In a sense, Jason Barber was born to be an Edward Jones broker.
His grandfather, Paul Barber, established the first Edward Jones office in Nacogdoches, Texas, a small town of 32,000, in 1981. His father eventually joined the business. Jason says his earliest memories involve his father knocking on doors and building his book.
“I even have a picture in my office that I drew when I was 6 years old that says, 'When I grow up, I'm going to be a stockbroker,'” Jason said. “And there's a picture of me sitting behind a desk, and I have a little bubble that says, 'Welcome to my office,' talking to someone.”
After college and a brief stint at Dell, Jason was the third generation of his family to join the firm. His cousin Taylor Pankratz came on board about 10 years later.
As they grew the business, Jason says the culture changed. They felt like they couldn't do some things at Edward Jones that they wanted for their clients, and often the things they could do didn't make sense for their business. Forty years after his grandfather started the practice, they left and started their own registered investment adviser, Holistic Planning, in 2023.
After 40 years with Edward Jones, Jason said he cried when he handed in his resignation papers. But it turns out that the transition from an off-the-shelf, captive brokerage firm like Edward Jones to their own independent RIA would prove to come with its own kind of pain.
As they looked at several different RIA support platforms, “it just seemed like no one understood me coming from Edward Jones because so few, based on my estimation, Edward Jones people went to RIA,” Jason said.
Indeed, most will join another brokerage firm or an independent broker/dealer before making the leap to full independence. Jason said he was not prepared for the complexity involved.
And while the transition was brutal, he said it instilled in him a desire to use the experience to help others with similar aspirations.
So last July they launched Uptick Partnersa support platform designed to help advisors working for non-protocol brokerages ease the transition to independent RIAs.
Jonathan Dvorak, founder of Dvorak Financial Planning in Cullman, Ala., was the first breakaway to join Uptick. Dvorak manages $275 million in client assets and made the move after 14 years with Edward Jones.
Uptick provides transition support, a technology stack, back office operational support, HR, billing, marketing and legal and compliance. Advisors keep 100% of their book of business and receive a 95% fee. It charges a platform fee of between five and 10 basis points, which decreases as advisers bring more assets to the platform.
They are as confident in their transition process as they have been in recent times created a warranty program in Novemberwhere Uptick will forgo its earnings from a firm until an advisor returns to 100% of the income they had before they left.
But the most compelling part of Uptick's offering may be the founders' battle scars and their ability to relate to the pain points others have when making a similar big leap in business models.
“If I could go back in time and think about what I would have loved more than anything in the world when I resigned that day, I would have had a team of people who would have literally been standing right there where I was standing,” Jason said.
“As Taylor says, 'Be my Sherpa and guide me up Mount Everest.'