StressZero offers help to busy professionals
It was shaping up to be a hectic day for Dr. Elizabeth Grosen, but the Spokane oncologist and single mother of two wasn’t worried. Despite an early morning surgery, Grosen managed to walk the dog, run a load of laundry, get dinner going in the Crock-Pot, and pick up her daughter’s favorite breakfast — a poppy-seed bagel from Rocket Bakery — before dropping her off at school.
How does she do it? She doesn’t — at least not alone.
As one of a growing number of busy professionals who rely on a personal assistant to help get through the day, Grosen pays $25 an hour to Rebecca Bales of stressZero, a company that takes care of everything from shuttling her children to and from school to shopping, cooking and hiring home contractors.
On that busy early morning, it was Bales who showed up at Grosen’s door — poppy-seed bagel in hand — to take her 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, to school.
“I’m a single mom and a professional, and I have two kids,” Grosen says, referring to Sarah and her son, Kyle, 17. “When I can’t be there, (Bales) picks up where I can’t be.”
The professional personal assistant no longer is the exclusive domain of Hollywood starlets and wealthy socialites. The job has gone mainstream. Although personal assistant services such as stressZero are just beginning to take hold in the Northwest, Bales’ year-old company currently handles four clients in the Spokane area, most of them doctors.
“I’m on call 24-7,” says the divorced mother of two, who is a busy professional in her own right. Although much of Bales’ work for the Grosen family revolves around Sarah and Kyle, stressZero offers a variety of client services – everything from chauffeur service in an H3 Hummer to event and party planning, life-coaching and personal financial consulting.
Bales currently is charged with reupholstering Grosen’s dining room chairs and hiring contractors to paint her dining and living rooms. In the past, Bales researched and interviewed artists whom Grosen later hired to paint murals in the kids’ bedrooms.
“I would never have accomplished that if she hadn’t done it,” Grosen says. “She gets those tasks done that I don’t have the energy or the time to do.”
Born and raised in Texas, Bales has lived in Spokane for the past 30 years. Much of that time was spent helping her former husband run two businesses and raise their two children — both experiences that she says lend themselves to stressZero.
“I offer a business background, I’m certified in early childhood education, I have interior design talent, and I am a person of integrity and someone they can trust,” Bales says, though working with kids is one of the most rewarding aspects of her job.
“I love being a mentor,” she says. “I love forming a bond; I’m not their mother, but I’m there for them.”
Grosen says she is grateful for Bales’ experience as both a business professional and a mother.
“I think some people have good intentions, but if they haven’t been a mother, they just don’t get it,” she says.
“Becky is a mom and an adult woman, not a teenager, so she knows what it’s like.”