Kyle MacDonald: And maybe a question for you, Brian. So thinking a little bit more about, you know, these traditional structures, whether that’s from PE funds, VC funds, or maybe even investment banks or beyond, how are family offices quite different in terms of a working environment for those who join these organisations? 

Brian C. Adams: Despite the fact that they’ve become much more professionalised and institutionalised, there’s still a lot of flexibility within the org chart. So, compared with working with a traditional Wall Street investment bank or a private equity firm or asset manager, you get exposure across a broad spectrum of wealth management and asset management. So you can learn a little bit about concierge services, trusts, estate investing, tax accounting, bookkeeping, and technology. You can touch all components of what kind of drives the family office forward. And that’s really appealing to a lot of people, especially young people. And I’m sure we’ll get into more of this, but I think the advantage obviously is that permanent capital base. Right. So, like we’ve talked about, they don’t have this churn every five to seven years.

I think the average PE firm is actually more like 12 to 15 years on turn. But they’re not recycling capital and chasing ROI, so they have to go back to the market constantly. So there’s that sense that they have more flexibility, and then at the same time, they’ve become really competitive alongside venture capital and private equity firms in terms of allocating capital and looking at deal flow. Obviously, as they become much larger, you get the opportunity to look at much more unique deal flows as well. And so I think just to become very competitive alongside the mainstream traditional firms, when you think of them as kind of a standalone investment office and then frankly, having fewer clients is really appealing to people. Right. 

So if you’re coming from a traditional Wall Street firm where your LPs are non-taxable pension plans, at insurance companies and endowments, where they’re really kind of nameless, faceless organisations that cycle through their own leadership positions to be able to have a deep relationship with the principals and the clients directly that you can build for 20, 50 years has become very appealing to people who, let’s be honest, who from Wall Street seems to blow itself up every three to five years. So it’s a very attractive spot for a lot of really talented people today. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, Brian, David, thinking a little bit about how there is this shift in appetite for candidates to move into this space, but also thinking a little bit about when you go out and actually start looking for candidates, where are their typical overlaps with skills that make candidates particularly transferable into this new sector for them? Where are their actual skills that might be even quite desirable in comparison to traditional family offices? 

David Chie: I think with Silicon Valley, I’ve found that a lot of the founders that we’re working with are looking for the highest quality talent, not necessarily from the family office space. They’re typically used to sort of having the highest calibre of individuals around them. And so they want that, whether that’s from a lifestyle perspective or from investors. And they offer sort of, as Brian said, a larger ability to touch on a lot of different asset classes, which is not necessarily the case if they’re going to go into just a regular VC or a PE firm. So, in terms of the transferable skills, I think there are sometimes candidates who are just kind of tired of going through the cycles and are ready to kind of be excellent in their field and work with these exciting individuals to deliver these long-term returns and so on. 

Kyle MacDonald: That makes sense. And Besarata, thinking a little bit more about, obviously, two angles. One is from the wealth owner’s perspective, but the other is from a candidate-centric perspective. Beyond the brains and hard work, what is it that wealth owners and family offices are looking for when it comes to candidates? 

Besarta Dani: Well, the great servant. Actually, they need someone that is a safe pair of hands. And Brian and David probably can relate to this. You meet certain people, and you think you’re an exceptional COO. They can do anything from tax, and they’re able to understand how the accounts work within the family office, they are able to do deal-making, they have a risk appetite, etc. So we always look for that sort of great servant, someone who is a steady pair of hands, not a contrarian. You need to a degree to be a yes man because imagine you’ve got the wealth owner at the helm of this. They need to know that they’re dealing with a very sensitive topic, which is their money and their entire wealth. 

A lot of them would have been people that I typically would see as second or third-generation wealth. So there’s a lot of pressure from these new wealth owners to be able to do a good job from it and have the right people alongside them. So it’s essentially a steady pair of hands. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah. 

Besarta Dani: That they can trust. Yeah. 

Brian C. Adams: I would echo that. We always look for what we refer to as a service mentality. Right. Or a service heart. I think the technical skills, considering how competitive the marketplace is today, are table stakes, in my opinion. So it’s really a function of whether we can find the right culture-fit. By culture-fit, we do mean that service heart. So we look for things, I mean in the States, people who served in the military, people who played college team sports, especially at a lower level, and maybe a niche sport where they have no opportunity to go anywhere with it. But they just really love to be part of a team and achieve things together. You know, Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, Girl Scouts, all those types of things really go towards it. 

