Technology is changing how businesses serve their clients, but adopting new tools is only part of the equation. The firms that stand out are the ones using technology to strengthen relationships, improve the client experience and create lasting value.
In this episode of the Modern American Advisor Podcast, Derrick Kinney sits down with Ted Moser, author of Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One. Their conversation explores why digital platforms are becoming an essential part of modern business strategy and what that means for financial advisors, attorneys, accountants and other professional service firms.
Moser explains how platforms can help businesses better understand their clients, automate routine work and create more meaningful interactions without replacing the personal relationships that matter most. He also shares his perspective on artificial intelligence, where it can genuinely improve a business, where firms should be cautious, and why technology works best when it supports human expertise instead of substituting it.
Whether you’re evaluating AI or looking for practical ways to modernize your client experience, this conversation offers thoughtful ideas for building a stronger, more connected business.
Listen to the Podcast
Transcript
Derrick Kinney:
Welcome to the Derrick Kinney Podcast on Modern American Advisor. Each week we revisit one of my most valuable conversations to bring advisors practical ideas to grow their businesses, serve their clients, and make more money to do more good.
It’s a big question I keep hearing a lot of business owners ask: “how do you keep up with all this tech stuff and still make your customers happy? Or let me rephrase it. How can you use technology to make your customer experience even better? My guest today is Ted Moser, author of the new book, Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One.
Think of a digital platform like a super smart tool that keeps an eye on whatever your customers need and want. Maybe you help people manage money or find their dream home or get legal advice. Ted’s going to share with you how to use a digital platform to connect better with your customers and grow your business like never before.
And it’s not just about making more money. Ted’s also going to talk about how being generous and thinking about the bigger picture can actually help your business stand out. And he’s got some really cool stories about companies that are doing just that. And yes, we totally talk about AI. It sounds fancy, But Ted’s got some practical advice on how to use AI to make your business even better without getting lost in all the techie details.
If you’re trying to figure out how to keep your business moving forward in this digital age, Ted’s got the wisdom and clarity you need. Ted, welcome to the podcast.”
Ted Moser:
Thanks so much, Derrick. Pleasure to be here.
Derrick Kinney:
Well, Ted, you have a hot new book out and you just told me offline it’s number one on Amazon in your sales and marketing category. So, it’s clearly resonating with people, and it’s all about digital platforms. And so, first of all, tell us what is a digital platform, especially for those people listening that are consultative salespeople, financial advisors, attorneys, realtors, CPAs—how can a digital platform help them, and what is it?
Ted Moser:
Right. Well, we would say that a digital platform is a technology stack that enables you to watch your customers on their use journey. Every customer has a “choose” journey and a “use” journey.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
And digital is lighting up those journeys to give companies or professionals visibility into their customers. Now, the choose journey was lit up in the 2000s with websites. We gotta watch our customers go shopping and talk to them while they shopped and hopefully earn their choice. By the interactions we had with them.
And we call that digital marketing. We call it website marketing. We call that e-commerce if—if they kept on going and signed up and bought something online. But it’s really around 2010 that the customer remained visible after they bought something. And that’s because of smartphones were invented or because cloud service providers created hosted software. You and I are speaking on Zoom right now. That’s a hosted software product. We didn’t have to, you know, download it and run it out of our own firm.
So what that does is it lets the company watch the customer use what it is they had acquired, interact with them as they’re using, and add new value during the use journey in order to strengthen their customer relationships and add to retention. And in fact, get the customer leaning forward into having an expanded relationship with the company. And so, platforms really have become a new strategic tool that professionals, entrepreneurs can use to grow their businesses. We say in many ways the platforms are to the 2020s what websites were to the 2000s.
Derrick Kinney:
Oh, good example there.
Ted Moser:
You know, you couldn’t really have survived or thrived if you chose to skip putting up a website. and talking to your customers, they were choosing.
We’d say 5 to 10 years from now, if somebody says, “you know, tell me all the companies who skipped having a platform and are thriving,” we’d say the list would be very short. So, we think it’s strategic, but it also raises a new question. It’s sort of new, and the disciplines of how to win through platforms are still pretty young.
And so what we try to do is write a playbook that said, if you wanna become a platform business, or if you already are one and wanna grow it, what are moves you can make to earn customer choice and to grow customer value? And how do you do that in a competitive environment where the folks that you’re competing against might also be platform businesses?
So, it’s a competitive strategy and growth strategy book for the platform era is—is really what Winning Through Platforms is about.
