US-Based Pinay Uses $50 to Start Online Shopping Business Now Worth Millions

At 18 years old, Ishka Villacisneros-Tusjakova bought a brand new BMW Sports Car with her own money and went on to buy a Mercedes Benz SUV at age 23 then a grand house in Los Angeles at age 25 – and all with the money she earned from an online shopping business she started with just $50!

How did she do it?

Well, it really is quite simple. When her family migrated to the US, Ishka enjoyed the wonderful shopping experience in her new home. So, when family and friends back in the Philippines asked for ‘pabili’ and ‘padala’, she enjoyed shopping for them.

Ishka said, “My friends and relatives were the ones who asked me for the ‘personal shopper fee’ because they realize there are expenses such as time, gas and shipping. That’s when I started the ‘Personal Shopper and Shipper’ service.”

From that, she started Stuff2Shop which later evolved to Californila.com when she realized it was better to have her own website than rely on then-available Multiply.

She started with a part-time business of processing only about 5 to 10 products a month and shipping just one a month to an amazingly full-time business of processing around 5,000 to 8,000 orders a month and shipping at an almost daily basis!

The business is doing so good that Californila had to move to a bigger warehouse. She now employs dozens of people to help her with processing the orders, including her own grandmother who acts as the site’s social media manager.

Her advice to would-be entrepreneurs, “If you’re looking to start your business, start it when you’re young so you’ll have more energy and motivation, more time to learn from your mistakes, you have less responsibilities, fewer commitments and much more time to make up for any losses you’ll incur.”

She added, “True success is not measured by material things. True success is your happiness. One of my happiness about running this company is having the ability to hire my 83-year-old grandmother as one of my social media managers and also provide jobs to those who deserve to get a chance.”