This leads to the following question about this concept: There’s nothing kind of too small. Right. There’s no task too small. And if it’s important to the family. I think one of the things people struggle with on the candidate side is that they were a managing director at Goldman or something along those lines. They have a very specific scope, and they do one niche thing very well. Even if you’re working at a big institutional family office, you’re the chief cook and bottle washer, and some days, you’re allocating capital to interview GPs and sponsors. Another day, you’re figuring out what summer camp the next generation needs to go to and working your network to get them access to whatever school they need to be able to go to. So there is nothing too small. 

And that really goes to. When you wake up in the morning, do you have that service orientation, that service heart? 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, 100. And I think also to interrupt you, I would. 

Besarta Dani: Sorry. I would add that it’s a high IQ and high EQ that really goes along with this person. They have to be very sensitive to the people they are working for. And that’s why they look for that long-term person who’s going to stay in the company for 10 to 20 years, and they usually never leave, if I’m honest. So sorry, just to add that. 

Kyle MacDonald: Exactly my point. I was going to say the sort of EQ question comes. It comes into play quite a lot from my years in the sector. Understand you’re working with and for people and I think that needs to be sort of front and center beyond obviously having exceptional technical skills. Perhaps more questions for you, David, are: So if you’re thinking about a family office where they’ve just had a liquidity event, you know, they’re thinking about setting up a family office for the first time. What is that typical sequence of hiring that you see sort of within the tech space? And maybe I’ll sort of bounce this back to Brian and Besarta in your experiences as well, but maybe Brian will be over to you. 

So, what would you sort of see as the typical sequence of hiring? 

Brian C. Adams: Obviously, every family is a little bit different, but when you’re talking about a de novo startup family office, we work with a number of them. We’re actually working with a large one in Dallas right now, and we really strongly advocate hiring that expert generalist. So, somebody who has all of the facilities across the spectrum of wealth and asset management. They may not be an expert in trust in estate law or private trust companies or investing per se, but they know enough about those things to be able to be, as Besarta just said, that safe pair of hands for the principal and the family and then everything kind of follows along from there. 

So we generally advocate for somebody that maybe has 10 to 15 years of family office experience or worked at a professional services firm that kind of worked alongside those types of families. A profile in the states would be somebody with kind of a JD, CPA, MBA, maybe a public accounting background, or worked at a kind of high-level trust in the state law firm where they were really more of a consigliere and a consultant in a lot of ways, as opposed to just kind of blocking, tackling and producing widgets. So, titles in the family office world are very fluid and dynamic. You can call them the CEO, the president, or the Chief Operating Officer. Sometimes, it’s the CFO, but often, it’s really just finding that kind of expert generalist. 

And what we typically see is the comfort level from the principal if they themselves came out of law or accounting or private equity or investment banking. You probably want to find somebody with a similar DNA because even though the skill set might be variable, they’re going to feel more comfortable with that shared background and pedigree, oftentimes.

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah. And David, do you see that sort of shifting in Silicon Valley? 

Brian C. Adams: I think we definitely look for those chief operating officer components, someone who can continue to move things going forward. Also, that has that general approach to understanding who they’re going to be hiring and can sort of be that right-hand person in establishing the set-up. Often, we place attorneys into this space. Actually, I’ve noticed this quite frequently recently because there’s so much nuance to the legal issues that they want to deal with. So I recommend that to a lot of individuals, but it really depends on the principle, as Brian said, where they’re coming from, what their objectives are. If they’re looking to drive philanthropic work, it’s going to be very different to them driving their investment work or creating new startups or whatnot. But, a generalist with a strong operating capacity is high. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah. And Bersarta, how do you sort of see that sequence? So say, for example, you hire this generalist, perhaps, and then sort of, what’s the next point of call? Who do you hire next? 

Besarta Dani: We usually hire an investment director. So the type of family office that I work for, as I mentioned earlier, is either a multifamily office or someone that’s had a conglomerate and that’s a third-generation wealth, and they will have a venture on the side. So it’s not that you’re typical in that you’re sort of doing the tax or moving the family into Switzerland. We’re usually looking more at the investment part. So they will either have another VC on the side, which is there. So, you typically have an umbrella, which is split into three different streams. And so you have like a holding company, you have a family office, and then you have a VC, and they usually invest in things that they’re sort of passionate about, and we need to find a great investor for that can manage all their portfolios. 

