The way an advisory business operates has consequences that extend well beyond its internal organisation. Its revenue model, the services it provides, the clients it accepts and the responsibilities of its people all influence the advice it delivers. When Alex and I established Vanta Advisory, we spent considerable time considering those relationships and how we could structure the business around the service we wanted to provide.

The decisions clients rarely see

From the outside, Vanta Advisory is a relatively simple business. We specialise in commercial property acquisitions, work with a limited number of clients and remain personally involved throughout the process. What isn't necessarily visible is how much thinking went into creating a business that could operate that way. Alex and I came into Vanta from different professional backgrounds, with my experience largely across different industries, including the commercial realities of business from an owner's perspective, while Alex had spent a significant part of his career inside larger property businesses, developing considerable experience in commercial acquisitions.

Between us, we had developed fairly strong views about the kind of business we wanted to build, particularly around the relationship between the structure of an organisation and the decisions it eventually makes. A business model determines much more than its operating costs or capacity. It influences what generates revenue, how resources are allocated, which activities are prioritised and ultimately what clients experience. We wanted to be deliberate about those decisions from the beginning, rather than allow the organisation to evolve into a structure that might eventually work against the reasons we had started it.

Why we only do one thing

There is a fairly logical progression that happens in many advisory businesses. You establish a relationship with a client through one service and gradually introduce others, often because those additional services are closely connected to the original offering. In property, that can mean expanding from acquisitions into finance, insurance, management and other related services. From a business perspective, the attraction is obvious. Acquiring a client requires time and investment, so there is a commercial incentive to service more of their needs. It can also be genuinely convenient for the client to have several services coordinated through one organisation, and there are certainly businesses that execute this model very effectively.

Our decision not to take that approach wasn't based on the belief that vertically integrated businesses are inherently flawed. We simply preferred a different model. Vanta is engaged and remunerated to advise on commercial property acquisitions, and while we regularly work alongside mortgage brokers, accountants, solicitors and other specialists, we deliberately keep those services and their financial incentives separate from our own. The reasoning is straightforward: if our business financially benefits from recommending a particular provider, another incentive has been introduced into that recommendation. It doesn't necessarily mean the advice is wrong or the recommendation inappropriate, but the incentive exists, and for the type of relationship we wanted to establish with our clients, we preferred to remove that consideration wherever possible.

There is obviously a commercial cost to that decision. Significant property transactions involve several services from which we could potentially generate additional revenue, and expanding into those areas could increase the value of each client relationship from a business perspective. But maximising revenue per client was never our objective. We wanted to concentrate on being particularly good at one part of the transaction and work alongside independent specialists who could provide the expertise required elsewhere. In our view, that creates a simpler business and a clearer relationship with the client, where our recommendations don't need to be considered alongside additional financial incentives.

The clients your business model attracts

Something I hadn't fully appreciated before starting Vanta was how much the design of a business influences the clients it eventually attracts. We generally think of positioning as something created through branding, marketing and communication, but I increasingly believe that the way a business operates does just as much filtering in the background. The way you sell, the expectations you establish and the decisions you are prepared to make all communicate something about the type of relationship a prospective client can expect.

Most of us are familiar with sales techniques built around urgency, deadlines and incentives to act. There is nothing particularly unusual about them, and in many commercial environments they serve a legitimate purpose. But when somebody is making an investment decision involving several million dollars, I think the distinction between genuine market urgency and urgency created by the adviser becomes particularly important. Commercial property can move quickly, and there are occasions when a suitable opportunity appears and a buyer needs to make decisions within a very short timeframe. That is quite different from encouraging activity because the business requires another transaction.

Our structure allows us to be patient. We can spend weeks assessing properties without necessarily recommending an acquisition, and sometimes the most valuable conclusion we reach is that we haven't found anything worth buying yet. Over time, we've noticed that this approach seems to resonate with investors who value selectivity and judgement over transaction activity. They don't necessarily measure our work by the number of properties presented to them, and often appreciate knowing how much assessment has taken place before an opportunity reaches their desk. It's an observation based on our first year rather than an established rule, but I find it interesting that the business model doesn't just determine how you service your clients. It also begins to influence which clients choose you.

Separating growth from execution

Another deliberate decision was how Alex and I divided our responsibilities. My role is largely focused on growth, relationships and ensuring we bring the right clients into the business, while Alex's role is heavily weighted towards acquisition strategy, property assessment and transaction execution. There is naturally overlap, and important decisions are made together, but the distinction becomes particularly valuable when we are working on a live acquisition and the demands of the transaction increase considerably.

Commercial property doesn't operate at a consistent pace. There can be extended periods of research and assessment, followed by a relatively short window where an enormous amount of work needs to happen. Market evidence must be gathered, assumptions tested, tenants assessed, lease documents reviewed, risks understood and a negotiating position established. During those periods, the ability to concentrate becomes particularly important, particularly when decisions need to be made quickly without compromising the quality of the assessment. Our structure allows one of us to become almost entirely absorbed in an acquisition while the other continues managing the broader requirements of the business.

It is a relatively simple arrangement, but one that relies heavily on the complementarity of our skills and experience. There is also an obvious trade-off in building a business around two founders, particularly when it comes to key-person risk and the ability to maintain continuity over time. We recognise that and continue developing systems, documenting processes and making knowledge transferable wherever practical. But we don't want to address that risk by removing one of the main reasons clients engage us in the first place: direct access to the people responsible for the advice and decisions.

Keeping complexity behind the scenes

Looking back, what I find most interesting is that many of the decisions we made before starting Vanta were about what not to introduce. Additional services, financial incentives, overlapping responsibilities, unnecessary overheads and unlimited client capacity were all things we considered and deliberately chose not to pursue. Each decision involved accepting a commercial constraint in exchange for something we considered more important, and together those choices have had a significant influence on the kind of business we are building.

The result is a business that appears relatively straightforward from the outside. The service is narrow, the roles are clear, the number of mandates is limited and our clients deal directly with the people responsible for their acquisitions. There is nothing particularly revolutionary about any of that, but simplicity doesn't necessarily happen by accident. Sometimes it takes quite a lot of thinking to arrive at something deliberately simple.