Been running Facebook lead ads for pet waste removal and kept losing leads to the oldest problem in the business: the lead comes in at 9pm, I see it at 7am, and they’ve already booked someone else. So I built a system that handles the whole front end automatically, and it’s honestly one of the cooler things I’ve put together. Here’s what happens from the moment someone submits the form.

1. The lead form fires an instant trigger.
The moment someone submits, the system pulls the full lead details straight from Meta. No polling, no waiting for a CSV.

2. It builds the quote on the spot.
The form asks for number of dogs and service frequency. From that, it calculates the price using a grid: base rate by plan, plus a per-dog add-on that changes depending on frequency. It also works out the version with my optional haul-away add-on. The form data comes in messy (frequency options arrive as text strings, dog counts as text), so there’s a layer that normalizes all of it before any math happens.

3. It texts the quote and emails it, from my business line.
The customer gets a text with their exact price and the add-on option, plus an email with the same quote. Before any text goes out, it checks that the number is a valid US number in the right format, because sending to a bad number just burns money and hurts your sender reputation. Every text includes the opt-out line, since you’re running real texting compliance whether you like it or not.

4. It logs them in my custom software.
The lead is created or updated in my CRM with a pile of tags: lead source, the price quoted, dog count, frequency, zip, which ad they came from, and the Facebook lead ID. That means I can see later which ad produced which customer at which price.

5. It reports the real outcome back to Meta.
When someone becomes a paying customer, that gets sent back to Meta as an actual conversion event. This is what makes the ad algorithm find more people like my real customers, not just people who fill out forms.

6. Then I built the reply handler, which is where it gets fun.
The quote text says “Reply YES to get started, or YES TAKEAWAY to include the haul-away add-on.” A second automation listens to my phone line for incoming texts. It only acts when:

• the message is an incoming text that starts with YES (not “yesterday,” not “yes I’m still waiting on my other quote,” that kind of thing)
• the sender matches a lead I actually quoted
• they haven’t already accepted

If all of that checks out, it tags them as accepted, tags the add-on if they asked for it, texts back asking for their service address and preferred start day, and emails me everything: name, phone, what they said, their tags, and the price I quoted. All of that happens in a couple of seconds.

7. And if they don’t book? They don’t disappear.
Most leads don’t say yes to the first text. That’s normal, and it’s where most people drop the ball. Anyone who doesn’t book gets entered into a year-long drip sequence in my custom software, so they keep hearing from me over time instead of getting one text and a shrug. People’s situations change. A lead who wasn’t ready in October might be sick of the yard in April, and when that happens I’m already in their phone and inbox instead of starting from zero. THIS is the machine that builds customers exponentially!

What took the longest:
Honestly, the edge cases. Phone formats, duplicate replies, existing customers texting “yes” about something unrelated, ads and forms changing, name parsing for people with weird or multi-part names, error handling so one failed step doesn’t kill the whole run, and keeping the quote logic in one place so I can change pricing without rebuilding anything. And once you add a long-running sequence, you have to make sure the right people are in it, the wrong people are out of it, and nobody who already booked gets a “still looking for service?” text. The happy path took an evening. Making it not embarrass me took a lot longer.

The result is that a lead goes from “clicked an ad” to “has a price in their hand and a one-word way to book” before I’ve even seen the notification. If they book, I get an email. If they don’t, they stay in the pipeline for a year.

Not going to name every tool or hand out the full setup, but I’m happy to answer general questions in the comments. If you want something like this built for your pet waste business and don’t want to spend weeks debugging it, DM me and we can talk about it.

For everyone in the pet waste removal business, I want to point something out that a lot of you might be overlooking.

RIGHT NOW is one of the best times of the year to go after commercial accounts.

Why? Because apartment complexes, HOAs, hotels, property management companies, and other commercial properties are working on their 2027 budgets RIGHT NOW!

They're figuring out what they're going to spend money on next year, which vendors they're going to use, and what services they need to add.

You want to be in front of these decision-makers BEFORE those budgets are finalized.

Here's what I'd be doing if I were you:

✅ Visit EVERY apartment complex in your service area. Ask for the property manager. Introduce yourself. Find out who's currently handling their pet waste stations and common areas.

