Prior to moving to Baton Rouge from Charleston, South Carolina, Niki Marie Hansen made ends meet working for a local babysitting agency while earning her undergraduate degree. With only a few dollars to her name, each babysitting job was a blessing.
“I know what a couple of extra shifts or another $50 or $100 can do for somebody,” she tells Business Report in its latest Entrepreneur feature.
When Hansen arrived in Baton Rouge in 2009 to pursue a doctorate in veterinary medicine from LSU, she looked for a similar local agency but found none. Despite her lack of business experience, Hansen decided to fill the gap in the market with her own company.
“I thought to myself, ‘How hard could it be?’” Hansen says. “You only get to be naïve once.”
She started Bayou Time Babysitting that year with less than $50 in her pocket. This year, Hansen expects to make $200,000 in gross revenue.
With a $40 one-time sign-up fee and a credit card on file, parents can simply request a sitter via a phone call, email or even text message to Hansen. The request is put into an online scheduling database, which sends a text to all of Bayou Time’s qualified sitters. The babysitter or nanny then logs on to the company’s scheduling app to accept the job.
“It gets pretty competitive,” Hansen says. “Right now, we’ve been able to fill shifts within five minutes to just a couple of hours; two hours at the most.”
Parents are invoiced and automatically charged biweekly for services. In addition to personal babysitting and nanny services, Bayou Time specializes in staffing events throughout the region, from weddings to military events to conventions.
“We are it in Baton Rouge,” Hansen says, though she admits it is still a difficult market.
Read the complete Entrepreneur feature on Hansen. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
