How Martini Pet Services Went From 34 Google Reviews in 9 Years to Over 200

How did Martini Pet Services start?

Angela started Martini Pet Services nine years ago because she wanted to create a job for herself. The idea was her husband’s. A friend of his had moved south, where pet waste removal was already common, and the friend’s neighbor, as she recalls it, did it for a living.

At the time Angela worked in a warehouse, three 12-hour shifts a week. It was not a terrible job, she said, but she knew she was not meant to be there. Her husband had gone back into the National Guard and was away a lot, the dogs were going to daycare, and she wanted something different. They bought a book on the business and built from that.

For a while she did both, scooping Tuesday through Friday around her warehouse shifts. When the client list grew and the warehouse began asking for mandatory overtime, she quit.

How did she get her first customers, and where do they come from now?

She thinks her first clients came from Facebook. She put simple magnets with the name and phone number on her car and started a Facebook page and a website right away. She did not ask family or friends to sign up.

Nine years on, word of mouth is the biggest source. The company runs a referral program that gives clients free scoops, and the magnets have been replaced by a full vehicle wrap. Facebook still brings people in, both organic posts and ads, which she says she does not run enough of.

Google is the newer one. For years nobody in her area searched for the service. Now they do.

She estimates the company has served at least 500 customers over the years. Spring cleanups are a big part of that: anywhere from 20 to 100 one-time jobs each spring, some of which turn into regular clients.

What was her biggest mistake?

Forgetting to invoice people. Angela is good with clients and good at the work, and by her own account not as good behind the scenes. In the early days some clients were never billed.

A few noticed before she did and offered to pay. She said no. “I need to learn from my mistake because when it hurts, that’s when you’re going to learn.” Autopay has made the problem much smaller.

Why did she wait six years to hire?

Because she started the business to work a little less, not more. For about the first six years she took on only as many clients as she could handle alone.

Then the calls kept coming and she had no room, and she did not want to add weekends. She hired. She now has two scoopers and says she could not ask for better ones. Turnover among clients has been low, with the usual losses from moves and pets passing away.

Her old job shaped how she manages. Management there changed and stopped treating people well, and she decided not to be like that.

She does not feel pressure to become the largest company in the area. Before she quit the warehouse she worked out the number she needed to pay her bills. “I’m not setting out to be the biggest one,” she said. “Just want to have enough.”

How did Martini Pet Services go from 34 reviews to more than 200?

By taking the asking out of her hands. “In nine years, I had 34 reviews,” Angela said. It was not that she never asked. She had not asked clearly enough or often enough.

After she set up automated requests, reviews arrived in a rush in the first couple of weeks, including from clients she had personally asked before. Now they come in as new clients sign up.

She thinks one of them was negative, and she is fine with that. “It’s okay to get a bad review,” she said, provided you respond properly.

What would Angela tell a new pet waste removal owner?

Make the business your own. Watch what other owners do and talk to them, but do not copy everything. What matters most to her is the way she and her team connect with clients, and one of her scoopers does it exactly the way she does.

“It’s not just, oh, we’re just going out to scoop dog poop,” she said. “There’s a lot more behind it.”