Our Process
A 90-Day Setup. A cadence that holds.
Armature does not begin with a product or a portfolio. It begins with a structural review. One conversation across the household's full system: where things stand, what works, where the gaps are.
From there, a deliberate sequence: understand, design, implement, govern. In some households a shorter, map-only engagement is the right first step; in others, a continuing governance retainer earns its place after setup. We only take the scope the complexity justifies.
Initial Conversation
A confidential first conversation across the full financial landscape. Most who reach it believe their system is reasonably coordinated. Within thirty minutes, that usually changes. Each advisor has done their job; no one has mapped the whole ecosystem in one view. Part of intake; no fee.
A clear read on complexity, coordination gaps, and whether Armature fits.
Wealth Architecture Review
A full review of the financial ecosystem: investment accounts, entities, insurance, estate documents, tax returns, and advisor relationships, mapped across 147+ governance checkpoints and assessed for alignment.
A written assessment of structural gaps and integration opportunities across every domain.
Governance Framework Design
From the review, a governing structure: how capital is allocated, advisors coordinated, decisions made, and risk managed across the ecosystem. Decision rights, escalation protocols, and reporting cadences, documented and assigned.
A written operating plan with clear decision rights and advisor responsibilities.
Implementation
The framework is built and activated. Accounts restructured, advisors aligned, policies and entities updated, reporting established. Core architecture is usually in place within weeks; full implementation somewhere around 60 to 90 days, depending on outside parties.
A fully operational system with integrated oversight and clear reporting.
Ongoing Governance
Then it is maintained and evolved: quarterly reviews, annual reassessments, coordination across domains. The system carries the load. You retain authority.
Reduced coordination burden, and a system that adapts as your life does.
The First Ninety Days
What the system produces.
The first ninety days are not preparation. They are deliverables: each dated, each a written mark in the engagement letter, each judged against a standard.
If a mark is missed for reasons within Armature's control, restitution follows under the engagement-letter terms.
Ninety days from engagement, the principal holds a system that someone else could step into without starting from zero. That is the test.
Not a marketing promise. A term of the contract.
What we measure
Two readings calibrate the work.
Autonomous Index™
The Autonomous Index™ measures whether the principal still carries the system day-to-day. A higher reading means it absorbs the recurring coordination (initiation, reconciliation, continuity, translation) without the principal's daily attention.
Coherence Index™
The Coherence Index™ measures whether the system holds together as one operating picture: whether the artifacts, decision rights, advisor scope, and continuity read cleanly when an outside professional steps in.
Both are scored at baseline and reported quarterly, appearing together in the Quarterly Coordination Memorandum and the State of the System memo, with a trend line across the engagement.
The Long View
A system designed to grow with you.
Governance is not a one-time engagement. As your net worth grows, so does your complexity. The system evolves with both.
Year 1
Foundation
You stop carrying the mental inventory of who knows what. Decision rights, advisor coordination, risk architecture, and continuity planning are formalized. The system holds the complexity. You get the hours back.
Years 2–3
Expansion
New decisions route through structure, not through you. Your phone rings less. The governance framework absorbs additional entities, expanded portfolios, and evolving estate considerations without increasing the demands on your time. What was informal becomes permanent.
Years 3–5
Succession and purpose
Your children or partners could step in tomorrow and the system would hold. That was never true before. Succession architecture is stress-tested. Philanthropic structures are integrated into the governance framework. The question shifts from whether your wealth is protected to whether it is doing what you intend.
Beyond
Sustained stewardship
You are the author of a system that no longer depends on your presence to function. What began as coordination becomes permanent infrastructure. The governance carries. You carry less.
First, do no harm. Then build the structure that lets wealth compound without requiring your constant attention.
Three lives this work recognizes.
The operator-owner.
You run the practice: the schedule, the partners, the entities it spun off. At work, nothing moves without a protocol. At home, the wealth the work created runs on memory and good intentions. You already trust this discipline. It has simply never been installed here.
The principal with a business attached.
The business made the wealth, and the wealth now has its own moving parts: real estate, partners, a buy-sell, private commitments. Every structure was right when it was built. Nobody has re-read them side by side since.
The professional whose system outgrew its parts.
More entities than you planned, more advisors than anyone coordinates, a spouse who should never have to reconstruct it from a drawer. You did not miss anything. There was never a seat whose job was the whole.
Who this is not for.
Armature is not for households who mainly want investment ideas, isolated tax strategies, or a replacement for their advisors. It is for families whose complexity has outgrown informal coordination, who want to remain authors of their capital and delegate the governing work to a system that will hold it.
If one of these reads like your week, the first conversation will feel familiar.