✅ Hit every HOA and property management company you can find. A single management company could potentially put you in front of multiple communities.

✅ Visit pet-friendly hotels. They have designated pet relief areas that need regular attention. Somebody needs to keep those areas clean!

✅ Sell more than just scooping. Pet waste station installation, station servicing, bag refills, deodorizing, sanitizing, and common-area maintenance. These are all potential recurring revenue streams.

✅ Follow up! Just because they don't need you today doesn't mean they won't need you in January. Get their contact information, find out when they finalize their budgets, and stay in front of them.

Here's the thing about commercial accounts:

One good apartment complex contract could be worth thousands of dollars annually. Land a handful of those, and you've built yourself a substantial recurring revenue base without having to acquire dozens of individual residential customers.

And once you're established with a property management company, you have an opportunity to earn their business at additional properties.

Stop waiting for commercial customers to find you. GO FIND THEM.

Walk in. Shake hands. Introduce your business. Bring some professional marketing materials. Ask questions. Find out what problems they're having.

Don't just walk in trying to sell something. Walk in trying to solve a problem.

And remember, you're not just selling poop scooping. You're selling cleaner properties, happier residents, fewer complaints, and one less headache for property managers.

We're in October. You've got a window to get your business included in next year's spending plans.

The contracts you pursue today could be paying you every month throughout 2027 and beyond.

Get out there and hustle!

Curious how many of you are actively pursuing commercial accounts right now? And for those who already have them, what's been your most successful approach to landing contracts?

Started a new campaign late Sunday and wanted to share the first few days because the ramp-up has been pretty wild:

• Sunday, Oct 4: $22.55 spent · 0 leads Started late in the day, so I wasn’t worried about this.
• Monday, Oct 5: $35.78 spent · 1 lead $35.78 CPL
• Tuesday, Oct 6: $44.73 spent · 4 leads $11.18 CPL
• Wednesday, Oct 7: $43.72 spent · 6 leads $7.29 CPL

Campaign total so far:
$146.78 spent · 11 leads · $13.34 overall CPL

What I like most isn’t even just the overall CPL — it’s the direction.

0 leads → 1 → 4 → 6.

This is why I try not to panic and start changing campaigns after the first day. Meta needs some data, and sometimes you can literally watch the campaign start figuring out who is most likely to convert.

Obviously it’s still early and CPL can move around, but getting pet-waste-removal leads for around $7–13 each is a hell of a start. Converted 8 of them to new clients...in 2 days (Tuesday and Wednesday! ~$800/mo in new MRR, in 2 days, on $146 in ad spend! That's how you do it right there!

I’ll keep letting it run and update everyone once there’s enough data to see whether it holds.

That might sound overly simple, but it’s something I genuinely try to apply to every part of my businesses.

You don’t necessarily need some revolutionary idea to beat your competition. Most of the time, you just need to execute better than they do.

Look at your business and ask yourself:

Is my marketing better?

Are my ads better?

Is my website better?

Is my SEO/GEO better?

Do I answer the phone faster?

Do I respond to leads faster?

Is my sales process better?

Is my customer communication better?

Do my trucks look better?

Do my employees present themselves better?

Is my service more reliable?

Do I follow up better?

Do I ask for reviews more consistently?

Do I handle problems better when something goes wrong?

Am I making it easier to do business with me?

You don’t have to be 10x better at every one of those things. Be 5% better here. 10% better there. Fix another weak spot next month. Then find the next thing.

The cumulative effect becomes enormous.

I think one of the biggest mistakes business owners make is looking at what their competitors are doing and thinking, “That’s good enough. We’ll do something similar.”

I look at it differently.

If a competitor is doing something well, I want to know how we can do it better.

If they’re ranking above us, why?

If they’re getting more reviews, why?

If their ads are better, what can we learn from them?

If they’re answering leads in five minutes, how do we answer in one?

And sometimes the competition isn’t doing something at all. That’s even better. That’s an opportunity.

This also means constantly evaluating your own business. Something that worked six months ago might not be the best way to do it today. I don’t care if an idea was mine. If there’s a better way, change it.

There is no finish line where you finally say, “Alright, we’re optimized.”

