When You Need Another You
Dazed by Busy Schedules, More People Are Ceding Responsibilities of Daily Tasks to 'Lifestyle Managers'

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 25, 2007

Initially, the busy McLean couple hired Ezra Glass for a few mundane chores, like waiting for the cable guy. But over time, they began giving him more intimate tasks -- 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 dogsitter and advises them on their home audio-visual system. He planned the funeral reception for a relative, taking 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 errand runner. Today, some busy two-career families are turning over virtually every aspect of their existence to 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 wrote 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 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 named Serenity Now, a name inspired by an episode of the television show "Seinfeld." It's modeled on similar lifestyle-management firms in vogue in Europe, where clients pay a membership fee for round-the-clock advisers who can cater to their every need, including entree 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, their increasingly fragmented lives and long commutes. In the Washington region, high median incomes have also helped the boom.

Pets need constant attention, not just someone to walk them. One of Glass's employees flew a dog to Colorado so it could spend a 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 offers a "personalized, customized approach to lifestyle management." She has gone so far as to complete homey projects like 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 over the summer and has 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 rich and famous clients such as Madonna (to whom they air-expressed her favorite herbal tea bags, according to the British media) and Jennifer Lopez (for whom they found a dozen albino peacocks). Locally, Quintessentially managers arrange restaurant reservations and tours of the White House.

Personal concierge services and errand running, industries that have 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 has 650 members, including more than two dozen firms locally.

"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 the helpers are handed -- credit card numbers, health insurance papers, Social Security numbers. (Clients should check references before handing over such data, Giovanni said.)

"You see, hear and know it all," said Indra Books, who runs On the Go 4 U concierge service in Northern 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."

She has refused clients who try to pawn off their parental duties, such as throwing a child's birthday party, although she will buy presents and cake.

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 husbands -- to know otherwise. One Leesburg company has its employees remove the magnetized signs from their cars when they visit certain homes.

An Arlington County 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 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 to the area 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 works two to three days there every week.

Then her garage door broke.

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

The couple 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 had chosen for 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 onto 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 a 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.