Hatch Advisory builds the operating models, accountability systems, and leadership a business runs on, and stays through the execution that makes change stick. The work happens at the ownership level, without arm's-length distance.
Get in touchEach has a different shape, but the same requirement: someone who can read the business accurately, build the systems it's missing, and work at the level where decisions get made.
The business is growing faster than its structure. The founder is the bottleneck, roles blur, and what worked at one size is breaking at the next. The work is building the operating model and accountability the next stage needs.
A founder-run business outgrowing the way it started. Decisions still route through one person, the systems are informal, and the team is ready for more structure than the business has. The work is putting in the operating model, roles, and accountability to run without the founder in every room.
An owner is stepping back and the business isn't ready: leadership gaps, undefined roles, a management team that hasn't been tested without the founder in the room. The work is identifying what the business needs to run without its current owner, and building it.
The problem is usually operational before it's financial: a leadership breakdown, margin erosion, an operating line covering what are really structural problems. The work starts with an honest read of what's wrong and moves to what can be fixed.
Acquisitions close. Integration rarely goes as planned. The work is making the combined entity function as intended: culture, systems, leadership alignment, and the gaps the deal process didn't surface.
Most businesses aren't ready to sell when owners decide to sell. Valuation gaps, undocumented processes, management dependency: solvable problems, but only with time. The work is getting the business to a state where a transaction reflects its actual value.
Every engagement starts with a diagnostic question, not a scope conversation. What is actually wrong, not the presenting symptom, not the owner's working theory, determines whether there is work to do and what it looks like.
Before scope, there is a prior question: fit. Trust, willingness, and the capacity to act on honest feedback get evaluated before an engagement begins. Not every situation is the right one to take.
The work itself is operational and organizational, with financial fluency underneath. Diagnosing leadership and structural gaps like a COO, reading a P&L like a CFO, working at the level where those problems get solved. Pressure, complexity, and competing interests at the leadership level are not a deterrent, they're where this kind of work is needed most.
Nolan Foster is the principal of Hatch Advisory, a CFA® charterholder and MBA. His career has run at the intersection of operational execution and financial analysis, as an executive, an advisor, and an operator inside businesses at critical inflection points.
As COO of one of Canada's largest mortgage investment companies, he implemented an accountability system across the organization, drove record capital growth, revenue, and EBIT improvement, made several key hires, and supported a successful acquisition outcome in 2025.
At a Schedule 1 bank, he learned the reverse mortgage asset class by facilitating the purchase of over $150M from the largest originator in Canada, then led the development of a third-party origination platform that reached $50M in originations in its second year. When the bank was subsequently acquired by a larger institution, he navigated the integration from the inside, experience that informs how he works with clients facing the same transition.
His independent consulting practice ran from 2010 to 2016 and included a CFO mandate, operational redesign engagements, and acquisition sourcing and negotiation on a $100M client mandate, all conducted directly with owners and boards of privately-held businesses.
Nolan is a CFA® charterholder (2006) and holds an MBA with Distinction. He is registered on the federal Indigenous Business Directory as a member of James Smith Cree Nation, and resides with his family in North Cowichan, BC on Vancouver Island.