Derrick Kinney:
Let’s say that an advisor listening, an attorney listening, and they’re thinking, “I want to grow, but technology seems like something that’s hard for me to grasp. I could grasp finance or the law, but this tech seems so ethereal for me. “ What would you say to them that are practical ways for them to embrace and adopt a platform model for their future growth?
Ted Moser:
Right. So, if they are an individual practitioner, they’re probably going to be tapping into someone else’s platforms. You know, the bigger investment managers, let’s say, have investment platforms and financial advisors use those platforms to advise their customers. But some other customers say, “I’d like to do this myself, self-service. I’d like to become a do-it-myself investor.”
Derrick Kinney:
Right.
Ted Moser:
So, platforms can range from having a professional assist a customer to empowering a customer as part of your relationship to make decisions themselves. I’d say another way we see platforms playing a role in investing is what may derogatorily be called “robo-investing,” where I could give an algorithm some instructions, you know, buy at this, sell at that would be the simple ones, but invest in these sorts of sectors of the economy and build me a portfolio would be others. So how financial advisors or professionals use AI to better serve their clients and maybe more productively serve more clients is another way that platforms are pretty relevant in the financial space.
Derrick Kinney:
What type of returns or what type of runway do small business owners need to expect before they begin to see sort of the ROI on a digital platform?
Ted Moser:
If they are using it to empower their own business and serving their customers, they’re probably gonna be subscribing to a hosted platform that some third party has provided for them.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay. Yes.
Ted Moser:
And then they’re gonna be using it to build their business. And I think the returns would be quite dramatic because it helps automate some of the workflows that might be manual today. It helps connect on a more always-on basis to customers through the ability to have quick digital interactions. Or if the customer is doing self-serve, you can watch your customers make their choices and then advise them.
So, you can in some ways outsource some of the work to the customer themselves. That again will stimulate your productivity. And I think you, you can build a reputation for a better customer experience because you’re providing them with a modern digital customer experience that makes their lives easier and makes their interactions with you as a service provider easier.
So the good news about platforms, if you’re an individual, is you don’t have a big investment curve. You probably have a signup curve and you’ll start paying, but you don’t have a big investment trough and the benefits should come fairly quickly.
Derrick Kinney:
And it sounds like it’s a pathway to consistency and allowing you to focus on the personal relationship.
Ted Moser:
That’s right.
Derrick Kinney:
And allow stuff in the background to be taken care of well and predictably and consistently. Is that right?
Ted Moser:
So true, Derrick. You know, so much of running a small business is all the manual steps that you go, that’s not really what I got into the business for, but it’s the business itself.
And many times, entrepreneurs will say, “more than half of my time is spent on the housekeeping of the business. “Digital platforms from whether they’re accounting platforms for a small business, whether they are a service delivery platform, as you and I just spoke about, financial advice or investment management, uh, they really reduce drastically the housekeeping side. And that means you get to spend a much higher percentage of every day doing what it is you love, doing what it is you’re great at, doing what it is that, you know, brings more good money to echo the theme of this podcast.
Derrick Kinney:
Yes.
Ted Moser:
Um, so I think it’s all goodness from that perspective.
Derrick Kinney:
As small businesses scale, what are some practical ways they can incorporate generosity into their business model?
Ted Moser:
That’s a great question. I will speak about it through the lens of platforms as well. There’s a chapter in the playbook—there’s 24 plays in The Platform Playbook that describe sort of ways you can use platforms. One of them is called “Visibility for Good,” and the key point that we make in that chapter is, while mostly we talk in the book about platforms giving you, the company, visibility into your customers. Platforms also do the opposite. They give your customers visibility into what your company is doing if you want to allow that.
If I’m a manufacturer, that could be visibility into my supply chain to show that the products I’m making for them have workers that were paid fairly and environmental practices that were carbon neutral, for instance.
Derrick Kinney:
Yes.
Ted Moser:
But I can go well beyond that to really make real to my customer base, how working with me empowers them to do good because good is baked into my company. I’ll give you a couple of examples, one technology, one less technology.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
Technology one, I use at my office a sparkling water dispenser where I can add flavors and add levels of fizz and all that sort of stuff. And as I’m filling up my glass with water, it’s counting the number of bottles of plastic that I’m keeping out of the ocean. And it’s turning
Derrick Kinney:
Wow, how practical is that?
