A three-person team runs $240 million on a meeting agenda

Wendy Ciehanski is a senior wealth advisor at Composition Wealth, an RIA in Columbus, Ohio. Her practice manages about $240 million. The money is spread across 156 client households. The staff is three: Ciehanski; her husband, who is also her advisor partner; and a client service associate. On the latest Financial Advisor Success podcast from Kitces' Nerd's Eye View, she credits that leverage to a meeting agenda the team has refined for two decades.

The front of the agenda covers the client's current focus: life and family updates, portfolio performance, and anything that might change the plan. It also leaves a section for what's ahead—economic commentary and to-dos. The back of the page is the record. Any change to a client's goals, risk profile, asset allocation, or securities holdings gets written there during the meeting.

The back side is not just for the file. It makes the meeting itself the point of record, rather than a summary typed up days later. Clients see the same agenda structure at every review. The cadence—quarterly, semi-annual, or annual—depends on client needs and preferences, not necessarily account size.

The week revolves around those reviews. Client meetings run Tuesday through Thursday. Monday and Friday are set aside for preparation and follow-up. The client service associate digitizes handwritten notes, chases loose ends, and builds personal relationships with clients. In a three-person team, continuity and follow-through cannot live in the lead advisor's head alone.

After two decades, Ciehanski has watched the content shift. Clients now spend more review time on life events and their planning implications than on portfolio performance. The agenda accommodates the shift: performance is one item on the front, and every change to the plan gets its own space on the back.

All of this was built inside an independent practice. It now runs inside a bigger one. Ciehanski and her husband chose a merger over independence. They screened candidate firms on firm size, resources, and the expectation that they would keep serving current clients for the foreseeable future. On the podcast, she calls the merger successful because it gave her more time for clients—the same focus the meeting system was built to protect.

The deal also lands in a buyer's market. This publication reported this month that RIA buyers now demand proof of organic growth, leadership depth, and clean operations before paying a premium. A three-person book running on a documented meeting process offers the operational discipline those buyers say they want. The process is not tied to one personality; it lives in the agenda, the CSA role, and the shape of the week.

What's worth copying is the template, not the merger. It sets expectations, captures decisions, and gives the team a shared memory that does not depend on any one advisor's recall. For a growing practice, the template is the cheapest hire available.