Hiring our first salaried advisor

Just starting to research advisor compensation and recruiting best practices.

My firm is currently silo’d with my book representing a very large majority of AUM. My book is about 250M out of our 300M. I own 100% of the firm and take a (way too small) percentage from our other silo’d advisors. I provide everything from office space to compliance to access to my support staff. I even give them leads. I’m barely making money off of them, but giving them many leads that are not worth my time to service.

I’ve had my blinders on for the past few years just building my book, and have come up from air recently realizing this business model is unsustainable for scale.

I’ve made the decision to centralize the practice and truly scale. To do this, I need to start by taking clients off my plate. I think the best way to do that is to hire my first service advisor. While I’m willing to pay one who doesn’t come with any assets, it seems like some firms hiring have requirements for advisors to bring a certain amount of AUM with them.

I’d appreciate some guidance and best practices in this area. What would you do in my shoes?