Marketing changes. Google changes. AI changes. Customers change. Competitors change.

So you keep improving.

Better marketing. Better sales. Better SEO/GEO. Better systems. Better communication. Faster responses. Better service. Better follow-up. Everything.

You probably won’t be the cheapest company in town doing this.

You won’t need to be.

I’m curious how the other operators in here approach this.

What’s ONE thing you’ve changed in your pet waste business that made you noticeably better than your competition?

And what’s one part of your business right now that you know you still need to improve? We can help, as a community.

Everybody talks about customer count.
“How many recurring customers do you have?”
But I’m starting to think the more important question is:
How many customers do you have per hour of driving?
I’d rather have 100 customers packed into a tight service area than 175 scattered all over three counties.
A $100/month customer sounds great until you’re driving 25 minutes out of your way every week to service them.
Route density affects damn near everything:
Labor cost.
Fuel.
Truck wear.
How many stops a tech can complete.
How quickly you can respond to problems.
And eventually, how profitable the business actually is.
One thing we’ve gotten more aggressive about is marketing around areas where we already have customers instead of just advertising everywhere we’re technically willing to drive.
Yard signs near current stops. Door hangers. Neighborhood-specific ads. Asking existing customers for neighbors. Even looking at our routes before deciding where we want the next 20 customers to come from.
The goal isn’t just more customers anymore.
It’s more customers in the right places.
For those of you running established routes: what are you doing specifically to increase route density?
And have any of you gotten to the point where you’ll actually turn down a recurring customer because they’re too far outside the route?

AI website builders are getting ridiculously good at making websites that look professional.

And that’s exactly why I think they’re becoming a trap for small service businesses.

You type in “build me a website for my pet waste removal company,” answer a few questions, and 10 minutes later you’ve got something that looks pretty damn good.

Then six months later you’re wondering why you don’t rank for “pooper scooper near me,” why Google barely knows you exist, and why ChatGPT has never heard of your company.

Because looking good and being built correctly are two completely different things.

SEO and GEO aren’t something you sprinkle on top of a website after it’s finished.

The structure matters.

Your service pages matter. Your city/location pages matter. Your URLs matter. Internal linking matters. Schema matters. Page speed matters. Your headings and content hierarchy matter. Your Google Business Profile connection matters. Your reviews and citations matter. The way information about your business is structured so Google AND AI engines can understand it matters.

And no, creating 50 garbage AI-generated city pages by changing a few city names isn’t a GEO strategy.

Your website should be the CENTRAL PIECE of your marketing.

Think about everything you’re doing to get customers.

Google Ads? Sending them to your website.

Facebook Ads? Probably sending them to your website.

Google Business Profile? Website.

Organic Google searches? Website.

AI searches? Your website is one of the places these systems can use to understand who you are, what you do, and where you operate.

Door hangers, yard signs, trucks, business cards? Where do people go when they want to check whether you’re legitimate?

Your website.

So why the hell would you spend thousands of dollars advertising your business and make the destination an AI-generated template you built in 20 minutes?

Learn how to build a REAL website that’s designed around SEO, GEO, conversion, and your local market.

Or pay somebody who actually knows how to do it.

I’m a huge advocate for AI. We use AI and automation all over our businesses. But AI should make you better at what you’re doing. It shouldn’t convince you that something complicated suddenly doesn’t require expertise.

A pretty website isn’t necessarily a good website.

For a local scooping company, a website that ranks, gets cited, builds trust, and turns traffic into booked customers is worth infinitely more than one that just looks cool.

Don’t build a digital brochure.

Build an asset.

