Why I Left a Large Financial Firm to Start Yach Advisors
Bryan Yach, CFP®
August 17, 2026
Starting Yach Advisors meant leaving behind more than a familiar office and a recognizable name. It meant starting over. It wasn't an easy decision to leave the company where I had built a 15-year career and developed relationships with so many people. I miss my coworkers, and I miss the clients I had the privilege of working with.
That being said, the clients I worked with weren't technically mine. They were clients of my former firm, and I have always respected that distinction.
My employment agreement included certain post-employment restrictions, including a one-year restriction on soliciting former clients to come with me. I intend to honor that commitment, especially to a company that gave me so much over the course of my career.
So when I say I'm building Yach Advisors from the ground up, I mean it.
That's intimidating. It's also freeing. It means every relationship Yach Advisors develops, every article we publish, every podcast episode, YouTube video, and every conversation we have has my name on it. It has my reputation attached to it.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” - Warren Buffett
My daily challenge to myself is to live those words.
The Fleas in the Jar
There's a story that Steve Harvey told publicly that I believe is the perfect metaphor for this change. A story about fleas in a jar. Fleas can normally jump many times their own height. Although, if you put them in a jar and screw a lid on, they will jump and repeatedly hit the lid. Eventually, they learn to jump only high enough to avoid hitting it.
Then, when you remove the lid, they still don't jump out. Their ceiling was provided to them, and they learned to stay within those limitations.
In Harvey's telling, even the next generation stays within that learned limit. The metaphor is about how our environments can teach us where the ceiling is and how we can continue living beneath that ceiling even after it's gone.
Starting Yach Advisors has given me freedom I haven't had before. But independence doesn't mean freedom from responsibility. There are regulatory responsibilities that come with being a financial advisor. And there is an even greater responsibility that comes with putting your own name on the door.
The difference is that today, within those responsibilities, I get to decide what I'm trying to build and I get to allocate my time and resources in a way I feel is best for my clients.
After fifteen years of learning how to operate inside the jar, I'm finally getting the opportunity to find out how high I can jump.
Building Something More Intentional
The Yach Advisors brand is one that starts with education and care, one that prioritizes planning over products and the client experience over the bottom line.
Inside a large financial institution, scale requires efficiency. Processes have to be standardized. Time has to be allocated carefully. There are common denominators that have to be considered, and practical limits to how deeply any one advisor can customize the experience.
Over time, I realized I wanted to build something different. Not necessarily bigger. Not necessarily more efficient. More intentional. More meaningful.
I wanted the freedom to spend an extra hour explaining something if that's what a client needed, without worrying about what that extra hour meant for productivity metrics and organizational efficiency. To create educational resources because a conversation made me realize they should exist. To create content for my clients to make them more well-informed while also helping a stranger do the same. To build financial plans around people's lives rather than shape people's lives around a scalable process. And to measure success not simply by how much the firm grows, but by how well we take care of the families who trust us.
That's the kind of firm I want Yach Advisors to become.
Starting Yach Advisors meant giving up a lot of certainty, it's a scary move for my family. There no income. Heathcare is expensive. Kids are expensive. But if I never took the risk, I would never have the opportunity to ask a question I hadn't been able to ask before:
If I could build a financial advisory firm from the ground up, what would I want it to be?
I'm still answering that question. But I know where I want to start: with education, thoughtful planning, genuine care for the people we serve in and around the community, and the willingness to take the time to get it right.
The lid is off. Now it's time to see how high we can jump.
Bryan Yach, CFP®
Wealth Advisor | Owner
Yach Advisors
