Nothing is as Certain as Change: Managing Family Offices

Join host Tiffanie Kinder, co-host Andrea Bruttig, and special guest Ronda Pierson as they delve into the intricacies of working with family offices in the Staffing at Tiffanie's Experience podcast. Ronda shares her extensive experience transitioning from a career in television to managing ultra-high-net-worth families. She explains the roles and challenges involved in family offices, detailing how they differ from traditional wealth management firms. The episode also covers the importance of hiring the right household staff, the complexities of hybrid roles, and the nuances of dealing with new vs. generational wealth. This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in household staffing or aiming to understand the demands of ultra-high-net-worth family management.
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Edited by To The Moon Creative | Nashville, TN
http://www.ttmcreativestudio.com
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Transcript

  You're listening to the Staffing at Tiffany's Experience,  behind the scenes of household staff.  Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Staffing at Tiffany's Experience. I am your host, Tiffany Kinder, president and founder of Staffing at Tiffany's, joined by my director of placement, co host Andrea Brudig.

And we have a special guest on the podcast today, Rhonda Pearson. Welcome Rhonda. Oh, thank you so much, both of you for having me. It's a pleasure. You're welcome. Thanks for being here. Let's start a little bit about your background and how you got into the industry. You have a wide array of experience, so it's really cool.

But whatever you'd like to share. Well, this is definitely a second career for me. So I had a long career in television as a news anchor and then as a host and 27  years on QVC. And I just decided that my days there were up basically. But I started working for a. philanthropy, a organization in Palm Beach through a friend and they needed some help.

Long story short, through that, one of the board members came to me and said, my role there was director of operations. And this board member came to me and said, you know, I'm looking for someone who has your skill set and does the same type of scope of work, but I need you to do it for my family office.

We're setting up a new family office. I need someone who's organized, fastidious, you know, would definitely pass obviously many background checks and that can manage multiple things at the same time, multiple people and multiple projects. So that was my big foray into family management. I've been a chief of staff, a household manager, a personal assistant, director of properties.

But my niche is pretty much ultra high net worth families with multiple homes. That's where I started and that's kind of the lane I've stayed in. Okay. And so how long have you been working with family offices? Each role, some have family offices that you work with, other families you work directly with, even though they do have a family office.

But family offices are there to be private wealth managers, to manage these families assets and their needs. And they handle investments, taxes, estate planning, you know, all that philanthropy. And often a family will come to them and say, we need help at home. We need help managing the multiple properties or we just need a household manager.

And instead of the family doing that research and search and hiring a recruiter, the family office takes it on and you end up, meaning me, I end up working for the family office directly and not the family personally. Okay.  We wanted to do a podcast on hiring and working with family offices. We work with a lot of family offices ourself and the spokesperson for the family office will reach out to us and want to do a search.

I thought it would be a good episode just to kind of dive into. How family offices work with household staffing and the differences between like a family office Versus a traditional like wealth management firm  Well, yes a single family office is only have handling the finances and management of one Family and a family office doesn't exist unless that one family has assets of 30 to 50 million.

Usually it's 50 million. There are family offices called multi family offices and I've worked for one of those in my past and they took on 10 ultra high net worth families and had a big staff. And they broke up that staff between their lawyers and their estate planners and their financial advisors.

And they kind of divided it among those 10 families, but we're talking about, I think a single family office. So single family office is set up just for one family and all of their assets, their asset management, and how to handle their needs, whether it's legal, financial, It can be real estate, it can be estate planning, their trust, and where I come in is their home.

So if they're doing a major home renovation, I'm dealing with making sure, so my connection to the family office is making sure, for instance, I have a certificate of insurance for every vendor who comes to the house, or every subcontractor or contractor, and I pass that along to the family office.

Because the family office is there to protect the family, right? Right. So a lot of this has to do with security, with contracts,  whether it's a real estate architect, a builder, an interior designer. So my role at the home is to kind of oversee it all, and when there is all of a sudden a rise in a budget of, you know, a couple million dollars on a project, I'm the first one to call.

Family always doesn't always do that and say, Hey, this project has changed. Uh, the amount of investment the family's putting in, it has changed from what I can gather. Sometimes I deal with title companies and I make sure that I'm always connected to the family office. I'm kind of the liaison between what's actually happening on the ground.

At the home, uh, what is needed, what catastrophes, if there's a flood, for instance, which has happened. I'm the one that's calling the family office. Of course, there's certain insurance companies in this country that only handle ultra high net worth. There's special insurance companies. So I'm the one that's notifying the family office, Hey, we've got an issue here so that they can kind of, you know, Spread out and make sure any issue is handled like that. 

The main thing about the type of people, which is ultra high net worth. So there's high net worth, which is, you know, as millionaires, ultra high net worth are the billionaires. And they're the ones that really all have some type of family office. And what makes them different in my role as a ultra high net worth family, you're going to have a laundress.

A chef, a driver, more than one housekeeper. Sometimes there's security people. I was recently in a home that had groundskeeper and a gardener. So there's a lot more staff to manage at an ultra high net worth. Level. Absolutely. You know, you mentioned Tiffany that when we work with family offices, we have learned a lot of this and experienced a lot of this.