Ted Moser:
Yeah. Turning good from a plaque on the wall to a customer experience of goodness and go, “Man, I wanna do more. How do I buy, how many more glasses of that water?” It’s making goodness experiential. If I think of what Patagonia does with their customers, if I buy from them, I’m earning points that then I get to allocate to nonprofits. that Patagonia is supporting.
And so, I’m empowered and I can sort of choose my project, allocate my points, and I’m experiencing the goodness that Patagonia’s doing because I’m part of it now. And so, I think platforms can digitally connect your customer base to any sort of goodness that your company has decided to take on and engage your customers in it and have it be part of their living experience, not just part of the brochure that says we’re doing good. So those are examples that hopefully are relevant to ways that platforms can help bring goodness into the core of your business rather than being sort of on the side of it.
Derrick Kinney:
Ted, have you found anything that confirms that companies that do have generosity woven in actually see an increase to their bottom line?
Ted Moser:
I think so. And I’ll explain how that—how we see that, Derrick. The short answer is it helps build your brand and make it relevant in a modern world because customers are looking to companies to be forces for social good.
Derrick Kinney:
Yes.
Ted Moser:
More than ever. They used to look at governments. They still do. They used to look at religious institutions. They still do. But they’ve given up believing that those 2 institutions on their own will get the job done. And if they wanna live in a better world, they say, “These companies are pretty good at what they do. I wish that they would take on social impact as part of their corporate mission.” And so we see that, first of all, all the research that we do and the data we see show that that’s an expectation of customers of a modern business will have a purpose above and beyond the bottom line.
Secondly, we see that that’s how strong brands are built. We track, in my company—I work for a consulting firm named Prophet that does a lot of brand and growth consulting—
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
We track about 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 customers a year through a survey over hundreds of brands. And we ask them about brand relevance and their desire to purchase from those brands. And then we regress back to attributes that those brands have to understand what’s driving the customer’s intent to purchase and use.
And there are 4 key aspects that they’re looking for in a brand: Innovation, critical to my life, inspires me through its values, and pragmatically solves my problems.
Derrick Kinney:
Yeah.
Ted Moser:
The third one inspires me distinctively through its values. And the way that it puts those values into action is one of those four pillars of a great brand. So, when customers are thinking about using your company, they’re not just thinking about your offer, you know, what ROI, what CAGR can you give me on my assets if I’m a financial planner?
Derrick Kinney:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.
Ted Moser:
They’re also asking, “Do I want to be engaged with this company in a relationship with this company?” And that’s the brand question. And so, your commitment to impact higher than your company’s bottom line makes people go, I want to work with this type of company. And if they’re doing a great job of money management, super. I have a yes and yes. I want to work with this company. I want to buy this offer. And that’s what gets customers to commit to you.
Derrick Kinney:
I really like how you’ve intersected technology with generosity. And so many people think that technology is the opposite of relationship. But when you’re talking about Ted, you’ve convinced me that this is good tech and it actually produces good in the community and good relationships, so that’s a powerful combination.
Ted Moser:
I agree with you. I’m a believer in what you just said.
Derrick Kinney:
Yeah, thank you.
Derrick Kinney:
Well, we’ve talked about how our listeners can take your principles and build their business, and I think be even a greater force for good in their community. At the end of our show, I ask each of our guests some questions about how our listeners can build their wealth. So, question number 1, what is something you’re doing right now that your 18-year-old self would be proud of?
Ted Moser:
I think for me, I have an avocation that goes along with my vocation, and it’s been several decades in the making, but I’m involved in financial inclusion through microfinance.
I’m a big believer that providing capital to the poor enables them to live out their own dreams and, and make their own way for their family. And so, I’ve been helping to build networks of banks for the poor that dole out small loans, provide small savings accounts, deliver small insurance policies to protect any gains that the customers made. And we’ve got about 20 million clients around the world.
Derrick Kinney:
Wow.
Ted Moser:
Who are all taking advantage of the services we offer. about $200 at a time in terms of every loan, but they’re able to feed their family, add another job, increase their incomes through the kind of work we do. And it’s scalable. You know, we’ve been able to grow over time. You know, I started with them when we made 30 loans a year. And now, as I mentioned, 20 million active clients a year. So that’s something that I’m really proud of. And while I’m a consultant by trade, I try to use my consulting skills to help nonprofits that I believe in, and I chose to work with this microfinance network.
Derrick Kinney:
That is something your 18-year-old self would certainly be proud of, the impact that you’re making on so many people, Ted. That is amazing. What is the biggest financial mistake you’ve ever made?
