Why an Entrepreneurial Advisor Needs More Than a Big Name

Robert Hamm | Clarity Financial Advisors | Bothell, WA

Robert Hamm had spent enough time working within someone else's framework. He was ready for a firm that would let him build his own.

After years at a larger broker-dealer platform that was acquired, restructured, and slowly stripped of the things that made it work, Hamm came to SFA Partners wanting to build the practice he envisioned — on his own terms. “Bigger firms, they'll say to just focus on your business, and we'll do the rest. Which sounds great, except for, you know, I'm entrepreneurial, I want control. I want to have the website the way I want it and I want to have the tools that I want to have.”

Hamm's practice, Clarity Financial Advisors, centers on educators in Washington State, many of whom come in through 403(b) accounts and eventually become long-term retirement clients. He has a clear vision for how he wants to grow, how he wants to onboard clients, and how he wants to show up in his market. At a larger firm, those ambitions kept running into walls. “Before SFA Partners, I might have been talking to someone who talked to someone. I had zero direct access to the due diligence team.”

The contrast at SFA Partners came into focus discussing a preferred stock transaction and a DST — less common investments that require careful documentation of the advisor's reasoning and process. Hamm was able to go straight to the SFA Partners' due diligence team. It's not just compliance and due diligence. Hamm describes a working environment where he can call someone by name for operational support, reach compliance directly with a real question, and build out client-facing tools and marketing that reflects his practice.

“We have all the tools, as if we are our own RIA. So we get to operate like our own  small RIA.”

Photo: Main Street westbound from 102nd Avenue in Bothell, WA, 2019  | SounderBruce  , CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons