Most advisors spend the bulk of their energy waiting - waiting for a client to bring up a referral, waiting for a COI to finally return their call, waiting for the market to improve before re-engaging prospects. Referrals and professional networks are important - but if that’s your only engine for growth, you’re operating on hope, not strategy.
The truth is, most of the biggest opportunities to grow your advisory practice come not from who you know- but from what you notice.
One of the most overlooked sources of new client acquisition is money in motion. These are the life events that trigger financial decisions: someone stepping into a new CEO role, a founder selling their business, an executive receiving a major bonus, or a team going through a merger or acquisition. These are real, trackable events that generate liquidity - and liquidity always demands action: tax strategy, estate planning, asset reallocation, retirement structuring, and more.
But here’s the catch: they don’t come find you.
In just the past few months, we’ve tracked hundreds of liquidity events—quietly, behind the scenes. None of them showed up through a referral pipeline. None were flagged by a COI. They happened in the open, yet invisible to most advisors because they weren’t in wealth detector mode. They weren’t building a repeatable system for identifying money in motion.
At Select Advisors Institute, this is exactly what our Fractional CMO program is built to solve. We help firms stop relying on passive growth strategies and start thinking like business developers. We turn your marketing department into a proactive opportunity engine - a system that surfaces real names, with real assets in transition, in real time.
And we don’t stop there.
It’s not just about knowing who had a liquidity event. It’s about knowing what to do next. Our team can work with you to craft a customized messaging, timing, and strategy for how to get in front of these individuals - credibly, relevantly, and at the exact moment they’re most open to making a financial decision.
If you want to grow, you can’t just wait for someone to refer a millionaire to you. You have to think like a detective, act like a marketer, and follow the money in motion.
We’ve seen the results of this approach firsthand. As examples, as you can see below, just in the past 6 months, four individuals experienced major liquidity events - two newly appointed CEOs, and two business owners who exited their companies.
And these four are just a snapshot.
Below, we share more detail on each example - not to boast, but to give you a framework for spotting these kinds of opportunities in your own market. This is the foundation of the WAVE Method we wrote about in Kitces.com - a diversified, repeatable structure for lead generation that turns unpredictable growth into a reliable pipeline.
If your team is ready to stop waiting and start detecting, the first step is getting in the game.
Here are four liquidity events that prove just how close the opportunities really are.
Linda Findley
Money in Motion Trigger: New CEO of Sleep Number Corp
Date Announced: March 2025
Email Address: Contact Us!
What to do with his email address: Contact Us!
Will Spielhagen
Money in Motion Trigger: Sold business to Smart Parking
Date Announced: February 2025
Email Address: Contact Us!
What to do with his email address: Contact Us!
Dave Davis
Money in Motion Trigger: New CEO of Spirit
Date Announced: April 2025
Email Address: Contact Us!
What to do with his email address: Contact Us!
Chuck Rahrig
Money in Motion Trigger: Sold business to Ubiqconn Technology (USA) Inc.
Date Announced: March 2025
Email Address: Contact Us!
What to do with his email address: Contact Us!
Practical guide for advisors on the Money in Motion Directory: what it is, how to join or build one, compliance tips, ROI metrics, and how Select Advisors Institute (since 2014) helps firms optimize talent, brand, and marketing.