Most pet waste companies are still focused entirely on Google rankings. That matters, but it’s no longer the whole game.
More customers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI results questions like:
“Who is the best pet waste removal company near me?”
“Who cleans dog poop in Chattanooga?”
“What’s the most reliable pooper scooper service in my area?”
That’s where GEO—Generative Engine Optimization—comes in.
Traditional SEO helps your website appear in search results. GEO helps AI understand who you are, what you do, where you operate, and whether your company is credible enough to recommend.
And here’s why it matters so much in our industry: people usually aren’t searching for your company by name. They’re searching for the service. If an AI assistant gives them three recommendations and you aren’t one of them, you may never even get considered.
We’ve been working on this intentionally. That means making sure our company information is consistent across the internet, building strong service-area pages, publishing useful content that answers real customer questions, earning legitimate reviews, keeping our Google Business Profile active, and getting mentioned on credible local and industry websites.
Reviews are especially important. It isn’t only about having a high rating. The number of reviews, how recently you received them, what customers actually say, and whether those reviews reinforce your services and locations all help establish that your company is real, active, and trusted.
This isn’t about stuffing “best pooper scooper near me” into every paragraph or creating hundreds of garbage AI articles. That might produce content, but it doesn’t create authority.
The goal is to build a clear trail of evidence across the internet that says:
This is a legitimate pet waste removal company.
This is the area it serves.
These are the services it provides.
Real customers consistently recommend it.
Other credible sources recognize it.
GEO is still evolving, and nobody can honestly promise they’ve cracked every AI platform’s algorithm. But the direction is obvious: customers are increasingly getting direct recommendations instead of scrolling through ten blue links.
If your business is invisible in those recommendations, being number five on Google may not save you.
Go ask several AI platforms who they recommend for pet waste removal in your city. Look at which companies appear, then ask yourself why they were selected and you weren’t.
That answer is where your GEO strategy starts.

What’s the first thing you’d fix if your goal was to DOUBLE your scooping business in the next 12 months?

Not “work harder.” Not “post more on Facebook.” 😂

I mean, if you had to pick one bottleneck that is actually keeping your business from doubling, what is it?

For us at Scoopy Doo, I’ve learned that getting customers is only part of the equation. Once you start growing, you run into an entirely different set of problems — route density, hiring, training, keeping quality consistent, answering leads fast enough, reviews, pricing, automations, managing trucks and equipment, etc.

The thing that got you from 0–25 customers probably isn’t what gets you from 100–200.

So where are you right now, and what’s the ONE thing you think is holding you back from the next level?

I’ll go first in the comments.

For me, it’s how quickly this stops being a “scooping” business and turns into an operations and customer acquisition business.

Getting a few customers isn’t that hard. Building enough recurring density to make the routes profitable is a completely different game.

You start thinking about route density, CAC, retention, pricing, Google rankings, reviews, automations, hiring, trucks, equipment, customer communication… and somewhere along the way you realize picking up dog shit might actually be the easiest part of the business. 😂

We’ve learned a TON building Scoopy Doo, and there are definitely things I would do differently if I started over tomorrow.

For those of you already operating:

What’s the biggest lesson you learned the hard way?

And for the newer guys — what’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with right now?

Could be pricing, getting the first 10 customers, ads, route density, hiring, SEO, whatever.

Curious to see where everyone is at.

Started testing a second service this month: professional dog door sales + install, sold as three simple tiers instead of an endless catalog of options.

• Good — $529 installed, soft flap door-mount unit, up to Large dogs ($669 for XL/XXL)
• Better — $699 flat, aluminum frame with a lockable slide-in panel, any size
• Best — $749 flat, app-controlled smart door, any size

Flat pricing by tier instead of quoting per-job. Customer picks a tier, we handle sizing, install, testing, cleanup — no "here's 40 SKUs, good luck."

Why I'm testing it: it's a natural add-on for people who already pay someone to deal with their dog's mess — same homeowner, same dog, adjacent problem. Higher ticket than a scooping visit, doesn't compete with the recurring route business, and it's a good excuse to be back in front of existing customers.

Running paid ads locally right now to see if there's real demand before I go deeper (dealer pricing, more brands, etc).

For anyone who's done install-type add-ons before — what tripped you up? Specifically curious about:

• Insurance/liability differences between scooping and doing actual work to someone's exterior wall or door
• Which installs you'd flat-out refuse (glass, brick, anything structural)
• Whether flat tiered pricing held up once you got into real jobs, or you ended up quoting anyway

Not trying to sell anything here, just comparing notes with other operators before I scale it up.

Running Meta ads for a Chattanooga-area marketing agency I built on GHL. The offer: a free "Lead Leak Audit" — we show a home service business owner (pet care, contractors, etc.) how many calls/leads they're losing to missed calls and slow follow-up, then pitch a $297/mo missed-call text-back + AI chatbot + CRM package if they like what they see.

