I finally pulled the trigger.

I’ve been a technician for 10 years, in that time I decided to learn how to clean every type of fabric, and hard surface. I worked for a large company for the first half of my career and worked myself to the bone. Then they fired me out of pettiness and used the pandemic to seal the deal. They tried calling me back after two weeks. I said no.

I then had the idea to eventually start my own business. I decided to try to learn from small businesses in my area and have them teach me how to run a business. Things did not work out. From machine problems to cash flow issues, I ended up having to leave both jobs on bad terms. Two connections lost, but knowledge and experience gained.

I started my business in June. I shopped around for a long time trying to find a truckmount that would be reliable. After talking to many people, I finally settled on a new 370 EFI. It’s a great entry level unit, better than any truckmount I’ve used. After buying that and a van, I got insured, licensed and certified. I bought everything I could think of, for cleaning the correct way. I could probably get away with cleaning with a portable or a cheaper truckmount, but I’d rather invest in something nicer.

After a month of advertising on yelp, google, instagram and TikTok. I’ve found that google is probably the best platform to advertise from. It’s been rough, acquiring new customers. So far I’ve serviced about 10 family members, 5 referrals and 3 people who searched online.

All of them have went on to give me a 5 star review, and they say they will recommend me to their friends and family. If you want to follow along on my journey, my instagram is keller_clean.

So far I think it’ll take a year to break even on my investments. I do feel that with my effort and knowledge that a very strong period of growth will be coming soon.

If anyone is in a similar situation or thinking about starting a company, I think you should. I feel very excited and happy that I have. I am very hopeful for the future! If you have any questions let me know!

My question for people who started their service businesses is, what was the best thing you did to acquire more customers? Is it just doing the best you possibly can and pile up happy customers?

Is this possible to start under $600 equipment wise until I gain traction? If so please give me a list on what you would buy in this budget range. Thank you!

We had one of aur best quarters ever and on paper everything looks great. The wierd part is I still second guess every equipment purchase or hire because I can't tell what actually safe to spend versus what just looks good in a report maybe that's normal maybe I'm overthinking it has anyone found a better way to make those decisions

I've been running google ads for my local service business myself, and it's worked reasonably well so far. But lately I'm spending more and more time tweaking campaigns, checking search terms, adjusting bids, etc. At some point I'm wondering whether that time would be better spent actually running the business.

I've started looking into a few agencies just to see what the alternatives are, and flighted was one that came up. For other trades/service business owners, did you ever reach the point where you decided to use a google advertising agency? I'm mostly curious whether it actually improved your lead quality/results, or if the biggest benefit was simply getting the time back.

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?

Everyone talks about equipment, pricing, logos, websites, LLCs, etc. None of that bothered me nearly as much as staring at three empty days on the calendar.

I’ve been comparing everything from knocking doors to Google and platforms like Thumbtack, InstaService, Angi. Getting the first batch of customers seems way harder than doing the actual work.

Once referrals start, does that problem noticeably ease up?

Pressure washing and gutter work, me plus 2 guys. My CPA at tax time asked for equipment receipts and I had maybe 60% of them. His estimate of what the missing ones cost me in deductions: about $2k. That's a full week of jobs, gone, because I can't keep paper alive in a work truck. I'm not an office guy. Anything that requires me to sit down every evening and "log expenses" is dead on arrival, I've killed 3 apps that way already. Guys running crews: what actually stuck for you? Snap-a-photo apps, a bookkeeper who chases you instead of the reverse, bank feeds that self-sort? Needs to survive a person who checks his phone from a ladder.

Service businesses are awesome. You get to help someone with something they can't or don't want to do themselves. America is built on this - about 75% of GDP comes from a service sector.

So what is the timeline of someone that starts a service business?

If you're into something that has a low barrier of entry - competition is high.
If you're trying to start something that requires a lot of capital - competition is lower but getting those funds is a challenge.

If you're going the first route you simply get drowned out by competitors. I think it's inherently good to be able to compete but it presents some challenges.

So you're ready to work and get the money. 1st problem you encounter is - how do I get steady work?

Usual move is to join local facebook groups, nextdoor and maybe post on social media. That itself is very hard to sustain when you have to do the work yourself.

You do more research and get your website going and maybe a google business profile - but those are invisible so not much results there. It's also another plate to spin.

From there you start to do research into more advanced tactics to rank yourself. You are bootstrapping so first try do so something yourself. Then some company reaches out to you and promises results for $200/400 a month. That fails. Maybe you turn to someone local but that is costly and you can't justify the costs.

Ultimately you give up on the idea of organic leads and maybe go towards hiring a business coach for your niche. Maybe getting a course thinking the foundation of what you built is wrong. This often isn't likely to produce much results.

I've ran my service business for 10 years now and passed all those milestones myself (never hired a coach or paid for a course) and the most important thing is you don't quit.

If you're in a populated area, you can build your business and eventually stop doing the sweaty part yourself.

You either have a lot of hustle and grit to learn, implement and stay consistent when things don't show results.

or

You have capital to hire people or run ads to speed up the early slog.

I have the utmost respect for people that do physical labor sweaty startups. You're slowly destroying your body or putting yourself at risk to provide a service to your fellow human.

