12 Lessons We Learned in 2024 as a Fast-Growing Hybrid RIA/BD Platform

2024 has been an incredible year for Alden Investment Group. We’ve grown to $2.25 billion in client assets, welcomed new advisors to our platform, expanded our client base, and continued to build out our internal team. But growth is about more than headline numbers—it’s about aligning people, processes, and purpose to create something sustainable and impactful.

As we set our sights on 2025, we’ve learned that connecting the dots—between people, technology, processes, and vision—is the key to sustainable growth. These 12 lessons reflect what we’ve embraced this year, and we believe they apply not only to us but also to many financial advisors seeking to grow equally rapidly.?

1. Vision is the Foundation of Growth

A clear vision keeps you focused on the big picture, especially during periods of rapid change. Conversely, without a vision, you will merely drift around and likely land quite far from your goal.?

For Alden, our vision is to simplify and elevate the advisor experience in a manner that considers all areas of an advisor’s business. This vision is at the forefront of everything we do, from advisor recruiting to developing and implementing ongoing client and advisor-centric solutions.?

This year reiterated to us that growth starts with clearly defining where you’re going, very closely followed by how you’re going to get there. Dedicated focus on your primary vision is required in order to scale effectively. You only have so much time, so you need to focus it on achieving your primary vision—spending it elsewhere is nothing but a distraction.?

2. It’s All About the Basics?

You can’t scale what isn’t working at a foundational level. Whether it’s client service, team communication or operational processes, the basics set the tone for everything else. Success starts with doing the small things exceptionally well.?

Rapid growth can expose any cracks in your foundation, which reinforces the importance of getting the fundamentals right. This year, we made significant investments in our operations systems, workflows and team members.?

If you can’t execute the basics as a small firm–or even if you have them down–scaling will only amplify or expose whatever cracks you have (whether you saw them coming or not).?

3. Align with the Right Partners

Growth isn’t a solo journey. This year, we’ve seen the power of partnering with like-minded advisors and vendors who share our values. We’ve prioritized relationships with advisors, vendors and clients who align with our values, allowing us to have true enduring partnerships. We’ve continued to see traction with our advisor equity model, allowing advisors to also participate in growth as partners.?

2024 reminded us that relationship management of all internal and external stakeholders is paramount. Being selective when choosing dedicated managers for a relationship is pivotal–you only get so many favors, so be intentional about when and how you ask for them.

We made a commitment to surround ourselves with people and partners who will stand up and be counted when things are either good or bad, and move forward with us. For clients, this alignment ensures they receive seamless, well-supported service from advisors who are backed by strong, values-driven relationships.?

4. Trust is Built Through Consistency and Clarity?

As we’ve grown, maintaining clear and consistent communication has been critical. From setting expectations with clients to meeting deadlines for advisors, trust is built one promise at a time (and can be broken just as easily).?

Shifting the mindset from “I can do that” to “We can do that” is crucial as you grow. Equally important is ensuring all team members are on the same page, telling the same story, and executing tasks in alignment with the broader vision.?

Tools like our operations workstation, which tracks request completion times, have helped us quantify our ability to deliver on our commitments, and put us on track to continue improving this area as we grow.?

5. People Drive Success and They (Rightfully) Want to Know Their Role?

Our growth this year wasn’t just about adding people—it was about adding the right people. Advisor headcount grew significantly, but equally importantly, so did our internal personnel. Advisors who align with our vision and embrace our platform thrive here, just like our employees and team members do.?

We’ve learned that recruiting for fit, not volume, builds a stronger, more cohesive team. Additionally, once people arrive, it’s about helping them find their role. Some people want to be decision makers, others are ambitious to progress, and some just want to do a good job between 9am and 5pm then go home.?

We were also reminded that your culture and values are on display daily. Ensuring connectivity between the firm’s top line vision and all team members as you grow becomes more difficult, yet is more important than ever. At Alden, we’ve seen how every interaction—whether it’s an email, a phone call, or a client meeting—reflects and reinforces who we are as a firm. Every touchpoint is another opportunity for your culture and values to shine through to stakeholders.?

Clearly defining roles, responsibilities and expectations across all teams and team members is paramount at a firm that continues to grow.?

6. Technology and its Advancements are Enablers, Not Solutions

From onboarding to reporting, we’ve embraced technology that makes us faster and more efficient. But tech alone doesn’t solve problems—but power users who know how to correctly leverage it do. For us, accessible data and integrated systems have made scaling easier while retaining the quality of our work.

We began embracing advanced technology even more, specifically to analyze data, automate tasks and make investment/tax related model mapping decisions for clients. Access to these tools doesn’t necessarily mean the work will be done better or faster. Rather, ensuring people know how to use these tools effectively will.

2024 seemed to be the year everyone tried to leverage AI. We noticed it has the ability to shift tech-savvy people further apart from those who are not. Building teams with power users is what allowed us to increase efficiency.?

7. Relationships Don’t Scale Without Intentionality

As we’ve grown, maintaining personal connections with advisors and clients has required more effort than ever. We’ve focused on creating systems and processes to ensure every advisor and client feels valued, even as our numbers increase.

