Choosing to leave the firm where you built your business often comes down to what we call push and pull.
Pushbacks are usually those things that are limiting or frustrating you. Drives are the desire to achieve something bigger: A vision of a future that allows you to serve customers and grow business with less friction and more potential.
It's not unusual to feel some pushback, but we find that advisors most often shared that they left their firm because they were drawn to an option that offered “a better way.”
Dylan O'Shea is one such counselor who felt that pull.
For Dylan, it was a pull that led him to independence after 10 years of building a solo practice at Merrill—a tenure that included serving as a trainer for the financial advisor training program and as chair of Merrill's NextGen Leadership Council -it, and eventually generating $1 million in annual revenue.
As time went on, however, the nagging feeling that Merrill “wasn't his tribe anymore,” as Dylan put it, grew stronger—and he wanted to achieve more than he thought possible at the firm.
As a young and rising advisor, Dylan watched as others left Merrill to follow their dreams and build independent firms that offered them greater freedom and control—a prospect Dylan found appealing. .
After conducting due diligence, Dylan decided to join former Merrill colleagues Kelly Milligan and Mike Barry at Quorum Private Wealth in 2022.
Dylan shares his story with Mindy Diamond, including:
- The specific pushes and pulls he experienced—and those pulls were turning points.
- The draw to join freelance firm Quorum—and how he found a new tribe in the process.
- Deciding between taking a transition deal from another firm versus independence—and why joining an existing firm was the path he chose.
- The value of the infrastructure—and why scale, support and experience were a key factor in his decision.
It's a story that offers a unique perspective of a young, rising advisor with a long track record who could have easily chosen a transition control but chose independence instead, why he chose to join an existing firm instead of building his own, and much more. .