Leppla Capital Management is a solo-run investment advisory firm providing personalized guidance for middle-income investors.
What started as a site redesign grew into a platform for trust, education, and financial growth.
Client
Boutique advisory firm serving clients in San Francisco and New York City
Duration
May 2025 - ongoing
Roles
Web design, brand positioning, content strategy
Brief
The client — an experienced antitrust lawyer, investment banker, and financial educator — approached me to redesign the website for his investment firm, Leppla Capital Management (LCM). Though the firm had already attracted several ultra-high-net-worth clients through referrals and professional networks, the client's long-term vision was to offer affordable, personalized investment guidance to a broader audience — specifically, middle-income professionals who might not see themselves as typical candidates for wealth management or financial advisement.
While the original ask was focused on the site itself, I quickly saw an opportunity to expand the scope into a full brand and content strategy that aligned with the client’s long-term goals and spoke to a broader, underserved audience.
Strategy & Brand Positioning
How can we market a legacy service to a fresh customer base without relying on traditional signals of success?
To kick off the project, I had the client complete a brand and personality survey to clarify his goals, values, and target audience. We followed this with a series of strategy sessions to better understand his long-term vision for LCM and how he hoped to differentiate the firm online.
In wealth management, credibility is everything. However, regulations restrict firms from directly using testimonials or performance data to advertise. Reaching an audience new to the idea of financial advisement would mean finding other ways to earn trust.
Client brand survey results (left) and the positioning diagram we created to visualize LCM’s desired brand identity (right).
We decided to lean into what set the client apart: his decades of experience, his educator’s mindset, and his values-driven approach to investing. The client regularly gives financial seminars to young adults, often free of charge, and had already built a library of slides and other materials. I saw an opportunity to fold these resources into a broader educational content strategy — positioning LCM as a trustworthy, transparent resource for middle-income investors.
We outlined a roadmap for future content, including:
Short videos answering common financial questions
Personalized video responses to real financial situations
Blog posts that break down fiduciary concepts in plain language
A downloadable guide to grow an email list and stay in touch with prospects
Our goal was to strike a balance between elite and approachable, showcasing the client's ability to explain complex financials without dumbing down the core ideas. The redesigned site needed to lay the groundwork for all of that — not just as a marketing tool, but as a platform for building long-term trust through education.
Visual Direction
What does wealth management look like when it's built for an everyday audience?
LCM originally lacked a distinct visual identity, and its existing site, a generic FMG Suite template, was outdated and poorly structured. Though the client had published strong long-form content on investing principles and how-tos, it appeared as dense, unstyled blocks of text that were difficult to read.
We wanted to reach a new audience of younger, internet-native professionals. That meant distancing LCM from the faceless, corporate big-bank aesthetic and the Suze Orman-esque infomercial style, both of which cater to older adults and near-retirees. We also needed to balance being content-forward and advertising LCM's actual services, tying them together seamlessly as part of a unified layout.
Legacy layouts from LCM's original site.
We retained classic signals of financial credibility (a serifed primary typeface, a navy-gold palette) but modernized the layout with wide margins, spacious structure, and strong visual hierarchy. We kept the homepage focused on services while compactly surfacing LCM's educational content with editorial-style blocks, offering both social proof and quick redirects to a future resource hub. I also built out a design system and rewrote key copy to reflect the updated brand strategy and tone.
