Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South Charlotte.
Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Ep. #22 Emily Miller's Journey in Transforming Childcare
What if you could transform your household and reclaim precious time in your busy life? Join us on the Good Neighbor Podcast as we sit down with Emily Miller, owner and founder of Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency, to explore how her team is revolutionizing home management and childcare in Charlotte. From her roots in the Montford area to her decision to settle back in her hometown after a stint in Savannah, Emily shares her journey of turning a passion for childcare into a thriving business that caters to the diverse needs of modern families.
In this episode, Emily reveals the array of services her agency offers, from nanny placements to house management and personal assistants. Discover how Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency can simplify your life by handling everyday tasks such as laundry, errands, and grocery shopping, so you can focus on what truly matters. Whether you're a busy professional needing a reliable nanny or someone looking for a house manager to keep things running smoothly, Emily's insights will show you how to create a more balanced and stress-free home environment. Tune in to learn how her agency is making life easier, one family at a time.
Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency
Emily Miller
1244 East Blvd #2d
Charlotte, NC 28203
(980) 292-1045
emily@charlottesbestnanny.com
www.charlottesbestnanny.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina League.
Speaker 2:Well, good morning everyone. I am so excited to welcome you to our next episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast Today. I'm super excited. I am speaking with Emily Miller. She is the owner and founder of Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency. Welcome, emily.
Speaker 3:Hi Regina, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I'm so excited because you are a born and raised Charlottean and you know how rare that is. That's why you're called a unicorn.
Speaker 3:What was it?
Speaker 2:about growing up here.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, so I was born and raised in Charlotte, which is very rare to find these days. A lot of people say they're from Charlotte, but they moved to Charlotte when they were young or maybe a little bit older. So yes, I was. I grew up in the Montford area of South Charlotte. I call it South Charlotte. I'm not sure if it's really truly South Charlotte anymore, but I'm in that area and I'm near the South Park area and I have always just loved living in Charlotte. I attended Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte, had a great time there, met my husband in high school at Northwest School of the Arts. We both attended Northwest and loved it, and I had a short tenure living in Savannah, georgia, in college and lived in Savannah Savannah's beautiful but ultimately decided I just love Charlotte. I love the community, I love the small town feel, even though it's a big city, and just wanted to put down roots in Charlotte and raise my family here and we just really enjoy being in this area.
Speaker 2:Well, the word is out Charlotte is a hot spot for sure, yes. So tell us a little bit, or a lot, about your nanny agency, because it looks like you do a lot more than nanny services and your journey. How in the world did you get into this?
Speaker 3:Yes, so I'm the owner of Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency. I established the agency in 2012 after a long career of being a babysitter, first, of course, when I was very young, and then working as a professional nanny to pay my way through college. I nannied for many, many years, loved it, created just a strong passion for the industry as a whole. Through finding positions as a nanny. I found positions on job boards, online job boards, and then eventually I found nanny agencies that would help me find awesome families to work for that were paying legally and doing everything above board and providing me a great opportunity above board and providing me a great opportunity. So I discovered that nanny agencies were a thing. I didn't even know that for the first part of my career, but once I discovered it, I just decided that that was just such a great business and service to this industry for both families and candidates. So I went to school for fashion merchandising, always thought that I would own a clothing boutique or a retail store, and then, after going through college and nannying the whole time and establishing this passion for the industry, I decided to open Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency and it's been going strong ever since.
Speaker 3:We do provide nanny placements. We provide babysitting placements to our current clients. We place family assistants, which are candidates that help with both child care and house management work. We also place exclusive house managers, so they just do kind of personal assistant tasks for families and take care of all those tasks that families don't have time to take care of If they're busy working professionals. You know, laundry, dishes, errands, grocery shopping, all of that. The goal for a house manager, family assistant or nanny is to make the family's lives easier and provide a professional service that really adds to each family's lives.
Speaker 2:So if they don't have children, they can still use you for these other services house manager and things like that.
Speaker 3:Personal assistant other services house manager and things like that. Personal assistant Absolutely, and many families do not know what a house manager is and I feel like if more families knew that they could hire someone to help them at home, even if they don't have children, they would hire a house manager as well, tell us what a house manager would do or can do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so a house manager can do just about everything except clean your house so they can tidy up and kind of keep things running. But they're not going to do any like heavy house cleaning. You would have to have a cleaning service for that. But they can run errands. They can drop off the dry cleaning groceries, take your car to get a oil change, car wash, take your pets to the vet you know things for your children's school projects, take your children to the doctor. You know, just do anything and everything that you would need help with during the day water your plants, manage vendors for projects, special projects or home maintenance. They can manage all of that and just take care of everything. So when you get home for your family time, you can have more quality time with your family, whether that's with children or without, and not have to run around and do these tasks on your time off.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, I'd love that. That sounds amazing. So what are the benefits of using you versus me just getting out there and kind of using online Facebook or something to find help?
Speaker 3:Yes, so there's many online sources these days to find nannies and domestic candidates.
Speaker 3:The biggest difference with Charlotte's Best Nanny Agency we are a local nanny agency.
