Most solo RIA owners don’t wake up one day and decide to retire. It creeps up on you — a “someday” thought that shows up more often each year until it’s not really a someday anymore. The trouble is that succession planning takes years to do properly, and the owners who wait until they feel ready to retire before they start planning are usually the ones who end up with the fewest good options.

The research backs this up: more than a third of financial advisors say they plan to retire within the next decade, and a lot of them, especially at independent RIAs, admit they don’t have a real plan yet. It’s rarely valuation that trips people up. It’s finding someone who can actually take over the relationships you spent a career building.

Below is roughly the order we’d tackle this in, based on what tends to catch owners off guard.

1. Get honest about your timeline

Not “when do I want to retire” — “when would I actually be okay stepping back if the right person showed up tomorrow.” Those two questions have different answers for almost everyone, and the gap between them is basically your runway.

2. Find out what your practice is worth

Not what AUM times some multiple you saw in an article says it’s worth. Revenue mix, how concentrated your client base is, average client age, fee structure, how much of the relationship lives with you personally — all of it moves the number. Get a real valuation, even an informal one, before you have any succession conversation. You want to be negotiating from information, not a guess.

3. Decide what kind of successor you’re actually looking for

Internal succession, promoting someone already at the firm, is what most owners say they’d prefer. Problem is, most single-advisor practices don’t have anyone internal to promote. So the real decision is usually between an external successor who grows into the practice over time, or a sale to a larger acquirer. Those are genuinely different paths for your clients and your team, and it’s worth being clear early on which one you’re actually solving for.

4. Map out what happens to your clients

This is the thing retiring owners lose sleep over, and honestly, it’s what their clients would lose sleep over too if they knew a transition was coming. Before you go any further: does your brand survive the transition, or does it fold into the successor’s? Do existing fee schedules stay the same? Has the successor already built some rapport with your clients, or are they meeting a stranger at the handoff?

5. Think about your own role afterward

A succession doesn’t have to mean walking out the door the same week you sign something. Owners who set up a gradual handoff — staying on as a consultant, tapering client contact over a few years, keeping some stake in how it turns out — tend to handle the transition better, financially and emotionally, than owners who sell outright and leave immediately.

6. Don’t forget your team

Even a one-advisor RIA usually has a paraplanner, an admin, someone. Whoever you bring in as a successor should have an actual answer for what happens to that person, not just to you and your clients.

7. Write it down, and then look at it again next year

A plan that only exists in your head isn’t much use to your custodian, your team, or a regulator if something happens to you unexpectedly. Texas RIAs should also know that state and SEC expectations increasingly call for a documented continuity plan, which is a separate thing from a succession plan built around a graceful, planned exit.