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I named my YouTube channel Croupin's Poopin Scoopin after my actual pooper scooper business. And I think that was a mistake. So if you're interested in hearing all about that, stay tuned.
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Welcome to the Scoop with Erica Crouppen. Your host is the owner of Krupen's Poopin Scoopin. She's built a six figure dog waste removal business and loves talking a little crap with like minded folks. Starting and growing a small business can be scary, but Erica wants to share some tips and tricks that she picked up along the way as she continues her entrepreneurial journey. She hopes this podcast will educate and inspire you to think outside the corporate box and do something a little crappy like scoop dog poop. And now here's Erica.
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And before we hop into it, we're gonna talk about the show's sponsors. Because that's the other thing that I don't do good enough is I don't really promote the sponsors as good as I should. I need to do better by them. They didn't tell me this. I just know. I just know that I need to do better and I know I can do better. So first things first, Jobber. That's the field management software that I use to run, grow and manage my small, hopefully not so small pooper scooper business. Stay tuned to the end of the year. We'll see what the revenue was Last year I ended at $247,000 and we'll see what we end at this year. I also have a relationship with a poop scoop millionaire. Why was that so hard to get out? Goodness gracious. The poop scoop millionaire community over on school is where a lot of, a lot of pooper scoopers are hanging out. A lot of new people, a lot of OGs. They have an entire course built out, several courses actually, for everything and anything that you need to know about pooper scooper business. It is step by step and it's a whole community. And they also just released PSM services where they're doing Google Ads, Facebook ads, and you can build a website as well. Tanner has actually been running my Facebook ads for spring rush. And I'll tell you what, I almost didn't run Facebook ads because last year I wasted a ton of money on ads and I don't want no part of it. But I decided to link up with Tanner. He walked me through it. He's like, send me over these kind of pictures because this is what performs well. I know what performs well. Cause I don't when it comes to ads. And he just handled it from there. And I picked up over 33 reoccurring customers. And a lot of times I had the hardest time with Facebook ads because like I said, they were just tire kickers. So I'm super stoked. All the links will be down below. And then most recently, I partnered with Quo because that is the phone software that I'm using for my business. I just had a physical phone. We'll pretend like this is the physical phone. I just had that, and I was the only one answering it. And I was a super big bottleneck with the amount of money that I put into ads. And I knew I was gonna put into ads. I needed other people to answer the phone. And when you put $17,000 in ads, you're gonna get a lot of leads, you're gonna get a lot of texts, a lot of phone calls, a lot, a lot, a lot of everything. And I did. And I'm really glad that I had started using Quo. And they are a new sponsor partner of the channel. And then an unofficial partner of the channel is Review Harvest. And the only reason why it's unofficial is cause we don't have a contract signed. So. But I've been working with Clay for a very long time. Clay has taken me from somewhere in the high hundreds, like maybe low 200 of Google reviews, and now I'm up to almost 600. We provided the excellent service Clay and his software with Review Harvest, facilitated the reviews and did the follow ups and did all of those good things and all these things in business. Frees me up to be able to work on other things such as my social media business. You want to know how many pieces of content I produce per month? I will tell you. I record either four or five podcast episodes. Those go onto the podcast and they also go onto the YouTube channel. I record four to five long form videos for Poop Scoop Millionaire, depending if there's four weeks or five weeks. Okay. Then if I have time, I will record a Wednesday episode, a dedicated Wednesday episode that does not go on the podcast, that has kind of slipped through the cracks, but I would like to at least to be able to do two of those per month. Okay. And then I have a dedicated jobber video that I produce once a month. And then I will also have a dedicated Quo video that I will produce once a month. And then on top of that short form content, I like to post at least one piece of short form content on my Instagram and. And sometimes I post three. And that's A mixture of a reel, a carousel or static post or a picture. And that's just my social media. That's not including KPS social media. KPS social media. Actually, I don't actually post any of that stuff anymore. That has been sourced out. Stephanie does all of that. So May is creating all that content for me and Stephanie is posting it. So I have definitely figured some stuff out there. It is. It's impossible for one person to do all of this and that's why you don't have to do everything. So I'm just letting you know that this is a full blown business and there's a lot of moving parts and I have to get super organized. And I want to talk about, I want to talk about the beginning days because I really. If you are thinking about doing this content creation thing and you see me or you see other content creators out there and you're like, oh, they're killing it. And I am like, I'm doing great. I think I made seven. I think it was 78. No, 74,000. I don't know. What's the number? I can't remember. I talked about it on last week's episode. 