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How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights
How to Start Swoop Scoop: Pet Waste Business That Makes Money on Day One
00:17:51
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- [00:04]
A
Realistically, you can get started with just, like, a bucket and a rake. And if you have. If you have transportation, I guess you could ride your bike or you could walk around, but I probably wouldn't recommend it. You can go out there and start making money within, like, a day.
- [00:18]
B
Welcome back to season two of How Much Can I Make? I'm your host, Mehra Vozeri, and we are kicking off things with a job you absolutely will not believe. Just 32 years old, William Milliken built a $3 million business within just five years. And he did it with an initial investment of only $1,200. You want to know how? By picking up dog poop. Yes. He turned poop into gold, literally. Will is the founder and president of Swoop Scoop, a booming service that picks up your dog poop. So let's find out how he did it. First of all, thank you so much for giving your time and ENJ joining the show.
- [01:01]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
- [01:02]
B
Let's start with the name Swork Scoop, which is very catchy. How did you come up with that?
- [01:07]
A
So we actually started off a different name, and we ended up having to change it because we couldn't get a trademark pushed through. So we ended up just putting, like, five different trademark applications through the the process, and that was the only one that came back. So that's kind of how we ended up with it.
- [01:21]
B
How did you come up with the idea of scooping poop? What's your background?
- [01:25]
A
So my background was in digital marketing. I have a couple other home service companies. I got electrical company, I got a garage door company. And I had a friend that wanted to start a company with me, but he didn't really have any trade skills. He wasn't a plumber, wasn't an H vac, and my wife had ended up hiring a pooper scooper service at the time because she was pregnant. I was just too busy with work, and that's kind of where the idea came from. Had no idea what we were doing. My business partner started off, like, timing himself, scooping rocks in his backyard just to see how long it would take so we could set pricing and stuff. Really just kind of took off from there. But that was kind of how we got it, got it started.
- [01:54]
B
Ever since I read about you and listened to your videos, I started to ask friends of mine with dogs because for me, it's, like, unfathomable that people will pay to clean their lawn. Right. So I started to ask them, would you pay for the service? They all said, In a heartbeat. Were you surprised when people agreed to do it?
- [02:13]
A
A little bit, yeah. Because one of the first things I do when I start a new business is I'll look and see how much like Google search volume there is. So how many people are searching for any particular service? And there was nobody searching for this service when we first started, I was pretty surprised. But once we were able to get the word out, it was just, yeah, people just wanted to sign up. I guess people don't like picking up dog food themselves.
- [02:32]
B
So how did you get the first customer?
- [02:34]
A
First customer we got, we really were grinding it out, just kind of reaching out to friends and families. I think we had some door hangers. We were knocking on doors. We're going to vet clinics and just trying to build relationships that way. So we probably got our first, I don't know, 15, 20 customers or so. And then once we had some cash coming into the business, we started to invest into paid advertising. So Facebook ads in particular were very, very powerful for us. Once we started running Facebook ads, I think we went from 20 to over 300 customers in about three months.
- [03:00]
B
And how long did it take from the idea to the first customer?
- [03:03]
A
Probably by the time we got all the business license and all that stuff set up, maybe, I don't know, maybe like four or five weeks.
- [03:08]
B
How many customers does one need in order to make it a full time job?
- [03:12]
A
So one technician or owner operator, they can, they can handle up to about 150 clients by themselves, which is a pretty, pretty good income. Our average client pays us around $110 a month right now. And there's not that many expenses in the business if you're just running it by yourself and you don't have any employees. So I mean, realistically, I mean you could replace your income with 60, 70 CL for most, most folks out there.
- [03:32]
B
You go to a customer twice a week. Once a week, yeah.
- [03:37]
A
So it works on a subscription model. So we have different subscriptions based on how many dogs you have and what service frequency you want. So if we come out, we'll either come out twice a week, once a week, once every other week, or once a month, kind of depending on whatever the customer's budget is and how often they use their yard. And that's really all there is to it. We show up, we scoop the poop and we leave. It's as simple as it gets.
