Going It Alone

Like many advisors who choose to leave established firms where they have been employees to build independent practices where they can be their own bosses, Cathy Pareto’s first task was finding clients.

“One of the greatest challenges we faced in starting this firm was that we had a non-solicitation agreement with our previous firm, which of course we honored,” she recalls. “It was much harder to start from zero, and in the most turbulent market conditions that we could imagine.

“That said, it just made me want to work harder–knowing that we were starting from scratch and having to build this foundation from only our experience and our knowledge,” she says. “It really moved me to want to do it better and to do it faster.”

After she had hung out her own advisory shingle, Pareto did get a few calls from former clients, but told them that unfortunately she couldn’t help them. “I didn’t want to go down that road,” she says. “I didn’t want those kinds of problems; I didn’t want that kind of distraction while I was trying to build a new baby.”