Shared Drives: A Guide for The Guesthouse Practice

Making documents shareable, findable, and useful

What is a Shared Drive?

Think of Shared Drives as filing cabinets in a shared office, while My Drive is like your personal desk drawer.

A Shared Drive is Google's way of organizing team files that belong to the organization rather than to individual people. Unlike files in "My Drive" (which belong to you personally), files in Shared Drives belong to the team. This means:

Our Shared Drives

We organize our institutional knowledge across 11 Shared Drives, each with designated stewards who maintain organization while everyone contributes:

Admin

STEWARDS: Colette, Ryan, Doug

Your central location for legal documents, tax filings, operating agreements, corporate governance, and regulatory compliance materials. Think of this as our corporate foundation—the structures and rules that allow us to operate.

Build

STEWARDS: Trevor, Doug

The complete historical record of every property we've built or renovated. Every architectural drawing, every construction draw, every punch list, every permit—it's all here. This drive tells the story of how our properties came to be.

Financing

STEWARDS: Trevor, Mike, Ryan

Capital structure documents, investor materials, financial models, and funding agreements. This is where we track how we finance our growth and manage relationships with capital partners.

Hospitality Operations

STEWARDS: Marta, Trevor

Standard operating procedures, guest experience protocols, housekeeping standards, and everything that makes a stay at Guesthouse exceptional. Marta and Trevor lead the way in documenting what hospitality excellence looks like.

Marketing

STEWARDS: PACT, J Wade PR, Rebecca

Brand guidelines, marketing materials, social media content, photography, and campaign strategies. This is where our story comes to life visually and verbally—including our complete brand book in Figma.

Membership

STEWARD: Meagan

Membership models, sales materials, pricing strategies, and member communications. Meagan maintains the knowledge base for how we invite people into The Guesthouse community.

Moneyball

STEWARDS: Trevor, Daniel

Analytics, performance metrics, business intelligence, and data-driven insights. Named for the data-driven approach to baseball, this is where we measure what matters and learn from our numbers.

PANTRY

STEWARDS: Quinten, Jason, Trevor

Culinary operations, recipes, menu planning, vendor relationships, and food cost management. Quinten, Jason, and Trevor curate the knowledge that makes our food and beverage program distinctive.

People

STEWARD: Tim (People & Talent)

Team member onboarding, HR policies, organizational development, compensation frameworks, and culture documents. Tim stewards how we build and support our team.

Places

STEWARDS: Trevor, Doug

Forward-looking market analysis and expansion planning. This is where we explore potential new locations—from Palm Springs to beyond. Trevor and Doug maintain our growth strategy and property development pipeline.

Taxes

STEWARDS: Ryan, Colette

Tax returns, accounting records, audit materials, and compliance documentation. Everything we need to stay compliant and maintain clear financial records.

Deep Dive: Build Drive

Purpose: The Build drive is our institutional memory for construction and renovation. It contains the complete historical record of how every Guesthouse property was created.

What You'll Find Here

Key Folders to Know

When to Use This Drive

Reference Build when you need to understand construction decisions, find specifications for repairs or replacements, review what was actually built versus originally designed, prepare for new construction projects by learning from past ones, or respond to building code or insurance questions.

Pro Tip

If you're dealing with interior design questions or need to understand furniture and fixture specifications, look in the HSU folders first. Hsu Office was our FF&E partner and their documentation is comprehensive.

Deep Dive: Marketing Drive

Purpose: The Marketing drive houses everything needed to tell the Guesthouse story consistently and beautifully across all channels.

What You'll Find Here

Key Resources

When to Use This Drive

Reference Marketing when you need brand-compliant designs, approved photography for any use, messaging that aligns with our voice, social media templates or content, materials for partnerships or press, or understanding of our positioning and story.

Pro Tip

When in doubt about brand colors, fonts, or visual style, the Brand Book in Figma is your definitive guide. It's maintained as the single source of truth for all brand decisions.

The Practice: How We Use Shared Drives

Documents are open and available for people to learn and have context for the decisions we make. This isn't about gatekeeping—it's about building institutional knowledge that makes everyone more effective.

Search Before You Ask

Before asking a team member for information, take time to search the drives. The answer might already be documented, and the search process itself builds your understanding of where knowledge lives.

Follow the Breadcrumbs

Use drive organization as a learning tool. If you need to understand interior design decisions, look in the HSU folder. If you need brand guidelines, start with Marketing. The structure itself teaches you where different types of knowledge reside.

Ask for Access

If there's a drive you think you need but can't access, request it. It's part of the practice to make sure the right people have the right access to do their work well.

Stewards, Not Gatekeepers

Each drive has stewards who maintain organization, but stewardship means shared ownership. Stewards make sure things are findable and organized, but everyone contributes to making our institutional knowledge better.

Getting Started

To begin building your relationship with Shared Drives:

  1. Explore: Spend 15 minutes browsing the drives most relevant to your role
  2. Bookmark: Identify 2-3 drives you'll reference often and bookmark them
  3. Ask: If there's a drive you think you need but can't access, request it today
  4. Practice: Next time you need information, search the drives first before asking someone

The goal isn't perfect knowledge of where everything lives—it's building the muscle of looking first and learning the patterns of where different types of information naturally belong.