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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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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.
The systems are the easy part.
Almost every founder I work with is capable. That's not the problem. The problem is that somewhere underneath the overflowing plate 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. The internal work comes first, every time. Once someone actually believes they're allowed to stop being Chief of Everything, the systems fall into place almost embarrassingly fast.
It's why "just delegate it" never works. You can hand someone a perfectly good system and watch a founder take every piece of it back within a month, because the real thing holding the work isn't a process gap. It's identity. Being the one who knows, the one who handles it, the one who's needed, that gets fused to who you think you are, and no checklist is going to unfasten it.
Most of what I do is workshop the decision, name the pattern, and remind a capable founder how good they actually are. It's less complicated than it sounds. It just doesn't happen on its own.
I've been the Chief of Everything too.
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.
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.
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.
TIFF HOEFT
CHIEF OF STAFFThe 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.
Katelyn Larson
CHIEF OF SYSTEMSShe 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.
Kylie McCoy
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.
CHIEF OF EVERYTHING ELSE
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.
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.