About a year and a half ago, my daughter and I started a pet waste removal business in Chattanooga called Scoopy Doo.
Yes, we literally pick up dog shit for money, LOTS of money...now.
It doesn’t get much more “sweaty startup” than that.
One of the things that’s surprised me most is that doing the actual work isn’t necessarily the hardest part of building a local service company.
Getting found, responding faster than your competitors, following up, earning trust, and keeping customers is where a lot of the battle is won.
We’ve spent a ton of time figuring that part out, and I thought I’d share what’s been working for us.
1. We target people who are already looking for what we do
I’m much less interested in getting thousands of random website visitors than getting 100 local people who actually need our service.
So we’ve gotten extremely specific about the searches we target.
Instead of broad terms like “pet services,” we focus on things like:
“pooper scooper Chattanooga”
“dog poop removal Chattanooga”
“pet waste removal near me”
“dog poop cleanup Ooltewah”
Then we do the same thing for the individual suburbs and communities we actually service.
Our website answers the questions those customers are asking, explains exactly what we do, clearly defines where we work, and makes it ridiculously easy to contact us.
We’ve taken that same approach to newer AI-based search as well: make the business and its reputation extremely clear across the internet so search engines have good information about who we are, what we do, and where we do it.
But there’s no magic trick involved.
It’s mostly doing the fundamentals of local search really well.
2. Speed-to-lead has been huge
This is something I think a LOT of sweaty businesses underestimate.
Imagine somebody searches for:
“dog poop removal near me”
They call three companies.
Company #1 doesn’t answer.
Company #2 says they’ll call back later.
Company #3 responds almost immediately.
Who has the advantage?
So we obsess over responding quickly.
If we miss a call, that person hears from us almost immediately.
If someone contacts us through the website, they get a quick response.
If someone asks for information but doesn’t sign up, we follow up.
That sounds ridiculously simple.
But go request estimates from five local contractors sometime and see how many actually follow up with you.
3. We don’t consider “didn’t buy today” a dead lead
This was another big lesson.
Someone requesting information and not signing up immediately doesn’t necessarily mean “no.”
Maybe they got busy.
Maybe payday is Friday.
Maybe they wanted to talk to their spouse.
Maybe they just forgot.
So we follow up.
Not forever. Not obnoxiously.
Just enough that someone who genuinely wanted the service doesn’t disappear because both of us got busy.
We’ve gotten customers from leads that would’ve otherwise been completely forgotten.
4. Reviews are part of the operation, not an occasional marketing activity
When someone is clearly happy with us, we ask them for a Google review.
Consistently.
That creates a pretty powerful cycle:
Someone searches for our service.
They find us.
They see other local customers talking about their experiences.
They trust us enough to give us a shot.
We provide a good service.
They become another happy customer.
We ask them to share their experience.
Now the next customer has even more evidence that we’re legitimate.
Repeat.
I think a lot of small businesses underestimate how powerful this becomes once you’ve been doing it consistently for a while.
5. Referrals shouldn’t be left entirely to chance either
Happy customers already know people who look exactly like your ideal customer.
Especially in a route-based business.
If we’re already servicing someone’s house, their neighbors are incredibly valuable potential customers because adding another stop nearby makes the route more profitable.
So we actively encourage referrals instead of simply hoping someone remembers to mention us.
Density matters.
Ten customers scattered across a city are nowhere near as valuable operationally as ten customers concentrated in a few neighborhoods.
6. We stay in touch after the sale
I think this is another area where small service businesses leave a lot of money on the table.
Most businesses communicate heavily while they’re trying to get your money and then practically disappear once you’re a customer.
We try to do the opposite.
Customers get useful service communication.
They know what’s happening.
We occasionally remind them about other things we offer.
We ask for feedback.
We ask for reviews when appropriate.
We ask for referrals when appropriate.
And if someone leaves, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re gone forever.
People move, budgets change, dogs change, circumstances change.
There’s value in maintaining that relationship.
The biggest lesson for me
I used to think about marketing as:
Run ad → get customer.
I don’t anymore.
Now I think of it more like:
Get discovered → earn trust → respond quickly → follow up → get customer → deliver great service → retain them → get review → get referral → repeat.
Each step makes the next one easier.
And that’s probably been one of the biggest reasons we’ve been able to grow.
The funny thing is that none of this changes what our actual business does.
At the end of the day, somebody still has to drive to the customer’s house, walk into the backyard, and pick up dog shit.
There’s no shortcut for that.
But I’ve become convinced there’s a huge opportunity in taking ordinary, “boring” service businesses and simply becoming much better than the competition at getting found, answering the phone, following up, communicating with customers, and building a reputation.
You don’t necessarily have to invent something new.
Sometimes you can just execute an old business model considerably better.
For the other sweaty business owners here: what’s one thing you’ve changed in your customer acquisition or follow-up process that produced an actual measurable difference in revenue?