April 22, 2025 • 50 mins
Will transformed his background in digital marketing to create a thriving dog waste removal business, turning a simple concept into a multi-million dollar enterprise within just a few years. His journey proves that finding underserved niches and applying sound business principles can create extraordinary opportunities even in seemingly ordinary services.
• Started with digital marketing background before realizing owning service businesses would be more profitable
• Launched an electrical company that hit $1M in revenue within six months
• Created Swoop Scoop after noticing poor service from existing dog waste removal companies
• Built market awareness where none existed previously through door-to-door marketing and Facebook ads
• Grew from 20 to over 300 accounts in just three months using targeted digital marketing
• Operates on a subscription model with pre-billing to maintain healthy cash flow
• Differentiates through professional branding, uniformed employees, company vehicles, and quality assurance
• Created "Poop Scoop Millionaire" educational platform to teach others how to start similar businesses
• Built such strong brand recognition that "Swoop Scoop" has become synonymous with the service in his market
• Plans to scale to $10M annual revenue through continued geographic expansion
Connect with Will and learn more about starting your own pet waste removal business at scoopstart.com or through the Scoop Start YouTube channel.
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I got to go back to the beginning.
So you're in high school, wereyou doing this shit?
Then Welcome to the SmallBusiness Safari, where I help
guide you to avoid those traps,pitfalls and dangers that lurk
when navigating the wild worldof small business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
(00:22):
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Alan, let's get ready to scoopup some knowledge, shall we?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
That's right, Alan.
I was wondering what you weregoing to come out of the gate
with on this one.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh, I've been thinking about this one all
flipping day.
Will's going to be rolling hiseyes.
I had a guy say to me I was ata networking event.
He said you know, I'm just likea kid in a candy store running
my business.
I'm like I'm thinking to myself, I feel like a ditch digger in
a shit center.
I'm like you're over there likeooh, I just love the biz and
(01:12):
I'm like dude, I feel like I'mcovered in shit and I'm like, oh
my God, I wonder who.
Oh my God, look at my nextguest going to be coming on,
Coming on the podcast.
We got Will from Poop ScoopMillionaire is what he says, but
he's from Swoop Scoop, so we'rescooping poop for millions of
dollars.
So I used to tell people man, Ijust make my millions $80 a
(01:33):
time in the handyman business.
By the way, we ain't in 80anymore.
No, you're not.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I am a customer and I can attest to that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Right, thank you, alan, and we appreciate you
especially, but we need to getoff of you a little bit and get
on to Will you know?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
we didn't even get on me.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
No, that was enough.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, I actually kind of have a funny story to tell
that would actually relate tothis podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
All right, let's hear your story.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I don't think you're going to give me enough
time to tell it.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Okay, that's good, great story, Alan.
All right Will on Are you doneyet We'll get back to your story
.
I'll let you later If timeallows.
Oh, we're going to breakeverybody Go ahead break.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Cut for time.
Alan's story Put it on.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
YouTube.
Oh, here comes from the zoo tothe wild Chris Lollabia's zoo
story about his business, andnow he grew his own business
from the zoo to the wild.
Get that on Amazon, Will man?
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Welcome to my world, Will.
Yeah, appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, man.
So let's talk about this, allright, so I got to go back to
the beginning.
So you're in high school.
Were you doing this shit then?
Or was this where you thoughtyou were going to be, or did you
have like other designs in life?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
No, I had no plans out of high school whatsoever.
I was just going for it Went tocollege.
Probably wasn't the right move.
Graduated college and needed tomake more money, so I decided
to go into business.
You're in the Northwest?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, we're in Spokane, washington right on the
border of Idaho and Washington.
There you go.
Well, go ahead, Alan.
Beautiful part of the country.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Go ahead.
What Tell everybody they want?
There you go well.
Go ahead, beautiful part of thecountry.
Go ahead.
What tell everybody they wantto know?
Where are you from originally,alan?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I was born in bellingham and raised in
portland.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right yeah, alan thinks northwest is the
greatest place in the world.
Will you have lived there allyour life?
Yes, so obviously will thinksit's the greatest place it's a
wonderful place all right, let'sget into this.
All right, all right, so you goto school, get into business.
Uh, did you take a corporatejob gig after?
(03:31):
Kind of give us that arc beforeyou started this idea oh man,
yeah, this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, well, I went to school, not even for business.
I went to school for likesocial work or something.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I was like a whitewater raftguy.
I just wanted to do fun stuffand figure out how to get paid
for it.
Graduated college and peoplewanted to pay me like 12 bucks
an hour, so I thought thatwasn't gonna work.
So, oh so, 12 bucks an hour isthe river guide, it's not the
big bucks.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
No, yeah, not, not, not the big bucks not the big do
the math, everybody probablygreat way to meet girls, though.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Huh, it's true, it wasn't.
It's like a nine to one girlthe guy ratio in the social work
program.
It's pretty easy to buy books.
My last year of schooleverybody just kind of passed
you, talk about your feelings orwhatever.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think to be in a social work, you actually have
to have some compassion.
I'm sensing a lack of that.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Oh, yeah, we moved on immediately.
A blunder.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh my God, that's.
That's hilarious, brother, thatis awesome.
You know we just like talkingfor our feelings and whatnot and
I get an a all right.
So next thing you come out ofschool, river guide.
Money is not going to make it,so where'd you find your job?
Or did you just immediatelystart like I'm gonna go figure
this out myself?
I?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
think I got like a job at like an insurance place
or something and, uh, I luckilyhad a friend that was in digital
marketing and kind of took meunder his wing, so he had a
worked for a digital marketingagency.
So I switched over there assoon as I could, um, basically
just started off doing marketingfor local companies.
Um, and I realized I'd make alot more money if I just owned
the local companies instead ofjust doing the marketing for
(05:04):
them.
So that was kind of the mostrecent pivot.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
So what businesses did you buy or start?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I started an electrical company.
So I partnered with a guy thatwas an electrician for like 30
plus years.
That was my first, I guess,home service business.
So we took that from zero toover a million dollars in the
first like five or six months,which was pretty cool.
And then at the same time I hadmy buddy from high school that
saw how that business was takenoff and he wanted to do
something, but he didn't.
He wasn't a handyman, hecouldn't even back up a trailer,
he wasn't an electrician orHVAC or anything.
(05:35):
So we came up with this ideathat we were going to try to
pick up dog poop and make somemoney and see if we can make it
work.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Had anybody done that before?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think there's been some people that were doing it
and actually at the time, uh, mywife was pregnant and I just
wasn't doing it, so she hadhired a pooper scooper and their
business kind of sucked.
So that's kind of where theidea came from and I thought we
could do a better job.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
All right.
So let's get into this nichebecause you know, you've heard
of dog walkers, especially inbig cities.
I mean, you're out in thenorthwest spokane, admittedly
not the biggest city in thenation, uh, not very densely
packed, knowing enough aboutspokane.
So it's not in new york city,it's not a, you know boston,
it's not a northeast city, soyou knew dog walkers but poop
(06:19):
scooping.
Let we talk to us about thatmarket yeah, so it's actually
kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It's totally different than my electrical
company.
I got a garage door companyalso where the main focus is
just getting on Google right,getting those top spots on
Google.
Nobody even knows what a pooperscooper business was, or at
least when we first started, sowe had to try to find ways to go
out and get in front of people.
So I think my buddy that I didthe business with he started off
by knocking on doors, passingout door hangers, and he kind of
(06:47):
grinded his way to his first 10, 20 customers or so.
And once we got there I thought, eh, maybe this thing's legit.
I started throwing some moneyinto Facebook ads and the thing
took off like crazy.
We went from 20 to over 300accounts in like two or three
months.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So I think what's interesting about this is that
you basically made a market.
There was no market for it.
Nobody knew this was a need.
No, nobody went.
Oh my god, I have got to have ared bmw because there's a
market for red bmws.
There's a market for cars,sports cars, there's a market
for whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But in his case, nobody knew that somebody would
actually come up and pick uptheir dog well, and he's
providing a solution forsomething that just absolutely
pisses me off, because I'm not adog owner.
I gotta listen to my neighbor'sdogs barking, and then what
makes it worse is then they takethem for a walk so they can
crap in my yard and I'm like howin what universe does this make
sense?
Crap in your own yard?
(07:41):
I feel like you Get off my lawnyou kids.
Here's another little sidebusiness you could do.
You could sell people like mebags of poop that you pick up so
I can go spread it all overtheir yard.
Oh, it would be a vengeance.
We got a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know what You've got.
Another idea, not just afertilizer bag situation.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Actually, that is a good question to find out what
they do with it.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Okay, let's find out what do you do with it.
What do you do with itBasically, waste management
takes it and burns it becauseyou can't use it for anything.
Why?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
can't you use it for anything that's not very
eco-friendly?
Northwest I mean, come on, allright.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Final one you can't say eco-friendly in Northwest,
and then talk about I justwanted to get the dog shit so I
could throw it on my neighbor'slawn.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And light it on fire.
That is nothing friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, if you could have a self-combustible bag that
I can throw in their house.
If there's one thing you havegoing for you in the Northwest,
everybody out there is alwaysknown across the entire nation
as being nice.
They are nice.
And you are, they're polite,they're polite, but you are out
there saying hey Will give methe poop and I'm going to throw
it all over my neighbor's yard.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, and I was thinking we could get one of
those big hydraulic dumptrailers.
So if you really don't likesomebody, we can get a couple
thousand pounds of it for you.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Deliver it.
That would really prove a point, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, that'd probably get them kicked out of business
.
I think that would.
So, alan, as we're kind ofbrainstorming great ideas, let's
put that one out there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So it's not compostable or compostable.
How do you say?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
that I mean you might be.
I think the protein content istoo high in the waste, so it
ends up killing people's grassand stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Oh, I've seen that.
Now let's talk about business.
Yeah, another reason why Ilove-.
How about my buddy who neverpicks up his we went to people's
yards and I see my buddy I'mtalking about when I go to
customer's house.
You look in their backyard.
They haven't cut the thing inforever.
You look out there and there'sjust like yellow spots
everywhere and it's where thegrass has died.
I didn't think about that.
Yeah, horrible.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I want to get your yard fast.
I got a solution for you, ooh.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Hmm, no, still can't do anything.
All right, let's go back tothis.
So you had to make a market.
I mean, that's where yourdigital marketing experience
came in, and I knew I knewthat's really where we're going
to end up going, but we had tohave some fun in the beginning.
We talk about this is that youhad to grow a market where there
was no market to be had.
You know we'll talk about, youknow, another gun Revis shelf or
(09:58):
shelf genie, or art of drawers.
You know people don't know thatthey could have drawers that
pull out in their kitchens.
And so what do you do?
You have to create a market sothat people know to go to that
market to buy that service.
They don't know what'savailable to them.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
People don't know what they don't know People
don't know that they havedrawers you can pull out in your
kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I'm talking about in your.
When you open up your, whatkind of customers do you have?
Did you have?
Did I mention?
Not many of my customers listento this, so I can say it they
are cheap, lazy and stupid.
Thank you Everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
There we go, that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
When you open up the cabinet doors, you can pull out
drawers in your cabinet doors.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Can you say it slower so I can get it?
I don't think you got it yet,so let's go back to Will, shall
we?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Let's Will.
How'd you grow that market?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yep Short story, I guess, was Facebook ads and
really good timing, because whenwe started the business all the
snow was melting, which leavesmonths and months and months of
months of dog waste left behind.
So people had a big pain pointcall it peak poop pain season.
So we got we got pretty luckywith that.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
That's pretty good.
I like that.
That's great marketing, allright.
So obviously so.
You make the market.
You got to figure out supplyand demand.
You got to figure out pricing.
We always talk about knowingyour numbers.
I mean, talk to us a little bitabout how you make those
numbers work.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah.
So I mean, there's some othercompanies throughout the country
that we kind of try to copy offof.
