What to Do With Doo?

Diane Rossi was making a living cleaning up dog doo from backyards, apartment courtyards and other locations. She had managed to attract hundreds of clients, but faced the problem common to many service providers: She was limited in how much she could earn based on how many hours she could work.

Rossi expanded and hired part-time help, but had a hard time keeping reliable people (apparently the glamour wasn’t enough!) Finally, though, she hit on a solution that may take her from struggling service provider to successful entrepreneur. Rossi began selling rolls of biodegradable dog-waste bags. After selling to many of her apartment building clients, she landed a big contract with the City of Chicago. She plans to expand her sales beyond the Chicago area to increase her revenues and profits.

You can overcome the income limitations of a service business by (1) duplicating yourself by hiring others to perform the service under your direction or franchising your operations, (2) finding a way to package and sell your service to many, such as writing a book or creating audio tapes, training programs, how-to kits and other ways to market your knowledge, or (3) creating a product related to your business like Rossi did.

Diane Rossi may have come up with a winner with her new kind of doggie bags. But she’s not finished. Dog doo treated with heat and enzymes can be turned into fertilizer. Says Rossi, “For me to take the poop and sell it back, that’s the ultimate.”