Brad Wales’ Transition To RIA Podcast Hosts Advisor Logistics CEO Brett Wheeler, CFP®
On June 30, 2026, Brad Wales of Transition To RIA released the latest episode of his Vendor Profile Series, featuring our very own Founder, CEO, and COO Brett Wheeler, CFP®. They discussed how Advisor Logistics supports growth-minded RIAs, giving them back the hours they need to scale. Brett also explains how outsourced trading differs from a TAMP; for a deeper side-by-side, see in-house vs. TAMP vs. outsourced trading for RIAs.
Click here to watch the podcast on TransitiontoRIA.com or watch the video below.
What Did Brett Wheeler and Brad Wales Discuss on the Transition to RIA Podcast?
Brett Wheeler, CFP®, and Brad Wales explored how independent RIAs scale by unbundling trade operations from portfolio design. Wheeler outlined how Advisor Logistics acts as an institutional virtual trade desk across 30,000+ client accounts, enabling advisors to eliminate 9+ hours of weekly administrative trading while retaining complete fiduciary investment control.
During the conversation, Wales and Wheeler unpacked the core operational dilemma facing breakaways and established RIAs alike: wealth managers want to design distinctive investment strategies for their clients, but the daily mechanical execution—rebalancing portfolios, deploying cash, generating block trades, and reconciling custodial trade files—rapidly consumes the advisor’s calendar.
How Does Unbundled Outsourced Trading Differ from a Traditional TAMP?
A traditional TAMP charges 20 to 50 basis points on AUM, requires adopting standardized third-party model portfolios, and frequently creates tax friction. Unbundled outsourced trading through Advisor Logistics costs ~5 bps, preserves the advisor’s bespoke portfolio design, and integrates directly with existing custodial accounts without requiring client repapering.
As Wheeler explained during the interview, modern clients hire an independent financial advisor for personalized advice and tailored portfolio management. Outsourcing to a TAMP often forces advisors to surrender that core value proposition to third-party fund managers, whereas an outsourced trading desk acts purely as the administrative execution arm of the firm.
Why Should Breakaway Advisors Partner with an Outsourced Trading Desk from Day 1?
Breakaway advisors transitioning from wirehouses or broker-dealers face steep operational learning curves. Partnering with Advisor Logistics from Day 1 provides immediate institutional trading capabilities, eliminates $20,000 to $100,000 in software startup costs, and ensures incoming client ACATS transfers are traded and invested without delay or cash drag.
When launching a new firm, advisors are inundated with real estate, compliance, client onboarding paperwork, and technology setup. Having an institutional trade desk already configured on Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, or Raymond James ensures that client assets are managed flawlessly from the first transfer. (For multi-custodian strategies, see our guide on switching RIA custodians without changing your trading workflow.)
Full Podcast Transcript
Brad Wales – Hi, I’m Brad Wales with Transition To RIA and this is the Transition To RIA Vendor Profile Series where we take a look at the solution providers powering the RIA model. On today’s episode, we’re answering the question, “What is Advisor Logistics?” And to help us with that is Brett Wheeler. Brett, thanks for coming on.
Brett Wheeler – Yeah, thanks for having me, Brad.
Brad – I’m particularly excited about this episode. Not that I’m not excited about all my episodes, but as I’m a big fan of and I talk about often, the RIA ecosystem has evolved tremendously. This has been true particularly over the last even five years, but surely 10 years and 15 years to the point where if you were to transition into the RIA model or you’re already there and you need or want some sort of service, there are generally specialized solution providers out there that provide that particular service.
Today’s episode is certainly no exception to that. I won’t steal your thunder so we’ll have you kind of explain what Advisor Logistics is and then we’ll get into the details. I think for the viewers you’ll see how this is a specialized service that can be very valuable for the people that are interested in it. So with that, Brett, if you could just give us that high-level elevator pitch telling us what is Advisor Logistics?
Brett – Yeah, sure. Advisor Logistics – we’re an outsource trading and portfolio administration firm. So the boutique or independent RIA will design and develop portfolios and then they’ll hire us to run them for their client accounts and households.
It can get very tailored, very nuanced. We like to operate with a high level of efficiency, but still with levels of customizations that the advisor needs for their particular client. So we are doing daily trades, we’re doing high-level trades, model portfolio changes, tax loss harvesting, kind of these big ideas, these big things that advisors want to do.
We’re doing all those levels of tradings and then considering within those the various intricacies that client accounts have across $8+ billion in client assets. So the idea is that the advisor paints the picture, they develop the portfolios with their investment committee and team, and then they turn them over to us to be able to run on a daily basis.
Brad – And if we think of this as outsourcing something, who are you, not that we’re looking to displace anyone, but just understand where you’re at in efficiency, who is this normally done by that perhaps you can do it better or more efficiently for folks?
So, if I’m an RIA, there’s a couple different ways, right, asset management could be done. But if I want to make my own models and kind of manage the investments in that sense, but I’m not necessarily passionate about nor do I want to do it myself as the advisor, the actual implementation of those models and the ongoing trading associated with that could be done by Advisor Logistics instead.
So normally I might have team members in my team that I need to kind of make sure they stay on the team and that they’re trained and that they do it right. Is that where I could just outsource to your team of folks to do it? I still get to do the part I’m passionate about, but you’re doing the actual implementation of the trades. Is that kind of correct?
