A woman sitting on a black stool working on a pink laptop in a minimal white room. She has long blonde hair, and wears a white and black patterned sweater, black top, sparkly black pants, and leopard print high heels.

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Beige oval background with white stylized letters 'FD'

Most Cognizant of Her Decorum

That's an actual award I won my senior year of high school, from my dance teacher. I didn't know what the word meant at the time.

It stuck anyway. Decorum turned out to be the thing I do. Read the room, match the people in it, make it comfortable enough that someone tells me the real version of what's going on. Founders tell me things they haven't said out loud to anyone. That's usually where the work starts.

The fierce part is simpler. I've never met a leopard print I didn't like, and at this point clients and total strangers send it to me unprompted. It's in the logo now, so I've accepted my fate.

I'm Tiff. I'm a Fractional Chief Of Staff for creative founders. I help you get out of your own operations and back to running your company.

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A woman with blonde hair, wearing a black jacket, ripped jeans, and red high heels, smiling while sitting on a red velvet couch in a living room.

I've been in the back of small businesses since I was a teenager.

Different industries, different owners, one constant. I was always in the same place. The clients, the operations, the money, the back end. The part that holds while the front of the house gets the attention.

I started in college, supporting solopreneurs who needed practical help. Then got married, had a short stint at a normal job, had a bunch of kids, and eventually started this as a virtual assistant, doing all of it myself. What I noticed fast was that most owners didn't actually need a doer. They needed a foundation good enough that a doer could execute on it. So I started building systems while I did the work, with the goal that the systems would eventually replace me.

I've been doing it that way since 2017. It's still the whole idea.

Woman sitting in a pink armchair using a pink MacBook, wearing a black dress and white high-heeled boots with embellishments.

The systems are the easy part.

Almost every founder I work with is capable. That's not the problem. The problem is that, somewhere under the overflowing plate, there is a quieter question. Am I actually worthy of this? Do I deserve to be at this table? There are people out there better than me, so who am I to take up this much room?

I know that question well. I ask it too.

So I don't start with the org chart. I start with what you're gripping and why. Sometimes the handoff needs a better process. Sometimes the process is already there, and trusting someone else to own it is the hard part. We look at both, because building the right support starts with understanding what’s actually keeping the work on your plate. Once someone actually believes they're allowed to stop being Chief of Everything, the systems fall into place almost embarrassingly fast.

And when the process is there but the handoff still isn’t sticking, we look at what makes it hard to let go. You can hand someone a perfectly good system and watch a founder take every piece of it back within a month. That’s why “just delegate it” doesn’t land. Being the one who knows, the one who handles it, the one who’s needed, gets fused to who you think you are, and no checklist unfastens that.

Most of what I do is workshop the decision, name the pattern, say the hard thing, and remind a capable founder how good they actually are.

I've been the Chief of Everything too.

A woman with long hair wearing a black blazer, ripped jeans, and red high heels arranges a white ceramic vase with dried pampas grass on a black side table against a wood-paneled wall.

The first person I hired took content and social off my plate. That was easy. I didn't want to be doing it, so I let it go without a fight.

Operations was the hard one. That's the work I actually love, and it was eating the hours I needed for growing the business, which is the exact trap I watch founders sit in for years. Hard to release isn't the stuff you hate. It's the stuff that feels like yours.

I'd love to tell you I trusted her right away. What actually happened is that I'm particular, so I looked for someone who could take feedback without taking it personally, and then it took months. Training. Reviewing. Watching things get done differently than I'd have done them and deciding that was fine. Now she owns work start to finish, and I don't think about it. That took time and patience, most of it patience with myself.

I'm still working on it. At home, in parenting, in my marriage. Asking for help and trusting people is a practice, not a milestone. So when I tell you it's hard to let go, I'm not observing that from a distance.

Woman in black leather outfit smiling and touching her hair, standing against a plain white background.

The rest of it.

I have four kids, born between 2007 and 2016. I built the early version of this business while they were little, and homeschooled for a stretch. Most of the women I work with are mothers running companies, and I'm not going to pretend that's the same as running one without kids in the house. It isn't. Mine are mostly older now, but I remember that season with littles like it was yesterday.

I love Jesus, believe leopard print is a neutral, Golden Girls is a personality type, and will never say no to a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee, even in negative Minnesota winters.

Part of a person's arm and thigh sitting on a beige upholstered chair, with a silver MacBook laptop resting on their lap, against a plain white wall and another beige upholstered chair.

NOBODY’S ACTUALLY CARRYING IT WITH YOU

Your team knows their part. The people who love you aren't in the business. Both of those are fine, but neither one is holding the whole thing next to you, and that's why every decision still lands on you.

That's the seat I sit in.

Chief of staff means I know enough of the business, the people, the money, and the life it's supposed to support that I can help you make the calls you shouldn't have to make alone. And when we decide something, I don't hand you a plan and wish you luck.

I don’t do this alone

There's a team behind me who builds what we decide, so the work leaves your desk instead of arriving on it. That's the difference between a plan and a thing that actually gets done.

They're temporary by design. So am I. The point isn't for you to need us forever, it's for the business to hold without us.

Black and white portrait of a smiling woman with wavy hair, wearing a white off-shoulder top and a bracelet, seated with her arms resting on her knee.

Tiff Hoeft

CHIEF OF STAFF

The one in the seat beside you. I know enough of the business, the people, the money, and the life it's supposed to support to help you make the calls you shouldn't have to make alone.

A young woman with long wavy hair smiling, wearing a light-colored button-up shirt, against a plain background.

Katelyn Larson

CHIEF OF SYSTEMS

She builds the thing underneath. Workflows, automations, CRMs, the connections that make your tools talk to each other so the process runs without anyone remembering to run it.

A smiling woman with wavy hair wearing a light-colored, textured dress with a V-neck and three-quarter sleeves, standing outdoors with blurred trees in the background.

Kylie McCoy

CHIEF OF EVERYTHING ELSE

Inbox, email marketing, social, sales pages. She takes the day-to-day off your plate and then builds it so nobody has to hold it.

 

what’s on your plate?

If any of this sounds like where you are, that's usually a good sign it's worth a conversation. No pitch deck, no pressure. Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you honestly what I'd do about it, whether that's with me or not.

Book An Advisory Call
 

notes from the seat

I write about what I'm seeing in creative businesses. What's working, what's quietly breaking, and what I'd do about it. No pitch.

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