Founder's Story
From $800 to $100 Million: Sardor Umrdinov's Entrepreneurial Journey | S2 Ep. 155
Fri, 6 Dec 2024
In this inspiring episode of Founder's Story, we sit down with Sardor Umrdinov, the visionary founder of Home Alliance. Sardor shares his remarkable journey of immigrating to the U.S. with just $800 in his pocket and building a $100 million tech-enabled home services platform.Key Highlights:Sardor's early struggles working multiple jobs to support himself and his family while pursuing his dreams.The humble beginnings of Home Alliance and the mission to create a trusted ecosystem empowering contractors and homeowners alike.How Home Alliance maintains exceptional customer service with a Net Promoter Score of 70+ and aims to surpass Tesla by 2025.Sardor's leadership principles of prioritizing people, continuous learning, and fostering a culture of growth and innovation.Insights into overcoming challenges, staying focused, and the importance of problem-solving as an entrepreneur.Favorite Quotes:"The American Dream is alive. If you work hard, do the right things, and never give up, it’s achievable.""If you enable other people to succeed, you create something far greater than yourself."Connect with Sardor:Website: Home Alliancehttps://sardorumrdinov.com/Tune in to learn how grit, customer obsession, and a relentless pursuit of solutions can lead to extraordinary success.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.com
Chapter 1: What inspired Sardor Umrdinov to come to the U.S.?
Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. Today we have Sardor Goumerdinov. So Sardor, you have an incredible story from immigrant to the US, looking for your American dream with $800, building a $100 million business. Thank you, Dal.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I moved to the United States in 2003 as a student. It was $800. And I did all kinds of odd different works from dishwashing, bath boy, waiter, painting. And I ended up in the construction, in the servicing, different kinds of things like plumbing, electrical work. and ended up doing a washing machine repairs in the company.
And later on, I decided to open a company for fixing washing machines and drying machines in the coin laundromats and hotel and hospitals. First, it started with coin laundromats. Basically, I print out the business cards for $100 and actually drive around the coin laundromats and actually start handing them over to those places. And that was the beginning of the entrepreneurship journey.
Chapter 2: How did Sardor start his entrepreneurial journey?
So how does somebody, when you're starting off like that, how do you continue to just put in all this work and effort knowing that you may never win? And I'm guessing at that time you weren't making a lot of money from it. So what was that motivation that made you want to continue doing that?
Yeah, when I moved from Uzbekistan to U.S., I came as a gym and I couldn't. go back with nothing, and that thought of actually making my parents proud, my relatives and everybody else proud, and actually kind of drove me to try to actually work harder. I even had three jobs at the same time. I was working like Monday to Friday in one work. Saturday, Sunday, I was working as a waiter.
And on Saturday, Sunday, during the day, I was working to go into the moving jobs. furniture and other places. They had to kind of even have three jobs to survive and actually make money. And I was sending some money back to home at that time to actually making sure that my parents feel that I'm okay. I'm doing well here, otherwise they would call me back.
So that was kind of my driving force in the beginning. But later on, of course, it kind of changed. after having a family and kids.
So let's go to Home Alliance. It sounds like you started getting a lot of the experience, which then enabled you to create this company. What is the mission and how did you get started?
Yeah, the Home Alliance was started basically, we bootstrapped the Home Alliance from service company, then marketing enabled, lead generation to the tech enabled. kind of a bootstrap the company from the whole thing without fundraising first. And the mission of the Home Alliance first was basically connecting the best contractors to right homeowners on demand, like building an Uber.
And it kind of, that vision became more of an ecosystem direction. And now we are basically building business ecosystem where we want to empower millions of contractors to basically, to build their vision and the mission and to be the most trusted business ecosystem in the earth, which empowers millions of partners to achieve their maximum potential and deliver world-class service.
That's our mission.
So I know you're scaling the company. You have a net promoter score of 70 plus. You've held over 500,000 customers. A lot of companies, when they do this, they can't maintain that same customer service level. I think we see this time and time again. How did you do that where you also had that small company feel, really care about the customer, but at the same time scaled the company?
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Chapter 3: What is the mission of Home Alliance?
One of our core values is customer obsession. We basically monitor and we have algorithm to distribute jobs among our contractors and technicians. And we monitor every single job like an Uber with the stars. But the job distribution itself happens with algorithm. And we really go beyond the customer to deliver that kind of exceptional service. And we continue working on that.
And our goal to reach 80 plus score by the end of 2025. And we would love to kind of catch up with Tesla in three years in the net promoter score by 90%.