So basically the way that weprice it is we have a
subscription, so we'll eithercome out twice a week, once a
week, once every other week,once a month, and then, based on
the number of dogs that theyhave so one dog, two dog, three
dog, four dog and then we justhave a flat rate subscription
that people get billed on thefirst of the month and we'll
just come out and fulfill it thenext month and then we pre-bill
(11:48):
everything so that we don'thave to chase down money or
anything like that.
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Absolutely Get paid before you go, love that and
then finding the labor.
Yeah, I was curious about thatyeah.
Finding labor is actually uhpretty pretty easy um said the
first guy ever on this podcast,by the way.
We've been doing this for threeand a half years will coming up
on four never had somebody goman finding people's easy no, it
(12:16):
is.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
It is easy for this business because it's not like
I'm going out trying to find ajourneyman electrician with 8
000 hours and all these crazylicensing.
I just need somebody that canpick up dog poop.
So the way that we went outabout this was to try to make it
the best, basically entry levellabor job that you can have.
So we pay a couple of dollarsan hour more than FedEx or any
of the lawn care companiesaround and provide benefits.
We let people take their truckhome, we let them work a
(12:37):
flexible schedule Monday throughFriday.
So we have a lot of perks that,just because of how the
business operates, that allowsus to have a little bit more
flexibility.
We don't have any cost of goodssold really, other than labor.
We're just picking up poop.
So we have higher margins insome of these other businesses
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So the people who go out W2, are they 1099?
Do they go in your own truck?
Talk a little bit about howthat service goes and why people
appreciate your service morethan others.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, so I wanted to make things as quality as
possible.
So everybody has a companyvehicle.
They're all fully wrapped orfully branded.
That's actually our third topchannel for customer acquisition
.
Everybody's got uniforms,things like that, but yeah,
they're all.
There'll be two employees withbenefits.
At the beginning we did toyaround with contractors just
because we got over overflown.
So basically we would just runour Monday through Friday people
(13:26):
and then on the weekends we'dhave them park the trucks on
Friday and have our weekend crewcome out.
So we didn't have to buy twiceas many trucks to keep up with
the demand during peak.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Wait a minute.
Big question Ford or Chevy?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
What did we start with?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I think we started with Chevy and then they sucked,
so you went to Ford I think wegot a bunch of.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
we got a bunch of Toyotas, we got a bunch of this
episode is over, right, I guess?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I'm not going to.
I'm not going to get my story.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I was waiting for him to say Kia and episode done.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Okay, so our second location we don't take the waste
with us.
We found out that peopleactually don't care.
We just put in the customer'strash can.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So instead of buying whatever $30,000 trucks, we're
buying $5,000 Chevy Sparks.
Okay, oh, let's talk about that.
So I assumed so.
In my business, in the handymanbusiness, one of the things
that we do and pride ourselveson is we take all the debris
away with us.
You know the old ceiling fans,the old fixtures, whatever.
So you are not.
You're saying, hey look, we'llcome there, we'll scoop it, but
it's going in your refuse.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
At our second, our first location, we already have
all the trucks, we got all thedumpsters, we got all the
infrastructure set up, so we'rejust taking it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
But every new location that we open, we're
just going to put in thecustomer like they literally
don't seem to care at all, maybea couple percentage points.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I was.
I didn't know what a chevyspark was.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But there's a little car, my friends, you don't put a
24 foot ladder on that thingwithout calling the car no no
that's, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I often joked.
I said you keep this up, man,I'm gonna stick you in that, in
a b, in a mini ladder on top ofthat, and then you show up try
to sell a job cargo doors onthere yeah.
So let's talk a little bitabout some of the things you
learned early on about theservice.
So, getting the customer,that's job one.
Getting the money, getting thecash flow right well, that's
(15:16):
actually that's job one.
But serving and operating whatdid you learn as you try to
scale that?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
yeah, it was definitely a lot of uh
bottlenecks that we didn'tnecessarily expect, like when we
were first starting off, likeour customer acquisition costs
were super low, we were makinggood money and it's all of a
sudden one person can onlyhandle about 150 accounts and
now we got to hire like two orthree people right off the bat.
We kind of thought it was goingto go forever, but there's
actually quite a bit ofseasonality in the business.
(15:43):
So we pick up probably 80% ofour customers quarter one and
then the summertime is actuallythe slowest time of the year and
we basically go down about 10%of our census and then it picks
back up in the fall.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Why do you think the summer is so?
I love the seasonality because,again, when you look around all
the world and of course we'reon every continent, in the
nation, a couple of galaxies,you like how I did that, yeah,
every continent in the nation.
Yeah, just shows you how world Iam here in the us, but no,
everything's, you know.
Hey, you're in atlanta, georgia, which is seasonally.
You can work 12 months a year.
I'm like, no, we have the sameseasonality you have in michigan
(16:17):
, you do in minnesota and newyork, so why was the summer a
slow season?
This is really interesting to alot of people.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of reasons.
One, people travel more in thesummer.
Two, people are outside moreoften, so maybe they want it
cleaned up every day.
Where we might not be able toaccommodate that.
You got kids that are home fromschool during the summer, so
people just make their kids doit, so there's probably a combo
of all those things.
People are more likely to moveduring the summer than in the
(16:46):
winter.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Um, so all those things, I think, just kind of
add up.
So you get your core businessand that is I'm going to come
out there and I'm going to cleanup your refuse.
Is it, uh, residentialcommercial?
What's the split on that?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
well, probably we do some commercial but I haven't
really focused on it becauseit's an almost entirely
different business probably like97 residential, uh we can we do
install like those uh dogwaystations at like apartment
complexes and stuff like that sothat was my next question is as
you've grown your business andlooked at it, are there other
adjunct things you add on, oryou're just staying true to the
(17:16):
core of your biz?
right now.
We're just now for the firsttime adding or trying to add
another service, just some,something minor, some odor
control for people.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I'm telling you the bags of poop for vengeance Spite
poop bags, Spite poop bags.
Yeah huge market there, untapit.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
You can have it for free.
I'll send it over.
See See, I got free product.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
No tariffs.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Honestly, hey, we'll talk offline about this one.
Alan, that's a horrible idea.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Hey Will between you and me I think I got an idea.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So what's your average customer like?
I can't imagine having a dogand not being willing to pick up
the poop.
Are they just two people thatwork a lot, or something like
that?
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I mean there's a big mix of people.
So number one there's peoplethat hate picking up dog poop.
Our top demographics probablyfemales in their 30s and 40s.
But you also have people thatare disabled.
You got married couples thatboth have to work a full-time
job.
They might not even get homeuntil it's dark out.
So busy professionals peoplethat hate it.
You got people with serviceanimals that might be disabled.
They might not be able to pickup after your dog.
You got the elderly people thatmight not be able to pick up
(18:21):
after their dog.
So there's definitely a mix.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I'd say there's more people, you charge them a lot
more right.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I'm just in a foul mood today.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
You are Again, alan.
You're supposed to be nice.
You're talking to another nice.
He's from Washington.
I mean in Washington, oregon.
It's the same thing, oh God.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Go Cougss.
Right, there is a, there is acertain brotherhood there, but,
uh, bite your tongue anyway.
No, normally will.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I'm the, I'm the nice one, and okay, and chris is the
one that wants to slasheverybody's tires well, that's
why I said I'm doing this alloffline because I'm getting that
shit and that shit's gettingspread and I've got two
customers.
I mean, uh, never mind, uh,let's keep going, shall we?
So you got the customeracquisition.
You guys are doing this, you'regetting things going.
(19:11):
You thought about the odorcontrol Do you do?
Where do you see this businessgrowing to and what do you got
for your plans going forward?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I mean um, yeah, so right now, we got, you know,
spokane location, we got ourseattle location.
We'll probably continue to openup throughout kind of the cutie
sound region.
Um, but I want to just keep itsuper simple.
I don't want to offer a bunchof different services and things
like that.
It's hard enough to scale oneservice to multiple locations
and millions of dollars versusdoing a kajillion other things.
(19:40):
So that's always a gold nugget,right?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
there, and that's.
That's the question.
That's the gold nugget foreverybody.
We always love to chase theshiny bubbles right.
We always want to add on aservice, as opposed to getting
your service.
Even better, to go in andreally penetrate a market or I'm
sure there's a lot more peoplein Spokane you could be
servicing and for just this, asopposed to going well, I'm going
to offer at least services, orI'm going to offer dog walking,
(20:03):
or I'm going to offer doggrooming.
That's not your core business,man.
In your case, that's so easy totalk about, but for many of us,
we can't see it, especiallywhen you're in your own business
.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Are you franchising?
We're not right now, but I havea list of over 100 people that
want to buy one, so that'salways a good start.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, that's a good sign, I think, if we so then,
what's the what's the purpose ofthe YouTube channel that you're
doing?
I mean, you've got a lot ofvideos out there.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, so we we started a group called the poop
scoop millionaire, so webasically teach people how to
pick up dog poop on the internet, and that turned into a whole
business.
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So there's an art to picking up poop.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Because, honestly, I can't do it without gagging.
I'm not going to lie I wouldactually be one of his customers
if I had a dog.
You don't have a dog, I don'thave any animals.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
That's a good thing, but I can't do it, I'll buy you
one I'd be gagging.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Buy me one, so you, that's another.
Right there you go, here you go.
Your kids really want a dog.
By the way, they're stillclaiming an emotional abuse at
26 and 23, that we never had adog.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, I got a little of that myself.
Anyway, go ahead.
So the video channel teachingpeople how to back to the
original question five minutesago.
That's right.
At least I'm on point what,what, yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:24):
So, yeah, how did that start?
I think I did my first everpodcast with somebody that had a
poop scoop company, maybe like3000 followers on YouTube.
Nothing, nothing crazy.
And there's been poop scoopersacross the country for years and
years and years, but none ofthem really got very big.
So when I came on the podcastand said we're making over a
million dollars picking up dogpoop, I had a ton of people
(21:45):
reach out and that wanted to dolike one on one coaching with me
.
Wasn't really interested in it.
So I just kind of threw out anumber.
I'm like, okay, I'll talk toyou for whatever 1500 bucks a
month for a call or two.
And we ended up making likeover 20 grand in a couple of
weeks.
So I was like, huh, there mightbe, there might be something to
this.
I don't want to do one-on-onecoaching, and I was a big
(22:05):
follower of Alex Ramosi.
He invested in the schoolplatform.
So I said, what the hell, let'sgive it a shot and see what
happens.
And it's basically been takenoff like crazy.
Like month after month, it justkeeps getting bigger and bigger
and bigger.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Do you know the platform he's talking about?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I do, Ramosi, but actually I cannot explain it
probably as well as you can.
Why don't you talk a little bitabout what Hermosi does and how
he?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
he markets himself.
Uh, as far as the schoolplatform, or him, yeah, the
school platform, not the otherstuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, so yeah,basically the school platform is
a community platform andthey've put a lot of effort into
it to make it as simple aspossible so you can have courses
, we can do live trainings, youcan sell stuff on there and we
(22:51):
basically just use it forcourses and community.
Community is really the bigpart, so it's almost like an
online forum that people pay toget access to.
So we're charging people yeah,69 bucks a month to come in.
They get access to all thecourses.
We do a couple live eventsevery single month, like a live
Q&A once a month, and thenpeople can just like talk to
each other about whateverproblems are having with their
business.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Love that.
I love the idea of buildingthat community.
So, franchising probably on thehorizon, you're thinking about
it, but this other idea thatyou've got, or what's happening,
is that you're building thiscommunity of teaching people how
to scoop poop.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yep, so you said a wrapped vehicle is your.
Your third best lead generator,chris, you have vehicles where.
Where does it rank for you?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
um, so for me it's a lot lower.
It does a great job for brandrecognition.
Here in atlanta, again, we'refive and a half million in the
metro atlanta area, so it'spretty spread out when you only
have 15 vans and a five and ahalf million, uh, radius.
But, um, it does work and I, Itotally insist on it and still
say absolutely if you're not, ifyou're in business right now
and you don't have at least afreaking magnet on the side of
(23:53):
your truck, you're blowing it.
