A seller's emotions can make or break an RIA deal

DeVoe & Company, working with Allworth Financial, has published a report on the emotional journey of selling an RIA. The white paper, a 2024 WealthManagement.com Wealthies finalist, argues that a seller's fears and aspirations can undermine a good partnership or give direction to the sale. It sorts those emotions by client, staff, and owner, and singles out founders, whose sale must be managed alongside a larger life change. The report's stated purpose is to offer guardrails, not a checklist.

A companion webinar moves from framework to case study. Brad Grubb, managing director at DeVoe, and Adam Reinert, former CIO and COO of Marshall Financial Group, discuss Marshall's recent sale to Creative Planning. Their conversation covers the leadership team's decision to explore a transaction, what mattered most when evaluating potential partners, what surprised them during diligence, and how the transition unfolded after close. DeVoe bills it as a candid look at what it takes to navigate a successful sale.

The report's treatment of founders is the piece worth dwelling on. A founder's emotional journey, the authors argue, is unique and coincides with a larger life change. That is a formal way of saying the seller's identity is in the room with the term sheet. Unresolved identity work can turn into delay: criteria that shift, second-guessing in diligence, points reopened after the letter of intent. The report does not pretend the work is easy; it simply names the places where it will surface. Owners who skip that work will meet it in the diligence room, at the signing table, or in the first months after close.

The guardrails the report offers are practical, not therapeutic. They exist to keep fear from being read as diligence and aspiration from being read as a term sheet. For the operator-minded reader, the takeaway is that emotional readiness is a deal term. It can shape which buyer looks attractive and how integration begins. The deal that closes cleanly is often the one where the seller did the identity work before the buyer even appeared.