Welcome to Episode #237 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast

One of the most frequent questions I have been asked recently is about having a family assistant.

I will be out with friends, casually mention a family assistant, and suddenly people want to know everything. “Tell me more,” is what I hear. And if I do not? They will find me before I leave and ask anyway.

What do they do? How do you find one? Why did you decide to do this?

After enough of these conversations, I realized this topic was going to be helpful for a lot of people, which is why I am here today.

How it all started

Most people are familiar with nannies and childcare arrangements, especially when kids are little. In order for us to work, we need childcare. That is a conversation for another day, but even if you work from home, you still want support.

Before kids, I traveled every week. After kids, we made changes so we would not be traveling as much. Even then, we were still going into the office or traveling occasionally.

Over the years, we have had grandparents help, nannies, shared nannies, babysitters, daycare, and after-school care. We are not new to getting help.

At this point, I mostly work from home, aside from traveling once or twice a month. I found myself struggling during the after-school hours, not because we could not find an after-school program, an au pair, or a babysitter, but because our needs had changed.

It was not just childcare anymore.

There was home care. Errands. Logistics. Questions that needed answers.

The girls are also at an age where they have multiple activities, constant schedule changes, and a lot of driving to and from.

Several years back, I hired a virtual assistant for my coaching business to free up time. I had also started thinking about a personal assistant, but I did not feel like I had enough for them to do on their own.

So I started using a placeholder name.

Whenever something came up, I would say to Jay, “This is what Jenny would do.”

One year, Jay’s entire family came to our house for Christmas, and all the gifts were shipped to us. I actually enjoy wrapping gifts, courtesy of my days as a retail representative selling Coach bags during the holidays.

I remember saying, “Jenny would wrap all of these.” How nice would it be for everyone to arrive with everything already done?

I kept saying “Jenny this” and “Jenny that” until Jay finally asked, “Who is Jenny?”

“She is the assistant,” I said.

Manifestation 101.

One night on a date, I was explaining how torn I felt. The girls would come into my office after school while I was still working, and they needed things. I did not think we needed a nanny, but we also did not need a full-time personal assistant.

We needed something in between.

Through both my corporate career and entrepreneurship, I have learned that there is always a solution to a problem, even when we do not know what it is yet.

So while we were sitting there, I started searching for someone who could help with childcare and everything else our family needed.

That is when I discovered the role of a family assistant.

What is a family assistant?

A family assistant is different from a nanny or babysitter.

They help with family errands and household needs, not just childcare. Some nannies and babysitters will help with things like laundry or meal prep, but a family assistant’s role is broader.

They can work part-time or full-time.

They help fill the gaps, which often feel like a second job that comes with parenting.

For us, that has included meal prep for the kids and dinner, back-to-school shopping, helping the girls pack for trips, laundry during the week, organizing closets and pantries, cleaning out the medicine cabinet, organizing the playroom, donating clothes, and running errands like picking up dry cleaning.

There is also more that can be done, like booking trips or planning family activities.

At one point, every Lego in our house, except for one car Jay built, was sorted and donated to a Lego free-builder.

We got our shelves back.We got our space back.We got our lives back.

For the first time, Jay and I finished work and had time to sit together before dinner. We had a snack and a drink instead of rushing straight into cooking.

Before, we went from work directly into the next thing because so much still needed to be done. Now, with meals prepped, we are just doing the finishing touches.

That shift alone changed our evenings.

Why family assistants matter

We all have a fixed amount of time in this lifetime. When we think about constraints, time is usually the biggest one. We have even less of it with the people we love.

Family assistants create more time, space, and balance.

Jay and I enjoy our work. We do not want to work all the time, but we do want to focus deeply when we are working. Because I balance both corporate leadership and entrepreneurial coaching, leverage is not optional for me.

As a coach, I work with people who are burned out, exhausted, or stuck on a treadmill that no longer works. Often, it is because they are doing the same things they have always done, even though their life has changed.

I was there too.

Instead of grinding harder, I put myself in rooms where people thought differently about time, money, and support.

I had the same questions you might have.What about the cost?How much would this be?Where would I even find someone?

My life keeps evolving in meaningful ways because I do not stop at the question. I keep looking for the solution.

These are just questions.

The more time, money, and health we want, and the more abundant we want to feel, the more willing we have to be to sit with questions we do not yet have answers to.

You can figure out the finances.You can figure out the logistics.You can figure out where to find support.

Before we wrap

I want to be clear about something.

This is not really about family assistants.

It is about how capable people decide when support is no longer optional.

I do have a short resource I share privately with clients when this topic is relevant. It is not a solution. It is context.

The real work is noticing when you keep asking the question and what finally allows you to answer it.

That is where change actually happens.

If you’d like to explore what more support looks like for you to have more time in your work and life to do the things you love, with the people you love, reach out to learn more about how Spiritual Achiever® Coaching can help at www.mayempson.com/contact.

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