Financial advisor father
I have another forum about this but nobody seems to respond anymore so I decided to try a new post. I am trying to decide between working with my dad and his 250$ aum at a B.B. and trying to get into investment banking. Which would have more money and be more worthwhile?
check my series on PWM. father/son teams can either crash and burn or flourish, I've seen both firsthand. PWM is a great business if you do business the right way and have an eye towards the future. the industry will get gutted over the next several years and your only chance at success is to be cutting edge and actually work hard (not coast and hope markets bail you out while charging 150-200 bps like guys in the 90s and 00s did). first, find out what your dad's AUM is, his ROA, number of clients, and business mix. that will tell you all you need to know, but maybe these scenarios will help. alternatively, if he's at ML/MS/UBS, you can guess based on his title. you want SVP and above ideally (including director, ED, MD).
assume it's 250mm AUM with an ROA >=60bps (which is good). this means his production is in the 1.5mm range so he makes 6-700k per year. this is plenty of room for him to take a paycut to groom you. I know a producer in my office personally who lives in a house that size and is cheap, you can't judge a book by their cover. the most extravagant spenders in my office are underperformers. when you find out his business mix and # of clients, this is where you could see opportunity. if he has under 300 clients, that's a good thing. anything more than that and your main job would be trimming the fat and doing business overhaul, because if he's carrying that many relationships, he's likely neglecting the top end of his book to some extent. either make it scaleable or get rid of lower end clients. also, this assumes his business mix is someone annualized, meaning it's fee-based by and large with recurring revenue. if he's still a transactional advisor, that model is dying more by the minute, again not a reason to say no, but just something to be aware of.
now, if it's 250 clients, I'd ask what his average client size is. if he's dealing with millionaires, you're in better shape than if most of his households are in the 250-500k range, more scaleable, better referrals, stickier assets, etc
I would probe him more on his business, because I've seen practices out there that are dead ends (shitty investments, poorly serviced clients, all elderly, etc) that you wouldn't want to touch., and I've seen others that are the ideal scenario: guy's built a great practice, just needs help scaling, managing the book, growing, etc. if your dad is in his 50s, you won't get full ownership for 10 years, but you've got a long enough runway to learn the business and grow into a wonderful situation.
TLDR - get more intel, it's too complicated of a question to just answer yes or no