Growth of Personal Services and Lifestyle Coaches

One of the small business trends I find really interesting is the growth of small personal services companies.  These are firms that have created niche businesses by providing life support services to increasingly harried,time constrained and affluent consumers.  Basically, these folks are paid to do things our parents did on their own or did without. 

In our commmunity there are many small personal service businesses.  They include the traditional services like garden services, cleaning services, shopping services, nannies, pool cleaning services, etc.  There are also a surprising number of kid-oriented small businesses that teach sports, music and academics.  We also have career coaches, college admission counselers, retirement counselers and other personal service businesses to help us with various life tasks.

Personal services are now even including life concierges and lifestyle coaches.  The New York Times has an article about a women who is a lifestyle coach.  Key quote:

"Looking for someone to curate your life? Need a personal concierge whose expertise is not picking up dry-cleaning but helping chose your wardrobe, your tastes, your friends? Ms. Storr calls herself a personal manager, but her duties go far beyond that. Her clients, all of them men, pay monthly fees of $4,000 to $10,000 to have her be their personal decider in nearly all things lifestyle-related."

A Silicon Valley lifestyle coach told me "I do what wives used to do - I organize lives and make lifestyle decisions.  In today's world its not just men who need wives, everyone needs a wife.  Working wives especially need a wife."

With a the number of affluent consumers continuing to grow we expect this trend to continue. 

Comments

[Thriveal]

I used to have a small business coach, and he was great. I'll probably be working with him again soon.

Thanks, Jason