Even Convergent had to cut head count, which it did in a pre-emptive second half 2008 strike, cutting the lowest 10% in hopes of strengthening from the bottom, as General Electric does, says Lockshin.

"Anytime you have to make those decisions it's painful," he says. "We're a small company with 100 odd people. We had over 100 people at the time and we value everybody here. It's no fun having to make those decisions, and I think the environment commanded that kind of decision. But I never want to be in that position again if I don't have to."

The revenue hassles meant less money for marketing at some firms, fewer dinners, fewer magazine subscriptions. Even the fresh cut flowers in the lobby sometimes had to go.

"We used to have TVs in the lobby that would show the news," says Steve Burnett, president of Hanson McClain, which runs both an RIA and broker-dealer in Sacramento, Calif. "That came with a cable bill, so we said, 'Is that really a necessity?'" The old TV/VCR hybrids were tossed, he says, along with the plant service.

Fastest Growers
Among the fastest growers with $1 billion or more in assets were Convergent, as well as Evercore Wealth Management in New York; American Portfolios Advisors Inc. in Holbrook, N.Y.; Mariner Wealth Advisors LLC in Leawood, Kan.; Telemus Capital Partners in Southfield, Mich; and United Capital Financial Advisers in Newport Beach, Calif.

Evercore leapfrogged into the big leagues with $1.5 billion in assets by the end of the year. The firm comprises a group of former executives from U.S. Trust, including CEO Jeffrey Maurer, who spent more than 30 years at that firm catering to the needs of blue bloods with fat accounts. His new firm launched at the end of 2008, and last year the team took along some U.S. Trust clients with them, says partner Christopher Zander. The firm also has a sister trust company. It deals with clients that have at least $5 million in assets and prides itself on giving its tony clients more inside access to asset managers. Maurer has said in the past he wants to reach $5 billion by 2013 in organic growth alone.

"I'm a founding partner," says Zander. "I headed the multifamily office for U.S. Trust and most of the partners here are ex-U.S. Trust senior professionals. We've just grown through clients being attracted to our model as a wealth management boutique." He says the team followed Maurer because it wanted to work in a smaller format and an entrepreneurial atmosphere.

American Portfolios Advisors, meanwhile, lured in 175 new reps to its B-D last year, and firm President Tom Wirtshafter says about half of those reps also do wealth management and have brought accounts to the RIA platform as well. The firm offers an open architecture so advisors can work with it in different ways, as IARs, as their own RIAs, or as reps for its broker-dealer.

"One of the reasons that we are growing is we've created a model that's pretty flexible," he says. "We allow assets not only to be held at Pershing but at outside custodians, and we allow for outside RIAs to hold their assets either at Pershing or away from us. What we're able to do is capture the transaction no matter where the transactions are taking place and do our part in supervision and surveillance on the trades. ... So that open architecture is both for letting the reps choose the custodian but also choose whether they want to be with their own RIA or part of American Portfolios' RIA.

Other fast-growing firms, such as Mariner, are aggressively hiring advisors from the wirehouse channels to bring in new accounts. Mariner went from 250 households to about 800, and its assets grew about 218% to $4.235 billion.