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Lifestyle Managers Run Errands - and Lives - For Busy Families

By ANNIE GOWEN | Washington Post
December 9, 2007


Initially, the busy McLean, Va., couple hired Ezra Glass for a few mundane chores, like waiting for the cable guy. But over time, they gradually began turning over more intimate tasks to him - planning their last-minute vacations and picking up their kids from time to time.

Now Glass takes their cars to be serviced, is a house and dog sitter and advises them on their home audio-visual system. He planned the funeral reception for a relative, ferrying the death certificate and the suit for burial to the funeral home.

"We've come to rely on him more and more," said Ken Nunnenkamp, 46, a lawyer. "He'll essentially do anything we can't get around to. ... You definitely get spoiled by it."

Forget the dog walker and the errand runner. Today, some busy two-career families are turning over virtually every aspect of their existence to people known as lifestyle managers. These hired hands - who charge a monthly fee of as much as $100 an hour - become like an extra member of the family.

Lifestyle managers have searched for a reliable used car for a client's 16-year-old or taken over their scrapbooking project. One helper penned an online dating profile for a client. Others have negotiated overseas adoptions or bailed their clients out of jail. Another was handed a brown paper bag full of insurance documents from a client's recent surgery with the command to sort it out.

"People are ceding more and more of their lives to others," said Glass, a Potomac, Md., native. "It's going to be a huge trend around here. Our clients are mostly suburban families because they have a whole range of problems to deal with - kids, carpools, dogs, houses."

Three years ago, Glass co-founded a lifestyle-management company in Rockville, Md., named Serenity Now, a name inspired by an episode of the television show "Seinfeld." It's modeled on similar lifestyle-management firms that are in vogue in Europe, where clients pay for round-the-clock advisers who can cater to their every need, including entree into chic clubs and restaurants. Glass' clients pay fees that range from $450 to $1,500 a month.

Once, lifestyle managers were a perk for celebrities and professional athletes. But now, ordinary families are hiring managers. Experts say the industry is on the rise because people are overwhelmed by basic tasks and with their increasingly fragmented lives and long commutes.

Pets need constant attention, not just someone to walk them. One of Glass' employees flew a dog to Colorado so it could summer with his family in Aspen, Colo. Other helpers changed the TV channel daily at one client's house; her beagle liked the Animal Planet network, but the client didn't want the dog watching its more troubling animal-rescue shows.

Lori Welch's JCL Services Ltd. in Alexandria, Va., offers a "personalized, customized approach to lifestyle management." She has gone so far as to complete such homey projects as scrapbooks for clients too stressed out to do the hobbies that once calmed them.

One of the best-known European lifestyle-management firms, Quintessentially, started a Washington branch this summer and has a roster of 100 clients. The "Q," as it is known, was started in London by a nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles and earned early fame by catering to such rich and famous clients as Madonna (to whom they air-expressed her favorite herbal tea bags, according to the British press) and Jennifer Lopez (for whom they located a dozen albino peacocks). Here, Quintessentially managers arrange restaurant reservations and tours of the White House.

Personal concierge services and errand runners, an industry that has grown exponentially in the past decade, are embracing lifestyle management as well, said Katharine Giovanni, chairman of the International Concierge and Errand Association.

Founded in 2000, the group has doubled in the past two years and now has 650 members.

"Recently, the terminology of 'lifestyle management' has come across the pond, and concierges have embraced it because it's better terminology for what they do. ... Originally, concierges were errand runners. Now it's 'Let me do everything for you so you don't have to,'" Giovanni said.

Confidentiality is important because of the volume of personal information these helpers are handed - credit-card numbers, health insurance papers, Social Security numbers. (Clients should check references before handing over such personal data, Giovanni said.)

"You see, hear and know it all," said Indra Books, who runs On the Go 4 U concierge service in Virginia. "I personally would not give out the amount of information about myself that I have about my clients. It's amazing how much information people trust in me. It shows to me how much people really do need help."

Such personal helpers are often hired by mothers who want to appear as if they're doing it all and don't want their neighbors - or their husbands - to know otherwise. One Leesburg, Va., firm has its employees carefully remove the magnetized signs from their cars when they visit certain homes.

An Arlington, Va., woman wanted two key lime pies - in the middle of winter. And a sitar player for one of her parties. By the end of the day, Glass had the two pies sitting on her countertop in her kitchen. He found a sitar player, too (and when that guy broke his finger, he found another one).

When Maureen Coleman and her husband, Tim, moved from New York City three years ago, she struggled with a chaotic schedule that included caring for their two young children, a busy career and remodeling their Potomac home. In addition, she and her husband have maintained their ties to New York firms; each work two to three days there each week.

Then her garage door broke.

"That's when I realized I need another 'me,'" she said.

They hired Judy Laist from Potomac Concierge, a firm that advertises its employees as multifaceted "problem solvers."


Why did Jen need albino peacocks? I don't remember reading about that. lol