In 2018, Paul Allen and Sean Gillespie founded Redeployment Wealth Strategies (RWS) in Virginia. A year later, Adrienne Ross established Clear Insight Financial Planning (CIFP) in Washington. Though we were unaware of each other at the time, our missions were strikingly similar: to provide fee-only financial advice to military and veteran families, without any minimum asset requirements.

Both RWS and CIFP experienced rapid growth, expanding to serve hundreds of families across multiple states. By 2023, each firm was registered in seven different states, navigating an increasingly complex compliance landscape. The administrative burden was becoming unsustainable.

At a conference in 2023, we compared our client lists and recognized a unique opportunity. By merging, our combined firm would need to register in 16 states—a number qualifying us for SEC registration under the multi-state adviser exception. The prospect of reducing our regulatory overhead from seven different regulators to just one was incredibly appealing.

Merging wasn't simple. While our firms shared core values, we had distinct approaches to fee structures and financial planning. We wanted the benefits of collaboration without sacrificing the unique identity of our individual practices. Thus, the Collaborative RIA concept was born. We created a new business entity, APFORIA (Atlantic to Pacific Fee-Only Registered Investment Adviser), and registered it with the SEC. All our registrations and client contracts were transferred to this new entity, while RWS and CIFP retained their original structure and continued providing direct financial planning services to clients.

APFORIA now serves as a robust support system, handling critical compliance and back-office functions for what we call our "Tenant Firms." This innovative model allows each original firm to maintain its autonomy while benefiting from shared resources and reduced administrative complexity.