How an ex-Marine grew an RIA into a $2.7B national firm

Inspiration for change can strike in odd places. In my case, it struck at 30,000 feet after reading an in-flight magazine article titled “The Best Doctors in America.” While I’d never considered joining the medical field, I was captivated by the idea of what it took to become America’s best anything.

I reflected on the business I had built to date — a successful but small independent insurance firm centered around seminars and a broker-dealer model. Although the fee-only advisory approach was still in its infancy, I felt compelled to make a dramatic shift in course. 

In 2012, we started the RIA alongside our insurance business. Today, it has more than $2.7 billion in AUM and serves roughly 8,000 households in 50 offices nationwide. 

Growth playbook

My formative years in the U.S. Marine Corps, which I joined out of high school, gave me the chops to grow the firm into a national brand over the years. As a Marine, I learned essential leadership skills like structure, discipline and mental toughness — all critical components of building a business. 

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I knew that firm growth hinged on hiring the right people and giving them a playbook to replicate. When we started out I recorded myself in client and prospect meetings to serve as training materials for new advisor hires. We kept meticulous notes about how we wanted our team to perform and what we expected them to achieve. 

Today, I lead our firm with that same transparency. We project relevant KPIs on screens across our offices, highlighting each division’s goals. It makes management’s job significantly easier and puts our people in a position to succeed, rather than making up the rules as they go. As inevitable turnover occurs, our plug-and-play materials simplify the onboarding process.  

Basic training for new hires, boot camp for advisors

Just as the military prepares soldiers for combat by putting them through basic training to ensure they can handle the challenges ahead, we establish clear expectations for our new hires. 

After a formal offer is extended to an advisor, we require them to memorize and present our scripts. Only then do we make it official. Because advisors know their job as contingent upon memorizing these scripts, they are motivated to do so quickly, speeding up the onboarding process. 

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We also conduct regular boot camps, where we gather all advisors and sales teams from offices across the country in an offsite location to present to their peers. This approach ensures that everyone performs, communicates and interacts in a consistent manner, creating a seamless experience for our clients regardless of their location. But more than that, it instills a culture of camaraderie, which helps teamwork thrive. 

RIA leadership agenda

As the leader, I repeat my three main responsibilities to myself daily: set the vision, establish and maintain the culture, and hire and retain the best. If you don’t hire an operations person, you are the operations person; if you don’t hire an assistant, you are the assistant. This realization helped me understand the ROI of having the right people operating at their highest frequencies in the right roles.

It’s also important to be vocal and decisive about who is — and isn’t — the best fit to help us reach our goals. Our success hinges on establishing strong relationships with employees, partner firms and our valued custodians. While building these relationships may take time, it’s important to act quickly if you sense something is amiss. Be steadfast in your philosophy of what sets you apart from the competition and be vocal about who is fit to help you reach your goals. Don’t hesitate to sever ties with partners and employees who do not share your values or philosophy. 

Our firm thrives on scalable systems, a defined workplace culture across offices, emphasizing strong relationships and being bold in our approach. I believe other founders can profitably follow this formula to build their own growth-oriented RIA firm.