Here's the actual path I'm putting a cold lead through, step by step:

1. Ad copy promises something instant: "we'll show you exactly how many leads you're losing, free."
2. Click sends them to a landing page — stats, the offer explained, no pitch language.
3. The only CTA on that page is a GHL calendar embed: pick a 20-minute slot and hand over your phone number.
4. Once they book, we text them a short VSL — a video meant to prime them for the call so it feels worth their time.
5. On the call itself we show their real numbers live (phone response time, review gap vs. competitors, AI visibility) — no pitch until they've seen it and want more.

Numbers so far: ~450 landing page views, 2.5-3.8% CTR (feels solid), and exactly zero bookings. Pixel/CAPI tracking confirmed working, calendar widget loads fine on desktop. So it's not a tracking or targeting issue as far as I can tell — people just aren't booking once they land.

Laid out like that, step 3 is the part that bugs me: the ad promises something instant, but the very first thing I ask for is a 20-minute calendar commitment and their phone number — before they've gotten anything. The VSL that's supposed to build trust doesn't even show up until after they've already said yes to the call. So the one payoff moment in the whole funnel comes after the highest-commitment ask, not before it.

Thinking about swapping that first CTA for a quick quiz/calculator — a few taps, gives them an instant "you're losing about $X/month" number — and only then asking them to book. Basically moving a version of that payoff earlier, before the big ask.

Anyone run something similar — an audit/diagnostic offer that converts on cold traffic? What actually got people to book, and did a quiz/lower-commitment step before the calendar make a real difference for you? Also open to "your offer just isn't compelling enough" if that's the real answer.

Chattanooga has been pretty damn good to us.

I’ve lived around here long enough that it’s easy to take this place for granted sometimes.

But over the last year or so, I’ve gotten a completely different appreciation for Chattanooga.

My daughter Leighton and I started a little business here called Scoopy Doo, when she was 13. Now she's 14 and loves working on our business!

Yes. We pick up dog poop.

Well…we don’t anymore. 😂 We have techs who handle the dirty work now. Leighton and I have been promoted to worrying about payroll, marketing, customers, trucks, schedules, and the approximately 7,000 other things nobody tells you about when you start a business.

But here’s the part I’m really proud of.

Leighton is a freshman in high school this year and I am sooo proud of her!

And before she’s even old enough to graduate high school, she’s helped build a real Chattanooga company with hundreds of customers.

That’s freakin' cool.

And I don’t say that just because I’m her dad.

Because we didn’t build this thing in some huge market with millions of people. We built it right here.

Chattanooga.

Ooltewah. Hixson. East Brainerd. Red Bank. East Ridge. Signal Mountain. Soddy. Apison. Collegedale. Ringgold and the surrounding communities.

The people here gave a father and his daughter a shot on an idea that, if we’re being fair, sounds pretty ridiculous when you first hear it.

“People are going to pay you to pick up dog shit?”

Apparently, yes. Quite a few of them. 😂

But what has impressed me more than anything is how much people around here genuinely support local businesses.

People recommend us in neighborhood Facebook groups.

They tell their neighbors about us.

They leave drinks outside for our techs when Chattanooga decides it’s going to be 96 degrees with 900% humidity.

They leave reviews.

They stop our guys and tell them they’re doing a good job.

Some of our customers have been with us almost from the beginning.

And those little things add up.

Eventually you look around and realize the stupid little idea you started with your kid isn’t a stupid little idea anymore.

It’s a company.

It employs people.

It has hundreds of customers.

And a 14-year-old freshman gets to go to school knowing she helped build the damn thing.

There are plenty of things we can bitch about in Chattanooga. Traffic on 75. Construction everywhere. Whatever the hell is happening on 24 at any given moment. 😂

But there’s something special about this city.

People here still root for people who are trying to build something.

I’ve experienced that firsthand.

So this isn’t really a Scoopy Doo post.

It’s a thank-you to Chattanooga.

You guys helped my daughter build her first company before she even got to high school.

That’s pretty badass.

Chattanooga (and Cleveland, and surrounding areas) are pretty badass, too.