So, what I’m seeing at the moment, especially in the Middle East, is they are buying a lot of football clubs because they’re passionate about football and sport. So this is very different from some of the family offices here in Europe. You need a strong investment director, and you need a strong chief of staff. These types of people will usually come from either McKinsey, a strategy house, BCG, or Goldman Sachs. But the struggle that we typically have, especially from multifamily offices, is usually that they, if you bring someone from Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, usually want someone like themselves who they understand. So there’s almost like an allergic reaction to having somebody from, you know, the other competitor, competing bank, let’s say. So it’s essentially building blocks around it. 

But with conglomerate families, what we’ve seen is that there is one major family office that they have, and then all the cousins will have their own split family offices around it. So when there is a good deal on the table, they will usually go to the main family office to see if they all want to invest, especially when this deal might be a little bit high risk. So it’s an interesting split. Or they pass on the companies just like you would see in a VC World Series A, which goes to one VC, and then they give it to their friends who’s Series B. So that’s what we’re seeing. Yeah. 

Brian C. Adams: Another thing is the CFO, where we notice that they [the principal] don’t have any structure for their incoming and outgoing cash flows. So, they need someone to create the structure to support that and manage the reporting aspect. And you can get shopping pretty quickly, and there’s a lot of transactions that are going on, and you need to have someone that can put some controls in place because often that is not something that’s thought about, especially, particularly if they’re entrepreneurs or so on. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, great point. So maybe diving a little bit deeper into thinking about executive search from a family office perspective. How should a family office go about engaging an executive search firm like any of yours, and how do they get the ball rolling? So maybe I’ll start with you, Brian. How typically do you find new clients approaching you, and what should they expect? 

Brian C. Adams: It obviously depends on the fact pattern and the family. I’d say it’s 50 for us. Sometimes, we participate in a formal RFP process where there’s a bake-off, and they’ll go to three different firms. We’ll do a Zoom interview, they’ll have a written RFP, and then we’ll move to a graduate to an in-person meeting. 

Other times it’s an introduction from a trusted advisor, and we have a great initial call. And we’re known in the marketplace to be the most niche-specific family office search firm. And so it just is a really good fit right away and they’ve got a need to get started. So I’d say either way, oftentimes it will depend on the provenance of the family. 

If they come from an institutional background, they’re going to want to run a process, whereas if it’s a de novo and they’re an entrepreneur, oftentimes they won’t. The multi-generational institutional firms typically have a search committee, right? So they’ve got more structure, they’ve got a board, they have an investment committee, they have a family council, they’ll constitute a search committee, and they’ll go to the market. Whereas the startups obviously don’t have that infrastructure. So we typically don’t run that process, and then it kind of goes from there. But I think it’s a really good opportunity to institute governance and have these hard conversations internally. And what we always advise families about is that even if they are multigenerational, we’re finding a replacement for a long-time CEO or CFO or CIO. 

It’s let’s take the opportunity to revisit these three kinds of big structural questions that every family should ask, which are: who are the clients, what is the family office, who are they serving, and what is the scope of those services being provided? Are we going to be holistic, providing everything from concierge to bookkeeping to investment management to trust and estate work to bill pay to estate management, et cetera, or are we going to be largely investment-oriented or just administrative back office? Based on who the clients are and what the scope of services are, what should be insourced versus outsourced? And oftentimes, that’s a very dynamic, fluid conversation these days with technology and compensation going up. 

We found that these C-suite positions have become really greater in responsibility because middle management has really been hollowed out by technology and some of the advancements they’ve been able to make. But it just means that responsibility is greater on a lot of the C-suite executives in particular. So, we have a consultative approach when we talk to these families. But I would say, you know, based on how you feel comfortable, you go to the market, but I would ask around, right? I mean, I think again, based on your comfort level with the DNA of your family, it will really dictate who the right fit is in terms of how you go about conducting the search. 

