EP Wealth's Brian Parker says organic growth drives firm value, not deal metrics

Buyers of advisory firms ultimately pay for organic growth rather than the asset and headcount numbers a deal adds, EP Wealth co-founder Brian Parker said on an RIA Edge panel. "Organic growth is really what all of these businesses are ultimately valued on," Parker said at RIA Edge Orange County, according to WealthManagement.com's account of the session. Parker spoke alongside leaders from Snowden Lane Partners and Bogart Wealth.

His advice to buyers: find a firm already growing rather than try to make one grow. "It's very difficult to get somebody to grow," he said. "It's much easier to find somebody that is growing and enhance what they're doing and build a culture around that."

"Any of these business models that are just about capturing EBITDA or additional business or even headcount—you kind of already lost," Parker said. He described the work as sitting at the kitchen table with your sleeves rolled up, talking about retirement and college planning. Parker, who started EP Wealth with Derek Holman in 1999, said he was cautious at first about building a larger firm because he did not want to lose a personal touch with clients. The firm oversees more than $50 billion in assets, per the report.

Alison Burkett, senior partner, executive vice president and head of enterprise development at Snowden Lane Partners, said her firm deliberately fostered organic growth so it would not be subsumed by its very active recruiting and acquisition strategy. She used the metaphor of a body: exercise only one muscle and the others atrophy. "What's really important in how we think about organic growth or just growth as a firm, is making sure you're not just exercising one or a few muscles, but all of them," she said. "Growth is something that's up to everyone in the firm."

Burkett said Snowden Lane's organic growth strategy rests on a "mantra, a method and a measure" that ties growth to better client services rather than a straight sales approach. The distinction matters for how a firm writes its growth plan: which activities get measured, and which get rewarded, decide whether the program reads to advisors and clients as service or as a pitch.

Read together, the two accounts put the growth record ahead of the deal mechanics. For a seller, that argues for being able to show client additions won outside an acquisition; for a buyer, for choosing a firm whose growth is already visible over one that needs to be built.