Edit: added Cleveland too! :)

Chattanooga has been pretty damn good to us.

I’ve lived around here long enough that it’s easy to take this place for granted sometimes.

But over the last year or so, I’ve gotten a completely different appreciation for Chattanooga.

My daughter Leighton and I started a little business here called Scoopy Doo, when she was 13. Now she's 14 and loves working on our business!

Yes. We pick up dog poop.

Well…we don’t anymore. 😂 We have techs who handle the dirty work now. Leighton and I have been promoted to worrying about payroll, marketing, customers, trucks, schedules, and the approximately 7,000 other things nobody tells you about when you start a business.

But here’s the part I’m really proud of.

Leighton is a freshman in high school this year and I am sooo proud of her!

And before she’s even old enough to graduate high school, she’s helped build a real Chattanooga company with hundreds of customers.

That’s freakin' cool.

And I don’t say that just because I’m her dad.

Because we didn’t build this thing in some huge market with millions of people. We built it right here.

Chattanooga.

Ooltewah. Hixson. East Brainerd. Red Bank. East Ridge. Signal Mountain. Soddy. Apison. Collegedale. Ringgold and the surrounding communities.

The people here gave a father and his daughter a shot on an idea that, if we’re being fair, sounds pretty ridiculous when you first hear it.

“People are going to pay you to pick up dog shit?”

Apparently, yes. Quite a few of them. 😂

But what has impressed me more than anything is how much people around here genuinely support local businesses.

People recommend us in neighborhood Facebook groups.

They tell their neighbors about us.

They leave drinks outside for our techs when Chattanooga decides it’s going to be 96 degrees with 900% humidity.

They leave reviews.

They stop our guys and tell them they’re doing a good job.

Some of our customers have been with us almost from the beginning.

And those little things add up.

Eventually you look around and realize the stupid little idea you started with your kid isn’t a stupid little idea anymore.

It’s a company.

It employs people.

It has hundreds of customers.

And a 14-year-old freshman gets to go to school knowing she helped build the damn thing.

There are plenty of things we can bitch about in Chattanooga. Traffic on 75. Construction everywhere. Whatever the hell is happening on 24 at any given moment. 😂

But there’s something special about this city.

People here still root for people who are trying to build something.

I’ve experienced that firsthand.

So this isn’t really a Scoopy Doo post.

It’s a thank-you to Chattanooga.

You guys helped my daughter build her first company before she even got to high school.

That’s pretty badass.

Chattanooga is pretty badass, too.

State: GA (federal employee — USPS — so this is a FECA/OWCP claim, not state workers' comp, but figured this sub still has people with federal experience)

Quick background: hurt my shoulder in a fall at work back in January, that claim was already accepted. Turns out I also hurt my back in the same fall, and that part of the claim hasn't been accepted yet — OWCP scheduled a second opinion orthopedic exam to decide whether to accept it.

MRI shows a small disc protrusion with an annular fissure at one level, plus an older/chronic-looking finding at a different level that's probably unrelated to the fall. I'm bringing the actual films (not just the report) like they required.

For anyone who's been through an OWCP second opinion exam for a back claim:

• Anything you wish you'd known going in?
• How direct should I be about the older/unrelated finding if it comes up, versus just not bringing it up?
• Any common mistakes people make in these exams that end up hurting the claim?
• Roughly how long after the exam does OWCP typically take to make a decision on accepting the condition?

Appreciate any insight — trying to go in prepared.

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?

Been experimenting with a setup where instead of manually clicking through Automations to build follow-up sequences, I have an AI assistant write a script that defines the whole workflow (steps, wait times, tags, triggers) and pushes it straight into the sub-account. Saves a ton of time when you're doing this repeatedly across multiple client accounts — describe the sequence in plain English, get a working (draft) workflow a few seconds later instead of 20 minutes of clicking.

The catch is the official API doesn't expose full workflow-building, so this relies on a more "under the hood" way of talking to the platform, which comes with some fragility (auth tokens expiring, etc.).

Curious if anyone else here has wired up AI (Claude, GPT, whatever) to build/manage automations this way instead of the native builder, and if so, what's your setup look like? Any tools/approaches you'd recommend or pitfalls to watch for?