If your goal is to eventually move up the ranks, stop doing the labor part yourself, manage people and focus on sales/marketing - this is achievable if that is your goal.

Focus on your craft, spread the word, make some money, leverage it to grow your business, surround yourself with good people, create systems, get help, start working on your business, treat your coworkers and customers well, stay curious, keep learning and NEVER GIVE UP!

So last year I met a guy at a networking event that told me that he was sending out 10,000 postcards every month for his lawn care business for virtually $0.

What he'd do was divide up one side of a 6x11" postcard into 8 slots and sell those slots as "ad spaces" to other businesses for 5-10 cents a postcard. This covered the entire cost of the postcard (and some depending on how much he sold the slots for)

Then on the other side of the postcard, he'd put a full size ad for his company.

I was skeptical at first, but ultimately decided it was worth a shot for our epoxy flooring business since we've already had great success with targeted mailers + EDDM.

It was surprisingly easy to get other businesses on board with it especially since we only allowed one company from each category to join. $500 to get into 10,000 households is a pretty good deal for them.

Thus far we've sent out about 50,000 pieces over 5 batches and that's turned into 13 jobs or so which is about $40k. We spent about $300 to get the targeted mailing list (income, home ownership status, etc) for the first batch.

We honestly could be turning a profit on each mailing and get paid to advertise if we charged a little more, but it didn't sit well with me to do that.

Anyways, just a little tip to try if you're looking for "inexpensive" (you still have to do some legwork) ways to get in front of a lot people.

I think we're going to see a resurgence of offline marketing methods.

I was listening to a podcast about bounce house rentals, and some other party rental things and it got me thinking what if you had portable ramps, pipes, etc that you could set up and rent out for like birthday parties -- how would you go about testing the viability of that before even investing in any sort of equipment?

My son is older and he skates, but I could totally have seen doing something like that for him and his friends when he was a kid.

Pressure washing company, second year, mostly Google Ads and door hangers. There's a billboard on the main road into town I drive past every day and I keep wondering what it costs and whether it would do anything.

Two things I don't know. Whether outdoor makes sense at my size, and how you buy one without getting locked into a twelve month contract. Anyone here done it?

I’m a gardener who has been brainstorming on how to keep the cash coming in as we get into fall and winter, and my brain landed on Cat Sitting. I have owned cars for years and LOVE meeting new fur babies.

Is there anyone in here who has cat sat as a service and can give me a glimpse of what your operation looks like?

Thanks in advance!

How does everyone like to communicate with customers here. Things such as asking for Google reviews, referrals, service updates etc. I’ve always communicated primarily through email but texting seems to be more effective and easier.

I’m a 18 year old landscaping company owner my business has been open for about a year and a half I’ve recently hit a plateau on my company’s progress we don’t get to many jobs I’m trying to start advertising on Facebook though and making actual landscaping videos for my social media plat forms I’m trying to get into more project based work and junk removal instead on weed removal because I feel like it’s not worth my money for the time it takes and especially since where I live it doesn’t snow but the weeds won’t grow during the winter either if any one has any advice for me (even if brutally honest) it would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all. I'm currently a remoter programmer but previously worked in HVAC as a residential service tech. I switched to make more money when I got married. Considering getting back into the trades for ownership reasons, now that I have capital; would have done it before but we just weren't saving any money.

HVAC is the obvious choice here, but I've also been doing some research on garage doors, and frankly I'm super intrigued by the trade's balance of defined scope (relatively easier to train techs, easier to scale) and emergency need / higher ticket replacements (like HVAC).

Would I be in idiot to launch a garage door business instead of looking into what I already know?

I’m looking for advice, things to know, and general information as I’m looking to start a cleaning business in the NJ area.

Open to all feedback and comments but my main questions are:

1. How did you get your first clients?
2. How did you compete against others in the market?
3. If you could do something differently, what would it be?
4. Where did you find your first crew?
5. What was it that made you pick cleaning over another “sweaty startup”?

Thank you!

Hey Reddit, I don’t come on here often but I had a question about dog waste removal. I’m 23 years old (M) and going back to school while working a part time job, but I would love to increase my income while not messing up my schedule for school or my other job.

Is dog waste removal something easy to get into? I know it sounds like there isn’t much to it but surely there’s gotta be more that people don’t see right? What do I need to start? What’s the best way to get my name out there? How do I charge for the services I will be providing?

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you all in advance

Going through the process of starting a poop scooping business. I’m aiming to start in another month or two. I still haven’t figured out one thing though. What do I do with the poop? I’m going back and forth between bagging it and leaving it in customers trash cans vs taking it and dumping it. It would be easier to bag it and leave it in the trash cans but I’m afraid customers won’t like that as much. I could take it but I’d rather not deal with disposal. Anyone on here own a poop scooping business? How do you handle getting rid of it?

Hey guys im getting good at making videos for my business but my targetting is soo off. I think the issue is its really hard to show before and after for my products (building materials) because i cannot film it in use so i will post a video of us doing deliveries with voice overs and whatnot and get like 100k views easily but mostly other people in the business or interested in the business. I want social media to be a huge share of how i get customers but this will be really hard to achieve with how things are going.