|
WASHINGTON—Initially,
the busy McLean, Virginia, 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.”
Marvel at multitasking.
Lifestyle manager Ezra Glass multitasks as he handles
chores for two clients; recently he took delivery of a
restored Corvette for one and managed repairs to a hole
in the other’s roof.
--Photographed by SUSAN
BIDDLE
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
membership fee or up to $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, Maryland, 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.”
‘Do it all’.
Lifestyle manager
Lori Welch shops for her clients in Alexandria,
Virginia. Welch is one of a growing number of life
managers, also known as concierges and errand-runners,
who help stressed-out families and two-earner couples
“do it all.”
--Photographed by MELINA MARA
Three
years ago, Glass cofounded a lifestyle-management
company in Rockville, Maryland, 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 a membership fee for round-the-clock
advisers who can cater to their every need, including
entrée into chic clubs and restaurants. Glass’s clients
pay a membership fee that ranges from $450 to $1,500 a
month.
Once,
lifestyle managers were a perk for celebrities and
professional athletes. But now, families are hiring
managers to help them through their busy lives, or at
least the boring parts. 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’s employees flew a dog to
Colorado
so it could summer with his family in Aspen. 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,
Virginia,
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,
Virginia,
firm has its employees carefully remove the magnetized
signs from their cars when they visit certain homes.
In
Arlington, Virginia, 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 realized I need another ‘me,’” she said.
They
hired Judy Laist from Potomac Concierge, a firm that
advertises its employees as multifaceted “problem
solvers.”
On a
recent weekday, Laist and Coleman sat down in her dining
room to discuss items in a binder Laist had made for
house maintenance. Laist also handed her a thick folder
of birthday cards she’d chosen for all of Coleman’s
friends and family members, carefully stamped and
arranged by month. Coleman had guiltily requested this
after she had forgotten a relative’s birthday.
Coleman
said that hiring Laist to manage the pesky details frees
her up to spend time with family. She has held on to
certain rituals with her children, such as driving them
to school—even if she’s on her way to catch the New York
shuttle—or packing their favorite lunch of Mediterranean
rice and yogurt.
But she
sometimes feels a twinge of regret.
“I don’t
mean to brag, but I am a very efficient person,” Coleman
said. “But even with this highly efficient multitasking
thing I’ve become in life these days, there is still
more. How do you let it go? Am I going to miss out?”
Coleman
reached across the table to look at the birthday card
folder Laist had assembled. She pulled out the card
Laist had selected for her son, Christopher, about to
turn 7.
It was a
sports-themed card, covered in colorful drawings of
baseballs. Perfect for any little boy.
“Who
would have thought I’d be giving my son a birthday card
I didn’t buy? But it’s a great card. It’s a card I would
have bought myself,” Coleman said.
It was
ready to go. All she had to do was sign it. In the end,
though, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She went
out and bought another card, one she had chosen herself. |
