From Skeptic to Advocate: One Advisor’s AI Experience

When Chicago financial advisor Terry Burke first encountered ChatGPT, he shared the skepticism common among his peers about artificial intelligence’s practical value. Today, he describes AI as “an intern that doesn’t sleep.” Terry’s journey from skeptic to advocate offers a roadmap for advisors seeking to leverage AI effectively. His experience demonstrates that success doesn’t require technical expertise but rather a systematic approach to implementation. Terry’s story provides both reassurance and concrete guidance for advisors considering AI adoption in their own practices.

Terry is using AI to enhance office efficiency in several key areas:

1. Writing assistance: Terry finds ChatGPT especially helpful for overcoming writer’s block. He uses it to organize stream-of-consciousness thoughts into coherent drafts. This helps him quickly generate professional client communication, social media posts, and notes.
2. Client meeting preparation and follow-up: Terry uses ChatGPT to streamline his client meeting workflows. He uploads meeting notes, asks ChatGPT to generate agendas, and suggests questions for meetings. Afterward, he inputs rough notes into ChatGPT, which refines them into cohesive records, significantly reducing the time spent on documentation.
3. Marketing and educational content: Terry leverages ChatGPT for creating content for educational webinars and social media posts. It helps him tailor the tone and style of his materials, ensuring his messages are more engaging and polished.
4. Time efficiency: ChatGPT saves Terry considerable time, reducing tasks that would normally take an hour and a half to just 15 minutes.
5. Prompt structuring: Terry learned how to craft effective prompts, understanding that a well-structured prompt yields better, more targeted responses from ChatGPT.

Financial advisors often excel at analyzing spreadsheets and market data. But many struggle with the writing demands of modern practice management. For Chicago advisor Terry Burke, the solution came from an unexpected source: artificial intelligence.

By implementing AI tools with a methodical approach, Terry has revolutionized his practice’s workflow, turning hour-long documentation tasks into 15-minute processes. His experience offers a roadmap for advisors seeking to leverage AI’s capabilities without getting lost in the hype.

Terry, who has a background that includes software development and options trading in addition to wealth management, says he was skeptical and at first had little success with AI.

“I played around with it a little bit, and with all the hype, I really wasn’t getting that much out of it. I knew I needed to find out how to use it and to try to release the power of it.”

But after some training and methodical use, Terry has become an AI advocate.

“It’s like having an intern that doesn’t sleep, that works when you want to work and it doesn’t take vacation,” Terry says. “It’s all of those things. It’s incredible.”

The business impact

The most dramatic improvement came in an unexpected area: practice efficiency. Terry reports that processes that once took 90 minutes now take just 15 minutes, particularly in client meeting documentation and follow-up communication.

Terry: “I consider myself kind of a spreadsheet jockey and very comfortable in front of a spreadsheet, and I’ve always struggled with writing. I’ve always found it easier to edit someone else’s writing, but I could stare at a blank screen for a half hour just trying to get my thoughts together.”

Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, makes the writing process much easier, he says. Terry says he can submit rough notes to ChatGPT, then ask the AI tool to convert them into usable drafts.

Practical implementation

Terry’s success stems from a systematic approach to AI integration, particularly in the client meeting cycle. He describes his detailed workflow:

Terry: “So I had a client meeting and I went to our Redtail (CRM software). I pulled some notes out; I threw it on a Word doc. I made sure that there’s no personal information on there, but then I uploaded them and asked [ChatGPT] to give me an agenda. I went back and forth, and asked for some questions that I should be asking.”

The post-meeting process is equally streamlined.

Terry: “Right after the meeting, I jotted down a bunch of notes that were like staccato notes, and then when I came back, I just dumped it into ChatGPT and I had a more cohesive note that I could use. I tweaked it a little bit and copied and pasted it from there into Redtail, and I think it just made the whole process much faster and much better.”

The technical framework

Perhaps surprisingly, Terry insists that technical expertise isn’t necessary for successful AI implementation. His experience with traditional programming actually highlights AI’s accessibility, he says.

“I’ve done little programming, [Visual Basic] and C++ back in the old days, and that was very hard, rigid and structured. This is very, very forgiving. So, it’s just a lot easier to use.”

The key lies in understanding how to communicate with AI. Terry offers a detailed explanation of the difference between traditional search queries and AI prompts:

“With ChatGPT, there is a structure there where you are engaging in a conversation. So you have to provide more color, more background. It takes a little bit longer to do that, but the payoff is huge because your output is so much better. Also, with a search, traditionally, you’re getting a lot of links and some of them may or may not be relevant. And to drill down on those questions in a different way. Whereas with a prompt with AI, it almost becomes a conversation as you fine-tune it and tweak it with going back and forth once you’re used to it.”

Getting started

For advisors considering AI adoption, Terry’s experience suggests starting with structured learning rather than trial and error. His breakthrough came after joining a Horsesmouth AI workshop that provided framework and direction.

The results were immediate: “So I would say even after the first class of it, we were already changing how we were doing things.”

His approach emphasizes incremental adoption, focusing on specific pain points rather than wholesale practice transformation. Initial success areas often include:

• Converting meeting notes into professional documentation
• Drafting client communications
• Developing educational webinar content
• Creating social media posts
• Preparing meeting agendas and questions

Future outlook

Terry’s firm is now expanding its AI usage into new areas, particularly educational content creation and marketing campaigns. The technology helps refine not just what they say but how they say it, enabling more effective client communications across multiple channels.

Terry says, “We know what we want to say, it really helps us on how we say it.”

The transformation has been profound. “After taking that [Horsesmouth] course, even halfway through it, it really clicked with me on just how powerful it is,” he says.

Terry’s key AI insights:

1. Start with structured learning rather than random experimentation
2. Focus initially on specific pain points where AI can provide immediate value
3. Establish clear protocols for protecting client information
4. Use AI to enhance rather than replace existing processes
5. Think of AI as a tool for amplifying rather than automating advisor expertise