A Different Kind of Business Owner
You didn’t walk away from business when you sold the company. You’re now acquiring operating companies, building a portfolio, and making sure each one runs the way it should. That takes people you can trust at every level.
The leaders you put in place at your portfolio companies aren’t just accountable to you. They answer to the family as a whole, people with real stakes in how things go and real opinions about how things should be run. That dynamic doesn’t show up in a job description. But it shapes everything about who the right hire is.
And the people working inside the family office itself sit even closer to the center. They need to be capable. They need to be dedicated. Above all, they need to be discreet.
RFT has been doing this kind of search almost since we started. We understand the environment because we’ve been in it long enough to recognize who belongs there and who doesn’t.
When you’re ready to talk, call us at 248-957-6598 or learn more about how our retained search process works.
This Isn’t a Standard Search. Don’t Treat It Like One.
The right person for a family office environment isn’t always the most obvious one on paper. A strong resume doesn’t tell you whether someone has the composure to operate with independence while staying genuinely accountable. It doesn’t tell you whether they understand discretion as a professional discipline, not just a policy. Those things take judgement to find, built from experience in exactly these situations. That’s what we bring to every search we conduct for family office clients.
Two Kinds of Searches
Where We Help Family Offices Most
Family office hiring tends to fall into two distinct situations. Each one requires a different kind of search, and both require someone who understands the environment they’re hiring for.
Situation One
Leadership at Your Portfolio Companies
Each company you acquire needs someone capable of running it day to day without you having to be in the middle of every decision. That person operates with significant independence, but they don’t operate in a vacuum. They need to earn the trust of the family over time, communicate with clarity, and perform under genuine scrutiny.
Finding someone who can do all of that, and do it consistently, takes more than matching a resume to a job description. It takes knowing what that environment actually demands, and recognizing the kind of person who will hold up inside it.
We know what to look for. That’s not a process. That’s experience.
Situation Two
Internal Hires at the Family Office Itself
The people working inside the family office are close to everything. The finances. The dynamics. The decisions that don’t get discussed outside the room. Competence is the baseline for any hire. In this environment, it’s the minimum, not the standard.
What matters most here is trustworthiness. The right person is dedicated, composed, and genuinely discreet, not because they were told to be, but because they understand what’s at stake and take it seriously.
We screen for that with the same seriousness you expect it with. Because the wrong hire here isn’t just a performance problem.
Your Search Gets the Attention It Deserves
We work retained, meaning we’re your dedicated search partner for this role. We’re not competing with four other firms to submit resumes first. We’re focused entirely on finding the right person for this specific position, inside this specific kind of organization.
Family office searches require a level of confidentiality that most firms treat as an afterthought. For us it’s standard practice. We don’t use our clients’ names to build our profile. We don’t broadcast searches in ways that attract the wrong attention. We understand when quiet matters and we operate accordingly.
Every search has owner oversight. Jason and Linda personally ensure quality standards are met, and you have direct access to decision-makers when you need them. No layers. No runaround.
To understand more about how the retained search process works, or to know when it makes sense to make the call, check out these before we talk.
Why Family Office Principals Work With RFT
When You Own Multiple Companies, a Bad Hire Multiplies
It doesn’t just cost you the salary. It costs you the time you spent managing around it, the opportunity you lost while the role sat wrong, and the credibility you spent putting that person in the room. Those costs add up differently when you have more than one company to staff.
The 5-Year Client Loyalty Pricing Program means that if a placement doesn’t hold, we’re here to help you find the right replacement. Completely free in the first few months. Heavily discounted fees after that, for up to 5 years based on when the replacement search begins. We’re not interested in charging you full price twice for the same position.
When you’re thinking about a long relationship with multiple searches ahead of you, that kind of commitment matters.
Ready to Talk About Your Search?
Whether you need leadership at a portfolio company or a trusted hire inside the family office, let’s have a confidential conversation about what you’re looking for.