AI for Advisors newsletter
Many financial advisors get their origin story wrong. Not because they’re bad writers. Because they’re solving for the wrong question.
Walk through a hundred advisor websites and you’ll see two extremes. The first is the sanitized corporate bio: years in business, credentials stacked like Tetris blocks, a generic closing line about “passion for helping clients achieve their goals.” It reads like a LinkedIn profile written by compliance.
The second extreme is the overshare. The advisor who leads with personal trauma, family crisis, or financial disaster, which is heavy on emotion, light on professional relevance. It feels like therapy, not positioning.
Neither approach answers the question prospects are asking: Why should I trust you with my financial future?
Here’s what most advisors miss: You are not selling portfolio construction. You are selling judgment under uncertainty. Your origin story is not autobiography. It is a strategic positioning tool that demonstrates earned judgment. A strong origin story accomplishes three things:
- It demonstrates transformation. You’ve evolved, not just aged.
- It reinforces your positioning and niche. It explains why you serve who you serve.
- It ends with conviction. Prospects hire advisors who believe something clearly.
Most advisors underuse this asset. They treat their origin story as background noise instead of a trust-building mechanism that works before the first meeting even happens.
Here’s the problem: Writing your own origin story is almost impossible to do well.
You’re too close to it. You either sanitize it into corporate speak or you can’t see which details matter. You don’t know where the story starts. You’re not sure which parts build credibility and which parts sound like you’re trying too hard.
This is exactly where AI becomes a strategic tool. Not to write your story for you but to pressure-test it and ask the questions you’d never ask yourself and pull out the details that matter and strip away the ones that don’t.
Here is an eight-prompt framework designed specifically to use with AI to develop your best origin story. Each prompt is crafted to eliminate vagueness, force specificity, and reveal whether your story has real substance or whether you’re still hiding behind generalities.
You won’t use all eight prompts in your final narrative. But running through all eight with an AI will sharpen what you do use. Think of this as iterative development: You feed the AI your raw material. It asks you harder questions and then you refine them until you end up with a story that feels true and builds trust. Let’s walk through how this works.
Use voice mode or dictation
This exercise is an ideal use case for AI voice capabilities—either dictation mode or the interactive two-way voice conversation features available in tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Speaking your answers out loud instead of typing them changes the quality of what comes out. You’re less self-conscious. You catch yourself using corporate language and self-correct in real time. You think out loud, which is exactly what this exercise requires.
If your AI tool offers active voice mode—where the AI asks follow-up questions and you respond verbally in a natural back-and-forth—use it. It feels less like filling out a form and more like working with a coach who won’t let you off easy.
For this exercise, set aside 30–45 minutes, find a private space, and talk through these prompts below. You’ll end up with raw material that’s sharper and more honest than anything you’d produce staring at a blank page.
The eight-prompt framework to create your origin story
These eight prompts are designed to be used in conversation with an AI—ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever tool you’re working with. They are not journaling exercises. They are diagnostic questions that force clarity through iteration.
Here’s why AI works for this:
It removes self-consciousness. You’re not performing for a human audience. You’re working with a tool that doesn’t judge, doesn’t get bored, and will ask follow-up questions until the story sharpens.
It exposes weak spots. AI can spot when you’re being vague, when your logic doesn’t connect, when you’re using marketing language instead of real conviction.
It speeds up iteration. You can test multiple versions, reframe the same story five different ways, and see which structure lands—all in one session.
The workflow is simple:
- Copy a prompt into your AI conversation.
- Answer it as specifically as you can.
- Let the AI ask follow-up questions.
- Refine until the answer feels sharp.
- Move to the next prompt.
By the end, you’ll have raw material that’s been refined through iteration. Then you shape it into one cohesive narrative. Let’s go through each prompt and what you’re trying to extract.
The eight prompts
1. The Defining Moment prompt:
“I’m working on my professional origin story. Ask me: What specific moment made me realize something had to change in my career or approach to financial advice and what did it cost me to admit that? Push me to name the year, the client situation if relevant, and the actual stakes involved.”
What you’re extracting: Vague origin stories talk about “always having a passion for finance.” Credible ones point to a specific year, a specific consequence, a specific internal conflict. The AI will push you for details. Let it. Specificity builds credibility. Trust lives in details.
If you can’t point to a defining moment, your story feels manufactured. The AI will reveal whether you have one.
2. The Pain-to-Purpose Bridge prompt:
“Help me draw a direct line between a personal struggle or experience I’ve had and the specific mission I now serve as a financial advisor. Push me to be concrete about: What happened to me → What I now do professionally → How that serves my clients differently.”
