PJEntrePOOneur
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- Joined
- Mar 27, 2021
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Hey everyone! I’m a longtime lurker and a big fan of the book.
I’ve been the marketing agency world the last several years working for agency’s. I started my own in October and stumbled on a long forgotten niche - pooper scooper service businesses.
I actually owned one as my first business when I was in elementary school and middle school.
Anyway I quickly mastered generating and converting leads after 3 months. I brought on a few clients and still have them.
But I’m looking to get out of the agency space. I’m just kind of sick of it. Instead of using my skills on other peoples businesses I want to use them to build my own.
I want to get back into the poop scooping business.
I’ve been running Ads that acquire new customers for my clients at $18 to $35 each. The lifetime of those customers will be minimum $2,000 to almost $3,000.
People rarely cancel and when they do it’s because they are moving or their dog died. It’s not uncommon for people to stay four years plus with the service.
It’s an EXTREMELY fragmented industry with tiny operators scattered sparsely around the country. Many are solo operators. After immersing myself in the industry and making a lot of friends in it I’ve learned that many purposefully just don’t want to expand beyond themself and one or two employees. One person can scoop 110 yards a week so that’s where most max out at.
But there are some big companies in the space. I have one by me in the DC/Virginia area that does $800k a year with 800 clients. There’s also a couple franchises with the biggest of them having 65 locations.
I just see a ton of blue ocean that’s ripe for the taking. I also see a ton of terrible marketing from the existing companies. I’m just not sure how to structure it so it’s a fastlane type business.
It’s a business with massive appeal among dog owners. Millennial women (25 to 44) are the main customers.
My original idea was to go to lawn care and landscapers across the country and get them to offer the service and then basically white label/subcontract the service from them for fulfillment. I’d generate the leads and sign them up and rely on the lawn care company to fulfill.
I quickly learned that they bill way too much an hour for it to be work their time.
Then I read a book by Paul Orfalea who founded Kinko’s. What he did was amazing. Instead of franchising he set up each store as a partnership where he was the majority/controlling owner. He had 1,200 locations owned by him and 130 partners. Some owned one store and some owned 100.
Bingo! (Or so I thought). I could bring on a partner in each location to handle operations. Each location would be a subsidiary of the main LLC. I would own 51% of it and the partner would own 49%.
I stared pursuing this and found several junk removal company owners throughout Florida who are eager and interested.
One of my clients does something similar. He is in Pennsylvania and started in one county and then expanded county by county by partnering with one person in each for operations. He has 3 locations plus his main one. Each location is under the same company/brand but in a different LLC
My friends who are entrepreneurs think the partnerships a terrible idea with too much risk.
One of my good friends who is an entrepreneur who I highly admire is pushing me to “not go near partnerships with a ten foot pole” (her words). She’s pushing me towards affiliate type deals where I’d just sign deals for these companies to just fulfill the services for the clients I sign.
I know I could just hire 1099 contractors but all my contacts who own companies in this industry advise against it because it’s technically illegal if you’re telling them what time to be somewhere.
I’ve been the marketing agency world the last several years working for agency’s. I started my own in October and stumbled on a long forgotten niche - pooper scooper service businesses.
I actually owned one as my first business when I was in elementary school and middle school.
Anyway I quickly mastered generating and converting leads after 3 months. I brought on a few clients and still have them.
But I’m looking to get out of the agency space. I’m just kind of sick of it. Instead of using my skills on other peoples businesses I want to use them to build my own.
I want to get back into the poop scooping business.
I’ve been running Ads that acquire new customers for my clients at $18 to $35 each. The lifetime of those customers will be minimum $2,000 to almost $3,000.
People rarely cancel and when they do it’s because they are moving or their dog died. It’s not uncommon for people to stay four years plus with the service.
It’s an EXTREMELY fragmented industry with tiny operators scattered sparsely around the country. Many are solo operators. After immersing myself in the industry and making a lot of friends in it I’ve learned that many purposefully just don’t want to expand beyond themself and one or two employees. One person can scoop 110 yards a week so that’s where most max out at.
But there are some big companies in the space. I have one by me in the DC/Virginia area that does $800k a year with 800 clients. There’s also a couple franchises with the biggest of them having 65 locations.
I just see a ton of blue ocean that’s ripe for the taking. I also see a ton of terrible marketing from the existing companies. I’m just not sure how to structure it so it’s a fastlane type business.
It’s a business with massive appeal among dog owners. Millennial women (25 to 44) are the main customers.
My original idea was to go to lawn care and landscapers across the country and get them to offer the service and then basically white label/subcontract the service from them for fulfillment. I’d generate the leads and sign them up and rely on the lawn care company to fulfill.
I quickly learned that they bill way too much an hour for it to be work their time.
Then I read a book by Paul Orfalea who founded Kinko’s. What he did was amazing. Instead of franchising he set up each store as a partnership where he was the majority/controlling owner. He had 1,200 locations owned by him and 130 partners. Some owned one store and some owned 100.
Bingo! (Or so I thought). I could bring on a partner in each location to handle operations. Each location would be a subsidiary of the main LLC. I would own 51% of it and the partner would own 49%.
I stared pursuing this and found several junk removal company owners throughout Florida who are eager and interested.
One of my clients does something similar. He is in Pennsylvania and started in one county and then expanded county by county by partnering with one person in each for operations. He has 3 locations plus his main one. Each location is under the same company/brand but in a different LLC
My friends who are entrepreneurs think the partnerships a terrible idea with too much risk.
One of my good friends who is an entrepreneur who I highly admire is pushing me to “not go near partnerships with a ten foot pole” (her words). She’s pushing me towards affiliate type deals where I’d just sign deals for these companies to just fulfill the services for the clients I sign.
I know I could just hire 1099 contractors but all my contacts who own companies in this industry advise against it because it’s technically illegal if you’re telling them what time to be somewhere.
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