If you're not wearing yourlogoed shirt every day
everywhere you go, you'reblowing it.
I mean, I'm doing this podcastwith the trusted toolbox on.
I went, uh, to another bignetworking event where it was
supposed to be suit and tie andI came in with my trusted
toolbox and my coat and you knowwho got to talk the most well I
(24:13):
don't know I got to.
I don't know, it's not the rightword.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I took over who spoke the most.
That has nothing to do withwhat you're wearing oh you know
they love me baby.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, dig me.
Guys want to.
I did it.
You got to keep it logoed, baby.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, I'll add a couple things about truck wraps
too.
If you have truck wraps, itactually allows you to charge
higher prices because you looklike a more professional company
.
I think that's something thatoften gets overlooked.
And then for us, More than amagnet.
Oh yeah, yeah, a lot more thana magnet.
And then for us Facebook adswas like our number one thing.
But we wrapped all our truckswith like dog poop stuff, took a
picture of it, ran it onFacebook ads and that's our top
(24:51):
performing ads.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
We're going to let Will keep talking, but I'm going
to refute you right now.
I said at least a magnet.
I didn't say I do magnets, Iwrap.
I think you were a magnetsupporter.
No, I was not a magnetsupporter.
I am definitely all pro-rap.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I think you're getting a kickback from the
magnet people.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I am not getting a kickback.
You know what I said, at leasta magnet, my friends.
And you kick it down and you'relike, yeah, chris, take that.
You can't do that man.
I am not a pooper scooper.
I'm going back to Will.
He said it the fee and earningthe fee.
You got to fit the part whenpeople have, hey, I'm just gonna
(25:27):
have this guy come pick up mypooper scooper stuff and they're
thinking he's gonna look like aderelict who just came up on
his bike.
He went the back, grabbed a bag, grabbed some shit, put it in
this dumpster.
But these guys do it waydifferent, I'm sure, and I'm
sure the neighbors see that andthat's how they get to earn the
fee.
Alan will, what do you think of?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
that you know he was a little sleepy before this
podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I knew I had to poke him a couple times.
You guys better be learningsomething.
Get in that truck, man.
Put the windows up because it'sabout to get saucy uh, but no,
no, you're, you're.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
You're exactly right.
Yeah, it's all about having aprocess for us.
So clean our equipment withkind of great disinfectant in
between each yards.
We're not spreading Parvo orweird diseases between dogs.
And we also take a gate photoevery time before we leave so
the customer knows we're notletting their dog out.
So that's kind of a big pain.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Did you learn that the hard way?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
No, no, thankfully that actually happened to me.
I hired like a ac person and Ilet my dog out, so uh, but I
didn't make a good little nuggetfor you, chris.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, I'll give you my story, so you've never, never
had to chase a dog through aneighborhood I'll be honest, I
actually, uh, haven't reallyscooped much myself, if at all.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
All right, all right, so now I'm going to tell myself
.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So we were doing a bathroom remodel.
I'm in year one, uh, sevenmonths into it, and the lady's
like do this remodel?
I'm like, I'm just a handymanbut I knew how to do remodels,
because I knew how to doremodels.
But I had to do the job.
And she had this little dog andthe little dog's name was
truman and it was a little dogand it was a little yappy,
little fucker and that fuckingthing kept yapping at me.
(27:04):
Every fucking day I went in hisfucking house.
Well, one day we're in thereworking and I have help right,
I've got helpers working with me.
Truman gets out of his cage,goes out the front door.
I spend the next three hoursrunning through the neighborhood
it's a gated community that youknow called St Marlon Running
trying to find this littlefucking dog, and he thought this
(27:25):
was a great game.
I am jumping over gates, I'mrunning through the backyard.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
So you could see him.
He's just standing two stepsahead of you.
Always, oh, and you're sweating.
Oh, I'm just dying.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I mean fat guy is running through this yard and I
am rumbling, bumbling.
I mean I'm not a small guy, man, I'm 6'2" 230.
I mean I'm running, I'mbumbling, I'm stumbling, I'm
chasing this dude down and Ifinally get him back right, get
him back in, get him in the cage.
I'm guessing you handled himgently.
I did.
I did not hurt the dog.
I do love dogs.
I love dogs to pieces.
(27:56):
Truman, truman, you wife saysshe comes home, she's been
working all day, she goes, shegoes up, she inspects everything
.
She comes down, she goes huh,didn't get much done today, huh
and what do you say to?
that I just looked over and wenttruman.
So, but back to your point.
(28:19):
I think that's the kind ofstuff that people want in their
customer service.
Right, they want to know thatyou did the job you were
supposed to do in today'sinstant gratification world.
Right, you got uber eats.
You got uber this.
You know exactly where youruber is before you're going to
get it, and when they drop youoff, they ask how do we do?
And so when your guys arewalking out of that property,
they're getting a notification.
(28:40):
Hey, we're done.
That's a peace of mind forsomebody who's sitting in an
office going my little precioustruman could potentially be
running around and not poopingin my own yard.
Oh my god, how could I do it?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
oh my god, just come, just come to my yard.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I'm sure truman's there you know what he probably
with all his friends.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
He was and the deer.
They had a lot of fun yeah thedeer.
So how long you've been doingthis?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
First full year was 2021.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So in 2021, obviously everybody's home, COVID, Did
you feel like that was a goodpoint for you to start a
business?
I mean looking back, and Istarted my business in 2008,.
Right beginning of therecession, I got my teeth kicked
in, and not as much as Alan.
Alan got his actually teeth headneck?
(29:27):
I don't remember that.
Yeah, okay, don't worry, we'llkeep going.
But the question was to willnot you all right back to 2021?
Did you find that starting abusiness at that time was good?
Would you do it?
I think it was actually really,really good.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I think people had uh extra money, they had their
stimulus checks coming out, sowe just uh, I guess we took them
.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I'll take those.
Thank you, you know, here weare.
You know we're talking to you.
2025, at the end of 2023, thestimulus check money ran out.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Was that a?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
noticeable squeak.
It was for me.
So in 2024, I've talked aboutthis Cause.
Here we are at 25.
People go hey man, how are youlooking?
Year over year?
I said well, I'm looking great.
I said, but last year sucked.
Why?
I said because everybody ranout of money.
Savings was gone, credit carddebt's the highest it's ever
been.
Interest rates started going upand everybody had already done
(30:20):
everything they wanted to do intheir house and they want to get
out and travel.
It's called we've covered thisin therapy.
We've got a guest here namedwill.
Well, we're talking aboutwill's business.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I'm just I'm just telling that will what happens
when shit hits the fan, and sohas every shit ever hit the fan
see, there's another, there'sanother revenue stream that's a
great video, by the way.
You should say we scoop it, wefan it it's gone okay, so you,
uh, you haven't had thisbusiness very long and yet it
sounds very sophisticated, andyour background was in, you know
(30:51):
sociology and you're a raftinginstructor.
I mean, did you have mentors orjust sit there and think about
what does a good business looklike, or was it just the?
Uh?
I think you mentioned that youhad a bad experience with
somebody in this industry, andwas it just a reaction to that?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I think it was that, and then also my, my electrical
company.
I started probably four monthsbefore that, so with a pretty
seasoned operator, so Ibasically just took all the
stuff I learned there andapplied it to, uh, dog poop
scooping.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I love that because there's such a parallel and I
want to say will uh, kudos toyou for taking the backhanded
compliment from alan saying andyou're a river guide I love
river guys do you because you'renot sounding very nice.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
That sounds like my favorite photo is a rafting trip
in oregon and we hit a bigrapid and the the guide was in
the process of being ejectedwhen the photo snapped.
That's the best.
Yeah, where's our guide.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
He's in front of us.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I mean it was like a full, like a luge pose, except
for just getting launched in theair.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was great I will say though uh, some of the best
times I ever had was doingrafting, and we've only done it
guided, and I told my wife I'mlike let's do it unguided, and
she goes not with you, I won't.
Which is probably smart, by theway, probably smart, yeah, I
wouldn't want you in stroke seat, you would not.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We'll keep you as ballast.
Oh God, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
No too much fun.
All right, let's get back tothe biz.
All right, the biz Can.
All right, the biz, can weplease?
Alan, you're so disruptor.
Such a disruptor Will's tryingto get his message out there, it
was a big compliment he doesn'teven know this is going to be a
good message.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I'm really impressed.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
All content's good content Will Tell Hermosi that
he knows that.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I mean he is running a very sophisticated business in
an unsophisticated industry, Iknow, and he's kind of like,
yeah, whatever.
I mean that's the way he acts.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
But there's a lot more I got a feeling right now
there's a lot more horsepowerunder the hood.
Yes, let's talk about this.
So what do you want to do withit?
We want to go, yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I think it'd be cool to make like 10 million dollars
Picking up dog poop a year.
That's probably where we'regoing.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And that's the headline of the show.
How to make 10 million a yearPicking up dog poop.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
We'll probably do three this year, so we're
getting there.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's beautiful.
I mean again.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Can you imagine what the impoverished countries would
be thinking listening to thispodcast?
That our country would spendtotally 10 million dollars just
in washington state to pick uppoop right just that they would
probably use in their gardenexactly right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, you can't because it's too high protein
maybe mix it in with somethingoh well, maybe you do.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
All right, let's figure it out.
You let me know, I'll ship it.
There we go, oh, oh All rightwe're formulating.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I'm thinking we have chemists, we know.
Okay, all right, we'll startworking on it.
I think there's an opportunitythere.
So your business strategyFamily is always number one for
all of us and I love saying that, but I didn't really mean that
when I started my business,because I left the corporate
world.
I was making a shit ton ofmoney and I left.
(34:04):
I said, hey, baby, don't worry,I'm going to make a million
dollars a year, I'm just goingto kill it.
Here I am 17 years later.
No, I'm not.
I mean I'm doing really well,but you know it.
It's.
It's definitely self-rewarding.
I love everything I'm doing.
I love having this podcast,love doing all we're doing.
So tell me what you want to do.
Uh, aside from the money,what's the?
(34:26):
What's the?
What are you looking to getdone?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
uh, honestly, I just enjoy doing uh business stuff.
So no matter what what businessit is, I just like like
building, building cool stuff,uh getting people jobs, helping
people out.
So yeah, I was kind of it'skind of I'm just doing whatever
I want you know, I think, andthat's awesome because, uh, you
know, back in the day.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
How many people are just driving down the road
listening to this and just greenwith envy you should be green
with envy, because listen towill.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I mean he found a niche, he built a market, he
used his skill set, worked withseasoned operators to refine his
market.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Amazon can't take it away.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
And now right, I mean Amazon's not bringing robots
out to scoop your shit.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
They could get it with drones.
Ooh, drone poop scooping.
There's a pool.
You know what, alan?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Alan, I got another idea.
We can't tell, will.
I'm thinking what we'll do iswe'll create a drone with lasers
and we'll just laser the poopout.
We'll just shoot it.
What could go wrong?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Nothing could go wrong.
I got a couple of neighborsthat like to try it on.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I know right, forget the poop.
There's the dog, there's theneighbor Truman.
Truman, I'm not killing you,but I'm definitely killing mom
who says I think you did a lotdone today.
Huh, no, no.
So I think that's the lessonthat I think a lot of people
(35:50):
need to understand is that ifyou're doing what you like to do
, kind of the money happens.
If you're trying to chase themoney, it's really hard to make
that work and feel fulfilledwhen you're done.
And, honestly, I can't tell youhow many times I have sat there
like, if I'm either in all theroles I've filled in our company
, if I'm in sales, or back whenI was a tech, if I'm in sales
going man, I got to win this job, I got to win this job.
I'm the worst person in theworld to have in your home
(36:12):
because I'm not going.
I really need to help thisperson.
I really want to help thisperson because that's why I love
what I do in my business,because we help people in their
homes, you know, create theenvironment that they love to
live in, you know, elevate theirlifestyles.
