Seventeen years ago, when I became an intern at the advisor firm I now lead, we had five advisors. Two years later, I became the sixth. Back then, we had a say in firm decisions, but each of us managed our own book of business and set our own fees. If I wanted to take on a friend with a modest portfolio or conduct reviews at a client’s kitchen table, I did. I filled out account applications, ran my own trades and built financial plans. I did it all.
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Today, we’re a $3.6 billion RIA with 35 advisors. We have dedicated teams for compliance, trading, marketing, paraplanning and client service. We have fee minimums and defined service models. Our advisors are advisors; specialists handle everything else.
Our evolution from an advisor-driven ensemble practice to an enterprise model built on leverage, consistency and specialization is one I see playing out across the industry. If you’re an advisor at an independent RIA that’s growing organically, you’re probably feeling the shift — and it can be a difficult one.
While scale comes with tangible benefits for advisors, it can also create a sense of nostalgia, a feeling that something essential has been lost. What I’ve learned, both as an advisor and a CEO, is that focusing only on the loss misses the other side of the equation. The question shouldn’t be “What did I give up?” but “What did I get in return — and is it worth it?”
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Scale has its privileges
The most immediate benefit of an enterprise RIA is specialized expertise and support. When you hire people to do one job, whether it’s trading, compliance or investment research, they get really good at those jobs! Now, not only do you have a team of experts in your client’s corner, but you don’t have to fill out account-opening forms or rebalance client accounts.
Then there are the advantages that come with having a strong brand. Enterprise firms invest in marketing, thought leadership and the employee value proposition in ways individual advisors simply can’t match. Done correctly, the result is a pipeline full of new client leads as well as future hires — as I found when I posted for a new executive assistant and got nearly 3,000 applicants.
Add to that standardized processes that protect your time, like built-in coverage when you’re on vacation, parental leave or out sick, plus the organizational maturity that comes with a defined strategy and governance.
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Client selection a casualty of scaling
But let’s be honest about what scaling costs, because pretending trade-offs don’t exist breeds dissatisfaction.
When an ensemble practice becomes an enterprise firm, advisors lose autonomy over client selection. If an RIA has a $1 million minimum and your friend’s daughter has $200,000 to invest, there’s a difficult conversation in your future.
You also lose some creative control over the client experience. If your reporting format gives way to a firm standard, or the reporting platform changes altogether, you can’t just waive a fee or make other billing exceptions without considering precedent. When the firm was still in its ensemble phase, you had a say on most decisions. That’s probably no longer the case.
The mistake I see advisors make is thinking they can have the brand strength, specialized support and lead generation of a scaled enterprise, while retaining the autonomy they enjoyed in an ensemble practice.
The truth is, it’s not possible to have both. You can’t build a powerful brand if every advisor delivers a wildly different experience. You can’t train a client service associate to support 35 different advisors differently. You can’t generate enterprise-level leads if there’s no clear answer to the question, “What does working with your team look like?”
How to thrive in an enterprise RIA
If your firm is making the shift to enterprise, understand the “why” behind the evolving standards. Push leadership to explain its reasoning, not just announce rules.
Then find your zone of autonomy. Great firms still need advisors who bring their own style and expertise. Advocate for what matters by bringing the feedback and proposing alternatives.
Most of all, decide if you’re in or out. Trying to resist the model while staying in it makes everyone miserable. The firms that scale successfully aren’t the ones that avoid tension between advisors and structure. They’re the ones where advisors understand the trade they’ve made and decide it’s worth it
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