What It's About
Hoping to avoid getting lost in translation, an operations manager creates a site to find Mandarin-speaking caregivers.
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Wen faced challenges with her site and working with clients. She has these words of advice and encouragement for those facing issues, "sometimes you need to know when to let go...and learn not to take it too personal."
Fun Fact
Because many caregivers are immigrants whose degrees are not recognized in the US, many of them are unable to get higher-paying jobs. Amazingly, AyiConnection has been able to help caregivers earn 30-50% more than if they were trying to find caregiving work on their own.
Notes from Chris
Episode 1026
Wen Sav [when sav] was going through a lot of changes. She had just moved to a new state with her family, which included an eight-month-old baby. Still trying to develop a community and thrive at her new job as an operations manager, the transition was rough. The thing that made everything seem so much harder was that she couldn’t find a Mandarin-speaking caregiver for her baby. Finally, Wen found the caregiver she’d been searching for—and her new friends, many of them facing the same challenge, were envious. And that’s when Wen got her first big idea: what if she created an agency that could connect families with caregivers for the Chinese community? Wen started emailing her friends, as well as people on local forums and Facebook groups complaining about not being able to find caregivers. Her offer was simple: the family would pay an application fee, Wen would find a local caregiver she believed would be a good fit, and then the family would pay another fee once there was a successful connection. In total, each connection would earn her a couple of hundred dollars. To her surprise, without even having a website, she landed nearly ten clients within a couple of weeks just from these cold emails—a clear sign that the demand was there. She then found a freelancer to help build a simple website for her agency: AyiConnection.com [AH-YEE, which means caregiver or nanny in Chinese]. It only cost her $200, but then came the real investment: tons of time. She met with every family, learning about their needs, concerns, and preferences. Did their child have special needs? Were they looking for specific cooking skills? and so on. Then she continued her search for caregivers through local meetups and church groups and got to know them: their skills, availability, and personality. She did background checks. She called references. She confirmed immunizations. It was exhausting at first—talking to so many people—but once she found patterns in the kinds of questions she was asking, she created checklists and systems to help streamline the research process. And it paid off. She continually got messages from both families and caregivers thanking her for helping them connect with the right people. Within three months, she had generated over $5,000 in revenue. It’s now been two years since Wen launched AyiConnection … and it’s working. She now has over 3,000 caregivers and 2,000 families on the platform, with more signing up every day. And though the website is profitable, Wen is still reinvesting everything back into the platform. She hopes to be able to expand the technology backend to serve other languages and cultures. She’s now preparing to go full-time in the next year or so (and finally take out more of a salary). But the most rewarding part is the notification she gets on her phone with every new connection made.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- AyiConnection.com: Learn more about Wen's service at her website.
- Immigrant Couple Translates Heritage Into Children’s Flash Cards: Two immigrants from Laos meet the needs of an underserved community in a $50,000 per year hustle.
- Father of 9 Starts “Uber for Tutoring” Hustle: After being frustrated in his search for the right tutors for his many children, a busy father creates a directory that has generated more than 100,000 user profiles.
- Teacher Hustles to Pay Off $100,000 in Student Loans: A young teacher uses tutoring and babysitting to pay off more than $100,000 in student loan debt in just three years.
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