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She knew how to be an advisor. She needed to learn how to run a business.
CRIS CARUSO · SAVOIRE FINANCIAL
Cris Caruso
Savoire Financial · Richmond, VA
A 20-year financial industry veteran who left a large firm to do the work the way it actually should be done.
Cris Caruso has been in financial services since 2004. After two decades of building client relationships inside larger organizations, she founded Savoiree Financial in September 2022 with a singular vision: to serve women, people in the LGBTQ+ community, and Gen X – the clients most consistently overlooked, talked past, and underestimated by a financial services industry that was built without them in mind.
Cris came to the work with two former careers that shaped everything: hospitality and teaching. She’ll tell you that teaching is her superpower – an ability to translate the most technical financial concepts into language that actually lands. The hospitality instinct drives the rest: relationship-first, high-touch, genuinely relational service that most financial advisors never even try to replicate.
To build an independent practice that amplifies — rather than dilutes — the voice and mission she had spent 20 years developing inside larger firms. To be the advisor she wished had existed for people like her.
The expertise was there. The business infrastructure wasn’t.
Cris spent nine months preparing for a transition she knew was coming. And when she finally made her intentions known, the exit was fast. Overnight, she went from a large firm with full operational support, technology, compliance, and infrastructure to being the person responsible for all of it – while also making sure the clients who took a leap of faith with her felt taken care of.
01
She Knew The Work – Not The Business
Twenty years in financial services made Cris an exceptional advisor. It did not teach her how to run a business. Legal structure, vendor selection, compliance, client onboarding, operational systems, policies – all of it was new territory. The expertise that built her reputation didn’t transfer automatically to the business behind it. She needed a completely different kind of support.
02
Losing Entire Infrustructure Overnight
At a large firm, the support structures are invisible until they’re gone. Technology, HR, compliance, marketing, operations – all of it just ran. Going independent meant Cris was now responsible for every single decision, every vendor relationship, every system that kept the business alive. The decision fatigue alone was overwhelming. The number of choices was staggering, and making the wrong ones early would cost her.
03
Emotional Weight of the Exit
This wasn’t a side hustle Cris had been building quietly. She wanted to do the same work – just differently. Which meant she couldn’t overlap, couldn’t ease out gradually, and couldn’t take time to build before she leapt. When she made her intentions clear, there was no longer room for her. The exit was swift. And leaving colleagues and clients she had worked alongside for years was, in her words, petrifyingly hard.
“I knew really clearly that when I was ready to launch, I knew how to be an advisor. I didn’t know how to run a business. And I knew that’s the support I was going to need. And that’s exactly what I got.“
CRIS CARUSO · SAVOIRE FINANCIAL
What the system actually built for Cris.
Cris found her way to Racheal through TikTok – and recognized immediately that what she needed wasn’t more financial expertise. She needed a framework for building the business around the expertise she already had. The 90-Day CEO Operating System gave her a structure to go slow intentionally, so she could eventually go fast.
Phase 01
Year One Foundation: Go Slow to Go Fast
With Racheal’s guidance, Cris made a deliberate strategic decision: year one was not for growth. It was for foundation. She prioritized attending to every client who had taken the leap with her, making sure they felt the care and service they’d been promised. Simultaneously, she was building the backend: policies, systems, culture, onboarding, client experience. That restraint in year one is exactly what made year two possible.
“We very strategically took year one as a foundation year – building systems, building policies, building the culture. Go slow to go fast.”
Phase 02
Client Education Engine: Value That Retains
Cris built a client-only newsletter system shaped around an annual theme, so she never repeats herself and never runs out of content that matters to her clients. Proactive, relevant, and personal – a back-to-school issue reminding parents of 18-year-olds what legal documents to put in place before college. An estate planning series that reaches people before a crisis does. It’s the extra touch most advisors never add, and it keeps her clients deeply engaged year after year.
“That’s that added touch that a lot of advisors aren’t adding in and it’s exactly what builds the kind of relationship where people call you first.”
Phase 03
Community as Infrustructure
As a solo business owner, Cris found that the CEO Collective community became a critical operational resource: a room full of business owners to bounce ideas off, share tools with, and ask the real questions that don’t have obvious answers when you’re building alone. The community wasn’t just encouraging. It was useful. And when the rollercoaster dipped, it was there for that too – not just for the wins.
What it means to build an independent practice on purpose.
The thing nobody tells you when you’re building toward going independent is that it’s not one moment of courage. It’s hundreds of them, spread across months and years before you actually leave. I spent nine months in preparation. Talking to attorneys. Evaluating which firms I’d align with. Talking to other advisors who had built niched, independent practices. Understanding the spectrum of options between “do everything yourself” and “have a firm do everything for you.” All while still doing the job every single day for clients who trusted me.
When I finally made my wants known, the timeline accelerated fast. There was no longer room for me to stay. Which meant the nine months of preparation weren’t optional – they were the thing that made the fast exit survivable. And then the real work began.
"It is the hardest work I have ever done. And it is the most satisfying and rewarding work I have done. Both of those things are true at the same time."
What I had to learn was what I tell my clients every day: let the experts do their jobs. I am the expert in financial planning. I needed an attorney, a compliance team, a tech stack, an operational framework. I needed to stop trying to be good at everything I wasn’t trained for, hire the people who were, and focus on what only I could do. Accepting that was harder than I expected, coming from two decades of being the expert in the room.
The CEO Collective gave me the structure for the business side – the things I didn’t know I didn’t know. And it gave me a community of people who were building alongside me. When you’re the only one in your firm, that room is not a luxury. It’s the infrastructure that keeps you standing when the rollercoaster drops.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOW
Cris’s biggest wins.
Result 01
Her Clients Came With Her
Result 02
Year 2 Is Humming Along
“Year two has been so good. We’ve implemented, tweaked, and adapted – because you try things for a while and you have to adjust. But we’ve really put into practice what we built in year one. And it shows.”
Result 03
100% Growth From Client Referrals
“My clients are such cool people – and they have the coolest friends. A referral means they already have a sense of who I am and the potential to be aligned.”
Result 04
A Client Experience That Stands Apart
Result 01
Her Clients Came With Her
Result 02
Year 2 Humming Right Along
“Year two has been so good. We’ve implemented, tweaked, and adapted – because you try things for a while and you have to adjust. But we’ve really put into practice what we built in year one. And it shows.”
Result 03
100% Growth From Client Referrals
“My clients are such cool people – and they have the coolest friends. A referral means they already have a sense of who I am and the potential to be aligned.”
Result 04
A Client Experience That Stands Apart
Featured Episode · Promote Yourself to CEO®
Building a Financial Practice for the Women the Industry Forgot
Cris joins Racheal to talk about leaving a large firm to build an independent practice – the nine months of preparation, the terrifyingly fast exit, and what it took to build the backend of a business she never expected to run. Plus: the massive wealth transfer opportunity that makes niching down to women and Gen X not just meaningful, but strategically essential.
MORE MEMBER STORIES
CEOs Building Unshakeable Businesses.
You know your work.
Now lets business the business around it.
The expertise that makes you exceptional at what you do doesn’t automatically transfer to running the business behind it. If you’ve hit the ceiling of what doing it alone can build – if you’re missing the systems, the structure, and the room full of people who actually get what you’re building – this is what comes next.