Dog Walking As A Viable Profession?
I had an article a while back on a friend of mine who was thinking about starting a dog walking business (don’t laugh). He had worked part-time for a dog walking company and every time he’d go into the office to pick up his schedule, he’d see his bosses sitting comfortably in their chairs playing video games.
So, of course, he thought to himself….”well, this doesn’t look like such a tough gig. If these guys can run a business playing video games the whole day, then it can’t be that difficult to do.” So, after doing his homework and thinking about it for awhile, he was finally able to get it off the ground.
He placed some ad’s at a pet store and also attended a pet “party” they were having. He worked the room, talked to the guests there and viola!….he’s got two clients already. Here is how it works (this guy is a Kenyan by the way).
Okay. Let’s do the math.
Now, he’d probably not be able to walk all the dogs by himself with that many clients. So, what do you do? hire high school students to help you out and pay them a small “salary” (all they need is pocket money). Even if you had to hire students, you should still be able to take home a good $85,000 dollars a year.
If your goal is to work for yourself, this “job” will provide enough to pay your rent or mortgage and still give you time to look for other business opportunities (remember, your only walking 3 days a week!) & another thing — He tells the clients that he’ll pick up the dogs between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. — so, he wakes up when he wants.
I know some people might look at this dog walking “business” and say that it’s not stable or it won’t look good on one’s resume, especially if your trying to build a more professional looking CV, but tomorrow, I’ll have another story about sticking with one job and seeing if that actually brings “stability”. I’m beginning to have doubts about this “stability” issue. Does it exist anymore?
Pixie
Interesting observations. I guess like you said, it’s something one can do in addition to other things.
Dog walkers do pretty well – I knew one who was pulling in around $60K a year. However, you have to take into account they don’t have health insurance (unless they’re paying through the nose for thier own). Also, what are the growth oppts in that line of work? Sure, you could always hire college kids to walk the dogs but how large are you really going to get by hiring ‘workers’ who will quit in a heartbeat? I think it’s a great part-time gig if you have a flexible work-schedule but I don’t see it being something you can do long term.