The business behind the advisor.
We work with advisors building what comes next, and with firms that want to grow alongside them.
The point of view
The most important decisions happen before the transaction.
Before an advisor moves, there is a question about what the business needs next.
Before a firm recruits a team, there is a question about why that team would choose them.
Before an advisor considers a strategy, there is a question about whether it belongs in the portfolio.
We work in that window, and bring data, judgment and nearly thirty years in this industry to the decisions that change businesses.
Two paths
Make the right decision about what comes next.
Grow where you are. Evaluate another platform. Consider independence. Plan for succession or a transaction.
We help you understand the paths available, compare them clearly, and navigate the one you choose. Confidentially, and without obligation.
Grow through the right advisor relationships.
We help wealth management firms attract and develop advisor teams, and asset managers reach the advisors most relevant to their strategies.
Credentials
Built from both sides of the table.
Tina Singh has spent nearly 30 years in financial services. She ran Merrill Lynch's closed-end fund business and founded TS Capital, raising more than $11 billion for managers including Apollo, Brookfield and DoubleLine.
She has also owned, financed and scaled operating businesses, and sold an interest in her own. That experience is why the conversation about enterprise value is not theoretical.
Tradecraft
The business behind the book.
Most advisors are taught how to do the work. Far fewer are taught how the business works.
Tradecraft includes independent writing and conversations on growth, capacity, talent, succession and enterprise value, along with a six-week cohort for financial-services professionals learning how careers in the industry actually advance.
The podcast is where advisors and operators describe what they built, what they changed and what they would do differently.
Begin
A few relationships change a business.
If you are exploring your options, start with a confidential call. It commits you to nothing.
For advisors
Make the right decision about what comes next.
You may be trying to grow where you are, questioning whether your current platform still fits, considering independence, or confronting succession.
These are not separate decisions. Each one begins with the same question: what are you trying to build, and which path gives you the best chance of building it.
You do not need to have decided anything, or to be considering a move at all, to have this conversation.
The question underneath
The offer is one part of the decision, and rarely the largest.
A transition package is a number. What matters more is what the business becomes afterward: whether it can grow, whether clients are served better, whether talent develops, whether relationships transfer, and whether any of it works without depending entirely on you.
Those are the things that create enterprise value and preserve future options. A decision that improves the number and weakens the business is not a good decision.
The paths
There are more of them than most advisors are shown.
- Growing within your current firm
- Moving to another platform
- Pursuing independence
- Resolving a partnership question
- Preparing for succession
- Considering a sale or an ownership transaction
- Staying
Most advisors are presented with one of these, by someone with an interest in that answer. The work is understanding which one actually fits.
How the work goes
One process, whichever path you take.
Understand the business and what you want from it
What you have built, how it grows, who carries what, and what the next ten years should look like.
Identify what is constraining the next stage
Often it is not the platform. Sometimes it is capacity, talent, ownership structure, or an agreement signed years ago.
Evaluate the available paths
Including the ones nobody has put in front of you, and including staying.
Compare economics, control, risk and long term value
Side by side, with the assumptions visible. What a package pays, what it costs, what transfers, what does not, and what the business is worth under each outcome.
Navigate the path you choose
Negotiation, sequencing, transition planning and the priorities that follow.
Bring in specialists where the work requires it
Legal, tax and valuation, coordinated rather than left to you. When a succession or transaction requires financing, we help evaluate the need, identify appropriate resources and coordinate the process with lenders and other specialists. We do not lend.
Confidentiality
Your name moves when you say it moves.
When you speak with me as an advisor, your name and identifying information are not shared with a firm, a buyer, a lender or anyone else without your approval. I may test whether a firm has interest in a type of team or opportunity without identifying you. You decide what can be described, when your name enters the conversation, and when a direct introduction should happen.
Exploring your options does not obligate you to make a change.
There is no cost to an advisor exploring or completing a move. The Growth Stack is compensated by the firm the advisor joins, consistent with standard industry practice. Succession, sale and other transaction work is engaged separately, with the scope and compensation agreed in writing before the work begins.
Begin
Start with the business, not the offer.
The first conversation is about what you have built, what you want it to become, and what is standing between the two. Sometimes the right decision is to stay and build differently. When that is the answer, I will say so.
If a call is more than you want right now, the Tradecraft podcast is advisors talking about these decisions in their own words. Listen first.
If you are exploring your options, start with a confidential call. It commits you to nothing.
For wealth management firms
Attract and develop the right advisors.
We identify the teams most relevant to your platform, develop the context behind each one and begin the relationship thoughtfully. Then we help the producers you already have become the ones you want to keep.
What you are actually buying
A name is not an opportunity.
Research identifies where to spend time. Judgment and relationships determine what happens next.