73,000 and some change. That's good money. That's good money, right? If I needed to live off that, I totally could live off that. Right. I do need to get my spending in check because I like to try new things and travel and all of that stuff. But having said that, I think it could be better. And I don't want to say that I'm ungrateful because I'm very much so not ungrateful, but it could be better. So let's talk about the beginning days. I left my hospital job and I wanted to create a YouTube channel. I think I might have already created a YouTube channel and called it Croupin's Poopin Scooping. Because I didn't know. I didn't know what to call it. I'm like, I'm just gonna call it the business name. Okay. And at this time, I think I was already posting content on my personal Facebook page. I was already doing some type of content. Cause I was already in like a content creation space, getting familiar with it from selling jewelry with premier Designs. Because during, I think it was before COVID I started doing a lot more in home shows, like online shows where I would just stream from my dining room to people in a party and I would sell overpriced jewelry. That's the truth. And that really taught me a lot with video and how to communicate and the importance of it. So as soon as I started my business, I knew I didn't have no money. I had no money. So I knew I needed to create video to be able to get the content and get everything out there and reach people. Okay. So with the YouTube channel, I just named it as my business name and then I started documenting my journey. Well, as time has gone on, I've wanted to veer around. Like, I'm like, I don't wanna just talk about poop scooping content. Like there's so much more to me. Like I've done vlogs, I have, I don't know, I've talked about other stuff and I can tell what you guys like and what you don't like. You really enjoy the truck talks. You really enjoy out in the field content. Like you really, really like that stuff. So I see, I see what hits, I see what performs. Good. And so with me wanting to veer off because I'm like, there's more to me than just the spoop scooping thing. But I've built up this brand is like Erica Krupin, Krupin's Poopin Scoopin. If I would have done it differently, I wouldn't have named, I would not have named my channel Krupin's Poopin Scoopin. But the thing is, is like, it has such a ring to it with the name it almost has and like the pink and all of it, it's like a vibe, right? It's a whole brand, it's a whole thing. So I think it did serve because people just love the name, they love the pink, they love all of it. They lose their minds, which is amazing. I've built something sticky. Built something sticky. But for the sake of separating the business, right? The person that I'm speaking to of, they want service, They're a homeowner, they want poop scooping service. They want to know how I can help them. Okay, versus you. I'm speaking with you. You want to start a pooper scooper business or you have started a pooper scooper business, how can I help you? Those are two very different avatars, right? A huge shout out to today's episode sponsor, Jobber. The number one operations management software, home service business owners. Jobber is the software I use to run, grow and manage my small pooper scooper business. Jobber helps me handle the admin tasks quicker so I can focus on growing my business and getting more me time back. From creating custom quotes all the way to getting paid, my Money Jobber has my back. Yeah, we're pretty much best friends, but if I had to choose my favorite feature, I'd say the mobile app. I can create the quotes, edit the jobs, communicate with customers, and keep my eye on the staff right from my phone. If you're a home service entrepreneur looking to level up your business, look more professional and save time, head over to jobber.com cruppen to start your 14 day free trial and get 20% off your first six months with my special link. Now let's get back to the Scoop. Two extremely different avatars. So if I would have named the channel something else, like Erica Poop Scoop or like Poop Scoop for noobs, his channel, Poop Scoop for Noobs, it's like Poop Scooping for new people, right? So he. I feel like he did it right. I feel like he did it right with a name. So then that way I could have a YouTube channel. Just focus like, okay, that name, whatever the clever name is. Because there's a people out there that have the Instagram handle. That's like Lexi the electrician. I talked about her in my last video. She's the cute electrician that, like really serves it. There's Jess H Vac Detail Groove. That's Oscar, you know, so it doesn't actually have their business name in it, but it has what they do. Courtney over on TikTok. I think hers is like Courtney Pooper Scooper or Poop Scoop Girl or something of that nature. And I like that. So then that way I could have had Croupin's poop and scooping YouTube channel. That could just be like videos from specifically talking to potential customers, educating potential customers, creating awareness in the local community, which would've been super helpful because AI is pulling from YouTube videos right now. That's where AI is getting most of their information from. Like Google Search is dying. Google's trying to figure all of that out, but AI is really pulling from YouTube. So it would have been nice to have that and then have like my content, a YouTube channel, been called something else. And that way, like, you know, the podcast can live underneath it. Erica's personal brand can live underneath it, all of it. I'm actually thinking about renaming the YouTube channel, but we'll see. I don't know if I should. I'm not making any hasty decisions, but the conversation has been had. I'm just trying to figure out what the next move is, just