In this motivational episode, William Milliken, President of Swoop Scoop, shares how to scale service businesses and overcome mindset barriers to hiring. If you struggle with doing everything alone and fearing your first hires, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What simple systems turn a simple service into millions
– How to start taking action without waiting for perfection
– Why mindset blocks prevent scaling beyond solo operations
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the start, scale and succeed. Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as founder, I’m your host, as always, Scott Ritzheimer, and today we’re talking to founders and those even thinking about getting into the founder game, who know that there’s this uncomfortable milestone that we all have to face. It’s that point where you’ve got customers, that’s a good thing. You’ve got revenue, that’s a good thing, but you physically can’t do it all yourself anymore, and you’re staring at it for the first time, thinking, we need real hires. We need people who can help. Why in the world would anyone want to work for me? Because you realize you’re competing against the big guys, right? The AmEx, the Amazons of the world. FedEx is a world of the world, the landscaper down the street of the world, especially those who are in the service business. And it’s a real challenge. And what I have found is that while there are some realities to that challenge, a very significant portion of it is between your two ears. So we’re gonna figure out how to fix that. We’re not gonna do it by ourselves, because today, we have the one and only William Milliken, who is the founder of Swoop Scoop, a multi million dollar dog waste removal company that’s transformed a very simple chore into a booming business serving 1000s across multiple states, with a sharp digital marketing background, he has built several seven figure home service companies and has become a go to expert in creating profitable, recession proof businesses. As the founder of Poop Scoop Millionaire community, he’s empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs to launch successful dog waste removal businesses. William shares powerful strategies for scaling businesses digital marketing and unlocking financial freedom in unexpected industries. To say the least, William, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. This is easily the most interesting business idea that’s come across our desk as we’re looking at different guests to have on. And what I love about it is you have literally made millions of dollars getting people to pick up who like, literally in an industry that other folks wouldn’t touch. And from the looks of it, you guys are doing a fantastic job with that. And again, it really goes to the heart of this issue in the small business world, of why in the world would folks come and work from us? So how have you done it? How have you gotten great folks to come and work for you all these years?
William Milliken
Yeah, definitely, it’s been an evolution from when we first started. For sure, I’d say some of the big things that we like to do is, as you were mentioning, comparing yourself to the big guys. So first and foremost, we like to be able to pay a little bit above market. So we’ll go and see what the local landscapers are and Amazon and FedEx and all those types of places. We generally try to pay people just a couple dollars an hour, more than that, and then beyond that. It’s about having a good culture, having good work life balance for people. So we provide benefits. We also allow people to come in and work. Basically, they can pick their own schedule, as long as they get their routes done, which is a benefit of this business. So we’re able to offer a lot of flexibility there as well, which I think goes a long way. And this industry too, as you mentioned, not a lot of people have heard about it before, so it’s kind of novel. Has the opportunity to go viral, not only for getting customers, but for people that want to work here too, because they just want to go outside, they want to spend time with dogs. So I think a lot of those things kind of play into how we’ve been able to ramp that up as we’ve grown
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so starting off with kind of the elephant the room in that statement is we find out what the average is, and then we pay a couple dollars more an hour. How do you make that possible? Someone who, who’s sitting there again, someone in similar shoes to where you were years ago? Now? How? Let me actually start with this seemingly basic question. But how do you know? How do you know what other folks are are offering nearby?
William Milliken
Yeah, I mean, you can just go on some of the job boards. You can go on Indeed, a lot of places will be posting those, those prices, and if they’re not, you’re done, typically going to be more competitive. You’re going to get more applications if you actually tell people what you’re paying versus some of the competitors. So that’s probably the first place that I would go. Place that I would go to start. And then just as you’re interviewing too, you can get intel, and you can get information from people, kind of as you go.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And then how did you guys figure out a way of paying more? What was the what’s the backstory there?
William Milliken
Yeah. So for me, personally, my kind of philosophy in businesses, I don’t I want as little problems as possible. So I want to be able to get the best people on my team as possible. So it’s kind of the whole philosophy, and then it’s just kind of reverse engineering the union economics of your business, right? So you have to have high enough margins to be able to do that. You have to have good enough systems to be able to do that. And that’s kind of how we reverse engineered the business, just to make sure that we could actually afford that. So I didn’t have all those issues, because I don’t want people coming in and out of the business all the time. It creates quite a bit of issues and costs more money than I’d like to pay.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s interesting, because those issues are a lot harder to quantify than the dollar an hour that you see on the job ad or the number and. Yeah, the pay stub. How did you guys get a sense of how much that was worth to you?
