The first meeting happens without you. Be in the answer.
AEOptim gets independent advisories named by AI engines. Ten specialties, from retirement planning to equity compensation, each mapped to the life event that sends someone looking. We build the structured answers and the record underneath them, written to sit inside SEC and FINRA marketing rules, then measure what the engines actually say about your market.
of consumers now use AI to find local recommendations. A year earlier it was 6 percent.
The money question gets asked long before the advisor question. That is where the shortlist forms.
specialties, each with its own page, question map, and playbook.
Referrals used to arrive warm. Now they arrive pre-briefed.
The old sequence was simple. Something happened in someone's life, they asked a friend or their CPA who to call, and they showed up in your conference room knowing almost nothing. That sequence broke quietly. Now the same person spends two weeks asking an engine what a QDRO is, how RSUs are taxed, what a reasonable fee looks like, and whether fee-only means what they think it means. They arrive informed, opinionated, and carrying a definition of a good advisor that somebody else's content wrote. Right now that somebody is usually a national platform, a custodian's education hub, or a lead broker, because those are the pages built to be quoted. Almost none of it is the independent advisory two towns over. That gap is the opening, and it does not stay open forever.
Something happens first. Walk the line and see what.
Every engagement starts with an event, not a search. Pick a point on the life and see the question it produces, in the words people actually type, and which specialty owns the answer.
Your practice gets its own page, because it gets its own questions.
Can we actually afford this, and when do we take Social Security. The most asked money question in the country, and one of the least locally answered.
Wealth management→Newly liquid and newly complicated. The proceeds landed, the questions multiplied, and the wirehouse is already calling.
Financial planning→A baby, a house, a raise that changed the math. Life-event questions asked by people who are not sure they are wealthy enough to call anyone.
Investment management→How much do you need, and what is an AUM fee really. Fee questions dominate here, and vague fee pages get skipped by engines and prospects alike.
Tax planning→A big year arrived and the return alone will not fix it. The gap between a preparer and a planner is the question people ask an engine to explain.
Estate and legacy→Trust or will, step-up in basis, what the kids actually inherit. Patient, careful research that runs for months before anyone books a meeting.
Succession and exit→An unsolicited offer, or a decision to be out in five years. Owners research this alone for a long time before telling a single soul.
Advisors for physicians→Residency ends, income triples, and the whole-life pitch arrives the same week. Doctors research defensively, which favors firms that answer plainly.
Advisors for executives→RSUs, ISOs, AMT, 10b5-1. An acronym problem with a seven-figure consequence, searched the week the vesting schedule turns real.
Divorce and transition→The house, the 401(k), the QDRO nobody explained. Searched privately, under pressure, usually before the attorney is even hired.
Two people, one gap between them.
Runs an independent, fee-only firm and competes for attention against custodians, national platforms, and aggregators actively rolling up firms like hers. She has watched marketing vendors promise things her compliance officer would never approve, so she stopped listening. She is not asking for growth tactics. She wants to know whether an engine, asked today by someone in her city, would say her firm's name or somebody's landing page.
An owner with a letter of intent on the desk. A surgeon three months into an attending salary. A woman working out what half of a retirement account really means. They will not fill in a form and they will not ask a friend, because the question is private. They ask a machine, at length, and by the time they are ready to talk to a person, the machine has already handed them a list.
Your CCO is not an obstacle here. She is the reason this works.
The SEC's marketing rule governs how a registered investment adviser advertises. FINRA's communication rules cover the broker-dealer side. They differ in detail and they agree on the spine: what a firm says publicly has to be fair and balanced, has to be substantiated, cannot cherry-pick, and cannot present anything in a way that implies a future result. Most marketing vendors treat that as a tax on their work. We treat it as the specification. Everything we publish is a fact your compliance file can support, and it arrives as reviewable copy with the claims marked and the sources attached, so your review is a check rather than a rewrite.
- Your services, described the way you would describe them to a client
- Your fee structure and how you are compensated, stated plainly
- Your fiduciary status and registrations, exactly as they appear on the record
- Your process, your minimums if you have them, and who you serve
- Your people, their credentials, and where those credentials are verifiable
- General answers to the questions prospects actually ask, marked as general information
- Performance figures and anything that reads as a projection
- Testimonials and endorsements, which carry disclosure, oversight, and recordkeeping conditions
- Superlatives about your firm, which you cannot substantiate and engines discount anyway
- Guaranteed outcomes of any kind, including guaranteed AI citations
- Comparisons against named competitors
- Anything that would make your next examination harder than it needs to be
AEOptim handles visibility and structured content. Nothing on this page is investment, tax, or legal advice, and no performance, result, ranking, or citation is promised. Your firm's compliance review governs everything that goes live.
Four steps, priced on the page.
We ask a live engine what a prospect in your market would ask, and show you who it names. Two minutes, no card.
The questions your specialty actually gets, answered on your site with the schema underneath so engines can quote you.
One canonical record of the firm, and every surface an engine reads made to agree with it. $2,995 with named advisors.
The engines polled every month in your market, with the work that follows. Optional, month to month.
Answers vary by city and by engine. A firm named in Raleigh can be invisible in Charlotte, which is why we measure where you actually take clients rather than reporting a national average.
Asked before, answered plainly.
Do prospects really ask AI which advisor to work with?
How does this sit with the SEC marketing rule and FINRA's communication rules?
Do you use testimonials or performance numbers?
Can you guarantee AI will name my firm?
Which parts of wealth and advisory do you cover?
Does my compliance officer need to review what you publish?
What does it cost?
Where should an advisory start?
Someone in your city is mid-event right now.
Two minutes tells you whether the engine gives them your firm. Free, no card.
Run your free check →Rather talk it through? Schedule a call.