BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

There are only a few basic skills an employee of Lifestyle Caddy needs to get by on the job: cleaning carpets, watering plants, taking cars to the repair shop.

Also, planning 200-person corporate parties, changing litter boxes, fixing bathroom sinks, putting new locks on sliding doors, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, and folding clothes.

And if a family is going on vacation, it helps to know their favorite foods and radio station so they can have groceries on the counter and music playing when they come back home.

“We don’t really consider anything outlandish,” said owner Tanya Smith-Chappell, who founded the Costa Mesa concierge service two years ago. “We handle pretty much everything.”

Lifestyle Caddy, which operates out of the east side of Costa Mesa, provides services of all kinds to people who don’t have the time to multi-task. Smith-Chappell, a former marketing executive, got the idea for the company when she served as a personal assistant to a Newport Coast family for seven years. As she ran errands and helped keep house, she began to realize how many people were juggling multiple responsibilities.

“It hit me that this family was one of many with so many moving parts and so little time to deal with them,” she said.

Smith-Chappell’s solution was Lifestyle Caddy, in which clients pay monthly membership fees and hourly rates to have agents take care of their everyday needs. The firm employs 10 agents who travel to homes around Orange County and perform any tasks within reason — for wealthy executives, working families or stay-at-home moms.

The agents begin many weeks by sitting down with clients and going over their plans for the next few days. Often, resourcefulness is the key.

“You have to do your own homework,” said agent Jay Jarmon, who recently cleaned an entire beach house and went shopping at Home Depot for replacement door locks. “There’s more to it than just getting an assignment and fulfilling it. Sometimes, you’ve got to fend for yourself.”

For Lifestyle Caddy’s members, the efficiency of hired help outweighs the cost of being in the program. Ryan Kelly, the chief executive of Spectrum Asset Management in Newport Beach, had agents pack his belongings when he was moving to a new house in Crystal Cove.

The last time he moved had been strenuous, but all Kelly had to do this time was make a call.

“I took my kids to the beach that day,” he said.

For more information, go to www.lifestylecaddy.com or call (949) 608-7366.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].