In private service, experience matters. In addition to saving a life, understanding HR practices, and having the skills required for high-tech homes, private service differs from almost any other industry due to the broad range of experience needed and the personal nature of working inside someone’s home. Here are 7 factors critical to an employee's success and longevity.

When developing your online household management system, on Trello or otherwise, some finesse is needed to get tech-adverse human beings on board. Expect some resistance and use a large dose of patience so that everyone on your team feels comfortable with the new information.

For 29 years, I have worked for no money-, new money-, faux money-, and old money clients. I can’t always tell which is which, no matter the brand of cars parked in the driveway, the size of the home, or how they dress. But one thing is crystal clear, I know which ones have learned lessons from the past and learned to protect their assets and their wealth…

When a vast majority of new millionaires are coming from the tech industry these days, it’s more important than ever for private service professionals to up their tech skills to stay in the game. The days of Moleskin notebooks and paper calendars are long gone. It’s time to check your ego (and old ways) and jump on board with the advanced level of home and personal technology.

I’m continually amazed when I walk into a 10,000-square-foot house and find the house manager working on a laptop at the kitchen table. Often, these houses have bedrooms that no one ever sleeps in. And yet, there’s no designated work space for household staff. If you’re new to hiring full-time household staff, you might think, “why would I give up a part of my home for my staff?”

We are all creatures of habit and get stuck in our ways, but when we get thrown sideways by daily “emergencies,” important tasks get dropped, and essential duties fall through the cracks, something’s got to change.

The relationship we build with our recruiter can be one of the most pivotal relationships in our career – either positive or negative. Similar to an agent, we need recruiters to do more than submit our resumes to homeowners.

Let’s be honest. Our worst nightmare is the first month of new employment, where we know nothing yet expect to know everything. With job descriptions leaning towards hybrid roles, let’s get clear on expectations before we sign the deal.

The reality is that everything comes at a cost, and often, private service professionals pay the price. How do we protect ourselves and create a sustainable career in an industry where boundaries are seen as a weakness?

Having an online presence and participating in social media as an industry resource is critical to accessing the unique deliverables of our work. Not to mention, social media is one of the best sources of getting jobs, resourcing resume services, and accessing online testimonials. So how can our industry peacefully co-exist with the chaos of social media?

Although most seasoned estate managers have the skillset and experience to perform a broad range of services, including almost every aspect of luxury home management and care, they can’t do all these jobs effectively simultaneously. They might have the skillset, but they need the right resources to make magic happen.

Typically, private service professionals are required to sign NDAs before entering into any discussion specific to a homeowner – and many are required to sign before their first interview. Although this privacy agreement is a reasonable request, let’s take a moment to look at the actual cost of this best-business practice.

The wild west nature of the domestic staffing industry often blurs the line of ethical compensation. Classifying your household staff as salaried employees can seem like a win-win relationship at first; however, this can snowball into a situation with a damaging outcome.

Yes, we all understand that employing a household team affords a certain level of service. Even so, there are certain boundaries that these often unspoken service expectations cross. Some principals abuse the privilege related to household pet care, and it starts by merely stating that it's in your job description.

Keeping your staff happy can be tough with the demands of working on an estate. We walk you through the early warning signs of unhappy staff and how you can fix and prevent this from happening.

Find out the 3 people you need to reach out to immediately, and the questions to ask that will fortify your knowledge to build a proactive, no-fail mechanical maintenance policy for your property.

Estate landscape maintenance is often overlooked, especially when the home needs full-time attention. Here are the top 4 items to check if you are responsible for an estate landscape:

As a Director of Residence, Chief of Staff or multi-property Estate Manager, many of you know how hard it is to control what goes on in your own schedule, let alone meet with and train new staff – not to mention create a global world-class team.

Many of my clients in Napa, Ojai and Rancho Santa Fe, CA are all well-aware of the fire risks that they deal with each year during fire season, have an emergency plan in-place and are prepared to evacuate when needed. However, many of you who manage luxury properties in areas never deemed high-risk before now need to educate yourselves for this type of emergency preparation.

For the past week my kitchen has been converted into a print shop – messy with all of the pieces of producing a 3-ring binder landscape manual for a garden that I first designed 20 years ago. Since the majority of my work has evolved into creating digital systems, this has been a nice shift from my normal computer-focused daily routine.