And if you're thinking, oh, Igotta make money.
I gotta make money, you'reblowing it man, in your case,
you're not thinking like that.
You're thinking, yeah, I havefun doing what I'm doing.
I enjoy it.
I mean that's fun, right, makesure you start over.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
I mean I definitely probably could have made moves
to try to make more money, evenif, like the Hoopscoop
millionaire group, like I, teachpeople basically how to start a
whole business for whatever 70bucks Right 70 bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I mean it's brilliant , it's an American dream story
really, I think again a totallydifferent business model than
anybody we've talked tospecifically in a world that he
could have gone franchised.
We've talked to a lot of peoplewho have done that.
He found the market, he madethe market.
He can go franchise the marketnow.
He still can.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He's got 100 people who want to buy one.
I think the price just went upafter this podcast.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Well, of course, because if you're listening,
yeah, the price just went up.
You mentioned, I think Willsaid that he would do this
before the show.
You mentioned Small BusinessSafari.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of the Small Business
Safari.
Remember to keep that positiveattitude, which will reflect on
a higher altitude as you're outthere making it happen in the
wild world of small businessownership, Until next time go
(37:33):
make it a great day AdventureTeam.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Are your sales in person or over the phone?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You can actually get a quote and sign up for services
on our website without eventalking to anybody.
Is that how most people do it?
Yeah, probably most.
When we first started off, mostpeople came to us through
Facebook Messenger, actuallybecause we found that our
website just wasn't good enoughand didn't have a high enough
conversion rate.
So that converted higher.
But we've since refined it, sonow we just try to push as much
(38:04):
stuff through the website aspossible.
It keeps our customer servicereps from having to do a bunch
of extra kind of manual work.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
talking to people just bogs it down.
So does that make you have tobe the low cost service provider
?
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I mean, you've got competition right, and so if
yeah, I guess I'm creating myown competition too, but no, we
charge a lot more than everybodyelse.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
So what?
So what are you projecting onyour website that says hey, I
guess I'll, I'll go with theseguys, even though they're more.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, well, one.
They might not even find someof our other competitors.
We've bought up other companiesand stuff so sometimes we might
have, like the top whateverfive listings on a particular
search Five calls to get thesame five people.
Yeah, we also have the biggestbrand.
So, like in Spokane, especiallywhen I first started, there's
maybe 10 to 20 searches a monthfor like pooper scooper service,
compared to like a thousandsearches a month for electrician
(38:51):
.
And now there's seven 800searches a month for just swoop
scoop.
Oh wow, people associate theservice with us and not that
it's its own service in thatarea.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
if that makes sense, so swoop scoop has become the
kleenex, or bandage tissues,right band-aid of band-aids.
What's the other word?
I mean kleenex is tissue paper,but what's the other word for
band-aid bandage?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
okay, thank you, whatever, all right right, no I
mean that's right.
I mean there's there's certainthings that the, the, the
branding is so strong thatthat's the word that people use.
Yeah, I mean, when I wasgrowing up we just called it a
coke when you wanted to go get asoda out west and northwest
yeah, we call it pop.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
But uh, I'll tell you .
There's another example cappingin our own world.
Um, they, the cement board thatpeople are putting on homes is
called.
We all call it hardy board.
Hardy board.
Well, because they dominate themarket.
Well, there's three othercompetitors.
There's two other competitors,three total, but they are such a
dominant player we all sayhardy board and it's like
Kleenex, I mean, and that's theline we use yeah, because you
say hardy board.
(39:52):
I know what that means.
Right yeah, so here we go.
Poop scoop has become Swoopscoop.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Swoop scoop.
Swoop scoop Our own miniKleenex vacuum in Spokane.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
There you go, swoop scoop.
Hey, you can use that and don'tworry, you don't have to throw
Alan any money, he doesn'treally.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I just want a bag of poop, I can buy him, for I'll
buy you a dog still, though, ifyou want.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
That's what you ought to be doing, so let's talk
about that alternative marketingideas that you've had.
Have you done something like?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
adoption program sponsoring.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
I want an incontinent dog so I can go walk it on the
property.
Yeah, no, we try to partnerwith.
So we have like a communitygive back program.
So like once a month we'lldonate like $1,000 to a charity
and then we'll give them like apromo code.
So if anybody signs up with thepromo code, we'll donate an
extra 50, basically forever.
So we'll try to partner withlike shelters and things like
that.
Um, especially like adoptionshelters, because everybody's
(40:43):
getting a new dog.
We'll get our informationpassed out.
Um, so that's worked.
We've done a lot of stuff thatdoesn't work.
Also, we we've got to deal with, uh, pizza hut and they let us
put our dog poop coupons on thepizza boxes.
Whoops, and uh, yeah, we got nocustomers from that spent like
five grand.
So that was kind of interesting.
Uh, why?
Why do you think that is otherthan what I?
(41:05):
think I don't even know if theyput them out, to be honest, but
uh also also because uh peoplebuying, yeah, pizza hut.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Probably they're not necessarily our ideal customer,
perhaps yeah, probably sittingin an apartment, and the last
thing I want to think aboutwhile I'm eating pizza is my dog
.
Yeah, we not necessarily ourideal customer, perhaps.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, probably sitting in an apartment, and the
last thing I want to thinkabout while I'm eating pizza is
my dog.
We got rejected by Domino's andPizza Hut took us.
You know what?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Actually, the thing I do like better is people love
their dogs, their cats, theiranimals and then their kids.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
For many, of them, of them.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, because the dogs and cats don't talk back
you know we had brian gottliebon many podcasts ago talking
about making them a co-producerand if you made your customer a
co-producer of you know, hey,I'm going to sponsor this
shelter and we're going to, youknow, save one euthanized dog a
month, or?
Or hey, we're going to giveback to this community.
I could see people going, howmuch is, or?
Or hey, we're going to giveback to this community.
I?
I could see people going, howmuch is your service?
(42:00):
Yeah, we're, uh, 20 more thaneverybody else, or 30, or
whatever the number is, I don'tknow.
We're twice as much as somepeople.
Twice, fine, but your firstmonth, you know, this month, or
every month you do it, this 20bucks goes to them.
I, I would see people doing itbecause they are ready.
I mean, every time I've been toa festival, people are dropping
(42:20):
money like it's going out ofstyle for giving back to
shelters, because a lot ofpeople going to festivals here
in Atlanta have dogs with them.
I love the idea.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
I don't like it that they're bringing their dogs to a
festival.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's annoying no, I love it no, they bark but they
come up.
They bark, but they come up,and then we have a little.
What if I'm allergic, I mean,you know the last flight.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
When I came back from LA, it's like, oh, we have
somebody with a peanut allergyon the plane.
I'm like, well, what about my?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
freaking dog allergy and all the you kids.
What happened to the niceNorthwest.
You know what.
That's what happened.
We've gotten Alan out of thePacific Northwest.
He's become like us down herein Atlanta.
He's been hanging out with metoo much.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I've been hanging out with Chris.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
He's been gone too long he's been getting angry.
Will.
This has been awesome, dude.
Tell everybody how we can findyou, or find what you want
people to find out about you,because I think it's an amazing
story.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, yeah.
So if you want to learn more, Iguess, about the industry,
we've got a websitescoopstartcom.
We've got the Scoop StartYouTube channel and then if you
want to talk to me, pretty muchthe only way to talk to me is if
you're in the Poop Scoopmillionaire community.
We've got like 800 otherscoopers in there.
Do not try to get a hold of meby.
(43:37):
Those would be the top threeplaces.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Will just says no to poop scoop.
What do those people do whenthey hit you?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
You're jealous of his million gatekeepers.
I am too.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
I got one.
Cindy is my gatekeeper, now Igot like five.
It's gotten too big.
I've gotten too big on the podwhere I've had to have Cindy
start to be my gatekeeper boys.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
He's got five.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Do you have a lot of?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
You got a lot of making up to do.
I do, I know.
All right, you need four moregatekeepers.
Wow, just to be like Will.
How long have you been doingyour business?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
17 years.
Geez, I'm not even close.
Nope, the three or whatever,yeah, but I mean sounds great,
but that's a great number.
But let me tell you about mybeers and the profit on the net.
It doesn't matter.
All right, guys, we learnedsomething.
It's up to you to learnsomething.
Today.
You figured out something else.
We talked about a lot of shittoday.
(44:31):
I had to do it again.
Yeah, come on, it's too easy,it's fine, all right, will we
want to hit you with our famousfour questions?
What is a book you'd recommendto our audience?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
$100 million offers and leads.
That's Hermosi.
Yeah, I always tell people myfavorite book is the Facebook
because it makes me the mostmoney.
I don't read anything else.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Now, that's a gold nugget.
There is the answer.
All right, number two what'sthe favorite feature of your
home?
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I don't have a favorite feature of my home
because it poisoned me and I hadto evacuate.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
All right, we talked about this before the podcast
Guys.
He is a victim of mold.
We talked about this quite abit and here's what happens when
you're at home and the familystarts not feeling good, you're
not really sure why.
There are people out there whowill come in there and check out
your air.
I know this because I'm in thebiz and I love hearing this
story and he brought this up.
You can have somebody come outthere for a very low amount of
(45:30):
money and they can do an airtest, air quality test and they
test the indoor air qualityversus the outdoor.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Now just because I'm suspicious of those people?
No, don't be, because I'massuming that the answer is
going to be oh, your air sucksand it's going to cost you 12
grand.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
But these people don't sell the services, they
just do the test.
My point I don't trust it, youdon't.
You gotta trust this becauseI've had it done.
Uh, guess what mold iseverywhere, guys, it's outside,
it's inside.
Mold only affects you if itaffects you, and when it affects
you it's a negative, negative,negative, negative Allen thing.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
What's going to be the favorite feature of your new
home?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, what do you want to do in your new home?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yeah well, we'll see.
We might have to rebuild thewhole thing.
We'll see how things end upgoing.
Well, probably my favoritefeature.
It's right on top of the hill,nice neighborhood.
Uh, it's got these uh,basically doors that basically
open up the whole wall to theoutside.
That's probably our favoritefeature yeah, like sliding glass
.
The sliding glass doors oh nice, those doors.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
All right.
We are, uh, very proud of ourcustomer service background.
We talk about customer servicea lot.
We talked about a little bit inyour world today as well, but
we're just customer servicefreaks.
Let's get it going.
What's a customer service petpeeve of yours when you're out
there and you're the customer?
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I don't know if it might be considered customer
service, but I hate not gettinga flat rate price when I want to
buy something.
I hate paying by the hour, wow.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Deep thoughts.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
That's something we could debate for a while we
could I get what he's going at,because he's a little younger
than you, alan, especially youBecause you're old.
I think a lot of the youngergeneration are used to Uber,
eats and Uber, and just tell mehow much it is.
Yep, that looks like a valleyto me.
Great, don't nickel and dime me, do not.
(47:22):
Where the older generation weused to go nope, we're gonna
nickel and dime, we're gonnaargue down, we're gonna beat you
up or we're gonna say, nope,you didn't use that nail, you
gotta take five cents off.
I want it all off that soundsuh, like you.
That is me.
I put it, but I might as you.
All right, let's keep going.
We've already talked about theTI White Nightmare story, unless
(47:43):
you have another one, but Ithink the mold is a pretty big
one.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, we're still in the middle of it.
So you get weird symptoms withmold poisoning too.
Like I shoot sparks and stuffout of my fingers and toes I
don't know if you guys haveheard of that I actually sparks
and stuff out of my fingers andtoes.
I don't know if you guys haveheard of that.
Like I actually actuallythought I was like schizo.
I like didn't tell anybody andwe hired a mold specialist to
help flush it out of our systemand I guess that's a symptom.
So, like at night, if you touchyour bed sheet it shoots out
(48:08):
static electricity literalsparks, yeah, like static
electricity comes out because ofthe build-up.
So yeah, it's kind of it wasweird, it was super weird wow.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Well, there you go, he's shooting sparks off his
fingers he may be, but he canshoot sparks through poop.
