Palaveev Forms Team-Based Consulting Firm for Advisors

The third source of clients will be the Ensemble Practice Institute, in which teams from larger advisory firms can attend in-person classes on strategic planning, compensation, career path structures, financial management and business development over a period of three to four years. Palaveev (left) says the Institute will launch in January in Denver, and will take advantage of advisors’ tendency to learn from one another as much as from the world-class experts who will be teaching at the Institute. That peer-to-peer learning, Palaveev says disarmingly, “outweighs anything I can say in a Bulgarian accent.”

There’s another area of expertise that The Ensemble Practice will offer: help with firms acquiring or merging with others. “in the past year, we’ve worked with seven firms in the middle of a merger,” Palaveev says.

While most advisory firms “haven’t seen what a big firm would look like, we have that knowledge and vision,” he says, estimating that he and his partners have already done consulting work with close to 5,000 firms over the years. “We’ve literally written the book” as well on how to systematically build an ensemble practice, Palaveev points out, referring to his book, “The Ensemble Practice,” which is being published Oct. 2 by Bloomberg. Advisory firm owners, by contrast, are “business owners for the first time and probably the last,” he says.

But aren’t there already plenty of consultants to advisors? “I believe we can’t have enough high quality experts for an industry that’s changing and growing,” Palaveev said. “All of us are engaged in searching for the sustainable business model of the industry. There are a lot of doctors in town, that’s good.”

The Ensemble Practice will also take a unique approach to its own compensation. “Our fees are tied to the results—in growth, in clients—we’ll be taking the same risk our clients will be making. If those goals aren’t meant, we give up part of our fee.” That’s only fair, Palaveev says, since “if we’re asking advisors to invest in their business, we should as well.”

Using one of his trademark analogies, Palaveev says that “most chefs don’t need to be taught how to cook, but how to manage a restaurant.” Referring to advisors, he says “most of these cooks haven’t managed a restaurant before, but it’s  a lifetime commitment—we can put them together with people who’ve already been there; Jonathan [McQuade] and I have been to a lot of restaurants—we witnessed the process again and again to see what works.”

Based in Seattle but with a national footprint,  Palaveev says his new firm moreover recognizes that there is “no such thing as an optimal business model. Every business is unique.”