Ted Moser:
Being too conservative in my approach to the stock market.
Derrick Kinney:
A lot of people can relate to that. Yeah.
Ted Moser:
Yeah. I—I’m in some ways a believer that if I’m really paying attention, I could do all right. And if I’m not really paying attention, I’m running the risk. And I should have years ago trusted more of a third-party financial advisor to pay attention for me. But I sort of lived in this interim of, “Let me do this. I know how to invest.” And, but I’m too busy to really invest a lot, so I keep my money too safe. And I think that’s, that would be a mistake that I would mention.
Derrick Kinney:
Good, good example. Thanks for sharing that. What is your favorite investment right now?
Ted Moser:
I would say my favorite investment would be with something that’s bringing artificial intelligence. You can—there’s a lot of fields in which you could say this.
Derrick Kinney:
Sure.
Ted Moser:
But something that’s bringing artificial intelligence to a problem that has a good fit to it. I’ll tell you one company that I’m a believer in. I won’t mention them by name, but they’re a company I’m working with. They’re a publisher of much of the world’s scientific research.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
And because they are able to aggregate and help the consumers of that research parse through a lot of complicated information using artificial intelligence, they’re going to dramatically add value to their users compared to what they offered them in the past. where you could have journals you could read and you were sort of siloed within the journal. And now they’re bringing the information across journals and aggregating and correlating it together, much like Netflix would do for you and me.
Derrick Kinney:
That’s right.
Ted Moser:
That, you know, if you like this article, you would like that article. And if you like this author, you would like what they wrote about this. And it’s changing the rabbit hole that, you know, I’d go down as a researcher trying to decide what to do research on next. By giving me access to the world’s knowledge really around what’s going on in STEM areas.
So the power of AI to change their value proposition, and you could repeat that in other industries with other examples, will change the course of their growth rate. And I think as a result, will change their multiples. There’s some healthcare providers I’m working with who I’d say the same thing.
They’re gonna radically change their customers’ ability to take care of themselves and not get sick. as well as to help them diagnose what the best thing to do is if they are ill. And the economics of that will change fundamentally, the economics of the HMO in this case. So, I just think anyone who has a latent issue with complex data that generative AI could solve, I think that company has a chance to really change their growth trajectory. And as a result, the investor in that, you know, will see great returns.
Derrick Kinney:
So, on that note, when you think about AI, should people fear AI, or what should their objective viewpoint be about AI in terms of how it affects their life and possibly their business?
Ted Moser:
There’s a few parts of AI that are easy to go, “No, they shouldn’t fear.”
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
Things like machine learning, things like machine vision or semantic recognition. Like my ability to speak to Alexa and Alexa to understand me.
Derrick Kinney:
Yes.
Ted Moser:
Or, you know, my, my car’s ability to figure out where I am on the road and tell me where to go next. All that sort of stuff is well-established AI. The part that people are writing about that’s scary is a new branch or a branch that’s now coming onto market in a way that it’s becoming widely available called generative AI, gen AI.
And that part’s the part that people say things get a little scary for 3 reasons. What the AI does is, it lets you ask a complex question. It trolls a set of information, and it brings back an answer. And there’s 3 tricks to doing that well. One is the database that that AI might be looking at, including the internet, may be full of lies.
Derrick Kinney:
Right.
Ted Moser:
And as a result, the AI doesn’t know. All it knows is it’s looking at data and trying to synthesize data. So it can bring back a lie from an untrustworthy database.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
A second one is the way that the technology works, it can make up answers. It extrapolates beyond the database itself to, to do what you might, might call creativity. Write a song for me, make a poem for me. But if I’m saying, “Tell me about, uh, what I should do to fix this problem, I don’t want a creative answer. I want the real answer. “And so GenAI right now, people are trying to figure out how we use it and not let it get out of hand through being in the wrong hands, tapping into the wrong databases, or getting too creative when we don’t want it to.
If we can keep the guardrails on it, then it’s really valuable. So, I’d just say, you know, turn to a trusted source of generative AI capabilities.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
And make sure that you sort of check out that truth-telling aspect of it. And if you can safeguard it, then you have a new valuable tool.
Derrick Kinney:
Good advice. Thank you for sharing that. Ted, last question. If our listeners could only do one thing to achieve bigger results, what’s the one thing you would tell them to do right now?
