Call it their moment of truth­-a health scare, frustration with working in a "factory" atmosphere, fear of being swallowed up in a global enterprise or simply reaching an age where change was needed.

Various circumstances have compelled the following advisors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals to leave large, lucrative firms to work at small "boutique" operations.

Whether they started their boutique from scratch or joined an existing firm, they all have prospered, partly because many were able to bring their high-net-worth clients with them.

None wants to return to a firm with hundreds or even thousands of colleagues. All say the small boutique firm can-with hard work and dedication-lead to big things.

A Life-Changing Diagnosis
When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer eight years ago, attorney Bruce Stone awakened to the fact that time was precious and he needed more fulfilling pursuits in his life.

It was a revelation that, three years later, resulted in Stone leaving Holland & Knight-a "wonderful law firm," as he describes it, where he worked for 29 years.

"They were shocked when I left," he says. "[Cancer] makes you realize you are just as mortal as your clients. It became increasingly apparent that for my happiness, I needed to make a change."

Stone became a shareholder with law firm Goldman Felcoski & Stone, P.A., in Coral Gables, Fla., where he specializes in estate planning for domestic and foreign clients.

His transition from a large global law firm to a small boutique was made easier by the fact that his Holland & Knight clients stuck with him, except for one who Stone thought his old firm could better serve.

Stone has found a niche working with family offices on specialized estate planning matters. This has meant, ironically, that his clients have a higher average net worth than those he worked for at Holland & Knight.

"There is life after the large firm,'' Stone says.

Consistent Service
R. Michael Gray, an accountant and former partner at KPMG, one of the so-called "Big Four" accounting firms, left after 20 years to do something "completely different.''

He is now director of the financial planning group at Captrust Financial Advisors, an independent investment advisory firm in Raleigh, N.C.
Captrust has about 100 employees, compared with 25,000 at KPMG. Gray joined the firm in 2005 with 90% of his KPMG clients.
Despite the disparity in size, Gray says Captrust can compete with his former employer.

"The level of service and consistency of service responsiveness is more predictable with us," he says. By comparison, "you get a lot of changeover in the big investment houses."

Working at Captrust has allowed Gray, who is a personal financial specialist, to address his clients' broad planning needs, including estate planning, income tax, life insurance and health care issues.

He adds that Captrust, unlike KPMG, is independent and not limited to proprietary investment products. "We have no ties or allegiance to any mutual fund family or investment advisors or advisory firms at all,'' Gray says.

One of the reasons often cited for staying at a large firm is that it provides more stability than a small firm. The recent collapse or sale of Wall Street giants such as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, however, shows this isn't always the case, Gray notes. Indeed, he says, the risks of leaving a large firm can be outweighed by the risks of staying too long.

"One of the risks of sticking around with the big firm has been pretty evident," he says. "Your company has melded into something else. All of a sudden you worked at Merrill Lynch and now you're with Bank of America."

Small boutiques can be more rewarding than a large firm, on both a financial and philosophical level, he says.

"In my case, a reward is being a shareholder in a growing enterprise with rewards that are potentially greater than might be present in a large company," he says. "I'm a big believer in the independent platform, so for me, moving was an opportunity to be independent and be part of a company with 100 or so employees, so it's big enough to have reasonable benefits-such as health care.''

Leaving The 'Factory' Behind
Rick Michalak owns a Collegewise educational service franchise in Chatham, N.J. The service, which caters to a mainly affluent clientele, prepares and tutors high school students bound for college.

He previously spent 23 years in the for-profit education field, most recently at the Princeton Review, where he worked from 1997 to 2005. At the time Michalak left the company, Princeton Review had sales of $80 million and 45 offices nationwide, with generous benefits, he says.

He gave that up when he started the Collegewise franchise, but Michalak remains happy with the decision. Leaving behind the "factory'' dimensions of the Princeton Review for a more personalized franchise approach appealed to Michalak.