No, it's not working, alrightyou know what let's?
just get out of here, guys.
If you didn't learn some shittoday, that's on you, because
we're talking about building amarket, making it happen, using
your skills to help you developyour business.
Figure this thing out, man.
(48:41):
Let's keep going, because everyweek, every day, every hour,
every morning you wake up.
It's a slog.
We got to make it happen and wecan get up there.
Let's make it go.
Cheers everybody.
So I got to go back to the beginning.
So you're in high school, wereyou doing this shit?
Then Welcome to the SmallBusiness Safari, where I help
guide you to avoid those traps,pitfalls and dangers that lurk
when navigating the wild worldof small business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
(00:22):
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Alan, let's get ready to scoopup some knowledge, shall we?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
That's right, Alan.
I was wondering what you weregoing to come out of the gate
with on this one.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh, I've been thinking about this one all
flipping day.
Will's going to be rolling hiseyes.
I had a guy say to me I was ata networking event.
He said you know, I'm just likea kid in a candy store running
my business.
I'm like I'm thinking to myself, I feel like a ditch digger in
a shit center.
I'm like you're over there likeooh, I just love the biz and
(01:12):
I'm like dude, I feel like I'mcovered in shit and I'm like, oh
my God, I wonder who.
Oh my God, look at my nextguest going to be coming on,
Coming on the podcast.
We got Will from Poop ScoopMillionaire is what he says, but
he's from Swoop Scoop, so we'rescooping poop for millions of
dollars.
So I used to tell people man, Ijust make my millions $80 a
(01:33):
time in the handyman business.
By the way, we ain't in 80anymore.
No, you're not.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I am a customer and I can attest to that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Right, thank you, alan, and we appreciate you
especially, but we need to getoff of you a little bit and get
on to Will you know?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
we didn't even get on me.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
No, that was enough.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, I actually kind of have a funny story to tell
that would actually relate tothis podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
All right, let's hear your story.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I don't think you're going to give me enough
time to tell it.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Okay, that's good, great story, Alan.
All right Will on Are you doneyet We'll get back to your story
.
I'll let you later If timeallows.
Oh, we're going to breakeverybody Go ahead break.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Cut for time.
Alan's story Put it on.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
YouTube.
Oh, here comes from the zoo tothe wild Chris Lollabia's zoo
story about his business, andnow he grew his own business
from the zoo to the wild.
Get that on Amazon, Will man?
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Welcome to my world, Will.
Yeah, appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, man.
So let's talk about this, allright, so I got to go back to
the beginning.
So you're in high school.
Were you doing this shit then?
Or was this where you thoughtyou were going to be, or did you
have like other designs in life?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
No, I had no plans out of high school whatsoever.
I was just going for it Went tocollege.
Probably wasn't the right move.
Graduated college and needed tomake more money, so I decided
to go into business.
You're in the Northwest?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, we're in Spokane, washington right on the
border of Idaho and Washington.
There you go.
Well, go ahead, Alan.
Beautiful part of the country.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Go ahead.
What Tell everybody they want?
There you go well.
Go ahead, beautiful part of thecountry.
Go ahead.
What tell everybody they wantto know?
Where are you from originally,alan?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I was born in bellingham and raised in
portland.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right yeah, alan thinks northwest is the
greatest place in the world.
Will you have lived there allyour life?
Yes, so obviously will thinksit's the greatest place it's a
wonderful place all right, let'sget into this.
All right, all right, so you goto school, get into business.
Uh, did you take a corporatejob gig after?
(03:31):
Kind of give us that arc beforeyou started this idea oh man,
yeah, this whole thing.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah, well, I went to school, not even for business.
I went to school for likesocial work or something.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I was like a whitewater raftguy.
I just wanted to do fun stuffand figure out how to get paid
for it.
Graduated college and peoplewanted to pay me like 12 bucks
an hour, so I thought thatwasn't gonna work.
So, oh so, 12 bucks an hour isthe river guide, it's not the
big bucks.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
No, yeah, not, not, not the big bucks not the big do
the math, everybody probablygreat way to meet girls, though.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Huh, it's true, it wasn't.
It's like a nine to one girlthe guy ratio in the social work
program.
It's pretty easy to buy books.
My last year of schooleverybody just kind of passed
you, talk about your feelings orwhatever.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think to be in a social work, you actually have
to have some compassion.
I'm sensing a lack of that.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Oh, yeah, we moved on immediately.
A blunder.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh my God, that's.
That's hilarious, brother, thatis awesome.
You know we just like talkingfor our feelings and whatnot and
I get an a all right.
So next thing you come out ofschool, river guide.
Money is not going to make it,so where'd you find your job?
Or did you just immediatelystart like I'm gonna go figure
this out myself?
I?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
think I got like a job at like an insurance place
or something and, uh, I luckilyhad a friend that was in digital
marketing and kind of took meunder his wing, so he had a
worked for a digital marketingagency.
So I switched over there assoon as I could, um, basically
just started off doing marketingfor local companies.
Um, and I realized I'd make alot more money if I just owned
the local companies instead ofjust doing the marketing for
(05:04):
them.
So that was kind of the mostrecent pivot.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
So what businesses did you buy or start?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I started an electrical company.
So I partnered with a guy thatwas an electrician for like 30
plus years.
That was my first, I guess,home service business.
So we took that from zero toover a million dollars in the
first like five or six months,which was pretty cool.
And then at the same time I hadmy buddy from high school that
saw how that business was takenoff and he wanted to do
something, but he didn't.
He wasn't a handyman, hecouldn't even back up a trailer,
he wasn't an electrician orHVAC or anything.
(05:35):
So we came up with this ideathat we were going to try to
pick up dog poop and make somemoney and see if we can make it
work.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Had anybody done that before?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think there's been some people that were doing it
and actually at the time, uh, mywife was pregnant and I just
wasn't doing it, so she hadhired a pooper scooper and their
business kind of sucked.
So that's kind of where theidea came from and I thought we
could do a better job.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
All right.
So let's get into this nichebecause you know, you've heard
of dog walkers, especially inbig cities.
I mean, you're out in thenorthwest spokane, admittedly
not the biggest city in thenation, uh, not very densely
packed, knowing enough aboutspokane.
So it's not in new york city,it's not a, you know boston,
it's not a northeast city, soyou knew dog walkers but poop
(06:19):
scooping.
Let we talk to us about thatmarket yeah, so it's actually
kind of interesting.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
It's totally different than my electrical
company.
I got a garage door companyalso where the main focus is
just getting on Google right,getting those top spots on
Google.
Nobody even knows what a pooperscooper business was, or at
least when we first started, sowe had to try to find ways to go
out and get in front of people.
So I think my buddy that I didthe business with he started off
by knocking on doors, passingout door hangers, and he kind of
(06:47):
grinded his way to his first 10, 20 customers or so.
And once we got there I thought, eh, maybe this thing's legit.
I started throwing some moneyinto Facebook ads and the thing
took off like crazy.
We went from 20 to over 300accounts in like two or three
months.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So I think what's interesting about this is that
you basically made a market.
There was no market for it.
Nobody knew this was a need.
No, nobody went.
Oh my god, I have got to have ared bmw because there's a
market for red bmws.
There's a market for cars,sports cars, there's a market
for whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But in his case, nobody knew that somebody would
actually come up and pick uptheir dog well, and he's
providing a solution forsomething that just absolutely
pisses me off, because I'm not adog owner.
I gotta listen to my neighbor'sdogs barking, and then what
makes it worse is then they takethem for a walk so they can
crap in my yard and I'm like howin what universe does this make
sense?
Crap in your own yard?
(07:41):
I feel like you Get off my lawnyou kids.
Here's another little sidebusiness you could do.
You could sell people like mebags of poop that you pick up so
I can go spread it all overtheir yard.
Oh, it would be a vengeance.
We got a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know what You've got.
Another idea, not just afertilizer bag situation.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Actually, that is a good question to find out what
they do with it.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Okay, let's find out what do you do with it.
What do you do with itBasically, waste management
takes it and burns it becauseyou can't use it for anything.
Why?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
can't you use it for anything that's not very
eco-friendly?
Northwest I mean, come on, allright.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Final one you can't say eco-friendly in Northwest,
and then talk about I justwanted to get the dog shit so I
could throw it on my neighbor'slawn.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And light it on fire.
That is nothing friendly.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, if you could have a self-combustible bag that
I can throw in their house.
If there's one thing you havegoing for you in the Northwest,
everybody out there is alwaysknown across the entire nation
as being nice.
They are nice.
And you are, they're polite,they're polite, but you are out
there saying hey Will give methe poop and I'm going to throw
it all over my neighbor's yard.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, and I was thinking we could get one of
those big hydraulic dumptrailers.
So if you really don't likesomebody, we can get a couple
thousand pounds of it for you.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Deliver it.
That would really prove a point, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, that'd probably get them kicked out of business
.
I think that would.
So, alan, as we're kind ofbrainstorming great ideas, let's
put that one out there.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So it's not compostable or compostable.
How do you say?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
that I mean you might be.
I think the protein content istoo high in the waste, so it
ends up killing people's grassand stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Oh, I've seen that.
Now let's talk about business.
Yeah, another reason why Ilove-.
How about my buddy who neverpicks up his we went to people's
yards and I see my buddy I'mtalking about when I go to
customer's house.
You look in their backyard.
They haven't cut the thing inforever.
You look out there and there'sjust like yellow spots
everywhere and it's where thegrass has died.
I didn't think about that.
Yeah, horrible.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I want to get your yard fast.
I got a solution for you, ooh.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Hmm, no, still can't do anything.
All right, let's go back tothis.
So you had to make a market.
I mean, that's where yourdigital marketing experience
came in, and I knew I knewthat's really where we're going
to end up going, but we had tohave some fun in the beginning.
We talk about this is that youhad to grow a market where there
was no market to be had.
You know we'll talk about, youknow, another gun Revis shelf or
(09:58):
shelf genie, or art of drawers.
You know people don't know thatthey could have drawers that
pull out in their kitchens.
And so what do you do?
You have to create a market sothat people know to go to that
market to buy that service.
They don't know what'savailable to them.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
People don't know what they don't know People
don't know that they havedrawers you can pull out in your
kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
I'm talking about in your.
When you open up your, whatkind of customers do you have?
Did you have?
Did I mention?
Not many of my customers listento this, so I can say it they
are cheap, lazy and stupid.
Thank you Everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
There we go, that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
When you open up the cabinet doors, you can pull out
drawers in your cabinet doors.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Can you say it slower so I can get it?
I don't think you got it yet,so let's go back to Will, shall
we?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Let's Will.
How'd you grow that market?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yep Short story, I guess, was Facebook ads and
really good timing, because whenwe started the business all the
snow was melting, which leavesmonths and months and months of
months of dog waste left behind.
So people had a big pain pointcall it peak poop pain season.
So we got we got pretty luckywith that.
There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
That's pretty good.
I like that.
That's great marketing, allright.
So obviously so.
You make the market.
You got to figure out supplyand demand.
You got to figure out pricing.
We always talk about knowingyour numbers.
I mean, talk to us a little bitabout how you make those
numbers work.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah.
So I mean, there's some othercompanies throughout the country
that we kind of try to copy offof.
So basically the way that weprice it is we have a
subscription, so we'll eithercome out twice a week, once a
week, once every other week,once a month, and then, based on
the number of dogs that theyhave so one dog, two dog, three
dog, four dog and then we justhave a flat rate subscription
that people get billed on thefirst of the month and we'll
just come out and fulfill it thenext month and then we pre-bill
(11:48):
everything so that we don'thave to chase down money or
anything like that.
Brilliant.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Absolutely Get paid before you go, love that and
then finding the labor.
Yeah, I was curious about thatyeah.
Finding labor is actually uhpretty pretty easy um said the
first guy ever on this podcast,by the way.
