Senior Concierge or Errand Business?

I read an article about a young woman in Denver that has started an elder concierge service.  While I applaud her for her business I'm concerned about the business model.  Anyone from her firm could be sent out to assist your parent.  That concerns me.  Senior Concierge professionals should be working alone with a family. 

Many people call me about my training program and the senior concierge profession.  They ask me if they can scale the business. What they want to know is if they can grow the business by adding a bunch of staff and taking a cut on their employees billable hours. 

Here is what I tell people.  The Senior Concierge business is a boutique business.  We are small intentionally and typically we are working alone.  As an example, if you're on the East Coast and your mother is on the West and she has needs for a Senior Concierge, are you going to want different people entering your mother's home? You probably want one individual that is there in your place that you can trust to handle things in the way that you would expect. 

Caregiving agencies work well because there are 7 areas that they are focusing on in their client's homes, the seven daily living activities.  Any trained professional can do those 7 activities.  A client can have multiple people to do those tasks because that's what they are there to focus on-just those 7 areas.  

Senior Concierge professionals on the other hand, may have any number of things that are thrown our way.  We are not simply errand people..while errands may be on the list of things to do it's not all we're doing.  If all you're doing for people are errands then call your business an errand business.  The Senior Concierge has many possible jobs and responsibilities that go beyond errands.

Look at my other blogs to find out all that we do or check out my website www.livewellsenior.com  to learn more about what we do.