Pam: Sarah, I know you shop for clients in the Charleston area and as the holidays approach, I know your shopping will increase. I challenge you to shop primarily (if not entirely) at locally owned businesses for 30 days for you and your clients.

Me: Done, and?

Pam: And to make it extra fun…BLOG about it. Sarah, you haven’t blogged since July.

Me: gulp. There’s the extra hard part.

Hmmm…Yes, my blogging days are not as frequent as all my social media experts insist they be.   But we are shopping daily for clients and ourselves. In fact, Pam used us last year as her Santa shoppers (click here for her video), buying up all the great toys her son had on his Christmas list.  And we do enjoy supporting area businesses whenever possible (givers gain philosophy, people!). And I’m up to the challenge to write daily…(coffee please!).   So heck yeah, I’m on board!

YuDu Concierge is locally owned and operated and 100% original to Charleston. I absolutely love the entrepreneurial spirit here, and it is attractive to some of the most creative, stylish, delicious, and capable businesses. We are proud to be a part of it all.

Be on the lookout for daily blogs on local places to get what you need. And if you don’t have time to stop by, you know where to find us.

According to a study a few years back by the Families and Work Institute,

• the average worker spends forty-four hours per week on the job
• thirty-six percent of workers say they often feel completely used up at the end of the workday
• Eighty five percent of workers have daily family responsibilities to go home to
• Seventy-eight percent of married workers have spouses who are also employed
• Weekends are consumed by errands and housekeeping
• Seventy percent of all parents feel that they don’t spend enough time with their children

Wow! How many of you have kids?

Do you relate to this?

How many of you run your own business?

Besides work, what takes up your time?

Ok, so I’m pretty sure errands are among the items taking up time. What kind of errands?

My goal here is not to stress you out more by hearing these statistics. Nor is it to make you feel bad about your current situation. What I’m here to tell you is that I have been there and there are very easy (and inexpensive) solutions to this – if you are willing to act and make some changes. I hope this blog will be a resource for you and your friends to learn how to have more time in your day. I am especially happy to tell you that this can be done without sacrificing the quality or quantity of things that get done!

YuDu was launched to bring life balance to clients and to our team members. You should know that before YuDu I was an executive with a local start up firm that I was incredibly passionate about for most of the time I worked there. I dedicated much of my life to that company, working 12 and sometimes 14 hour days, working from home on the weekends, working while on vacations, the same I am sure that some of you have done or still do today. Despite the fact that the dry cleaners was down the street from my office, I could not fathom taking the five minutes to do the drop off/pick up. It was too stressful and those minutes were precious to me. And the grocery store? Forget it! My cell phone had poor reception there – what if I missed a call? Plus the thought of spending 30-40 minutes searching for food was overwhelming. Bottom line, I had zero life balance! If it were not for my husband, friends, and the gym, I probably would have headed for self-destruction. At that time, I would have paid A LOT of money for someone to pick up my alterations, bring me lunch (a healthy one!), buy those birthday presents, make reservations for girls night, plan my anniversary trip – etc. As far as I knew, no one else was doing it and if they were, they were not making it known to ME – their prime target.

So – I left what I was doing. Now, the truth is that a good friend of mine and I decided to launch YuDu years before we actually did it. We planned and researched and put off the business until I was inspired while on a work trip and reading “Ladies who Launch” and decided it was “now or never”. I hadn’t anticipated working full time with this company but once we launched, it was a no-brainer. I am so passionate about our Life Balance core value, I had to get out there and find more people like us to share it!

Our services include research, shopping, gift wrapping, delivery and more! We also provide exterior/interior holiday decorating, meal preparation, grocery shopping, etc… You name it, we do it.  Our goal is to make the holiday’s bright at your home or office.

Find out more by contacting us at www.yudulist.com or calling 843.972.4008.

P.S. Remember to tell your friends about YuDu’s Secret Santa Service!

Consider giving YuDu at Christmas, as a thank you, for a birthday or anniversary, to the busy bride and on and on….  visit www.yudulist.com for more info and to order your Time Saver Gift Card today!