Well, it sounds like you're going to surpass Tesla. Tesla is going to be wanting to be like Home Alliance, not the other way around. When it comes to leadership, obviously I can tell the passion, the mission, the fact you have core values, you really laid down the foundation at the company and you're really driving everyone in the same direction.
What is maybe one or two things that you have found over the years has been critical for you as the leader?
Leadership, of course, was kind of evolving always. The caring for the people, caring for employees, caring for the contractors, caring for the customers, right? Making sure all of the stakeholders are happy and always working. And another core values we have is hire and develop the best.
We always kind of try to hire the best and always working on them and making sure we even have a book club in the company. We want to make sure everyone is developing and kind of growing together.
What is a book that you really like to read or maybe a book that you always recommend to people?
I have multiple of them. And recently the book I read was, the one of them is Zappos, Delivering Happiness, right? It's one of the good books. And another one is The Principles. The Principles also is one of the great books, Ray Dylos.
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Chapter 4: How does Home Alliance maintain exceptional customer service?
When is your book coming out?
I think I'm going to finish it by the end of the next year, hopefully.
Well, I can't wait to read your book. It's going to be amazing. I think a lot of founders, many times they have a lot of ideas and it can be hard, at least for me too. I have this problem. I get excited about a lot of different ideas and sometimes it's hard to really hone in on one thing and then also stay within that and not try to, you know, overdo a bunch of different things, right?
It sounds like you really wanted to be good at one thing and you really mastered that one thing.
Yeah, I'm working on our business course, how to actually build and grow and scale the home service business. And even probably it's going to be applicable for any service business. So the course should come within the quarter or two. That's what I'm working on now.
Wow, that's amazing. I know there's a lot of talk now about the American dream. And is it alive? Is it dead? How do immigrants feel about going to the US and becoming entrepreneurs? How do you feel about this?
I think American dream is, of course, alive. It's just the best thing. And I would really suggest And I think everyone should actually go for it. And this country, I think, has the biggest potential to actually achieve the American dream. And I don't believe some people are saying American dream is not achievable anymore. I'm one of those stories. And there are a bunch of others as well.
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Chapter 5: What leadership principles does Sardor follow?
You have to just work hard and do the good thing and do your best and grow and read books and find a mentor. and try to actually follow someone good and mentor and do your best. And I'm sure it's going to work out.
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It's the biggest economy in the world, because I believe it's 27 trillion. And the California is where we are, is like the biggest economy, one of the biggest, and it would be itself is like, I believe it's almost like for $5 trillion. So you cannot not succeed in this country. And I think if you go after your dream,
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Chapter 6: What books have influenced Sardor's leadership style?
I think we always face in the different stage of the business, we always face different challenges and those obstacles. I think having a grit and having a not giving up and always having actually tried to solve those problems and actually think about how I can solve the problem. By asking those questions, you can always find the answers, right?
Like entrepreneurs, I think we are problem solvers itself. So actually by thinking of how can I solve this problem actually makes me, and one of the greatest ideas actually comes at 2, 3 a.m. at night when I wake up. So like I want to actually get up and I want to write it down. Because that was a kind of a moment when I actually came up with an idea.
Chapter 7: When will Sardor's book be released?
And it's normally is about when you care and ask really deep questions, like how you can solve that problem, you can always find answers. If not, just Google it, chat GPT it, read books, and all of the answers are there. And you have to always be reading and caring and looking for all those answers. And answers are there.
You know, three things I took away from today, customer service, obsession. I don't hear as many people, I think, talking about that the last few years like you used to. You're hyper obsessed and your net promoter score is going to be better than Tesla. I can't wait for that. And the problem solving.
It's almost like if you really want to make money in a successful business, you have to solve a problem. But the interesting thing about what you're doing is you're not just solving a problem for the customer consumer. You're also solving a problem for other business owners.
So if you enable other people to make money and you enable people to get jobs done, it seems like when you marry those two things together, now you have a hundred million dollar, maybe a billion dollar company. But if people want to get in touch with you, Obviously, at one time, they're going to have to buy your book. I know that. They want to find out about your course. How can they do so?
Yeah, it's actually they can follow me on the social media. It's like they can go to Instagram or the Facebook or YouTube, or they can just go to Sardar on the channel dot com. And all my information and social media information is going to be there.
Sardar, this has been great. I'm fired up right now. I can't wait till people hear this and I get all the feedback about other people who are in the same situation with only $800 knowing that they can make it too. But thank you so much though for joining us today on Founders Story.
Thank you, Dan. I really appreciate it.
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