Catching up with Bob Doyle

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St. Pete native Bob Doyle, the founder of Doyle Wealth Management, can recall his first job of washing dishes to earn money, and can picture Beach Drive when it was once a deserted street where he’d skate.  

Over the years, the city of St. Pete has evolved into a bustling and thriving metro and so has Doyle’s business of 16-plus years, which he runs with his wife Jillian. 

Doyle has grown his business to one of the largest wealth management firms in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, with $1.2 billion in assets. He never had plans of selling it -until the right opportunity presented itself last year. 

“I would get a phone call here and there or an email. I would just disregard them. I ended up speaking with a buddy of mine who just sold his business in Milwaukee and I said, ‘yeah, I’d consider it but I don’t want to retire.’ He said, ‘Bob, when you sell your business, you don’t have to retire. It doesn’t mean you are out of a job,”‘ Doyle said, explaining his friend introduced him to Cambridge, a merger and acquisitions broker in New York he was working with. Doyle then connected with the Cambridge firm. 

“We did all of this during Covid, so everything was Webex and Zoom,” Doyle said. 

Doyle had a preliminary list of 15 firms that were interested in potentially buying the business. 

He and the group narrowed down the prospects to five and then to one – CI Financial, a Toronto-based wealth and asset management firm, which purchased Doyle Wealth Management last year. 

 The top requirement, for Doyle and his wife, was that their employees would be protected. 

“Don’t shake up my snowglobe. I think we’ve got a good thing going here. I need you to stand behind us, give us financial support, give us marketing support and allow us to propel this growth forward,” Doyle said, recalling the initial conversation with CI Financial. 

“We are a professional team with very sharp individuals and have to perform at peak levels,” Doyle said, adding how it’s truly the team that drove the momentum of Doyle’s success. “My future is here in St. Petersburg.” 

If Doyle is ever out-of-office, he could likely be found hiking a momentous trail somewhere in nature – a wanderlust he has embraced in recent years.

The last treacherous hike Doyle conquered was the Pacific Crest Trail, which starts at the Mexican border and ends on the Canadian border. 

His advice to people who want to walk in his footsteps – make sure your feet can start hiking 20 miles a day before you commit to a big hike.