Hypergrowth, Succession, and the AI Shift Inside a Modern RIA
What Happens When 35 Years of Client Knowledge Lives in One Advisor’s Head
I had David Rath, Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Continuum Wealth Advisors, join me on the podcast this week, and the timing couldn’t have been better. David is in the middle of something that so many RIAs quietly wrestle with: how to scale a firm that was originally built on the back of one extraordinary founder.
It’s the story every advisor knows. A firm that grew because clients loved the relationship. A founder who remembers every detail. And the realization that, for a firm to last, all of that context has to migrate beyond one person’s memory.
This is where the real AI conversation begins, and how industry-leading Chief Investment Officer’s like David Rath are thinking in terms of architecting an AI strategy.
The hard part isn’t the tech. It’s the transfer of human memory.
When you hear David talk about their internal reality, you hear the same themes we see across the industry:
Notes are in paragraphs instead of fields.
Years of meeting history buried across the CRM.
Personal details stored in someone’s head, not in a system.
Files living as PDFs, screenshots, and photos of statements.
And the founder remembers everything, so no process ever forced the data to be captured.
This isn’t a Continuum problem. This is an RIA problem.
People talk a lot about AI taking notes or drafting emails. But if you want a future where an advisor can actually talk to an interface and say, “Update the plan and prep the distribution trades for the Smiths,” then it starts with something much less glamorous: cleaning the basement.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
CRMs full of unstructured notes. Estate docs scattered. Meeting history spread across years. Advisors storing key facts in their own memory. There is no magic model that can organize information nobody captured.
David sees this clearly, and I think that is why his firm is going to be ahead of the curve.
Note takers helped. But they only scratched the surface.
Continuum implemented AI note takers a couple years ago, and like most firms, the lift was immediate. Faster CRM entry. Less backlog. More consistency.
But this is also where David is honest: the shiny tools only get you so far. The real challenge is getting the whole team to adopt cleaner habits, shift long-held workflows, and invest in a foundation that will support the next decade of growth.
And that is before you even get to the AI dream state.
We spent time on what that dream state looks like for him. It has three pieces:
All firm data in one unified layer.
Planning, investments, CRM, documents, email, everything.A conversational interface that sits over it.
Something he can talk to the same way he talks to a team member.Automatic actions that follow the plan.
Updating projections, generating trades, preparing communication, coordinating with planning tools.
Is it a pipe dream? Not really. But it is absolutely not tomorrow. And it requires the slow, steady work of making your firm’s information usable.
The human side determines whether AI helps or hurts.
David cares deeply about keeping the firm human. He writes his own market notes. He writes in his own voice. He wants clients reading him, not a canned paragraph from ChatGPT.
He is not naïve about the shortcuts AI offers. He just knows that nobody builds trust by sending generic content.
So, his mindset is simple.
Let AI automate the tasks humans do not want to do.
Let humans own the communication that actually matters.
On this point, I could not agree more.
The biggest risk in this AI wave is not that advisors get replaced. It is that advisors outsource too much of themselves, and the client feels it immediately.
The big opportunity is exactly the opposite. If a system can capture the context, clean the data, prep the tasks, manage the intake, and surface what matters, then the advisor finally gets to do the purest part of the job: show up for people.
Succession and hypergrowth create the same pressure: the firm has to scale beyond one brain.
Whether you are planning for a founder transition or trying to grow faster than your current processes allow, the underlying issue is identical.
You need the firm’s memory to live somewhere other than in one advisor’s head.
In David’s case, he is both successor and growth engine. Continuum wants to expand seminars, build real marketing motion, widen their prospect funnel, and deliver the same care their long-term clients have always felt. That is a lot to hold.
And this is why their view of AI resonated with me. Their goal is not to automate the relationship. Their goal is to preserve it at scale.
This is the moment for RIAs to define the long-term AI strategy.
Not the tools.
Not the widgets.
Not another tab.
The strategy.
The data.
The habits.
The workflows.
The context engine that compounds over time.
As I told David on the episode, this is exactly why we built Impruve the way we did. We do not believe note takers or email drafters or meeting summaries are the story. They are only inputs.
The real story is the operating system that helps a firm scale without losing its soul.
Continuum is right at the intersection of succession, growth, and AI readiness. And if their trajectory is any sign, more firms are about to feel that same tension.
The ones who thrive will be the ones who decide, early, to build the foundation instead of waiting for the future to arrive.
