Ep 471: Growing To $475M In 7 Years While Making Yourself Dispensable Enough To Take A Personal Sabbatical with Dennis Morton
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Building a firm that can thrive without its founders being constantly "on" requires far more than revenue growth. It takes intentional infrastructure, deep team trust, and long-term thinking. This episode explores how designing a business that doesn't depend on any single individual can create both freedom for the founders and stability for clients.
Dennis Morton is the co-founder of Morton Brown Family Wealth, an RIA based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, overseeing $475 million in AUM for 275 households. Listen in as Dennis shares how his firm built the systems and team structure needed to allow both founders to take five-week sabbaticals without disrupting client service or slowing growth. We also discuss how socializing clients with the full advisory team strengthens their relationship with the firm as a whole, how strategic outsourcing and in-house specialization support scalability, and how hiring a dedicated marketing leader amplified his firm's brand visibility and lead flow.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/471
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.9 | Welcome to the 471 episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.2 | podcast is Dennis Morton. Dennis is the co-founder of Morton Brown Family Wealth, an RIA based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, |
| 0:40.9 | that oversees $475 million in assets under management for 275 client households. |
| 0:47.6 | What's unique about Dennis, though, is how he and his co-founder were able to build sufficient |
| 0:52.1 | firm infrastructure to be able to take five-week sabbaticals without major disruptions while continuing to experience client growth. |
| 0:59.2 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how Dennis's firm is able to offer all employees |
| 1:03.7 | a five-week sabbatical after five years of service, in part by socializing clients with |
| 1:08.0 | more than one advisor and the rest of the team so that they don't rely on a |
| 1:11.4 | single point of contact, how Dennis found that rather than being nervous about their advisor being |
| 1:16.1 | out of pocket for several weeks, that clients were excited for him to have the opportunity to take |
| 1:20.3 | time away from the business and showed his authenticity about wanting to spend quality time with |
| 1:24.5 | his family while building his firm, and how Dennis' experience with a |
| 1:27.8 | failed succession plan at a previous firm inspired him and his co-founder to build a business where |
| 1:32.0 | they wouldn't be indispensable. We also talk about how Dennis and his partner have scaled their |
| 1:36.6 | firm in part by identifying tasks that need to be done in-house, typically those that require |
| 1:41.0 | intimate knowledge of their client's circumstances, versus those that |
| 1:44.4 | can be outsourced where knowledge of the firm's principles is sufficient, how Dennis boosted |
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