But as a candidate, we always feel really comfortable when we are able to go to them and say, hey, the board put together a search committee with representation for the next-gen and then could they have a proxy vote from the family council, etc. And they’ve done a compensation study, right? They’ve brought in a third-party comp consultant to understand the market and the structure. That’s obviously very encouraging. It’s a great step forward for us when we go to the market. So I would encourage families to explore and really get prepared because oftentimes, we see them come in and say, we need somebody in the seat by January 1st. This is a six-month process, I think, from soup to nuts, realistically. So, the more patient and organised you can be, the greater your level of success will be. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess thinking a little bit more about, you know, what types of roles your firms typically focus on. Maybe I’ll start with you, Besarta. So thinking a little bit about, you know, it’s obviously an interesting wild world out there in the family office sector, you know, is, are you typically focused just on the C suite? Do you focus beyond that? Maybe up to you, Besarta. 

Besarta Dani: No, we focus primarily on the CEO, CFO, COO, and we can go to the director level depending on the size of the family office. I mean, titles mean they don’t mean very much, not just in the family office. But, I’d say in 40% of the industries. So it depends on how big they are. If they’re on the 10 billion scale, then the director is actually a very senior person. But what we see in the Middle East a lot is that they are very secretive as family officers. They do not open the doors to anybody, and no one knows what the other family is doing. And they really want to protect that at all costs. So, all of our searches are confidential. 

And even though we look for these senior people, there is a level of not necessarily frustration, but we advise the family offices they should use headhunters because you must be able to go out there and find the best person that is available. Not just someone from your friends and family, but what we’ve actually seen is that the C suite, the majority of the time, I say 70% of the time, will usually find someone from their own network, and it doesn’t necessarily work out. But what they do is they bring a very smart director, who we come in to find. Or a smart COO to support the CEO. But it is all about trust. 

And if you look at the sheikhs and the royal families within the region, they, all of their fathers, and all their families will invest together. So, they are heavily involved in business, and if one of their children is at a certain level, then they will go from one family office to another. So, we focus on the C suite, and we’ve a very close relationship. So, I typically work alongside them as an advisor. I also introduce them to other family offices in Europe, hoping for co-investments. This has been particularly important for me in the sports industry, especially with football clubs. So that’s been a way for us to get them to try to co-invest and potentially move a person from one family office, a family office in Europe, to the Middle East. And it’s beginning to work. So it’s. Yes, we’re seeing some results from this. 

Kyle MacDonald: Fascinating. Maybe a question for you, Brian. So thinking a little bit about sort of from a talent-centric or maybe candidate-centric point of view. How do you get the best-in-class executives to raise the flag and raise their hand and say this is a sector I’m interested in? How do they get in touch and find out? 

Brian C. Adams: It can be, I think it’s changing, but it can be a very opaque, clubby space. Right. And so often, what we advocate to families is that they should use a recruiter because we have access to candidates that you don’t. Because in this world, even though the family office, this ecosystem is expanding and it continues to grow, it’s still a pretty small world. A lot of candidates will trust our confidence, discretion, and privacy and know that we may speak with them for 10 years, and no one else would ever know. But that’s where they can see real opportunities coming across. Because they won’t obviously want the world to know that they put their hand up and that they’re interested. But you know, we have access to that cohort of candidates. 

I think the skill set is really useful for being thoughtfully persistent with recruiters like myself and making sure that you know who all of the real players are in the space. Because that’s the same skill set that you would need to apply in a high-functioning family office. The ability to network, the ability to access certain circles to make sure you’re in the right conversation, in the right room, looking at the right deal flow, understanding what a great family office looks like, what best-in-class family office operations are, right, That’s a very applicable skill set. So we tell families you want these candidates to be out in the market to some extent. 

In this world, it used to just be a trust officer that you brought in, and it was a very insular job where you were just processing tax forms and K1s and doing bill pay like those days are gone. It’s a much more dynamic environment and the requirements for the candidates are equally as dynamic. So part of it is just knowing, right, to be on my radar to attend my networking events, to be able to text me, and to know when something is coming along. And then as we get to know those candidates, to be able to have in our kind of mental role at X, oh, this person would be terrific for this role. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that makes sense for them to really take a chance here. 

I think that’s how I would view it from a candidate’s perspective. In the States, there just aren’t that many specialised recruiters, so you really just have to know. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah. And maybe a question for you, David. So thinking a little bit about, you know, how do you, as someone who’s looking to get into the sector, maybe you’ve been headhunted, how do you know you’re actually the right fit, that this is going to be a good job for you and a good life decision certainly. 

