Before the Move is a strategic framework for advisor teams who have decided to go independent but have not yet decided what kind of firm to build. Written for principals at wirehouses, IBDs, and insurance-owned broker-dealers, it works through the architecture, partnership, legacy-commission, and platform decisions that compound across the decade after a move.
The first decision is the one most advisors give the most weight to: whether to leave the firm they are at. By the time they reach EverSource, that decision is usually settled. What is less settled, and what we have watched compound across hundreds of conversations, is the question that follows: what kind of firm do you actually intend to be on the other side?
The choices are not what the industry's marketing makes them out to be. They are not "join a platform" versus "start an RIA." They are choices about team architecture, about ownership and equity, about legacy-commission economics, about what the practice looks like in five years and ten years, and about whether the structure you choose at the move can support the firm you intend to build.
We wrote this paper because the advisors we work with deserved a clearer framework for working through these questions than the industry was giving them. It is not a brochure for our platform. It is a strategic guide to the decisions that determine whether the next decade reflects the practice you intended or the structure you ended up with.
The paper takes the major decisions in roughly the sequence they need to be made, with frameworks, examples, and the trade-offs that compound from each.
From production aggregation through coordinated practices, ensemble practice, and integrated enterprise. The structure you intend determines almost every decision that follows, and most teams have not yet stated which they are building.
What you give up when you take equity from someone else, what you keep, and how the economics of those structures play out across a career. The decisions most advisors regret in year five are the ones they did not understand in year zero.
What actually happens to your legacy commission economics under each structural option. Honest numbers, honest tradeoffs, and the considerations most platforms gloss over until the paperwork is in motion.
The real comparison between joining an existing platform and starting your own RIA, on the dimensions that matter at year one and the dimensions that matter at year ten. They are not the same dimensions.
The investment-management decision is often deferred to "we will figure it out after the move," which is when it becomes the constraint on everything else. The paper works through the choice up front.
A working framework for evaluating any platform or partnership opportunity, with the questions to ask, the answers to weigh, and the warning signs to take seriously. Useful with us, useful without us.
Before you give us your email, here is who we wrote this for and who will get less out of it. Self-selection is a form of respect for both of our time.
Two fields, then the PDF arrives in your inbox immediately. The follow-up series unpacks each decision the paper raises, in case the conversation is useful to continue.
The paper covers a lot of ground, and sometimes a conversation gets there faster. Ed leads Audience Development at EverSource. He'll listen to where you are, share where the platform can help, and tell you honestly when it cannot.