[Journey - Post #1]- Starting Pooper Scooper Business w/goal of $10k MRR by July 4th

[amincitia]

Hey guys! I recently discovered the podcast/subreddit and am a huge fan of all that @mariusk teaches! I wanted to share my journey to starting a profitable pooper scooper business in hopes of quitting my full-time job by the 4th of July (approx. 4 months from now). I'll be posting monthly updates and am happy to answer any questions. Please feel free to comment with advice, suggestions, etc. My purpose in these posts is accountability, documentation of the journey, and hopefully inspiring someone else. Maybe I can even make it on the podcast if successful

Background: I'm in my mid twenties with a bachelor's & master's. I was planning to enroll at Harvard Med School in the fall of 2019, but a week before orientation I realized I was pursuing it for the wrong reasons. I accepted a $75k job in the leadership development program of a industry leading multi-billion dollar company. There is long term career growth potential, but I hate it. I would much rather be my own boss as opposed to working for someone else.

Idea: Start & Scale A Pooper Scooper Business (Top 4 Reasons I like this idea below)

1. Very Low Start-Up Costs (If this fails I'm not out tens of thousands of dollars.)
2. Recurring Revenue That's Extremely Profitable
3. Low Competition (Not many people wanting to start $1M+ dog poop scooping businesses. Most of my friends are chasing tech, real estate, e-commerce, etc.)
4. Low Skill Required For Future Employees - Makes the expansion/scaling easier and allows me to focus on finding the right type of employee (Customer centric, friendly, professional, etc.) as opposed to sacrificing on the qualities because a niche skill is needed.

Goal: $10k+/monthly recurring revenue by 4th of July

• Our services start out at $12.50/week with the average client being $14/week
• I'm aiming for 200 clients x $14/week = $11,200 every 4 weeks.

Initial Marketing Plan:

• 10,000 emails to local dog owners (bought from a respected source. opted-in emails.)
  • TBD if this will work. I bought the mailing addresses for a physical mailer campaign and emails were included. Figured I would give it a shot. I'm using a separate domain just for cold emailing in case it gets flagged as spam. (Ex. instead of companyname.com I'm using getcompanyname.com ). I've read a few guides on the best way to do this, but I'm skeptical.
• 2,000 flyers mailed to local dog owners from the list of 10,000. If this goes well I'll mail the other 8,000. The flyers will be stuffed into normal envelopes in hopes that they will be opened/looked at more closely than a postcard or door hanger.
• $500 in Facebook Ads - Any YouTube videos or articles you would recommend for this?
• $500 in Google Ads - Any YouTube videos or articles you would recommend for this?

To-Do List:

• Execute Initial Marketing Plan
• Build out operational plans
  • Email flows & responses templates
  • Finding the best equipment
  • Develop 1st visit gift (Thinking collapsible water bowl for the park, dog treats, chew toy, and handwritten note)
  • Getting branded polo/hat.
  • SOP's for future employees.
• Build out software stack
  • Jobber
  • G-Suite
  • Squarespace
  • Slack
  • Freshbooks (Accounting)
  • Woodpecker (Email software)
  • Vicky's Virtual Assistant (Call answering service. Any other ideas here?)
• Develop Future Marketing Plan
  • Refine direct marketing plan based off results from launch
  • Refine digital marketing plan (Google, Facebook) based off results from launch
  • Partner with local pet services businesses
  • Partner with local vets
  • Partner with local landscaping businesses (I hear they hate doing yards w/dog poop)
  • Score some local media hits (news, newspaper, etc.)
  • Partner with real estate agents - I provide a free month of service if they pay for a month of service, thus allowing them to offer new home owners 2 months of free service.
  • Wrap Tesla with company branded wrap & get (POOP GUY) custom plates

Costs: $937

• Website - $31
• Flyer: $17
• Domain Name: $24 ($12 for main. $12 for cold emailing)
• G-Suite: $6
• 10,000 mailing addresses (emails included) of dog owners: $900

Revenue: $0

Profit: -$937

 

[mariusk]

@amincitia Can’t wait to see what you can do. Keep us posted!!!

 

[servantanna]

@amincitia I like the idea. I'm looking forward to following along.

A couple of questions...

--What is the actual service? Do you show up to customers' homes and scan the yard for poop?

--What are your expected monthly expenses once you take on customers?

Also...you might see about apartment/condo complexes as customers. I'm sure they have plenty of poop that needs to be scooped and could possibly be a higher price point. Property managers and landlords might be good targets as well.

Good luck!

 

[mollym8505]

@amincitia Where are you located?

 

[mccleary]

@amincitia Looks awesome, can’t wait to see where this goes for you! Tbh you may inspire me to do the same - we’re about the same age and in the same position. Don’t worry, I’m on the east coast so we wouldn’t be competing with each other at all.

Just as a side note - have you looked at or considered Wave for your accounting instead of freshbooks? I only ask because Wave is free while FB charges and also limits the number of billable clients you can have on any specific plan, which could be a problem as you grow.

Good luck, I hope this takes off for you!

 

[raraleesane]

@amincitia For your initial 2000 flyer rest, split it 50/50 enveloped vs postcard style.

 

[jinetakosa]

@amincitia My only concern for you would be that, are you sure there is not much competition? Have you done much research outside of just your friends? Because in my area there are actually a lot of those businesses, and a lot of community management companies will offer the service themselves. It sounds like you have a great plan, but if you're going to invest in wrapped Teslas and stuff, you just might want to make sure the market is there first.

