Emeraude[1], based in the Pinnacle Hills area of Rogers, was born out of a need to serve clients of a regional law firm who sought assistance beyond the scope of legal work.
Emeraude is a multidisciplinary business firm and family office that supports entrepreneurs and businesses and helps to preserve family legacies. Three of Emeraude’s leaders also comprise the leadership team at Rogers-based Smith Hurst PLC, including Emeraude Chairman Jim Smith, Vice Chair Rebecca Hurst and Managing Partner Kristin Baldwin.
Smith and Hurst co-founded Smith Hurst in 2011. Baldwin is the firm’s chief operating officer. Smith Hurst operates independently as a business and private wealth law firm. Emeraude’s leadership team also includes Managing Partner Graham Cobb, who previously worked for Walton Enterprises and led the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce.
The leaders have decades of experience in law, finance, governance, policy, economic development and community engagement. They launched Emeraude in August, and Hurst said business has been great.
“The business as a whole has been very well received,” she said. “This was something that was requested by several of our clients that we’d be able to help with additional services and additional opportunities to be able to provide more service for them beyond the legal capacity that was being facilitated through Smith Hurst. Emeraude … developed through that to be able to offer additional services to those clients.”
Hurst said the company has been discussed for the “last couple of years.” Smith Hurst clients needed assistance with business services, strategic planning and family asset management.
“We were acting a lot of times as an external family office for clients and wanted to make that … independent from the law firm,” she said.
While Smith Hurst is independent from Emeraude, the two firms collaborate naturally, as they have mutual clients, Hurst said. Smith Hurst collaborates with Emeraude as it would with financial advisers, certified public accountants or other service providers.
“I do not believe there are any companies in Northwest Arkansas or the state that are similar to Emeraude, and I think the reason is the basis for what originated Emeraude to begin with,” Smith said. “We’re particularly unique because the foundation of Emeraude stems from Rebecca’s and my legal relationships and experience with our historical clients over the past 30 years, several of whom have been asking for an Emeraude-type platform for several years. We haven’t built this under the belief that ‘if we build it, they will come.’ Rather, we have built it from the foundation of ‘they have come, the time is right and we need to build it.’”
MULTIFAMILY OFFICE
The clients helped Emeraude determine its focus areas, including serving as a family office for multiple families or a multifamily office. Hurst said the concept of Emeraude’s multifamily office is unique to Northwest Arkansas.
She said it’s designed to be a family office for those who want the benefits of having their own family office without the complexities typically associated with running one, such as “the personnel and the compliance requirements that go with having your own family office.”
Smith said Emeraude’s multifamily office is unique because it doesn’t originate from the wealth management and investment adviser industries. In these industries, the fee is based on a percentage of assets under management, and the focus is on “stewarding investments and assets,” he said.
“We are not investment advisers. We do not manage investments, per se, and we do not compete with financial advisers. Rather, we work closely with our families and their financial advisers and have strong relationships with what we consider to be among the best investment advisers locally, nationally and globally.
“Our purpose, however, is to bring an additional layer of professionalism and structure to the operation of a family as a business and institution as a whole beyond financial metrics — but a metric of how to help these families which we believe is unique in our region. Our compensation is more specifically tailored on a case-by-case basis to take into consideration the level of involvement that is asked of us and the goals and stage of the family’s affairs.”
Over the next 20 years, about $124 trillion is expected to be passed from one generation to the next in the United States.
While Northwest Arkansas does not account for all of that amount, Hurst said the area’s largest companies and their complementary businesses have generated a significant amount of wealth. And families want to preserve it.
“In our area we have so much wealth and success,” she said. “We’re still in the earlier stages of family legacies. Maybe we’re not in the first generation anymore, but we’re now in the second generation. And they want to make sure that gets preserved for the benefit of their children and grandchildren … in a way that is beneficial to not only their family but also to society as a whole.”
Excluding the four partners, the company has six staff. Hurst said the company is hiring and continues to grow. It recently launched a retail brokerage arm.
MANAGING PARTNERS
Hurst said in working with Baldwin at Smith Hurst, she’s “a natural fit, understanding how to help manage those family office relationships and working with the clients that way.”
Baldwin said she’s worked at Smith Hurst for more than 12 years, and over the years, clients have requested additional assistance, such as helping them set up payroll. She said Emeraude can help clients “with whatever they need.” This might include helping them find professional services, such as accountants.
“We either help coordinate or we manage everything we can for them,” Baldwin said.
The work also includes understanding clients’ goals and helping to reach them.
