From the first day I stepped into my role as an estate manager, I had an idea of how I thought it should be. I had been working on luxury properties for more than 20 years, but not in them. And I felt like I had hit the jackpot when I was hired for this very demanding role.

Recent job descriptions of estate managers have become a laughable list of unrealistic expectations and impossible deliverables. As with any job, an employee should have reasonable agility to adapt to ever-changing work environments. While the growing trend of homeowners wanting fewer staff in their homes is understandable, it shouldn’t be seen as an opportunity for unethical behavior.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Learn what’s wrong with a traditional house manual, and why it’s critical to capture your household information in a secure online format.