- [03:56]
B
How long does it take you to do a yard roughly?
- [03:58]
A
I think the average yard is around seven minutes.
- [04:01]
B
What do you need to start a business?
- [04:02]
A
Like realistically, you can get started with just like a bucket and a rake. And if you have, if you have transportation, I guess you could ride your bike or you could walk around, but I probably wouldn't recommend it, but really just need a bucket and a rake. And then we also highly recommend that you get some like disinfectant so you could spray down your equipment in between each yard so you're not spreading like Barbo or anything like that, the dogs. So technically you could start for a couple hundred bucks if you want to get your LLC and all your legal stuff. And obviously that's a little bit more. But as far as like the bare bones, what you need to get started for a couple hundred bucks.
- [04:32]
B
Wow. And you turned your business into a million dollar business. But we'll get to it in a minute because you have a side hustle sort of with all your members, which was very impressive. One of our listener, Maria David from New York sent me a few questions. She wanted to know, have you ever got bitten by a dog?
- [04:50]
A
I haven't been bitten by a dog. I actually haven't even scooped myself. So I started with a business partner that was doing all the scooping, but he has been bitten by a dog a couple of times. Unfortunately, it's pretty rare when it happens. I was running through the numbers, it happens about once every 20,000 yards that we cle. Most of the time when it does happen, it's if there's like a kid or something that like lets out a dog that's not supposed to be outside. Well, we're in the yard kind of a thing.
- [05:12]
B
Right now you're only on the west coast, right?
- [05:14]
A
Yeah, we're in, yeah, North Idaho, eastern Washington. And we're also in Seattle, Everett, and then we just opened up in Tacoma.
- [05:20]
B
But how can you protect your idea? Anybody could do it, right?
- [05:23]
A
I mean, at the end of the day, it's not rocket science, it's just picking up dog poop. So I feel like it's more of an execution thing. Right. So it'd be really hard for somebody to come into our market and become bigger than us just because of how much brand recognition that we have now we also have a full team. We have a lot more resources. We got ops manager, we got a marketing manager, we got finance people. So it's really hard for somebody to come in that's starting their first business and kind of compete with a business like that. We got, I don't know, close to 1500 five star reviews across our location.
- [05:49]
B
So I know I Saw that.
- [05:51]
A
Yeah. So there's definitely a brand moat. And then I think the biggest thing is just that, the execution. Right. So I know there's a guy in New York, he calls himself the. The king of poop. He owns a company called Scooby Doo over on Long Island. So he's got about a thousand clients himself over there.
- [06:06]
B
Whoa.
- [06:06]
A
He's been in it for over. I think he just hit his 25th year, which was cool.
- [06:10]
B
And how do you deal with season when it snows? I don't know if it snows where you are.
- [06:15]
A
Our first location, it does snow. Our second location, it doesn't snow. We actually clean all year round. So when it does snow, most of the waste just stays on the top of the snow, so it makes it really easy to pick up. And then when the snow melts, I call it peak poop pain season. So people have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months worth of snow that just melts off in their backyard's, like, totally disgusting. That's actually when we get probably 70, 80% of our clients for the whole year is kind of during that. We call it the spring rush.
- [06:40]
B
Every business has its good season. Do you only do loans or apartment complexes also?
- [06:45]
A
Yeah, so we'll work with homeowners associations, some commercial buildings, some apartment complexes. So we'll actually go and install those, like, pet waste stations that have, like, the bags and the garbage can. So we'll install those, and then we'll also clean up, like, after apartment complexes and stuff like that. It's not a huge part of our business, but definitely, we definitely get calls for that coming in.
- [07:06]
B
What is the biggest challenge of this job?