William Milliken
Well, I think at the beginning, as I mentioned, I don’t, I don’t want any issues personally, so I try to be as hands off as possible with the business. So I’m willing to take a little bit less personally, I guess, I guess, to make that happen, but really it’s just putting putting it out there, putting a different price, putting a different offer out to the marketplace, and then seeing what kind of candidates you’re able to get from that. So with the kind of current flow that we have right now, every time we post a job ad, we have over 100 people applying professional Cooper scooper, which is great, and we’ll literally filter through 125 different resumes before we actually make one or two hires, just being very selective about what we’re able to bring on now too, has been very beneficial.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s interesting because it sounds obvious when you say it, but for so many people, the thought process is the opposite. The thought process is like, I got into this to make money. Why would I give it to everybody else? And, and I think again, that’s really at the heart of the problem, in that there’s some obvious limitations to that and and the trade offs aren’t as clear in that direction as they are in the opposite and so the Yeah, I’m trying to figure out how I want to wear this next question. But when let me just switch gears a little bit, I’ve been wanting to get this. I’m putting off those to see if I can go any longer, if I can. So you talked about paying above the average wage, and then the other thing that you talked about is culture, and that’s interesting to me, especially in an environment where folks at their own hours don’t work their own routes, they’re going to spend the majority of their time out, most of it even alone. How do you guys achieve culture in an environment like that?
William Milliken
Yeah, so there’s a couple of things we do. One big thing that we’ve done that’s helped not only with culture but hiring is we have a use a platform called School, which is basically an online community platform. So we have all our employees there, and not only can they interact with each other, they’re able to talk to each other, they’re able to upload pictures of like cute dogs and stuff they saw that day. We also have full training for every single position within the company, so whether you’re Cooper scooper, marketing manager, office manager, everything’s right there in that same hub. That’s been a pretty big unlock for us, especially when we’re onboarding as many new employees as we are, they’re able to just go through the training, it’s pretty seamless, and then they’re able to kind of integrate into the community in online way. Then we also will do events, we’ll do competitions, different things like that, and then also having, like, a clear ascension route for people to come in as super scoopers if they want to become a supervisor, we call it as a next step or area manager. So we have, we have a lot of opportunity also,
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. What What role do you think your selectiveness and hiring has attributed to that culture?
William Milliken
Yeah, I think it’s been, it’s been totally key, especially in the service based industry, right? You have to make sure you have good customer service. You got to make sure that you’re getting good reviews and reducing turnover, making sure you’re hiring high quality people, people that can pass a background check, people that you’re not afraid to send out into your customers backyard. I mean, that’s that’s going to be totally key if you want to scale, scale any business beyond yourself, I would say.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so I want to shift our focus back to the founder themselves. We talked about the mindset that you shared on valuing, not having problems and paying well to do that. Now the flip side of that, especially for folks who are in service businesses that might be a little closer to their heart, right, something like an accounting professional, or I remember talking once with a guitar luthier, and so almost a bit of a craft an artist and piece to it. And part of the challenge that they find in bringing other people in is that those other people just are problems. They don’t think like them, they don’t act like them. So for someone who who is really good at the job that they do, and they’re trying to reproduce that success in others, what have you learned as a trick there?
William Milliken
For us, it’s really we’ve productized our service, right? So it’s not, we’re not like attorneys or anything like that, where we have to come up with strategies and whatnot. Everything is totally systemized from the way that you walk your yard and how you clean your equipment in between each yard, and it’s easy to replicate, I guess is what I think the main key is, it’s makes it a lot easier to train people not doing a bunch of custom services and the custom products for people. If you could just set your product, make it kind of cookie cutter, that’s going to be a lot easier for not only scaling your business in general, but also hiring training, getting people going.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, one of the things I like about that sets it up to when you’ve simplified. That by the delivery, you can set up really effective processes around that, right? Yeah. And again, this looks like an area that you guys have really excelled. But it’s one thing to have the systems. It’s another thing for people to actually follow them. How have you guys succeeded in getting folks to actually follow through on those systems processes?
