A business advisory firm that began in Wilmington is expanding its services to Fayetteville.

Cornerstone Advisory Partners made the announcement Thursday that its new office, to be led by Ben Goetz, will expand the firm’s presence in the Sandhills region as well as in the Raleigh-Durham area. Goetz, a Fayetteville-based certified implementer of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), will become a managing partner of Cornerstone.

“This is phase one of our plans to expand nationally. Our vision is to be in 40 cities within five years,” said Dallas Romanowski, Cornerstone's founding partner. 

That goal is much more ambitious than one articulated by Romanowski when he helped start the firm in 2008. Romanowski said that while Cornerstone’s original vision was to be “the most trusted advisor to business leaders in southeast North Carolina,” the rocky economic environment changed his immediate goal to “just make next month’s rent.”

“That was a very tough time, since the economy was in the early stages of a steep decline,” Romanowski said.  “I’m glad I can smile about it now. Frankly, becoming a business owner challenged everything I knew about business and entrepreneurial risk. This experience has helped us understand the challenges faced by business owners -- wisdom that can only be gained by taking personal risk yourself.”

Recently, Cornerstone has seen rapid growth. Since January its team has grown from four advisors to 13, and the firm was tapped to provide the business advisory services for Seahawk Innovation Management -- the fund management company for the Seahawk Innovation Fund. Romanowski is one of three managing partners for the fund; the others are Tobin Geatz and Tom Looney.

In addition to its business advisory services, Cornerstone manages IMAF Cape Fear (Inception Micro Angel Fund), a member-managed seed-stage angel capital fund.

The firm’s new Fayetteville office is the result of a chance reunification of Goetz and Romanowski, who had been camp sailing instructors together 20 years ago. Working for a mutual client, the two discussed what their combined services could do for businesses.

“We were overwhelmed at the synergies we discovered. Our intention in the Sandhills, and focusing on Raleigh as well, is to serve new clients but also to build up the Cornerstone team there,” Romanowski said, noting the many opportunities that exist within a wide range of businesses unique to the Fayetteville area.

“By joining the Cornerstone team, we will better serve clients [who are] implementing EOS, by filling talent gaps with interim C-Level advisors from Cornerstone,” Goetz said in a news release. “EOS provides a simplified way to manage and grow an organization by executing fundamental management principles and has been implemented in over 610 companies.”