How Fresh Start Pet Waste Removal Reached 500 Recurring Customers in Under Two Years

Who is Hunter Conley, and how did Fresh Start Pet Waste Removal begin?

Hunter Conley started Fresh Start Pet Waste Removal in Austin, Texas as a side business while working 40 to 50 hours a week for a pest control company. He has a marketing degree, sold door to door in college, and then spent five years running marketing and inside sales at a pest control company that he says grew from about $5 or $6 million a year in revenue to around $50 million while he was there.

The idea came from two places: YouTube videos and groups about small service businesses, and coming home from work to see his pregnant wife bending over to pick up after the dog in the backyard. “There must be a need for this,” he thought.

He did the first yards himself, on Saturdays and a few times on his lunch break. He had told himself he would hire a part-time employee at 20 customers. That took two or three weeks.

How much did he spend on ads to get the first 100 customers?

About $70 to $80 a day, paid for out of his day-job income. Hunter put $30 to $40 a day into Facebook ads and $15 to $20 a day into Google ads from the start, which he estimates came to $1,500 to $2,000 in the first month. Fresh Start reached about 100 customers in two and a half months.

He was not sure it would work. Pest control is close to a need; poop scooping, he said, is a want. But customers kept signing up every week, and he decided he would never pause the ads. He says he still has not doubled or tripled that budget. “I’ve just been extremely consistent with that spend.”

His view on bigger budgets is that returns diminish. If doubling spend doubled customers, he said, he would be spending $500 a day and have 5,000 customers. For most pet waste companies he suggests around $30 to $40 a day, and less if a full-time job keeps you from answering leads quickly.

Why does Fresh Start keep advertising in the slow season?

Because the customers who cancel in summer have to be replaced, and because most competitors stop. Hunter said the number one mistake he sees is owners turning ads off when things slow down. In pet waste that is summer, when people move, go on vacation and have kids at home to help.

“For me, if everybody shuts down their ads, what does that mean? I’m the only company advertising. Opportunity.”

He compared pausing to digging a hole at the beach: the water fills it back in, and you spend the busy season catching up. Lower the spend if you have to, he said, but do not shut it off.

How does he turn leads into customers?

Lead follow-up, in his words, “is almost everything.” His process:

• Answer fast. He replies to leads himself, including at 10 at night if that is when they text.
• Sound like a person. Emojis, exclamation points, a thank-you, and something in common. People want to buy from a local person, not a robot, which is also why he tells owners to put their own face in their ads instead of AI-generated graphics.
• Do not send the quote too soon. He calls the opening the connection phase: ask questions and learn what the customer wants, and many objections never come up. Owners who send a price right away, he said, get ghosted.
• Keep talking after an objection. When someone says they need to talk to their spouse, he asks what the spouse’s main concern was, then answers that.
• Follow up, more than once. “People are busy,” he said. He needs a couple of reminders himself.

What did 500 recurring customers do for the business?

It made revenue predictable. Fresh Start had 530 to 540 customers at the time of the interview, five full-time employees, and $45,000 in revenue the previous month. Because the service recurs, Hunter said, 500 customers this month means 500 next month “unless we just completely wet the bed.”

He also pointed to reviews. The company had about five when it started with Review Harvest, and he put the count at around 370.

What was the hardest part of growing this fast?

Employees. Hunter said hiring “sucks”: people skip interviews and first days, and you are handing a $25,000 truck that doubles as a moving billboard to someone you barely know. He described taking a call about an employee speeding through a school zone and telling that employee it was a two-strike system.

His approach is to be honest in interviews that the job gets hot, stinky and messy, to pay well and send bonuses and gift cards, and to let go of people who do not fit. “If you’re trying to grow a business and run a business without knowing people, you’re probably going to fail,” he said.

What would he tell someone starting a pet waste business?

Start today, and control the controllables: how much you spend, how many flyers you put out, how fast you respond. You cannot control how many leads come in or who cancels.

Hunter now runs ads for other pet waste companies through his agency, Rise Ads Marketing, and says he has worked with more than 100 of them since January. His benchmark for a new owner is that 100 customers within a year “should absolutely be doable.”