Ten Thousand Hours: John Pettman on his remarkable journey to Buckingham Palace – and beyond

John Pettman

Finding My Corridor: From a Sixteen-Year-Old Footman to Building an International Service Empire

The first time a teacher asked me to stay behind after class, I expected the usual speech: drifting off, not applying myself, disappointing potential. School had always been a long corridor of those conversations. I was bright in flashes – particular, neat, obsessed with order and presentation – but I couldn’t make my grades reflect any of it. It wasn’t until my early forties that I was diagnosed with ADHD and the fog of those early years finally lifted. By then, my life had already taken a very different direction.

At sixteen, I left school with no remarkable qualifications and headed to Thanet Catering College – now Broadstairs College – convinced that my love of neatness and beauty meant I’d thrive as a chef. I imagined kitchens as temples of order. In reality, they were hot, chaotic, and unforgiving. I could plate exquisitely, but the multi-tasking felt like trying to tie shoelaces in a storm. It was clear: my instinct for precision was not enough to keep pace with the adrenaline of the pass.

Six weeks in, my lecturer, Mr Southgate, asked me to stay behind. He had a gentleness about him, a quiet old-world dignity shaped by service. I stood before him, bracing myself – only to be handed a doorway to my future.

“How would you like to work at Buckingham Palace this weekend as a Footman?” he asked.

I didn’t even know what a Footman was. But I said yes.

The Door That Changed Everything

That weekend at Buckingham Palace was my first glimpse into a world that would become my life’s work. The moment I stepped into uniform, something clicked. Service had structure. It was choreography – a quiet, exact, almost meditative rhythm. There were rules, standards, details that mattered. And in this environment, for the first time, I felt in time rather than behind.

I learned how to hold a salver so it seemed to float, how to read a room without interrupting it, how polished glass could hold light like crystal water. In those grand halls, I discovered something essential: the things I’d been told where flaws were, in the right environment, strengths. My hyperfocus, my obsession with precision, my care for the small things – these were assets in private service.

I began taking regular placements whenever the Royal Household needed additional staff, each one refining my understanding of discretion, anticipation, and the elegant invisibility of professional service. Eventually I grew into roles in stately homes, private households, becoming a Butler, then a House Manager to Chief of Staff. Much later, my ADHD diagnosis tied the threads together. What had been labelled as difficulty in school had become the architecture of my success.

Building Companies with Purpose

As my career developed, I realised two things clearly:

Exceptional service transforms the lives it touches – quietly, but profoundly.

The industry needed a place where the right people could be matched to the right households and trained to the highest standards.

I founded Exclusive Household Staff (EHS) to provide exactly that – an agency that understood not just roles, but the nuances of culture, compatibility, personality, and craft. EHS grew quickly, expanding across the UK and internationally, building a reputation for excellence that I am incredibly proud of.

But recruitment was only half the picture. Service is a skill honed through mentorship, discipline, and example – just as I had been mentored. To honour that lineage and formalise the craft, I founded:

The Exclusive Butler School (EBS) – to train new generations in the traditions and modern realities of private service.

Luxury Yacht Interior Training (LYIT) – specialising in the unique exactness required aboard luxury vessels.

Today, those companies operate internationally, training and placing exceptional individuals in households, estates, yachts, and private offices across the world.

A Career Built on Apprenticeship and Opportunity

Because of the way my own career began – with someone taking a chance on me – I have always believed fiercely in creating pathways for young people. Apprenticeships, mentorships, and early opportunities are not just add-ons to my business model; they are part of its foundation.

Over the years at EHS, I have taken on more than 10 apprentices straight from college. Many of them arrived with the same nervous hope I once had. Two are still with us today. Two more have grown through the ranks internally, carving out careers within my companies and proving what potential can look like when given the right structure.

To ensure students from all backgrounds can access training and opportunity, we also offer a fully funded scholarship place every year to our two-week Exclusive Butler School programme. This scholarship – worth over £7,500.00 – is awarded to the most suited student at their college and provides an immersive, professional training experience that many would otherwise never have access to. Since launching the programme in 2018, we have placed numerous scholarship students, often with no prior experience, into private households, luxury residences, and top hotels worldwide.Watching them flourish in roles across the globe is something I am immensely proud of.

I also maintain work-experience partnerships with two places close to my heart:

Broadstairs College, where my journey began, and The British Embassy in Paris, where I worked early in my career.

For more than 25 years, one or two students each summer have spent a month at the British Ambassador’s residence, learning the true art of service. Seeing them step into that historic house – exactly as I once did – remains one of the most meaningful parts of my work.

Closer to home, we welcome students from local schools for work-experience placements, giving them an early glimpse of the workplace and the possibilities within it. Many go on to careers in hospitality, service, events, or management, and all leave with more confidence than they arrived with.

I believe wholeheartedly in the power of mentors. I had them at every turning point – Mr Southgate, senior butlers, housekeepers who taught me the unspoken rules, clients who trusted me. In many ways, each of my companies is a thank-you letter to the people who helped me step forward.

Why Service Matters for Young People Today

Service is so often misunderstood. It is seen as old-fashioned, deferential, a world of stiff uniforms and rules. But true service is something deeper and far more modern. It is:

Discretion
Emotional intelligence
Anticipation
Resilience
Professionalism
Precision
Teamwork
Adaptability
Leadership disguised as support

These are the very skills employers across every sector are desperate for. Young people who train in private service learn discipline, detail, confidence, communication, timing, and poise. Whether they stay in the industry or not, these skills are transformative.

Service teaches you to take pride in excellence – to care not because someone is watching, but because the standard matters.

Finding Your Corridor

If there is one message, I hope young people take from my journey, it is this:

Not doing particularly well in one room doesn’t mean you don’t belong in the house. You may simply not have found your corridor yet.

I didn’t excel at school. I didn’t shine in a kitchen. But when I stepped into Buckingham Palace, into the quiet choreography of service, something aligned. My instincts, my strengths, my quirks – they belonged there. And from that moment, my path unfolded.

Today, as I lead EHS, EBS, and LYIT, expanding internationally, training new generations, and championing apprenticeships, that young sixteen-year-old is never far from my mind. The one who stood nervously waiting for another reprimand and instead received an opportunity.

A single “yes” changed my life.

My hope – my mission – is to create those yeses for others.