 

[gore2828]

@amincitia Good luck! I think this is one of the best startups you can do in a major metropolitan area. My wife and I have 4 dogs and we have a poop service come twice weekly. We still pick up poop ourselves but it's well worth the money to us top have them come while we're at work and they also spray off the patio and put some sort of disinfectant on it (I think that part is just soap but my wife likes the idea a lot)

 

[runestar]

@amincitia There are some people doing this, but I don't know how successful they are.

I frequently go to an urban area in So Cal where there are no lawns and an apartment complex nearby. The dogs piss all over everything. Light posts, trees, signs, homeless people sleeping, etc. Also, it hardly ever rains here. So there is a visible stain running from the base of every vertical object. Owners pick up the poo under pain of citation or humiliation if they're caught. But nobody does anything about the pee. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, you could get the city or the landlord or someone to pay you to clean that stuff.

The real trick though about this kind of business is to see if/how you can hire people to do the work. Otherwise it will not scale beyond yourself. It's my guess that managing that labor will be the biggest challenge by far. Or maybe you could get an army of these.

If you want to make it a gig thing, like uber for dog shit, that's a whole different discussion. I think you would have to charge a lot more, and then you have to figure out quality control, and more importantly, how to control the transaction after the initial introduction so your platform doesn't get cut out of future transactions.

It's probably a worthwhile pursuit regardless of this next part, but your numbers seem way off to me. 200 clients per week = 40 / day (5 day week) = 5 per hour (8 hour day) = 1 yard every 12 minutes. This seems barely possible even without travel time. And then, when are you going to do marketing etc? Also, you stated about $2000 in marketing costs to acquire 200 customers. A $10 CCA is extremely optimistic, and this doesn't account for your time.

It sounds like you do not have experience with adwords. $500 in google ads is a nothing burger. It can be gone in 10 minutes if you aren't careful. Trust me that this is a whole field of study in and of itself. There aren't a lot of good videos out there because it changes constantly, and a lot of it is pretty specific to each type of business and niche. You will just have to dive in and read whatever you can find and experiment. Be very specific about limiting your spend per day and by geography etc. It will take time and effort to build a proper keyword and negative keyword lists, quality score, ad texts that convert, etc. And much of this is not even so much about the ads, but about the landing page. check out r/PPC

Facebook ads are probably better in your case because they are cheaper and more targeted. And you can get creative with the visuals. But what FB lacks is customer intent. In other words, you are interrupting the viewer instead of being in their face when they are searching for the product or service. So keep that in mind.

 

[qey]

@amincitia your prices seem too low? 200 clients = 40 a day 5 days a week. How are you going to pick up poop from 40 people's lawns a day with just $11000?

 

[jesuisroyal]

@qey At ~11,000/week income, the annual is ~500k.

To service this many people, OP needs at least 5 employees (+himself as a cover for sick calls, etc).

5 employees @ $30k/year plus benefits comes to about $250k in just salary+benefits+payroll tax.

That leaves ~250k to cover expenses like vehicles, supplies, etc. 6 vehicles per year will cost between 30-40k for lease, gas, and maintenance (no depreciation if leased).

Supplies and dump fees will probably be another 30-40k.

At the end of the year, OP may be looking at 170k in profit, which isn't a bad payday, even if you consider saving some money to invest in the business.

Not a bad gig, but lots of work.

 

[jesuisroyal]

@amincitia Hey OP, I stumbled upon your post while doing research for my own startup poop cleaning business. I'm wondering if power equipment can be adapted to pick up poop, like this vacuum: https://www.ramair.co/product/cyclonic-powervac-portable-vacuum-system/

Thoughts?

There might be an issue with poo sticking to the hose, or inside the vacuum ducts.

 

[bear_lady]

@amincitia Awesome. Great write up. Where are you located?

 

[bojan]

@amincitia There is a podcast?

 

[induvdaze]

@amincitia Good luck on your business! As a sidenote, I’d love to hear more about backing out of Harvard Med School. Seems pretty bold,

What was the wrong reason you were pursuing it? Sounds like you want to be your own boss. I’m sure there are a lot of entrepreneurship opportunities that would come with an MD from Harvard.

 

[sorrowsun]

@amincitia What will you do with the poop?

Good luck!

 

[deltoots]

@amincitia No special entrepreneurship experience here but I'd think $12.50 for a pass at an average yard is too inexpensive. I have one 40 lb dog and if someone offered to do my lawn for $20 a week I'd probably go for it. Back when I had 2 dogs, I absolutely would have paid that. I live outside Boston, but I don't think this a geographical issue - it's convenience and handling something no one else wants to do.

Also - what's with the Tesla? Why buy a $40-50K car when you could get a Yaris/Corolla/Jia Soul etc. or anything small with great mileage and have far less of an initial investment. Plus hatchbacks are a better form factor for moving around equipment. I'd think you would want room if you expand (example, add chemical treatments sprayed at poop/pee spots to combat the bad effects they have on grass, etc.)

 

[rscaroline446]

@deltoots No where did it say he bought a tesla for the business. I assume he already had the car. He just said hes going to wrap it.

 

[74rider]

@amincitia Question: are you aware of/thinking of integrating the new roomba-for-dog-poop-your-yard that's come out recently?

 

[harvesters2]

@amincitia I think someone said this already but you should definitely try partnering with dog companies near you and even creating a network so that say you create a flow of referrals and youre giving back as well.