We've been doing this for threeand a half years will coming up
on four never had somebody goman finding people's easy no, it
(12:16):
is.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
It is easy for this business because it's not like
I'm going out trying to find ajourneyman electrician with 8
000 hours and all these crazylicensing.
I just need somebody that canpick up dog poop.
So the way that we went outabout this was to try to make it
the best, basically entry levellabor job that you can have.
So we pay a couple of dollarsan hour more than FedEx or any
of the lawn care companiesaround and provide benefits.
We let people take their truckhome, we let them work a
(12:37):
flexible schedule Monday throughFriday.
So we have a lot of perks that,just because of how the
business operates, that allowsus to have a little bit more
flexibility.
We don't have any cost of goodssold really, other than labor.
We're just picking up poop.
So we have higher margins insome of these other businesses
as well.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So the people who go out W2, are they 1099?
Do they go in your own truck?
Talk a little bit about howthat service goes and why people
appreciate your service morethan others.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, so I wanted to make things as quality as
possible.
So everybody has a companyvehicle.
They're all fully wrapped orfully branded.
That's actually our third topchannel for customer acquisition
.
Everybody's got uniforms,things like that, but yeah,
they're all.
There'll be two employees withbenefits.
At the beginning we did toyaround with contractors just
because we got over overflown.
So basically we would just runour Monday through Friday people
(13:26):
and then on the weekends we'dhave them park the trucks on
Friday and have our weekend crewcome out.
So we didn't have to buy twiceas many trucks to keep up with
the demand during peak.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Wait a minute.
Big question Ford or Chevy?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
What did we start with?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I think we started with Chevy and then they sucked,
so you went to Ford I think wegot a bunch of.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
we got a bunch of Toyotas, we got a bunch of this
episode is over, right, I guess?
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I'm not going to.
I'm not going to get my story.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I was waiting for him to say Kia and episode done.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Okay, so our second location we don't take the waste
with us.
We found out that peopleactually don't care.
We just put in the customer'strash can.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So instead of buying whatever $30,000 trucks, we're
buying $5,000 Chevy Sparks.
Okay, oh, let's talk about that.
So I assumed so.
In my business, in the handymanbusiness, one of the things
that we do and pride ourselveson is we take all the debris
away with us.
You know the old ceiling fans,the old fixtures, whatever.
So you are not.
You're saying, hey look, we'llcome there, we'll scoop it, but
it's going in your refuse.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
At our second, our first location, we already have
all the trucks, we got all thedumpsters, we got all the
infrastructure set up, so we'rejust taking it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
But every new location that we open, we're
just going to put in thecustomer like they literally
don't seem to care at all, maybea couple percentage points.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I was.
I didn't know what a chevyspark was.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But there's a little car, my friends, you don't put a
24 foot ladder on that thingwithout calling the car no no
that's, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I often joked.
I said you keep this up, man,I'm gonna stick you in that, in
a b, in a mini ladder on top ofthat, and then you show up try
to sell a job cargo doors onthere yeah.
So let's talk a little bitabout some of the things you
learned early on about theservice.
So, getting the customer,that's job one.
Getting the money, getting thecash flow right well, that's
(15:16):
actually that's job one.
But serving and operating whatdid you learn as you try to
scale that?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
yeah, it was definitely a lot of uh
bottlenecks that we didn'tnecessarily expect, like when we
were first starting off, likeour customer acquisition costs
were super low, we were makinggood money and it's all of a
sudden one person can onlyhandle about 150 accounts and
now we got to hire like two orthree people right off the bat.
We kind of thought it was goingto go forever, but there's
actually quite a bit ofseasonality in the business.
(15:43):
So we pick up probably 80% ofour customers quarter one and
then the summertime is actuallythe slowest time of the year and
we basically go down about 10%of our census and then it picks
back up in the fall.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Why do you think the summer is so?
I love the seasonality because,again, when you look around all
the world and of course we'reon every continent, in the
nation, a couple of galaxies,you like how I did that, yeah,
every continent in the nation.
Yeah, just shows you how world Iam here in the us, but no,
everything's, you know.
Hey, you're in atlanta, georgia, which is seasonally.
You can work 12 months a year.
I'm like, no, we have the sameseasonality you have in michigan
(16:17):
, you do in minnesota and newyork, so why was the summer a
slow season?
This is really interesting to alot of people.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, I think there's probably a couple of reasons.
One, people travel more in thesummer.
Two, people are outside moreoften, so maybe they want it
cleaned up every day.
Where we might not be able toaccommodate that.
You got kids that are home fromschool during the summer, so
people just make their kids doit, so there's probably a combo
of all those things.
People are more likely to moveduring the summer than in the
(16:46):
winter.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Um, so all those things, I think, just kind of
add up.
So you get your core businessand that is I'm going to come
out there and I'm going to cleanup your refuse.
Is it, uh, residentialcommercial?
What's the split on that?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
well, probably we do some commercial but I haven't
really focused on it becauseit's an almost entirely
different business probably like97 residential, uh we can we do
install like those uh dogwaystations at like apartment
complexes and stuff like that sothat was my next question is as
you've grown your business andlooked at it, are there other
adjunct things you add on, oryou're just staying true to the
(17:16):
core of your biz?
right now.
We're just now for the firsttime adding or trying to add
another service, just some,something minor, some odor
control for people.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I'm telling you the bags of poop for vengeance Spite
poop bags, Spite poop bags.
Yeah huge market there, untapit.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
You can have it for free.
I'll send it over.
See See, I got free product.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
No tariffs.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Honestly, hey, we'll talk offline about this one.
Alan, that's a horrible idea.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Hey Will between you and me I think I got an idea.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So what's your average customer like?
I can't imagine having a dogand not being willing to pick up
the poop.
Are they just two people thatwork a lot, or something like
that?
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I mean there's a big mix of people.
So number one there's peoplethat hate picking up dog poop.
Our top demographics probablyfemales in their 30s and 40s.
But you also have people thatare disabled.
You got married couples thatboth have to work a full-time
job.
They might not even get homeuntil it's dark out.
So busy professionals peoplethat hate it.
You got people with serviceanimals that might be disabled.
They might not be able to pickup after your dog.
You got the elderly people thatmight not be able to pick up
(18:21):
after their dog.
So there's definitely a mix.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I'd say there's more people, you charge them a lot
more right.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I'm just in a foul mood today.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
You are Again, alan.
You're supposed to be nice.
You're talking to another nice.
He's from Washington.
I mean in Washington, oregon.
It's the same thing, oh God.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Go Cougss.
Right, there is a, there is acertain brotherhood there, but,
uh, bite your tongue anyway.
No, normally will.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I'm the, I'm the nice one, and okay, and chris is the
one that wants to slasheverybody's tires well, that's
why I said I'm doing this alloffline because I'm getting that
shit and that shit's gettingspread and I've got two
customers.
I mean, uh, never mind, uh,let's keep going, shall we?
So you got the customeracquisition.
You guys are doing this, you'regetting things going.
(19:11):
You thought about the odorcontrol Do you do?
Where do you see this businessgrowing to and what do you got
for your plans going forward?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I mean um, yeah, so right now, we got, you know,
spokane location, we got ourseattle location.
We'll probably continue to openup throughout kind of the cutie
sound region.
Um, but I want to just keep itsuper simple.
I don't want to offer a bunchof different services and things
like that.
It's hard enough to scale oneservice to multiple locations
and millions of dollars versusdoing a kajillion other things.
(19:40):
So that's always a gold nugget,right?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
there, and that's.
That's the question.
That's the gold nugget foreverybody.
We always love to chase theshiny bubbles right.
We always want to add on aservice, as opposed to getting
your service.
Even better, to go in andreally penetrate a market or I'm
sure there's a lot more peoplein Spokane you could be
servicing and for just this, asopposed to going well, I'm going
to offer at least services, orI'm going to offer dog walking,
(20:03):
or I'm going to offer doggrooming.
That's not your core business,man.
In your case, that's so easy totalk about, but for many of us,
we can't see it, especiallywhen you're in your own business
.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Are you franchising?
We're not right now, but I havea list of over 100 people that
want to buy one, so that'salways a good start.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, that's a good sign, I think, if we so then,
what's the what's the purpose ofthe YouTube channel that you're
doing?
I mean, you've got a lot ofvideos out there.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, so we we started a group called the poop
scoop millionaire, so webasically teach people how to
pick up dog poop on the internet, and that turned into a whole
business.
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So there's an art to picking up poop.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Because, honestly, I can't do it without gagging.
I'm not going to lie I wouldactually be one of his customers
if I had a dog.
You don't have a dog, I don'thave any animals.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
That's a good thing, but I can't do it, I'll buy you
one I'd be gagging.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Buy me one, so you, that's another.
Right there you go, here you go.
Your kids really want a dog.
By the way, they're stillclaiming an emotional abuse at
26 and 23, that we never had adog.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, I got a little of that myself.
Anyway, go ahead.
So the video channel teachingpeople how to back to the
original question five minutesago.
That's right.
At least I'm on point what,what, yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:24):
So, yeah, how did that start?
I think I did my first everpodcast with somebody that had a
poop scoop company, maybe like3000 followers on YouTube.
Nothing, nothing crazy.
And there's been poop scoopersacross the country for years and
years and years, but none ofthem really got very big.
So when I came on the podcastand said we're making over a
million dollars picking up dogpoop, I had a ton of people
(21:45):
reach out and that wanted to dolike one on one coaching with me
.
Wasn't really interested in it.
So I just kind of threw out anumber.
I'm like, okay, I'll talk toyou for whatever 1500 bucks a
month for a call or two.
And we ended up making likeover 20 grand in a couple of
weeks.
So I was like, huh, there mightbe, there might be something to
this.
I don't want to do one-on-onecoaching, and I was a big
(22:05):
follower of Alex Ramosi.
He invested in the schoolplatform.
So I said, what the hell, let'sgive it a shot and see what
happens.
And it's basically been takenoff like crazy.
Like month after month, it justkeeps getting bigger and bigger
and bigger.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Do you know the platform he's talking about?
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I do, Ramosi, but actually I cannot explain it
probably as well as you can.
Why don't you talk a little bitabout what Hermosi does and how
he?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
he markets himself.
Uh, as far as the schoolplatform, or him, yeah, the
school platform, not the otherstuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, so yeah,basically the school platform is
a community platform andthey've put a lot of effort into
it to make it as simple aspossible so you can have courses
, we can do live trainings, youcan sell stuff on there and we
(22:51):
basically just use it forcourses and community.
Community is really the bigpart, so it's almost like an
online forum that people pay toget access to.
So we're charging people yeah,69 bucks a month to come in.
They get access to all thecourses.
We do a couple live eventsevery single month, like a live
Q&A once a month, and thenpeople can just like talk to
each other about whateverproblems are having with their
business.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Love that.
I love the idea of buildingthat community.
So, franchising probably on thehorizon, you're thinking about
it, but this other idea thatyou've got, or what's happening,
is that you're building thiscommunity of teaching people how
to scoop poop.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yep, so you said a wrapped vehicle is your.
Your third best lead generator,chris, you have vehicles where.
Where does it rank for you?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
um, so for me it's a lot lower.
It does a great job for brandrecognition.
Here in atlanta, again, we'refive and a half million in the
metro atlanta area, so it'spretty spread out when you only
have 15 vans and a five and ahalf million, uh, radius.
But, um, it does work and I, Itotally insist on it and still
say absolutely if you're not, ifyou're in business right now
and you don't have at least afreaking magnet on the side of
(23:53):
your truck, you're blowing it.
If you're not wearing yourlogoed shirt every day
everywhere you go, you'reblowing it.
I mean, I'm doing this podcastwith the trusted toolbox on.
I went, uh, to another bignetworking event where it was
supposed to be suit and tie andI came in with my trusted
toolbox and my coat and you knowwho got to talk the most well I
(24:13):
don't know I got to.
I don't know, it's not the rightword.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I took over who spoke the most.
That has nothing to do withwhat you're wearing oh you know
they love me baby.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, dig me.
