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Welcome back to another episode of Quantum Growth for Financial Advisors!

In this episode, Jon Kuttin sits down with Joe Licciardi, founder of Torchpoint Advisors, for the first installment of a three-part series exploring the accelerating convergence of accounting and wealth management. Jon and Joe reconnected through their shared background in the lacrosse community, and after watching Joe present to a room of roughly 60 CPAs at a recent industry retreat, Jon knew the conversation needed to happen on the podcast.

Joe brings a decade of investment banking experience — first in distressed debt advisory, then in lower middle market M&A — to a space he saw as underserved: helping accounting firms and wealth management practices in the $1 to $10 million revenue range think and operate like real businesses rather than high-paying jobs built around a single owner. At the center of the conversation is “key man risk”: when the owner is the entire business, the relationship goes with them, and a buyer can’t justify a meaningful multiple. Jon and Joe unpack why so many of these firms are practices, not enterprises, and why so many acquisitions in the space unravel two or three years later because they were never properly structured in the first place.

The conversation moves through both sides of growth: organic growth, built by investing in people and process and by learning to sell advisory value instead of underpricing compliance work, and inorganic growth, built through disciplined M&A, earn-outs, and multi-year transition periods that protect client retention. Jon and Joe also unpack a growth lever that’s often overlooked: minority and majority recapitalization, where bringing in the right equity partner can matter more than the capital itself.

Zooming out, Joe shares striking data on how quickly private equity is moving down-market into accounting — since 2021, every direct PE investment in the space has been tied to roughly seven and a half follow-on acquisitions — echoing what’s already happened in wealth management, where roughly 90% of RIA sellers now sell to private equity or PE-backed firms. Jon and Joe close part one by connecting the dots: a fragmented market, recurring non-discretionary revenue, and sticky client relationships are pulling accounting and wealth management into the same integrated, “one-lobby” client experience, with tax and wealth increasingly treated as a single service rather than two separate industries.

Whether you’re running a CPA practice, a wealth management firm, or thinking about how the two might eventually work together, this episode lays the groundwork for two follow-up conversations — one digging deeper into CPA growth and exit planning, and another exploring how accounting and wealth management practices are merging in practice.

Listen in to learn:

  • What “key man risk” is, and why being the entire business — not just running it — is what’s actually capping your firm’s valuation
  • Why most $1–10 million CPA practices are “practices,” not businesses, and what separates the two
  • How Torchpoint Advisors helps firms grow through buyer and talent matching, and helps them exit through structured, discovery-driven M&A advisory
  • Why so many acquisitions unravel two or three years after closing, and how earn-outs and multi-year consulting periods protect client retention
  • How to start selling advisory services instead of underpricing compliance work, without it feeling like you’re taking advantage of long-standing clients
  • Why succession and exit planning needs to start at least a year — ideally years — before a transaction, not after the decision to sell has already been made
  • What minority and majority recapitalization actually look like in practice, and why the right equity partner can matter more than the capital itself
  • The private equity data reshaping the accounting industry, including the roughly 7.5 follow-on acquisitions tied to every direct PE investment since 2021, and the 90% of RIA sellers now selling to PE-backed firms
  • How fragmentation across the roughly 45,000-firm CPA market, combined with recurring revenue and sticky clients, is fueling the convergence of tax and wealth management into a single client experience

Connect with Jon Kuttin and Kuttin Consulting Group: