How Rover Scoopers Reached 100+ Pet Waste Clients in Its First Year in Portland

Why did a tech veteran start a pet waste removal company in Portland?

Chris Reents wanted out of the house and into a business with less stress. A lifelong resident of the Portland area, he spent more than 20 years in technology and worked from home for seven or eight of them. As his kids neared college age he bought into a moving and junk hauling franchise and ran it for a couple of years.

That business was expensive and stressful: seven-day weeks, heavy regulation, costly insurance and expensive trucks. A franchise territory also capped how many customers he could reach. While looking for new ways to promote it, he fell into what he called a YouTube black hole one weekend and found a couple of operators in Seattle and Spokane posting videos about poop scooping. Compared with what he was doing, he said, it “seemed like it was really something that could take off.”

How did Rover Scoopers launch?

With the systems in place first. Chris found the industry in late summer or early fall, joined a couple of Skool communities, formed the LLC, picked the name and built the website. He also set up a way to manage leads, operations and client communication from an app on his phone, because he knew he would be in the field until revenue could cover hires.

He started Facebook and Google ads at the end of the year. The first job was on January 1. “Most people take that day off, but we were excited,” he said.

About a year after he found the industry, Rover Scoopers had a little over 100 clients. In Oregon, summer is flat, with some clients leaving and a few joining. From around Thanksgiving through March, when it is rainy and gray and people do not want to go out in the yard, he turns the ads back up.

How does Rover Scoopers follow up with every lead?

Automatically, until the lead signs up or says stop. Chris’s reasoning is about cost: if a lead costs $50, $100 or $200 and you reach out once, “you’re leaving a lot of potential revenue and clients on the table.”

His setup:

• Lead nurture built on GoHighLevel. Every Facebook lead gets an automated message right away.
• A short-term drip. Four or five contacts over about 10 days, with money off or coupons.
• A long-term drip. Anyone who has not signed up or opted out gets a monthly message that rolls from January to December and into the next year.
• Sweep&Go for operations. Scheduling, billing, routes and the client database, connected to his marketing through its API.
• Partial quotes get remarketed. The quote page asks for a phone number, so people who do not finish hear from the company too.

He also wanted as few tools as possible so the business stays efficient.

How does he build route density across the metro?

By zoning the map and refusing to break it. Chris split the Portland metro into five zones, one per weekday. If someone on the far east side wants Friday instead of Tuesday, the company apologizes and asks them to try Tuesday. Now that the service area is as wide as it will get for a while, every new client fills in an existing route.

One tactic he shared: when a technician sees a for-sale sign at a client’s house, they text a photo to the office, and Chris offers the realtor a discount or a free month for the buyers if they have pets. It had worked once so far.

What has he learned about ads?

That video helps and that fear is part of it. Chris had never run a Facebook ad before this business. He films short videos, adds a logo or phone number in Canva, and runs them alongside static images. Five to ten second videos get much more interaction than images, he said.

His mistakes were letting ads run too long when cost per acquisition was well over target, and hesitating to spend. Going from $5 or $10 a day to $125 a day, he said, is “really scary, especially from scratch.”

What would he tell someone starting a home service business?

Decide what you want, then reinvest. A rake, a bucket, a car and a few thousand dollars for ads will get a solo operator going, and 100 clients at an average of $100 a month is a six-figure business. To build something bigger, form the LLC, get insurance and keep putting money back in. “It’s a long-term game, not a short term.”

He also tries to lead with kindness. When a woman who was signing up landed in the hospital for weeks, Rover Scoopers cleaned the family’s yard free for a month. They became long-term clients. Chris said the question he asked himself was whether it was the right thing to do even if they never signed up.

His goal is more than 300 clients by April, which he called conservative, with a couple more hires and fleet vehicles over the winter.