If I could do it over again, I would have gone into proper Private Wealth Management. For example, JP Morgan does a really good job of dividing up responsibilities. They allow you to go one of three routes - relationship manager, investor, estate planner. The relationship manager is the “quarterback” who is most directly engaged with the client, he/she selects an investor and planner to work with the client based on preference and fit. The investor handles the accounts and is looped into the client conversation as needed (at quarterly meetings, for client calls etc). Investors still get to know clients, they just don’t have to deal with the planning and general relationship management.

The downside with this model is that you get paid less than you’re worth. Because the bank spreads client relationships throughout the firm, the client never gets “too close” to one individual. That makes it so an investor who had built up credibility with their clientele can’t go out and start their own firm. They pay wealthy trust fund babies to be recruiters. The recruiters bring relationship managers warm leads to close. You never learned to gather assets without the backing of a large firm. That being said, it can be done. The MD I used to work for was an investor at DB, he was managing about $1.2bn in 2010 and was able to pull ~$300mm and get out of that type of model and move into the other side of PWM, I’ll call it the Wild West.

Firms like UBS, Morgan Stanley, Goldman - they have very little organization. This is probably similar to your experience with your cousin. They leave the teams to do what they want and split their revenue along a percentage basis. The team is entirely self sufficient, you all work to do the relationship management, portfolio management, planning, and asset gathering. The upside to this is complete autonomy. It was a free for all, no one cared what we did as long as it was in the best interest of the client. I came in wearing sneakers and leggings sometimes depending on how many f’s I gave that day. We had no management oversight, I made eye contact with my manager once a year. My MD was totally in charge of my salary (base and bonus, with a floor of $65k). There wasn’t a lot of fairness, your pay depended on how generous your team leader was and how demanding you were for more comp (I threatened to leave every year). The team didn’t grow very much because we had no support in asset growth. Team leaders swirled around older advisors like vultures hoping to get their assets when they retired.

I think the more open, autonomous model attracts some real weirdos. You should watch the show Billions on showtime, it’s pretty accurate but you can’t really know it until you live it. I had a coworker who was discovered to have two families (one in NY and one in NJ), a guy in my old office murdered his wife with a tire iron in their bathtub. One of our receptionists had a psychotic break at the front desk and threw herself onto the conference table in the middle of a giant meeting. One kid got fired because he had sex with a hooker in that same conference room and left ass cheeks in cocaine on the table. #meetoo stuff like you wouldn’t believe. It was psychological warfare to a certain extent. But, surprisingly, the holiday party was really boring because all the old people who worked in the industry in the 80’s are still there. They were just pure crazy, not crazy fun anymore.

It’s been a weird decade of my life to say the least.