Production tells you size. It does not tell you whether a team can move, whether anything has changed for them, or why your platform would matter more than the last three that called. That understanding takes time, and it is where the outcome is decided.
Attract
We work in the time before the conversation.
We agree on the teams that genuinely fit your platform, and on why yours is a firm they would consider rather than one more call.
We work from public filings, firm records and career history to understand how a practice developed, who carries the relationships, and what would have to be true for a move to make sense. That gives us priorities and a reason to believe in each one.
Then we do the part that takes time. We build the relationship, we understand what the team is weighing, and we stay close as their view forms.
Sometimes the work begins with your mandate. Sometimes it begins with an advisor already evaluating the market. In either case, identifying information is handled with discretion and shared according to the nature of the engagement, and your name is used only as we have agreed.
Develop
Recruiting a team is the beginning. Making them productive is the work.
The same is true of the producers already inside your firm. A book that is inherited, acquired or handed down does not become a business on its own.
We work with next generation advisors on client and commercial fluency, on carrying a confident conversation about what they are selling, on business development, on team roles, and on readiness for the responsibility they are being handed.
Built for firms investing in the producers they intend to keep, and for teams that arrived through a transaction and need to become more than the assets that came with them.
Where you stand
You will always know which conversation you are in.
Some teams we approach under your mandate. Others come to us first while evaluating several possible paths. You will always understand our role and the context in which the conversation began.
A team that is choosing is a team worth winning. The firms that do well here arrive knowing that, and win on what they actually offer.
Who we work with
National and regional RIAs
Growth plans that assume teams, and a recruiting effort ready to deliver them.
Private wealth and UHNW firms
Competing for a small population of teams, with a platform worth choosing.
Aggregators and platforms
Real recruiting ambition, and readiness for a more deliberate approach behind it.
How we engage
One market at a time.
An engagement is defined by a market and the teams in it, not by volume of activity. The work depends on knowing that market well enough to notice when something in it changes.
Tina leads the relationship and makes the calls herself. A research team keeps the picture current between conversations, which is how the timing gets caught.
Terms are agreed at the outset and are consistent with standard industry practice.
Begin
Start with where you want to grow.
The first conversation is about the teams that fit your firm, what makes your platform worth choosing, and what has been preventing those conversations from happening.
For CEOs, heads of recruiting, and firms whose growth plan assumes teams.
For asset managers
Reach the right advisors.
We help asset managers identify the RIAs most relevant to a strategy, clarify why the strategy should matter to them, and begin informed conversations the sales team can continue.
The problem
More names do not create more distribution.
Most firms already have databases, territory lists and contact information. What is usually missing is context. Which advisors have a portfolio problem this strategy addresses. What would make it relevant to the way they actually build portfolios. Why now rather than next year.
Advisors form a view of a strategy well before they agree to a meeting. By the time a sales conversation begins, most of that view is already set. The work that matters happens earlier.
The engagement
A name is not an opportunity.
Knowing who exists is not the same as knowing where a strategy fits, why it should matter, or how to begin the conversation.
Research identifies where to spend time. Judgment and relationships determine what happens next.
Understand where the strategy actually fits
Which portfolio problem it solves, what it sits next to, who is likely to have that problem, and why it would matter to them now.
Build the reason to care
A differentiated strategy is not always described in a way that makes its relevance obvious. We work on how it is explained before anyone hears it.
Have the conversations
We approach selected advisors with relevant education rather than a pitch, and we stay in the conversation as a view forms. When genuine interest develops, we bring your team into a conversation that already has context.
Throughout, we report what advisors are responding to, what remains unclear, and which competing approaches they are weighing. That comes back as themes across the market. What an individual advisor tells us in confidence stays that way.
What you receive
Focused outreach, and what the market teaches us.
- A researched and prioritized advisor opportunity set
- The context and reason behind each priority
- Positioning and educational material shaped by what advisors actually ask
- Direct outreach to selected advisors
- Introductions when genuine interest develops
- Aggregated market feedback, including where the story is not landing
- A clear account of where time was spent and why
We do not promise meetings, allocations or assets. We promise the work that makes them possible.
Who this is for
Boutique managers
Strong investment capability without a national distribution organization.
ETF and product issuers
Differentiated strategies that need explanation before an advisor recognizes the portfolio use case.
Alternative and international managers
Established expertise seeking more effective access to the U.S. wealth channel.
Firms entering the RIA channel
Institutional or wirehouse traction already in place, and a more focused approach needed for independent advisors.
Experience
Investment products are evaluated by people, not screens.
Tina Singh ran Merrill Lynch's closed-end fund business and founded TS Capital, raising more than $11 billion for managers including Apollo, Brookfield and DoubleLine.
