I am in the process of establishing myself as an RIA. Could you share advice regarding the process, difficulties, etc.? Did you pay for assistance through a consulting company or did you go through the process on your own?

Are you looking to recruit advisors in a sales capacity? Depending on what your value proposition is for advisors or the specific roles you need filled by the advisors, this would dictate how you go about finding them. If it is more of an employee structure, I’d use the traditional employee recruiting services. If you are looking for independents, there would be a variety of other recruiting avenues I’d focus on. There are list/database services that offer data on advisors etc that may help.

EagerToLearn, I’d recommend using a provider. There are some very cost effective compliance firms that do this kind of work. However, this isn’t the major challenge. The ongoing operations of the RIA are much more labor intensive and costly. Performance reporting, billing, asset management, research, trading, ongoing compliance, marketing, etc. are all services that will be needed. I’d recommend doing that due diligence ahead of time to get your ducks in a row. Hope that helps,

Thank you Steve! This does help and gives me more to consider.
I am aware of Compliance Consultants, but can you suggest any other particular firm?
Also, in a different post, I saw that you mentioned “U4 issues” that can arise. What do you mean?

We’ve used a variety of firms on the compliance side but most recently have been working with RIA Compliance Consultants to revamp our Policies & Procedures manual. I like their process because they have a variety of template materials (forms, policies, etc.) that you can take and customize to your firm. I know they file new registrations as well if you’d like to check them out. I apologize but don’t recall my post on U4 issues, if you don’t mind giving me some additional info, I’d be happy to comment. Thanks!