- [07:08]
A
The biggest challenge? We had a lot of challenges over the years. It kind of varies depending on the season. When we first started off, it was all trying to figure out, like, how to hire people efficiently, how to keep people working for the company. So that was a big challenge when we first started. Another challenge, especially when you get bigger, is managing, like, your customer churn. So, like, how many customers are canceling every month? So as you get bigger, maybe you only have a 4, 4% churn, but you got a couple thousand clients. You're losing over 100 customers every single month that you got to replace to stay the same size. That's probably the biggest thing that we're always battling, especially with the subscription basis. Just how do we reduce our customer churn?
- [07:44]
B
Why do people leave? They move away or they decide they can pick up themselves?
- [07:49]
A
Yeah, a lot of it. People will move away. Their dog passes away. Oh, a lot of people will cancel during the summertime, which is actually the opposite of what I thought. I thought the summertime was going to be the busiest time of the year. But a lot of people go on vacation. Their kids are home from school. They try to make their kids do it. So for us, the worse the weather gets, the busier it is for us. So, like quarter four and quarter one is like the busiest times for us. People don't want to go outside.
- [08:13]
B
Nothing like benefiting from people's laziness. I must ask you, though, what do you do with the poop?
- [08:19]
A
Yeah. So yeah, this one comes up a lot. There's a couple of options. So, unfortunately, dog poop isn't really good for anything that I know of right now. So, like, if you try to use it as fertilizer or anything like that, it'll just kill your grass. So you gotta dispose of it. So at our first location, we just have a deal with waste management. We got some big dumpsters, and then they come and they take it. And I think, honestly, I think they just like incinerate it. I don't know. It's not. Not good. And then we realized that a lot of our customers actually didn't care if we took the waste away. So, like over in our Seattle location, we'll just double bag it and we'll put it in the customer's trash can. That's pretty much it. So it saves us a lot of money. We don't gotta buy these big trucks. We don't have to get all these dumpsters. It's just a lot, a lot more efficient for the business.
- [08:58]
B
And client doesn't mind that you put the poop in their garbage?
- [09:02]
A
No, I mean, that's where they were going to put it anyways, or had been putting it anyways.
- [09:05]
B
So I saw that you have something very interesting. You have 900 members. Could you explain this to me a little bit?
- [09:12]
A
Yes. We have an online community called the Poop Scoop Millionaire. So we were looking at ways to expand Swoop Scoop ourselves. We looked at franchising. We looked at just opening more locations. We looked at buying up other companies. I didn't really feel like franchising offered enough value. And there wasn't really any other companies that we could acquire. So we decided to kind of put out all the information that we use to grow our own company, Swoop Scoop, just out on an online community. We basically just walk people through how to start the business. So what tools to buy, how to do your marketing, all the equipment, all that kind of stuff is going to be there on that community. The goal is really to make the industry a more well known industry, more of a mainstream industry. So get more people searching for the industry which is just going to help all the different companies throughout the country. We even got people all over the world. We got people in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Canada. So it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of crazy. It took off a lot more than I expected it to. Wow.
- [10:01]
B
If somebody want to start this business, what the best advice you could give them?
- [10:06]
A
Yeah, I think the best advice is to just get out there and start. I see all the time, especially in the community, people try to get the perfect logo and they'll try to get the perfect website and they'll try to get the perfect like whatever. And they never actually go out and get customers, which is what it's all about. Right. If you don't have customers, you don't have cash flow. And if you don't have cash flow, you don't really have a business. So I would say just go out there and get started, like whatever it takes, get your first 1, 2, 3, 5 customers and then start to kind of dial in those other things. But if you don't, if you don't get started, you're just not, not going.
- [10:34]
B
To go anywhere right now. You started the business in 2020, correct?
- [10:38]
A
Yeah. Right at the end of 2020, right in the middle of the COVID with.
- [10:42]
B
Little, very little investment, you got to million dollar. I mean just tell me what is the potential of this business, money wise?
- [10:50]
A
Definitely big potential. I think we're one of the, we're one of the bigger companies in the space obviously. I think we' over $3 million this year.
