An advisor considering a move is running two jobs at once: the practice everyone can see, and a project nobody can know about yet. The second job fails when it is treated as one enormous leap. Treated as a sequence — seven steps, in order — it becomes a plan: decision, research, model, private build, resignation plan, the move, and the settle-in.
Each step exists to de-risk the next one.
The decision gives the research a purpose. The research tells you what the build may legally include. The build makes the resignation plan realistic, and the plan makes resignation day boring — which is exactly what you want it to be. Start by writing the decision down somewhere private. A fuzzy "maybe someday" cannot be planned; writing it down forces the fuzz out.
The research step is the one advisors skip.
Read your employment agreement as it stands today, not your memory of the one you signed; comp-plan updates and retention awards can carry fresh restrictive language. Confirm whether both your firm and the destination participate in the Broker Protocol — membership is voluntary, firms join and withdraw at will, and it has to be confirmed, never assumed. And understand what an employed advisor may lawfully do to prepare, because preparing to compete is treated differently from competing. That line is drawn by a securities attorney, and finding one belongs on the checklist itself.
What the Protocol actually permits.
Where it applies, the Broker Protocol lets a departing advisor take five fields of client information, only for the clients they personally served: name, address, phone number, email address, and account title. Nothing more. The protection is procedural — you resign in writing to local branch management and leave the firm a copy of the client information you are taking. Follow the mechanics exactly and a routine departure stays routine; improvise and it can convert into a lawsuit.
A transition is not one enormous decision you make on a single terrifying day. It is seven smaller decisions you make over time. You are not jumping. You are walking down a staircase you built yourself.
Where the anxiety actually lives.
- Almost none of it attaches to the decision or the settle-in. It concentrates in the private build and the resignation plan — the steps you control most completely, because nothing is public yet and nothing is irreversible.
- Spend generously on the reversible steps so you can move fast through the irreversible ones.
- Keep each step's question inside its step: client conversations belong to the move, custodian paperwork belongs to the build, and most transition worry is simply premature.
The timeline is a function of the checklist.
The public portion — resignation, announcement, repapering — is the short end. The private portion typically consumes months, and the settle-in adds roughly ninety days on the far side. An advisor with a current agreement, a confirmed Protocol answer, a chosen model, and a scripted resignation moves quickly when the moment comes. An advisor who starts the research after resigning discovers the timeline is no longer theirs to set.