Rather than leaving prospective client conversions solely to their boss, two staff members at a registered investment advisory firm took lead roles in winning a major new client.
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The multiyear, non-transactional outreach to a prospect with about $20 million in holdings by Shannon Irwin, the chief of staff of Synergy Financial Group, and Lindsey Ahlo, a paraplanner and the RIA’s lead operations specialist, ultimately brought the customer on board, according to Palash Islam, founder of the San Ramon, California-based firm. In an industry facing financial advisor succession challenges and a future talent shortage, Synergy’s approach offers replicable lessons that could help dispel misconceptions about careers in the field.
“It was really truly building that relationship and connecting on a deeper level,” Irwin said of the outreach, which spanned roughly five years before the client joined the firm in 2025. “A lot of it was just building that connection and showing that Synergy was not just a one-person firm.”
Easier said than done?
But that often proves difficult for many firms, according to experts like Steven Tenney, a former advisor who founded consulting and RIA coaching firm Grandview & Company and wrote the book “RIA Succession Alpha.” In light of the industry’s talent needs, firms that master training and mentorship “will be absolutely big winners,” Tenney said. However, founders often struggle to let go of the reins enough to let other team members take ownership of responsibilities, and sometimes find better methods when carrying out those vital tasks.
“By empowering these other people to go out and win that business, he becomes less important to the firm in a good way, so that others are building those skills and have established those skills to go win that business,” Tenney said. “And the firm becomes less reliant on him. The more you can do that, the better — the more operational leverage you have to grow the firm more.”
Building the pipeline
Synergy didn’t do that overnight, either. Islam’s RIA has grown to about 75 high net worth households with $375 million in client assets over roughly two decades, with niche focuses on athletes and early-stage technology company employees, and a fully remote office since 2008. The company has four other employees besides Islam, Ahlo, and Irwin, although the founder noted that the staff size will soon rise to eight with the hiring of another paraplanner. Irwin, who has been at Synergy nearly six years, helped recruit Ahlo to join the team in January 2022.
The following year, Ahlo met the prospective client for lunch during a vacation in Hawaii, where Ahlo is based year-round. They spent most of the meal discussing non-financial topics such as their shared love of art and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ahlo recalled. But she, Irwin, and the prospect, who is a sibling of one of the firm’s clients, stayed in touch and met several more times before sealing the deal last year.
The future of the industry, and that of the firm
She and Ahlo said their work assisting clients and the Synergy team belies a common notion that financial jobs revolve only around sales and making money. Another mistaken assumption, Irwin noted, is that professionals can’t find rewarding careers unless they’re an advisor.
“I feel like that’s one of the biggest misconceptions,” Irwin said. “You can have a successful career, have relationships and be very ingrained and engaged with clients at an operational level.”
For Synergy’s founder, that bonding between team members and clients is a crucial reason the RIA has laid the groundwork for growth from tens of millions of dollars in assets a decade ago to a future size in the billions.
“If we don’t want to roll with them for 20 years, we just say, ‘no,’ now,” Islam said about prospects. “It’s very natural and organic, and we’re not trying to put the wrong people into the relationship. And so it’s very important that the staff, the team, really align with the clients, that they want to serve the clients.”