But what I have found is it's typically the director of HR, right? The director of human resource. That's our point of contact. And when they come to us, they already are almost at that pulling their hair out point where they've had their own. job description posted somewhere. They're recruiting somewhere and they are unsuccessful.

And so most everyone that I've worked on, it's when that director of HR for a multimillion dollar, very large company, they can hire internally for their staff, but they can't seem to find a For these family offices in homes. And so that's kind of where we get brought into it in my experience. And I think Rhonda and I have some experience here in the Midwest with a couple of different interviews, searches, placements, what have you.

So that's what I wanted to just, you're absolutely right. And you're great because you understand. That the family doesn't always know exactly what they want or need, right? And I think the most complicated thing, it used to be that you were very defined in your role, in my role. I'm a house manager, I'm a chief of staff, I'm a personal assistant.

And now, today, all those roles kind of overlap and intertwine. Andrea, you've placed me in a role where, you Had some unique requests, uh, that the family needs. And, you know, ultimately all of our goals, yours and mine is to support what the family needs. So you really do need a recruiter. And I'm a big proponent of your team and of recruiters in general, because they understand more that it's more complex than a human resource person realizes. 

It is complex. You know, it's this hierarchy and like, where do we start? And so when a family office contacts us, I have a lot of questions usually, because I don't know where they are in this process. I don't really know, is this family new money? Is this generational wealth or do they have fully staffed homes?

Are they just starting out? So there's lots of questions to be asked. and where they are in the process and we are experts at this. I've been doing this for 26 years and I understand if I have enough information what the next step is or who the next person should be hired and how it should go. It's great when we work with family offices that understand that and that see us as experts at this.

When a home is not staffed correctly, that's when turnover happens, or when you staff for the wrong role, they're hiring for a household manager when really they need a housekeeper, things like that. And I do see a lot of these hybrid hybrid. roles where if somebody doesn't understand the household industry, like we understand it like inside and out there for sure that they need this one type of role, but it's not what they need.

So it's great to have insiders like yourself in these family offices that understand. How the process works and what's necessary. And that's exactly what I was going to say is it's also really helpful when we have candidates like yourself, Rhonda, that have this experience with family offices and know what they're getting themselves into and want to.

This is a desire. This is a passion. This is something that interests you versus a candidate that's coming from a different role and wanting to try this. Everybody has to start somewhere, but it's really helpful for us too. When we have someone with your wealth of knowledge. So, well, thank you. I agree.

Sometimes we have to tell them what they need. And even in my role, often they they'll want a nanny slash house manager. Well, that those are two separate roles, right? Or they want a chef slash personal assistant or whatever. There are some roles, depending on how the scope of work is defined, that you can combine.

But most is very separate scope of work, very separate responsibilities. And when you're in a big home, I mean, the first question I ask when I go to work for a family office is, How large is the home? What is the square footage? It's the first thing I want to know. And we all have limits. So if someone says the house, I will work up to a, How 13, 000 square foot house with a housekeeper.

But when they say, Oh, it's a, you know, 15, 000 or 20, 000 square foot house. My second question is who's the staff, how much staff do you have there? And then you understand the family understands the scope of the home that they're running. I've had many times where I've had to say, actually, I had a job for a long time, a lovely couple that came into money.

Uh, suddenly. So multigenerational families are very different than the new money when we're talking about ultra high net worth. Very. I had to say to them, you need a chef. You need a housekeeper, a second housekeeper to come in at the odd hours and the weekends. Most people in your position would also consider having no XYZ.

So sometimes when it's new money, they don't even understand. Um, and it's up to you guys as recruiters, not really up to me, but I, I have persuaded some to say, it's crazy that you're spending time doing this when you could hire someone to do this for you, no matter what that role might be. But the new thing is laundresses.

So the housekeepers are now saying, we can't be a housekeeper for a house, the size. And do the laundry. So, you know, there's new roles being created to manage, uh, this particular client. Rhonda, we like to tell potential clients that any home that is over 10, 000 square feet, we recommend multiple housekeepers at least two.

So do you feel that that's aligned with where you would draw the line? 10, 000 square feet or above. Well, I was in a 13, 000 square foot house for a long time and they did have a housekeeper. Eventually they got a chef. So it depends on the number of people in the home. If there's a lot of kids, high schoolers, little kids, it's a different situation than if it's just a couple, quite frankly. 

But yeah, I think one of the most important things is how large is the home? Yeah, definitely. Well, like I said, Rule of thumb, every 10, 000 square foot per housekeeper. That's kind of how we do it. That's our recommendation. What kind of strategies do family offices use when they're going to hire household staff?

What do you see? Like the strategy that they use, do you find them researching and learning about the household staffing industry and what these roles are and really like dissecting what has been your experience? Do you feel that they understand this industry?  Yes, so I think that when it's a multi family office, so it's a family office that's handling many homes, like I mentioned, I worked for one that had 10 families, so they're getting feedback from those families of what is needed or not needed, but basically the most important thing they're looking for is someone with a Clean background check with incredible references.

