We recently connected with Tamara Lucas and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Tamara thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?
When we first created the company, it was named Bamboo Services. We imagined bamboo popping up all around the neighborhood. Bamboo is beautiful, strong and versatile for many uses so it was a great image for what we were trying to accomplish. We decided to call our providers Pandas to go along with the Bamboo theme. Once our app was released, we found that everyone kept referring to us as “Panda” and not Bamboo. We made the decision to rebrand and once we started thinking about the word Panda, and our role as hyper-local personal assistants and how we leverage technology – we came up with the acronym for PANDA “Personal Assistant Next Door App”. My Panda was born! My Personal Assistant Next Door App.
Tamara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
The expectations that are being placed on today’s woman continue to grow, yet our support systems are not keeping up. We are suffering from a severe sense of time scarcity, we are isolated from traditional support systems of extended family and community and struggle to find a way to get it all done. And the challenges from the lingering pandemic and current political climate continue to add to our level of anxiety, stress and overwhelm.
As a single working mom with two school-aged boys I am acutely aware of these struggles. I have my Master’s degree in Social Work and have always been passionate about finding ways to support other people through community. I realized several years ago that we do indeed have a community around us, we just need a way to connect with that village of support. There are plenty of people right in our own neighborhoods who would be happy to step in to help us with all those life tasks that we struggle to accomplish on our own.
So, in 2019, I set out to create My Panda, the Personal Assistant Next Door App. We leverage technology and the trust of the hyper-local community to connect users with vetted and screened personal assistants who live within just a few miles. Think Taskrabbit meets Nextdoor. We hire our Pandas (Personal Assistants Next Door) from within the local community in which they live. This encourages social accountability, keeps money in the local economy, improves time efficiencies, and increases the trust between our clients and our providers.
With a few clicks on her phone, our ambitious, empowered user saves hours of her precious time by simply submitting a request for anything she has on her to-do list. Compared to other solutions on the market, requests made in the My Panda app can be highly versatile and are more realistic when it comes to the needs of today’s modern family. For example, our busy client can request that a Panda arrange for a handyman to make some repairs to the house, come up with a meal plan for the week, do the grocery shopping, and while at the house, meet the handyman, also prep the veggies for dinner, fold a few loads of laundry, straighten the toy room and take the dog for a walk. With a few clicks on the phone, our client has saved hours of her precious time while providing work for someone from within her community, keeping money in her local economy. The affordability of our services allows average income families the luxury of personalized help at their fingertips in an instant.
Women supporting women is a key tenet of our model. Our commitment to empowering women provides them the support they need so they can experience “Liberation through Delegation”. Our solution helps not only women who are searching for needed support, but also provides an alternative work environment for women who are searching for flexible ways to benefit their community while making a living wage.
Services start at $15 and can be requested on an as needed basis or as a monthly subscription. We are currently serving metro Atlanta and are leveraging our technology and systems to expand throughout the southeast and then nationwide.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
What we do at My Panda is inherently personal and requires a high level of trust and confidence on the part of our clients. Because of this dynamic, most of our growth has been grounded in word of mouth and referrals. In order to have this kind of growth, it is crucial that your reputation is exemplary and that starts with the people that work for you.
Our goal when hiring our Pandas is to find people who want more than just a paycheck for doing tasks. We search for those who want to help others in their community and who are driven by solving problems and serving others. When you have a team of people whose primary goal is to help, that will automatically result in happy clients.
If we run into a problem, if a Panda makes a mistake, if expectations are not met, we always work to make it better and have clear and honest communication. Customer (and Panda) satisfaction is one of the company’s primary goals. Many of our resources are focused on communication with clients and Pandas and we have clear guidelines on how to resolve issues to be sure that all parties are heard, respected and appreciated.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
The story of My Panda started back in 2018. I was working on two separate businesses and hustling to make ends meet as a single mom who had left her corporate sales career 2 years prior. I had all intentions of continuing to grow my career in the fine wine industry.
When I first came up with the basic concept of My Panda – connecting busy, time-starved people in my neighborhood with others in the neighborhood who had the time and desire to help – I thought it would just be a quick little project to get off the ground. I really just needed the services myself and knew that between me and a few of my friends we could support a small business. My goal was to serve my neighborhood and maybe, eventually, a few neighborhoods right around me.
As I started to talk about my idea, pretty much every single person I talked to made a comment along the lines of “Oh I need that! When can you come to Colorado/NY/Florida?? etc”. After some time I realized that there was a huge need in the market for this sort of service, a pain point that resonated with so many. I decided to find some support to help me build a real, scaleable business.
After securing a small amount of funding from friends and family, I applied to, and attended some programs in the startup ecosystem in Atlanta. Between ATDC and the Emory program Start:ME, I established a foundation that could be built upon and I started to make crucial connections in the ecosystem. This foundation got us through a beta-test period and to the point where we were able to raise some more funds from friends and family to build the app.
By September 2019 when the app launched, this business was still a side gig. I was still working with a group of Virginia wineries, securing placements and distribution throughout the Southeast, traveling and planning wine events and dinners. My time was being stretched thin, but My Panda was still taking a backseat to my primary responsibilities with the wineries.
When COVID hit, all the activity in the wine business ground to a halt. I realized that My Panda was set up to provide support and help to people who needed it, and so many had a huge need in the Spring of 2020. The pandemic was actually a huge blessing to the growth of the business. I suddenly had nothing to do but take care of my children and focus on growing this business that was starting to help so many.
I continued to apply to incubator and mentorship programs and spent 2020 and 2021 gathering a network of support around us. All these connections and support, paired with the focus I have been able to give the company has gotten us to the current point of proving product/market fit and getting prepared to scale.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mypandaapp.com
- Instagram: @mypandaapp
- Facebook: @bookapanda
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamara-vrooman-lucas-094a089/
- Twitter: @mypandaapp
- Other: ios app download: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1474244745 Android app download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambooservices.bamboo