David Chie: So I usually find candidates who have had experience somewhere else and are looking to just take the next step. As Brian said earlier, it’s the service-driven culture that you really need to be on board with. And if you have a strong background in both technical capability as well as having that service-driven focus, then this is something that could be open, could be an opportunity that would be great for you. I think it is really about getting to know the recruiters, and we get to know the candidates very well over time. So that when we make introductions, we introduce candidates that we’ve known for several years. They’re not necessarily just people that we’ve just, you know, just recently connected with. 

You start to learn how different people’s organisations are structured just because you can see if they had an operating business or if they had something in the past. You can see the types of characteristics that they look for in individuals. And if you’re thinking about transitioning into this field, then those are the types of things you want to see and what you align with. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yep, perfect. Maybe sort of diving a little bit more into the actual process of going through this recruitment journey and sort of developing your talent and your culture internally. So, thinking a little bit about some of the challenges that a family office might face when they begin to engage with the process, I am outlining some here. It might be, you know, you have this pipeline of amazing interviews. How do you actually manage that process? What would you recommend to a family that has a bunch of interesting interviews and great candidates coming up? How do you sort of handhold them through that process?  

Besarta Dani: So you become, I mean, you have to be the trusted advisor for some time. In my experience, you can’t go in there cold and just give them a list of people that they should look at. So the way that we approach the search is that we complete the search… It might be controversial to say this but in four weeks’ time. So all we do for 12 hours a day is that particular search day in, day out until we have a full map of the candidates that are out there. So we don’t just look at our database. I’m a big believer that you should approach this like a thesis and, you know, target every company that is similar and provide the list. 

Of course, we have GDPR things in Europe that we have to be compliant with, but we provide a document. So in that list, we give them all the companies that we approached and all the candidates that have agreed to speak and have given us permission to share the details. And also the search data that we completed. So with a list of people. And, of course, this is all public stuff, so we’re not going on a personal way to get this information. So when the family office has come to me as a headhunter, they have exhausted their pipeline. They have looked and have been either unsuccessful, or they’re not sure, or sometimes they just want to see who they missed. 

So it’s important for an executive search firm to talk about the retainer because it has to be substantial, and you also have to understand your client. We’ve, I’m sure Brian and David and I have been where we’ve given them an amazing list when they had decided not to hire because they were just seeing who’s out there. But we do a very thorough search. So we make sure that we have not missed anybody. And it’s normally a long process. So although we give the list quite quickly, it takes many months before we cross that line of bringing the right person in. But it’s a case of being a trusted headhunter to these family offices. A lot of our clients have been recommended. They seem to all work together or know of each other. 

So we have really relied on our network and very little on the business development side in order to attract these clients, especially in the Middle East region, because they all sort of trust each other and work together. So if they hear one good headhunter, you end up working with them. So I’ve worked with these family offices, so I have begun my company, and they still remain with me. It’s based on trust and being able to do the best. You know, they know that you are the best headhunter out there and that you’re going to give them a very thorough search and that you haven’t missed anybody and you’re not just calling people off your database, but doing a search externally as well. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yep. It’s a relationship business. Right. 

Besarta Dani: Of course. 

David Chie: That thorough search thing there is very key because a lot of the times if you go to, say, a Korn Ferry or a larger firm that doesn’t have a special focused on family office, they miss the nuance, the relationships that you have to be able to successfully execute this type of role. So, they’ll be great at finding operationally excellent people, but those people moving into an environment that’s more of a service-driven culture is not necessarily going to correlate. So, having the experience of working with a lot of these family offices, we know what we’re looking for in that sense. 

Besarta Dani: And to add to that, David, sorry. This is the trouble with executive search firms like ours to grow to a large number. And I’m usually asked why you don’t have more employees. Well, you can’t control the searches, so you’re not able to do a very good job if you have 20 people in the company or more. You have to be very thorough and clinical in the way that you approach it. So for us, it’s not becoming the biggest. It’s a case of doing the best job and continuing these relationships. And maintaining these relationships. 

