High-net-worth individuals, like celebrities and tech billionaires, always seem to have it all together: they have lavish lifestyles full of Gatsby-like parties, vacations to exotic destinations, and multiple homes across the world to choose from. What you might not realize though is that usually, they’re not actually managing their lives themselves. That would take an incredible amount of time and skill, and frankly, they just don’t have time for the details. This is where power couple Robert Gertz and Mario Seiler, Founders of Modern Butler, come in.
As two of the most highly sought-after Estate managers in the world, Robert and Mario created Modern Butler to provide the “most personalized, prestigious, and worry-free maintenance for luxury estates in the US and the UK.” With a long list of celebrity clients, from Cindy Crawford to Robbie Williams, Modern Butler provides anything a client could ever want or need.
“We designed [Modern Butler] to be a comprehensive concierge company for clients to have a ‘one stop shop’ to actualize their vision,” Robert recently told us. “If you think of a butler as an expert in all things lifestyle and home, that’s how we were positioned. To be that expert for our clients to get things accomplished for them in a sophisticated and luxurious manner.”
When Robert and Mario set out to build a comprehensive brand, they certainly did just that. Modern Butler is poised to step in and help clients with every aspect of their lives, including, but certainly not limited to, microsite real estate, estate branding and maintenance, staffing (housekeepers, chefs, security, trainers), security, events, travel, health (including COVID-19 safety), and beauty. They also offer what they refer to as à la carte amenities and services to enrich the lifestyles of their clients, like household operating procedures and systems development, contract negotiation, budgets and billing, emergency procedures, relocation management, art advisory and consulting, personal shopping, and even holiday decorating.
Their goal is to make life as easy as possible or their high-profile clients. For instance, instead of “having to download everything to their estate manager and then to their designer and then to their events planner, and staffing agent. Why not just download it once to one person, and then that person deals with it? [...] Establish the relationship once. It creates trust and then goes from there.”
“To have it all in-house, because again, we’ve established this trust and we know their taste and their sensibilities, and we know how their billing works, et cetera.”
Sometimes, clients don’t even know what all they could get help with before speaking with Robert and Mario. They might have all the resources available to them, but they still have chaotic systems governing their day-to-day lives. Whether that’s because it’s old money, where generations upon generations have been operating the same way for decades, not knowing that there are more resources out there available to them, or new money, where it just hasn’t even occurred to them that annoyances in their lives can be alleviated entirely.
Mario recalled having meetings with a client where he sat down to get to know them and their life. “He kept talking about [how most of his days] really revolved all around food and how it takes forever to go to the grocery store, to prep and cook, and cleanup, and how it just clogs up his day. I just looked at him and I’m like, ‘Well, you realize that you can have a personal chef who does all of that for you. Unless it’s a passion of yours to cook, but it doesn’t sound like it is, it sounds more like a burden to take care of that aspect of your life.’ And he just looked at us like, ‘I can have a chef?’ ‘Of course! You can have anything you want!’”
Modern Butler has recently added real estate as a service, as they’ve been managing homes for years and it seemed like the most natural progression for the brand. Though they intended to kickstart the service last year, COVID-19 hit and put a bit of a pause on things. Thankfully, things are finally underway and about four months ago, the owner of one of the properties they managed in Beverly Hills contacted them about listing the property. “We had it listed for three months and it just sold for a little over $16 million. [...] It’s a great success story for us to show the level of service that we provide. It’s a testament to who we are and we’re quite proud of it.”
Of course, Robert and Mario already have the next property lined up, which boasts a home built by several different renowned architects back in the 20s. We can’t divulge too much about this home considered to be a historic monument, but we can’t wait to showcase the luxury listing in a future article.
Though they just added real estate to their roster, we can’t wait to see what else Mario and Robert tackle with Modern Butler in the future. Whatever it is, we have no doubt that they’ll find incredible success through their personalized and comprehensive approach to effortless luxury.
