When you think of high-end concierge services, the world’s most exclusive hotels come to mind, not Google’s corporate offices in Mountain View, Calif.
But that is where Ginger Franke, the founder of Franke Lifestyle Management, better known as FLM, a concierge service catering to Silicon Valley’s elite, cut her teeth. For seven years, Franke, a 35-year-old Alaskan, worked with the company’s top executives, including Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
FLM now has about 20 clients, some of whom keep the company on retainer. Others buy blocks of time by the half-hour and hour, or hire FLM for specific projects. The company’s rates — typically $70 an hour — are clearly not for everyone. But FLM and its eight employees in San Mateo, Calif., and New York City do not just run to the dry cleaner and drugstore; they offer a personalized service that has few limits.
In Franke’s first years at Google, the company had as few as 50 employees and the pace was frenetic, so she quickly became a jack-of-all-trades, doing everything from filling bowls in the office with M&M’s to planning company sales conferences that seemed to triple or quadruple in size each year.
“These guys couldn’t tell me how to do my job because they were too busy being entrepreneurs,” said Franke, who previously worked at Netscape. “If I was going to survive, I would have to feel and not think.”
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Photo by Marilynn K. Yee.
Attending The Needs Of The Too-Busy
October 9, 2008 by Rich | 3 Comments
In Niche, Opportunity, Success
CoolProducts on October 10th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Numerous firms are making shifts similar to the examples seen here with Google. One of my favorite is the on call masseuse! But this really is a great investment to help keep your busy employees stress levels down to lead to greater productivity.
jaeda on October 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
definitely, coz it’s not good to work having a lot of pressures.
Jaclyn on October 12th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I agree. So many firms are growing at rapid rates which obviously causes stress but then you add on the pressure of the economy in it’s down spiral and the need for your business to be the best at what they do add’s an enormous amount of stress. So to have a company that can offer even a half hour’s peace to employees would seem like a lifetime i bet to those in desperate need of some down time. It allows for that little break that we all need from time to time in order to function at top notch quality.