Gents,

I acknowledge in advance how annoying this type of question is (redunance+newbie = ....) 

Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

I'm mid 40's, have built and sold successful small businesses, done well with real estate investments, and am looking to change careers to become an RIA.(current career is in a declining industry and the 20 year outlook is poor. Time to make a move before the cheese runs out)

Strongly prefer a fee based structure thus RIA.

Looking for tips on what companies to potentially start with and hoping to get lucky and find some guys who have made this jump.

My perspective is that I easily have another 20+ years of fight and hustle in me and an RIA practice fits my skill set and interests (long been a student of finance, economics etc).

I have assets so no need for a salary. Just want to build a solid book of business in the smartest, most straight foward manner possible.

Please drop me a note if I should include additional details and thanks in advance for your input. (seriously, thank you.  I usually would never post a question like this in a forum but the quality of threads/posts made me eager to engage. Thanks again.)