It wasn’t.

Keeping them was.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that people don’t cancel because of price nearly as often as they cancel because they forget you exist.

That’s why almost everything we do now is automated.

* Reminder texts before service
* Thank you messages afterward
* Review requests
* Follow-up emails
* Educational content
* Seasonal reminders
* Referral requests
* Reactivation campaigns for old customers

None of it is complicated by itself, but together it keeps us in front of customers constantly without me lifting a finger.

This month our website traffic is up around 40%, recurring revenue is up about 27%, and I honestly think retention has had just as much to do with that as bringing in new customers.

Getting a new customer is expensive.

Keeping an existing one is where the money is.

Curious what everyone else is doing…

I’m always looking for ideas I haven’t thought of yet.

It wasn’t.

Keeping them was.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that people don’t cancel because of price nearly as often as they cancel because they forget you exist.

That’s why almost everything we do now is automated.

• Reminder texts before service
• Thank you messages afterward
• Review requests
• Follow-up emails
• Educational content
• Seasonal reminders
• Referral requests
• Reactivation campaigns for old customers

None of it is complicated by itself, but together it keeps us in front of customers constantly without me lifting a finger.

This month our website traffic is up around 40%, recurring revenue is up about 27%, and I honestly think retention has had just as much to do with that as bringing in new customers.

Getting a new customer is expensive.

Keeping an existing one is where the money is.

Curious what everyone else is doing…

What’s one automation or process you’ve implemented that has had the biggest impact on customer retention?

I’m always looking for ideas I haven’t thought of yet.

I own a dog poop removal company in Chattanooga, TN. Small, unsexy service business — weekly/bi-weekly cleanups, one-time cleanups, some commercial and HOA contracts. Nothing glamorous, but it's a good example of a business that lives or dies by local search.

For the first little while I was doing what most of us do: relying on word of mouth and Facebook group posts. That's fine, but it caps out fast. So I spent a chunk of time building out a system instead of just posting more:

* Fully optimized my Google Business Profile instead of just setting it up and forgetting it
* Went after actual local SEO on my site, not just a generic "services" page
* Started treating AI visibility as its own channel — making sure when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity for pet waste removal in my area, I actually come up. Most local businesses aren't doing anything for this yet, which makes it a pretty open lane right now.
* Automated my follow-up and review requests through my CRM (Jobber) so happy customers actually leave reviews instead of me having to remember to ask
* Automated a chunk of my social posting instead of doing it manually every week

It made a real difference for lead flow, and didn't take a huge budget — just time spent setting the system up right once.

I own Scoopy Doo, a dog poop removal company in Chattanooga, TN. Small, unsexy service business — weekly/bi-weekly cleanups, one-time cleanups, some commercial and HOA contracts. Nothing glamorous, but it's a good example of a business that lives or dies by local search.

For the first little while I was doing what most of us do: relying on word of mouth and Facebook group posts. That's fine, but it caps out fast. So I spent a chunk of time building out a system instead of just posting more:

• Fully optimized my Google Business Profile instead of just setting it up and forgetting it
• Went after actual local SEO on my site, not just a generic "services" page
• Started treating AI visibility as its own channel — making sure when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity for pet waste removal in my area, I actually come up. Most local businesses aren't doing anything for this yet, which makes it a pretty open lane right now.
• Automated my follow-up and review requests through my CRM (Jobber) so happy customers actually leave reviews instead of me having to remember to ask
• Automated a chunk of my social posting instead of doing it manually every week

It made a real difference for lead flow, and didn't take a huge budget — just time spent setting the system up right once.

I got far enough into building this that I want to test it on a few other home service businesses to see how it performs outside my own niche. So I'm offering to run the whole thing — GBP, SEO, AI visibility, social automation, review automation, plus a free SEO/GEO-optimized website — for 5 businesses, 3 months, completely free. No card, no contract. If it doesn't move the needle, you walk away owing nothing. If it does, you start paying and all I ask for is an honest review.

Only asks: LLC and business bank account already in place (needed to connect Jobber), willing to run Jobber as your CRM, and you cover your own domain/subscriptions going forward. ONLY want people serious about growing, not tire-kickers.