So You Want To Start A Pooper Scooper Business

In doing research to start Mr Dog Poop Inc, I found hundreds of articles on how to start a pooper scooper business claiming it was a low cost startup and easy to do. Effetively luring people into the market with the promise of a fast easy buck with little effort or expense.

They all said, buy a rake, bucket and start picking up poop and charge for it. Bacically, 1,2,3 you are open for business!

Most sources talked about the hardest decision being how much to charge for the service.

But what they all were missing is telling the reader that they needed to actually know something about dog poop.

I would equate these how to articles to telling someone they can be a Doctor or a Lawyer, just open a website, buy a desk plaque with "Dr Dog Poop" and start charging people. Of course, that would be illegal without a degree and licencing.

There is no difference in Dog Poop. You cannot just go out and do someting you don't understand.

This leads to the cross contamination of yards, spreading bacteria and parasites between dogs and creating general health hazzards.

Before starting Mr Dog Poop Inc, I looked at investing in mobile hair salons. It seemed like a great idea with almost no direct competition.

Then I began to learn of all the licencing and heatlh issues involved. Began looking at autoclaves to disinfect scissors and chemicals to prevet spread of HIV and blood borne pathogens.

It had never occured to me how dangerours it could be to cut hair or have your hair cut and when I got done researching I was completly afraid to even go into a hair salon at all.

When you go to school and get a degree for medicine or hair dressing you learn all these things and when you do your job, under license you understand safe handling procedures and observe the proper methods to insure eveyones health. Inspectors come in and make sure you are following the rules each year and issue a licence.

But with all of the dog poop scoopers, they seem to enter the market blind, don't have a degree in "Poopology" and don't fully understand the risks of handling poop.

The fact is nobody would ever enter a yard filled with human poop and clean it the way the dog pooper scoopers are doing it, because everyone knows human poop is a biohazzard and they can catch infectious diseses from handling it. That is why we wash our hands (some of us anyway) after using a bathroom, because even trace amounts of urine or feces can make people very sick.

But the reality is that dog poop is 2 times as toxic as human poop. Much more dangerous and just as bad to handle or be near.

Just like any other unregulated industry, people come out of the woodwork when money can be made and they open their own business with absoultely no knowledge of what they are doing.

This can be a real problem for the consumers and is a big reason why licencing and industry regulation is done in the first place. But most industries are not regulated until they become popular or someone gets hurt or killed.

Even beyond that, people don't understand the tax issues, the insurance issues, the legality of services they are providing, the liability they assume in offering the service and many other aspects of many businesses.

I became sickend reading pooper scooper blogs and forums and seeing how careless and dismissive pooper scoopers were about their own business and safe handling practices.

After all, if they can hang a sign on the door saying I am a doctor and charge people $200 to tell them to "take an asprin and call me in the morning", why not do it? Right?

That is exactly what I found people doing in the pooper scooper business.

Trampling through yards with sneakers, scooping poop with buckets and then spritzing them with some 409 kitchen cleaner and considering that as an efective method of killing all the germs.

I am sure those same people would not feel the same way if their doctor was covered in HIV Aides infected blood and sprayed 409 kitchen cleaner on himself before examining them.

I am pretty sure they would expect a full professional regiment of disinfectant, a long shower, changing of clothes and so on...

It is that kind of unprofessionalism that made me want to enter the market.

I saw a need for real professional services. Something reliable and safe.

After all, people don't want to pick up poop but they also don't want to be infected by another dog's poop either.

I spent hundreds of hours doing research about the toxins, bacteria and parasites in dog poop. What needs to be done to kill the bacteria on different surfaces. Outlining safe handling procedures and developing a plan for my employees to follow.

I don't want to discourage anyone from becomming a pooper scooper.

But you cannot just do it without knowing what you are doing. You could litetraly kill someone.

Of course that is true of any business.

You need a solid understanding of what you are doing before you attempt to start a pooper scooper business.

You need to understand the consequences of your actions, the impact you might have one someone or someone's pet.

You need liability insurance, workman's competsation insurance, an accounting system to manage withholding, social security and unemployment taxes as well as billing your customers. You need to be licensed in most cities and you likely need to have a business license on top of occupational licenses for each employee.

You need a dedicated vehicle with insurance so that fecal matter is not spread to your family by using the soccer mom's mini van to pick up dog poop in the morning and the kids at school in the afternoon.

You need a viable method for disenfecting boots and tools between yards.

When I started researching the idea I though it was going to be cheap, easy to enter and then I realized it was going to cost me about $250,000.00 to open the business that I wanted. Well above the $2,000.00 I was budgeting at the time.

The more I leared, the more expensive it got.

Each time I considered an new problem the price when up and up. For example I did not realize I needed to disinfect tools and boots. Now I am faced with:

• How can I get enough water to wash the pooper scooper rake and pan?

• Do I use the clients garden hose?

• What if they don't have one?

• What about disinfectant? Which disinfectant kills which parasites?

• How can I be sure my shoes are disinfected?

• What prevents me from tracking fecal matter, fleas, parasites or germs into my own home?

• What if I track parvo virus through 20 yards on the route and 20 dogs get sick?

• Is this really worth all the trouble?

All these questions and thousands more arose as a result of planning out the business on paper.

I read a great story about a couple that started their business and the first cleanup was a mess, they had no clue what to do, did not have the right tools or an understanding of what it took. They spent 2 hours doing what should have taken 15 minutes. Needless to say, they had no clue about the dangers of scooping poop the risks to their health.

Another story of a man that did not bill a client for a year and a half because of an accounting error on his paper ledger. I bet that happens a lot with people working from paper invoices and sloppy book keeping.

Before you attempt to open a pooper scooper service, do some research.

If you are going to go out and market yourself as a professional, you need to know a little more than just how to use a rake to pick up dog poop.

If you go into something blind it will take years before you fully understand what you are doing and in the process, you could really do some serious damage to yourself or your clients.

You could also be violting the law and end up shut down permanently. Or a law suit by a home owner that claims you killed their dog by tracking parvovirus on your shoes from another yard could easily bankrupt you just paying legal fees and defending yourself.

Remember this.

Before you cross the street, you look both ways.

Before you start your pooper scooper business, remember to look both ways.

They are both safe and productive things to do, but done wrong, the next time could be your last.

Don't let it be the last time you cross the street.

Think before you jump.

Learn what you are doing before you start your scooper business and you will have a productive profitable business. If you just jump in half ass, hopefully it wont come back to bite you in your ass.