithm that interpreted that
and turned it into a sort of
digital knowledge base. And they
went, Oh, what other sectors
have got really technical, you
(06:44):
know, very, very deep, sort of
complex concepts. Oh, financial
services. And so they've
effectively pivoted that
software into into a completely
different area, and that just
helps us reduce the amount of
time someone's got to spend, you
know, crunching through that
data and floating it up in a way
that that's kind of easy to,
easy to interpret.
Heather Murray (07:03):
Yeah, I think, I
think that's something that
people worry a lot about with,
with the data, with analysing
data as well, is hallucinations
when it comes to sort of off the
shelf tools. I think it's
something, how do you think
these tools get around that
hallucination issue, and is
that? Is that a better reason to
use them than the likes of, say,
chat, GPT, data analysis mode,
(07:23):
yeah,
Alasdair Walker (07:24):
yeah.
Hallucination is an interesting
one, isn't it? I, what I think
is, is kind of reminds me of the
of doing sort of maths at
school. You know, the teacher
would always show you, show you
working. Show your workings,
yeah. And the best tools that
I've seen show they're working.
So you can, for example, with
real away it effectively, you
(07:47):
upload the PDF to their sort of
thing that they interpret it,
and you click one of its
interpretations, and it will
show you where it's lifted it
from, right in the PDF. So you
can immediately see if it's if
it's messed it up. So it doesn't
mean zero human interaction. And
I think that's very often the
key thing. That's the message
that we see over and over again.
You know, you aren't going to
replace a load of humans with
this stuff. You're just going to
(08:08):
enhance the work that the humans
are doing. Because what they're
effectively doing is now sense
checking something and then
spending their time on more
productive work for them. That's
Heather Murray (08:18):
that's a thing
that comes up over and over
again, regardless of the sector
that I'm talking to, is that
exact same thing. So the people
and I have seen this, and I keep
on saying, this is people
saying, I don't need an X
because I'll just get AI to do
it instead. And it's just not
the case. You need to be able to
be need to be able to describe
what looks good, looks like, and
recognise it the other side.
It's really important. So what
(08:39):
would you say your biggest
success when it comes to AI has
been whether it's a process,
whether it's just a singular
result. What do you think has
been a real standout moment for
you with AI?
Alasdair Walker (08:50):
There have been
a couple of real sort of what I
describe as light bulb moments,
so just just one offs, and
actually they've been, they've
both been using copilot now,
copilot, I think, is one, one of
the biggest unfulfilled promises
of the AI world, right? Because
you watch the intro videos and
it's just like, wow, it's going
to completely change the way I
(09:10):
interact with everything. It's
going to be amazing. And then
you try and use it, and it goes,
oh, sorry, I can't do that the
moment, you know, it brings you
some like, I don't know, poem
from three years ago, rather
than the business document you
were looking at. But when it
works well, it works really,
really well. So the most recent
example of this was I was needed
to make a short term cash flow
(09:30):
for the business, and we get a
load of data from our back
office software, which is
effectively in proprietary
format, but they'll spit it out
into CSV files. We we use zero
so we get output from zero.
Again, they can do do Excel
format, but I needed to draw
these different bits of
information together. And I
started sort of manually
grabbing and copying and
(09:51):
pasting. I thought, if I can do
this better, so, so with on a
chat with copilot in Excel and
saying, you know, can, can I
sort of in. Suggest this data in
a way that's been easy to
manage. Effectively created a
data source where you drop the
those individual files you
downloaded into a folder, pulls
it all through into an automated
table, manipulates the data with
(10:13):
with a pivot table, and
basically brings it out in the
format, style and whatever that
I need. But most importantly, it
means in three months time, when
I got to do it again for the
next quarterly board meeting.
Rather than completely rehash
what I was doing, you just drag
three new files into that
folder, and it all flows
through. And that was done. You
know, I had zero I wouldn't be
able to repeat that without
copilot. You know, that isn't
(10:33):
something I now know how to do.
It did it for me, and it made
life so much easier. That's,
Heather Murray (10:38):
that's, it's
really nice to hear something
positive about copilot, because
I'm in that same sort of school.
Sort of school. Thought it's a
massive, woeful disappointment
in everything I try. The more I
use it, the more I think, ah,
actually, the email integration
is kind of okay. It's not that's
better than the others that I've
seen. But it's really good to
hear a positive use case that'll
be our that'll be our hook for
this, this, uh, episode of the
(10:59):
podcast, for sure, amazing. So
what would you say? What lessons
you've learned? What do you
where did you hope it would be
great and it hasn't been? Or
what sort of time can you say
for other people who are a few
steps behind you in their sort
of AI journey? Yeah,
Alasdair Walker (11:15):
I think I spent
a lot of time sort of, sort of
experimenting, spinning wheels.
I was building front ends for
multiple chat bots. I was like,
Oh, I could get, I could ask the
same question to like, five of
them and see which answers
better. And, you know, there's
kind of free, open source
software you can do that kind of
stuff on, yeah, got a little
raspberry pi spinning away with
some some different stuff on it.
(11:37):
And after, you know, you look
back and you go, Well, I think
that experimentation was really
useful, because it showed me all
the things that weren't very It
showed me all the things that
weren't very weren't very
sensible, weren't very so I
think experimentation early on
in your journey is really
important, not being afraid just
to spend a bit of cash on some
of the some of the
subscriptions, if that's the way
you want to do it. There's some
great, I mean, you do some great
some great training stuff.