- [10:57]
B
What? Yo.
- [10:59]
A
Yeah.
- [10:59]
B
That is amazing.
- [11:01]
A
Yeah, thank you. So and then we actually made, we made the Inc. 5000 list. So we were the sixth fastest consumer service business in the country. Also on the ink list.
- [11:10]
B
Oh my God. This is, this is shocking. It's in five years you did all of that.
- [11:15]
A
And so now it's getting to the point where it's like, okay, we really got our systems dialed in. We got our next layer of management dialed in. So I'm not really doing anything day to day in the business. I'm not scooping, I'm not even running our marketing. I'm not even hiring people anymore. We other people to do that. So now it's going to be a point of how many locations can we just basically copy paste and open up in new cities you have to buy.
- [11:35]
B
The cars for them. Or you could just put somebody in business with a bicycle, like you said.
- [11:41]
A
Yeah, I don't recommend. There's a lot of people out there that will just get. Instead of hiring full time employees, they'll get like 1099 and they'll make people drive their cars. So you can get started even if you don't have a car. I personally like to buy all our vehicles so that we can put those wraps on them because it's a pretty core element of our marketing. But if you're not taking the waste, you can literally go out and buy a $5,000 car that gets decent gas mileage, that maybe it's a little bit older, throw a wrap on it, nobody can tell that it's an old car, and you can go out there and get started.
- [12:06]
B
What would you say was the smartest marketing thing you did?
- [12:09]
A
We did a lot of not smart marketing things.
- [12:13]
B
Like what?
- [12:14]
A
There's a Pizza Hut right across the street from our office, and we thought it would be a great idea to put our Poop Scoop coupons on Pizza Hut boxes. So I think we spent like $5,000 putting like flyers out on Pizza Hut boxes. And we signed up zero customers.
- [12:26]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [12:31]
A
Probably the best thing that we did was we wrapped all of our vehicles so all of our trucks have full wraps. They're like kind of the teal blue of Swoop Scoop. They all got our logo on it. They got our phone number on it. We get hundreds of customers signing up every year just from our truck wraps alone. But we got like 25 vehicles rolling around that are wrapped now, which is nice.
- [12:48]
B
So that you think was the smartest thing to do?
- [12:51]
A
I think that is one of the smartest things to do because not only did we get people calling in right off the wraps, more people started googling the service. So we show up on Google, which helps our Facebook ads, that we actually took pictures of our real team standing in front of our real truck. Those always seem to perform the best as well.
- [13:06]
B
Where do you see the business going in the next five to 10 years?
- [13:09]
A
It's definitely growing, especially since we started coming out and doing podcasts and doing our YouTube videos and things like that. I think just over the last year, searches are up over 180%, which is nice. I think it's definitely going to become a more mainstream service. Right. People search for house cleaning and lawn care and all that stuff. So my, my hope is that it'll be kind of up in that arena where people know that It's a service that's available to them because like you said, you probably talked to all friends. They're like, I had no idea this was a thing, but I would totally pay for that. So it's really just getting the. Getting the awareness out there because people want it. They just don't know that it's a service, that it exists. So I think it's going to continue to grow pretty exponentially for our company. Specifically, our goal is to get to 10 million within the next three years, which I think that we should be able to do now that we structure in place. But, yeah, that's kind of. That's kind of where we're going and I think where the industry is going.
- [13:53]
B
So is your dream eventually to have an exit for somebody to buy your business?
- [13:57]
A
Maybe. I mean, I'm pretty. I'm only 32 right now, so I got to find something to do. If I sell my business and retire, I'll probably die early. I don't know if that's a good idea. But I think. I think the goal is always to have a valuable business just so you have those options. Right.
- [14:11]
B
What's your favorite part of the business? The money.
- [14:15]
A
Yeah, I like money. I'm definitely not passionate about dog poop, so I guess I don't want people to get confused about that. I know for me, it's just kind of interesting to see how big we could take picking up dog poop, honestly.
