Dear Billionaire

Set your contractors up for success and get the service you desire with this step-by-step guide to outline what pleases you.

Kelly shares the details of her document, The Contractor Memorandum of Understanding, which includes topics such as:

-Office Admin, communication and Safety expectations

-Supervisor and staff protocol

-Site work and property protection requirements

-Accidents, conflicts, and misunderstandings

-Phone usage

-Dress code

-Normal business hours, breaks, and overtime

-Photography and document sharing

Check out this document and all of our products and services.

Thanks for listening!

For more information, visit our Linktrees:

https://linktr.ee/dearbillionairepodcast

https://linktr.ee/estatemanagementsystems

#luxurylifestyle

#luxuryhomes

#uhnwi

#domesticstaff

#estatemanager

#billionaire

#millionaire

#mansion

#householdstaff

#housemanaager

Set your staff up for success and get the service you desire with this step-by-step guide to outline what pleases you.

Kelly shares the details of her document, The Staff Memorandum of Understanding, which includes topics such as:

-Owner preferences

-Service attitude

-Appropriate conversations and responses

-Team expectations

-Chain of command for staff requests

-Guest protocol

-Staff visitors

-Phone usage

-Dress code

-Normal business hours, breaks, and overtime

-Photography and document sharing

Check out this document and all of our products and services.

Thanks for listening!

For more information, visit our Linktrees:

https://linktr.ee/dearbillionairepodcast

https://linktr.ee/estatemanagementsystems

#luxurylifestyle

#luxuryhomes

#uhnwi

#domesticstaff

#estatemanager

#billionaire

#millionaire

#mansion

#householdstaff

#housemanaager

Things to think about before hiring your first/next house manager:

-Determine your service preferences and protocol

-Identify a payroll service and employee recordkeeping system

-Outline your business policies

-Collect contractor and fleet information

-Consider your housekeeping, landscaping, and home technology maintenance standards of care

-Hire us to collect your household inventories!

-Get your house ready for medical and natural disasters

***Download our FREE resource entitled "Master List of Lists for Managing a Mansion" by subscribing to our email list: https://www.estatemanagementsystems.com/email-signup

Use this document as a guideline when you engage a domestic staff recruiter and during your candidate interviews to get your team on track toward meeting your needs.

If you need a coach to walk you through this process – to take this off your plate – call me to discuss the next steps.

Thank you for listening!

For more information, visit our Linktrees:

https://linktr.ee/dearbillionairepodcast

https://linktr.ee/estatemanagementsystems

Since we’re just getting started with Dear Billionaire podcast, let’s look at the common terminology we’ll be using, and share some assumptions about whom we’re talking to, so we’re all on the same page. If this is you, then this is YOUR podcast!

• You have multiple homes

• You have Full-time staff

• You Hired, or are you ready to hire a full-time house or estate manager

• Or maybe You’re intrigued with the lifestyles of the rich and famous and want to gain insight into the dynamics of how their lives are managed.

Whether you’re an esteemed billionaire or someone who aspires to be one, we’re talking to you. Today you’ll learn how to take care of the people who take care of you and your family.

Results?

• Better service

• Avoid high staff turnover

• Lower your risk

I’m guessing that you’re listening because:

• Your stress is greater than your pleasure of owning these properties

• Mechanical issues have become costly due to proper maintenance

• Your property value starts to decline due to aged mechanical systems

It’s time to set yourself up for success to attract skilled staff and retain them. Before we do that, let’s clarify some terms:

• Homeowners are the same as principals

• Homes are the same as estates

• Estate manager refers to a luxury home and lifestyle manager, not a financial portfolio manager – although both are correct

• Private service professionals – the definition we’ll use here refers to anyone who works as an employee at your home, in other words, not a contractor or vendor. They are referred to as Service Providers.

Why does all of this matter? As your wealth and real estate portfolio grow, so does your risk of:

• Lawsuits

• Security and privacy breaches

• Theft Your household staff is one of the riskiest endeavors you’ll undertake.

So how do you lower risk, find the right employee, and retain them? That’s why we’re here… The great resignation is alive and well in private service. Barron’s Quentin Fottrell of MarketWatch, says that people have returned to work after the covid shutdown but are looking for happiness, stability, flexibility, and a good salary. There’s been a significant shift in the work culture and the demand for personal well-being is peaking. You’ll want to finding the right staff and then retain them.

Here’s why:

• Minimize costs associated with a high turnover – your time and recruiters’ fees to screen, background investigate, trial employment, onboarding, and training.

• It’s takes months or years to build a trusted household team.

• New people in your home are one of the highest personal risk to your safety and security.

• Long-term, trusted staff who feel valued, heard, well-paid, and appreciated want to provide the best service, and reduce risk and minimize lawsuits.

• Eliminates Bad press - Google celebrities who were sued by their housekeeping staff.

What makes staff leave?

Burnout, per Philipp Smith, Managing Director of Silver Swan Recruitment (they service the Middle East, UK, and US domestic staffing markets). Burnout typically occurs 12 to 18 months into the new employment term. Do you contribute to burnout - knowing or unknowingly?