Somebody who can pivot. You have to be very, very flexible and willing to pivot at the last moment. Because a family office understands how these families work. One day they're in town and they're going to be there a week. And the next day they decide to get on their private jet and go to their other private home in another place.

Every day changes. And it's one of the things I love about the business is, um, it's never boring, but a family office understands that these families are fluid. They're constantly changing plans and going to different homes and, uh, last minute trips. And I think they're looking for somebody who  is spontaneous, very, very flexible and can roll with the punches, you know, and make those pivots.

You cannot be, um, really firm and, your plans for any day because every single day changes and family offices understand that about their families. And so I think that's what they're looking for. I mean, none of us are executive assistants that are sitting behind a desk for the ceo of the family. Uh, they all have executive assistants.

What we are is Fly by the seat of your pants, pivot, make a quick move. Nothing is as certain as change. That's my motto. Nothing, every day, nothing is as certain as change. And family offices know that. So they're, they know the type of personality that's going to best suit their family. Now, I will say I had a really nice match once where the family office recognized that this The family I was going to work for, or they were searching for a house manager, had kids in high school that were headed to college.

And when I interviewed, I said, Oh, I've just been through that process. I've had two daughters. They, I went through all the testing, the ACTs, the tutoring. I visited all the colleges. I've moved kids in and out of dorms for the last four years, twice a year. And that was like, Game changer. They're like, Oh, thank you, Jesus.

You can help us because we don't have a clue how that's done. And we are overwhelmed with the, even the thought of it. And so this family really appreciated that I had that recent knowledge and experience of doing something they were about to embark on. So that was a good match. So I think good family offices that are finding a perfect match for their.

Their client, their family is very particular about making sure the match fits. Right. And like you said, good family offices.  And most of them are great. I will say over the years, I've had situations where the contact that I was dealing with  did not understand the job description and did not understand the family's needs.

And we would start with one role, do tons of interviews. And the family was like, no, that's not, that's not what we want. And so we'd have to start over again. And it would have been so much easier to be able to speak to the principal myself. But of course that's their job. So I'm dealing with them. And so it just makes a world of difference when you really understand the family that you're working for and what their needs are.

And then. Understanding this industry as well, because they're looking for guidance a lot of times on what kind of role that they need. And then we were talking about these hybrid roles. They'll come to me sometimes too. And they'll, they'll say things like, yeah, we need a chef slash PA.  No, I'm sorry. But a personal assistant is a different candidate than a chef. 

Can a chef run some errands? Sure. To the grocery store, but they're not going to be doing other things like that typically. Well, also those roles are all encompassing. So to be a personal assistant or a chef, I mean,  yeah, the person hiring has to understand what these people go through to do a good job.

And, um, it's really hard, you know, they think that everything is easier than it is. And, and it does take a lot of time. I mean, there's. A lot of details. And the other thing, whether you're a chef or a housekeeper or a house manager, it's really important to be proactive instead of reactive. So today, I'm not thinking about today.

I'm thinking about what's happening next week. And what needs to be done to make sure next week is smooth, whether the guests are coming or there's trips planned or a project in the house. It doesn't matter. Okay. So I feel a little sorry for you guys, because you do have to educate the recruiter that you're working with, or the person in the family that you're working with, to really kind of give them a crash course in, hey, this is not how it's done for the size of house you have.

This is what you need. And these are the roles that each of these different titles will help the family with. But it's, it's. And then sometimes they have to go back and educate a family. Some families who have never had a house manager, a personal assistant, a chef, a driver, a laundress, or whatever, they need to be educated on really what those people do and how much you can expect from them.

Rhonda, you've touched on one of the primary motives.  So on our website, staffingattiffanys. com, we have a lot of blogs and 21 plus podcast episodes, and that's exactly part of what we wanted to do. We wanted to help educate and inform. It's not others faults that they don't know or that they are unclear. 

Not everybody understands the domestic staff industry or has a passion for it. So you nailed it on the head and you also brought in a slogan because it wouldn't be a podcast if I didn't bring in a slogan and my version of your slogan that I use, All the time is nothing is permanent except change and your version was Nothing is as certain as change in this world, right?

Thank you for that and for all your insight. Yes. I really appreciate you guys It's been a pleasure, Andrea, working with you. I have to say, I've worked with a lot of recruiters and you are a top notch and just a joy to work with and fun besides it all. But thank you. And when you have the opportunity to work with Tiffany, you will find the exact same thing.

I look forward to that, Tiffany.  We're just very passionate about this industry as well. And like Andrea said, we created this podcast so we can give insight. We can give knowledge and we can talk about these issues that aren't always talked about and have a platform for it. So behind the scenes of household staffing is what this is.

So I really appreciate your time, Rhonda. And, um, we just appreciate everything you do for the industry as well. Well, thank you both very much. You're welcome.  Thank you for listening to the Staffing at Tiffany's experience.  Please share our podcast and stay tuned for more episodes. Visit us at staffing at tiffany's.

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