A growing advisory practice’s new office will give it more room for expansion — and a home for the launch of its partners’ private social club.
The offices of AFE Private Wealth and the E Social Club (the “E” stands for “experience”) will open later this year in Leawood, Kansas, at the site of a former restaurant in suburban Kansas City. The club — which will be available to members paying dues of $20,000 a year, whether or not they are clients of the wealth firm — will feature: a cafe, a bar, a private dining room and boardroom, a speakeasy, a sports lounge, a cigar lounge, golf and other video sports simulators, a small movie theater, a music-focused “audio sanctuary,” a card and game room, an outdoor tailgating area, a tasting lounge, secure storage lockers and privacy pods for remote work and meetings.
These separate yet symbiotic businesses are expected to form a kind of ultrahigh net worth community ecosystem at the facility, according to partners Ryan Forster and Ryan Anderson. The setup displays an interesting take on a wealth management workplace and marketing endeavor.
AFE Private Wealth
Forster, a veteran planner whose firm has built a base of roughly 140 client households consisting primarily of business owners, surgeons and professional athletes, stressed that the pairing isn’t going to be a sales funnel on either side. But he and Anderson, who developed a similar but smaller-scale concept to the club as part of a luxury home automation business he sold to private equity investors, aim to cultivate a place for work and play for replication in other locations and recruitment of more financial advisors catering to wealthy clients.
“We’re changing a lot of lives, we’re impacting families, and I’ve never been so happy with what I’m able to do for the people around me,” said Forster, citing the impact of a team that is acting as a “small multifamily office” with its current footprint of 13 employees — which had been a group of only three when his practice began its 2024 transition from Cetera Financial Group to NewEdge Advisors. “Nobody wants to work from home. They all want to be in the middle of the madness.”
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AFE Private Wealth
He credited Anderson as the “creative inspiration” behind the club, which the Kansas City Business Journal first reported and a local realtor shared in June on his social media account. The idea stemmed from an event space that Anderson had created at his prior business for corporate executives and high-profile athletes to use for private meetings in an environment providing “that sense of, ‘Get out of the office and change your mindset,’ but also still having the right setup to get business done.”
Together, the workplace and the club combine “a little bit of, ‘If we build it, they will come,'” with trappings that suggest to members and advisors, “‘This is where I want to work, this is where I want to bring my clients,'” Anderson said. While the wealth clients will not be automatic club members, AFE advisors will be able to bring them as guests.
“What makes Kansas City so special is, it’s a big little town,” Anderson said. “We can have the top advisors see the space and walk in and say, ‘Oh man, if I had this in my toolbelt, I could get these big clients. I could take care of the very best.'”
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The “fascinating” design reminded Megan Carpenter, founder of wealth management growth marketing firm FiComm Partners, of a “clubhouse” concept that executives with Gerber Kawasaki, a Santa Monica, California-based registered investment advisory firm, described in their new office during a recent episode of FiComm’s podcast. Like Forster, she pointed out how the rise of artificial intelligence is driving an opposite-focusing trend in popular culture in general toward more emphasis on what is authentic and in the moment.
“With how quickly AI is changing the world in which we live in, I do believe that in-person, face-to-face connectivity is going to become increasingly important,” Carpenter said. “Advisor-client relationships are so fundamentally built on trust.”
AFE Private Wealth
AFE plans to open the new facility in the fourth quarter, and the wealth office will have space for a team of 20 employees. The club gives the firm a location to host events catering specifically for, say, oral surgeons or pro athletes to congregate to listen to a speaker, taste specialty bourbons or try out artisanal coffee, Forster said.
“When you can give them a place where they’re able to come together, good things happen,” he said. “That creates that experience that catalyzes relationships.”
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The idea for the combination also drew from AFE’s existing culture at its office in nearby Overland Park as a desirable workplace where employees, clients and prospective clients “enjoy hanging out in our space” for gatherings such as happy hours, Anderson noted. He and Forster, who have been friends for several decades, had been tossing ideas around for a workplace that nudged people to socialize, such as a golf simulator or a bar.
“We wanted to do a new office space that had a vibe to it, that would encourage that, and people would be able to enjoy it, as opposed to a traditional office,” Anderson said. “We thought, ‘What if we did one that just blows everyone else away?'”