Baldwin’s responsibilities at Emeraude “will be client-facing and managing needs or strategies on structures, processes, [and] operations of businesses. I will support any part of Emeraude that I need to.”
She said she’ll also help family office clients, including managing their needs and implementing systems and processes to increase efficiency.
“Working with clients for over 20 years, clients are typically very good at several things but really good at one thing — whether it’s innovating or they’re a doctor or … an attorney,” Baldwin said. “So behind the scenes, running a business … setting it up … managing employees or HR … that may not be their strength. They don’t know how to set it up or the first thing to do to get there even though they’re brilliant in other areas. That’s where we’re like, ‘Let us handle that part because we have a system, and we have our contacts. You go do what you’re good at … We’ll manage this part of it.’”
Over the past year, Hurst said they’ve developed a relationship with Cobb and “found a kindred spirit for working to help businesses. He works a lot in the strategic planning side of opportunities and found that he was a complementary fit with the goals we were trying to undertake for Emeraude and partnered up. It … came naturally in conversation and working through mutual opportunities.”
Cobb said while working on a project with Smith unrelated to Emeraude, Smith explained that mergers and acquisitions work led him to relationships with high-net-worth individuals and to assisting them with trust and estate management. Then, they asked him, “What else could you do?” Smith asked Cobb about this, and Cobb said he helped Smith with the most efficient ways “in stewarding the wealth of these individuals.”
Cobb joined Emeraude in late May, having served as senior policy officer at Walton Enterprises for two years. From October 2017 to December 2021, he was president and CEO of the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce.
In the year before joining Emeraude, Cobb was a consultant working on economic development, quality of life, education, and health care projects. He said this work has evolved into Emeraude Strategies, as one of three divisions of Emeraude. The other divisions are Emeraude Business Partners and Emeraude Family Office. He said the company’s newest arm is Retail Partners, comprising a brokerage.
“My focus at Emeraude is on the day-to-day raising the profile of this nascent organization,” Cobb said. “I try to be in as many of the right rooms that I need to be in to add value to what’s going on in this region. One of the opportunities that we see is to support projects, individuals and businesses that are coming into Northwest Arkansas as well as the ones that are growing in Northwest Arkansas. I make sure that we’re all up to speed on regional priorities, regional projects, regional directions and opportunities.”
Cobb said he and Baldwin work together with family office clients, while Hurst and Smith develop relationships on this part of the business. Cobb also worked on messaging, branding and marketing for the company’s launch.
THE EMERALD CITY
Emeraude is the French word for emerald. Hurst said the leadership team developed the name through a collaborative effort while planning for the company.
“We started thinking about the color green and what does that represent — growth, life and prosperity,” she said. “That kind of translated to emeralds to us but also … at the same time as a parallel thought of the Emerald City from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and … that mastermind behind the curtain.
“He was always the one pumping furiously behind the curtain to run the grandeur of the Emerald City … And we wanted to be basically that wizard behind the scenes. Everything looks smooth on the outside for clients to be able to run with their lives and run with their businesses but that we would take care of everything behind the scenes.”
ADVISORY BOARD, CLIENTS
Emeraude also has a board of strategic advisers that will help hold the Emeraude leadership team accountable for the company’s performance for its clients, Hurst said.
The board comprises leaders across various industries and company sizes, including Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. from 2010 to 2014; Gerald Johnston, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Tyson Foods from 1981 to 1996; Clete Brewer, co-founder and co-managing partner of Bentonville-based investment firm NewRoad Capital Partners; Are Traasdahl, founder and CEO of Bentonville-based retail technology company Crisp; Kenny Tomlin, an entrepreneur and investor who founded Rogers-based digital agency Rockfish; and Tom Allen, president and principal of commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield / Sage Partners in Rogers.
“They bring a lot of perspective and a lot of experience that can be beneficial to not only our clients at different levels: Those who are in the throes of business right now looking at being able to exit a company, looking at how do I structure this in the best way for my children,” Hurst said. “I like what I see with what you’ve done with your children — just providing some examples and a resource to be able to call if there’s a question that comes up and just expanding our team without having them on staff.”
Emeraude’s family office clients across various industries, including commercial construction, multifamily, real estate, e-commerce and consumer packaged goods, and retired executives from Fortune 500 companies. Most of the clients are in Northwest Arkansas, but some reside throughout the United States.
Hurst said the Emeraude isn’t targeting a specific region for clients, but “Northwest Arkansas will be natural just because of proximity but also because there’s so much opportunity in Northwest Arkansas.”