If you are two or three years into thinking about independence, you have probably decided something is wrong with you. Everyone else, you imagine, saw the opportunity, ran the numbers over a weekend, and resigned by Friday. The data says otherwise. Long deliberation is what this decision looks like when a careful person makes it — and once you accept that, the rest of the thinking gets easier.
The timeline runs in years, and that is the median.
There is no study that pins down an average deliberation length, so treat any precise figure with suspicion. What the research does measure is the consideration window. Fidelity's Advisor Movement Study — a 2023 snapshot — found that 56% of advisors had considered switching firms within a five-year period, while roughly one in four actually moved. Sit with the gap between those two numbers. That space between considering and moving is where most advisors live for a long time.
Movement itself is not slowing down. Diamond Consultants counted 11,172 experienced advisors changing firms in 2025, up 16.2% from 2024. The arc advisors describe is consistent: an itch that starts small, a first round of research that raises more questions than it answers, a spell of talking yourself out of it, then sharper passes. That stop-and-start rhythm is the norm, not a defect.
The shame is the real tax.
A harsh little voice says a braver advisor would have moved already, so you carry two loads at once: the indecision, and the embarrassment about the indecision. Clear thinking about payout structures, transition mechanics, and your own appetite for running a business requires bandwidth. Beating yourself up consumes it. The first move is not to decide anything — it is to set the second load down.
The years you have already spent turning this over were not a waiting room. They were the work.
Exploring is not procrastinating.
The confusion comes from measuring progress only in moves. Measured in understanding, an advisor deep in a two-year exploration may be far ahead of someone who acted fast. Preparation compounds; panic does not. Structure helps the exploring go somewhere — a short honesty test you revisit each quarter keeps the thinking advancing rather than circling.
- Am I running toward something, or away from something?
- Would I join my current firm today, knowing what I know now?
- What specifically would have to be true for me to move, and what am I afraid of, named plainly?
Four things tend to stall the decision.
Golden handcuffs come first: deferred compensation vests over years, and FINRA itself has described recruiting incentives of as much as two to three times prior-year commissions and fees, often structured as forgivable loans. Then the fear that clients won't follow, the operational load, and the quieter identity question — do you want to run a business, or a better version of your current job? Each is nameable, and a named obstacle stops running the whole deliberation from the shadows.
Waiting to feel certain means waiting forever.
Decisions this size rarely come with certainty attached. Real research produces answers that change your next question; hiding produces the same anxieties on a loop. If deferred money keeps the clock running, get the actual vesting dates in front of you — a known number can be planned around, a vague sense of handcuffs cannot. The only timeline that matters is the one that ends in a clear, deliberate choice: to go, or to stay on purpose. Both beat drifting.