Guys want to.
I did it.
You got to keep it logoed, baby.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, I'll add a couple things about truck wraps
too.
If you have truck wraps, itactually allows you to charge
higher prices because you looklike a more professional company
.
I think that's something thatoften gets overlooked.
And then for us, More than amagnet.
Oh yeah, yeah, a lot more thana magnet.
And then for us Facebook adswas like our number one thing.
But we wrapped all our truckswith like dog poop stuff, took a
picture of it, ran it onFacebook ads and that's our top
(24:51):
performing ads.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
We're going to let Will keep talking, but I'm going
to refute you right now.
I said at least a magnet.
I didn't say I do magnets, Iwrap.
I think you were a magnetsupporter.
No, I was not a magnetsupporter.
I am definitely all pro-rap.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I think you're getting a kickback from the
magnet people.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
I am not getting a kickback.
You know what I said, at leasta magnet, my friends.
And you kick it down and you'relike, yeah, chris, take that.
You can't do that man.
I am not a pooper scooper.
I'm going back to Will.
He said it the fee and earningthe fee.
You got to fit the part whenpeople have, hey, I'm just gonna
(25:27):
have this guy come pick up mypooper scooper stuff and they're
thinking he's gonna look like aderelict who just came up on
his bike.
He went the back, grabbed a bag, grabbed some shit, put it in
this dumpster.
But these guys do it waydifferent, I'm sure, and I'm
sure the neighbors see that andthat's how they get to earn the
fee.
Alan will, what do you think of?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
that you know he was a little sleepy before this
podcast.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I knew I had to poke him a couple times.
You guys better be learningsomething.
Get in that truck, man.
Put the windows up because it'sabout to get saucy uh, but no,
no, you're, you're.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
You're exactly right.
Yeah, it's all about having aprocess for us.
So clean our equipment withkind of great disinfectant in
between each yards.
We're not spreading Parvo orweird diseases between dogs.
And we also take a gate photoevery time before we leave so
the customer knows we're notletting their dog out.
So that's kind of a big pain.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Did you learn that the hard way?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
No, no, thankfully that actually happened to me.
I hired like a ac person and Ilet my dog out, so uh, but I
didn't make a good little nuggetfor you, chris.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Well, I'll give you my story, so you've never, never
had to chase a dog through aneighborhood I'll be honest, I
actually, uh, haven't reallyscooped much myself, if at all.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
All right, all right, so now I'm going to tell myself
.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So we were doing a bathroom remodel.
I'm in year one, uh, sevenmonths into it, and the lady's
like do this remodel?
I'm like, I'm just a handymanbut I knew how to do remodels,
because I knew how to doremodels.
But I had to do the job.
And she had this little dog andthe little dog's name was
truman and it was a little dogand it was a little yappy,
little fucker and that fuckingthing kept yapping at me.
(27:04):
Every fucking day I went in hisfucking house.
Well, one day we're in thereworking and I have help right,
I've got helpers working with me.
Truman gets out of his cage,goes out the front door.
I spend the next three hoursrunning through the neighborhood
it's a gated community that youknow called St Marlon Running
trying to find this littlefucking dog, and he thought this
(27:25):
was a great game.
I am jumping over gates, I'mrunning through the backyard.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
So you could see him.
He's just standing two stepsahead of you.
Always, oh, and you're sweating.
Oh, I'm just dying.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I mean fat guy is running through this yard and I
am rumbling, bumbling.
I mean I'm not a small guy, man, I'm 6'2" 230.
I mean I'm running, I'mbumbling, I'm stumbling, I'm
chasing this dude down and Ifinally get him back right, get
him back in, get him in the cage.
I'm guessing you handled himgently.
I did.
I did not hurt the dog.
I do love dogs.
I love dogs to pieces.
(27:56):
Truman, truman, you wife saysshe comes home, she's been
working all day, she goes, shegoes up, she inspects everything
.
She comes down, she goes huh,didn't get much done today, huh
and what do you say to?
that I just looked over and wenttruman.
So, but back to your point.
(28:19):
I think that's the kind ofstuff that people want in their
customer service.
Right, they want to know thatyou did the job you were
supposed to do in today'sinstant gratification world.
Right, you got uber eats.
You got uber this.
You know exactly where youruber is before you're going to
get it, and when they drop youoff, they ask how do we do?
And so when your guys arewalking out of that property,
they're getting a notification.
(28:40):
Hey, we're done.
That's a peace of mind forsomebody who's sitting in an
office going my little precioustruman could potentially be
running around and not poopingin my own yard.
Oh my god, how could I do it?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
oh my god, just come, just come to my yard.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I'm sure truman's there you know what he probably
with all his friends.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
He was and the deer.
They had a lot of fun yeah thedeer.
So how long you've been doingthis?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
First full year was 2021.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
So in 2021, obviously everybody's home, COVID, Did
you feel like that was a goodpoint for you to start a
business?
I mean looking back, and Istarted my business in 2008,.
Right beginning of therecession, I got my teeth kicked
in, and not as much as Alan.
Alan got his actually teeth headneck?
(29:27):
I don't remember that.
Yeah, okay, don't worry, we'llkeep going.
But the question was to willnot you all right back to 2021?
Did you find that starting abusiness at that time was good?
Would you do it?
I think it was actually really,really good.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I think people had uh extra money, they had their
stimulus checks coming out, sowe just uh, I guess we took them
.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I'll take those.
Thank you, you know, here weare.
You know we're talking to you.
2025, at the end of 2023, thestimulus check money ran out.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Was that a?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
noticeable squeak.
It was for me.
So in 2024, I've talked aboutthis Cause.
Here we are at 25.
People go hey man, how are youlooking?
Year over year?
I said well, I'm looking great.
I said, but last year sucked.
Why?
I said because everybody ranout of money.
Savings was gone, credit carddebt's the highest it's ever
been.
Interest rates started going upand everybody had already done
(30:20):
everything they wanted to do intheir house and they want to get
out and travel.
It's called we've covered thisin therapy.
We've got a guest here namedwill.
Well, we're talking aboutwill's business.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
I'm just I'm just telling that will what happens
when shit hits the fan, and sohas every shit ever hit the fan
see, there's another, there'sanother revenue stream that's a
great video, by the way.
You should say we scoop it, wefan it it's gone okay, so you,
uh, you haven't had thisbusiness very long and yet it
sounds very sophisticated, andyour background was in, you know
(30:51):
sociology and you're a raftinginstructor.
I mean, did you have mentors orjust sit there and think about
what does a good business looklike, or was it just the?
Uh?
I think you mentioned that youhad a bad experience with
somebody in this industry, andwas it just a reaction to that?
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I think it was that, and then also my, my electrical
company.
I started probably four monthsbefore that, so with a pretty
seasoned operator, so Ibasically just took all the
stuff I learned there andapplied it to, uh, dog poop
scooping.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
I love that because there's such a parallel and I
want to say will uh, kudos toyou for taking the backhanded
compliment from alan saying andyou're a river guide I love
river guys do you because you'renot sounding very nice.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
That sounds like my favorite photo is a rafting trip
in oregon and we hit a bigrapid and the the guide was in
the process of being ejectedwhen the photo snapped.
That's the best.
Yeah, where's our guide.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
He's in front of us.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I mean it was like a full, like a luge pose, except
for just getting launched in theair.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
It was great I will say though uh, some of the best
times I ever had was doingrafting, and we've only done it
guided, and I told my wife I'mlike let's do it unguided, and
she goes not with you, I won't.
Which is probably smart, by theway, probably smart, yeah, I
wouldn't want you in stroke seat, you would not.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
We'll keep you as ballast.
Oh God, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
No too much fun.
All right, let's get back tothe biz.
All right, the biz Can.
All right, the biz, can weplease?
Alan, you're so disruptor.
Such a disruptor Will's tryingto get his message out there, it
was a big compliment he doesn'teven know this is going to be a
good message.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I'm really impressed.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
All content's good content Will Tell Hermosi that
he knows that.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I mean he is running a very sophisticated business in
an unsophisticated industry, Iknow, and he's kind of like,
yeah, whatever.
I mean that's the way he acts.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
But there's a lot more I got a feeling right now
there's a lot more horsepowerunder the hood.
Yes, let's talk about this.
So what do you want to do withit?
We want to go, yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
I think it'd be cool to make like 10 million dollars
Picking up dog poop a year.
That's probably where we'regoing.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And that's the headline of the show.
How to make 10 million a yearPicking up dog poop.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
We'll probably do three this year, so we're
getting there.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's beautiful.
I mean again.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Can you imagine what the impoverished countries would
be thinking listening to thispodcast?
That our country would spendtotally 10 million dollars just
in washington state to pick uppoop right just that they would
probably use in their gardenexactly right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, you can't because it's too high protein
maybe mix it in with somethingoh well, maybe you do.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
All right, let's figure it out.
You let me know, I'll ship it.
There we go, oh, oh All rightwe're formulating.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
I'm thinking we have chemists, we know.
Okay, all right, we'll startworking on it.
I think there's an opportunitythere.
So your business strategyFamily is always number one for
all of us and I love saying that, but I didn't really mean that
when I started my business,because I left the corporate
world.
I was making a shit ton ofmoney and I left.
(34:04):
I said, hey, baby, don't worry,I'm going to make a million
dollars a year, I'm just goingto kill it.
Here I am 17 years later.
No, I'm not.
I mean I'm doing really well,but you know it.
It's.
It's definitely self-rewarding.
I love everything I'm doing.
I love having this podcast,love doing all we're doing.
So tell me what you want to do.
Uh, aside from the money,what's the?
(34:26):
What's the?
What are you looking to getdone?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
uh, honestly, I just enjoy doing uh business stuff.
So no matter what what businessit is, I just like like
building, building cool stuff,uh getting people jobs, helping
people out.
So yeah, I was kind of it'skind of I'm just doing whatever
I want you know, I think, andthat's awesome because, uh, you
know, back in the day.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
How many people are just driving down the road
listening to this and just greenwith envy you should be green
with envy, because listen towill.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I mean he found a niche, he built a market, he
used his skill set, worked withseasoned operators to refine his
market.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Amazon can't take it away.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
And now right, I mean Amazon's not bringing robots
out to scoop your shit.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
They could get it with drones.
Ooh, drone poop scooping.
There's a pool.
You know what, alan?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Alan, I got another idea.
We can't tell, will.
I'm thinking what we'll do iswe'll create a drone with lasers
and we'll just laser the poopout.
We'll just shoot it.
What could go wrong?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Nothing could go wrong.
I got a couple of neighborsthat like to try it on.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I know right, forget the poop.
There's the dog, there's theneighbor Truman.
Truman, I'm not killing you,but I'm definitely killing mom
who says I think you did a lotdone today.
Huh, no, no.
So I think that's the lessonthat I think a lot of people
(35:50):
need to understand is that ifyou're doing what you like to do
, kind of the money happens.
If you're trying to chase themoney, it's really hard to make
that work and feel fulfilledwhen you're done.
And, honestly, I can't tell youhow many times I have sat there
like, if I'm either in all theroles I've filled in our company
, if I'm in sales, or back whenI was a tech, if I'm in sales
going man, I got to win this job, I got to win this job.
I'm the worst person in theworld to have in your home
(36:12):
because I'm not going.
I really need to help thisperson.
I really want to help thisperson because that's why I love
what I do in my business,because we help people in their
homes, you know, create theenvironment that they love to
live in, you know, elevate theirlifestyles.
And if you're thinking, oh, Igotta make money.
I gotta make money, you'reblowing it man, in your case,
you're not thinking like that.
You're thinking, yeah, I havefun doing what I'm doing.
I enjoy it.
I mean that's fun, right, makesure you start over.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
I mean I definitely probably could have made moves
to try to make more money, evenif, like the Hoopscoop
millionaire group, like I, teachpeople basically how to start a
whole business for whatever 70bucks Right 70 bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I mean it's brilliant , it's an American dream story
really, I think again a totallydifferent business model than
anybody we've talked tospecifically in a world that he
could have gone franchised.
