How Kroopin's Poopin Scoopin Doubled in One Spring Rush on About $17,500 in Ads

How did Erica get into the poop scooping business?

Erica Krupin started Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin almost eight years ago, standing in her kitchen watching her dog out in the yard. She asked her husband if she could use the “Poopin Scoopin” name he and his brothers had joked about as kids, and filed for a DBA the next day.

At the time she worked at a hospital. Her father was an entrepreneur who struggled, and his advice had been to get a stable hospital job with good benefits. She did, and said she was “slowly dying inside.” Once the scooping business replaced her hospital income and could cover health care and retirement, she left in 2019 after 14 years.

She had no money for advertising, so she made videos. A stint selling jewelry through home shows had made her comfortable on camera and taught her one rule: “If people can’t find you, they can’t use you.” The videos warmed up a market that barely knew the service existed, and the YouTube channel she started on a cheap Android phone has since led many other owners into pet waste removal.

What went wrong in 2024?

Nearly everything. Erica said the business did not fall apart in 2020, but it did in 2024:

• two vehicles totaled within six months, which raised her insurance
• an $1,800 a month office in an affluent area that never brought the higher-paying customers she expected
• an employee lost
• a fall down the stairs that herniated two discs in her back

She said that if someone had offered her a dollar for the business then, she probably would have taken it. One reliable hire, an employee named Charles, gave her room to rehab her back and think.

How did she prepare for the 2026 spring rush?

She treated 2025 as a recovery year and started planning the next spring in September. At home, she and her husband sold everything they could, eliminated as much debt as possible and shared one personal truck. In the business, she listed what she needed before the snow melted:

• money for ads, and people to run them
• someone to handle SEO
• a way to answer the volume of leads
• new hires trained before the rush

When an employee quit on January 1, she ran a sponsored hiring ad, got more than 100 applicants and onboarded new people about a month and a half ahead of the rush.

She then spent between $17,500 and $17,800 on Facebook and Google. She used to think Facebook leads were tire kickers, but with an outside team running the ads and sending people to her website instead of a lead form, the quality improved. She also ordered 600 yard signs and paid technicians a dollar for each one they placed.

She did not offer a free first cleanup. New customers paid $120 to $170 for the spring clean, and in May they were still with her.

What did the spring rush produce?

Erica called it the craziest spring rush in her eight years, and said she barely left her desk for almost six weeks. Her job was to answer the phone, get people into Jobber and track the numbers.

From January through April 30, Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin had 1,082 new requests. It converted 294 of them, up 35% from the year before, and 189 became recurring customers. She said the business doubled, even with more than 60 companies in her area offering some form of the service.

Answering the phone also taught her that her customer is changing. It used to be busy parents. Now it is often an older woman whose husband handled everything and who has never had to hire help. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard, ‘Nobody answers their phone,’” she said.

What mistakes does she see new pet waste removal owners make?

Three, and she has made the third herself.

1. Advertising contracts. New owners get locked into a year or two of magazine, golf cart or mailer ads for thousands of dollars. She would put that money into Google, Facebook, yard signs and door hangers.
2. Get-rich expectations. Owners spend $5 a day on ads, have 100 followers and wonder why they have no customers. Either put in money or put in a lot of sweat equity.
3. Spending the first profits. She bought a Gucci belt, took a vacation and rented the office too soon. That money could have gone into ads.

Her fix for the third is payroll. Pay yourself a set amount, even a few hundred dollars a week, and treat the rest as the business’s money.

What is next for Kroopin’s Poopin Scoopin?

Erica wants to double again next spring. The company had invoiced $128,000 so far in the year, against $247,000 for all of the year before, and she expects to finally break the $250,000 mark she has been stuck under. Her target for the end of next year is more than half a million dollars.

The plan is to keep it simple: answer the phone, double the ad budget and keep a small circle of trusted help. Her advice to an owner who is stuck is to cut personal spending and put it into ads in the busy season. “Now that I have seen what can happen with 17,500, why didn’t I put 30,000 in?”

She also runs She Built That, a faith-based community for women who own businesses, with weekly coffee chats, a monthly book and a monthly guest expert.