She Picked Up a Side Hustle Her Husband Saw on 'Shark Tank' — Now It Brings in More Than $100,000 Per Year Stephanie Jackson started working with BabyQuip in 2020 and says the venture's "surpassed" all of her previous gigs.
By Amanda Breen Edited by Jessica Thomas
In 2020, Stephanie Jackson and her husband were expecting their second child when the pandemic struck, halting travel and miring her job as the director of study abroad at the Savannah College of Art & Design in "lots of uncertainty."
With the financial reality of putting two kids into daycare fast approaching, the couple "needed a little extra" income. Then, that April, Jackson's husband saw an intriguing side hustle opportunity on Shark Tank: A company called BabyQuip, which rents baby gear to traveling families, needed quality providers to help facilitate those rentals.
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BabyQuip's founder and CEO Fran Maier, a serial entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience who's widely known as the co-founder of online dating service Match.com and founder of privacy compliance tech company TrustArc, was inspired to launch BabyQuip in 2016 by her own Airbnb side hustle and the "rapidly changing" travel and work landscape.
It clicked when Maier met a mom "earning good money" with a baby gear rental business she ran out of her home. A company like BabyQuip could offer a two-fold solution, she realized: ensuring parents had the gear necessary for a comfortable travel experience and that vacation rental hosts like herself weren't on the hook for purchasing, cleaning and storing all of it.
So Maier made it happen. Today, BabyQuip is focused on the unique challenge of "building both a new category and a new brand," which means attracting thoroughly vetted quality providers and spreading the word about its offerings — especially via social media. The company currently serves more than 1,000 markets and employs over 1,600 quality providers.
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By June 2020, "after a bit of nudging" from her husband, Jackson became one of those quality providers and dove into her new BabyQuip side hustle. She continued to work her day job during normal business hours and spent evenings and weekends cleaning gear, responding to customer emails and making deliveries.
Jackson was no stranger to side hustles: Throughout their 13-year marriage, she'd babysat, dog-sat, house-sat and listed items on Facebook Marketplace for extra cash. But "the BabyQuip venture has surpassed them all," Jackson says.
Jackson's business as a BabyQuip provider boomed, and in 2022, she exceeded $100,000 in sales, she says. "I enjoy the flexibility of being a provider, managing the gear I own, the rates, and when I want to operate," Jackson adds. "It is a family-friendly business that my husband and children can help with. It has also pushed me out of my comfort zone to approach hotels and rental companies to offer my services."
Jackson even quit her job to join BabyQuip's corporate team, where she serves as a corporate service manager and says the family's next big goal is to pay off their mortgage.
Related: 44 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money in 2023 | Entrepreneur