What you’re extracting: This is where transformation happens. You’re building the connection between lived experience and current service. If you went through a divorce and now you specialize in helping clients navigate financial separation, that’s a bridge. If you watched a parent lose retirement savings in 2008 and now you focus on downside protection for retirees, that’s a bridge.
The AI will test whether the connection is real or forced, whether it’s vague, and if the story feels opportunistic. If it’s direct, it builds authority.
3. The Credibility Anchor prompt:
“Ask me what proof exists that I’ve actually walked this road, beyond words. What market cycles have I survived? What did I learn from them? What certifications or training shaped my thinking? What failures did I learn from? Push me to be specific about what changed in my practice as a result.”
What you’re extracting: Years in business alone do not create authority. Experience under pressure does. This is where your résumé earns its place, not as a list of credentials, but as evidence that you’ve done the work. The AI will help you separate what sounds impressive from what demonstrates earned judgment.
4. The ‘Why I Care’ prompt:
“Challenge me to explain why this work matters to me personally—not professionally. If I use words like ‘passionate’ or ‘helping people achieve their goals,’ call me out and make me dig deeper. What would I lose emotionally if I stopped doing this work?”
What you’re extracting: This is the hardest prompt for most advisors because it requires dropping the marketing language. The AI won’t let you get away with LinkedIn filler. It will push you to find the real emotional stake. Connection requires skin in the game. Prospects can tell when you genuinely care and when you’re reciting a mission statement.
5. The Relatable Weakness prompt:
“What belief or behavior once held me back as an advisor and how did I outgrow it? Help me identify a real weakness or blind spot I had earlier in my career, what made me see it, and what I do differently now.”
What you’re extracting: Transformation builds authority. Perfection creates distance. Maybe you used to chase performance and now you prioritize planning. Maybe you used to avoid difficult conversations and now you lead with honesty. The AI will help you find the evolution that signals maturity without undermining your credibility.
6. The Turning Point Framework prompt:
“Help me structure my origin story using this framework: Before → Disruption → After. What was I doing before? What caused the shift? What am I doing now, and why is it meaningfully different? Keep me disciplined—don’t let me ramble.”
What you’re extracting: This is your structural backbone. Every credible origin story follows this pattern. The AI will keep you from wandering. It will force you to identify the actual turning point and explain what changed. This framework prevents the meandering autobiography trap.
7. The Service Alignment prompt:
“Test whether my origin story uniquely positions me to serve my specific niche. If my story could work for any advisor in any specialty, call that out. Help me tie my personal experience directly to why I serve [my specific client type].”
What you’re extracting: Generic stories create noise. Precision creates differentiation. If you serve business owners, your story should involve business complexity. If you serve retirees, your story should involve retirement planning under uncertainty. The AI will examine whether your positioning is differentiated or just claimed.
8. The Conviction Statement prompt:
“Based on everything I’ve shared, help me articulate what I now believe without hesitation. What’s my core conviction about financial advice, drawn from my experience? Don’t let me hedge or use soft language. Make me land on something clear.”
What you’re extracting: This is how you close. Not with a tagline. With a clear belief. Prospects hire advisors for judgment. Conviction signals leadership. The AI will help you strip away the qualifiers and land on what you believe after years of experience.
After you’ve run all eight prompts
You’ll have raw material that’s been validated. Now you shape it. Use this prompt and ask the AI:
“Based on my answers to these eight prompts, draft three different versions of my origin story: one that’s 150 words for my LinkedIn About section, one that’s 300 words for my website, and one that’s 500 words for a speaking bio. Keep the strongest through-line and end each with my conviction statement.”
The AI will synthesize your answers, and you will refine them. You choose the version that feels most true and edit appropriately. This is AI-assisted development. Not AI writing. The difference matters.
What you’re building here
This isn’t an exercise in better copywriting. You’re building a trust mechanism that works at scale. Every prospect who reads your origin story before the first call is running the same calculation: Does this person understand something I need them to understand?
Generic bios don’t answer that question. Credential stacking doesn’t answer it. Personal oversharing doesn’t answer it. A sharp origin story does because it shows transformation, not just longevity. It connects your experience to their need, and it ends with conviction, not a tagline.
Most advisors will skip this work. They’ll keep the sanitized version or wing it in discovery meetings. That’s their error. Your story is already working, and the question is whether it’s building trust or creating distance.
So, set aside 45 minutes and run these eight prompts. Let the AI ask the questions you’d never ask yourself and answer them in a relaxed, free-wheeling and honest way. You’ll end up with something sharper than anything you’d produce staring at a blank page.
Remember, your origin story is not autobiography. It’s “positioning,” so treat it like the strategic asset it is.
Ready to make the leap? Horsesmouth’s AI for Advisors Pro training programs provide the structured, advisor-specific approach that transforms occasional users into confident practitioners. Learn more at www.horsesmouth.com/aipro.