for clarity. Okay. And the same thing goes with when you're posting on Instagram I wanted to be able to be a little bit lazy when it came to my content creation and just post on one, just one platform, right? That's kind of what my personal Facebook is. That'll get business stuff, that'll get tips that it gets behind the scenes. It gets my faith, it gets my, what is it called, like, fitness journey, all of that. Cause that's like building up my personal brand, the Erica Kruipen personal brand. Well, my personal Facebook, like got a ping on it for a copyright strike. So I created a. Another personal brand, Erica Krueppen, where it's called like, I don't know, the original or the. I can't remember what it's called. Erica Kruipen. So then that way if my other one gets taken down, I'm already building up another one because you got to be careful. Facebook is stupid. And my Facebook is attached to all my businesses. So I have to be super careful with what I post and how I post it, and copyrighted pictures and copyrighted music, all of that stuff. So I just want to be lazy and just post everything in one spot. And that's kind of what I did with my Krupen's Poop and Scooping Instagram and business page is I was kind of just posting everything in one. And when I would share my stuff on social media, I would tag the Croupens, Poop and Scoop and business page. And that just, it caused like too much confusion because that Facebook page is for local exposure. That is for my local community, for them to see me, for them to want to use our service or learn more or share, share what we're doing. But if I'm posting like business tips on there like regularly, that's, that's not good. Like every once in a while, like behind the scenes stuff is good, but with the amount of content that I am making and cranking out over on YouTube and have the potential to, with like all the tools that you're able to repurpose. And it would have just been insane. And I think for a short period of time it did. It got really, really muddy over there. And so I pulled back and I'm like, I don't even know where I'm supposed to be posting at, what is it that I'm doing? Because at the end of the day, the poop scooping stuff, I'm not, it's not glamorous, right? It's just here, here, here's our services, here's what we do, here's our community. And I Wanted to keep it very simple over there. So over the past, like chunk of time, I have been really just kind of struggling and dragging my feet on posting on different platforms. But it's the truth. At the end of the day, it's two separate businesses. So you have to run two separate Instagrams, two separate Facebooks. Same thing with the podcast. I started an Instagram and a Facebook for the podcast. I'm like, I can't do three. So all of that has to go under my, my personal brand. That's. That is literally what I have decided. I'm going to start building myself up as a personal brand. And I already kind of have. Right. It's just I've been doing the thing. That's why it's always Erica Croupin with Croupin's Poopin scooping, making that connection. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. To be able to separate. So now that we're like 15 minutes into this. Okay, this is, I guess, let me look at my notes to see if there's anything. Java. Sorry, hold on a second. My dog, my old senior citizen dog, she's a cardiac patient. She's so needy. My other part time job, I have another part time job. Letting her outside so she can come back in. Letting her outside so she can come back in. And then when she comes in here, putting her on the bed because she can't jump up on the bed anymore because she's an old lady. To jump off the bed. And then I put her on the bed. Okay, you get the gist. The first thing I want you to think of when you're like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do this content thing. Okay, great. Do it, do it. It's gonna be a grind. How much time are you going to dedicate to it? Consistent time. I'm not playing around. How many times? How much? One day a week. Nope, not enough. Not enough. I mean, maybe, maybe it's enough for you, not for me. I need seven days because you have to prepare, you have to plan, you have to record, you have to edit, you have to schedule, you have to post, and you have to promote that. I dropped the ball with the promoting. Oh, my gosh. I have so much content that you guys have only seen once, or many of you have probably never even seen it because I'm so bad at promoting. It's like one and done. Stupid. So, so stupid. How much time can you dedicate? I have to dedicate at minimum seven days a month. At minimum seven days a Month, maybe even ten days a month to social media content. And like I said, that's with figuring out what I want to create, figuring out the cadence. It's going to be posted, where it's going to be posted, kind of scripting it out a little bit so I can stay on track. Because I'm a rambler, actually physically recording it, editing it, or uploading it to my editor for her to go to, schedule out, look at it and approve it, have it be posted, respond back to comments, and then. And then publicly put it out. Publicly put it out there. Okay, so figure out how much time, what days, how are you gonna do it? Then figure out who it is that you want to talk to. Why are you just a lifestyle creator? You just want to share your experience? What's the reason you just want to talk? Because that was me in the beginning. I just want to talk now. I want to talk and make money, which I am doing, because this gets tiring, you know? So it's like, what's the trade off? It's taking time away from a family, but we can go on pretty cool trips and stay in really nice hotels and fly first class every so often. You know, little things like that and be able to give back. I don't really like to talk about that kind of stuff. Even though