How instaMek Was Started Part 1
This is going to be multi-part series of the struggles that I’ve gone through in the last 2 years in creating a new company that is actually profitable.
As my homie Drake says
“I heard once that they would rather hear about memories than enemies,
Rather hear what it was or will be than what is
Rather hear how you got it over how much it cost you”
It’s way more interesting to see how I got to this point rather than just creating a Facebook page, and telling my friends to like it and throwing a random launch party like a dweeb (even though that stuff will still happen because it works).
Before we get started, I’d like to get the results from the Uzair Ahmed Scholarship out of the way.
There were a few applicants and they all had one thing in common:
They all sucked.
It’s disappointing to know that my readers are either entitled friends who thought they were deserving of my money for the simple fact that they were my friends or they were just plain unqualified.
It did cross my mind why people wouldn’t apply for free money that was right there for the taking, if only they put a little bit of effort. I soon realized most people are in fact fools so it wasn’t really worth my time to ponder it further.
So instead I put the $1500 in the Star Ambalamps lottery and if I win the million dollar home you bet I’ll rub it in everyone’s face (and sell it).
Moving on, today I’m going to talk about the first business I ever started. It was in 2012 right after I graduated from University and started my first job.
I knew that working 9 to 5 was just not for me and everyone knows how much I’m against the 8 hour work day and prefer the 14 hour work day instead. Instead of doing the job I was paid to do I would sit at work and figure out ways to get out.
The first one that came to mind was to “detail” cars on my drive way.
Here was the trick though that made it a business; I wasn’t planning on cleaning the cars myself. I was only going to do the final touch ups on it and make sure it looked good but hire out employees instead.
So I put an ad up on Kijiji, and offered to clean cars.
The business plan was to charge $150, and pay my 8 year sister and her friends $10 to clean the car.
It was quite the sight to see, there was a 10 year old boy, 2–8 year old girls and a 6 year old girl all working together as a team to clean these cars. They were getting paid to do it too.
This was a $140 profit per job!
However as expected, having 6 to 10 year old employees is a headache.
They’re spoiled, incompetent and extremely unreliable. They also fight over the most childish things.
To think that on the other side of the world, their counter parts are creating beautiful iPhones and iPads on a lower salary and kids here can’t even clean a car right! I blame their parents for spoiling their kids. I will have my children doing manual labor as soon as they can walk.
Needless to say this business didn’t last long because I ended up doing most of the work and I hated it.
Main Takeaways:
- You get what you pay for when it comes to hiring employees
- Scalability is extremely important in business and you don’t want to be the guy doing the work. It’s hardly a business then
- Just because a plan looks good on paper, doesn’t mean it will work out in the end
Originally published at uzairstheoryofeverything.com on February 16, 2015.
