Thirty hours an issue, until they stopped sending it.
SchlegelDunn's three advisors wrote their client newsletter themselves. A single issue ran past thirty hours, and eventually they stopped sending it. We built WealthNotes, a desktop application that turns each advisor's chosen topics into a first draft in their own voice. The same newsletter now takes about two hours.
- Client
- SchlegelDunn, RIA firm
- Built
- WealthNotes Studio (desktop app)
- Delivered
- A few weeks
- Engagements
- Two, and counting
Thirty hours an issue, and they were writing every word.
SchlegelDunn is a registered investment advisory firm. Every quarter they send clients a newsletter, and every word in it has to clear compliance before it goes out.
The advisors wrote every article themselves, starting from a blank page each quarter, and the layout was assembled by hand off their website template. Between the three of them, one issue ran past thirty hours.
Eventually the math won and the newsletter stopped going out. Getting it back meant cutting the hours without giving up the part that made it sound like them.
WealthNotes Studio.
A desktop application that runs the whole newsletter, from first draft to print-ready PDF.
- Three voices, one per advisor.
- Each advisor picks the topics they want to cover and gets back a first draft already in their own voice. They edit and polish from there instead of staring at a blank page.
- Typography that fits itself.
- A layout engine sizes each section to fit the space it has. Run long or short and the page corrects itself, so nobody is nudging text boxes around at 9pm.
- Print-ready spreads.
- Exports the spreads their printer can run as-is, rather than a letter-size PDF somebody has to rebuild first.
- Theirs to keep.
- It installs on their own machines and runs without a connection. No login wall, no seat count, and their content never leaves the office.
The advisor approves every word. The tool just makes the writing faster.
This is the part most AI tools skip. SchlegelDunn is an RIA, so every sentence a client sees goes through compliance review. We designed WealthNotes for that from the first line of code.
Nothing auto-publishes. The advisor reviews and edits every draft inside the app before anything leaves it. For a regulated firm, that's the difference between a tool you can use and one your CCO won't allow near a client.
Two hours an issue, and a client who came back.
The newsletter is going out again. An issue that used to run past thirty hours now takes about two, so the firm sends it as often as they choose rather than as often as they can stomach. The advisors still write and approve every word; the blank page is just gone.
The clearest signal it worked: they came back. After WealthNotes shipped, SchlegelDunn hired Ridgeborn again, this time for a full website redesign. Nobody hires you twice out of politeness.
Run an advisory firm?
The marketing tools built for everyone else weren't built for a firm where every word goes through compliance. We build content and web tools that respect how your firm actually has to work, and you own what we build.