Let's see - how did my Doordash adventure begin. Let's start with a little background about me. I have always worked odd jobs, and quite honestly I never held on to a job for more than a few years. It's not that I am a lazy guy or anything like that. I have always worked, but I guess that you can say that I am the type of person who gets bored pretty easily and needs a change probably too often.
When I was in my 20s, most of that decade consisted on me doing security work, and I was not satisfied at all with the income I was taking in. I wanted to do something more in life, but without a college education I sometimes felt discouraged. When I turned 30 years old, I remember having some deep thoughts and wondering if my time would ever come. Here I was getting older, and I did not see a satisfying future ahead.
Being a wannabe entrepreneur, I always had a lot of ideas in my head about starting a business. I would even write ideas down on a piece of paper so I wouldn't forget. The problem that I had was that I could not act on any of my ideas. I was barely making ends meet to pay the rent and other bills.
I worked as hard as I could. There was even a one year span when I worked four jobs at once. I had two laborious full-time jobs Monday through Friday, and I had two weekend security jobs. I worked 112 hours per week, and I was never home. I might add that none of these jobs payed very well. They were all minimum wage jobs except for my Fed-Ex warehouse job that paid a couple of dollars above minimum wage. Even with all of these paychecks coming in, I was still struggling. I might add in here that I had three children to take care of.
A few years in to my 30s, a major change in my life happened. At the time it seemed like it was a negative change, but time would reveal that it was the best thing that ever happened to me. That is a long story of it's own, and I will not get in to that here. Anyways, I was put in to a situation that allowed me to save my paycheck earnings. I ended up saving $5000 in a few months. This was the opportunity that I had always hoped for. I was going to invest this money in to a business idea that I had. My thinking was, here I am in my early 30s, and if I am going to do something, I have to do it now. If I failed, so what, at least I will know that I tried. I ended up starting an online business, and to this day, over a decade later, I still operate my successful online business.
What does all of this have to do with dashing? I am working up to that. Well, last year my company's income had decreased by more than 75 percent. I will not get in to deep details about why this has happened. All I will say is that other companies started infringing on my brand. It was difficult to make a satisfying case to protect myself as I did not properly register my brand with the USTPO. Once I realized my mistake, it took about one year to register my brand, but the damage had been done. I still own my business, and I still make a very good income from it. The problem is that it became very difficult to pay all of my bills. My family and I live in a large home, have three car payments and I am confident when I say that we have more bills than most people. Maybe we have lived a lavish lifestyle, but it was never a problem because I could always afford it.
With the decline of income from my business, it was very difficult to maintain our lifestyle. I knew that I needed to do something else to bring in more money to help with the bills and to invest in to my business so that I could build it up again to what it once was. Being in my 40s now, I haden't had a regular job for over a decade so it was going to be kind of strange for me.
While looking at job listings online, I seen an ad from a company called Doordash. It said that their drivers have the potential to earn $20 to $25 per hour delivering food to their customers. After looking more in to it, I learned that you would not be an employee of Doordash. You would instead be classified as an independent contractor. You were also allowed to work anytime you wanted. This flexibility sounded great!
I jokingly mentioned the idea to my wife, and we both kind of giggled about it. It is not that we thought we were too good for this type of thing. You have to understand that our business had a cash revenue of nearly one million dollars just a few years ago and now here I was considering using my car to deliver food. I forgot about it, but then a week later I mentioned it to her again. I convinced her that it could help our situation out a bit, and the next thing I knew we were both at a Doordash orientation. Yes, she also signed up to be a Doordash driver.
It has been nearly a year since we have been driving for Doordash, and yes, I am still slowly but surely trying to build my business to where it once was. During this time, I have learned a lot about Doordash and the food delivery business in general. Doordash does have some positive sides, but it also does have some negative aspects too. I created this blog to give my opinions on a lot of issues with Doordash, both positive and negative. If you are a Doordash driver and are reading this, I encourage you to comment on any issues I cover, and let me know your experiences and opinions. I will end this by saying as some of the Doordash customer reps have ended their conversations with me - "Happy Dashing!"
No comments:
Post a Comment