Running a Successful RIA: Marcio Silveira of Pavlov Financial Planning

Welcome back to our latest interview series on the XY Planning Network advisor blog. We reached out to a number of XYPN member advisors who have successfully run their own RIAs for a year or more and gathered their insights for others who are at the very beginning of their journey to launching their own firms and RIAs.

Michael Solari of Solari Financial Planning kicked off this series a few weeks ago. You can catch up on his advice and tips for new planners here.

Today, we asked Marcio Silveira of Pavlov Financial Planning to look back on one year of running his successful RIA and to share his experience and tips for success with us.

About Marcio Silveira

Marcio Silveira is a CFP® and CFA who is passionate about empowering people to live prosperous and secure lives. He feels strongly about the importance of providing financial planning services that truly align with his clients' needs and priorities. His focus is on that service, and using his experiences in life and business to help others achieve success.

Marcio specializes in helping young professionals who are ready to get their finances in order so they can begin building wealth.

Running a Successful RIA: Looking Back One Year After Launch to Provide Advice, Insights, and Tips for New Advisors

If you could go back, what advice would you give to your younger self before launching your RIA?

Spend more time building online visibility than doing in-person traditional networking.

What do you wish you had known before you launched your practice that would have helped avoid some stumbling blocks along the way?

1. Having a good website is really important.
2. People don't really understand the meaning of different financial designations, the critical one to have is the CFP. Pursuing other designations does not help with clients and can be a big distraction while building a practice.
3. Things always take longer than we think. We are naturally optimistic and building anything takes a lot of energy and time. We need to learn to deal with this frustration, particularly when it comes to the pace of new client acquisition.

Even as a successful financial planner, all RIAs face challenges. What’s one challenge that you had to work to overcome?

I took too long to create a decent website. The current one is not that great and I'm in the process of upgrading it, but it is much better than my initial one.

The way most of my clients find me is online and a decent website is a must. If you have the time, money, and energy to create a great website, your business is more likely to grow faster.

What is your number-one piece of advice for a new advisor starting their own firm?

Understand that building a practice takes time, energy, and money. Each one of these resources should be used wisely. In my opinion, the best area to focus the resources in the beginning is client acquisition using online tools.

What has been one of your best successes as a result of launching your own RIA?

In 2012 I attended the FPA residency in California. The program was great and helped me refine my process.

The best and most unexpected thing about attending came a few months afterwards when a colleague in the program reached out to talk about a partnership. In the beginning of 2013 I started working with Hui-chin Chen, who is a great contributor to the business and to my clients.

About the Author

Alan Moore is the CEO and Co-Founder of XY Planning Network—a support ecosystem dedicated to helping fee-for-service advisors start, run, and grow their own financial planning firms and serve the clients they want. His favorite part about his job is dreaming about possibilities for what's next, knowing his stellar team will either tell him no or Get Sh*t Done to make it happen.