Background
Founder & CEO
Steve Perry is the founder and CEO of The Well Recruiting Solutions, a recruiting firm for wealth management firms of every model: independent RIAs, hybrid firms, insurance-based advisory firms and broker-dealers. Before he started The Well in 2023, he spent 17 years inside New York Life, a Fortune 100 company, first as a financial advisor, then as a team builder, then as a Managing Partner. Not as a consultant. Not as an observer. As the person accountable for the team, the culture, the hires and the outcomes.
He joined New York Life as an advisor in 2006. Within five years he had built a team from scratch to 40 people. He went on to lead a firm of 125 as Managing Partner. Over those 17 years he interviewed thousands of candidates and hired hundreds. He lived every side of the talent equation: the urgency of a vacant seat, the cost of a wrong hire, and the pressure that lands on a leadership team when growth depends on finding the right people. He did not theorize about it. He felt it.
His path into the business started early. Steve grew up in San Diego and started his first business at 15. He became a life insurance agent at 20 and made partner in his local firm five years later. He has also spent more than 20 years living in Alaska.
On October 23, 2023, Steve stepped away from a seven-figure career to build something the industry did not have. He and his wife, Tabatha, felt a clear call to step out and serve firms differently. The Well is the firm he wished he could have called when he was the one hiring: a search partner run by people who have built teams themselves. The firm was founded in faith, and he says so plainly. A team of more than 40 Bible college students, funded by The Well, prays for every client by name each day.
In 2021 he published The Capacity Model: How to Build Your Best Life. Its central idea is that stress is a signal to grow capacity. That line now sits under Growth, one of The Well's five operating values.
Today Steve oversees The Well's large strategic partnerships and leads its leadership development, its vision and its investment in technology. He speaks often about talent as a driver of enterprise value, capacity as the real limit on growth, the cost of a wrong hire, succession, and how founders and COOs split the work. He has been a guest on The Advisors Edge Podcast, the Top Advisor Podcast with Bill Cates, Unpacked with Ron Harvey, the Elite Financial Advisor Podcast and Simply Be Found Huddle, among others. In August 2026 WealthManagement.com quoted him on The RIA Talent Report, The Well's first-party study of advisor hiring.
Away from work, Steve plays basketball and golf and coaches kids. He and Tabatha are active members of Dream City Church, and they have two daughters.