9 Rights (And Wrongs) In the First 9 Years Of Building An RIA

For many financial advisors, the journey of building a firm from scratch is a blend of idealism, grit, and inevitable growing pains. The early years in particular are fraught with challenges that make survival difficult. However, for those who persist, the reward can be a firm – and a team – that reflects the founder’s values and supports their lifestyle.

In this article, Shawn Tydlaska, founder of Ballast Point Financial Planning, candidly shares the wins and lessons from his first nine years of entrepreneurship. He offers a grounded, honest account of building a multi-advisor firm from scratch – without a client base, personal brand, or local network – while navigating the complex realities of leadership, growth, starting a family, and self-worth. Now he leads a $130 million AUM firm serving over 130 households and reflects on both the strategic decisions that fueled his firm’s growth and the missteps that tested his leadership and mental health along the way.

One of the most pivotal decisions was simply starting. Unable to find a salaried role aligned with his desire to serve younger clients, Shawn embraced an “accidental entrepreneur” path, launching his firm in 2016 after a marketing internship at Personal Capital. With modest personal overhead and strong intrinsic motivation, he minimized his overhead, meeting clients in coffee shops and libraries. And with few tech solutions designed for his clientele at the time, he built custom Excel templates for spending plans, equity compensation, and cash flow – tools that met the real-world planning needs of younger clients better than traditional retirement-centric software.

As the firm grew, so did the challenges of scaling a team. Shawn recounts the struggles of ‘right-sizing’ staffing to revenue, as well as the need for infrastructure to support people once they are hired. Career tracks, sabbatical policies, HR calendars, and feedback loops became essential to guiding the team and building a team culture – and so did learning how to transfer client relationships to developing advisors.

Alongside the professional journey came personal highs and lows: defining success on his own terms, adjusting to fatherhood, and working to balance health, family demands, and ambition in a shifting world. Through therapy, self-reflection, and personal growth, Shawn found greater clarity about what matters most to him.

Ultimately, the journey highlights the importance of aligning vision, values, and structure over time. Despite earlier ambitions focused on ‘going big’, his current definition of success emphasizes sustainability: building a firm that supports his team, nurtures his family, and creates space for meaningful work – without losing himself in the process. Looking ahead, part of his vision includes building on his work as co-founder of the BLX Internship Program, which provides internship opportunities for underrepresented groups in financial planning, and expands into creating infrastructure to address the broader industry challenges around accessibility and advisor development to offer opportunities to more aspiring planners!