We've talked to a lot of peoplewho have done that.
He found the market, he madethe market.
He can go franchise the marketnow.
He still can.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He's got 100 people who want to buy one.
I think the price just went upafter this podcast.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Well, of course, because if you're listening,
yeah, the price just went up.
You mentioned, I think Willsaid that he would do this
before the show.
You mentioned Small BusinessSafari.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of the Small Business
Safari.
Remember to keep that positiveattitude, which will reflect on
a higher altitude as you're outthere making it happen in the
wild world of small businessownership, Until next time go
(37:33):
make it a great day AdventureTeam.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Are your sales in person or over the phone?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
You can actually get a quote and sign up for services
on our website without eventalking to anybody.
Is that how most people do it?
Yeah, probably most.
When we first started off, mostpeople came to us through
Facebook Messenger, actuallybecause we found that our
website just wasn't good enoughand didn't have a high enough
conversion rate.
So that converted higher.
But we've since refined it, sonow we just try to push as much
(38:04):
stuff through the website aspossible.
It keeps our customer servicereps from having to do a bunch
of extra kind of manual work.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
talking to people just bogs it down.
So does that make you have tobe the low cost service provider
?
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I mean, you've got competition right, and so if
yeah, I guess I'm creating myown competition too, but no, we
charge a lot more than everybodyelse.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
So what?
So what are you projecting onyour website that says hey, I
guess I'll, I'll go with theseguys, even though they're more.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, well, one.
They might not even find someof our other competitors.
We've bought up other companiesand stuff so sometimes we might
have, like the top whateverfive listings on a particular
search Five calls to get thesame five people.
Yeah, we also have the biggestbrand.
So, like in Spokane, especiallywhen I first started, there's
maybe 10 to 20 searches a monthfor like pooper scooper service,
compared to like a thousandsearches a month for electrician
(38:51):
.
And now there's seven 800searches a month for just swoop
scoop.
Oh wow, people associate theservice with us and not that
it's its own service in thatarea.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
if that makes sense, so swoop scoop has become the
kleenex, or bandage tissues,right band-aid of band-aids.
What's the other word?
I mean kleenex is tissue paper,but what's the other word for
band-aid bandage?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
okay, thank you, whatever, all right right, no I
mean that's right.
I mean there's there's certainthings that the, the, the
branding is so strong thatthat's the word that people use.
Yeah, I mean, when I wasgrowing up we just called it a
coke when you wanted to go get asoda out west and northwest
yeah, we call it pop.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
But uh, I'll tell you .
There's another example cappingin our own world.
Um, they, the cement board thatpeople are putting on homes is
called.
We all call it hardy board.
Hardy board.
Well, because they dominate themarket.
Well, there's three othercompetitors.
There's two other competitors,three total, but they are such a
dominant player we all sayhardy board and it's like
Kleenex, I mean, and that's theline we use yeah, because you
say hardy board.
(39:52):
I know what that means.
Right yeah, so here we go.
Poop scoop has become Swoopscoop.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Swoop scoop.
Swoop scoop Our own miniKleenex vacuum in Spokane.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
There you go, swoop scoop.
Hey, you can use that and don'tworry, you don't have to throw
Alan any money, he doesn'treally.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
I just want a bag of poop, I can buy him, for I'll
buy you a dog still, though, ifyou want.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
That's what you ought to be doing, so let's talk
about that alternative marketingideas that you've had.
Have you done something like?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
adoption program sponsoring.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
I want an incontinent dog so I can go walk it on the
property.
Yeah, no, we try to partnerwith.
So we have like a communitygive back program.
So like once a month we'lldonate like $1,000 to a charity
and then we'll give them like apromo code.
So if anybody signs up with thepromo code, we'll donate an
extra 50, basically forever.
So we'll try to partner withlike shelters and things like
that.
Um, especially like adoptionshelters, because everybody's
(40:43):
getting a new dog.
We'll get our informationpassed out.
Um, so that's worked.
We've done a lot of stuff thatdoesn't work.
Also, we we've got to deal with, uh, pizza hut and they let us
put our dog poop coupons on thepizza boxes.
Whoops, and uh, yeah, we got nocustomers from that spent like
five grand.
So that was kind of interesting.
Uh, why?
Why do you think that is otherthan what I?
(41:05):
think I don't even know if theyput them out, to be honest, but
uh also also because uh peoplebuying, yeah, pizza hut.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Probably they're not necessarily our ideal customer,
perhaps yeah, probably sittingin an apartment, and the last
thing I want to think aboutwhile I'm eating pizza is my dog
.
Yeah, we not necessarily ourideal customer, perhaps.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, probably sitting in an apartment, and the
last thing I want to thinkabout while I'm eating pizza is
my dog.
We got rejected by Domino's andPizza Hut took us.
You know what?
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Actually, the thing I do like better is people love
their dogs, their cats, theiranimals and then their kids.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
For many, of them, of them.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, because the dogs and cats don't talk back
you know we had brian gottliebon many podcasts ago talking
about making them a co-producerand if you made your customer a
co-producer of you know, hey,I'm going to sponsor this
shelter and we're going to, youknow, save one euthanized dog a
month, or?
Or hey, we're going to giveback to this community.
I could see people going, howmuch is, or?
Or hey, we're going to giveback to this community.
I?
I could see people going, howmuch is your service?
(42:00):
Yeah, we're, uh, 20 more thaneverybody else, or 30, or
whatever the number is, I don'tknow.
We're twice as much as somepeople.
Twice, fine, but your firstmonth, you know, this month, or
every month you do it, this 20bucks goes to them.
I, I would see people doing itbecause they are ready.
I mean, every time I've been toa festival, people are dropping
(42:20):
money like it's going out ofstyle for giving back to
shelters, because a lot ofpeople going to festivals here
in Atlanta have dogs with them.
I love the idea.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
I don't like it that they're bringing their dogs to a
festival.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
It's annoying no, I love it no, they bark but they
come up.
They bark, but they come up,and then we have a little.
What if I'm allergic, I mean,you know the last flight.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
When I came back from LA, it's like, oh, we have
somebody with a peanut allergyon the plane.
I'm like, well, what about my?
Speaker 1 (42:52):
freaking dog allergy and all the you kids.
What happened to the niceNorthwest.
You know what.
That's what happened.
We've gotten Alan out of thePacific Northwest.
He's become like us down herein Atlanta.
He's been hanging out with metoo much.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I've been hanging out with Chris.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
He's been gone too long he's been getting angry.
Will.
This has been awesome, dude.
Tell everybody how we can findyou, or find what you want
people to find out about you,because I think it's an amazing
story.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, yeah.
So if you want to learn more, Iguess, about the industry,
we've got a websitescoopstartcom.
We've got the Scoop StartYouTube channel and then if you
want to talk to me, pretty muchthe only way to talk to me is if
you're in the Poop Scoopmillionaire community.
We've got like 800 otherscoopers in there.
Do not try to get a hold of meby.
(43:37):
Those would be the top threeplaces.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Will just says no to poop scoop.
What do those people do whenthey hit you?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
You're jealous of his million gatekeepers.
I am too.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
I got one.
Cindy is my gatekeeper, now Igot like five.
It's gotten too big.
I've gotten too big on the podwhere I've had to have Cindy
start to be my gatekeeper boys.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
He's got five.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Do you have a lot of?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
You got a lot of making up to do.
I do, I know.
All right, you need four moregatekeepers.
Wow, just to be like Will.
How long have you been doingyour business?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
17 years.
Geez, I'm not even close.
Nope, the three or whatever,yeah, but I mean sounds great,
but that's a great number.
But let me tell you about mybeers and the profit on the net.
It doesn't matter.
All right, guys, we learnedsomething.
It's up to you to learnsomething.
Today.
You figured out something else.
We talked about a lot of shittoday.
(44:31):
I had to do it again.
Yeah, come on, it's too easy,it's fine, all right, will we
want to hit you with our famousfour questions?
What is a book you'd recommendto our audience?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
$100 million offers and leads.
That's Hermosi.
Yeah, I always tell people myfavorite book is the Facebook
because it makes me the mostmoney.
I don't read anything else.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Now, that's a gold nugget.
There is the answer.
All right, number two what'sthe favorite feature of your
home?
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I don't have a favorite feature of my home
because it poisoned me and I hadto evacuate.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
All right, we talked about this before the podcast
Guys.
He is a victim of mold.
We talked about this quite abit and here's what happens when
you're at home and the familystarts not feeling good, you're
not really sure why.
There are people out there whowill come in there and check out
your air.
I know this because I'm in thebiz and I love hearing this
story and he brought this up.
You can have somebody come outthere for a very low amount of
(45:30):
money and they can do an airtest, air quality test and they
test the indoor air qualityversus the outdoor.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Now just because I'm suspicious of those people?
No, don't be, because I'massuming that the answer is
going to be oh, your air sucksand it's going to cost you 12
grand.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
But these people don't sell the services, they
just do the test.
My point I don't trust it, youdon't.
You gotta trust this becauseI've had it done.
Uh, guess what mold iseverywhere, guys, it's outside,
it's inside.
Mold only affects you if itaffects you, and when it affects
you it's a negative, negative,negative, negative Allen thing.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
What's going to be the favorite feature of your new
home?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, what do you want to do in your new home?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yeah well, we'll see.
We might have to rebuild thewhole thing.
We'll see how things end upgoing.
Well, probably my favoritefeature.
It's right on top of the hill,nice neighborhood.
Uh, it's got these uh,basically doors that basically
open up the whole wall to theoutside.
That's probably our favoritefeature yeah, like sliding glass
.
The sliding glass doors oh nice, those doors.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
All right.
We are, uh, very proud of ourcustomer service background.
We talk about customer servicea lot.
We talked about a little bit inyour world today as well, but
we're just customer servicefreaks.
Let's get it going.
What's a customer service petpeeve of yours when you're out
there and you're the customer?
Speaker 3 (46:48):
I don't know if it might be considered customer
service, but I hate not gettinga flat rate price when I want to
buy something.
I hate paying by the hour, wow.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Deep thoughts.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
That's something we could debate for a while we
could I get what he's going at,because he's a little younger
than you, alan, especially youBecause you're old.
I think a lot of the youngergeneration are used to Uber,
eats and Uber, and just tell mehow much it is.
Yep, that looks like a valleyto me.
Great, don't nickel and dime me, do not.
(47:22):
Where the older generation weused to go nope, we're gonna
nickel and dime, we're gonnaargue down, we're gonna beat you
up or we're gonna say, nope,you didn't use that nail, you
gotta take five cents off.
I want it all off that soundsuh, like you.
That is me.
I put it, but I might as you.
All right, let's keep going.
We've already talked about theTI White Nightmare story, unless
(47:43):
you have another one, but Ithink the mold is a pretty big
one.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, we're still in the middle of it.
So you get weird symptoms withmold poisoning too.
Like I shoot sparks and stuffout of my fingers and toes I
don't know if you guys haveheard of that I actually sparks
and stuff out of my fingers andtoes.
I don't know if you guys haveheard of that.
Like I actually actuallythought I was like schizo.
I like didn't tell anybody andwe hired a mold specialist to
help flush it out of our systemand I guess that's a symptom.
So, like at night, if you touchyour bed sheet it shoots out
(48:08):
static electricity literalsparks, yeah, like static
electricity comes out because ofthe build-up.
So yeah, it's kind of it wasweird, it was super weird wow.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Well, there you go, he's shooting sparks off his
fingers he may be, but he canshoot sparks through poop.
No, it's not working, alrightyou know what let's?
just get out of here, guys.
If you didn't learn some shittoday, that's on you, because
we're talking about building amarket, making it happen, using
your skills to help you developyour business.
Figure this thing out, man.
(48:41):
Let's keep going, because everyweek, every day, every hour,
every morning you wake up.
It's a slog.
We got to make it happen and wecan get up there.
Let's make it go.
Cheers everybody.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.