$20,000 a month cleaning houses? The company is called ThinkMaids.
This was posted yesterday.
All of our appliances are past their life expectancy and most were purchased either used or from a going out of business sale. That being said, any issues we've had (except for the Viking dishwasher) have been fixed by me, buying parts online, and watching youtube videos on how to fix them. I've strongly recommended to non-mechanically gifted friends to at least attempt this route before replacing appliances. Not only can you save a substantial amount of money but it also is a good exercise in self sufficiency.
This site member has a unique ability. He can figure out how to fix old appliances. Not many people can do this.
He also is something of an evangelist. He wants to help non-mechanically gifted people learn how to do this.
He has a problem. Non-mechanical people would rather pay to buy a new machine, or pay somebody to come and fix an old machine than learn how to do it themselves. Their time is valuable. They don't want to spend a lot of time being frustrated and also risking failure. People don't like a failure. They don't want to start a project, and then have the project blow up in their face, or spill water over the floor. This is especially true of men who don't want their wives to see how incompetent they are.
My wife has always known how incompetent I am at fixing things. I have the reverse Midas touch. I use a gadget that works, and it breaks. Then she has to fix it. She can fix almost anything. She loves fix-it shows on YouTube: fix-up houses, fixing broken antiques, anything.
As a percentage of the population, hardly anybody wants to learn how to repair things. But a small percentage of people do want to learn this. That's the initial market. YouTube lets you reach this market. This is a tremendous advantage of YouTube. People who are interested in something can find out how to do it. They can do this almost free of charge. Never in the history of mankind has there been this kind of opportunity.
Here is an example of a man who knows how to repair appliances and who is helping other people learn these skills. This is not a good video. The sound is terrible. He could have solved this problem with a $20 lapel microphone. He knows how to repair appliances, but he does not know how to produce a good video. Nevertheless, this is a good example of somebody who is trying to take his knowledge and build a market for himself.
It was cheap to produce. A YouTube video is a good way to start a business.
He made a mistake in trying to cover too much in one video. He should have a separate video series for each type of appliance. There should be a longer video that shows what things can go wrong. Then there should be individual videos that show people how to repair each of the things that can go wrong. Break everything down into its component parts. This enables you to put the appliance back together on screen.
MAKING MONEY
How could you make money with videos like this? The videos could be used to start a repair business. Most people don't want to learn how to fix used appliances that are broken. They are looking for somebody who knows what he is doing. If you were to produce a series of videos on how to repair specific appliances, these videos could be used to fill up a website on home appliance repairs.
If you created a website that showed people how to do this for themselves, this will impress people. They will be impressed that you know enough to fix these units. They don't want to fix the units. But at least they can get an idea of what it will take to fix a unit. That is someone who is likely to call the person who produced the video. The person knows enough from the video that he doesn't want to do it himself. So, he calls the person who produced the video. Every video takes the viewer back to the website. The website has all the contact information on the homepage. Basically, this is the positioning:
I'll show you how to fix your broken appliance. If you don't want to fix it, call me, and I will come to your home whenever it's convenient for you, and I will fix it.
Most people will want you to come in the evenings or on Saturday. This preference is ideal for a start-up business. You can do it after work.
If you created this kind of website, yo
reated this kind of website, you would have the only website like it within 20 miles of where you live.
Another way to make money with a website like this would be to use the website as proof that you can teach appliance repair in a local community college. You don't have to have a bachelor's degree if you are teaching a course on repairs. Teach young people how to start a business, or at least get a job locally. This is what they are after. This would be an opportunity to produce even more videos. They could be even more professionally done.
It's a good idea to help young people get jobs. If a community college will pay you to do this, that's an even greater benefit. Anyone who can produce videos has the skill of being a good teacher.
If you had access to a supply of young people who are interested in learning how to repair appliances, you could pick and choose from this pool of talent. You could take advantage of the Pareto distribution: 20% of the students will have the abilities necessary to become successful repairmen.
If I had access to a continuing supply of students like this, I would set up a local repair business. I would let them do the work, and I would do the marketing. I would put other people to work, paying them good wages, or paying them a large percentage of the fees paid by customers. I would keep 20%. That would be nice stream of income.
People will pay for solutions. It takes knowledge to provide these solutions. But it takes more than knowledge. It takes enough entrepreneurship to go out and find the people who are willing to pay for solutions. Most repairmen do not have this skill. But most entrepreneurs don't know how to fix anything. I would put myself in the middle. I would find the customers, and then I would send repairmen out to do the repairs.
When the recession hits, people are going to start paying to repair their appliances rather than buy new ones. There will be a growing market for people who possess repair skills.
TURNING JUNK INTO MONEY
Some people will pay you to haul away broken appliances. If you can fix them, you can convert what is essentially free inventory into a stream of income.
If I could repair a broken washing machine that somebody else thinks isn't worth keeping, I would advertise in Craigslist for free pickup of the item. I would pay some young man $20 an hour to go out and pick it up with me. Of course, at my age, I would pay two guys to do it.
I would test the market first. I would borrow a pickup truck from somebody in my church until I knew the market was viable. Then I would buy a used pickup truck as cheaply as possible.
If you can get an item free of charge, or at least almost free, and then fix it, you can sell it for $200 in the used goods market. This will be a way to make money in a recession. If somebody has to buy a replacement washing machine, and he doesn't have much money, he will start looking for a used machine. If you can provide such a machine and provide a 30-day money-back guarantee, you can solve his problem.
What you want is someone who will buy your used machine, which you deliver to him free of charge. He has to agree to give you his old machine. That's part of the deal. That's why you're giving him a good price. You replace your inventory every time you sell a used machine.
If you taught at a local community college, you could bring in the broken appliances and show your students how to repair them. If you had enough broken appliances, you could get your students to repair them as part of their training. That would be an ideal situation.
This recycling strategy works. I spent part of my youth at my aunt's home in Newhall, California, which was then a small rural area -- before the freeway made it a suburb of the San Fernando Valley. I did not know the following story as a child, but I learned it decades later: the story of the local garbage collection service. All I knew was that it was my job to take out the garbage, which I hated.
The local garbage collection service was run by an Armenian, i.e., a gentile Jew. (I later married one.) He got paid to pick up the garbage. Then his employees sorted through the garbage (ugh) to find food that pigs would eat. Then he sold the garbage to his pig farm. Here is a classic story of an Armenian who adopted a business strategy more closely associated with Jews, but in a field not open to Jews. The pigs were later bought by locals, eaten, and the remains tossed out in the garbage. He got paid every step of the way. He was a kind of ecologist, part of the green revolution. He generated a whole lot of green. This was the Agajanian family. One son went into real estate and got rich. He financed a series of successful Indy race cars in the 1950's through the 1970s. The other son became a legendary kicker in the NFL. The family's story is here.
CONCLUSION
The most valuable asset is accurate information. The second most valuable asset is the knowledge of how to convert accurate information into money.
If you know how to repair something, you have accurate information. If you can figure out how to convert this accurate information into a stream of income, you will not have to worry about the next recession. You can generate a stream of income for yourself in good times, and this stream of income will not suffer much when a recession hits.
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