Story of a Startup: A Maid with income of $150,000/anum

I recently read a story of a startup on Neil’s QuickSprout blog, a maid who earn $150,000 per year. Lets read how he does!

Last month I ran into a Quick Sprout reader at the Entrepreneur Magazine conference in Miami. Every time I meet a Quick Sprout reader, the first thing I ask is:

What do you do?

Within seconds Juan got into his life story and explained how he kind is a maid, but makes $150,000 a year. And once I heard $150,000, I instantly thought how does a maid make that much money?

Naturally I started to dig deeper and I realized that he had an amazing life story that I have to share with all of you. So here goes…

Coming to America

Juan was born in Colombia and when he was young he dreamed of being an automotive engineer. But he couldn’t find too many colleges in Colombia that specialized in automotive engineering so he decided to look for colleges in other countries.

He found a lot of good schools in the U.S. so he applied to them. Within months he got accepted to a school in Texas and relocated.

During his first year he learned everything about cars. And by the second year, he was able to take apart and put back together a car. According to one of his professors, he was on track to being a great engineer.

But he ran into one big problem…

During his second year at the university he found out from the school that they lost his immigration paper work. They searched hard to find it and they tried to resolve the issue with the government, but they were unable to do so.

Because Juan wanted to stay in the U.S., this meant that he had to stay as an illegal immigrant.

A tough life

Although Juan had a girlfriend who was a citizen, and they were already planning on getting married, he didn’t want to rush things. He couldn’t get a normal job due to his illegal status, so he had to take side jobs to make a living.

He quickly saw how many immigrants were standing outside of local hardware stores. He noticed how competitive it was and felt that he could do better because he had a special skill… he was good with cars.

At that point it hit him that he should help people fix their cars. So instead of standing outside of Home Depot, he stood outside of AutoZone.

When someone walked out with car parts, he offered to fix their car for them right then and there in the parking lot. He did it for $10 to $20. For example, if you walked out of AutoZone with a pair of break pads, he would offer to replace them for you for $10.

The fight for survival

Juan wasn’t making a ton of money, but he was able to pull in anywhere from $20 to $100 a day. He wasn’t making stable income so it was impossible for him to provide for his girlfriend if they ever decided to get married. So he started to look for new ideas to make steady money.

One of his friends recommended that he start cleaning houses as you can make up to $100 a day for being a maid. He instantly latched onto the idea and started his own maid service.

He started out by cleaning his friends homes and because he was doing a good job they naturally referred him to more people. He got so busy that his girlfriend decided to join him and together they started to clean homes for a living.

Within months they got up to $3000 in monthly income and because Juan felt financially stable his girlfriend and him decided to get married.

The thirst for knowledge

Making $3000 a month isn’t bad, but it wasn’t enough for Juan. He wanted to continue learning and further his education so that he could do better in life. But there was one issue… he didn’t have enough money to go back to college.

So instead of giving up on his quest for more knowledge he started to buy audio books about entrepreneurship, marketing, and website design. He also started to read blogs like Quick Sprout and Mixergy.

From his readings he learned that the best income is passive income. And that you ideally want to figure out a way to make money even when you are sleeping. This way your income isn’t directly tied to how many hours you are working each day.

The road to entrepreneurship

The business concept that Juan came up with was to start a cleaning service that connected people with maids in their area. Kind of like Molly Maid, but instead he would focus on the Dallas Texas region.

In the first 30 days of launching it, no one came to his website and he didn’t make a dime. He actually lost money because he had to pay for hosting and wasn’t cleaning as many homes due to the amount of time it took him to create a website.

He quickly realized that he wasn’t going to be successful unless he figured out how to separate himself from the competition.

He surveyed his customer base, and saw that there was a demand for an eco-riendly maid company. People were actually willing to pay a bit more if he used products that were better for the environment.

So he decided to change the name of his maid business to Gmaids (Green Maids). Gmaids would connect people with eco-friendly maids in the Dallas Texas region.

Within a week of launching his eco-friendly site the Daily Candy picked it up and he was bombarded with new customers. If you fast-forward to a year after its launch, he hit 6 figures in yearly income getting people to subscribe to a monthly maid-cleaning program.

Growing the business

Now that Juan started to make a healthy amount of passive income from his business, he focused on growing it. From traffic acquisition strategies like search engine optimization to optimizing Gmaids for conversions by fine tuning the copy, adding video testimonials and modifying design elements.

These days Juan is looking to grow Gmaids into a million dollar company by expanding into more cities. He doesn’t know if he’ll get there, but he’ll never stop trying.

Conclusion

If you don’t have money and things aren’t going your way, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a successful entrepreneur. Juan had a lot of things going against him and he did well… he had to learn English, he didn’t have much cash, and worst of all he was an illegal immigrant.

Keep on pushing forward like Juan did and never let anything stand in your way. Yes, things won’t always go the way you want, but if you keep on trying something has to work out to your benefit.

So what do you think of Juan’s story? Do you know of any other people who went from having nothing to becoming successful?

