Episode 19
It started with frustration.
Two successful entrepreneurs, both frustrated clients of major Wall Street firms, spent a year searching for something better—a wealth management platform designed for CEO founders who were too busy building businesses to manage family offices. They never found it. So in 2017, Eric Becker and Avy Stein built it themselves.
Eight years later, Cresset manages $65 billion in assets and serves over 4,000 households nationwide. But this isn't just another impressive growth story. It's a masterclass in how foundational decisions—made before you have a single client—determine whether you can scale without losing what made you special in the first place.
Most firms start with clients and figure out culture later. Cresset did the opposite.
Before Eric and Avy moved their own assets onto the platform, before their first dollar of revenue, they spent three days defining their culture. They created a culture card with core values and operating principles that still guides every hire and client conversation today.
They also chose a trademarked name instead of the typical founder-name approach. "We wanted a container that held meaning," Eric explains, "something people could recognize and trust over time." While most wealth management firms bear founder names, Cresset was building a brand that could outlast any individual.
Then came the third decision: broad-based employee ownership from day one. Every single person who joined Cresset received equity. Today, employees own 60% of the firm, clients own 30%, and minority investor Constellation Wealth Capital holds 10%. This wasn't generosity. It was strategy. If you want people to think like owners, make them owners.
Eric had been a client of a prestigious Wall Street firm for 25 years. In all that time, he met with their wealth strategist exactly once. Both founders had also run their own family offices and knew the challenges intimately. As Eric puts it: "I had this drawer where I would just shove bank statements and investment statements. What I've learned is everybody has that drawer."
CEO founders excel at their businesses because they focus obsessively. But that means everything else—including wealth management—becomes friction. Cresset set out to remove that friction entirely, building what Eric describes as "a fractionalized single family office at scale." Consolidated reporting across all assets, tax services, family governance, philanthropic planning. The whole thing.
Context matters here. When they launched, both founders were emerging from profound personal challenges. Avy had battled stage four lymphoma. Eric and his wife Jill had lost their daughter Kara to leukemia. They understood viscerally that wealth management isn't really about wealth—it's about giving people back their time and attention for what actually matters.
In the early days, growth came through relationships and peer networks. But Eric knew they needed something more to scale. Enter Jessica Malkin, who had co-founded and led Chicago Ideas Week into a nationally recognized platform. She understood how to build community, attract attention, and take calculated risks.
Seven weeks into her role as CMO, COVID hit. "We were a baby brand," Jessica recalls. Her answer: turn events into their superpower. They brought in spectacular virtual speakers—Eric Schmidt, Matthew McConaughey, Ursula Burns. "All of a sudden people were asking, 'Who is Cresset?'"
Then came the acquisition of Pagnato Karp, a firm that had done early successful testing with Google advertising. Eric saw potential: "We're across the whole country. We have more advisors. Let's see what we can do here." They incrementally turned up the dial, kept pivoting and testing, and built a digital marketing engine that now drives a third of the firm's growth.
Since 2020, Cresset has brought in $4.5 billion through digital marketing alone. This past quarter, nearly 50% of their web leads came from AI engines like ChatGPT—not Google, not referrals, but generative AI that most firms haven't even started exploring. One recent ChatGPT inquiry? A $500 million prospect.
Not every bet worked. Several years ago, as digital was scaling, Jessica and Eric hired a specialized firm to build their platform architecture. Six weeks in, their lead person left. Then the firm started experiencing mass exits.
"I had this conversation with Eric where I said, 'I'm so sorry. I don't know how I would rerun this playbook because we were so thorough, but this isn't working.'" Eric's response was immediate: "We were thorough. We did good diligence. The important thing is to make the call."
They reverted back, regrouped, and brought on an expert internally who now leads their digital efforts with remarkable success. Eric draws two lessons: create constructive tension in decision-making so everyone feels heard, and maintain "just the right amount"—the right balance of outside perspective with industry knowledge, forward thinking without over-investing in tools you're not ready to use.
Cresset's growth strategy is diversified by design: a third from M&A, a third from advisor lift-outs, and a third organic. When one channel slows, others compensate. When all three fire simultaneously, growth compounds.
But here's what makes it work: the channels reinforce each other. The brand they build through digital attracts lift-out teams. The family office capabilities they add through M&A make organic leads more valuable. The employee ownership structure makes advisors want to join and stay.
Their focus on the CEO founder archetype creates built-in compounding dynamics. These clients have liquidity events, refer other founders, and value entrepreneurial culture because they recognize it. "When you look at our $65 billion," Eric notes, "our clients probably have one to two times that outside of Cresset through still owning family businesses or concentrated stock positions."
At 28, Eric was turned down by a prestigious Wall Street firm for not meeting their minimum. The rejection stuck with him.
Years later, as Cresset's digital marketing generated leads below their minimum, Eric's former chief of staff noticed a pattern: they were saying goodbye to prospects who could become great clients down the road. His idea: Cresset Catalyst, a program serving first-time founders and pre-liquidity entrepreneurs.
Today, more than 120 people are in the cohort. Multiple liquidity events have happened. The average assets that eventually move onto the platform? Twenty to twenty-five million dollars. "Sometimes doing the right thing means you end up getting amazing benefits," Eric reflects.
This past quarter, Cresset saw a 30% decrease in click-throughs on Google ads. For a firm heavily invested in Google, that could have been catastrophic. Instead, they were already pivoting.
Jessica and her team shifted from search engine optimization to generative search optimization—optimizing for how AI engines scrape and surface content. They're now managing presence across 200 sites, ensuring Cresset shows up when AI tools answer prospect questions. The result? Nearly 50% of web leads now come from AI engines.
"It's constantly shifting and changing," Jessica says. "You need clear growth goals as a barometer. But from there, it's almost like you need to get on the horse and ride. That's not always a straight line."
Most firms can't make pivots like this. They don't have the infrastructure, the talent, or the risk tolerance. But that capability doesn't come from tactics. It comes from how you've built the foundation.
Eric has been a board member or investor in over 100 companies across his career. When he says Cresset is "the best group of people in the best company in the best industry I've ever been in," it carries weight.
"Avy and I both had been humbled by life events," Eric shares. "Later in life, we could start anew and share that in a really meaningful way with broad ownership. The combination of the human side—the things we love about the best people in our lives—combined with a highly resourced platform to improve client lives in a meaningful way. That's what's wonderful about it."
The numbers are remarkable: $65 billion in eight years, $4.5 billion from digital since 2020, 50% of web leads now from AI engines. But those numbers are outputs, not inputs. They're what happens when you build the foundation right.
Spend three days on culture before you have revenue. Choose a name that can outlast any individual. Give everyone equity from day one. Focus on an archetype and mean it. Measure what matters and pivot when the data tells you to. Build for the clients you want five years from now, not just the ones you have today.
That's not a growth strategy. That's how you build something that lasts.
Ficomm Partners is the embedded growth partner for results-driven RIAs, and wealth management platforms. With a track record of helping over 250 clients achieve their growth goals, Ficomm understands that while industry patterns may repeat, each firm's growth challenges are unique. Ficomm prioritizes strategy and finds the most impactful ways to move you toward your goals. We align all your marketing activities with your business objectives, acting as your dedicated growth partner with our human-first approach, strategy-first methodology, and unrivaled team of industry marketing experts.