When you’re smaller or just starting out, you really can do almost everything. But as you grow, that approach becomes unsustainable. We made a conscious effort to hand off relationships to personnel who would not only execute tasks, but do so with the same care and competency (or perhaps more) the original team member did. Bringing new people into the equation who can execute more work at a faster speed, without compromising quality, is important.?

Our philosophy quickly became, “If we’re able to bring someone in to play that part just as well, or better, and also focus on that entirely, we are doing a disservice to our partners by not bringing them in.”

8. Productized Processes Help Scale and Improve Experiences

This year, we standardized key processes like advisor onboarding, service workflows, and client reporting. By productizing how we do things, we’ve created efficiency without losing flexibility. But scaling isn’t just about systems—it’s about people.

A failure to delegate and hire the right people means you end up retaining tasks that could be done more effectively by others. Over time, this can become a disservice to your team, advisors and clients. At Alden, we’ve learned the importance of hiring the right people and empowering them with clear roles. It allows us to productize our services (and expand our voice of reason), ensuring that advisors get the guidance they need without bottlenecks.

Productization required each department to provide a standard suite of services directly to our advisors. We will be continuing with this approach in 2025, with a major focus to build on this success and strategically align departments with one another to seamlessly deliver services.?

9. If You’re Not Positive, The Chances Are Nobody Else Will Be

We’ve learned that as leaders, we set the tone for everyone around us. When challenges arise, staying positive and solution-focused inspires confidence in the team. Oftentimes, if you’re not positive, nobody else will see reason to be.

To some extent, we are all the voice of reason. Whether that’s a client services team member with an account that continues to NIGO, an investment committee member making a recommendation, or an advisor helping a client plan for retirement–everyone is the voice of reason in some capacity, within this business.

It’s inevitable that challenges will come along the way. It’s our role to provide our partners and clients with counsel and a level headed approach, delivered in a positive manner. Even if you’re not feeling optimistic, the delivery and messaging matter.?

10. Growth Requires Continuous Improvement

At Alden, we embrace kaizen—the idea that small, continuous improvements lead to big results over time. Whether it’s refining workflows or rethinking advisor support, incremental progress has been key to sustaining our momentum.

Allocating time to conduct consistent research is pivotal in ensuring you remain at the forefront of your industry and remain priced appropriately. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas, and conducting research on competitors and consumer/marketplace trends directly or through third-party consultants can be invaluable.?

2024 continued to remind us that if something doesn’t seem scalable, it’s generally best to identify it and quickly create a plan to improve it. We learned to be objective in our assessments, make compromises, and be unafraid to break things (within reason), in order to fix them.?

11. It’s Our Job to Connect the Dots?

As we grow, the connections between people, processes, and technology become more important than ever. Advisors don’t just need tools—they need guidance on how to integrate those tools into their practices.?

At Alden, our role is to connect the dots, helping advisors find the best way to succeed while improving outcomes for their clients. For advisors, it’s a similar ethos with their clients.

In a business with so much to focus on–marketing, prospecting, planning, investments, taxes, compliance, service and more–it’s important to remember that our role isn’t just to understand how things work in a silo. Those things can be learned with advanced technology and online searches.

What can’t be learned as easily or found online is how to connect the dots. Our firm made a concerted effort to connect the dots for advisors across multiple areas of their business—and it paid off.?

12. Zoom Out to See the Bigger Picture

When you’re in the middle of exponential growth, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day challenges that arise. Zooming out helps you see challenges in perspective. Most problems are smaller than they seem when you focus on the long-term vision.

It’s our role to look at the bigger picture, prioritize and rationalize appropriately, explain things to our stakeholders, and approach challenges from another angle when necessary. This helps you to remain positive, energized and enthusiastic–all of which is blatantly visible and obvious to everyone you work with or hope to partner with.?

Zooming out allows you to revisit what’s important. For Alden, that’s continuing to push forward with an integrated hybrid BD/RIA advisor platform that empowers advisors to deliver exceptional client experiences and successful outcomes.?

Looking Ahead to 2025

As we reflect on 2024, these lessons remind us that growth isn’t just about hitting milestones—it’s also about how you do it. At Alden Investment Group, we’re doubling down on an advisor and client-centric platform that brings all accounts into one place for seamless opening, servicing and management.?

While some of these lessons were new, many were gentle reminders. Together, they serve as focus points for us in 2025, as we continue to grow at an increasing speed while helping advisors and clients.?

If you’re looking for a firm that prioritizes marketing, investments, technology, and service, we invite you to reach out.?

About Alden Investment Group

Alden Investment Group’s mission is to empower financial advisors with cutting-edge technology, comprehensive support, and innovative solutions for clients. Based in Wayne, PA, Alden offers a seamless, unified wealth management platform through a full suite of investment management, planning, client services, and operations services, positioning advisors and their clients for success in an evolving marketplace. Alden’s assets have grown considerably from $750m in December 2022 to $2.25 billion in December 2024.?