William Milliken
Yeah. So, I mean, we really try to track a lot of those important metrics, right? So we’re tracking how many yards people are doing per hour, tracking that people get callbacks. We do QA is on everybody. And there’s also a clear line of command. So there’s, there’s a lot of oversight to make sure people are doing their jobs the correct way, which is another expense to the business. As you get bigger, right? The more people that you hire as you bring on, managers, directors, etc, definitely shrinks the margin. But without it, kind of the wheels fall off the bus, so to speak. So it’s definitely something necessary as you continue to grow.
Scott Ritzheimer
I think one of the challenging things to accept is that, is that all that management stuff is worth it, right, especially if you’re being selective where you’re hiring the top 1% of the people who who choose. Why is it that management is still necessary in that in that environment?
William Milliken
I mean, you can only manage so many people, you can only scoop so many yards. Can only manage so many people, you can only hire so many people and you only have so many domains of, I guess, knowledge that you’re really good at. So we’re at the point now where we don’t even hire scoopers anymore. We have a Operations Manager. We have location managers at each location. We have an office manager who’s hired a marketing manager. We got somebody to run finance. And with those are all the kind of the core functions of the business, right? I want to have a business anyways that can technically operate without me, even though I’m still part of it, trying to grow it. But it’s not possible unless you have those people in those positions that are that are talented at what they do.
Scott Ritzheimer
What role does your vision for the company have in that? Did you have, I mean, did you have an ambition of going to multiple locations in many states from the very beginning? How did you know that those investments were going to pay off?
William Milliken
You know, I’ll be on. When we first started this, this business, I had no idea if it was even going to work. I was happy to make an extra 1000 bucks a month, kind of a thing. And as it started to grow, and as we started to get product market fit and the demand started to increase, really started to expand the scope of what was going to be possible. So we’re in a good position now where we have a lot of options. We can keep opening up locations, we can franchise. Just really looking at, for me, I look at the unit economics and see what makes the most sense for the company. And over this last year, kind of my job has been building that infrastructure, bringing in those leaders for the company, so we can just start copy pasting, opening new locations, which we’re going to be doing throughout the next few years.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So William, there’s this question that I have for you asked all my guests. I’m interested to see what you have to say, both as someone who helps founders and entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and someone who’s still very much in the game themselves. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
William Milliken
The biggest secret I wish wasn’t a secret at all. I know there’s a lot of people that are kind of afraid to make that first step to get into business. So I would just say, I mean, the biggest secret, really, is just to get out there and start doing things, start taking action. It can seem overwhelming, but it’s just things that you got to figure out one step at a time. If you want to have a better life, you want to hit financial freedom, you really just got to get out there and get after it. That’s going to be the best way to actually learn not do things, not make things perfect before you get started. You don’t need to have the perfect logo, you don’t need to have the perfect website, you don’t need to have the perfect marketing plan. You don’t even need to have the perfect plan in general. It’s just really going out there getting started. I say, I would say it’s the biggest, biggest secret to success that I found.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good, doesn’t happen if you don’t take the first step. So there are some folks listening that may be interested in becoming franchise fees or or just learning from your success. How can they reach out to you? How can they find more out about the work that you all do?
William Milliken
Yeah, so we’re not franchising the business right now, but if you do want to learn the business, or you do want to talk to me, we have an online community on that same platform I talked about school. It’s called the Poop Scoop Millionaire. So we teach people how to get into the industry. That’s pretty much the only place where people can talk to me. I check my exams every morning, so if you want to talk to me, that’s probably the best way to get a hold of me. Otherwise, if you want to see our company or anything, check it out at SwoopScoop.com kind of see what we’ve been doing over the years.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, William, thanks for being on. Thanks for sharing what you learned. Fascinating stuff in there. I really appreciate you being here today. And for those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us, I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot see you next time. Take care.
Contact William Milliken
William Milliken is the Founder of Swoop Scoop, a multi-million-dollar dog waste removal company that has transformed a simple chore into a booming business serving thousands across multiple states. With a sharp digital marketing background, he’s built several 7-figure home service companies and has become a go-to expert in creating profitable, recession-proof businesses. As the founder of the Poop Scoop Millionaire community, he’s empowered hundreds of entrepreneurs to launch successful dog waste removal businesses. William shares powerful strategies for scaling businesses, digital marketing, and unlocking financial freedom in unexpected industries.
Want to learn more about William Milliken’s work at Swoop Scoop? Check out his website at https://swoopscoop.com/