Brian C. Adams: Yeah, I can’t resist piggybacking on top of all the comments. Obviously, this is the world we live in, but the typical playbook of a large search firm where they get the profile of the candidate and they try to poach somebody who, you know, works at a similar profile firm but is just one or two degrees below and they throw a big comp number at them. Doesn’t really work in the family office space. The consultative approach and the boutique, you know, we’re all obviously white glove boutique firms here. Just because the family office world is so idiosyncratic and each family, even though there are similarities in terms of AUM and scale once you get to a certain size. But they’re all different. Right. Based on the story and how they got there. So it is really important. 

And a lot of these firms will look towards their kind of traditional fishing holes of private equity and wealth management. And the technical skills might be there, but again, the culture fit is really challenging. And so for us, we’ve built up a database of over 25 years of all these family office folks with whom we’ve developed contacts. But we’re also on the road pretty much every week, going to conferences and putting together discrete coffee networks and dinners. We’re all members of these various networks that we really leverage fully for each individual custom search to make sure we’re going as wide and deep as we possibly can. So, members of YPO, IPI, Campden, organisations like Simple, and newsletters all kind of come together, and it all really makes a huge difference. 

David Chie: Yeah, I think another interesting thing is that you probably have that in your space as well as in technology, and you’ll have a lot of family offices coming out of one particular business. And so they’ll all start to have very similar cultures because of the way that they have operated and they’re high scaling businesses. So then, kind of being able to build relationships with all of these people makes them a little bit more interchangeable at that point. But you have to also know who the players are because no one wants to be stealing people from their friends and so on, which is not necessarily something you would have to deal with in a regular business. 

Kyle MacDonald: Well, I guess we’ve had some interesting questions. Jurgen’s actually brought one up, which is keen to see how the family offices still stay competitive on a comp level, with family offices pushing back and increasing costs, regardless of other motivations outside of comp, you know. So let’s talk a little bit more about compensation and terms. Obviously, family office regions vary and are quite different. But how are family offices beginning to approach compensation in an increasingly competitive environment? 

Besarta Dani: I think they’re less rigid, so there’s more room for movement and getting the right fit they want, right? Well, if they have the right person in front of them, you will be amazed at the kind of compensation they can put together. So what’s amazing about family offices is that they’re not rigid, they’re not corporate, so it’s not a case of you falling in the box here or there, but it really varies. I find that Middle Eastern family offices pay extremely well. There is, of course, no tax. In particular, in Bahrain, they provide homes. And so it depends on where, which, you know, which region you’re looking at. Of course, in Europe, it’s a little bit different. 

But what’s important, because we have to look at a family office like a company, is that it depends on its size and what’s required from this person. So, in terms of compensation, it really depends on how much they are managing. So it will vary, I find. I’m happy to share numbers, but it will depend on the size. So I think it will probably. It’ll be interesting to see what David and Brian think about America. But yeah, it depends. 

David Chie: I’m not sure if you have this as well, but one of the things that we find is that the relationship the principals have with the individuals can completely change comp. So once people have been in roles for a while, there’s really no sort of structure for them. It depends upon their relationships. So that can often be difficult for people who want to move from one family office to another because they may have very generous compensation at one business, and it’s just not necessarily transferable until they build that rapport and relationship on the other side. 

Besarta Dani: So, just to add to David, they are essentially family members. They become like family members. So they’re very well taken care of after a few years of being in the family office. And yeah, it’s a good place to be if people are looking to enter that world. 

Brian C. Adams: Yeah, I think this dovetails really nicely with how we started the conversation about why it’s an attractive place to go if you’re a candidate, especially an investment candidate. Because these families have an edge a lot of times in terms of the permanency of capital and the patient capital base that they have. Obviously, they have their own kind of internal investment committees and credit committees. I think families now realise that the advantage that they had on the investment side from a capital perspective is now an advantage that they can leverage to retain and obtain talent. Right. So that flexibility to put into place deferred compensation, long-term incentive plans, participation in carried interest or even a profit share if you’re a key employee within the family office itself is just huge in terms of being able to attract really top-tier talent today. 

