New Mom Recruits 3,000 Chinese Caregivers

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

One of my favorite things about producing Sautosil School is hearing stories from our listeners. Success stories from listeners who have taken action and created a project for themselves that we're now featuring on the program. Well, today's story comes from someone who's been listening since 2017 and that same year started her project. It's perhaps a quintessential example of how a product or platform that is built for the masses might not work well for a smaller population. And whenever that's the case, that creates an opportunity.

So after moving to a new state, this operations manager had a hard time finding a Mandarin-speaking caregiver for her baby. The mainstream platforms that connect caregivers with families weren't that helpful. So she goes on to start her own network. And she does this two different ways. First through an agency model where she does all the matchmaking herself, and then as demand increases throughout the country by transitioning to that platform that connects people directly.

This isn't easy. She has some challenges along the way. So we'll look honestly at the challenges and rewards of this listener success story. We're calling it New Mom Recruits 3000 Chinese Caregivers. That story is coming up in just 30 seconds.

Erin Sov was going through a lot of changes. She had just moved to a new state with her family, which included an 8-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. Coming from a family of immigrants, Wen wanted to be able to pass on the traditions, values, and language of her heritage.

But finding someone she could trust to do that was taking much, much longer than expected. Every now and then she would get a lead, but either that person would already be booked solid or they would meet up and realize they weren't going to be a good fit. She tried to use Care.com, a popular matchmaking platform, but it was really set up for English speakers, not Mandarin. So she quickly gave up trying to find someone there. Finally, Wen found the caregiver she'd been searching for, and her new friends, many of them facing the same challenge, were envious.

That's when she got her first big idea. What if she created an agency that could connect families with caregivers for the Chinese community? She'd already met many local caregivers over the past few months, and there was no shortage of parents who were looking unsuccessfully. So there had to be a way to bring these groups together. Wen started emailing her friends, as well as people on local forums and Facebook groups who were complaining about not being able to find the right caregiver.

Her offer was simple, the family would pay an application fee, Wen would find the right caregiver and one that 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 hundred dollars. To her surprise, without even having a website, she landed nearly 10 clients within a couple of weeks just from those cold emails, a clear sign that there was demand. She then found a freelancer to help build a simple website for her agency, which she called IECareConnection.com, i.e. means caregiver or nanny in Chinese.

It only cost her $200, but then came the real investment tons of time. She met with each 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, their availability, and personality. She did background checks. She called references. She verified 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 process.

And it paid off. She got messages from families and caregivers thanking her for helping them connect with the right people. Within three months, she had generated over $5,000. Now, with dozens of connections within the Chinese immigrant community, her reputation was spreading. She got referral calls from Chicago, New York, and other major cities.

It was clear that there was no way she could help all those people if she was just doing this agency style. She needed a way to scale. She wanted to make a platform where people could make their own connections, like Care.com, but specifically for Chinese-speaking caregivers. Wayne had a local acquaintance who offered to be a technical co-founder. She could do operations and marketing, and he would build the platform's website.

He'd call it ieconnexion.com, a shortened name from her agency, i.e. Care Connection. It seemed like the perfect match, at least until it wasn't. Wayne agreed to give him a small percentage of the business in exchange for his expertise. Believing he had the best of intentions, she didn't make her contract as foolproof as she should have.

Within a couple of months, that co-founder had created only a minimal website and demanded his stake so he could be free of the project. It was a nightmare, largely because the functional website seemed to meet the contract's non-specific requirements, but it was far from what they had discussed. Wayne eventually let him sell his stake back to her and was left with a website she couldn't really use. She had to find an outside developer to finish it. That set her back nearly six months and cost all of the money she'd earned in the agency side, but now she has a European development partner that she trusts, and her contract with them is a lot more specific.

Finally, September 2017, just under a year after she started the agency, IEConnection.com went live. The platform is mostly free, but there's a premium subscription of $30 a month that enables families to engage with caregivers in more ways, making it easier to make connections. The agency side, Wayne's original idea, still operates as a concierge service for $150 to $300. She moved her agency clients, now over 100 of them, to the new platform and started telling everyone in her network. Once again, thanks to the tight-knit community she was serving, traffic began flowing in.

It's now been two years since she launched that site, and it's working. She has over 3,000 caregivers and 2,000 families on the platform, with more signing up every day. And though the website is profitable, Wayne is still reinvesting everything back into it. She hopes to be able to expand the technology back in 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.

Even so, the most rewarding part is the notification she gets on her phone with every new connection made. Well, as I said, perhaps the quintessential example of something where there is a large platform that serves a lot of people and for the most part does it well, but because it's a large platform it can't meet the needs of specific groups or populations, which is exactly what we have here. Care.com is where a lot of families connect with caregivers, and Wayne wanted to make something that was specifically for Chinese speakers, or actually just families in search of Chinese-speaking caregivers. So I love how she pursued this, I think it was really smart to start as an agency first, just doing it in her local area to make sure she knew what she was doing, she could streamline the process, figure out those checklists of questions, and so on. And then once it was clear there was demand, then think about making a platform that people could connect with all over the country, perhaps eventually all over the world in different languages and cultures as well.

And then lastly, I respect how she was able to overcome the challenge of the technical co-founder who didn't work out. Sometimes that happens, so she regroups, she learns a lesson, she pays him off basically and gets a better contract going forward. So good for her, I love the story, I love knowing what people out there are up to. And listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. What's your story going to be?

What's your project? I want to feature you on the program, there is still time. If you'd like to check out the show notes for today's episode, or if you happen to need a Mandarin speaking caregiver, go to sodussleschool.com/1026, that's 1026. I'm so glad you're out there, be sure you come back because more is on the way. And hey, Ms. Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School.

From the Onward Project.