I should. I should talk about it. The giving back portion. I feel like I'm not doing enough. I feel like I could always be doing more, but I definitely am not one to skip over something that tugs on my heart. I will cut that check so quick. If you were my husband, you'd be like, oh, my gosh. Every so often, something will hit me, and I'll be like, josh. So there's this thing, and I think we should give them some money. And he'll be like, how much? I'll be like, what are you thinking now? He's like, what are you thinking? I'll be like, what do you think I'm thinking? And he'll be like, a thousand dollars. And I'm like, yes, yes. I think that would be perfect. I think that that would allow that person to not have to work for a full week and maybe two weeks so they can grieve the loss of their wife and figure out what's going on with their children. Stuff like that. Okay. When you start making money, you're able to help people. And sometimes I do it at the detriment of myself and some. I mean, we're never gonna be homeless or anything. Well, I don't want to Say that. All I'm saying is we don't. I don't put myself in a situation where it's like oof. But you know, sometimes I'm like, ooh, you know, I didn't budget as well as I should have. We're off topic. Refocus. Erica, where are you posting your content and who you're talking to and why? Are you going to strictly just be talking about business, business, business. Are you going to be more open ended where you talk about tactical business stuff? Are you showing the behind the scenes? Are you also like with myself, this encompassing like a business owner? Here's my experiences so you can see what it's like. I will say it gets diluted if you show just tactical boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That stuff performs better. Okay, where are you gonna be posting it? On YouTube. YouTube is more evergreen content, right? And so you can yap more. It lasts there for a long time. If you wanna do short form content, say for instance, here's an example. Tools for your pooper scooper business to make $100,000 a year. You wouldn't show all of the tools in one video. You would break it up into like a six part series and show like each additional tool. That's what I learned over this weekend because I don't really understand short form content too much. But Oscar really broke it down for me and opened my eyes. I said okay, all right, I was overthinking it. Sounds good to me. Okay, so you're thinking about all that. You have your name figured out, figure out a name. I really suggest not using your business name. Come up with like your alter ego or even your name. Like that's what I'm doing now. I already have the Scoop podcast. I have, she built that. I have Krupen's Poopin Scoopin', I have KPS Media. All of that's gonna live underneath Erica Kruipen on my website when my website's finally done all of it. Okay, where are you posting then? It's the cadence. How often are you going to be posting? This is the biggest thing when you are trying to get brand sponsors is how often you are posting and planning it out too. So say for instance, if you want to post five days a week, what are you going to post on those days? That that's what you really have to figure out. And that's what I have written here on this piece of paper. Here's an example. So like Monday my podcast drops on YouTube, right? So that's Monday morning. It goes on YouTube and it actually goes on the podcast. And then from the podcast we pull three clips, we rip three clips from that and those get uploaded onto the YouTube channel. Realistically I should be taking those and posting those on my Erica Kruippen Instagram. That goes over to Facebook. I haven't been doing that. I used to post them on Croupin's Poopin Scoopin business page and that was stupid, got too muddy. And then on Monday also too I would want to post maybe like a static post or a carousel and then definitely a story. I definitely want to share a story with a link that's going to promote the episode. Then on Tuesday I could post like a brand sponsorship with a shared link to the sponsor. Then on Wednesday I would want to do something else. Because you don't want to post two sponsors back to back. You want to give them some breathing room. So you have to like paste that stuff out. And you definitely don't want to post two sponsors in the same day. You got to give them breathing room. So figuring out what your cadence is, what you're going to post, who you're going to post to and just sticking to it. I have over complicated all of it. You know, I really have. And that's just how my brain operates. Do you want to launch or grow your poop or scooper business? If you answered yes, then you have to check out the Poop Scoop Millionaire community created by Will Milliken, the president of a seven figure dog waste removal business, Swoop Scoop. You will gain access to the same strategies he used to scale his business from zero to over 2,000 reoccurring customers in just three years. Community members will receive exclusive access to his community forums with industry leaders, business courses are running, Facebook ads, commercial services and so much more. You'll get downloadable Pooper Scooper documents, live coachings and trainings, and access to verified one on one coaches and vendors that is a perfect fit for you. Including a gold level Google product expert that can help you with all of your Google troubles. Space is limited so please join Poop Scoop millionaires today@skooled.com or click my link down in the description. Your content is really built around you. You are the content creator. I want you to think about this with your business. If you are somebody that has grown your business, you know that they can go out and they can scoop probably better than you. Like my scoopers are way more efficient than me. I found