Our founder, Emé de Vries, tells us about her background and inspiration for founding the company.
What is Minerva Cayman? What does it do?
Emé: We are a small organisation that supports the lifestyles of busy individuals and their families. We save them time, money and energy by assisting them with all aspects of their personal lives. This means anything from taking care of paperwork and administration to finding a rare or original gift for a very special occasion.
Why did you create the business?
Emé: Because I needed assistance and couldn’t find it! I have a busy, complicated life with many demands and commitments which require constant attention. I could spend every weekend and all my holidays dealing with ‘life administration’ and still never get to the end of the list. So the choice was either to simplify (i.e. get divorced, disown my children, sell my belongings and live in a hotel) or get help. The right help is tricky to find, not readily available locally – not everyone is good at everything. Online services lack personal touch and local knowledge and employing a PA full time is a heavy commitment; it can backfire if you are not a good match, if you can’t trust them or if they walk out suddenly and leave you in the lurch.
How is Minerva Cayman the solution?
Emé: All my problems came from not having enough bandwidth or anyone I could trust and rely on. I now have at my service a team of dedicated and trustworthy professionals with complimentary skill sets and backgrounds who all work fantastically well together. They use smart systems and processes to make sure that everything gets the right level of attention and that nothing is forgotten or left until it becomes critical. They look after all my life administration and make sure my staff know how to support me at home. In essence, they give me back my time so that I can spend it on living. That is, at its simplest, what Minerva Cayman does for clients!
Why the name Minerva Cayman?
Emé: Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, business and the arts, and her profile with a winged helmet also happens to be one of the French hallmarks for pure silver. In classical mythology, she is known for quietly assisting heroes in various tricky situations and so is often depicted with an owl to symbolise her knowledge and discretion. As our services also require knowledge and discretion and we treat our clients as heroes, Minerva’s profile is perfect for a high-performing organisation that focuses on supporting high-performing clients.
In a nutshell, Minerva Cayman offers a 360-degree service for people who don’t have 24 hours in the day, from taking care of your to-do list to making sure that you shine in every conceivable situation!
What about the Minerva Academy?
Emé: We run courses to teach domestic workers the skills and knowledge they need to support our clients properly and to make our clients’ homes their havens, as they should be. For example, we create house manuals (an operating guide for a household) and train workers to use those to keep everything properly on track just the way the owner wants it. I deliberately use the term ‘worker’ and not ‘helper’ because our staff are not just ‘helping’ us; they are working, deserve proper training and proper recognition for all they do for us.
We are also etiquette consultants and offer private one-to-one courses to clients who wish to learn, refresh or refine their social skills so that they can be completely at ease in all social and business situations. These are very popular, especially with young people who are entering the work place for the first time and having to confront all those awkward situations, sometimes without a lot of experience behind them.
