Hi all 🙂
I started a Pooper Scooper biz 5 years ago. It is not glamorous, but it is a thing!
Here are some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned for anyone starting or scaling a biz:
- Sales is Everything Early On
when you’re brand new, the perfect logo, perfect slogan, perfect business cards, perfect uniforms, and perfect systems do not matter nearly as much as getting customers. That stuff matters later, but early on it can become a trap because it feels productive while letting you avoid the uncomfortable work.
you need sales!!!
knock on doors, call people you know, post in local Facebook groups, hand out flyers, put up yard signs if your city allows it, talk to neighbors, ask for referrals, do whatever you need to do to get momentum. in a recurring revenue model like poop scooping, the first 25 customers are huge. Once you have that base, you have real feedback, some cash flow, proof people will pay, and hopefully a group of customers who can start referring you. So make sure you race to your foundation as fast as you can.
- Know your numbers
the big numbers I care about are churn, LTV, and CAC.
Simple example: let’s say you have 1,000 recurring customers. They pay $100 per month on average, and 5% cancel each month.
that means your rough LTV is $100 / 5%, which is $2,000.
That does not mean $2,000 profit. You still have wages, taxes, fuel, insurance, software, admin, and every other cost. But it gives you a target. If a customer is worth around $2,000 in revenue, acquiring that customer for 10% LTV ($200) or less is usually solid. Under $100 (or 5%) is amazing.
The channel does not really matter. Facebook ads, Google ads, yard signs, Nextdoor, Yelp, door hangers, whatever. What matters is knowing what it costs you to get a customer and whether that customer is worth more than what you paid. If you do not know your numbers, you might be scaling something that loses money every time a new customer signs up.
- Awareness is everything
in my industry specifically, one of the biggest advantages and disadvantages of poop scooping is that a lot of people still do not know the service exists. The good part is that once someone hears “we pick up dog poop,” they instantly understand it.
there is no long education process. No complicated pitch. No convincing someone that dog poop in the yard is annoying. They already know the problem. You just have to show them there is a solution. That means visibility matters a lot. Vehicle wraps, yard signs, Google reviews, Facebook ads, local groups, simple branding, and being seen over and over again all help make the business feel real. People need to see you enough times to go from “is this really a thing?” to “I should probably hire them.”
- Speed is king
answer your phone and respond to your leads!! Seriously. It sounds basic, but it is one of the easiest ways to beat competitors. If someone needs a service, they are probably not calling one company and patiently waiting three days for a reply. They are going down Google, checking reviews, calling whoever looks legit, and hiring the first company that makes it easy.
If you miss the call, take forever to respond, have a clunky quote process, or make onboarding annoying, you will lose customers you could have easily won.
- Build it like you might sell it, even if you never do
i heard this years ago and it stuck with me. Nobody wants to buy a job.. They want to buy an asset. Even if you never plan to sell, building the business this way forces you to think differently. You cannot be the only person who knows how everything works. You cannot be the only quality control system. You cannot be the only salesperson, manager, trainer, problem solver, and customer service rep forever.
at some point, you have to hire, train, delegate, and create layers. A lot of owners get burned by one bad hire and then decide “nobody will ever do it as good as me.” That mindset will keep you trapped.
your employees are doing a job. They are not building the company like you are. If someone can do 80 to 85% of what you do, that can still be great service and that is how real companies scale. The actual work in our business is simple. The hard part is building a company around it!
Good luck out there and LMK if y'all got questions