How Poo Squad Kansas City Grew From Zero to About 725 Recurring Clients in Five Years

How did Matt go from grocery retail to poop scooping in Kansas City?

Matt spent more than 16 years in grocery retail, working his way up a local Midwest chain. He got to the top and decided he was done.

Poo Squad was started by his friend Jamie, whom he met in that earlier career. Matt’s first reaction was that Jamie was crazy. “If you would have told me 6 years ago I’d be doing this, I would have said, ‘You’re absolutely crazy.’”

After he moved to Kansas City, he called Jamie to see how it was going. He joined a few Facebook groups for the industry and saw owners doing well across the country, while Kansas City had only one or two small companies. He is a numbers guy, and the numbers worked. About five years ago he opened Poo Squad on the Missouri side of the city. It is part of a small franchise with a few locations around the country.

How did Poo Squad get its first 100 clients?

By showing up everywhere. For the first seven months it was Matt alone “with a rake, a bucket,” and not much of a budget. So he joined things:

• the chamber of commerce, two days after the business became official and before he had scooped a yard
• a networking group, a Rotary club and other business groups, many through people he met at the chamber
• a monthly Kansas City group he found on Facebook

He went to 8 to 10 events a week, sometimes a couple in a day, and scooped yards in between. Some weeks brought no new customers and some brought a lot. At about seven months he had 100 clients.

It helps that nobody forgets a poop scooper. Even now, if he wears his orange Poo Squad shirt to an event, “people come talk to me because they want to know what is the deal with that.”

What did he do after the first 100?

He hired someone and started over. His first employee, a person he knew from his grocery career, took over all the yards. Matt went back to events and began learning Facebook and Google advertising for the first full spring rush.

Hiring cut his income sharply, and he used that as fuel: “Now I’ve got a person that’s depending on me.” By the end of that spring the two of them needed a third. A part-time hire became full-time, and the company kept growing.

Social media, mainly Facebook, has been the biggest channel since. About two years in, Poo Squad worked with an outside company on Facebook ads, learned from it, and then brought the ads back in house.

How does Poo Squad stand out now that there are more scoopers?

On service. The grocery chain Matt worked for was one of the more expensive in town and competed on service, and he runs Poo Squad the same way.

The company was early to text customers, then to send gate pictures. Competitors caught up, so the differentiator now is the basics: answer right away, show up, be there when someone has a concern. A new client told him she had contacted three companies. “I was the only one to call her back the same day.” One still had not called four days later. The company she tried first advertised a starting price of $35 and never called her. She signed with Poo Squad at $92.50 a month and told him she was happy she did.

Matt still answers messages himself, with help from an office assistant a few days a week.

He also told the story of a woman who wanted a one-time cleanup after her dog died. He did the job and never sent an invoice. When she asked why, he told her it was on the house. She cried. She was never going to be a long-term customer, he said, but it took little time and she will probably tell that story.

How does he keep quality up with a team?

By hiring carefully and keeping the team close. “How do you get someone to care as much as you care about the business you run and the business you built?” he asked. His answer:

• Start the interview with the negatives. The work is outside in rain, heat and cold, it is solitary, and it is picking up dog poop.
• Train for a full week, so new hires understand the pride he takes in a simple task.
• Get the team together. They go to Royals games and out to breakfast every couple of months, since everyone works alone all day.
• Hire referrals. One early employee brought in her husband and a friend.

What would he tell another owner?

“Keep doing the things.” Put yourself out there, try different kinds of advertising, and when one fails, figure out why. “I knew I couldn’t get a customer sitting on my couch.”

Poo Squad moved out of the home office into a warehouse and office space in the past year. Over the next three years Matt wants the trucks paid off and a full-time manager who can do what he does.