'Wait, you can do that?' 3 of the biggest eye-openers for breakaways

When I worked in the wirehouse channel, I had to pick my battles. Everyone did.

After years of work in a wirehouse, you get used to having to justify everything you want to do. You have to push through layers of management and talk to people who have no idea what your day-to-day work is like.

The first time a newly independent adviser realizes they don’t have to do that anymore is always a “eureka” moment. After helping other professionals make the leap to independent advice, I wanted to share some of those moments with you.

No more walls between you and the community. Years ago, I wanted to give $500 of my own money to sponsor a local art festival. This was not a bank-breaking sum, and I knew the festival attracted people who would be natural fits as potential clients. I thought this was a slam dunk, only to be denied. Why? Because I did not make my request 90 days in advance.

Every registered investment advisory firm is different, but I don’t know of any that need three months to sign off on a $500 expense with a clear benefit to the business. Going independent eliminates the barriers that wirehouses put between you and your community. You’re free to show your neighbors who you are and what you value. And on that subject …

Say goodbye to the content hive mind. If you stay friends with your buddies from the wirehouses, you’ll start to notice something weird on LinkedIn. Like clockwork, they will post the exact same canned thought leadership or approved personal finance content … using the same language … at about the same time. Week after week.

It’s hard to tell clients you’re giving them personalized advice when a cursory search will reveal all your co-workers chanting the same thing on social media. Don’t get me wrong, discovering your own voice and brand is a meaningful task all on its own. But it’s not something that’s even possible in the wirehouse world.

Look how you want. At the outset of the pandemic, the physical trappings of our offices took a back seat to our digital presence. Both play a huge role in standing out in our industry, but the wirehouse way does no favors to financial professionals. You can pick from a menu of approved color templates and prefabricated websites, and that’s about it. Your optionality with office space is even more constrained. Every major brokerage seems to have the same dark desks, dark carpets, beige walls and wood trim that evoke mental images of 1980s bordellos.

One of the most exciting parts of independence is your freedom to tailor the way your clients perceive you. An office in Nashville may have the warm, cozy, den-like setup, while an adviser in San Diego may want a light, airy, and modern-looking office. Two very different approaches, but both are designed intentionally to appeal to very different niches.

Independent advisers talk all the time about the freedom they have compared to the time they spent in big brokerage firms. That freedom can be intimidating — just one of the reasons why the average breakaway takes 10 months from start to finish. But it never fails to shock breakaway advisers when they discover the upside of that freedom: the ability to make business decisions without fighting tooth and nail for them.

Mike Hlavek is COO and co-founder of Concurrent.