I’ve spent a long time arguing that most wealth management firms — especially small to mid-sized RIAs — do a terrible job of differentiating themselves. Years ago, I wrote about what I call “me-too branding”: the habit of mimicking competitors, defaulting to generic messaging, and blending into a landscape where every firm says the same thing in slightly different fonts.

Back then, the culprit was laziness, fear, or simply not knowing better.

Today, there’s a new co-conspirator: the AI prompt.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not anti-AI. It’s a powerful tool and I understand why advisors use it. Building a website and finding the right words to clearly communicate your value is hard. AI makes it faster.

But faster isn’t always better, and in branding, fast and generic is a dangerous combination.

Lately I’m seeing a lot of advisors generating websites, bios, service descriptions, and taglines that are polished, grammatically correct, and COMPLETELY FORGETTABLE! The web is filling up with content that sounds like it was written by the same person for every firm — because, in a sense, it is.

So, if me-too branding was a problem before AI, it’s an epidemic now.

The firms that stand out are the ones that push past the prompt. They use AI as a starting point, then layer in the one thing no large language model can generate: themselves. Their story. Their process. Their point of view. Their reason for doing this work in the first place.

I realize I spend a lot of time talking about what advisors do wrong. So let me flip the script with three firms I’ve worked with who got it right — and show you exactly how each one pulled themselves out of the sea of sameness.

Vista Wealth Solutions: When Clarity Becomes Your Competitive Advantage

There’s a trap that high-performing firms fall into more than any other: trying to communicate everything they do. Vista Wealth Solutions manages nearly $9 billion in assets and serves both individual clients and financial professionals across the greater Philadelphia region. They could lead with any number of impressive facts. But impressive facts don’t convert prospects. Clarity does.

When we worked with Vista on their rebrand, the core challenge wasn’t what to say — it was how to say it simply enough that a prospect landing on the homepage for the first time could immediately understand whether Vista was right for them. A firm with that breadth of capability can easily bury the client under layers of complexity. We took the opposite approach.

We built their entire client experience around three words: Plan. Protect. Grow.

Those three pillars didn’t just organize the website. They became the language of the firm — a framework every advisor on the team could speak to, and every client could see themselves in. The site now communicates depth without demanding that visitors work for it. It earns trust before the first meeting is ever scheduled.

The tagline, “See More of the Life You Want,” flows directly from the Vista name itself — a word that carries perspective, horizon, and aspiration. That’s not a coincidence. Good branding builds from the inside out.

The lesson: Complexity is not the same as credibility. If your homepage requires a prospect to read three paragraphs before they understand what you do, you’ve already lost them. Find your three words and build from there.

WHealthy Empowerment Network: When Your Mission Is Your Differentiation

Here’s something I believe deeply: the why is always more important than the how. Most advisors have compelling reasons for doing this work. They just never put those reasons on the website.

WHealthy Empowerment Network (WHEN) was founded on a belief that the wealth management industry was failing a significant portion of the people it was supposed to serve — that financial planning had become something exclusive, overwhelming, and disconnected from how people actually live. The founders didn’t just believe that. They built an entire practice model around changing it.

That conviction is the brand. Not the services. Not the credentials. The mission.

When we worked with WHEN, our job wasn’t to invent a message — it was to make sure the website was as bold and direct as the people behind it. There’s a tendency, especially in financial services, to soften a strong point of view into something safer and more palatable. We pushed back on that. Hard.

The result is a site that communicates holistic financial wellness with warmth and specificity — one that speaks directly to the people WHEN was built to serve. Clients who land on that site and see themselves reflected in the mission don’t need to be sold. They’re already there.

That’s what happens when you stop trying to appeal to everyone and start speaking clearly to the people who actually need what you offer.

The lesson: Your mission is not a formality for the About page. It’s your most powerful differentiator — but only if you’re willing to say it plainly, without softening it into language that could belong to anyone.

Bridge Generations: When Your Experience Does the Selling

I said it in my original me-too branding article and I’ll say it again: in an industry where firms tend to offer much the same, storytelling is what catapults you out of the sea of sameness. Bridge Generations Wealth Management is a perfect example of why.

Bridge Generations is multi-generational, family-owned, and fiercely hands-on. They serve high-net-worth individuals and families navigating the complexities created by significant wealth. They have offices in Miami and Salt Lake City. They have deep roots and a genuinely distinctive approach.

What we often find with firms like Bridge Generations is that the most compelling parts of their identity get buried — because advisors assume prospects want to see credentials and services first. They don’t. They want to know if you understand their world.

Four words — “Relationships Measured in Generations” — accomplish more than most advisory firms achieve in an entire homepage. It’s not a tagline about returns or strategies. It signals longevity, commitment, and a fundamentally different way of thinking about what the advisor-client relationship is supposed to be.

Their tagline, “Connecting You With Greater,” works for the same reason. It’s personal. It promises something clients actually care about: getting to more of what they want their life to look like. That kind of language doesn’t come from a prompt. It comes from advisors who’ve sat across the table from families for decades and know exactly what they’re trying to say.

The lesson: The most powerful sentence on your homepage isn’t the one that explains your services. It’s the one that makes a prospect stop and think, “these people understand me.” Find that sentence. Lead with it.

The Prompt Problem — and How to Solve It

I want to be practical here, because I know the argument on the other side: “Chris, I don’t have time to reinvent my brand. I just need a website that works.”

I get it. And I’m not suggesting you ignore AI or spend six months on a brand strategy before you publish a single page. What I’m suggesting is this: before you accept whatever a prompt generates as your brand voice, push back.

Ask yourself the questions I’ve been asking advisors for years:

• Who started this firm, and why? What was the frustration or moment that made you go independent?
• What do you actually say to clients in the first ten minutes of a meeting — not the polished version, the real one?
• What kind of client do you do your best work with? Not “high-net-worth individuals.” Actually describe them.
• What do you believe about financial planning that most other advisors aren’t saying out loud?
• What’s the promise you make to every client — and have you actually put it on your website?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the raw material of a differentiated brand. AI can help you organize and articulate the answers. But it cannot generate the answers for you — and if you let it try, you’ll end up with another me-too website.

Your brand is your firm’s most valuable asset. I wrote that years ago and I mean it more now than I did then. In a world where anyone can spin up polished-sounding content in thirty seconds, the advisors who invest in something genuine — something that sounds like them and no one else — are the ones who will stand out.

Don’t hand that advantage to a prompt. Own it.

Chris Carragher is a Brand Strategist at Advisor Guidance, a registration, compliance, and brand development firm that works exclusively with independent RIAs and financial planning firms. If me-too branding is holding your firm back, let’s talk. And if you haven’t read the original article that started this conversation, you can find it here: Why RIA Firms Should Avoid Me-Too Branding.