1026
8 min 45 sec

New Mom Recruits 3,000 Chinese Caregivers

After moving to a new state, an operations manager struggles in finding a Mandarin-speaking caregiver for her baby—so she starts a network that matches them with families.
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What It's About

Hoping to avoid getting lost in translation, an operations manager creates a site to find Mandarin-speaking caregivers.

Business Model
Service
Skills Required
Organization & Communication
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
High

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.

 
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Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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Quote of the Day
"Knowing that I have helped the customer find the right fit, and that the caregiver has been connected with a wonderful family—that joy of fulfilling a purpose outweighed everything else. "
—Wen Sav #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau