BUSY BEES - TAKE THE STING OUT OF LIFE

Tara Dalrymple of Busy Lizzie

In this fast paced world it can be difficult to find time to do everything. Tara Dalrymple’s company can take all the hassle and stress out of everyday tasks. She tells Niamh Mac Sweeney why the demand for her lifestyle management business is flourishing.

We all complain that it is difficult to strike a work-life balance, that the pressure of trying to do too many things at once can be overpowering and that our chaotic lifestyle is too stressful to manage.

One businesswoman has found the perfect solution and her company Busy Lizzie will help alleviate some of the stress and take over those time consuming tasks that can take over a person’s life.

Tara Dalrymple set up Busy Lizzie in 2004 and since then she has herself been extremely busy ensuring that all her client’s needs are fulfilled. From a social point of view she has been busy cleaning houses, arranging trades people to take on refurbishments, walking dogs, house sitting, and organising parties, all the things that we want to do but never really get the time to do because we are too busy working.

On the corporate side of things she provides a corporate concierge service providing anything from a virtual PA services to going to the bank. “We do errand running for companies, we do web design and web development as well. We can help with marketing and PR or help find new staff, so its all manner of things really. It’s hard to pin it down to one thing because it’s really the time consuming tasks that people don’t really have time to do, we just do it for them,” Dalrymple explains.

Changing Ireland

An ‘on-demand’ service, Dalrymple admits that while some requests have been a challenge for her, there is nothing that they haven’t been able to help with. She also reveals that modern Ireland has witnessed huge changes and that her business would not have been so successful ten years ago. “In two years I’ve seen a huge difference especially with regard to the astronomical change in our client base. I think people are realising that there is a big issue in terms of not being able to spend time with family and friends and work is becoming more demanding. People are becoming more used to that lavish lifestyle and they have to work hard to achieve that still,” she says.

Coping With 24/7 Demands

In the last few years there has been considerable studies done on stress and how a balance can be achieved between work life and personal life. As a result of this research companies and HR departments are realising that they have got to address this worklife balance issue, because people are taking time off work due to stress, exhaustion and depression.

According to Dalrymple the beauty of Busy Lizzie lies in the fact that they don’t really have time to do, we just do are virtual, so people don’t even have to take the time out to make a phone call as most requests are done by email or via the website. “People can email at any time of the day or night and that just makes it more accessible. We have a lot of clients in America, Europe and England and its just nice for them to know that if they are travelling abroad they can just drop us an email and things will be done,” she says.

Seizing The Opportunity

Not many people would like to take on the task of doing other peoples chores but Dalrymple says she is so well suited to this service industry. “It really is an amalgamation of all the other jobs I’ve done in the past like event management. I’m an extremely efficient person and for me organising other people’s lives is like a dream come true. I saw that there was this opportunity and realised that you have got to harness these niches before they get done by somebody else. So I just took the bull by the horns and ran with it. I haven’t looked back since,” she says.

To her own admission she is an extremely organised person who plans well. However she also practices what she preaches and is a strong believer in quality of life and striking a balance. “I'm very open minded, flexible, adaptable and very creative. I think very much out of the box and am very team driven. In this service you can’t really have a structured timetable as such, because things come up at the last minute, so you have to be flexible and that is what I like. I don’t like to do the same thing everyday, I like to be able to deal with change and I think that is why the business I am in serves me so well because it is constantly changing and evolving, its new and its young”, Dalrymple concludes.