Primary culprits are:

• Vague job descriptions

• Job creep

• Hybrid roles

• Long hours

• 24/7 service expectations

• Unrealistic service requests

• Staff who doesn’t feel valued (did you lay off during covid?)

More subtle causes of burnout that you might not be aware of:

• Buying alcohol or prescription meds for an addict

• Hide things or lie to a spouse

• Lack of control of personal time off

• You aren’t organized enough to turn over information to someone else

• No household management system

• Too much conflict between staff (or between principals)

• No staff training = not valued

• Recognition

Are you a Good Employer? Let’s test that. Do you:

• Communicate with them regularly? Weekly or more?

• Express appreciation? How often?

• Compensation (look at hourly wage + housing costs + expectations)

• Do they feel secure in their job?

• Guess-pectations. Do they have to guess at what pleases you?

• Do you give clear directives and deadlines?

• Do you expect 24/7 service and responses from only one person?

If you’re any of these missing key aspects, here’s how to remedy them:

• Use a time-tracking app

• Review staff regularly

• Ask them what they need from you to be successful

• Pay them hourly with overtime compensation

• Follow state and federal employment guidelines for rest and lunch breaks

• Provide a break room area, or somewhere they can have private conversations, as well as a personal locker

• Get a house management system so they can work autonomously

• Develop a 12-month maintenance calendar program

• Provide adequate funding to manage your expectations, purchases, and proactive maintenance.

• Refine job descriptions – no vague language

• Eliminate hybrid roles.

Remember, they aren’t paid parents. They excel in specific areas, and to be successful at those, they need to focus.

Remember, The Dear Billionaire Podcast was created to create win/win relationships between private service professionals and employers. Thanks for listening!

For more information, visit our Linktrees:

https://linktr.ee/dearbillionairepodcast

https://linktr.ee/estatemanagementsystems

Whether you’re a millionaire or a billionaire, new money or old money,
If you have a household staff and are considering hiring your first house manager,
Here are some tips and feedback on finding and retaining
Trusted and world-class staff so you can enjoy the life you've earned.

This is our first-ever Dear billionaire podcast! I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. I have been in a unique position in my career where I spent 25 years in landscape design and construction work for some very high net worth families in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Rancho, Santa Fe, California, and recently in Los Angeles. Through those experiences, I transitioned into an estate manager fairly late in my career.

My first role was for a global high-tech giant. That experience was surreal and an introduction to an industry I had never fully understood. And when that ended, I went to work for another global retail heiress to manage multiple properties internationally.

Through those experiences, I noticed a need for essential business tools and systems to run these large properties, crazy lifestyles, and numerous staff and contractors. This was compounded by a need for better communication, clear directives, and an understood chain of command to which I had become accustomed in the high-end construction world.

When I left private service, I created Estate Management Systems to share the tools I had developed as an estate manager with others. In those system training sessions with my clients, it became obvious that the focus often turned to solving problems related to the personal side of private service (communication, unspoken expectations...) and many other challenges that no system could solve. Then, realizing that more focus was needed to support household staff to succeed, Private Service Support Team (www.PSST.club) was launched for that reason.

But there was a missing piece. All of the coaching programs were supporting private service professionals. As lovely as that was, addressing the other part of this equation to create real change in this industry was needed – the homeowners who employ these people.

When I mention the Dear Billionaire podcast to my industry and personal friends, they laugh out loud or look at me as if I’ve lost my mind. The ones who will share their thoughts say, "Billionaires aren’t going to listen to suggestions about attracting and retaining world-class service staff.” OK. Maybe not. But I’m moving forward with the notion that it’s better to say it then to sit silently and watch the same patterns repeat.

So here we are. Thanks for being curious.

Before starting our first episode, let’s clarify if you're in the right place. 

Your household staff hasn’t said “No” to you in a while.

You employ full-time housekeepers, gardeners, and handypersons.

You likely have more than two homes.

You have hired or are interested in hiring someone to manage your household staff and residential real estate.

You’re ready to turn over the reins of some aspects of your personal lives to someone else so that you can focus on enjoying the life you have earned. 

Further...

Don’t think of this as HR training - It’s not.

It’s not legal advice, either.

These might not even be considered “best practices.”

This podcast will address topics in the category of… “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

We'll talk about the subtle, obscure, and ridiculously surreal experiences that so many household staff are having. Hopefully, we’ll laugh along the way, and I’ll explain why this should matter to you.

Remember, these are people inside your home –  the place you and your family go to feel safe, rejuvenate, reconnect, and entertain. If you have household staff who are not trusted, unhappy, mentally unstable, and not financially secure, this will impact the service they provide for you and your family. Don’t you think this erodes your family’s security and privacy?

We’ll share important information about building more trusted, long-term, win-win relationships with the people who care for your family and home.

That’s my hope, so thank you for listening.

For more information, visit our Linktrees:

https://linktr.ee/dearbillionairepodcast

https://linktr.ee/estatemanagementsystems