Ted Moser:
So, for me, that one ties right into the book. I would say adopt a platform approach to your business.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
If you cannot watch your customer use what it is that they’re paying you for, whether you’re a lawyer, whether you’re a financial advisor, whether you’re a real estate agent, whether you are an entrepreneur, if you can’t watch your customer using what it is that they’ve acquired and add value by interacting with them during use and keeping track of that interaction data so that you know what to offer them the next time, to expand your relationship. If you can’t do that, you’re at structural disadvantage against competitors who are doing that. So that would be my one piece of advice. It’ll build your brand, it will grow your customer revenues, and it will position you well for competition in the future.
Derrick Kinney:
Ted, I—as I told you when you first came on, I was learning about this as much as our listeners, and I think you have distilled this down in a way that makes practical sense. I think our entrepreneurs, our consultative salespeople, uh, now see digital platforms in a new way and how it can grow their business. So, Ted Moser, thanks for being here. But before I let you go, tell us how we can buy your book.
Ted Moser:
Great. Well, Derrick, what you’ll find in the book is 24 platform plays. Think of it like a playbook of a sports team.
Derrick Kinney:
Okay.
Ted Moser:
That has, you know, if I use football examples, run plays, pass plays, defensive plays, offensive plays. So, there’s different types of plays to help you grow and gain advantage. 24 of them, each one has its own chapter. So, it’s very practical. You can read the chapters that matter to you most. So the title of it is Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One. And you can find it on Amazon or any bookseller under the author Ted Moser. I’ve got a couple of co-authors, Charlotte Bloom and Omar Akhtar, but if you just search on my name and search on the book title, you’ll have no problem finding it.
Derrick Kinney:
Ted, uh, I think your book can help a lot of people. Hope you sell even more copies and you stay number one for many, many weeks to come. You deserve it, my friend. Ted Moser, thanks for being on the podcast.
Ted Moser:
Thank you, Derrick. Appreciate it.
Derrick Kinney:
At the end of each podcast, I give you a roadmap to help you get into the top 1% of your field. I really enjoy this conversation with Ted. Now, I’m a part of an investment group that focuses on investing in Shark Tank-like products. I’ve been in this group for a while now, and basically the whole venture was just based on trust.
They picked a product, vetted it, and I sent them a check. The group is amazing and the people are super trustworthy, but recently they just unveiled a new private portal where I can check my investment values in real time. It’s a super cool platform and it’s made my customer experience even better. I think that’s what Ted is talking about here.
How can you use technology to further enhance your customer experience? Now, keep in mind, and I don’t want you to miss this, technology never replaces the face-to-face or the personal interaction. It only is meant to enhance it. If you’re trying to use technology to make up for poor customer service or how you interact with your client, it will only fail.
Technology makes what’s good great. It doesn’t make what’s bad even good. Remember that. Thanks for listening to the Derrick Kinney Podcast on Modern American Advisor. Do you want to attract more $3 million to $10 million clients and grow your business? Then check out successforadvisors.com. That’s successforadvisors.com. And remember, if you want a business that’s booming, focus on the human.
We’ll see you next time.
About Ted Moser
Ted Moser is a business strategist, author and senior partner at Prophet, where he advises organizations on growth, customer strategy and digital transformation. He is the co-author of Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One, which explores how digital platforms are reshaping customer relationships, competitive advantage and long-term business growth.
Over the past two decades, Moser has helped organizations navigate the evolution of digital customer engagement—from the rise of websites and e-commerce to today’s platform-driven economy powered by cloud technology and artificial intelligence. His work focuses on helping leaders use technology to strengthen customer relationships, improve the user experience and create sustainable competitive advantage without losing sight of the human element at the center of every business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a digital platform?
Ted Moser describes a digital platform as technology that allows businesses to better understand how customers use products and services while improving engagement, retention and long-term relationships.
How can financial advisors use digital platforms?
Digital platforms help advisors automate routine tasks, enhance client communication, improve customer experiences and deliver more personalized service.
What does Ted Moser say about AI?
Ted Moser believes AI should enhance human expertise, not replace it.. He encourages businesses to adopt trusted AI tools while maintaining proper safeguards around data quality and accuracy.
Why are digital platforms important?
According to Ted Moser, digital platforms allow firms to strengthen customer relationships, increase efficiency and remain competitive as more industries embrace digital-first experiences.
What is Winning Through Platforms about?
The book explores how organizations can use platform strategies, customer visibility and digital technology to compete more effectively in today’s marketplace.
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