Busy Mom Cleans Up Debt by Cleaning Car Seats

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

In this story, a part-time occupational therapist and busy mom of two in New York City goes in search of a new income stream and finds a solution with a gig economy platform focused on cleaning baby equipment. Baby equipment, especially car seats. Now, this story features a platform known as baby quip. Baby quip. It sounds kind of ominous, but it's not.

You might call it the Airbnb of children's services. Platforms like baby quip fall into this interesting category. I'm not a huge fan of the gig economy overall, at least as it's often known. Gig economy is like driving for Lyft or Uber or DoorDash or whatever. Those are basically glorified part-time jobs.

They're not really entrepreneurship. But some other platforms are kind of like a bridge between something like that part-time job and where you have much more control over your schedule, your income, your opportunity for expansion. Because with platforms like these, you often have the chance to start with them and then branch out on your own. I'm going to give you a few other examples of platforms like that at the end of the episode. If you're interested in jumping into this world, maybe not necessarily cleaning kids' car seats, but you like the idea of a starter platform that has some potential for growth.

As I said, I'll give you more examples at the end of the episode. The story is called "Busy Mom Cleans Up Debt" by Cleaning Car Seats. That story is coming right up. From New York City, Brittany Springer is the mom of two toddlers and works part-time as an occupational therapist for elementary school students with autism and learning disabilities. She's also a certified child passenger safety technician, CPST, which means she does child seat installations in vehicles.

In short, Brittany is the definition of busy. Still, even though she was so busy, she also found herself in need of something else to earn extra money, in particular to pay off some expensive student loans. Whatever she found had to pair well with her complicated schedule. And that's when she found the BabyQuip platform and website. BabyQuip is a children's equipment cleaning and rental business.

They specialize in cleaning infant and child car seats, which as any parent knows can get pretty dirty. Brittany already knew a lot about car seat safety from her role as a technician, one of her jobs, but she wondered how a baby gear cleaning company was getting the dramatic results she saw online. Those car seats were just super clean, pristine, but were their methods safe? Turns out car seats need to be treated with extra caution to ensure they remain structurally intact. Many cleaning ingredients can't be used because they can alter the materials that affect the safety and integrity of the seat.

Brittany decided to sign up as a BabyQuip cleaning provider so she could get the inside scoop of their products and techniques. After learning more about the company, she decided the business could be a good fit for her as well. She already had the advantage of being a CPST, that's that child passenger safety technician certification, and she was active in several Facebook parenting groups. So how does it work? Well, people who want their strollers, car seats, and high chairs thoroughly cleaned are her customers.

Sometimes it's gear that's been in storage for a while, maybe hand-me-down items that need a good clean before they are passed on to other kids. For cleanings, Brittany vacuums, washes, steam cleans, and details the item, depending on how dirty it is, and for car seats in particular, she pays close attention to the manufacturer's instructions and follows them precisely. Gotta make sure it stays under warranty, after all. Now, Brittany found this easy to get up and running because she gets all the leads she wants or needs directly from the BabyQuip platform. This is key, like she doesn't have to actually go out and do a lot of advertising, or actually any advertising, in fact.

So far, she's been receiving the ideal amount of business. Now, of course, the cut that BabyQuip takes from each order might be considered a downfall or I don't know, a negative, but for Brittany, it's worth it because it eliminates the need to promote herself. She does wish she could do some customization on the platform to adjust her availability a bit and set her own fees for delivery and pickup, but overall, she says, the system works well. Let's talk about some money here. Brittany started using the platform in September 2021.

She has completed about 100 orders so far. She earns between $100 and $120 per cleaning order, sometimes a bit more, and they typically take her an hour or two to complete. She averages about $2,000 a month between cleanings and equipment rentals. Brittany says the best part of the business is watching her student loans disappear without her having to spend additional time away from her kids. The BabyGear cleaning side hustle is helping her get ahead financially with a schedule that works for her.

All right, congratulations to Brittany. As mentioned, what else is like BabyQuip? I call them starter platforms because you're not going to make a huge amount of money from them. There are some various limitations. Of course, the platform itself wants to make money and build its own business, but it's different from Uber and Lyft and DoorDash and so on, et cetera, just because with Uber and Lyft, you can't just decide one day, "Hey, I'm going to actually go out and become my own Uber driver without the Uber platform." You need the platform, whereas with a service like this, you often end up establishing your own clientele through it.

These services, these platforms, they have various rules and restrictions on that, but it is pretty common. A few others include ShareGrid. That's for photography gear rental. Snapper is for actual photography services. It's the Uber of photography.

Rover.com for pet sitting, dog walking, et cetera. Maybe TaskRabbit as well. TaskRabbit is in this border category because a lot of the services there are really basic and a commodity, but we have seen some TaskRabbits over the years actually grow their own business from it. Pretty much every single time I have hired a TaskRabbit, they have given me their own card at the end of the service, and they're like, "Just call me directly if you want and it'll be cheaper for you and better for me." If you're interested in jumping in, but you want it to be simple, you don't want to find your own leads, that's where these platforms can be helpful. If you never want to go beyond that, that's also fine.

You can also just do it part time, like Brittany's doing, make some good money and not be stressed out about anything else, or at least not anything else related to the business. There you have it. Check it out. TaskRabbit, but inspiration with action is better. The show notes for today's episode, including links to Babyquip and Brittany's specific profile, in case you happen to be in New York City, need a car seat cleaned, just go to sidehustleschool.com/2047.

That is our episode number. We have in fact made that many episodes. It is always surprising to me when I get to this point and I'm like, "Wow, wow, okay." But tomorrow, 2048, coming up, so I hope you'll subscribe, follow, come back. My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.