Concierge Service Offers Help, Hope for the Busy

By Sheri Benedict

Time is, quite literally, money for Mary Beth Esquibel.
Esquibel, of Portage, owns and operates her business, A Single Ray of Hope, which is a personal assistant and concierge service for busy families, businesses and individuals.

“It’s a very unique service, at least, unique in this area,” said Esquibel, who founded the business in 2006. “Put simply, it’s a matter of saving people time – of helping them to reclaim their time – and balance life and work so they can enjoy their time for a change. We live in a smaller community, so it’s kind of hard for people to understand that everyday people can use this kind of service. It’s no longer reserved for hotels and the rich and famous.”

Working from her home Esquibel offers a myriad of services including grocery, personal and gift shopping, calendar management, meal ordering and delivery, scrap booking; special events and party arrangements, transportation, animal care, and office help. She even runs errands for her clients and cares for their homes while they’re on vacation.

“The most popular are gift shopping, grocery shopping, errands – the things that take up a lot of people’s time when they would rather be doing anything else,” she said. “Life is just too busy, and people are always running in different directions. I help them so they don’t have to spend all their time running all over the place trying to get things done.”

While building the business has been a slow process, “things are getting better every day,” Esquibel said, noting she has already established a small base of individual and business clients.

In the coming months, she hopes to grow that base, undertaking projects for those individuals on a monthly – or even weekly – basis.

She knows it is an uphill climb: “In the concierge industry, you have to build a lot of trust with clients because you may have access to their home or finances when they’re not in. But once they get to know you and know they can count on you and trust you to keep their matters confidential, they can call on you before things get too stressful.”

No request is too small: Many of the projects she undertakes can be done via telephone, as in the case of one customer who wanted to have the air ducts in her home cleaned but did not want to take the time to make the multiple calls necessary to gather quotes. Instead, Esquibel did it for her, then emailed her findings to her client. She let the woman select the company she wanted and Esquibel made the appointment for her.

She has yet to receive a request she and the team of independent contractors she sometimes works with, cannot handle, but she is prepared for that eventuality, as well. “If I can’t help you, I have a list of resources for someone who can,” she noted.

She maintains that her unique background prepared her well for her current career. Prior to opening A Single Ray of Hope, Esquibel worked as an executive assistant in both the corporate and non-profit arenas.

“That’s all about project management, doing a lot of different things at one time and making sure the projects get done,” she said.

She had also experienced first-hand how the havoc and the fast pace of day-to-day life can, wreak on a family.

“I was a full-time mom working outside the home, and my husband worked rotating shift work. Add to that the fact that one of our children has special needs, and you get the idea: Our household was crazy, but never dull.”

With her children grown, she paused to reflect on what to do with the rest of her life and came to this conclusion, “Life is too short to be as stressed as we are as a society. We need some kind of business people you can call on just when they need it.”

She created A Single Ray of Hope in response to that need. To date, she has no regrets about taking on tasks others deem too tedious.

“I’ve been called ‘another wife’ because wives say ‘I need another wife to help do all this work for my family.’ I love being of service to people and, at the end of the day, knowing I’ve made a difference in somebody’s life,” Esquibel said. “It also helps me to have balance in my own life by allowing me work and still have time with my own family.”

Esquibel is philosophical about what the future may hold.
“I see the business continuing to grow because life is just too busy, and I don’t see life slowing down at all,” she said.