Name: Will Rice
Major: Entrepreneurship
Business: Poop Busters Indy, LLC. We do residential and commercial pet waste removal, so basically scooping up dog poop in people’s yards & around apartment complexes.
What is your story?:
My co-founder, Kieran, was scooping poop for another company. We decided that we could do it ourselves and make it better. We launched our business at the start of 2020, just a few weeks before COVID hit. We spent the first few months just trying to get the word out. After a summer of going door-to-door and making phone calls, we had a whopping one client. It wasn’t until the following spring when things really picked up. The dog poop in people’s yards had accumulated over winter so that spring we just exploded in growth. We started working on search engine optimization, developed a social media presence, and grew a lot through simply word-of-mouth. We broke into the commercial side of things fairly quickly after landing our first contract with an apartment complex. We developed relationships with property managers to keep us in mind, and eventually landed our first contract with an apartment complex.
What’s been your favorite failure / most valuable learning experience?:
Cold-calling people and having it go terribly has been a valuable learning experience. A lot of times you get the phone hung up on you or people just won’t care when you first call a business. Sometimes, the first person who answers the phone is like a wall or a hoop to jump through. It’s all about people and if you can develop just a couple of good relationships, eventually those people will talk to each other and be like ‘Oh yeah, those poop guys – we like doing business with them’ and continue using and spreading the word about your service.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received as an entrepreneur?
- Take care of your customers and they’ll take care of you. Every time that I answer the phone and someone is unhappy about something, all I want to do is find a way to fix their problem. I will sink the entire business and my time into this customer to save a client relationship.
2. Under-promise and over-deliver.
What has been the most valuable resource you have utilized at the university?
Asking for situational advice from professors. Not asking for generalized advice, but going in with a very specific situation – you can get really valuable input.
What has been the most valuable resource to you outside of IU?
Other business owners – friends and family that already had a leg up in their industry! I have been connected with someone in the lawn-care business through a friend who has had great things to say about PBI. My dad is also in the small-business world and had insights, tips, and tricks to help us build and grow smarter.
How can people connect with you?
You can find us online at poopbustersindy.com, email me at will@poopbustersindy.com, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.