"I made a comfortable living and flew to Europe on vacations with the family in first class from frequent flyer miles from the business," says Michalak, a math tutor who typically puts in a 100-hour week overseeing a staff of 10. "All those lovely perks are gone, including health care coverage. You have to be willing to take those risks on yourself and very aggressively go after the marketplace."

Making Things Happen
Clark M. Blackman II had 26 years experience with firms such as Arthur Andersen, Price Waterhouse and Deloitte Touche when he founded Alpha Wealth Strategies, LLC, an RIA practice, in March 2006.

Located in Kingwood, Texas, it provides family wealth planning with an emphasis on investment strategy. Blackman, a CPA and financial planner, is the sole practitioner. His wife Julie is operations manager. Blackman says he sees more small firms spinning off from big organizations, enabled in part by advancing technology.

"I think this trend will continue," he says. "I find that a lot of financial planner-type people are self-motivated [and] aggressive. They get out there and make things happen.''

Blackman says his career move was motivated in part by his frustration at large firms' resistance to trying alternative approaches.

"It was a constant struggle to get partners in the firm to accept that investments, consulting in particular but even to a degree financial planning as a whole, was a service line that they should support and that could actually make money," he says.

Blackman says his firm has $80 million in assets under management and 13 clients, half of them high-net-worth. He brought all of his clients with him from his former firms, including his longest-term client, the CEO and chairman of a Fortune 500 company. Ironically, he and many of his other clients were originally attracted to the large size and reputation of his former employers.

"Honestly, if I had been on my own then, he wouldn't be a client of mine," Blackman says. "My appeal now is to people who can look at my background, the size of my organization and say, 'I want to work with that guy, because I want to be one of a dozen, not one of 200.'"

Jumping Off A Cliff
Kenneth P. Brier of Brier & Geurden LLP was an estate and trust lawyer at several large Boston firms, working in a field where "a lot of the biggest firms were letting the trust and estate practices wither on the vine."

It reached a point where he felt something had to change. "When I turned 50, I asked myself, what else am I going to do?''

In 2003, Brier formed his own firm.

"In the first week, I thought, 'My God, is this going to work?' he says. "Leaving the big firm is like jumping off the cliff. [You] hope the parachute is going to hold.'' It held, as Brier was able to bring his clients with him to his first boutique firm.

In larger firms, Brier notes, partners don't have the luxury of  "picking and choosing who is the best lawyer. You have to refer a client to a partner. I spent roughly half of my time serving other people's clients.''

In 2007, Brier did have the luxury of choosing a partner. Along with Robert M. Geurden, Brier formed his current practice in Needham, Mass. Julia A. Rossetti has since joined the firm as an associate and there are two other office staffers.

Brier says his small firm can offer the same services as the big downtown firms, including estate planning, tax issues and planning for executives and entrepreneurs. As the operator of a small firm, he adds, he has lower overhead and can charge clients a lower fee than his larger competitors.
"There's a growing demand for this kind of practice in the suburbs and we're still close to Boston,'' says Brier.

Living Off Referrals
At Johnston Asset Management in Stamford, Conn., Cassandra A. Hardman, CFA, says referrals enable her firm to compete with larger operations.

"We are a long-only equity management boutique and in the very high-net-worth area we more often than not get new business by referral," she says. "We also run portfolios for several multi-family offices, trust companies and wealth management firms who have found us through their own research of the investment universe.''

An early boutique, Johnston Asset Management was founded by Richard Johnston in 1985, and currently has $1.4 billion in assets under management, Hardman says.

Unlike some others who have made the jump from large to small, Hardman was unable to retain her former clients. This was due to a non-compete agreement she had with her former employer, PCM International, a subsidiary of what was then The Prudential Insurance Company of America, now Prudential Financial.

"The major risk in working for a small firm is that revenue, which is fee based, can be volatile depending on the performance of the market," she says. "Also, we have fewer product lines and if there is a performance issue with one of them, it will have a much bigger impact on the firm.''