ABOUT LEATHER APRON
The idea came to Halden almost as soon as he started in his financial career. He’d spent years watching good owners and capable CFOs struggle, even with a room full of professionals around them. Everybody was in their own corner, siloed experience was abundant, diversified experience was scarce.
As a Trader, Adviser, Portfolio Manager, and Banker, his career spanned public capital markets to small business, investments, credit, and derivatives. So he started imagining a different kind of help. One independent person who could see all of it at once, and who worked for the owner alone. No referral fees, no salaries, no tiers, nothing quietly pulling him in another direction.
By 2023, the idea had a shape. In 2024 he proved it through a 1031 exchange, fast-moving, with an unforgiving clock, producing significant deal economics and an above-market performing asset. A small job that told him what he needed to know. Give an owner someone who’s truly in their corner, and good things happen quickly.
Bespoke analysis, always before execution.
He didn’t launch it then, and fate got in the way, disguised as an unsolicited job offer. The truth is he wasn’t ready, and he knew it. The idea needed more building, he needed more training and more reps, and there were two little boys at home who took precedence.
So he was patient. He went back to what he knew best as a senior credit officer at a large institution, underwriting large, complex transactions, sharpening the analytical edge the whole idea would stand on. It wasn’t a detour. It was the last of the foundation going in. He fathered, underwrote, and built.
Beautiful plants often do the most growing while in the shade.
Studying, working, and Dad-ing, and then a few people called, unexpectedly. They needed what he had. Answers, and effort. They knew only Halden had this model. No salaries, no tiers, no pitch deck, success-based economics only.
He has ethical lines he won’t cross, and disloyalty is chief among them, so he did the work for free, off hours only, building his infrastructure in moonlight. The work impressed. He also hit walls, and with a few owners came to an honest crossroads: he wasn’t the man for the job. That mattered as much as the wins. It showed him who Leather Apron is for, and who it isn’t.
A certain kind of business. Sustainable, with happy customers and a real reason to exist. A certain kind of owner, and CFO if they’re at that scale. Curious about their own situation, honest about it, and actually wanting the help.
Helping the few who fit became too good to keep as a side thing. A family, a demanding job, and a vision that wouldn’t quit. Something had to give. It was the job. He left in good faith, and spent the next nine months building what would become Leather Apron.
The right fit is found as much in the no as in the yes.
By the summer of 2025, three had become real, ongoing relationships. One manufacturer, two service firms, none of them alike. Underneath, the work was always the same two questions. How do we get more free cash flow into the firm? How do we lower what that capital costs? Everything else grew out of those.
For the manufacturer, he built the institutional-grade model they’d never had, despite an in-house accountant and a well-regarded outside firm. It runs their daily decisions now. He ran the ROI scenarios, placed a new bank and credit relationship, mapped how the owners work with each other and their people, and put numbers to the paths ahead. He still talks with them quarterly, keeping their information memo current.
For the first service firm, he put a full tax-advantaged framework in place and helped them grow without outside debt. He works alongside their accountant so the books finally tell the truth about profitability, a problem for years.
For the second, he gave an owner the confidence to invest in what her business needed and carry the overhead real growth requires. With a custom capital strategy and every banking piece in place, she runs a healthy balance sheet and positions for her cycles on purpose. Over twelve months, she doubled her revenue and tripled her run-rate profitability.
Three clients. Three different problems. One way of working.
A small sample to serve a larger population.
Somewhere in those three engagements, Halden noticed the piece that was always missing. He’d been reading financial statements for fifteen years, reworking them, pulling them apart, always for his own analysis. Now he was sitting across from owners who depended on those same statements every day, and too often the numbers didn’t speak to them clearly.
He’s not a CPA, and he’d never claim to be. He’s been using financial statements long enough to know how good reporting works, and where it breaks down. The old way of a professional introducing their client and the accountant, and hoping it goes well, often leads to mixed outcomes. So he started facilitating things, more than just a hand off. Helping define the scope, budgeting with the Owner then negotiating with the accountant so the pricing tension leaves the relationship, calling for the extra work when it genuinely pays: a quality of earnings study, a review or audit, a better inventory or payroll system. Doing right by the owner and the accountant at the same time.
It was new. It still is, and it works. The accounting problems got solved, the relationships deepened, and the whole practice found its shape. That’s when the Leather Apron name presented itself.
Reading Benjamin Franklin’s bio (Halden loves bios), he recognized his clients. Franklin’s leather apron class, the tradespeople who build, restore, and hold up society. The modern version: self-financed, unprivileged, no parent company. Industrial, technical, earning their profit through unique craft and engineering. Sustainable, with customers who keep coming back, treating their employees, vendors, and customers with honesty and the utmost respect.
That’s who this is for. The modern-day leather apron class.
Craft finance, measured true, for the craft business owners it serves.
PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
1. Halden served as Portfolio Manager and Analyst for the Bank’s most complex deals and business structures, involved in numerous lending and capital provision decisions.
2. Cash flow lending, Sponsor Acquisition, A/R and Inventory lending, Telecommunications.
3. Experience guides our knowhow on institutional decision making and risk taking.
Built to understand the current regime and predict new ones.
MARKETS AND SECURITIES
1. Seven years on the securities side: Charles Schwab, New York Life, JPMorgan Chase.
2. Traded, advised, and originated over $2B, across securities markets and diverse clients.
3. Experience provides Leather Apron its unique expertise in Markets and Risk Management.
Making markets for our clients, price discovery is continuous.
EDUCATION
1. Bachelor of Science in Financial Services Management, Summa Cum Laude, Johnson & Wales.
2. International MBA from the University of Denver.
3. Used Post-9/11 GI Bill to fund education, approximate cost of $5,000.
Value creation, executed early.
MILITARY
1. Six years aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship out of San Diego.
2. Auxiliary Division: emergency diesel generators and small-boat search and rescue.
3. Two Persian Gulf deployments. Rose to E-5. Surface and Air Warfare designated. Six medals.
Pressure, accountability, and incomplete information: standard military evolution.
For now, this page has one face on it.
That’s on purpose. Leather Apron is built to serve a handful of owners completely, not a hundred of them halfway. As the right people join, you’ll meet them here.
Built to grow, in no hurry to.