My Life as a Personal Assistant to 
the Rich and Famous and Socialites

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My lips are sealed.  Working as a personal assistant is sacred.  The lives of the rich & famous and society's crisp crop are indeed very different than most of our lives.  They are afforded grand, grand opportunities by the sweat and fervor of an ancestor, perhaps, or themselves.  Yes, some of these people are completely thankless for their extravagance and financial resources, affectionately known as "money tool" to me.  They expect that the world simply works in the way in which they live and govern, and berate their staff and the people around them with such hostility.  Yuck.

I no longer work for such emotionally wrecked, dramatic rich families and people.  The families that I service come from the hallowed blood, sweat and tears existence, like many of us, and utilize their great money tool and personal power for the betterment of others, the evolution of the economical, environmental and educational systems, the continued security of their family's future and evolution for those members and themselves.  These families, though, extremely wealthy, are humble and gracious. They treat their staff as family and are concerned about their staff AND their staff's family's well being.  The families I choose to work for are also very connected to creativity and art.  They honor and support the development of the artist and the artistic interpretation of life. 

I believe money is a tool:  a tool to further experiences in life, education, establish a home and nest, evolve the soul, and empower others to discover the gems within them that they may not otherwise develop due to lack of money tool and the ability to break free from hard core struggles.  

An effective personal assistant is also a life manager in the highest regard.  Attention must be paid to every single detail, and the assistant must be able to multi-task (should be called million-task) in this job.  Discipline is essential!  Follow-through.  Focus.  And all of these qualities were keenly further developed in me because of my motorcycle enthusiast lifestyle.  A true biker watches the back of his brothers and sisters, is a protector, a nurturer, a caregiver, takes care of business and is a take no BS person.  These mannerisms are an intrinsic part of my personality and thus has contributed to my success as a personal assistant.

We are accountable for everything we do in life. Well, when you caregive as a personal assistant to a family and the household staff, you are incredibly aware of everything that is going on around you at all times, because YOU will be accountable if the household isn't smoothly flowing. Keeping the lady and gentleman and the children of the home on schedule, scheduling the staff and outside vendors, it's like being mother hen to someone else's life.  If you don't enjoy making coffee for someone else, you'd never last in a job like this.  

Why did I decide to do this kind of work? Well, I hated working in an office.  Never could conform to the 9-5 uniform.  Because I didn't have a college degree I was disqualified to advance in life by these life sucking so-called human resource people.  Now, let's say that word one more time:  HUMAN RESOURCE.  They are my human resource and they are human resource leaders servicing an entity of some sort; the authorities on human resourcefulness and securing and analyzing such human resourcefulness.  As an applicant, I go to them as a human resource.  Yeah Right.  No matter how far you personally advance in life and in the job, take classes here and there, if you don't have a degree, you are not valued as a worthy candidate for career advancement.

So, the only qualifications I had if I didn't have a connection into a job was secretary that is what I am in human resourcefulness terms. Now, don't get me wrong, working as a secretary means you're the success story behind some shining executive's career.  It's an important gig and I learned quite a bit.  But, I've done it for too many years and I no longer could dig the gig.  I wanted to move on.  The money wasn't great and the hours usually grueling.  Plus I detested having to be categorized within a corporate level of salary.  I would watch fellow employees at higher levels than I, and with degrees, take advantage and get over on the system and get paid handsomely for it, whilst, in my position, there is no hiding.  You must DO or else an executive will suffer without your good assistance. 

Oh, and finding a great executive boss to assist who will respect you is really a needle in the hay.  Anyway, I was climbing the corporate ladders for a managerial role so that I could really use my life and work history talents and thus further myself along in career goals.  I mean there are plenty of self-made people who are running multi-million dollar businesses without the holy DEGREE.  But I needed paper evidence of my cumulative abilities in the human resource form called:  a degree, thus I was deemed a non resourceful human.  Goodbye corporate life.  I rode away on a Harley...

