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A quick look at where your Production and AUM Book could go. Enter your goals below — share your info to unlock your full revenue, profit, and staffing plan.
Planning Horizon
Current Year Goals
Business Mix
Growth Assumptions
Production
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AUM Book
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Revenue Locked
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Profit Locked
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Team Headcount Locked
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Production & AUM Book Growth
| Year | Production | AUM Book | Revenue Locked | Profit Locked | New Clients Locked | Team Headcount Locked |
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The projection in front of you turns a long-horizon goal into the numbers you actually manage against: Production, AUM Book, revenue, profit, New Clients and Team Headcount. Look past the end-state figures. The line worth studying is the one where the trajectory stops being an extension of what you do now and starts requiring a different business.
Growth in Production and AUM Book is pleasant to project. The headcount the projection implies is where it gets real. Look at the year the derived Team Headcount changes, then ask who that person is, who trains them, who they report to, and what they are paid before they contribute. For most independent financial advisors and RIAs, the constraint is never the market. It is whether the next hire happens two years before it is comfortable or six months after it was necessary.
The projection derives how many New Clients the trajectory needs each year. Compare that figure with what you added last year without a marketing system. If the required number is meaningfully higher, the gap will not close through effort - it closes through a repeatable source of new relationships that does not depend on you having a good month. That is a build, and it takes longer than a plan. Better to see the gap now than in the year you needed it filled.
Two firms with identical AUM Book figures can produce very different revenue and profit lines depending on Business Mix and FIA Allocation. Run the projection a second time with a different mix and watch which output moves most. That tells you whether your long-horizon goal depends primarily on gathering more assets, on changing what you deliver, or on both. It also shows you which assumption you should be least comfortable leaving unexamined for the next decade. Run it once more with the mix you would choose if capacity were not a constraint.
Start with the destination rather than the growth rate. Decide what the business should look like a decade or more out - the AUM Book, the Production, the size and shape of the team - then work backward until the projection produces a number for this year and this quarter. Setting the goal by extending last year's growth rate produces a forecast, not a goal, and forecasts rarely force the hiring and capacity decisions that actually determine the outcome.
There is no universal figure, because it depends on your average new relationship size, what your existing clients add over time, and what leaves. The projection derives the New Clients figure from your own inputs rather than an industry assumption, which is the only version worth planning against. Once you have the number, the question becomes whether your current source of new relationships can produce it consistently, or whether it needs to be built.
Use more than one measure. AUM Book alone can grow while profit and your own time get worse. Production alone can grow while the business becomes entirely dependent on you. A useful long-horizon goal names the AUM Book and Production destination, the profit that has to come with it, the Team Headcount required to support it, and what your own role looks like at the end. If the last item is missing, you have planned a bigger job for yourself.