Today we had the chance to sit down with Please Assist Me CEO, Stephanie Cummings.
Stephanie is from Nashville, TN and received her Masters in Business Administration from Middle Tennessee State University. She previously worked for HCA (Hospital Corporation of America) Healthcare and Cerner in healthcare IT and has a background in IT and product development. She is the founder and CEO of Please Assist Me Inc and focuses on creating work-life balance for busy professionals.
Q: What was the inspiration behind Please Assist Me?
Stephanie: Please Assist Me came from a personal problem. I used to work for a tech startup company that required a lot of hard work and travel. I would come home after a long business day and feel defeated. Although I was succeeding at work, my home life was falling apart. There were no groceries in the refrigerator. My sink was overflowing with dirty dishes. My laundry hadn’t been washed. I started seeing a trend where a lot of female colleagues were leaving the workforce, not because they wanted to, but because they felt like they couldn’t balance the high-demanding job with their home responsibilities. At first, I just wanted to provide a solution for busy females. However, after doing more market research, we discovered it was a phenomena for both males and females. So I began to work on a solution to help people manage work-life balance, and that’s how Please Assist Me was born.
Q: How has your background helped shape your company?
Stephanie: I previously did program management, so I worked very closely with our tech team to facilitate what they were doing. I was an in-between for the business side and the tech side. Both of my parents are engineers. I am a self-taught coder. All of that has helped me build our technology now. I’ve basically been doing it all myself. Our first MVP was built fairly quickly just to get it out on the market. But right now I’m building it out based on customer feedback, making it more detailed with smarter technology. I’m hoping to eventually outsource all of that tech and not do it all myself, but having that knowledge of technology as a CEO will always be beneficial in the long run.
Q: What pushed you to leave the previous startup company you were working with and go all in on Please Assist Me?
Stephanie: When I joined the previous company I was with, the startup team had already been half-bought by another company. That taught me a lot about startup companies and the steps they have to go through. But I had this idea that kept pestering me and I kept thinking, “someone has to build a solution for this”. It finally came to the day where I realized that I was the solution. I talked with my husband and we chewed on it for about three months. During that time, the stars were beginning to align in a bit of a bad way for me. My job was getting more stressful, which was a sign that I needed to go and pursue my dream. I found a part-time job similar to project management that allowed me to quit my job and work until Please Assist Me was able to generate enough revenue to support me full time. I didn’t come from a financial background to even do a friends and family round of investments. I had to be fully self-supported until Please Assist Me was ready. It was tough, but this really allowed me to appreciate all that hard work when it came to converting to my new company full time. I’ve learned that getting your hands dirty from the beginning allows you to really gain a passion for your business.
Q: What really differentiates Please Assist Me from your competitors?
Stephanie: We pride ourselves on being comprehensive. It’s okay to outsource your dry cleaning, laundry, and groceries, but it gets overwhelming when you have to coordinate five different apps for five different tasks. We take that out by having one comprehensive app that takes care of everything through your own personal assistant that learns and records all of your preferences. That info is then updated into our system in order for us to know you better, allowing us to continually iterate on your needs.
We’re also the most secure in the industry. When I started doing customer discovery early on, the biggest problem was security. We took a lot of steps to handle this, from a welcome consultation where you get to meet your assistant, to being insured for a million dollars per visit, to even installing body cameras on each assistant. We found that customers felt a lot better about our workers having a camera documenting everything. Our employees also felt safer knowing no one could wrongfully blame anything against them. This transparency is key and we feel that it’s something our customers really appreciate.
Q: What brought you to Memphis for the Summer of Acceleration?
Stephanie: It was another star-aligning moment. We were pitching at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center where we were working out of at the time. Start Co. had a representative there that heard our pitch and told us about this home services accelerator that was starting up in Memphis. We thought it was a little eerie that there was a startup accelerator that did exactly what we did right down the road from us. We decided to apply and got accepted. What we liked about Memphis versus other accelerator programs was the proximity to where we began in Nashville. If I needed to take a sales meeting with a new apartment complex or have a staff meeting, it was only three hours away. At this stage of our business, we felt it was the best step for us and we are very excited about our partnerships with Start Co., Innova, and ServiceMaster.
Q: What have been your biggest hurdles this summer?
Stephanie: The accelerator has been very good at challenging me to get out of the weeds and understand that my role as a CEO is to be very 10,000 foot driven. My background is strategy and implementing things, and while I pride myself at being very good at that, sometimes you need to let the people below you do that. You have to focus on setting the vision and culture and let that iterate on itself, which is something I’ve had to work on personally. Overall, they [the accelerator] have been pointing out holes that we thought we had figured out. We’ve uncovered problems in our business model, financials, and slides that are causing us to go back and fill those holes so that by the time we have serious conversations with investors, we will already have addressed and fixed those issues.
Q: Where do you see yourself and your company three to five years down the road?
Stephanie: In three to five years, we hope that Please Assist Me will no longer be seen as an oddity or luxury; it will be normal. We want every home to have Please Assist Me. Everyone will experience and understand that outsourcing your household tasks saves time, creates happiness, and allows you to spend more time on your work or with your family. We can see Please Assist Me becoming a household name not just in the home services industry, but in the personal well-being industry as well. Hopefully we can continue to grow and maybe become as big as Amazon.
Q: If you could give a TED Talk, what would your theme be?
Stephanie: My mantra has always been about embracing the journey and not focusing solely on the destination. I’m a perfectionist and very Type A, and something I’ve had to learn is that although the outcome is important, the learning achieved getting there is much more valuable. I’ve actually given a lot of talks to high schoolers and professionals about embracing the journey. There are just various things that have happened in my life where if I would’ve focused solely on the outcome and not the journey, I never would’ve held on long enough to embrace the successes that I did. I think that’s very important in this generation that wants immediate results. Sometimes the world just doesn’t give it to you; there are things that come with time, focus, and determination, which is something that I try to focus on and not miss.
Q: As a female founder and CEO, what advice would you give to a young female looking to make the leap into entrepreneurship?
Stephanie: I would tell her to believe in herself and do it. There were things I didn’t know about startup life and on-demand apps that I had to learn about and not let my lack of knowledge hold me back. I just found a way to figure it out and kept on going. That’s what this accelerator is all about–finding a way to educate yourself. I would also say to surround yourself with resources and a determination to get it done.
To anyone who has already began their entrepreneurship journey, one thing I learned as an African-American female tech founder is that you don’t always have to prove yourself. When I went into meetings that were predominantly filled with males, I felt like I had to prove myself to everyone there. I had to prove that I knew what I was talking about and that I was supposed to be there. It caused me to be defensive and see the negative in every meeting. I had to reshape my mindset and tell myself that I was supposed to be there, not to impress everybody but to show them the real Stephanie and all of her knowledge. I learned to only spend my time on people that value me and my gifts. I think that is very important to understand as you grow in this industry.
Please Assist Me is a comprehensive online platform and mobile app that handles the outsourcing of all your household tasks like laundry, cleaning, and groceries to your own dedicated personal assistant. Please Assist Me is currently up and running in Nashville, and is seeking to expand its business across the U.S.
Stephanie Cummings scummings@pleaseassistme.com
By Zach Cornelison