Even successful planning firms hit a wall at some point in their growth journey. The early days of running your advice firm were hard work: juggling client acquisition, regulatory requirements and relationship building. Only when solid foundations were in place could your firm begin to generate significant revenue growth.
From there, careful management and hard work allowed you to expand the firm, hiring more advisers, attracting great clients and maybe even picking up a few awards along the way. After many years, your firm got to £100m in assets under management. You are a success, your achievement is a well merited source of personal pride.
However, after reaching this critical inflection point, growth has stalled and the time has now come to adopt a new, more strategic, mindset. For many founders, this is the moment where effort no longer translates cleanly into progress.
Time for a refresh
After hitting the £100m mark, founders often encounter similar challenges. Many wear too many hats, switching from adviser to compliance officer one minute, then IT manager to HR manager the next. The team is stretched and hiring feels harder than it should be, while retaining good people feels harder still. There is a collective sense that further growth is possible, but there is no clear strategy to make it happen.
This is an inflection point. To reach the next level, the growth strategy that got your firm to this point will need a refresh. It is a common misconception that simply doing more is the solution, and we have seen many firms stall because they confuse activity with progress.
More hires, more technology, more internal meetings. Over time, complexity compounds and your firm will eventually buckle under its own weight. Despite offering high quality advice to clients, you will flatline if your firm becomes bogged down in process.
Creating conditions for growth
To overcome the £100m barrier, many firms make an active decision to do less, better. Rather than attempting to do it all, now is the time to assess where your expertise truly lies and decide where to cut back. Outside the common set of core functions for advice firms, everything should be challenged.
The aim is to create an operating model that plays to your strengths, leverages existing infrastructure as much as possible and eliminates the need for constant hiring. Further growth relies on having a clear structure in place that works without constant intervention. While there is no one size fits all solution, we have seen many firms outsource specialist functions and partner earlier as the simplest way to drive further expansion.
But outsourcing cannot be the only answer. Running a firm with £100m in AUM requires discipline. Further growth will not materialise without long-term planning. To reach the next level, you need certainty around where growth will come from, what is needed to fund it, and when you expect to generate returns. Developing a set of KPIs will allow you to track progress and spot issues before they arise.
Drown out the noise
At this stage of your firm’s journey, you will find no shortage of outside opinions that claim to hold all the answers. However, at this critical inflection point, you must remain focused and learn to ignore advice that conflicts with your strategy. Real progress often starts somewhere much closer to home.
With £100m in AUM you already have a proven model which has brought significant value to clients’ financial lives. If things went wrong along the way, you turned to trusted advisers, non-executives and partners who provided expert counsel. These are the people you should listen to in order to get through the next stage too.
This part of the trajectory will not look like the last. From here, future growth will require a change strategy, underpinned by a drive to tackle complexity. Adopting a strategic, focused and selective mindset will be crucial to ensuring the continued success of your firm. Breaking the £100m barrier is tough, but the financial and personal rewards for those who do it are great.