There's a conversation happening in wealth management right now that Michael Shoniker, a Charlotte, NC-based financial services professional with over 15 years of experience in private investments and business development, sees playing out repeatedly across the Southeast. High-net-worth clients — the ones who have spent decades building real wealth — are increasingly dissatisfied with traditional portfolio construction. Not because their advisors are doing anything wrong, but because the standard 60/40 framework wasn't designed with their specific situation in mind.

These clients have longer time horizons than most. They have more capital to deploy. They have less need for daily liquidity. And they've watched the public markets long enough to understand that correlation is a real risk — that when things go wrong, everything in a traditional portfolio tends to go wrong at the same time.

What they're looking for, more often than advisors realize, is a conversation about what else is out there.

The Question Advisors Aren't Asking

In Michael Shoniker's experience working with independent RIAs, family offices, and accredited investors, most advisory relationships are built around a client's stated risk tolerance and time horizon. Those are important inputs. But for high-net-worth clients, there's a third question that rarely gets asked directly: how much of your portfolio actually needs to be liquid?

For many wealthy investors, the honest answer is: less than you think. They have income. They have other assets. They have flexibility. And yet their entire portfolio is constructed as if they might need to liquidate everything next Tuesday.

That mismatch — between the liquidity a client actually needs and the liquidity their portfolio is optimized for — is exactly where Michael sees private market strategies becoming most relevant. Not as a speculative bet, but as a rational allocation decision based on the client's actual financial picture.

Why Alternatives Aren't Just for Institutions Anymore

For decades, institutional investors — pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds — have allocated meaningful portions of their portfolios to private markets. The reasons are well documented. Michael Shoniker points out that private market strategies offer exposure to return drivers that aren't available in public markets, diversification across different economic fundamentals, and the potential for long-term capital appreciation tied to real underlying assets.

Independent RIAs now have meaningful access to many of the same strategies. The question is whether they're using it.

What the Conversation Actually Looks Like

For Michael Shoniker, introducing private market strategies to a high-net-worth client doesn't have to be complicated. It starts with understanding the client's full financial picture — not just their investable assets, but their income, their liquidity needs, their time horizon, and their experience with less liquid investments.

From there, the conversation is straightforward. A portion of the portfolio — sized appropriately for that specific client — can be allocated to strategies that aren't correlated to public markets. Strategies tied to physical assets, infrastructure development, or real property. Strategies with a longer hold period but a different set of underlying drivers.

The clients who respond well to this conversation, in Michael's experience, are not the ones who are chasing returns. They're the ones who understand diversification at a deeper level and are looking for an advisor who does too.

The Advisor's Role Is Changing

Michael Shoniker believes the most valuable thing an independent RIA can offer a high-net-worth client today isn't access to the same public market strategies available on any brokerage platform. It's the ability to think more broadly about portfolio construction — to bring strategies and perspectives that a client couldn't easily find on their own.

Private market strategies, including real assets and land infrastructure development, are part of that broader toolkit. Advisors who have done the work to understand them are in a fundamentally stronger position than those who haven't.

The Bottom Line

High-net-worth clients often have financial circumstances that differ significantly from those of the average investor. As Michael Shoniker sees it, portfolio construction should reflect factors such as liquidity needs, time horizon, and overall financial objectives rather than relying exclusively on traditional allocation models.

Private market strategies, including real assets and land infrastructure development, may be appropriate considerations for some investors when evaluated within a broader wealth planning framework. The role of the advisor is to assess those opportunities carefully and determine whether they align with a client's specific goals and circumstances.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Any such offer may only be made through formal offering documents. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including loss of capital.

For years, the conversation around alternative investments for independent RIAs has centered on the same short list — private equity, hedge funds, real estate syndications. And while those categories have merit, Michael Shoniker, a Charlotte, NC-based financial services professional and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in private investments, sees a growing segment of the private markets that most advisors haven’t seriously explored: land infrastructure development.

This isn’t a niche play. In Michael’s experience working with independent RIAs, family offices, and accredited investors with high-net-worth individuals and commercial real estate professionals across the Southeast, land infrastructure sits at the intersection of real assets, infrastructure demand, and long-term capital strategy. And yet, most independent RIAs either aren’t aware of it or don’t know how to position it for their clients.

Here’s why that’s a problem — and what advisors who are paying attention are doing differently.

The Access Problem Is Largely Solved

A few years ago, the argument was that independent RIAs simply couldn’t access the same alternative investment strategies as large institutional players or wirehouse advisors. That gap has closed significantly. In Michael Shoniker’s view, the real barrier today isn’t access — it’s education and confidence.

Advisors who aren’t allocating to real assets and land infrastructure aren’t sitting out because they can’t get in. They’re sitting out because they haven’t had a clear, straightforward conversation about how these strategies work, how they fit within a diversified wealth portfolio, and what the due diligence process actually looks like.

Why Physical Assets Matter in Today’s Environment

Real assets — land, infrastructure, tangible physical holdings — behave differently from publicly traded securities. They’re not immune to economic cycles, but their performance drivers are distinct. For high-net-worth clients looking for diversification beyond stocks and bonds, Michael Shoniker believes physical asset strategies offer exposure to a different set of underlying fundamentals.

Land infrastructure development in particular is tied to long-term demographic and housing trends, infrastructure demand, and regional growth patterns — factors that don’t move in lockstep with equity markets. For advisors building portfolios for clients with a 5-10 year time horizon, that distinction matters.

The Advisors Who Are Getting This Right

In Michael Shoniker’s conversations with independent RIAs and family offices across the Southeast, a clear pattern emerges. The advisors who are successfully incorporating alternatives into their practice share a few common traits:

They’ve done the work to understand the asset class before bringing it to clients. They’re not selling a product — they’re educating clients on a strategy and letting the fit reveal itself. They’ve built relationships with partners who can walk them through due diligence clearly and without pressure. And they approach private market strategies the same way they approach any allocation decision: with discipline, patience, and a clear understanding of what problem it solves in the portfolio.

What Most RIAs Are Still Getting Wrong

The advisors who are falling behind in alternatives aren’t failing because they lack access or intelligence. In Michael’s experience, they’re failing because they’re waiting for certainty that doesn’t exist in private markets. They want a track record that looks like a public fund, liquidity terms that look like an ETF, and a story simple enough to explain in 60 seconds. Private market strategies don’t work that way — and advisors who hold them to that standard will always find a reason to pass.

The alternative isn’t recklessness. It’s a willingness to do the work, build the knowledge, and have honest conversations with clients about the tradeoffs involved in private market investing.

The Bottom Line

Land infrastructure development is one segment of the broader private markets landscape that some advisors are evaluating as they expand beyond traditional portfolio construction. Like any alternative investment category, it requires thoughtful due diligence, a clear understanding of client objectives, and an appreciation for the tradeoffs involved.

Michael Shoniker believes advisors who take the time to understand a wider range of private market strategies are often better positioned to evaluate whether those strategies belong in a client’s overall wealth plan. The objective is not to replace traditional investments, but to understand where alternative approaches may complement a diversified portfolio.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Any such offer may only be made through formal offering documents. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risk, including loss of capital.