Advisors have no shortage of growth strategies -- seeking mergers and acquisitions, finding referrals for new clients, creating new efficiencies.

But few choose the “all of the above” approach that Newport Beach, Calif.-based hybrid RIA United Capital Financial Advisors has used to mushroom into one of the largest firms in the country.

After doubling its revenues in the two-year period from 2013 to 2014 and growing largely through the addition of broker-dealer representatives, United Capital made some of the largest RIA transactions of 2015.

“While our focus has been on existing RIAs and folks coming out of independent broker-dealers, we’re not channel dependent,” says Matt Brinker, senior vice president and member of the Acquisitions Executive Team. “What we’re worried about above everything else is culture. We’re looking for people we can give the United Capital keys to and feel confident that they’re going to be great stewards of the brand.”

In February, United Capital recruited the Capital Investment Council, a 23-member team based in Denver that managed $2 billion as a subsidiary of Spanish bank BBVA Compass, the largest recruitment in firm history.

That deal was followed in April by acquisitions of firms in Indianapolis and in Chapel Hill, N.C., that have a combined $625 million AUM. Then, in June, United Capital added more than $550 million in assets from StanCorp Financial Group as the latter exited the wealth management business.

In August it absorbed McDonald, Cox & Klugh, a multi-office South Carolina financial firm with $415 million AUM. Then, in November, the RIA added firms in Maryland and Pennsylvania with a combined $1.5 billion in managed assets.

At the end of last year, United Capital had $16 billion in assets managed from 79 offices nationally, an increase of 25 percent from the end of 2014. That year, the firm reported $11 billion in assets, enough for tenth place on Financial Advisor’s 2015 RIA Ranking.

Unlike other giant hybrids like Hightower, Dynasty Financial Partners and Stratos Wealth Partners, advisors joining United Capital take on its brand and become its employees.

“We’re one company with one ADV, we own 100 percent of the business and we buy 100 percent of the business from our partners,” Brinker says. ”Since we participate in the profitability of United Capital, we have mutual alignment to grow topline revenue and keep our costs as low as humanly possible to make sure our operating expenses are at the ideal equilibrium to keep our clients happy and to grow the business.”

In exchange, recruits receive an equity stake in the company, with the option to redeem a portion of their stake for cash. Brinker says United Capital seeks advisors for partnerships, not succession. “Our typical partner is 48 years old, their catalysts for joining us are growth, scale, leveraging our digitally-backed office and leveraging our client experience. When advisors are 45 years old, their firms tend to be 10-15 years old. They’re figuring out what the next 10-15 years are going to look like from a business perspective and worrying about how they can maintain their lifestyle.”

Part of United Capital’s draw is the combination of services once thought to be the forte of smaller advisors with the economies of scale available to a major national financial firm. Brinker says that scalability is driving more advisors onto its platform.

“Since we bring so much operational, practice management, and staff training resources to bear on their offices, the folks that see the most value in joining us are the ones struggling with those problems today: independent advisors and broker-dealer reps,” Brinker says.

Lifestyle is central to United Capital’s pitch to advisors and clients —in early 2015, the brand pivoted from wealth management to financial life management, Brinker says, because money management was being commoditized by digital advice providers, large asset managers like Alliance Bernstein and SEI, and national wealth management brands like LPL and Ameriprise.

“As a $16 billion RIA, we’re able to invest in a client experience in a way few other firms can,” Brinker says. “We also understand that what can’t be scaled are things like decision-making, empathy and relationship building. If our advisors can spend 70-80 percent of their time doing that and own the final mile with the client, that’s where the real value resides.”

United Capital settled on its financial life management branding after consumer research in 2014 showed that consumers were more interested in advice focused on improving their quality of life rather than managing their money.

Similarly, many potential advisor recruits are interested in partnerships that improve the quality of service they can provide to clients and allow them to scale their practices, Brinker says.

“Most firms, at this point, are not growing at the rates that they historically have grown at,” Brinker says. “They’re spending more time operating the business and managing their staff, and they don’t have time to focus on growth, building market strategies and executing them.”

Brinker says United Capital is pivoting out of the acquisition business as recruitment and practice development have become its primary engines for growth.

“As it stands, most of the regional $1 billion-plus RIAs are interested in acquisitions as a strategy,” Brinker says. “I think they all can be very good at it, but the space has already been noisy from all of the would-be buyers. You can’t go to a merger and acquisitions conference where everyone’s a buyer.”

In 2014, United Capital formed a recruitment team to identify low-asset advisors who fit in with the hybrid firm’s culture, recruit them as contractors paid through a 1099 form, fully train them and then add them as full employees as their revenues cross $1 million annually.

As the RIA channel becomes more competitive, Brinker says United Capital will also attempt to add teams from other large firms and from wirehouses via recruitment.

“So far, very few of our anchor offices are staffed with individuals coming from the wirehouse channel,” Brinker says. “I don’t want to generalize too much, but a lot of these advisors want to make all of the decisions from portfolio accounting software to the brand to the website design, they want to flex out their muscles in the independent space. I applaud them for that, but they don’t know the burden that comes with that level of independence.”

Brinker says United Capital will continue its aggressive growth, aiming to double revenue over the next two years, and to have $25-$30 billion in assets and $250 million in annual revenue over the next three to five years.