How to find a job in a bad economy

As I was scrubbing a toilet this morning, I got to thinking about how many times people have asked how I started my business, The Cleaner Sweep.  Let me tell you...

About two years ago, my sister and her husband made the decision to pick up their family and move their lives to the other side of the country. They made this decision for some very good reasons, but they made this decision without jobs. I assured my brother-in-law that he would be able to get a job at a call centre to get the finances started up again, and then he could start looking for a job in his field. It took him a month and a half to get hired at one of the three call centres in the area.

Meanwhile, my sister realized she needed to get a job to help out, at least until her hubby found other work. She applied for a variety of jobs and finally got asked to come work for one of the Big Name cleaning services. She lasted two days before they told her she didn't need to come back. (Knowing what I know about her, it was certainly not her work ethic or attention to detail that bothered them.) My guess is they just didn't have enough work for a new girl.

So we  sat around and cried and worried and waited until someone called us and told us they wanted to pay us to form our own company and gave us an instruction manual on how to build a successful business  chatted and wondered and prayed and eventually one of us said, “Let's just start our own company!” We called our mom, the Tax Lady, and asked her a few tax-related questions about how to set up a business. Then we made up flyers and put ads online on those free advertising sites (Craiglist, Kijiji, etc.) and within a day or two we had a job lined up. Within a month we had five regular clients!

One and a half years later, my sister has, consistently, been working as much as she wants (which is a good thing as her husband is still stuck in that awful call centre.)  We've had to turn away business. We are known by our clients to be hard-working cleaners with great attention to detail. And it was built from an idea in my kitchen, using our hands and hard work. God has definitely blessed our determination to work.

The point of all this is:
There is work, even in a bad economy. To quote a movie that my parents enjoy, “There are the Haves and the Have-Nots.” You just need to figure out where the money is and how people are willing to spend it. Day-time childcare, house-cleaning, cooking/shopping for a busy family... There are all sorts of SAHM type jobs that someone wants to pay you to do! Find out what it is and where those people are and advertise where they'll see it.

People have asked me specifics about how we started our company and I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has in the comments section.