The Hospitable Asset Management Company
by Shaun Morgan, Founder
I spent fifteen years in financial services—wholesaling for multiple firms, recruiting advisors to RIA platforms, evaluating fund managers. I've sat in hundreds of internal meetings, listened to countless conference calls between home office teams and the field, and watched how asset management companies organize themselves to serve advisors.
And I've learned this: most firms think hospitality is a sales strategy. They're wrong.
Let me explain what I mean by hospitality—because it's not what you think.
Service is doing your job well. It's competence. It's expected. A restaurant provides service when your order arrives correctly and on time. A wholesaler provides service when they respond to emails, schedule appointments, and deliver product information accurately.
Hospitality is something else entirely. Hospitality is making someone feel genuinely seen, understood, and cared for. It's the waiter who notices you're celebrating an anniversary and brings a handwritten note with dessert and offers to clear the table, adjust the lighting and take a picture. It's the wholesaler who understands the comprehensive needs of an advisor, not just the slice of the portfolio they’re fighting for. Hospitality transcends the transaction and touches the human being on the other side of it.
In a world where investment products are increasingly commoditized—where advisors can access thousands of funds through a single custodial platform, where AI is beginning to automate portfolio construction, and where performance data is instantly available to everyone—hospitality is your only sustainable competitive advantage. Not your Sharpe ratio. Not your marketing materials. Not even your performance track record over the last five years.
The experience you create. How you make advisors feel. Whether they sense that you genuinely care about their success.
Now, here's the problem: most asset management firms think hospitality only applies to client-facing roles—the wholesalers, the key account managers, maybe marketing. If that's your mental model, you're capturing about 10% of the potential.
How does the spirit of hospitality transform an asset management company that distributes through intermediaries? It starts by recognizing a simple truth: every department within your organization has a client. Every single one.