The server came back and said they didn't have Coke.

One of my business partners didn't blink. He skipped Pepsi entirely and ordered iced tea.

I shrugged and took the Pepsi. For me, it was fine.

But that little moment at dinner stuck with me. Because he wasn't choosing a drink. He was choosing a side. Atlanta runs through his veins, and Coke is part of who he is. Pepsi wasn't an alternative. It was a betrayal.

We all do this. You drive a certain car. You wear a certain shoe. You shop at a certain store. Your texts show up as a blue bubble or a green one, and you have feelings about which. These choices go beyond preferences. They shape our identities.

Researchers call it identity-based loyalty — when a brand stops being something you use and becomes something you are. Seth Godin put it simpler: "People like us do things like this." We don't pick brands. We pick tribes.

And here's what's interesting to me. That same force is now running underneath technology.

Are you using Jump or Zocks? Orion or Envestnet? These have become identity choices, not just software decisions. And the plurality is bigger than people admit — you might have one person in the office on Jump and another on Zocks, sitting ten feet apart, both convinced they're ‘right.’

The choice itself isn't problematic. The problem is what happens to everything around it.

Two forces are working against you the moment you commit. The first is status quo bias — we're wired to stick with the familiar and treat any switch as risk, even when the new thing is better. The second is loss aversion — leaving a tool feels like losing something, so the pain of walking away from Orion looms larger than whatever you'd gain by moving to Envestnet.

So you stay. Or worse, you split the difference, and now half the office is on one tool and half on another.

And all of it only matters if your work has a place to compound.

The real question underneath every technology choice is not "which tool is better?" The real question is "where does the value accumulate?" Every decision that doesn't land somewhere permanent — your data, your history, your client relationships — turns the next switch into starting over from zero. Compounding is what makes a choice survivable. Without it, switching becomes a demolition.

This is exactly what I want to open the hood on this Wednesday.

I'm hosting a webinar on choice and AI tools — how advisors should think about the ones they're adopting, and what we're seeing from some of the fastest-growing firms making those calls right now. We'll get into what they're using, how they're thinking about it, and why some choices compound while others quietly cost you.

We'd love to have you join us.

You can sign up here.