And you can get very complex and sophisticated with some of these comp structures. And so that’s what we’re saying is families are getting a lot smarter with the understanding that they’re competing directly with some of these more traditional private equity and asset management firms. But they can out-compete a lot of times because they’re largely unregulated. They have a lot of flexibility and a lot more creativity at their hands. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, I guess thinking a little bit more about, you know, perhaps some red flags. You know, this obviously is a personal business. You’re bringing someone in, and you sort of really have to know. You trust these individuals who you know you are entrusting with your personal affairs. As a family office. What are some red flags that they should be looking out for when it comes to the process as a whole and for managing new candidates coming into their organisations? Maybe I’ll start actually with you, David. 

David Chie: Yeah. So something interesting that I see in this space is because I’m so used to doing confidential searches, we don’t necessarily have too much of a brand story or an employer story to be able to share with the individuals coming in. And about a year ago I actually did a search for a very public figure, and they actually allowed me to utilise their name in the reaching out to candidates. And it was… we had to do the shiny object test all over again to make sure that they were coming in because of wanting to be the best operator and have the service level excellence. Not necessarily because they were interested in the celebrity of the kind of individual they were going to be supporting. 

And I’ve seen this happen time and time again, especially with bringing people in that you’ve perhaps known through your life, whether that’s college friends or whatnot. And they haven’t got the experience necessarily and they’re just very interested in being connected to those individuals. And so that’s an advantage I think from a search firm perspective is where able to screen for that. But I do think that can be a really big red flag just assessing the motivations of someone coming on board. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yep. Perfect. What are your thoughts, Besarta? Any sort of red flags from a candidate perspective, particularly, I guess, in a Middle East perspective where it is incredibly sort of family-centric?

Besarta Dani: I think for them, it’s more of a case of the candidate’s motivation to go in there. Is it going to be in particular at this time? Is it going to be a temporary thing? So does the person want to move to that region and work for that family office because it’s very quiet in Europe, or are they there long term? So these are sort of the red flags that they look for, and they’re very careful at interviewing the person. Usually, the process can take up to a year because of that. And that’s what we’re seeing at the moment. But to flip it on the other side, we know we’re seeing more candidates and family offices that are slightly frustrated sometimes because they want to move quicker and if they’ve come from an entrepreneurial background. They really want to get things done very quickly. And it’s not how it moves in the family office. Sometimes there are going to be quiet periods. But yeah, from a family office hiring someone, it’s how long are you going to stay? Are you here temporarily, or are you here long-term? And they want to see long-term. 

David Chie: Yeah. 

Kyle MacDonald: Brian, maybe a question. You know, the majority of the world’s workforce today are millennials and Gen Z. Right. And a lot of family offices may not necessarily align with some of those new ways of working. Are you beginning to see a change in culture and request? Are there sorts of watch-outs to consider? 

Brian C. Adams: Yeah. So, only in the family office industry would I be considered young as a 42-year-old. But I am indeed in this world. We’re seeing, probably. Well, it’s a little bit calmer now in the summer. But you know, in Q1 and Q2, we saw an inbound call once a week, once every other week. And the fact pattern was pretty similar. A family office executive, or maybe a family office member who acted as a principal, is 65 to 75 years old. They’ve been in the seat for 20-plus years. They’re now in a place where they want to retire. They wanted to work their way through COVID. They’re not really interested in sticking around for another political transition. 

It’s time for them to go to the beach and drink margaritas, and they need help figuring out how to backfill them and find a new head for their family office or the investment protocol. And I think that’s just in the states, a function of demographics. Right. We have this huge baby boomer population that’s retiring at an enormous clip. And it’s peaking as we’re speaking right now. And there just aren’t enough people my age, millennials and Gen X and older Gen Z’s, there aren’t enough people in my generational cohort with the skills required and the experience required to step into those shoes. So it’s becoming a very competitive landscape. I think that’s why a lot of families are now relying on executive recruiters like ourselves to help them through that process. 

A big challenge that we have is often when we go meet with the family, either virtually or in person, we walk into the boardroom, and it’s a group of 65 to 75-year-old people, and we say, listen, you seem like a great family, we’d love to help you and work with you. It’s not going to be a very competitive process for us on the candidate side unless you have some type of next-generation representation here in the room. Because candidates my age are looking at this as a 10 to 15-year opportunity. They look around, and they say, well, who’s going to be here when this transition occurs? I need to build this relationship with the next layer of family member leadership. 

