Hoping to start a new business :)

honeybee88

Hi All,

I have been reading the forum on and off for the last few months and have finally decided to write my first post

A little about me: I'm 25, I work in investment business support and I'm currently saving for my first house.

I've recently been thinking about how to make some extra money and have decided to start a small business. To begin with I will still be doing my 9-5 job but hopefully after building up a good client base I would hope to go full time.

My business idea is a personal lifestyle assistant service. Services would include doing all those mundane tasks which you dont want to do yourself! Such as de cluttering the spare room, running errands and obtaining quotes for insurance/mobile phone contracts etc.

The idea is basically having your own personal lifestyle assistant to help you out when you are a little short on time.

I've just begun my initial market research phase just to get a feel of who my target market would be. This type of service is usually only associated with the very wealthy people but im wanting to create something which is accessible and affordable to the average person.

Any feedback on type of services etc or whether you think this is a terrible idea would be really appreciated!!


Thanks:)

DomRavioli

The average person wouldn't be able to afford the service, because you still have to make money on it at some point - and a moneysaving forum shouldn't be your first port of call.

There are services which already provide this (concierge etc), and I doubt anyone would pay you to get an insurance quote from here - with the introduction of the guides on the site (check 3 comparisons, and then the big 2 which are missed), de-cluttering is a major thing on the old style thread, and is done by the users.

I am struggling how you could make this affordable in a time where people are in a lot of debt, and those who aren't are usually time rich; those who can afford it don't need it, and those who can't afford it are priced out.

Have you thought about the actual costings of it? The refuse fee (you will be charged; you are a business therefore you will need to factor it in, or even a skip hire), your own costs, etc?

InsideInsurance

First of all be careful touching any regulated industries like insurance or banking. Obv fine to go get someone some money from the cash machine or such but to recommend a product/ service requires you to have a lot of paperwork from the FSA etc

The problem, and the reason it predominately exists for the HNW, is that this works because the people are on call 24/7. They dont want to realise they've forgotten to pick up their dry cleaning and call you to do it urgently to get it and meet them at the airport because they are flying out this afternoon for you to turn around and say you cant because your clearing out another customers spare room. That means you have to have a lot of slack built into your/ your staffs time so you never have to say no. If your staff are only being used 40% of the time you still have to charge your customers to cover 100% of their time so effectively increasing costs by 250% and pushing it into something only the more wealthy can afford.

There is increasing numbers of telephone concierge services out there and more banks are bundling it with their upper end mass market products. These guys pick up the easier to do things like booking restaurants or get tickets etc and so it'll probably leave you with the more in person model.

You obv need to be careful to remain a personal assistant business and not just become a handyman.

Its actually a very interesting industry, esp when aimed at the HNW, and I know a few people who work in the HNW space. You certainly shouldnt under estimate the effort it takes in networking to get the necessary contacts (and obv agreeing kickbacks). The higher the level of people you are dealing with the more expectation they will have of you being able to secure things that they cant get themselves.

somethingcorporate

The idea of shopping for quotes for them is not a great one, they'd need to supply you all the info they could just crunch into one of many portals to get a reasonable quote - you'd hardly be saving them anything and I am not sure you'd be able to make any money here.

I don't think it's a great idea but if you do give it a try let us know how it goes.