This blog was a post by Neil Patel

21 Things for those who Starting their own Business

Starting A Business

21 things we’re learning at Fab.com – October 2011

Presentation Transcript:

21 Things We’reLearning At Fab.com 10-12-11

• 130 Days Ago Fab.com Didn’t Even Exist.
• Now, We’ve Got 750,000 Members, 3M Visits/ Month, $100K sales days.
• It’s Humbling.
• It’s Exciting.
• It’s Challenging. We never imagined we’d grow so fast.
• Here are 21 Things We’re Learning As We Go:

1. Do 1 Thing. Find 1 thing you can do really well and focus entirely on that one thing.
2. Say No! Don’t do any thing else except for yourone thing. Say no to meetings, ideas, proposal, b.s., outside of your core 1 thing.
3. It’s Always All About The Product. Our virtual products (website & apps) and physical products (design objects) must delight every day.
4. Keep it Interesting. No one comes back to check out the same thing every day. Keep it fresh, exciting, and unpredictable.
5. Make People Smile. We’re not in the design sales business, we’re in the design inspiration business. Inspire people and the sales will come.
6. Service Matters More Than Sales. Sales go up and down. Service lasts forever.
7. Do Whatever It Takes To Make Customers Happy. Get it right and they’ll tell their friends. Get it wrong and they’ll tell the entire world.
8. Make Mistakes Take risks. Move fast. Learn faster.
9. Recover Quickly.
10. Apologize. Own your screw-ups.
11. Strive to Have Your Customers LOVE Every Interaction With Your Company. Push your team to live this dream.
12. Celebrate Your Challenges. Force the team to focus on why you suck, even while you’re growing.
13. Don’t Focus Too Much OnThe Vision. Winning is all about execution.
14. Be Transparent. The more people know, the better.
15. Measure Everything.
16. Grow Your People. Coach your team to scale with the opportunity.
17. Fill Your Gaps. Bring in new talent to spur further growth.
18. Hire Smarter. Hire people who are better at their jobs than you ever could be.
19. Maintain Perspective Success is fleeting.
20. Say Please & Thank You. People do things because they want to, not because they have to.
21. Have Fun. Life’s too short to do it any other way.

Entrepreneur vs Business Owner

Hello World!

This is my first blog and i would like it to be as good as possible. Therefore, am not posting here something that i have written but bringing a post from wonderful blogger & Entrepreneur Jun Loayza. Lets start reading it!

What is that 1 special quality that allows one entrepreneur to succeed over another?  Is it hustle, determination, persistence, leadership, or luck?  I have seen many startup teams who have received funding fail because they weren’t able to reach critical mass and ran out of cash.  I have seen many entrepreneurs fail because they had an entrepreneurial seizure and started a company without actually knowing what they were getting themselves into.

If you want to give yourself the best chance at succeeding in the startup roller coaster, then you need to come mentally prepared.  You need to know the edge that a successful entrepreneur has over a Business Owner.  You need to know what kind of entrepreneur you are.

The edge is the Entrepreneurial Mindset.  A successful entrepreneur builds systems and works ON his company, while a business owner works IN his company.  Lets dive into the two different mindsets to examine why the Entrepreneur has the superior mindset.

The Business Owner Mindset

Example: Tony, the SEO professional, excels at his job and works at a large SEO firm

Tony likes his job, is great at what he does, and gets paid a decent $65K salary.  Though he likes his job, he doesn’t like his boss because the boss makes Tony work long hours without getting paid extra.  Fed up with the long hours and the boss taking all the credit for Tony’s hard work, Tony decides to leave his job and start his own SEO company.

Tony’s thinking: “I’ll just start my own company, hire employees, and pay myself much more money than I was ever paid at my old company.”

Tony quickly brings over 5 clients from his previous company and picks up 5 more clients through his connections for a total of 10 clients.  He also hires 2 SEO professionals to join his company and trains them to do client work.  Tony does well for the first couple of months, but then unexpected problems begin to arise:

• A client is late on a payment so Tony has to personally call the client to handle the situation
• Tony conducts all of the sales calls because he doesn’t trust his team to sell the services on their own
• Tony hires more team members, but doesn’t have the time to train them all properly
• Tony spends time doing all of the logistical work like finances, setting up meetings, and human resources tasks
• Tony hires more people but has to micromanage all of them because they don’t know what to do on a daily basis
• Tony has to show up to work everyday to make sure people are doing what they need to do

Though Tony owns his own company, he is no better off than he was at his previous job; in fact, I would argue that Tony is worse off because he is working harder and working more hours and has less time for personal enjoyment.  Tony has become a SLAVE to his business.

The Problem with the Business Owner Mindset

The problem with the Business Owner Mindset is NOT the long hours or the hard work; on the contrary, the Entrepreneur will spend just as many hours working ON his company as the Small Business Owner spends working IN his company.  The following are the key differences between the two mindsets:

• The Entrepreneur works smarter; The Small Business Owner works harder
• The Entrepreneur builds systems; The Small Business Owner hires more people
• The Entrepreneur removes himself from the day-to-day tasks; The Small Business Owner micromanages
• The Entrepreneur spends time hiring the right people; The Small Business Owner feels that he’s the only one who can do the job the right way
• The Entrepreneur understands that TIME is the most valuable possession; The Small Business Owner believes that MONEY is the most valuable possession

The Entrepreneur’s Mindset

Example: Same example and set up as the one above

Tony picks up 1 client that will allow him to sustain life for a period of one month.  During this period, Tony focuses on developing systems and processes that will allow him to scale his company and remove himself from day-to-day tasks.  By establishing the systems from the very beginning, Tony ensures that all future employees will become indoctrinated in the system-focused culture.  Here are some systems that Tony focuses on:

• System for hiring and training employees
• System for sales
• System for project management
• and many other systems that are specific to a company

Once the systems for project management are in place, Tony hires a project management team to do the client work.  This allows Tony to focus on sales and bring in more clients.  Once the systems for sales are in place, Tony hires a sales team and removes himself from all future sales calls.  And so on and so forth…

Just because you start your own company, it does NOT make you an entrepreneur.

Even though you may not own your own company, you CAN still have the entrepreneurial mindset.

—

It is very important to bring in sales and make money. However, I feel it’s more important to establish systems that will allow you to automate many aspects of your company.

I would rather make $50K/year and work 10 hours per week than make $100K/year and work 60 hours/week.

Entrepreneurship is not a career; it’s a lifestyle!

Courtesy Jun Loayza