Ep 465: Making The Sell-Or-Keep Decision When You Hit A $260M AUM Wall with Todd Pisarczyk
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In an environment where there is no shortage of external acquirors, many RIA founders receive regular inbound inquiries from potential suitors. While the compensation from such deals (and the ability to shrink the administrative burdens they face) might be tempting, these offers can be weighed against a desire to grow independently and perhaps pass it on to the next generation.
Todd Pisarczyk is the founder of Momentous Wealth Management, an RIA based in Vancouver, Washington that manages $400 million in AUM for 400 client households. Listen in as Todd shares how he hit a turning point after reaching 350 clients and feeling trapped by success, then built a detailed spreadsheet (included in the show notes) to analyze whether to sell or keep his firm. We talk about how the numbers (and lifestyle considerations) ultimately led him to stay independent, the changes he made to scale sustainably, and how his definition of success has evolved from "more growth" to creating a legacy where others can thrive.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/465
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsas. Welcome everyone. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to the 465th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast |
| 0:35.2 | is Todd Pissarcheck. Todd is the founder of Momentous Wealth Management, an RIA based in Vancouver, Washington, |
| 0:41.5 | that oversees approximately $400 million in assets under management for 400 client households. |
| 0:47.1 | What's unique about Todd, though, is how he worked his way through the choice of whether to sell or keep his firm after hitting a complexity wall by analyzing both the numbers, creating his own spreadsheet in the process, and the lifestyle considerations |
| 0:58.4 | of this decision. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Todd found that as his business |
| 1:03.7 | grew to around 350 clients, he became frustrated by the increasing lack of freedom and time, |
| 1:09.2 | despite the financial success of the firm itself. How Todd started receiving offers to acquire his firm, which led him to consider |
| 1:15.5 | what he wanted the rest of his career and future ownership of the firm to look like and |
| 1:18.9 | what would be most financially advantageous for himself, and how Todd built a spreadsheet to |
| 1:23.9 | analyze offers that showed that holding onto the firm, even if it meant eventually |
| 1:27.5 | selling at a lower multiple to internal successors, could lead to a better financial outcome, |
| 1:32.2 | particularly given the strong growth his firm was experiencing. |
| 1:35.1 | We also talk about how Todd, after deciding against selling his firm, brought in newer advisors, |
| 1:39.9 | which both helped to spread out the workload of the growing firm, but also energized him |
| 1:44.0 | by allowing him to spend more time coaching these the growing firm, but also energized him by allowing |
| 1:44.7 | him to spend more time coaching these new hires, how Todd worked with a consultant to document and |
| 1:49.2 | build out his firm's processes to streamline operations and more efficiently scale. |
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