Why ‘Girl Friday’?

For years I’ve been helping businesses in all sorts of capacities… On a consultancy basis, building websites, helping with marketing strategies, managing ops, you name it & I’ve done. Often becoming the ‘right hand’ of the founder/owner/manager/person in charge and without marketing myself at all I became fully booked for months at a time purely from word of mouth.

But then one rainy Sunday, sat in a soft play cafe with my mum while my two children burned off some excess energy in the hope they might actually sleep that night, I went on a long old identity crisis rant, saying I have no idea what I am.

I know what I do, and I know that I do it well, but I don’t know what that is in terms of a job title.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I just say ‘freelancer’ and usually that’ll do, but occasionally they might ask ‘in what?’ and when I respond with ‘a bit of this a bit of that’ I just sound like a knock off Del Boy flogging stuff from the back of a van quite frankly.

My mother simply said “Well in my day you’d have been called a Girl Friday”.

A what? I might be getting on but the phrase was totally new to me.

Mum explained, "it’s like the go-to person in the office, the one who nothing really works without, the one who knows everything and gets everything done behind the scenes but without the big inflated job title”, and it was like a little lightbulb was switched on inside my head. Finally, a title for what I do! A title for a job that I know tons of businesses, especially startups & entrepreneurs need.

After looking into it a bit more, the name really does carry quite a lot of misogynistic weight behind it, and as a raging feminist that didn’t sit right with me.

Besides, the name typically referred to a secretary or PA, and that wasn’t exactly what I was doing either. So, here I am, trying to reclaim the title and flip it on its head.

Girl Fridays were always behind the scenes, taking no credit and generally undervalued. My team of Girl Fridays are superstars, they’re your go-to person, they’re highly skilled & incredibly versatile, they’re used to startups and they know how to do everything you need.

So I decided to set this up & build this team of reliable Girl Fridays to fill the gap. To provide the service that so many people and businesses still need, but that there wasn’t really a name for anymore. Virtual Assistant comes close, but often there’s the misconception that that role is a PA but remote, and that’s not often the case, but with Girl Friday there’s no mistaking we’ve got all of your tasks covered.

Then if you need that next level up, Founder’s Associate, strategic thinking, critical ideation and all the other blue sky buzz words, but without the fluff & corporate B.S., I’m your Girl Friday for the job.

Jess