RIABiz quietly records its 14th year and stays with its serious mission -- not without fun -- to provide the 'news, vision and voice for the advisory community'

RIABiz has completed 14 years with its most profitable first eight months since its founding by staying serious, sticking to our underdog roots and understanding that our job is fun when we live that way. See: Welcome to RIABiz on day one

Our Mill Valley, Calif., online publication recorded its highest revenues of any year through August – roughly at the inflation rate – by continuing to rely on the writing, selling, coding, servicing and thinking generated by mostly 10 people.

RIABiz continues to focus on articles about businesses and the people who drive them through the eyes of other business people, sometimes competitors, who provide insights into understanding brands from the inside out.

“Brooke came of age during the golden era of print journalism, before the Internet, when in-depth reporting was the coin of the realm,” says Keith Girard, a colleague for almost 30 years.

“While the Internet and social media often reduce reporting to sound-bites, Brooke never lost sight of the power and impact of traditional journalism. It's what distinguishes RIABiz from the competition and has helped solidify our success."      

The capitalistic system ultimately rewards financial advisors who serve clients ahead of themselves and the corporations they work for. RIABiz is grounded in the same philosophy. 

The very meaning of RIA is foremost an aspirational concept; a whole industry has grown up through the sidewalk cracks of Wall Street's transactional heritage and serves far more people far better and – for the best practioners – far more profitably.

Following the action

Honoring the best of fiduciary advice inside tip-top businesses means policing Wall Street, but more and more often watching exactly what happens in the RIA house as RIAs and their vendors ambitiously pursue scale. 

Scale in the RIA business is good when more people get more advice at fair prices. It must be scrutinized when it starts citing old wirehouse rationalizations about sacrificing certain investors for the greater good.

What keeps RIABiz going – and helps me motivate our staff to hang in there – is experiencing the great admixture of this industry. 

We are where the action is as journalists but also as business people interacting with bright, motivated, idealistic people. As a publication, we provide a service – free journalism, underwritten by paid advertising -- to the industry and make a living from it.

We dish out criticism through the angles our articles take. and we accept criticism when we are wrong. 

Rocking on

Keeping the journalistic flame burning means taking on tough topics and understanding that not all news is good news. 

We try to avoid producing “click bait,” but we try just as hard not to be boring. We're not here to entertain readers. We're not here to write Soviet-style crop reports.

The RIA business is multi-faceted like a fine diamond and we've covered every angle from breakaway brokers, automated advice, software delivered online, the idea of a national RIA, the advance of outsourcing and wide-scale M&A, to RIA custodians competing as RIAs, poaching on Wall Street and Silicon Valley and RIA events that take over entire entire Los Angeles beach towns.

That means that in many cases – crypto-tokens, alts and artificial intelligence aside, maybe – that less will be new under the sun in our industry. 

We'll need to rock on as the novelty wears off by looking at our business with fresh eyes. RIABIZ knows an RIA when it sees one, and one day might even be able to describe one. See: What exactly is an RIA? 

Offering thanks

I'd like to thank Lisa Shidler, Oisin Breen and Keith Girard in Ohio, Maryland and Scotland, respectively, for being the editorial heart and soul of RIABiz – and rolling with my constant prodding.

Thank you to Frank Noto, Robin Riley and Wendy Timmons in San Anselmo, New York City and Texas for running RIABiz as a business.  We do not need to charge subscription fees, solicit donations, sell sponsorships to dubious events and awards or sell sponsored content.

Thank you, readers, for wading through a certain amount of emailed and banner advertising to loyally consume our articles – and advertisements.

Thank you engineers, Terry Hong and Co., in Toronto, for keeping the advertising and editorial aspects of output functioning in our all-online publication.

Thank you John and Dawn Kodin from Seattle for keeping our directory – now 13 years old.