At your service

It is 8pm and you are walking into your house when you remember that it is your best friend’s birthday tomorrow and you completely forgot to get her something.

Or it is Christmas Eve and you have looked everywhere but you can’t find that Santa costume you need to make Christmas memorable for your children.

Sometimes there is a lot more at risk – say, if you got nabbed by the Alcoblow police last night and are sitting in a police cell when you are, at this very moment, meant to be at a meeting to close the business deal of your life.

What do you do? You call The Lady Concierge.

Irine Kasyoka runs a personal concierge and lifestyle consulting company. Every day is a chance to fix her clients’ problems, catering to their needs while giving them the luxury of time.

GLAMOROUS CAREER

From as far back as she can remember she was the friend who made sure all her male friends got gifts for their girlfriends for special occasions, and who made gift baskets for her mother to gift her friends. She however dreamed of a life on television or radio.

After high school, Irine set her sights on a career in the media because it looked glamorous.

She was lucky to land a broadcasting job with a local media group but she lasted only one year. She was broadcasting for a Kamba station and she hadn’t learnt Kamba as a first language. “When the excitement of being on air wore off it was torture,” she recalls.

She moved on to work as an executive assistant for an entrepreneur, an experience which nudged her into entrepreneurship. “He had such flexible hours and just a few months into the job, I wanted to be like him. He is the one who shaped my view of entrepreneurship,” she says.

Two years into the job, when Irine felt she had gotten into a rut, she decided to change things. At the start of 2012, she quit. “At that time, I just needed a change. I had no grand business plan on my mind,” she recalls.

For three months, she did nothing, although she had made up her mind that she was not going to send job applications unless she spotted a job that would allow her to be in charge of her time.

Then one morning, she had a business idea. She loved to serve and she loved to run around – in fact, she had been doing it for her friends and family for free for years.

She however hated the idea of being called an errand girl. What if she could provide this convenience to the high-end customer?

“My mother has always understood that I’m a little bit eccentric and she could see my idea coming into being, but no one else could,” she says.

SPECIFIC QUALITIES

It was a hard idea to sell in a country where the average citizen has an askari at their gate, a boda boda person who runs their errands and a house maid who looks after their home.

Irine was well aware of this and had decided that her target market was going to be upper middle class Kenyans. However, all she had in her bank account was Sh10, 000. She used half of it to put up a website and the other half to make business cards then, working from her mother’s dining table, began offering her services for free.

Her mother, a teacher, raised her to be eloquent and composed, and it therefore wasn’t hard for her to fit into the social circles she targeted.

It was during one such event where she had offered to bring in ushers at no charge that she met her first client, a female MP.

“I like to think of myself as lucky. Up to that point I hadn’t been sure that this idea could work. Soon after, I asked a friend of mine for office space and he it gave to me. I haven’t looked back since.”

She has since learnt that the bigger the client, the harder it is to fulfil their needs. Most of her clients are young executives who she hopes to grow with, providing a wide range of products from pet sitting to hen party organising.

Two and a half years in, she employs a team of five full-time employees, all of them female.

Most of her clients tend to be very specific about their needs, some even specifying the race and religion of the person they want to serve them, which has seen her making sure her staff is multi-racial.

It is also vital that they are street-smart, mature and discreet, qualities she admits haven’t been easy to find.

When you are working with people in their homes, it is easy for the lines to get blurred and every so often she has to take a step back and re-draw the line.

“I want to retain a manageable list of clients so that each can know that their needs are taken care of and none will feel like a statistic,” she says.

HOW SHE DID IT:

• Asking: When she needed help with office space she asked. She is not afraid to ask. The worst that can come out of asking, she says, is that the other person will say no.

• Watching: By watching him work, Irine found inspiration in her former boss.

• Image: She was conscious of her image. She reckons her confident company profile has won her clients.