The way a financial advisor changes firms usually starts with a phone call. A recruiter has a number in mind, a deadline in mind, and a script. The advisor - who may have spent twenty years building a book of business - negotiates the single biggest move of their career against an audience of one. 3xEquity looked at that setup and decided the advisor was standing on the wrong side of the table.
The Kirkland, Washington firm runs what amounts to a silent auction. An advisor fills out a short form describing their practice, and 3xEquity brings back competing transition offers from a network of more than 200 broker-dealers and RIAs - usually within two to four business days. The advisor stays anonymous the whole time; no firm gets a name until the advisor decides to reveal it. And the advisor pays nothing. The offers, not the person shopping them, do the competing.
For more than 15 years, our mission at 3xEquity has been helping advisors better understand and maximize the value of the businesses they've built.
Jeff Crosby, Founder
01 / THE INSIGHTLeverage you don't have, you can't negotiate
Founder Jeff Crosby did not arrive at this from the outside. Before 3xEquity, he built one of Ameriprise Financial's most successful advisory practices in the Pacific Northwest, and he spent more than 30 years in wealth management - long enough to be named a Barron's Top Advisor. He co-founded the company with Chris Stacey, who spent 26 years in the industry and built the valuation methodologies and the transition process that the firm runs on. Between them, they'd sat in the advisor's chair often enough to know where the money leaks out of a move: the advisor negotiating alone, one firm at a time, with no way to know if the first offer is the best one.
Their fix is structural rather than motivational. Instead of coaching an advisor to negotiate harder, 3xEquity changes who's competing. The advisor becomes the scarce asset that multiple firms bid for at once. That's the whole product in one sentence, and it's the part worth stealing: find a high-stakes, low-transparency decision, stand between the buyers and the sellers, and charge nobody the person you're protecting.
02 / HOW IT WORKSFour steps, and none of them are a cold-call
The transition service is deliberately boring to use, which is the point. There's no recruiter breathing down anyone's neck and no obligation attached to seeing what's out there.
Enterprise value has become one of the most important strategic conversations happening inside advisory firms today.
Frank LaRosa, CEO, Elite Consulting Partners
03 / THE OTHER BUSINESSWhat is a practice actually worth?
The auction gets the attention, but 3xEquity's second engine may be the more durable one. Most advisors own a business that is likely their single largest asset, and most have no defensible number for what it's worth. 3xEquity sells that number: a certified practice valuation, priced at $1,395, delivered in three to five business days.
The report runs to 23 pages and reads less like an appraisal than a physical. It covers practice metrics and profit per client, peer benchmarking with report-card style grading, five-year revenue trends and ten-year value projections, plus tax implications and deal terms. The pricing is the strategy: at roughly a quarter of what some competitors charge, a valuation stops being a once-in-a-career event and becomes something an advisor can run every year to see whether the business is getting healthier. The valuations are certified enough that lenders - including Live Oak Bank - and the SBA accept them for financing.
- 23 pagesFull practice work-up, not a single headline figure
- BenchmarksReport-card grading against peer practices
- Projections5-year revenue trends, 10-year value outlook
- Deal-readyAccepted by lenders and the SBA for financing
The fee leak nobody notices
Alongside valuations sits a fee-analysis service - and it's a shrewd wedge. 3xEquity says hidden administrative and platform costs can quietly amount to $250,000 to $500,000 a year in recoverable revenue for a practice. That's a specific, uncomfortable number, and it's exactly the kind of thing that gets an advisor to open the door to a conversation about everything else 3xEquity sells: financing, succession planning, and, eventually, a look at what other firms would offer.
04 / THE MODELFree on one side, fixed-fee on the other
The economics are cleaner than they first look. The transition-offer service is free to advisors because the broker-dealers and RIAs in the network pay when a placement happens - a matchmaking model, essentially, where the person being matched isn't the customer. The professional services are the opposite: fixed fees paid directly by advisors for valuations, fee analysis, and financing. One side builds trust and volume; the other side turns that trust into predictable revenue. Public estimates put the company's annual revenue in the range of $4.4 million on a team of roughly eight people.
Where it sits in the market
3xEquity competes on two fronts at once. Against recruiters and third-party transition consultants, its differentiator is plurality and anonymity - many offers instead of one, with the advisor's identity held back. Against practice-valuation shops like Truelytics, FP Transitions, and Succession Resource Group, its differentiator is price and repeatability. Bundling both under one roof is the actual moat: the valuation that tells an advisor their practice is undervalued is also the thing that makes them curious about who might pay more for it.
In the 25 years I've been in the industry this is the most powerful practice management tool I've ever seen.
3xEquity valuation client
05 / THE EXITAcquired, and pointed at enterprise value
In May 2026, after more than 15 years operating, 3xEquity was acquired by Elite Consulting Partners. The platform continues as a standalone brand, and Elite has signaled plans to expand it - additional valuation services, enterprise subscription models, licensing, advisor education, and deeper M&A and succession support. The timing tracks a broader shift Elite's leadership is betting on: as wealth-management firms consolidate, the question of enterprise value - what a practice is worth, and to whom - is moving from a once-a-career footnote to an ongoing strategic conversation. 3xEquity spent 15 years building the tools to answer it.
Where it wouldn't work
The model has edges. An advisor happy at their firm has no reason to run the auction, and the outcome numbers 3xEquity cites are its own, gathered from advisors who chose to move - a self-selected group. The transition service leans on the health of the broker-dealer network; thinner recruiting budgets across the industry would mean thinner offers. And a certified valuation is a benchmark, not a buyer - the $1,395 report tells an advisor what their practice should fetch, not that anyone is standing by to pay it. The value shows up when an advisor is genuinely weighing a move, or genuinely wants to know where their business stands.
What 3xEquity really sells, underneath the offers and the reports, is information the advisor didn't have before: what firms will pay, where the fees are hiding, what the practice is worth. In a business built on relationships and pressure, handing the leverage back to the person making the decision turns out to be a product.