##  [# Ritholtz’s Tini on Operating a Media-First Wealth Firm](/sections/conferences/ritholtzs-tini-operating-media-first-wealth-firm) 

 

# Ritholtz’s Tini on Operating a Media-First Wealth Firm

 

 

"Kick-ass for billionaires with no minimums." Ritholtz Wealth Management's Jay Tini reveals how the firm leverages a massive media footprint and smart tech to scale organic growth, eliminate "low-value" admin tasks, and redefine the client experience.



 

 

 

 

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[By ETF.com Staff](/contributors/etfcom-staff)

 Dec 22, 2025

 Edited by: ETF.com Staff

 

 

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Jay Tini, President of Ritholtz Wealth Management, shared how he approaches infrastructure scaling from an operational standpoing for an established firm with a roster of high-profile talent. From rapid growth to building tiers to meet all types of investors, Tini talked shop with ETF.com's Dave Nadig at Schwab IMPACT 2025 Conference. The following is a transcript of their conversation.

## Transcript

**Nadig:** Jay Tini, president of Ritholtz Wealth Management. Part of why I wanted to talk to you is, a lot of people probably don’t know that you have this job. You joined Ritholtz Wealth Management a couple years ago at a firm that did not seem like it lacked for people at the top. It’s very well known in the media space. What’s it like jumping into a firm where there’s already a huge established marketing engine and some really high-profile talent?

**Tini:** Yes, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of high-profile talent, a lot of media stars. I think what they didn’t have is somebody to just kind of focus on the operations of the business, build out the infrastructure to mirror the intensity and success of the media business, and that’s what I focus on. I want to make sure that we have an awesome client experience for a rapidly growing firm that’s happening as quickly as we’re growing, and there are a lot of things that need to be focused on, and really, to free up the media stars to do what they do.

**Nadig:** So, you came from a much more traditional asset management background, a career at Vanguard, AllianceBernstein. This is sort of your first run in the wealth management side of the fence. How’s that shift been? Because you used to be the seller and now you’re the buyer in some ways.

**Tini:** I used to just focus on one thing and that was raising money at Vanguard ETFs and mutual funds. Now I focus on everything, so I would say the biggest change is the scope of the responsibility and what I focus on day-to-day is massively different.

**Nadig:** How do you measure how large you are and the growth path? Is it clients? Is it assets? Is it a number of families served? Is it number of advisors in the field?

**Tini:** Rough numbers, we have about 4,000 families, 30 advisors, 80 people. The growth has been fast. A lot of growth. I think what’s been exciting is we’ve been able to keep up the rate of growth, right? Despite the numbers just getting bigger and bigger every year.

 
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## Why Organic Growth is "Holy Grail"

**Nadig:** And you guys have grown through a collection. You’ve brought in some smaller advisor practices. You’ve certainly done a lot of organic growth yourself. It's a big topic of conversation here. We’re talking to folks like Dynasty who are obviously helping in that aggregation and integration space.

How do you guys think about that? Because obviously there are a lot of advisors here who would probably love to jump into the Ritholtz Wealth Management ecosystem and you guys yourselves someday may want to be joining one of these larger firms. How do you think about the life cycle of an RIA?

**Tini:** Well, I can't see us joining one of these larger firms. But I think the way we view growth is organic growth is the Holy Grail of the industry. We are blessed with 11 content people that make that a substantial and primary part of our growth. So for us, organic growth is engine number one. But our footprint across the country is really defined by great people that we find that recognize what we’re doing and want to be a part of it. So that’s how we’re getting advisors. They’re fans of the content. They follow Barry, Josh, Animal Spirits. They reach out and if they’re great people, if they’re awesome, if they can contribute to the culture, they join.

**Nadig:** So, 30 advisors, couple thousand families—that’s a pretty aggressive load for a lot of other firms who might be thinking, you know, I want 100 or 200 families per advisor. I’m guessing that’s because you’re serving a lot of folks across the wealth spectrum. Tell us about how the offering differs if you show up with, you know, a million dollars or 200 million dollars.

**Tini:** So, we kick ass for billionaires with no minimum. And that is not a business strategy that I would recommend. Usually smart business is doing finding something you’re good at and doing a lot of it. But when you have a media footprint like we do, we have people in their ‘20s that are just starting out, listening to podcasts and reading, and then we have the biggest investors in the country reaching out to us.

So we really need to be able to serve, and we’re really proud of the tiers that we’ve built out. A lot of it is really just being smart about what are the needs. Somebody just starting out versus a billionaire that we’re doing bill pay and legal, estate planning, tax—they're way different. So I think what it all comes down to is building out a scalable model that is going to really define excellence at that tier of wealth and be able to just deliver that in a high-quality way.

## Where AI Adds Value

**Nadig:** Does AI help in that? I mean, AI's again another topic we’ve been talking about here all week. Is it just accelerating that growth? Is it letting you serve more clients? Is it letting you grow faster? How do you think about AI, not necessarily today but over the next couple years?

**Tini:** Yeah, I think of AI in a couple different ways. One is, I think before AI, it’s just technology. We want to be able to eliminate low-value tasks. We’ve got fantastic people. They all have strengths and we want to deploy them all day in what they’re good at. That is more and more looking like dealing with clients and being client-facing as opposed to stuff like data entry. You don’t want to join Ritholtz Wealth Management and do data entry all day. So we’re working really hard to streamline the tech stack to take off those low-value tasks to free up people to work with clients.

**Nadig:** Do you think that that means you’ll end up with say fewer paraplanners or you’ll just end up with younger folks coming in and doing a different kind of work?

**Tini:** I think the administrative aspect of the job will be less and less. We are freeing up the administrative tasks to deploy people in more client-facing roles. I think that’s going to be a trend we’re going to see for quite some time.

**Nadig:** Awesome. Well, Jay, thanks so much for taking some time with us today.

**Tini:** Great to talk to you, Dave.



 

 

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