Advisors need a multi-year business plan, not a quick win: AE Wealth's Shannon Larson

Advisors chasing every good idea the moment it strikes are setting themselves up to fail, says AE Wealth Management President and industry veteran Shannon Larson — the discipline that separates lasting practices from the rest is knowing when to say "not right now."

Larson has been in the financial advisory industry for about 25 years and joined RIA AE Wealth earlier this year after eight years at Osaic, where she served as senior vice president, platform and product solutions for the giant network of broker-dealers and RIAs.

The AE Wealth President will be sharing her expertise at InvestmentNews’ Women Advisor Summit on Nov. 5 in New York City. Specifically, she will be joining Cathy Curtis, founder and wealth advisor at Curtis Financial Planning for a closing fireside chat on the theme of “the long game,” examining how success isn’t built overnight and how meaningful careers are built over the long term.

For advisors, patience is a key quality, she told InvestmentNews. “I think they have to be open to a mindset that isn't ‘no,’ but it's maybe ‘not right now’,” she said, noting that this can sometimes be difficult given the entrepreneurial nature of many advisors. “In that moment, they may have the greatest idea ever, but it's really focused on what's the effort versus impact.”

“And then is this the right time for this or is this something that we would look out next year or the year following?” she added. “So, one of the disciplines I think that's critical for advisors is multi-year business planning.”

Larson, who was a client operations associate at Fisher Investments in the early 2000s before serving as vice president for advisory platforms at LPL, says that the people working with an advisor are also key to their success.

“They have to surround themselves with people that are different than themselves,” she said. “No matter what you look at it, if I have somebody surrounding myself that's just like me … I'm just going to do more of what I do.”

“Advisors need those partners, whether it be if they're a sales rainmaker, a COO, that's really going to provide them with perspective,” Larson added.

Larson has already seen this dynamic in action at her new company. “At AE Wealth, getting to know our advisors, the most successful teams I see are those that have been together for a long time, but they're really complementing each other in terms of the differences in what they bring,” she says.

Advisors at the RIA have about a 12% organic growth rate, according to Larson, who describes this number as “very high.” AE Wealth has about $50 billion in assets.

In the 2026 True Ensemble Growth and Profitability study by The Ensemble Practice, the average firm's organic growth – which it defined as new client relationships net of market appreciation – clocked in at just 3.7%, a near-decade low for the firm's benchmarking. In Schwab's most recent RIA benchmarking study, client growth in 2025 was up 4.7% across all firms, and net organic growth accounted for 12.9% of overall asset growth among the top performers surveyed.

Read more: AI enters RIA hiring and recruiting process, Schwab finds

Larson also highlights the importance of events such as the Women Advisor Summit. “We all come from different backgrounds and perspectives, but when we come together in a meeting like this, there's a lot of history lessons to be learned from the women that that have been in the industry for a long time and have seen things that some of us have never seen before,” she said.

“I'm also excited for the celebration of the awards as well, which I'll be joining as well,” Larson added.

The Women Advisor Summit will conclude with the Women to Watch Awards honoring the key women in the wealth management industry. 

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to attend the Women Advisor Summit on Nov. 5. Register now.