Monday, December 1, 2008
The AHA moment that led to Simplify
I'm working 50+ hours a week and by the time I get home I'm exhausted. I want to play with my kid and spend quality time with her, but I have 2, maybe 2 1/2 hours tops to get dinner on the table, eat, clean up, give her a bath, play, read and put her to bed. Then I have to get back on the computer and finish that motion that's due tomorrow. Couple that with a husband who's out at evening networking functions a couple times a week and life is crazy. The house is a mess and nothing ever gets done. And if it does, it's with resentment at having to either sacrifice time with the family or sleep.
Sound familiar? But we did have household help. We'd had a housecleaner for years, even before we had kids and even before we were married. We also had a gardener. Those we considered valuable basic essentials because let's face it, I hate cleaning and my husband hates yard work. But we started outsourcing a lot more. We hired a high school student to come a couple evenings a week to help with dishes, laundry, trash and such. And we made an arrangement with my mother-in-law for her to cook us food for 3-4 days' worth of dinners.
One day, we were watching a show on CNN about entrepreneurs and how they got the ideas for their businesses. The host said that often times, businesses spring out of a need in their owners' lives. My husband and I looked at each other and he said, everyone needs an Eva (our high schooler). All of our friends were in our exact same situation - crazy lives going a mile a minute with no time. We needed help with the house and help finding people to help us and help managing the people who helped us. Sort of like a temp agency meets home concierge meets an off-site household manager, with emphasis on the management and convenience part of course. Thus, the genesis of Simplify.
When I found out that Carmela had had the same idea for the same type of business, but hadn't yet had the time to develop it, we decided to team up and launch Simplify (that is, after a couple months of market research, business planning and formulation!) A year into the company and I'm proud to say that we're still going strong, learning new things every day and most importantly, helping people manage their households and craziness in their own lives.
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