The reality of starting out as a financial advisor is that it's hard to know what type of advisory firm structure will be best in advance; often, the best strategy is just to dive in, get a job at any reasonable firm that will allow you to launch your career, and after you get some experience, decide whether it's really the right fit for the future. Of course, the caveat to this approach is that if it turns out you do need to make a change later, that change can be scary - so frightening, in fact, that many advisors never make the subsequent changes they should, fearing the unknown and finding comfort in an (admittedly not ideal) current firm or environment.
In this guest post, financial advisor Noah Morgan shares his own transition process in making the leap, first from his original advisory firm to an independent broker-dealer, and then subsequently to an independent RIA. Accordingly, Noah gained a wide range of experience and perspective about what it's like to make these transitions, from vetting RIA custodian platforms to navigating the Broker Protocol and compliance concerns, to selecting the entire suite of technology necessary to sustain the new advisory firm.
So if you're an advisor who's currently unhappy at your current firm, and considering the process of transitioning to something new, hopefully this will be helpful to you in gaining an awareness of the issues that you need to consider if you're really going to make a switch in the future!