So, where else could I go?  I learned about being a personal assistant from the wonderful writings of Melba Duncan, Letitia Baldridge and later the lovely philosopher, Emily Post  [shout out to the ladies!] and I thought, cool gig to support my dreams.  Better dollars and free-er lifestyle.  And I can kind of dress the way I want.  Alright!  I even managed to wear a darling Harley-Davidson tank top with red roses under a suit jacket with a long skirt.

In this job, I watch the backs of the families that I work for like a security watch dog.  I protect their very lives everyday.  I am privileged to extremely sensitive information and experiences because I, in effect, manage their households and lives.  It is a respectful job.  When I first began doing this type of work, I didn't know anything about a formal household--about using all those forks, formally answering the door and all the other behaviors inherent in a formal lifestyle.  I had come from a household where we used toilet paper as napkins because we couldn't afford to use paper towels or paper napkins!

 The first time I ever worked in this sort of ultra fancy environment, I had to sit down to lunch with the "lady" of the house.  Now there were forks, glasses, layers of plates.  Jeez.  We were just having a salad.  She waited for me to make my move and I waited for her.  I reached for the fork but with peripheral vision watched as her hand glided to the first one on the outside left of the plate, so I grabbed mine, tho, like a wild child, and shoveled those leaves into my mouth.  Whew.  The pressure was off.....then I, um. learned how to hold a fork.  

Although I didn't have the fluffy extras, what I had was respect, discretion and resourcefulness.  I was a survivor.  These simple experiences were the foundation for this kind of work.  Discretion  is key.  From there, I studied books on etiquette, society and home style and housekeeping and more and more.  Being an effective personal assistant requires that you become a "know it all" and a resourceful human because you are expected to have answers to questions.  Thus, you are appreciated for your skill and knowledge and considered a human resource.

As mentioned before, the families that I work for are kind and respectful.  What do their schedules consist of you may be wondering?  Well, again, the ones that I choose to work for, their life schedules consist of developing their lives, the lives of others, care giving for the environment and the economy, education, and so forth, and grueling hours sustaining their powerful businesses and careers.  

These families use their influence and power for fundraising and improving the lives of the destitute and saving our land, supporting political and social crisis's.  They just don't sit on their haute couture hinnies and attend showy gala events.  They work at the events, they go to every meeting, they host events, take classes to improve their knowledge on a given subject, jump in and participate on a real deal common level.  They seek to commune with us, too, indeed it is lonely in their lives sometimes. Yeah, they have all the high-powered contacts, but some of my families long for just a genuine relationship without a gimmie motivation.  

It's not easy living their lifestyle, either, though it is not like our intense struggles due to lack of personal money tool and resources.  But, like I said, the families that I work for are as close to regular folk as possible. They are pulled in a million different directions and nothing was simply handed to them, they had to take their place in the family work life or career tradition and support the business evolutions and the family's well being for generations to come.  They are also extremely concerned about their employee's future, contrary to the BS that is happening in the corporate world today.  These families try and do the right thing all the time even if it means constantly sacrificing their own personal lives for the betterment of others.

None of the families that I work for are ever idle.  For them to sit down and enjoy a cocktail, means that they're taking a reference book with them or speaking to someone for business or social causes or thinking about their work and ways in which they can improve things.  Working for these families and individuals taught me so much more than any corporate gig could have done.  I feel working as a personal assistant really helped to prepare me for living my dreams because being around that constant energy of success and possibility, definitely rubs off.

 We are all related, is the bottom line here.  My life as a personal assistant has exposed me to a generous lifestyle that is fascinating and has expanded my perception on many facets of life.  NO matter what our "status" in life, we all share many of the same worries such as our world stability, our children's well being, the quality of our futures, and mankind's ability to be kind to one another.   Sure the wealthy have it different because their financial resources can protect them from some of the terrible worries and stress that we the common folk experience.  Nonetheless, we all deserve to be treated with equal respect whether you have three cents or three million dollars in your pocket.  It's all about the heart.  What goes 'round comes 'round.

The most important thing that I have learned from the families that I have chosen to work for is this:

 if they can build their dreams 
from nothing, so can I.  The only thing that sets us apart is our mindset.  Epilogue. . .and click if you wanna
know more about this line of work.

“Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one’s innate character and attitude toward life.” - Emily Post