Trust at a Distance: How One Advisor Built a $200 Million Practice Almost Entirely Virtually
I sat down with Mark Cecchini, a financial advisor who serves clients with 7- and 8-figure net worths across 16 states, to learn how he's built a practice where roughly 70% of his clients have never sat across a table from him. His clients are mostly tech employees and business owners, and his practice has grown to nearly $200 million in assets under management. Here's his five-part “trust at a distance” framework and how you can apply it to your own practice, virtual or not.
The short version:
- Trust isn't built by proximity, it's built by consistency, speed, and specificity.
- A virtual practice can feel more personal than an in-person one when the systems behind it are tight.
- The right tools remove friction so responsiveness and specialization can actually scale.
The five signals of trust at a distance
These five signals stand in for physical proximity, making a fully remote relationship feel personal and high-touch.
1. Specialize deeply: The fastest way to earn trust with a new prospect is proof you've already solved their exact problem, not a general pitch about what you can do. In Mark's case, that comes down to choosing a niche and going deep: about 60% of his client base is in tech, VC, or crypto, with deep expertise in equity compensation built around nearly 30 liquidity events in three years, so a prospect coming out of a tender offer or IPO already knows their situation has been handled before.
2. Respond quickly: Responsiveness only works as a trust signal when it's a standard clients can count on, not an occasional show of effort. In Mark's practice, that means no rigid SLA, but most client emails get answered within minutes, rarely longer than 24 hours, a good baseline for communication best practices generally. For clients used to Slack-speed workplaces, a slow reply reads as inattentive no matter how good the eventual answer is.
3. Communicate proactively: Reaching a client before they have to ask does the work in-person face time would otherwise do. In Mark's practice, that means no waiting for a quarterly meeting: a stale balance sheet, a birthday, a tax deadline, a life event, all trigger outreach from his side first. The message is simple: someone is thinking about my finances even when I'm not.
4. Execute repeatedly: Consistency only builds trust when it's visible, so say what you'll do, then say when it's done. In Mark's practice, every meeting ends with the same output: a follow-up email within 24 hours outlining what happens next on both sides, then a follow-through once each item is done. The shorthand for it, borrowed from a former boss: "Who's delivering the cheese to the mouse?"
5. Remove friction: Advice should be easy to get, and that doesn't mean losing the personal service that comes with it. In Mark's case, one client, previously with a large wirehouse, didn't want steak dinners or hockey tickets, he wanted "advice at the drop of a hat from someone I trust, and it doesn't matter where they are," the kind of time management that means same-day scheduling instead of a two-hour block on the calendar.
Let AI handle the parts that don't need to be handmade
None of the above requires being physically present, but it does require being fully present in the moments that count. Mark uses Jump to handle the note-taking on client calls, draft the meeting recap, identify action items, and follow-up automatically, so the 24-hour turnaround isn't an hour of writing at a desk afterward.
If you're building, or already running, a high-touch practice without high overhead, the leverage isn't in doing more. It's in automating the parts of the job that don't need a human hand: meeting notes, follow-up drafts, task tracking, so the time you get back goes toward the specialization, responsiveness, and proactive outreach that actually builds trust.