The Debrief: Dog Walking Side Hustle

Welcome to The Debrief. This week we interviewed Jay, a musician with a dog walking side hustle. If you didn’t catch it, feel free to check it out here before diving into this edition.

In this mid-week newsletter, we are going to investigate what we covered in our interview and breakdown the key takeaways and share some actionable advice for you to work on in your business venture.

Each debrief is designed to give you something to work on each week based off the advice given by our featured entrepreneur.

Let’s get into it!

Dog Walking Side Hustle

Key takeaways:

1. A dog walking side hustle is a great opportunity for people that don’t work during a typical 9-5 schedule. Although not exclusive to this, offering a service when most people are at work will give you a broader customer base to offer yourself to, since most people require a dog walking service when they are out at work. If you’re available to dog walk during a weekend, this is also a busy time. Overall, this side hustle gives you the flexibility to work when you want to which may benefit your needs.

2. Building a client base may be slow at first but once you’ve got a few regulars in place, you will often expand through word of mouth and referrals. If you use an app like Wag, you can always build your customer list through there. It’s also worth noting that these dog walking finder apps are only lucrative if there’s a high number of customers on there. Some countries do not use these apps so sourcing your clients through Facebook or local advertising platforms may be the best bet for you.

3. Similarly to the point above, building your client base requires patience. You cannot expect to be earning big money from this side hustle, but you can build a comfortable side income through this once your client base grows, but this won’t happen overnight.

My thoughts:

I love the idea of a dog walking side hustle, it’s absolutely perfect for someone looking to supplement their income doing something with flexible hours, low stress, while being outdoors. Now let me break down my scoring on the chart above.

The entry requirements for dog walking are low, probably about as low as it can get. I suppose the only requirement needed is for you to be able to walk a few miles and to enjoy the company of dogs. Not really that difficult, this grade is pretty self-explanatory.

Time requirements are also incredibly low. Most dogs need walking for around 30-60min (sometimes less depending on the breed of dog). You may even find that the biggest time constraint is the travel to and from your client’s house, which of course you won’t be paid for, so take this into account when calculating your hourly rates.

Now, so far it seems like this is a dream side hustle, right? Well, for most it probably is. However, this desirability also brings some downsides, notably competition with the many other dog walkers. There’s definitely a demand for dog walkers in many parts of the world, and most clients will use you as a repeat service since dogs need walking every day, but finding those clients is tough and will take some time for you establish your client base. You’ll also need to price your service correctly to avoid losing your clients to your competitors.

Not many people have built a dog walking side hustle and been able to quit their jobs to focus on it full-time, simply because there’s not much of an opportunity to scale it. You run this business by trading your time for money and there’s only a finite number of hours in the day which means that once your calendar is full, you can’t grow any further. Of course, hiring other dog walkers to work under your brand is an option but what’s stopping them from working for themselves and earning a larger share of the money?

Overall, I think dog walking is a great side hustle if you want to get out and about and earn some extra money, but don’t expect to quit your day job with it.

Do you agree with me? I’d love to know your thoughts, just reply to this email!

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👇️ Now it’s your turn to answer a question:

If you’d like to read last week’s debrief, covering an interview with Dan, a newsletter writer who shares interesting facts about everything to his readers, and gets paid for it. Check it out here.

Thank you all,

See you on Sunday! 👋