Ritz Stevens Launch℠
Nine pages on your firm, before we ever talk.
The Firm Review is a written outside read on an advisory firm. What your website does and doesn’t do for a larger prospect, where you sit against the firms registered the same year you were, what the next four years look like if the average relationship gets bigger, and what the firm is worth while you build it.
We build it at no cost, and there’s nothing attached to it.
Why we build it
Most advisors have never seen their own firm written up
An advisor we talked with had been running his own firm for three years and nobody outside of it had ever described it back to him. He knew his assets and he knew his client count. He didn’t know his site gave a prospect no way to book a meeting, and he didn’t know that four of the firms registered the same year he was had already passed him on assets per advisor.
So that’s what this is. We pull your ADV, we read your site the way a two million dollar household reads it before they answer the phone, and we write down what we find. Our goal is to show advisors what their firm looks like from the outside, and what it would take to change it.
Nine pages, two parts
What’s in it
Your firm today
Assets, how long you’ve been registered, team, custodian, and a read on what your website does and doesn’t do for a prospect who’s checking you out before the first call.
Where you stand
Your assets, your advisor count, and your assets per advisor, put next to the firms in your state that registered around the same time you did. Most advisors have never seen this number.
The firm score
One number out of a hundred with the categories underneath it, and a short written analysis naming the two places the firm has the most room. The scores get updated after we talk.
The next four years
What the firm looks like if the client count barely moves and the average relationship gets bigger, year by year, with the revenue and the value range that come with it.
Part One
We read the firm the way a prospect does
The snapshot opens with one line on what we saw, and then the facts under it. Assets, how old the firm is, how many advisors, who holds the assets, and a checklist of what a prospect can and can’t do on the site. It’s short on purpose. Most of the firms we look at fail the same two or three items.
Then it gets scored. One number, four categories, and a plain read on the two you’d fix first. The firm below came in at 34, which sounds bad and isn’t. A low score on a two year old firm is mostly a list of things nobody has gotten to yet, and every one of them is coachable.
See your firm’s number
Tell us the firm and the website and we’ll build the review. It takes us about a week.
Part Two
The next four years, with the client count flat
Most firms this size grow by adding clients. It works for a while and then the calendar runs out, because a four hundred thousand dollar relationship takes about as many hours as a four million dollar one.
Part Two runs it the other way. The client count barely moves and the average relationship gets bigger, and you can see what that does to revenue and to the firm. Every assumption behind it is printed on the page next to it, so you can argue with them. Yours will be built on your own fee, your own book, and your own starting point.
Sample figures from an anonymized review. This is an illustration and not a forecast, and nothing in it is a projection of Ritz Stevens results.
Part Two, continued
What the firm is worth while you’re building it
Advisors usually start asking what the firm is worth around the time they want to do something about it, and that’s late. The number matters long before there’s a sale in it, because it’s the first thing a partner, a bank, or a successor advisor asks for, and moving it takes years. Your review carries a value range for every year of the illustration and the plain reasoning behind it.
The review also covers what a buyer, a bank, or a partner actually looks at
- How much of the revenue walks if the three largest relationships leave.
- The share of revenue billed on assets or a retainer rather than earned once.
- How many clients have met somebody at the firm besides you.
- Whether onboarding, review, and service run off something written down.
- Whether anyone could carry the book for a quarter without it being a crisis.
How you get one
01
You send us the firm name and the website. That’s all we need to start.
02
We pull your ADV, read the site, build the illustration off your own numbers, and write it up. About a week.
03
We walk you through it, and the category scores get corrected with whatever we got wrong from the outside.
No cost, no obligation
Request your Firm Review
Fill this out and we’ll come back to you with any questions we have. We build the review whether or not you ever become a client, and it’s yours to keep either way.
The Firm Review is built from public information, mainly your Form ADV and your own website. The four year section is an illustration rather than a forecast, and the value range in it is a rule of thumb for scale. Ritz Stevens does not appraise firms, and nothing in the review is a valuation, an offer, or a promise of any outcome.