Brett – Yeah, I mean, that’s right. I think often when we come to work with a firm, normally the advisor might be doing trades themselves. They’ve kind of grown and hit this inflection point where they’ve been doing the work. They’ve been trading the client accounts. Normally they’d have already established their own investment portfolios within the firm and either they’re doing it or a client admin is doing it. Neither one of them is a good choice. Neither one of them is the right devotion of assets.
The advisor needs to be out there meeting with clients. The advisor needs to be growing their business. The admin or operations support has so much on their plate already. It’s really such a very nuanced and specialized area that when they hit this capacity and inflection point, they’re looking to do something else with it.
Historically, the only other option has been hire a TAMP, hire somebody that tries to do everything. And I think the issue there is the advisors are so equipped nowadays with the knowledge and the ability to develop their own portfolio IP that they don’t want to pay and have this outside entity developing portfolios. Their clients expect them to be able to design and develop portfolios. So they’re hiring us just to pull this grunt labor force, if you will, to do the nitty gritty and make sure that their portfolios are operating as they should.
Brad – And I think I’d add to that being able to outsource as opposed to having someone directly on the team is if you’re an RIA and you have maybe one or two people on the team that they are the traders, they are the ones doing that, that perhaps works for you, but you as the RIA owner also have to realize that those people are going to want to take vacation at times and they’re going to call in sick at times. There’s going to be turnover at times. And particularly if you only have one person doing it, that will be very disruptive if those happen.
I assume it’s fair to say, Brett, that it becomes your problem. If folks use your services, it’s your problem on your side to make sure your whole team is staffed and that you manage those kind of scenarios, so I think it’s a big plus on that front as well.
And now let’s dive farther down to when you kind of compared it to a TAMP. For someone that’s maybe using SMA managers now or TAMP, what is the different approach that you could bring to the table?
Brett and I kind of talked about this before we hit record, is this where hey, maybe I can either save some costs or just do things in a better way that aligns with my style and use an outsource CIO-type offering, but then that still needs to be implemented or that person that’s currently using a TAMP, currently using an SMA, how does that look to maybe convert to what you’re offering?
Brett – Yeah, I mean, that’s great because we want the advisor to be the brain behind their portfolios as I think clients often do too. And I think sometimes it can be hard for an advisor to maybe say, hey, you’re hiring us, we’re doing your planning, we’re doing all of your financial management. But then also this firm over here is the one that’s going to actually be creating your portfolios and running them. And sometimes that can be a hard conversation.
And so it’s a really nice coupling if a firm is able to work with an outsourced CIO that’s on their investment committee. They’ve got a lot of professional minds together to create portfolios. And then they can use us as just an extension of their team to actually do the hard stuff to go out and execute those portfolios.
So it’s a way of unbundling, bringing in-house all of these professionals to develop something that is for the firm and for the firm’s clients, which are unique, right? They’re unique. Firms are in Miami. Firms are in New Jersey. Firms are in California and the clients are different in a lot of different areas and I think it’s important for a firm to be able to be flexible to develop their financial planning, their investment strategies for their clients that they serve particularly rather than trying to bring them to some larger scale model.
Mechanically, we’re a bit different than a model or a TAMP because we’re very behind-the-scenes. Firms are contracting with us directly. We’re a sub-advisor in the true sense of the word. We don’t have any contractual relationship with an end client. It’s all, you know, us to the firm. We’re very behind the scenes.
There’s a small ADV disclosure that you may make. Other than that, a lot of our firms will put us on their website as a part of their trading team too. So we want the feel to the client to look very much like your RIA has this stuff in-house on their team.
Discover more about our team and institutional background on our About page and read our strategic guide on what growth-oriented RIAs should look for in an outsourced trading partner.
To see how Advisor Logistics can empower your firm, contact our team today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Brett Wheeler discuss on the Transition to RIA podcast?
Brett Wheeler, CFP®, joined Brad Wales on Transition to RIA to discuss how unbundling trading operations from asset management frees independent RIAs to scale. Wheeler detailed how Advisor Logistics executes custom advisor models across 30,000+ accounts while eliminating software licensing fees and single-person staffing risk.
How does outsourced trading differ from using a TAMP according to Brett Wheeler?
Unlike Turnkey Asset Management Programs (TAMPs) that take investment discretion and charge 20–50 basis points, Advisor Logistics operates as an unbundled execution extension of the RIA. Advisors retain 100% ownership of their investment models and client relationships, while paying a transparent fee structure starting around ~5 bps.
Can breakaway advisors use outsourced trading from Day 1 of launching their RIA?
Yes. Breakaway advisors launching new RIAs benefit immediately from Day 1 trading readiness. Partnering with Advisor Logistics allows new firms to avoid investing in expensive rebalancing software licenses ($20k–$100k) or hiring an internal trader ($125k+), ensuring institutional-level execution from their very first client account transfer.
What operational responsibilities does Advisor Logistics handle on a daily basis?
Advisor Logistics manages daily portfolio monitoring, cash deposits and withdrawals, model drift rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, block order routing, and custodial reconciliation across Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, and Raymond James. The advisor directs model allocations, and our traders execute all mechanical trades.
How does an outsourced trade desk protect against trader turnover and vacations?
An in-house trader creates an acute single point of failure when sick or on PTO. Advisor Logistics provides redundant trading desk coverage every single market day, staffed by professionals averaging over 10 years of trading experience, ensuring trades are executed accurately regardless of individual staff schedules.