And so oftentimes, we push families to include an external on the search committee, include them on the investment committee, have a pathway for them to have board representation, and bring independent board members at a competitive compensation, which is always a challenge. And that world is changing, but slowly just so that there’s a more robust representation for these candidates in the position for them to step into. And it’s uncomfortable sometimes because these folks have been in charge for 20 or 30 years. But again, in this competitive landscape, you really need to see that occur. And oftentimes families are very open to it. But that’s the big transition we’re seeing. 

Frankly, one of the reasons Linda recruited me to join the firm about a year ago is that I think families were asking her rightfully, well, we’re going to be filling out this C suite over the next 10 years. What’s your own plan for succession? And so we kind of ate our own dog food on that one. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, brilliant. Well, maybe switching gears a little bit to that sort of, you know, an eye on the horizon. So if we think a little bit about family offices, we obviously live in quite interesting times. What is it that makes you so optimistic and excited to be working in this space today? Maybe I’ll start with you, Besarta. 

Besarta Dani: Well, I think family office is going to dominate in the next 10 to 15 years, and this is just because of where we are, I think it’s about 10 trillion that is owned by family offices. So we are seeing continuous people exiting and starting up family offices. So a lot of the world’s problems will be solved, I believe, by family offices and individuals with ultra-high net worth. I’m seeing a lot of third-generation wealth that is focused on philanthropy. And they are going to co-invest. From a company perspective, you’re better off going to a family office rather than going to a PE or a VC, especially since VC World has gone very quiet, as we know. So I think it’s one of the spaces to be, and it’s probably going to solve problems like global warming. 

So I don’t think corporations are going to do that, and I don’t think governments are going to do that. So it’s an exciting area to be in, and that’s why a platform like Simple is phenomenal, to be able to bring them together. This mysterious family office industry is going to start slowly opening its doors. What I’m starting to see is family offices, co-investing and actually, as headhunters, it is our job, and we should probably try and do a little bit more introducing them and bringing them together. I came from an event where we spent a few long days together with a bunch of people who owned family offices, and that was a very exciting thing to see how they’re starting to. The first two days, everybody was very quiet, and then they started talking about co investing together. 

And we’re following up with more meetings now where people are actually going to meet in various parts of the world. So I think this is the space to be in. Of course, some of the family offices potentially might need to sort of close down because it’s a broad brush to call something a family office. It really has to be under the right circumstances in the sense that, in my opinion, it has to be about 250 million to 300 million to operate or where it’s worth it to be a family office. And sometimes you see companies like, sort of operate like a holding company, but they are called family offices. So we’ve got to potentially filter that out. But I think it’s a very exciting space to invest in companies such as AI and solve problems like global warming. 

Kyle MacDonald: Yeah, maybe a cheeky question on AI. I ask you, David because I see you are based in Silicon Valley, thinking a little bit more about how might AI help you better serve family offices. How are you seeing it beginning to interrupt this space as well? 

David Chie: Well, in terms of the recruiting aspect, we’re playing with things all of the time that are helping us in terms of building candidate profiles and reviewing candidates. We have some tools that we use for sourcing, which to Besarta’s point before, one of the challenges in this business is being able to scale or to be able to grow your headcount internally, to be able to support the needs. And in the past, we’ve not necessarily been able to do that. The standards and the nuance that we understand of working with these principles as not easily replicable in hiring individuals, especially from a space that is a lot of the time focused on the sales aspect of search. And that’s really not what we do. 

Many times I’m sure the other two as well would walk away from candidates in maintaining the relationship. And so being able to utilise some AI tools to be able to assist us in being able to get a greater reach or be able to do more follow up, get connected with more candidates. Those things are all exciting opportunities for us as we see and so we can spend more of our time working on the personal relationships. 

Kyle MacDonald: Brilliant. Well, I might wrap it there. It’s been an absolute pleasure. So thank you for joining today’s webinar on Family Office Recruitment and Executive Search. If you would like to learn more about Family Office recruitment, you can log in or sign up for a complimentary account to access Simple’s comprehensive Family Office Recruitment guide, which each of our guests today has contributed to. With your account, you can post free Family Office job roles, connect with Simple’s webinar guests directly and further explore a broad array of guides, tools, data and services across the simple platform. 

Stay tuned for our next webinar, which will be announced shortly, and make sure to follow Brian, David, and Besarta on LinkedIn as well. Thank you so much for your time today, and goodbye.