AE Wealth's two-word growth advice: 'not right now'

Shannon Larson, president of AE Wealth Management, tells advisors to say 'not right now' to a good idea. AE Wealth is a $50 billion RIA. Its advisors, by her count, are growing organic assets about 12% a year. To her, those two facts are connected: the discipline to defer instead of reject is what keeps a practice aimed at its plan. The advice sounds simple and proves hard, especially in a profession full of entrepreneurs who did not get here by waiting.

Larson joined AE Wealth earlier this year after eight years at Osaic, where she was senior vice president for platform and product solutions across the network's broker-dealers and RIAs. She spoke with InvestmentNews ahead of the Women Advisor Summit, where she and Curtis Financial Planning founder Cathy Curtis close the Nov. 5 New York conference with a fireside chat on 'the long game.' The entrepreneurial instinct to say yes in the moment is exactly what derails growth, she says. 'In that moment, they may have the greatest idea ever, but it's really focused on what's the effort versus impact,' she said. The question, she added, is whether the idea belongs this year or next.

That patience runs against the grain of the industry. Larson's own path maps the independent channel's evolution: client operations at Fisher Investments in the early 2000s, vice president for advisory platforms at LPL, then Osaic's platform and product solutions group, and now the president's chair at AE Wealth — a roughly 25-year tour. She has watched the parade of platforms, products, and affiliation structures. Her advice is not that such things are bad; it is that adopting them has to survive contact with a multi-year plan. 'One of the disciplines I think that's critical for advisors is multi-year business planning,' she said.

The second piece is the team around the advisor. 'They have to surround themselves with people that are different than themselves,' she said. A team built in the founder's image just produces more of the founder. 'If I have somebody surrounding myself that's just like me … I'm just going to do more of what I do.' The healthy model she names is the classic split: a sales rainmaker paired with a COO who brings operational perspective. At AE Wealth, she says, the most successful teams are long-tenured but complementary — together long enough to have found their lanes, different enough to cover each other's gaps.

The 12% rate deserves an industry benchmark. The Ensemble Practice's 2026 True Ensemble Growth and Profitability study measures the average firm's organic growth the same way Larson's number does: new client relationships net of market appreciation. Buyers and sellers lean on organic growth when they talk about a practice's health, because it strips out market tailwinds and shows whether the business is adding clients. AE Wealth's advisors, by her count, are running at roughly that rate. She calls it 'very high' and presents it as the result of the two disciplines — the multi-year plan and the complementary team — rather than any single product or marketing push.

For a principal, the argument lands on the decision queue. The independent channel sends a steady stream of entreaties: new technology, private credit products, recruiting overtures, merger pitches. The firms that grow, in Larson's telling, are the ones that can hold a good idea up against a multi-year plan and answer, 'not right now.' Deferral keeps the door open without letting the idea shove the year's work aside. The team point is just as practical: a founder who hires in their own image compounds blind spots along with strengths, while a rainmaker and a COO covering different ground give the plan someone to execute it. The successful AE Wealth teams she describes have been together long enough to know their roles and differ enough to fill their gaps. Organic growth, in this telling, is the byproduct of that structure. The quick win, by her reasoning, is an idea that could not pass the effort-versus-impact test.