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2024 is a big year for Here For You Concierge! We are celebrating in June 7 years of business success. Melissa is also celebrating the release of her book “Finding Freedom From Clutter”. It is only fitting to tell the story of how we began back in 2017. This is meant to be inspiring, and a little bit comical… if you know someone who dreams of starting their own business, please share this with them!

In order to tell the story of how I got started, I unfortunately need to share a sad story for some background. When I was 25 years old, I received a call from my father out of the blue. He was crying and very emotional. Between tears he told me that my mom was in the hospital and that she was dying, she had terminal cancer. This was quite a shock; my mother had been complaining of an odd stomach pain the last time I talked to her. But she was someone who was very interested in healthy eating and healthy living. She would make pancakes out of buckwheat and some really delicious quinoa dishes for family dinners. She worked part time as a teacher naturalist at the Honey Hollow Nature Center. We were all very surprised that someone like her could be affected by something like that.

A few weeks later I found myself quitting a temp job that I really didn’t enjoy anyway, driving back and forth to my parents’ house a half hour away, and taking care of things. I took care of meal prep, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, organizing, and whatever else they needed. I had a great deal of help from my family and friends to do all of these things. However, it never seemed to be enough. There was so much to do and so little time. My parents decided they would finally be married, and we planned a farm wedding that happened on the front lawn of our 13-acre property. It was lovely but certainly added to the growing to-do list.

About 2 weeks after my parents’ lovely wedding, she was moved into hospice where she passed away. As if taking care of myself while grieving my mother was not enough to do, I was also in charge of managing my mother’s estate. This project took me an entire year to complete. I was responsible for downsizing 13 acres, going through years worth of accumulated possessions, organizing yard sales, project management. If you have never been through an estate, you don’t realize how much needs to be done when someone dies. Every single company that my mother had an account with or did business with needed to be notified of her passing, and they needed proof faxed to them in the form of Death Certificates. And sometimes they didn’t receive the faxes, or the messages didn’t get to the right place, so it all needed to be done again. I had to sell the house that my parents’ lived in. It was a lot of work and again, I got lots of help from friends and family. But it still was never enough.

After the dust had settled and everything was finalized with my mother’s estate, I felt really accomplished. When you complete one goal, it is time to set a new one. And I had always wanted to be in business for myself in my 20’s, just like my mother had been. She was the owner of a Music Store called Trac Records and it was a wonderful example that she set for me. I started to wonder what would someone do in my situation if they hadn’t had help from so many friends and family? How could someone manage all of the things I had done without so much help? A business idea was forming for a company that would help others do things. I started looking around for a Personal Assistant type of business on Google and stumbled across Kelly Schaefer, who teaches marketing to Personal Concierge Business Owners. I invested into attending her first ever in-person event Concierge Live, and there she helped me flush out my business name, register a domain online, and set a launch date of June 2017.

The first few months were not very fruitful. I distributed flyers to my friends and family who were I’m sure thinking this would be just another thing I did for a few months. Some paid me to give them rides places, which I gladly did. However, it was a lot of waiting around for the phone to ring. Which it finally did, a man called me out of the blue saying his assistant was sick and he needed someone to help him in the office with his professional and non-profit work. He canceled our first appointment, but I followed up with him and we started working together. He would dictate letters and then we would edit them together, I would do all of the typing. It was pretty interesting work. Another older man needed help in the office at a marketing company, doing some bookkeeping and other admin work.

It took about a year and a half to build enough clients to quit the part time job I had been working at from home from 4am-8am. Once I was able to hit this milestone, I was able to move forward and not look back. I have now worked with over 100 different clients and written over 1000 invoices. I have done work for people from all different walks of life and have enjoyed the diversity of services requested. It is a wonderful thing to be in business for yourself. There have been periods when the phone was ringing off the hook and I was working like crazy, and there have been slow periods when I was not able to even take a paycheck. Business ownership is not for the faint of heart. It is an up and down rollercoaster, but this business is never boring. I love being able to help others and make their lives easier by providing needed services. I also love to teach my clients how to be more efficient and save time in their workday.

Zig Ziglar says “You can get what you want, by helping enough other people get what they want. When you help enough other people get across the river, you will get over there yourself.” And I totally believe this is what I am doing. It takes a very caring person to be a Personal Concierge, and I have loved being able to care for others for these 7 years. My clients have become like family and friends to me. I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve them, and I am very optimistic for the next 7 years of Here For You Concierge!