Speaker 3:We are comprised of a team of parents a grandparent, a foster parent, a mom of multiples and we treat every placement as we're placing for our own family, so you do have that human touch in it. We are a very proactive agency, so we pre-screen multiple nannies a week and family assistant candidates a week to make sure that we are recruiting and sourcing the best candidates in the area and we help your family through every step of the process to set the placement up for success. We do require everybody to pay legally and offer standard benefits and competitive wages, and we require a work agreement to be in place. We give our families a work agreement template so they don't have to start from scratch and get everything set up for success. And then we stand behind all of our placements. So we offer a one-time replacement search guarantee within the first 12 months of placement. So if your nanny or family assistant were to quit or be let go in that time, we would do one replacement search free of charge.
Speaker 2:So what is the vetting process to work for you?
Speaker 3:Yes, so all the candidates work for the family, so no one ever works for the agency. But so the vetting process for all candidates would be they need to pass a pre-screening interview with our team. They have to pass a reference check. So we call the references and write a report for families. We let the hiring family call the references as well and then we do a full background check on the hiring family, call the references as well and then we do a full background check on the candidate as close to hiring as possible, and that's a national, county and state criminal inquiry check, civil inquiry check, driving record check, sexual offender registry check, social security verification and security watch the search. So they have to go through that extensive background check and they also have to be CPR and first aid certified before they start. So we use that 14 step process that we've developed over the last 12 years to, you know, ensure that we are referring candidates that really are showing us their expertise, experience, reliability and commitment to do these placements long term in the best possible way.
Speaker 2:So is it fairly typical, when a family or person reaches out for your services, that you offer up a couple candidates so they can interview and figure that out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so each placement is custom so it's hard to say like the exact number of candidates families get. You know, we start with about three to five candidates and go from there. You know, the idea is for our clients not to have to sift through a ton of candidates because we are narrowing everything down and making sure that we're sending them candidates that are the best match for them. But the beauty of our agency we continue sending profiles until the family finds the right match. We don't have a limit. There's some agencies that will say you know, you get three to five candidates. That's not our practices and we really want people to be 110% sure with who they're welcoming into their home.
Speaker 2:So for our listeners, it occurs to me there might be the people who want to work there or to be a candidate and the people who want your services. Is that correct? Yes, correct, perfect, perfect. Tell me about, maybe some hardships or challenges you face, because it looks and just from what I see on your website, you have evolved over time to being just a nanny service to this full service concierge type approach. So describe maybe something that you know you faced a hardship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know, running a business for 12 years, there of course been many, many ups and you know some learning experiences and I feel like that has helped our agency develop into what we are today. I would say the biggest challenge and what the agency does is we can only control so many things. So we can only control so many things. So we can only control what we do. So we rely on people to be, you know, to follow through on their end. So sometimes that can be a challenge.
Speaker 3:You know, when we've gone through the whole pre-screening process with a candidate and you know family loves candidate, we love the candidate, we think they're great, they check all the boxes and then they don't follow through. So that can be a little tricky. But that's why we offer the replacement search guarantee. So you know, sometimes that can be. The biggest challenge is that we don't have total control of everything that happens within a placement. But we always stand behind our placements 100% and work through any challenges and, like I said, we've got that replacement search guarantee if we need to do that. That is wonderful. What?
Speaker 2:are you most proud of when you look back on these 12 years?
Speaker 3:I'm most proud of the agency as a whole, just building it from the ground up. You know I didn't know anything about running a business when you know you first start. I do have a business degree so I knew a little bit. But you know, just pulling myself up from the bootstraps and developing the agency and learning over time and really having now the community support over the last 12 years and I'm very grateful for that and everyone that we've worked with, both candidates and families, to develop us into the agency we are today.
Speaker 2:Amazing. So I'm just curious being from here when you're not working, what? Where in Charlotte are some of your favorite places or things to do with your family?
Speaker 3:oh, there's so many, there's so so many. Um, I grew up going to Freedom Park, so love, love, love Freedom Park. Sometimes it's pretty busy these days so, um, you got to catch it at the right time. But love, love Freedom Park, love playing on the train playground. We played all over that train when we were young and now it's kind of more closed off, so Freedom Park's awesome. We're big foodies, so we love to go to 300 East Loopy's Cafe you know Pinky's. We visit restaurants all over the place mama ricotta's, midwood smokehouse, all those good places. We love going to different things like that and then just visiting different areas in town, going to the children's museums discovery place, discovery place kids. The shield museum in gastonia is awesome. So there there's so many. Park Road Shopping Center is another one of my favorite, just because I grew up near there.
Speaker 2:Been around forever, hasn't it?
Speaker 3:Yes, love going to the soda shop. Went there when I grew, you know, growing up. So there's just so, so many fun places in Charlotte.
Speaker 2:That's a neat part of town. Yeah, that goes back to my memories as well. Well, you have been a wonderful guest. I love what you do. I can see I wish our listeners could see the joy in your face. I can tell you're extremely passionate and proud of your work. So as we wrap up, how do listeners get in touch with you to use your services or possibly learn about you know? How to be a part of it.
Speaker 3:Yes, so if any of your listeners are interested in our service, we would love for them to reach out. We always do free consultations at first, so there's no obligation if you call in, but you can reach us at 980-292-1045 or via email at families at charlottesbestnanny. com.
Speaker 2:And Mrs Emily Miller. Such a pleasure talking with you today. I hope to see you out in the community sometime, Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Same to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthCharlotte. com. That's GNPSouthCharlotte. com, or call 980-351-5719. Music.