That experience is not a list of relationships. It is knowing how a product actually gets evaluated inside a wealth business, what makes an advisor act, and why a strong strategy can still fail to earn attention.
$11B+ raised · nearly 30 years in the channel · senior relationships across asset and wealth management
How we engage
One strategy, one mandate.
Each engagement begins with a specific strategy, a defined advisor market, and an agreed commercial objective, including how your team participates once interest develops.
Tina leads the outreach. The research and technology behind it are built by a team, which is how a firm this size covers a channel this fragmented.
How we work
The objective is the right path, not a completed transaction.
The Growth Stack works with advisors and with firms across wealth and asset management. That gives us a broad view of the market. What matters in any one conversation is narrower: which path serves the clients, strengthens the business and builds long term enterprise value.
A transition package matters, and it is rarely the largest part of the decision. The right path should also improve the business's ability to grow, serve clients, develop talent and transfer relationships without depending entirely on one person. Sometimes that means a different platform, partner or ownership structure. Sometimes it means staying and building differently. When staying is the right answer, I will say so.
Confidentiality
Your name moves when you say it moves.
When you speak with me as an advisor, your name and identifying information are not shared with a firm, a buyer, a lender or anyone else without your approval. I may test whether a firm has interest in a type of team or opportunity without identifying you. You decide what can be described, when your name enters the conversation, and when a direct introduction should happen.
Sometimes a wealth management firm engages us to identify and approach teams that may fit its platform. That work is done from an agreed mandate, and conducted discreetly. Work performed for a firm does not reach conversations happening elsewhere. For a firm, the value is not simply knowing that a team exists. It is understanding the business behind the name, why the platform may be relevant, and whether there is a credible basis for beginning a relationship.
Exploring your options does not obligate you to make a change.
There is no cost to an advisor exploring or completing a move. The Growth Stack is compensated by the firm the advisor joins, consistent with standard industry practice.
Succession, sale and other transaction work is engaged separately, with the scope and compensation agreed in writing before the work begins.
About
I have spent my career building businesses, evaluating opportunities and living with the decisions that followed.
Nearly thirty years in financial services, most of it spent seeing these decisions from inside the businesses affected by them. What an advisor is deciding is not simply which firm to join. It is what the business becomes next, and who will be capable of carrying it.
I began in the wirehouses and spent the early part of my career at Merrill Lynch, where I ran the closed-end fund business, including through the Bank of America acquisition. Running a business inside a large firm teaches you how those institutions actually decide things, which is rarely how they describe it from the outside.
I then founded TS Capital and raised more than $11 billion for managers including Apollo, Brookfield and DoubleLine, distributing through the wirehouses and regional firms. That work put me in front of the same platforms, and the same advisors, from the other side of the transaction.
Building TS Capital also meant negotiating strategic relationships and eventually selling an ownership interest in my own firm. Sitting on the other side of diligence, valuation and terms changes how you read a deal. You learn which parts of an offer are real, which parts are structure, and how much of the number depends on things nobody puts in the headline.
Outside financial services, I bought, financed and scaled California Truck Driving Academy, acquired in 2018, and grew it to five campuses. Payroll, lenders, covenants, regulators, and a workforce that showed up every morning whether or not the market cooperated. It is a different kind of ownership than a book of business, and it is the education that made everything since more useful.
Then I lost it. The workforce unionized, our largest client left, and a business that looked diversified turned out to rest on one relationship. None of that was unknowable. I did not see it in time.
Concentration is the risk nobody prices until it arrives. It is also the reason I ask an advisor early how much of the business sits in the top handful of relationships.
Which is why the questions I ask an advisor are about the business rather than the offer. What is it worth. What is it worth if you never sell it. What happens to it if you stop. Who is going to be able to run it. Those are ownership questions, and I have had to answer all of them myself.
The firm
The relationship is mine. The work behind it is not.
Every conversation, every negotiation and every judgment call is mine. That part does not get delegated, and it is the reason to work with a firm this size rather than a large one.
What sits behind it is a team. Research and data operations keep the market picture current, tracking changes across a market that no one could follow by hand. A technology group builds and maintains what that research runs on, from the databases to the screens that tell us where to look.
That is how a small firm can maintain a broad, current view of a market while still giving every client senior attention.
Relationships and judgment
Led by Tina, on every engagement.
Research and data
Continuous market and practice research, maintained rather than commissioned.
Technology
A specialist group building the systems the research depends on.
The two names
The business behind the advisor.
The Growth Stack works on the business behind the advisor. Tradecraft examines the business behind the book. One is the work. The other is the thinking that informs it.
If you are exploring your options, start with a confidential call. It commits you to nothing.