But building clients and assets is not as easy as it looks. Competitive pressures and revenue challenges mean advisors often hit ceilings when they're trying to grow.

"The opportunities to be competitive for a $100 million firm is very tight," especially in cities, says Peter J. Raimondi, the president of Banyan Partners LLC in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a firm that has been acquiring advisory businesses in cities like Boston and New York and has clients in California and Pennsylvania as well.

As RIAs clawed their way back from a rough couple of years, they are going to have to find new ways to stay ahead of the game. In the age of Bernie Madoff (and Suze Orman) when clients have become savvier and more skeptical of their financial advisors, the challenge is to figure out new ways of selling yourself if you want to grow.

Clients are not just taking their friends' recommendations anymore, says Stephen Onofrio, a managing director with the SEI Advisor Network. "They've already been scarred by that and it's made an indelible mark," he says. That means the growth methods of the past have become stale, he says. "With the new consumer, you have to reinvent yourself and reinvent the ways you attract new clients. The way they did business before and attracted business before isn't the same way so they have to get more innovative and more creative and that's clearly a trend we see this year."

One firm that saw massive growth was Massey, Quick & Co. LLC in Morristown, N.J., which saw its assets balloon to $2.987 billion from $1.416 billion at the end of 2009. Stewart Massey, a founding partner, says that the firm's game is not to grow its number of clients so much as it is to selectively go after bigger fish clients, and if that's the case, then the strategy paid off in spades in 2010. Indeed, the firm grew mainly by adding a few large clients-its roster rose to only 126 from 105, but its assets per client grew by 75%.

"We're not trying to grow the number of clients as much as reaching for much larger clients," Massey says. "I think that our model is-and our plan is-to continue to try to increase the average client size. It takes just around the same amount of time to service a $100 million client as a $10 million client."

Joseph Duran, the CEO of United Capital Financial Advisers in Newport Beach, Calif., says his firm grew to 7,500 clients from 4,000 in 2010 and grew to $4.127 billion in assets under management from $1.682 billion the year before, a growth rate of 145%. United Capital has been on an acquisition tear for the past few years, making strategic purchases geographically, and looking specifically for firms that will adopt its client relationship management strategy. The firm uses a card system (called "Honest Conversations,") in which clients use sorting cards to determine goals and fears about money.

The firm's United Capital purchases adopt this system in its client meetings, and this client relationship system is part of its brand. (When asked if it sounds a bit like Jenny Craig, Duran doesn't totally disagree with the comparison.) The firm has not only been growing through its core acquisitions, Duran says, but through the new assets client bring in after they've adopted the new system.

"When we acquire a firm, they're mostly investment-centered," he says, "And we will show them how to develop clients' holistic needs and look at their entire financial life. When that happens, the client will inevitably increase the amount of assets-an average 20% increase. If a firm with half a billion joins, within 12 months they've added about 20% in new assets from increasing the client base," he says.


One of the newer firms on the list is Delphi Private Advisors, a San Diego firm founded in November 2009 which has garnered some $130 million in assets since starting up. The firm's three partners launched it after leaving Sanford Bernstein.