Beverly Hills Wealth Management (BHWM), an RIA started earlier this year by a former Morgan Stanley executive, is setting its sights on attaining a wider profile.

Founded by Margaret "Mag" Black-Scott, former vice chairman of global wealth management at Morgan Stanley, the firm currently consists of four employees, including an advisor with more than two decades of wealth advisory experience who recently came from Merrill Lynch.

Black-Scott says her goal is to hire seasoned advisors with at least ten years' experience and good compliance records from wirehouse and RIA firms who serve her firm's target client base of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net worth individuals, along with corporations and institutions.

In return, Black-Scott says BHWM will offer advisors an ownership stake, an increased payout and an independent platform with access to providers of institutional-level investment products.

"We'll have growth opportunities in different kinds of specialty areas to offer clients," she says. "A lot of that stems from my background and knowing people in a variety of industries."

Black-Scott says BHWM is custodially agnostic, but that Fidelity is its primary custodian thus far.

A native of England who is married to David Scott, a former NASA astronaut who walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 15 mission, Black-Scott was a 30-year veteran of Morgan Stanley who began as a broker and then worked her way up through the advisory ranks to become a division director for the western U.S. responsible for more than 3,000 employees and revenue of $1.5 billion. She was appointed to her vice chairman role in early 2008, and retired at the end of that year.

Black-Scott said after a half-year of retirement she got the bug to start an advisory firm that she says emphasizes trust and transparency. "We want to take the business back to where clients and advisors want the business to be," she says.

And she believes there are a lot of advisors who want to do the same. "I think there are many people and many [advisor] teams that are frustrated for a lot of reasons with where they work," Black-Scott says. "And we believe there's a great opportunity in this space based on the fund flows going from wirehouses to RIAs."

Black-Scott says BHWM is trying to replicate the playbook used by Hightower, a Chicago-based, advisor-owned company with a growing national footprint of advisors that serves high-net-worth and institutional clients.

Hightower is a well-capitalized company backed by several outside institutional investor groups. That includes Red Eagle Ventures, a private-equity firm led by David Pottruck, the former CEO and president of Charles Schwab and a current Hightower board member.

To date, BHWM has been funded solely by Black-Scott. The company is currently in a "friends and family" round of capital raising, and will begin sourcing additional investment capital in six to 12 months.

"I see smaller independent advisor firms attempt to re-create that [Hightower-like] model all the time, whether they have grand ambitions to be a national firm or are simply trying to develop a regional or super-regional strategy," says David Selig, CEO of Advice Dynamics Partners, an M&A consulting firm in Mill Valley, Calif.

"It's a common refrain: Build a better mousetrap and the disenfranchised will come," he continues. "But you need to have a very compelling pitch that helps you differentiate yourself, maybe not from a Hightower, but from an RIA down the street trying to do the same thing."

For BHWM, whose office is in the heart of Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard near its intersection with Rodeo Drive, its goal is to hire two or three additional advisors by year-end. It aims to have from $80 million to $100 million in revenue in five years. "Based on the plan we've put together, we believe we can do that with a steady growth trajectory," Black-Scott says.

She adds BHWM is working on expansion opportunities in different cities around the country, but wants to grow carefully to make sure they get it right. "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves," she says.

For now, BHWM is relying on Black-Scott's industry contacts--as well as word-of-mouth referrals--to expand its advisor base. She says they'll eventually hire recruiters to attract new talent.