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Advisorpedia talked with Craig Clark, Chief Growth Officer at Nitrogen, live at the 2026 Nitrogen Fearless Investing Summit in Denver, Colorado.
Resources: Nitrogen
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Doug Heikkinen: This is Advisorpedia at Nitrogen's Fearless Investing Summit, and we're here with Craig Clark, who is the Chief Growth Officer at Nitrogen. Welcome Craig.
[00:00:11] Craig Clark: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:12] Doug Heikkinen: How's the conference been? We're here near the end of it.
[00:00:15] Craig Clark: It's the anxiety's going down. You put on a big conference like this. . .
It's pretty smooth.
[00:00:20] Doug Heikkinen: I think you guys nailed it though again.
[00:00:21] Craig Clark: It's been good.
[00:00:23] Doug Heikkinen: Let's talk about AI and the big misconception that advisors have about it and how you guys are solving that. How are you going about solving that misconception?
[00:00:32] Craig Clark: I think we'd have to start with the misconception. I think the elephant in the room is that advisors, some of them I think, perceive AI as something that's coming for their job.
And we actually had some really good content at the conference here earlier today. I think Josh Brown really addressed that head on earlier today. AI is not coming for your job. It's coming to automate away the sucky, menial tasks that you don't want to be doing or you don't want to be paying for.
It's maybe a little bit more threatening to the assistants and operational staff on your team. But if you're an advisor, a customer, client facing advisor, it's a huge advantage for you. I think, yeah.
[00:01:15] Doug Heikkinen: Let's talk about the Tax Center.
How does the Tax Center help advisors create a tax catalyst moment, without going into the CPI territory, because advisors are having to do more and more to create value.
[00:01:27] Craig Clark: Absolutely. Fee compression is real for sure. And portfolio management is just, it's table stakes these days. And so a lot of advisors, most advisors are looking for other opportunities to showcase their value in front of a client.
And do you like taxes?
[00:01:46] Doug Heikkinen: Nobody likes taxes.
[00:01:47] Craig Clark: I don't like paying taxes. I think almost everyone who's got investible assets enough to be working with an advisor, they also hate taxes. And you can definitely differentiate yourself as an advisor by being tax aware. I give you the analogy of a doctor.
You go into a doctor's office and they go, Hey, what can I help you with today? That would be a weird experience, talking to your doctor. So how can you go into a meeting with your financial advisor who's supposed to be advising you on definitely your core portfolio and your, the investments perhaps they're managing, but if they don't understand changes they might make in your portfolio, how that's going to roll into your tax posture, that would be the same as the doctor not knowing what your health status is. And all we've done with, with Nucleus and our tax planning product is just giving the advisor the full tax posture of your client when you're stepping into that meeting. And so now you're armed, like the doctor would be with your full medical history, to not give advice, but to understand how your advice and your guidance might impact their tax posture.
[00:03:01] Doug Heikkinen: You were known for your risk number and portfolio conversions. So what shift in advisor and client expectations led nitrogen to evolve into this massive suite of help for advisors?
[00:03:16] Craig Clark: Yeah. It's, you're right. The legendary risk number, the essence of it was always you're sitting across from somebody and they don't understand their financial picture.
And so it boiled, the risk number kind of boiled down, this is how much risk you're taking in your portfolio. Made it very understandable. And so that's kind of how we've approached everything that we build in terms of software. We've always had that visual impact. That visual educational impact has always been a design ethos for us.
And so when we brought that to bear on tax. Which, like I said a second ago, is absolutely on the forefront of every single investor ever's mind. We brought that same design ethos to it. We were going to take a tax statement, a 1040, and we were going to translate that into something that the advisor could easily explain, and they could use Nitrogen to do that. But also the client could look at the screen and go, okay, these are my tax brackets. These are the opportunities I have to pay less tax. Now, and perhaps even on into retirement.
[00:04:27] Doug Heikkinen: It seems like the momentum is not withering. It's continuing on. Good luck this year and into the future. Thank you.
[00:04:34] Craig Clark: Thank you.