The New Wealth Advisor

Derrick Kinney built an independent advisory practice from nothing into the top 1% in the U.S., then sold it to become a coach, speaker, and the bestselling author of Good Money Revolution (a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller). In this conversation, Derrick breaks down the "you know how" framework that changed his business overnight — replacing "I'm a financial advisor" with a single sentence naming the exact problem a client already loses sleep over — and the community-marketing move that started it all: a $75-a-month teacher-and-student-of-the-month award at his old high school that quietly turned into million-dollar accounts. He tells the story of a 24-year-old advisor who felt judged for her age until she stopped leading with her credentials and led with a client's real fear instead, closing a $10 million account two weeks later. And he explains why he once lay down on the floor of a team meeting and announced a fake medical emergency — to force his firm to prove it could run without him. On AI, his take is blunt: no client has ever asked about your tech stack. AI's job isn't to replace the advisor, it's to clear more room for face-to-face time. "Face to face wins the race. Voice to voice is the best choice."

This episode's guest is Michael Williams, head of Trustone Financial, a national MGA under Empire Life with roughly $2.5 billion in assets under management and about 1,700 active brokers. Michael has led an MGA since 2005 and spent nine years chairing CAILBA giving him a rare, regulator-level view of where the industry is actually headed. In this conversation, Michael explains why he hasn't been told of a single advisor in his network formally using AI in their practice yet, and why he thinks that's about to change fast — including a prediction that within five to seven years, advisors will be forced into a "dealer-like" model where they can only work with one MGA. He gets into why the top 100 of his 1,700 brokers generate 97% of TrustOne's revenue, why most brokers still have no succession plan (leaving clients stranded when something happens), and his central belief: that the real wealth transfer isn't money, it's trust — which is why he pushes advisors to meet the next generation while the client is still alive, not after. He's also direct about the limits of AI adoption: any system touching client data has to be self-contained and compliant, full stop, and "AI cannot replace trust. Not yet, anyway."

This episode's guest is Shawn Bellefeuille — a Certified Financial Planner, author of Pursuit of Retirement, and founder of Retirement by Design. Before any of that, Shawn spent years as a licensed funeral director, and he traces almost everything about how he runs his practice back to that job: showing up for people at the worst moment of their life, and building trust fast because you have to. In this conversation, Shawn explains why only 14% of Canadians have a written retirement plan and what that says about the industry, how he built Retirement by Design by acquiring firms — an EOS integrator, a charitable-giving specialist, an accounting practice — instead of hiring department by department, and why he positions his team as their clients' "personal CFO" rather than one more advisor in a fragmented lineup of accountants and lawyers. He also gets into where AI genuinely helps a practice (cognitive load, efficiency, digesting information fast) and where it can't go at all — like the week his firm hand-delivered a critical illness check to a client, or the calls where the job is just to sit with someone.

This is the first episode of The New Wealth Advisor, a new interview series from Marc Gingras where he sits down with advisors quietly redefining what this industry looks like. Marc's first guest is Robert Diorio, a Portfolio Manager and Wealth Advisor at RBC with over 25 years in the business — and someone who was talking seriously about AI back in 2021, well before most of the industry caught on. In this conversation, Rob explains why he reads market history in 15-to-20-year cycles and uses it as a guide for client conversations, how AI has already eliminated the task-driven work his team used to be hired for, and why that's pushing the advisor's real job toward teaching, coaching, and emotional discipline instead. He also gets into how he's approaching the great wealth transfer with next-gen clients, at what age he starts talking to kids about money, and how he thinks about betting on companies like Nvidia and Tesla without ever betting the farm. Full video episode available now. Rob also hosts his own podcast, Behind the Numbers.