Skeptical of AI yet sold on Zocks: why LOTUS Financial Partners passed on Jump

Lucila Williams spent years cringing at AI panels. As a CFP, fiduciary, and founder of an independent advisory firm, she watched the early wave of AI in financial services with one recurring thought: “I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be doing that.”

Today, her firm runs its most relationship-driven workflows on it.

LOTUS Financial Partners: an all-women firm built on presence

Lucila founded LOTUS Financial Partners in Denver in 2012, after eight years inside a sales-first culture that never fit the fiduciary work she wanted to do. The firm has since grown to eight advisors, all women, serving clients with a distinct point of view: planning for couples is ultimately planning for women.

“The repercussions for all financial decisions will ultimately land on the person who lives the longest,” Lucila says. “It just happens to statistically be women.”

That worldview shapes how the team defines the job itself. To Lucila, a great advisor is “a coach who's guiding their clients through an experience,” and the real value lives in the relationship. Her colleague Leslie Elson, who joined during the pandemic, adds, “This work is fulfilling if you do it with heart and integrity.” 

The challenge: spending weekends taking notes

The problem wasn't a lack of process. LOTUS had a thorough post-meeting template covering every area of a financial plan. Completing it took 15 to 20 minutes of focused work after every meeting, and follow-through varied across the team. “You ended up with the admin team sitting there waiting for the advisor to do their job,” Lucila says. “It became the sticking point.”

For Leslie, the cost was personal. “I would spend my weekends trying to catch up on notes,” she says. “Meetings take a lot of energy out of you. Sometimes it's like a performance in a way, and you need to decompress.”

The deeper cost was attention. Advisors were balancing the client's plan, investments, and emotions in every meeting while also trying to document all of it.

The solution: no recording, no add-ons, no compromise 

When the team evaluated AI tools, Jump was the closest competitor. It didn't make the cut. Here's why:

• The product itself was the biggest differentiator. For Lucila, Zocks won on “the level of customization…at this point the product suite has evolved so much that it really becomes a center of your practice.” 
• Trust also was important.“There’s an extra level of complication with the way Jump records,” Leslie says. “That was one of the main reasons we didn't go that way.” Lucila adds: “Zocks wasn't an AI tool adapted for finance. It was built organically on a compliance platform.” Zocks also is approved by their broker-dealer, Cambridge, and fits cleanly into their OSJ structure. 
• Customer service and “being able to talk to humans” sealed the decision. “I wanted a partner,” Lucila says, calling Zocks “the friendliest, warmest tech company I've ever encountered.”

Today, Zocks runs through the entire client lifecycle at LOTUS. Before every meeting, details and context from past conversations and emails  are pulled automatically from Zocks and the firm's CRM into a one-page summary. During the meeting, Zocks takes notes live without recording. The notes are automatically generated in the firm's preferred format for every stage of the client journey, including six initial planning meetings and three annual reviews. 

“It's not just a data dump,” Lucila says. “If we're working with clients, we're working with Zocks.”

The Zocks feature the team leans on most is Ask Anything, where advisors can ask Zocks a question about a client in plain language, and it instantly surfaces an answer while providing direct source citations. Before, advisors would walk clients through a recommendation covering pros, cons, fees, and disclosures, then retype that entire conversation for compliance. Now Lucila asks Zocks to summarize exactly what she told the client. “That allows me to have a complete compliance-ready solution to cut and paste in my CRM,” she says.

Leslie uses it to hold herself accountable. “I love going in and asking the assistant, ‘what was my justification for this investment or for this piece of advice?’”

 The results: ‘the best ROI in your business’ 

Clients feel the difference. Lucila never used to send meeting summaries; now every client gets a recap with clear next steps. One of Leslie's clients wrote back to thank her for “sending me all of my homework assignments.”

But the result Lucila keeps coming back to is presence. Research she cites puts an advisor's long-term value at roughly 3% of net worth per year, and half of that comes from behavioral coaching, which "is only possible if you can be in the moment with the client."

“Zocks supports me by making sure that I'm present, yet all the work's getting done,” she says. “We can be in the emotions with them more while work is being done for us.”

Her advice to advisors who aren't using Zocks yet? “You have to use Zocks. It has changed my practice.”

And Lucila's math is simple: “The couple hundred dollars that you might spend for Zocks is the very best ROI that you're gonna have in your business absolutely anywhere.”