(11:57):
There's stuff on Coursera, you
know, open, aI have a big
training bank. They will.
They're all really useful. But
at some point, what I realised
is we've got to start asking for
an ROI from this stuff. So we've
got to say, right, how do we now
deploy this? It's got to meet a
name. So rather than treating it
as a as a solution, in search of
a problem, you've got to find
problems. You need to solve and
(12:19):
and deploy the right tool in the
right place for that. And so
that's the way I'm trying to
think about it now. And it's,
you know, this concept of sort
of shiny things syndrome, you
know, something comes up and
you're like, Oh, it's great. Oh,
this one. Oh, what about this?
You know, trying to, trying to
combat a little bit of
Heather Murray (12:34):
that. I suppose
it's hard, though, isn't it?
Even when I'm doing workshops, I
know can chat GPT team, there's
a new, a new pop up that, what
is it? What is it? I'm dying to
get into it. But they're like,
Yeah, that's very another.
Another thing that keeps on
going up is dedicating time to
experiment. I think it's so
important, isn't it, you, you
need to. Everybody's got their
own experience of this, because
everybody's got their own parts
of their job. They don't enjoy
as much of their own things to
(12:54):
optimise, or their own things to
innovate and ideas to execute.
So it has to be you. It can't
really be somebody else saying,
oh, use these three things for
these three reasons. So you have
to kind of find your way. And
that's the way I learned as
well. Was just pure
experimentation. And you know,
now it's, I'll do it probably an
hour a week, even though my main
job and I get plenty done in
that one hour, and I'm still
(13:16):
able to find lots of tools. I'll
just have this. I call it a
playlist, and it's just a list
of tools. As I go through the
week, I'll just put them quite
just in that, into my Asana,
actually, and I'll just work
through them at the end with the
free or I might it's for some if
I think it's okay, I might
invest in a subscription just
for that first month. And but
just making sure, of course,
other people like me, just for
who might be listening to this,
(13:36):
make sure you're regularly
reviewing that with subscription
list. It gets incredibly
expensive, very fast. Oh yes,
okay, fantastic. I mean that
that's that's brilliant. There's
a lot, a lot there. So what
would you say? Just finally, I
always ask these people at the
end, how would you advise
somebody in your position, a
financial a financial planner,
(13:57):
they're coming in and they have
not used any AI yet, where would
you advise that they get started
and get stuck in? What would be
your advice then? So
Alasdair Walker (14:07):
I think it's
easier to kind of let it meet
you where you're at. So if
you're spending your whole life
in your email inbox, you know,
maybe look at what copilot can
do to help you. Crunch a bit of
that. If you're in meetings all
day, you know, which is
basically what I do, then just
(14:30):
start inviting AI to those
meetings in whatever formats
easiest for you. So, so, yeah, I
use fireflies because it's dead
easy. One of the things I like
about fireflies is it's kind of
service agnostic, so I don't
need to be on teams or zoom or
or whatever. I I just put the
app on the phone record in the
middle of the room. It works out
for me. And don't expect it to
(14:51):
do anything magical early on,
you know, the but just getting a
set of decent meeting notes from
from, you know. A decent set of
outcomes from from a meeting
without having ever had to put a
pen to paper. You know, is
incredibly that that in itself,
got us going. So I think that's
probably the easiest thing
Heather Murray (15:09):
to do. Yeah,
yeah. I'd agree as well. From my
perspective, you've not been in
financial planning, AI note
takers. It really changed it. I
spend my day in meetings, as
well as a lot of jobs where you
do and it really changed
everything. It's almost that
kind of, oh, at first it's sort
of, what do I What do I do with
my hands? Okay? And then you
learn to start to listen more,
and it's a much better
experience. Though. I do have, I
have found that when they don't
(15:30):
show up, it's a it's a moment of
panic and a kind of random
because they do sometimes. I
don't know if fireflies has
these problems, but I test a lot
out, and I found some of them
may not go to every single
meeting. They might struggle,
and so it's a bit of a panic
moment. Then I recommend just
getting used to the manual
recording those in those
situations. Oh
Alasdair Walker (15:48):
yeah, yeah. I
mean, just, just on that. The
worst is when you realise you've
forgotten to hit record. So
you've got the app, you've
spoken to the client, you've
said, I'd like to record this
meeting. Is that okay? They say,
yes. You say, right. Here it is.
And you've not hit record.
You've had an hour speaking
away, having a really great
chat, then you're like, oh my
gosh, I'm not gonna have to
write some meeting notes for the
first time in the last three
months.
Heather Murray (16:08):
Yeah, that's
awful. Yeah. I mean, it's such a
something that's so happily left
behind, isn't it? It's something
I do not miss. I do not miss
paperwork as well. I'm trying to
reread my own writing as well.
But that's fantastic. Thank you
so much for your time. Alistair,
I really appreciate really
appreciate it. If people want to
get in touch about the next
wealth AI lab or about financial
planning themselves, what's the
(16:28):
best way to get in touch with
Alasdair Walker (16:30):
you? Yeah, so
you can find me. The easiest
place to find me is probably
I've got a link tree, which is
on financial walker.uk it's got
the business website. It's got
me on LinkedIn, it's got all
that sort of stuff. So that's
financial walker.uk,
Heather Murray (16:42):
excellent. I'll
put that into the show notes.
Believe beneath, beneath. Thank
you so much. Alistair, I really
appreciate it, and hopefully
we'll get a chance to chat again
soon.
Unknown (16:51):
Yeah, looking forward
to it. Thank you. Bye. You
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