Don’t Do That: Don't Wait to Start Marketing (Ep.10)
Summary:
What if AI could give you back nine hours a week—would you take it?
Mark Gilbert, CEO and founder of Zocks, joins host Kelly Waltrich for a conversation about the transformative potential of AI, a platform that actually delivers on its promise of saving advisors time, and the costly mistake of waiting too long to build marketing momentum.
During the discussion, Mark explains how Zocks is helping advisors reclaim up to nine hours per week by eliminating the tedious administrative tasks they hate: meeting prep, documentation, follow-up, and data entry. Mark and Kelly also explore the nuanced art of properly timing a go-to-market motion, knowing where to start with your marketing, and more.
Kelly and Mark discuss:
01:29 Mark’s journey through Microsoft, Hearsay Social, and Twilio before founding Zocks
02:28 The “aha moment” when advisors unanimously responded to Zock’s concept: “If you can do anything close to this, we’ll take it”
05:00 Zocks’ three game-changing differentiators: no-recording technology, structured data that enables powerful cross-client queries, and deep platform integrations
06:50 The concrete time savings advisors have reported from using Zocks: 7-9 hours weekly from meeting workflows, 1-2 hours daily from email management, and client response times reduced from hours to minutes
08:53 Carson Group’s remarkable 5-week deployment with 90%+ weekly activity rate – proof of how much advisors value eliminating administrative burdens
09:35 Mark’s future vision for the platform: automating thoughtful client touchpoints for life events and creating an ecosystem where advisors simply “scan, click, and things just happen”
10:50 Mark’s personal ‘don’t do that’ – don’t delay marketing simply because you have a strong product
17:05 Why marketing growth resembles compound interest – “It grows slow, and then it just hits.”
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About Our Guest:
Mark Gilbert is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zocks, a privacy-first AI platform for financial services that revolutionizes data capture from conversations. In this role, Mark leverages years of enterprise, AI, and fintech experience, as well as deep go-to-market strategy skills.
Prior to founding Zocks, Mark held executive product and technology roles at Twilio, Hearsay Social, and Microsoft. He graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) focused in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.