When I was a kid, too young to legally have a real-grown-up wage-earning job, one of my household chores was cleaning up the back yard after the family dog.  Come to think of it, as an adult it was still one of my household chores.

My octogenarian mother has moved from her sprawling house into a retirement community and still has her dog.  Someone needs to clean up the grounds, and I can’t travel 2,500 miles every week to do it.

Enter the PoopButler! 

Where once there were only neighborhood kids doing chores or making spare change to buy candy, there are now hundreds of similar businesses across the country, ready and willing to clean up this dirty niche market.  Plenty of job security too.

And the idea isn’t that new, either.  Robert A. Heinlein wrote about the handyman class gone corporate in his 1941 story –We Also Walk Dogs.

So don’t be dissuaded from pursuing an unlikely business idea.  Do your research, write your business plan (to be sure you’ve covered the details) and start up your business.  Business is picking up!

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software