somebody that can answer the phones way better than me, right with the content. It's you, baby. Like, you are the personality, you are the talent. You are the person that somebody is coming here to watch and listen to. And if you don't believe that's true, if you really think that you can outsource that, I would love for you if you have not if you don't know who Brett Cooper is. Brett Cooper used to run the comment section over on the Daily Wire. There was beef, there was drama. That happened sometime last year. She left the Daily Wire and they tried to replace the host. They tried to replace Brett Cooper with Regan Conrad, which was her producer. And also Reagan was the best woman in Brett's wedding. Basically, Brett left. They replaced Brett with. With Reagan, thinking that nobody was going to care because it was the same format, pretty much the same exact, like, setup in the back. They just changed the tone and the color, the same delivery, the same edit style, the same everything, just a different host. The comment section is garbage. It is plummeted. Brett Cooper used to get, like, each video would do, like, millions of views. Reagan, I don't. Reagan can't pull views to save her life, even if they put money behind it. Because, yes, some of these content creators, they have these videos that are like outliers and really pop. They're putting Google Ads behind those videos. And you want to know how you can tell? You go to that video and you look at the comments to see if the comments are equivalent to like a million views, right? So if you have a video that has a million views and they only have like 5,000 comments, 2,000 comments, they bought those views because there was a content creature creator that made a video and it popped. And so I was like, well, I'm do that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do the same kind of video. Nothing. And then I learned what I learned. I was like, oh, oh, there was ad dollars put behind that video to push that out. Hmm. Interesting. I'm not saying that it's wrong. I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm just saying it's interesting perspective, right? There's things that you don't know about the content creation until you know and then you see how the game works type deal. I say all that to say that you have to be on the grind. You have to be on the hustle. People, when they develop a connection, they want to see you, okay? They want to see you for whatever it is that you bring to the table. Your business page. Keep your business page for your local business page. Really don't cross Promote. Don't get too mushy, don't get too muddy. Keep it focused. The content on there really needs to be. How is this going to benefit a local customer? If you do create something on your content creation side for your personal brand that could provide value for the local customer? Sure. I suggest keeping that really to a minimum. Unless you do skits. If you do like, funny skits, I feel like that's a whole different ball game. I don't do that kind of stuff. I'm not funny. Your branded content, it really is your personality, your journey, your expertise. You're giving it, you're giving it to the audience. And then on here it says you can mention croupins all day, just don't make it the name of the brand. What is that supposed to mean? What is that supposed to mean? This is in ChatGPT. I'm using a different one. Clawd. What does that mean, Claude? Oh, well, I am Croupin Spoopin Scoopin'. I'm Erica with Croupin' Spoopin' Scoopin'. Like, that's it. And that's okay. That's okay. I'm okay with that. I am the poop scooping lady that started a business and from that was able to leverage it into a media company. I was able to leverage it into speaking engagements and being an authority within my space and even like a little mini local celebrity in my area. I ran into one of our subscribers at Meijer. He's like, I watch you on YouTube. I said, me? You watch me on YouTube? That was so cool. He got to say hi. I met him and his girlfriend. Awesome sauce. And then to close it, Do your homework, decide what you're going to post, where you're going to post, get your brand identity, you know, who are you going to show up as online and just work that, work that for a while and make sure you just schedule enough time and put enough time to the side to make sure that you're able to make this happen. Enough planning time. Because if not, you'll be beating your head against the wall. And a lot of podcasters don't really make it. I think it passed their seventh episode. I think. I think that's what it is. Maybe I'm off on that statistic. Mr. Producer had texted me that a while ago, but I can't remember it fully. But yeah, they don't make it. They don't make it more than three months because it takes a long time. And it's a whole thing like talking to yourself and talking to a camera and setting up a camera in public places to record content. It's embarrassing. You'll be humbled really quick. All right. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. If you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel and you're not following me over on Instagram under Erica Krupen, please go ahead and follow me. And if you want to support the channel, you want to click any of the links, those links will be down below. Until next time, bye.
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Thank you for hanging out with Erica Kruipen. She is so grateful and honored you decided to tune in to the Scoop podcast and hopes the information you heard today positively impacts you moving forward in business and life. Follow Erica on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @CroupInSpoopin Scoopin. And don't forget to follow the show in order to get notified when the next edition of the Scoop drops.
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Sam.