- [14:26]
B
So everybody asked. They thought it was a great idea. It is obviously a great business idea. The way you grew it in five years, it's shocking.
- [14:33]
A
Yeah, yeah. Like that slow cost. There's definitely some upside. You don't have any, like, cost of goods sold. It's a lot easier to hire employees. Like, I got an electrical company where I gotta find guys that have like 8,000 hours and all these journeyman licenses and stuff. I can just hire somebody to scoop dog poop. It's like a lot easier to scale this company and then other companies.
- [14:50]
B
If somebody starts the business through you, do they have to pay you anything?
- [14:54]
A
Nope. It's literally 69 bucks a month. And we'll basically teach you everything we know to get to the point that we did. It's a pretty good offer. If you wanted to buy into like a franchise or something like that. You're paying 50 grand to 100 grand just like in franchise fees and getting set up and doing all the stuff. And then you have to listen to what they say.
- [15:10]
B
But this way they just learn from you and then they go on their own.
- [15:13]
A
Yep, exactly. And I mean, that's kind of the whole point of the industry, right? It's, you don't need a giant investment to get into this and actually start making money. And it's been pretty life changing for a lot of people that weren't happy at their jobs. They were able to get in there and get 100, 150, 200 clients and leave their job and have their own business.
- [15:29]
B
I know, I read some of the reviews of your that side of your business and they were raving this. They are independent now. They're making great money. They were like raving. And you have a lot of hundreds of members. That's fantastic.
- [15:41]
A
Yeah, it's been cool. We even did a in person event out in coeur d', Alene, Idaho. So we had like over 100 companies fly out called ScoopCon, which was cool. So that was, that was actually pretty crazy. It took me like an hour and a half just to walk through the lobby because everybody was like trying to stop and talk to me and stuff. So that was kind of cool. But that was just our first year online, so we'll see what happens a few years down the road, but yeah, it's definitely been booming more than I expected it to.
- [16:05]
B
Yeah. It surprised you, huh?
- [16:06]
A
Yeah, it did. I was like, okay, I gotta not let this go to my head. You're just getting started, right?
- [16:12]
B
It's crazy.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah.
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B
The opportunity that in 2020 you could still find a brand new business that nobody ever did. This is fantastic. Yeah, I really commend you for that. Take my head off.
- [16:24]
A
I appreciate, I appreciate that. I know I always kind of say, like, if you're thinking about starting a business and you've been thinking about it for years and years, you're not willing to start like this business because it's so simple, you're probably not even gonna start one. You know what, I. You can go out there and start making money within like a day.
- [16:38]
B
So if someone wants to start a scooping business, where can they find you?
- [16:42]
A
Yeah, so if you want to just kind of check it out before you commit too much, we have a free YouTube channel. And so if you just search like dog poop business will pop up. We got like 400 videos on there. And if you really want to dive in, we have our online community called Poop Scoop Millionaire. That's where we have all our courses. We have the live trainings. We got like 8, 900 other companies in there that you can ask questions to. And then the other cool thing about this community was that it got so big that we were able to go out and start negotiating discounts on stuff. So if you join, you can actually get discounts on software and equipment and things like that. Unofficial association. So we're starting to get some buying power. So it's actually cheaper to be in there if you use the discounts than an even cost, which is cool.
- [17:17]
B
That is really great. I'm going to put in the show notes all the links for people to know exactly where to go to get in touch with you and get into business and start making money.
- [17:26]
A
Yeah, that sounds good. I appreciate your time.
- [17:28]
B
Sure. Thank you very much.
- [17:30]
A
Yeah, have a great day.
- [17:31]
B
You too. Bye. Bye. That's a wrap for today. I don't know about you, but Will really reminded me that the opportunity community is everywhere, even in places I never thought of. If you like the show, please leave us a review. It really helps. And until next time, stay curious. See you next week.