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In Episode 47 of the Emerging Manager Growth Show, Gui Costin and Tim Dolan broke down how emerging managers can do more with less: treating cold outreach as a discipline, using consultants as R&D rather than a primary capital source, and building the systems (quarterly webinars, CRM hygiene) that make a small team look and operate like a much bigger one.
Here are the 10 highest-value takeaways.
1. Cold Outreach Is the Foundation, Not a Shortcut Around It
There is no substitute for volume. Gui's benchmark: 20 emails a day, focused on five cities at a time, a practice Dakota calls city scheduling. Consistency, not a clever hack, is what separates managers who scale from those who don't.
2. Every Cold Email Is a Marketing Email, Not Just a Meeting Request
A tightly written email does three jobs at once: it asks for a meeting, builds brand awareness, and educates the recipient on the strategy. Even when a prospect can't take the meeting, a clear one-line description of the asset class gets the email filed into the right Outlook folder for next time.
3. RIAs and Family Offices Are the Most Receptive Channels for Emerging Managers
RIAs depend on differentiated products to win and keep clients, which makes them structurally open to cold outreach from new managers. Family offices behave similarly. Dakota's data shows roughly 50 new RIAs formed per month on average, with 90 formed in August 2026 alone, a steady stream of new outreach targets.
4. Consultants Are R&D, Not Your Primary Capital Source
Getting in front of emerging manager programs (EMPs) at consultants is about being known when an opportunity opens up, not expecting near-term allocations. Tim recommends prioritizing 15 to 20 must-hit accounts and treating the channel as a long-term seed rather than a pipeline driver.
EMP-focused firms like Xponance and Stable Asset Management are natural first stops for managers prioritizing diversity, equity, inclusion, or impact strategies. Larger global consultants with dedicated EMP programs, including Meketa, Mercer, StepStone, and WTW, are worth pursuing as a manager's track record and AUM grow. OCIOs such as Fiducient, TIFF, and GCM Grosvenor tend to favor sub-advised or white-label structures, so managers should be prepared to discuss how their strategy could be accessed that way.
Building your emerging manager target list? Dakota Marketplace lets you filter RIAs, family offices, and consultant EMPs by geography and AUM to build your city rotation. Book a demo to see it in action.
6. A Quarterly Webinar Is the Single Highest-Leverage Move for a One-Strategy Firm
Tim frames it as pure efficiency: a single 20-to-30-minute update can replace what would otherwise be a string of one-off calls with every client and prospect. Structured as a save-the-date, a join-today reminder, a same-day nudge, and a replay, one webinar generates four touchpoints, or 16 touches a year, without ever making a direct ask.
7. The Webinar Gives a Manager Full Control of the Narrative
Unlike a face-to-face meeting, a webinar is entirely on the manager's terms for those 20 minutes. Gui's advice: use the time to demonstrate expertise through specific examples and clear ties between decisions and the stated investment philosophy, so the audience walks away thinking, "this is a sharp team."
8. The Webinar Replay Becomes a Due Diligence Tool and a Content Engine
Analysts often ask for a manager's last four quarters of webinars as part of evaluating whether the firm is transparent and consistent. The follow-up content (a well-formatted transcript plus a summary) tends to get read even more than the webinar itself, and both can be repurposed across the website and sales outreach.
9. CRM Discipline Is Non-Negotiable, According to Every Head of Distribution Gui Has Interviewed on Rainmaker
Logging every call and meeting matters less for record-keeping than for spotting sales triggers: a firm that "feels" recently touched may actually be three months stale. Weekly review of activity reports is what catches that gap before it costs a relationship.
10. Use Claude to Turn Meeting Notes Into CRM Entries in Minutes
Gui's workflow: dictate what happened right after a meeting, have Claude draft the call notes (calendar context included), then copy the output into Salesforce or Slack. What used to be a dreaded admin task now takes about two minutes, removing the main excuse for CRM entries falling behind.
Ready to build your emerging manager target lists? Dakota Marketplace tracks RIA, family office, and consultant EMP data monthly. Book a demo to see it in action.
