Ross Levin

What do you win by not being bought ?

H , THE ALLURE OF CASH . THE PROMISE OF MAKING BIG bank . Of being able to walk away from a firm I founded after all these years to spend time with the new grandkid , go to Minnesota Twins games , and take winter desert walks with my wife at our home in Arizona .

Considering all that , why would we not sell our stake in Accredited Investors Wealth Management to a private equity firm willing to pay at least twice the rate of our internal sales ?

Well , folks , for those who go beyond algorithms for their financial planning , let me give you my reasons ( many shared by my co-founding partner , Wil Heupel ) and I will graciously accept your counsel . Here goes .

Our business is a family business without family . Yes , we manage $ 3.5 billion dollars , have 60 employees and serve 600 families , so we have to run our business as a business . But our firm is the result of the faith those families placed in us and all the people at Accredited who try to deliver on the promises we make . Accredited was built by these clients and our current staff as well as the staff that came before us and the clients no longer with us . My co-workers and clients feel like family to me — with at times some of the same dysfunction and disappointments that befall all families .

This family mindset influences our decisions . We want to improve the collective lives of those we serve — our colleagues , our clients , our community . At times we run into choices that conflict with those constituencies , but we have to manage those conflicts like any other in our business .

We don ’ t have a succession plan . We have a sustainability plan . We want our company to exist long beyond Wil ’ s and my eventual retirements . In order for that

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2024 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | 17