Onward to what’s next.
Helping wealth‑management firms build, grow and transition enterprise value — through strategy, fractional growth leadership, advisor recruiting and succession advisory.
Most successful wealth‑management firms eventually outgrow the structure that built their success. The owner believes the business should be accomplishing more than it currently is — but the constraint isn’t always obvious.
It might be stalled organic growth. Weak recruiting. Competing priorities. Acquisition ambition with no strategy behind it. Succession risk nobody has named out loud. Organizational friction. Or simply too much strategic weight still sitting on one person’s desk.
Proso starts by diagnosing which of these is actually true — then brings the strategy, relationships and execution capability to move forward.
Proso diagnoses first, then flexes across advisory, fractional executive leadership, recruiting and hands‑on execution — rather than forcing every client into the same engagement.
The degree to which a firm’s revenue, client relationships and ultimate value depend on one person’s continued presence. It’s the largest common driver behind three separate problems: succession, recruiting and valuation.
Every advisor has the opportunity to earn two paychecks: current income, and the enterprise value of a business built to transfer. A great practice creates income. A great enterprise creates income, optionality and transferable value.
Growth engines have real costs, dependencies and sequence. Treated as a system — not a string of disconnected tactics — they compound. Treated as activity, they just create motion.
From Proso’s white paper, From Practice to Enterprise — the data behind why so many wealth‑management firms aren’t built to survive the transition already underway.
Advisors heading toward retirement within the next decade — 37.4% of industry headcount, controlling 41.4% of client assets.
Cerulli, U.S. Advisor Metrics 2024Of RIAs had a written succession plan in 2024 — the lowest share recorded since DeVoe began tracking it in 2019.
DeVoe & Company, Talent Management ReportOf RIA leaders believe their next‑generation successors could actually afford to buy them out at today’s valuations.
DeVoe & Company, M&A OutlookRookie‑advisor failure rate — compounding a retirement wave the industry isn’t replacing fast enough.
Cerulli AssociatesShare of top‑performing firms with a written succession plan, versus firms under $250M in AUM.
Schwab, 2024 RIA Benchmarking StudyMedian RIA EBITDA multiple in 2025 — with a 1.0x–2.5x discount for key‑person dependency, and a 0.5x–1.5x premium for a developed next‑gen team.
Industry deal data, 2025Wealth management is one of the few professional industries where its most valuable asset — the client relationship — is typically owned by an individual advisor rather than the firm itself. Proso calls that exposure Advisor Dependency Risk: the degree to which a firm’s revenue, client relationships and ultimate value depend on one person’s continued presence. It’s the largest common driver behind succession risk, recruiting friction and a capped valuation — and it’s a variable a firm can actually move, deliberately, over time.
“A book of business is worth what it produced last year. An enterprise is worth what it can produce without you.”
Everything above reduces to one question: how much of what you’ve built depends on you personally showing up tomorrow? There are no trick answers here — a deliberate lifestyle practice can reasonably answer “not yet” to several of these. What matters is whether that answer was chosen, or inherited by default.
If you were unexpectedly out for 90 days starting tomorrow, is there someone who already knows your top twenty households by name and could keep their accounts running without calling you?
Could someone else in your firm run a client review meeting today using only what you have actually written down — not what’s in your head?
If you tried to sell or transition the practice tomorrow, is a buyer pricing your revenue — or pricing you?
Has anyone you’ve hired in the last three years joined with a salary and a service team behind them — or with a phone and a list of names to call?
Do you know roughly what your practice is worth today, in a multiple you could defend to a buyer — and what specifically would move that number?
Practice owners who want an experienced operator in their corner — for growth decisions, recruiting and the moves that matter, without hiring a full executive.
Owners who believe the business should be accomplishing more, and need outside pattern recognition, relationships and execution capacity to get there.
From single practices through larger platforms — wherever growth, recruiting, succession or enterprise structure has become the constraint.
Geography is national and relationship‑driven. Proso follows fit and opportunity rather than a fixed AUM band or territory — economics matter, but strategic and interpersonal fit are non‑negotiable.
“Growth should serve the owner’s personal and financial objectives — not the other way around.”
Paul has spent two decades building growth inside independent wealth management — opening markets, building advisor relationships and translating complex platforms into value advisors can actually act on. His work spans asset‑management distribution, advisor recruiting, enterprise growth and succession at firms including Mariner Advisor Network, LPL’s Independent Advisor Network, UBS, Zacks, Clark Capital and Wilshire.
He holds a business degree from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Illinois, and is based in Homer Glen, IL.
“As valuations climb, it may take four new owners to replace two departing ones.”
“A firm can have a generous payout grid and a weak EBITDA story if most of the revenue would walk out the door with the advisor.”
“‘Come here and build your own book’ asks a new advisor to take on the very risk the firm itself is trying to engineer away.”
