The Challenge
Stonegate Capital Advisory is a boutique property investment advisory founded by a former institutional fund manager. The firm had built an excellent track record with eight high-net-worth clients and was consistently generating strong returns. The problem was structural: the founder was the product.
Every client interaction, every deal assessment, every review call ran through him. There was no documented process, no delegation framework, and no way for a junior hire to take meaningful ownership of anything without the founder's direct involvement at every step.
What We Did
We spent the first three weeks in deep observation: shadowing client calls, reviewing how deal assessments were structured, mapping every recurring touchpoint in the client lifecycle. The output was a clear picture of which founder activities required genuine expertise versus which were habit or preference.
From there we designed:
- A three-tier service model with defined scope at each level
- A client engagement playbook covering onboarding through quarterly reviews
- A deal assessment framework that could be run by a trained associate
- A handover protocol for client relationship ownership
The Outcome
Two senior associates, hired over a six-month window, were onboarded into the new model and took full ownership of six client relationships between them. Stonegate grew from eight to fourteen active clients in nine months. The founder now works at the level of strategy, business development, and portfolio oversight — the work only he can do.
