The opportunity that I have often thought about and has been discussed among friends is a concierge service for families.
I'm sure we would all like to have a personal assistant to help in day to day activities but the fact of the matter is, unless we all make a huge income to exceed 100k, that does not seem feasible. There are often times when someone will say, there are not enough hours in the day, or they call their spouse and ask if they can pick-up dinner because the other spouse is running behind. Instead of doing that, there should be general service where you call a company and say, "hey I have to work late tonight, can you please have someone grab groceries and drop them off at my house"; or "the dog is under the weather and we are going out of town, can you please take him to the vet." This does not have to be isolated to just one person, it could be busy families with lots of kids, single moms who could use some help, the bachelor who works too much and cannot take care of personal matters or the college student who cannot break away from studying during exams to buy his mother a birthday present.
I guess to isolate what needs actually exist I would ask the following questions:
1. When are you most busy in your day?
2. Do you often run out of time to finish your to do list?
3. If you could afford a personal assistant/family helper without having to hire them fulltime, would you?
4. What errands do you find tedious?
5. what matters would you not trust another person to handle?
I actually brought up casual conversations among different types of people; a single gentleman at the bar; a group of moms on a play date; working moms within my office; and a couple of people I am in a study group with. The consensus was universal, if the price is right, every person could use an assistant. The only issue that people were not comfortable with were medical and financial matters.
I learned what is important to one person is not at all important to another. The college students couldn't care less about having grocery delivery or hosting; they focused on someone assisting with writing a paper for them or being their designated driver. This was not nerve racking at all, when you treat your customers as a peer or at least place them in a casual atmosphere, it is easier on both of you.
I enjoyed reading your blog on opening a concierge business for people that are always busy and on the road. It is very difficult to find the time to balance everything in life all of the time. I don't know if you forgot to put your videos up or not but with having kids of my own, I am always trying to figure out what to do with dinner. I noticed you were born in Brideport, Connecticut. My ex wife was born and raised there, and after seeing it first hand I now realize why they coined it "Gotham City."
ReplyDeleteYout blog and opportunity was quite interesting. I do believe however that epersonal assistants might not be the solution to this. With firends and family being there for you, you would rather trust that friend of family member to go pick upt he groceries or taker the dog to the vet more than a company employee. That is jjust my honest opinion. I do believe that people always love to have assistants to help their jobs become easier. Maybe if the company has a personal assistant to each client. That way the clients can trust the assistant more and have a more stable assistant. I would have loved to see the interviews and how different people responded to this idea as well. If you want to check out my blog and interviews the link is below.
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Hey Nicole, Good post. I agree with you that it would definitely be nice to have an assistant and I don't know if you have heard about it, but there are many services somewhat like this that offer overseas assistants for very cheap. They can do basically anything you would like them to. Here is mine
ReplyDeletehttp://sawyerlambert.blogspot.com/2016/01/customer-interviews-no-1.html