Poop Money

Hey folks.

I’m sitting around with some time to kill between sporting events to attend and, as always, thinking about business ideas.

A couple on my mind right now are:

1. Trash bin cleaning & sanitizing

2. Dog poop clean up service

Both seem pretty straight forward.

From what I read, and surprisingly (to me, anyway), there is demand for both of these services in pretty much any town.

I know that because there are people out there doing it. 

So, how difficult can it be to start one up?

I’m leaning towards the dog poop idea because that is something my kids can handle as soon as I bring in a customer.

They would more than likely need my help to properly wash and sanitize a trash bin. 

And I’m lazy. So I’m going with the less Dad intensive idea.

So, where does one start after this idea strikes?

Well, step #1, as is almost always the case, is getting a customer.

So how do we do that? What are the options?

Well, we could start by cold calling…

We could pick a neighborhood and start knocking on doors.

Might work, but I can’t stand cold calling or cold callers so I avoid this option at all costs.

What else could we do? 

Well, if we aren’t going to cold call to drum up interest I guess we have no other choice than to attract the interest that may already exist.

And how do we do that?

Well, we could set up some sort of a booth at some sort of event and make a sign that says, “We pick up your dogs poop” and see what happens. 

But that seems like a lot of work too.

I’d like to not have to leave my house and somehow get people to people to raise their hand and say they’re interested. 

How can I make that happen?

Well, my first instinct here would be facebook ads. Local facebook ads.

But what should the ads say and where should they lead? Like if someone see’s it, reads it, and is interested, what happens?

Do they click over to a website? 

Is there some sort of form they can submit their info to directly on facebook that sends me the info and then I follow up?

Truly, I don’t know these answers yet. I’m right there with you, thinking it all through. 

I think this is the best way to start based on what I outlined above but I don’t know for sure. 

So now I’m going to dig around and figure out those answers. I’m going to start by asking chatGPT what it thinks I should do. 

Here’s my prompt:

I want to start a dog poop pick up and sanitizing service. I don't want to cold call to get my first leads. I'm thinking I should use local facebook/meta ads to see what sort of interest there might be in my area. But, where would the interested folks click to if there are any? I don't want to start a website without knowing whether or not there is demand. Is there a way for a lead to fill out a form right within facebook that gets sent to me and allows me to follow up with them?

….

Alright, I just spent about an hour muddling my way through the meta ads interface and I’ve got one running live. 

For the ad I dropped a pin on my town and told it to serve it to anyone within a 7 mile radius.

It’s a “lead” ad that, when clicked, leads to a form that simple asks their first name and now many dogs they have. After submission it says we will follow up soon.

I’m simply gauging interest here. 

It’s probably a insanely bad time to test this idea since there is currently about 10” of snow covering every yard in my home town. 

But, I accounted for the in the ad. It says, “Snow now but soon it will melt and reveal all the “presents” your dog left over the winter.”

Here’s the ad cover:

I’m running it at $5/day max.

I probably will not get any leads since the average for a local lead (according to chatGPT) is $5-$7.

I might not be paying enough to get to an actual lead. 

BUT, what I did accomplish is figuring out the meta ad platform enough to be able to get an ad up. 

It ain’t perfect and if any of you astute readers of mine are good with meta ads you can probably poke all kinds of holes in what I did here BUT this is square one for testing ideas. Figuring out how to get some sort of ad, any sort of ad, live to the world. Can only get better from here.

…..

Hey, look at this…. It’s not a lead but it is a like. I’ll take it! I know I can’t deposit likes in my bank account but someone out there saw the ad and took the time to thumb it up.

Anyways, I’m on hour #18 of a 3 day campaign for this one. 

I will keep you posted on how this one turns out. 

My point here is not to give you a masterclass on idea to meta ad to first sale to business.

My point is to illustrate an attempt at MIH…. Makin it happen!

Alright, c-ya tomorrow folks.

Kurt