Tobias SalingerGuest
Michael BatnickHost
[reel whirring] [gentle music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Talking Wealth.

I'm Michael Batnick, managing partner at Ritholtz, and I'm excited to have the conversation today about when is the right time to go independent and launch your own RIA.

Every advisor I know who's thought about going independent has run the same loop in their head.

A licensing exam, an entity, a filing with the regulator, some insurance, some technology, a website.

So if the barrier to entry is that low, why does so many people talk like the barrier is actually enormous? That's what I wanna get into today with Tobias Salinger, chief correspondent at Financial Planning, who just spent a l- who just spent a year writing 30 stories on this exact question.

It's the morning you plan to prospect, and instead you spend three hours on a compliance manual you didn't write and don't understand.

So the questions I'd want answered before I signed anything is, what is my break even? Who's my chief compliance officer? And if the answer is me, what am I actually signing up for? Who's doing the billing? What does the custodian, uh, want from me before they'll take my calls? What does the tech stack cost once I stop shopping and start signing? How many of my clients follow me? Not the number I tell my spouse, but the number I'd actually bet on.

And who picks up the phone when the market's down 20% and I'm already on another line? And then the one nobody wants to say out loud, am I an entrepreneur or am I, or am I an advisor who's tired of his boss? Because those are two very different jobs, and only one of them is the job you are applying for.
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