The Gig Economy
About a million different opportunities to make money on the gig economy clamor for our energy. “Drive for Uber!” they shout. “Deliver takeout!” All the while, they provide less money in exchange for the services rendered.
One segment of the gig economy, though, has done okay. I’m referring to dog walkers! A quick search of rover.com and some rather rough and from-the-hip mental math has revealed that dog walkers in the Atlanta, Georgia area make roughly $20 per hour. In a state whose minimum wage is outpaced by the federal minimum wage at $7.25 per hour, that’s not bad money!
How to do Even Better
Now, what if you could harness the lasting magic that’s maintaining the rate for pet walking and couple it with the early adopter’s advantage of the first Uber drivers, AirBnB owners, etc.?
I submit to you…[drumroll, please!]…a human-walking service!
The Numbers
We’ve already said that dog walkers in Atlanta make $20 per walk, which we can reasonably assume takes about an hour. It should be obvious that a human walker does at least the work of a dog walker, which is to take the subject off another human’s hands/out of their hair and accompany them on a walk, typically in the immediate vicinity of the concerned human’s home. Human walkers also do the work of personal trainers, which is to compel other humans to exercise. A quick google search reveals personal trainers make roughly $65 per hour. Since human walkers do the work of both dog walkers ($20/hr) and personal trainers ($65/hr), we can safely assume that they’d make $85/hr. Positioning yourself as both is critical to your marketing strategy. Actually talk to the humans you’re walking, and now you’re doing the work of a therapist as well for an extra (average) $32/hr, putting your total hourly rate at $117/hr.
That’s for one human walker. Imagine if you’re the owner of a human walking agency, and you take a ten percent cut for the privilege of the human walkers being on your advertising platform. Let’s say that you start this business in Atlanta, and Atlanta is a city in which a mere 1% of the population requires human walking services. The google-able population of Atlanta in 2021 was the most current data I could find at 496,461 Atlantans, leaving 4964 who require walking services. Let’s assume they require those services two hours per week. That’s 9928 walk hours at $117/hr, for a total of $1,161,576 weekly revenue.
If you take a 10% cut of that, you’ll end up with $116,157 PER WEEK. Unbelievable! Multiply that by the 52 weeks in a year, and you’re running a $6 million per year business. If you’re not jumping on this opportunity, you simply don’t want to make money.
The Next Level
Once you’ve mastered the human walking business, you could enter the cost-cutting phase of your business by training a pet to walk a human. Because dogs and other animals don’t have bank accounts or a use for cash, they’ll be content to carry out the work for treats and or some other reward. Obviously, you’ll have to feed them, which will be an expense, but it’ll be much less than the $105.30 you’re giving up to each of the independent contractors using your advertising platform for each hour they’re walking a human. Use a pet to walk humans, and your business will be a lot closer to a $60 million/year business than a $6 million/year business. If you’re worried about out-competing all the expert human walkers you just helped develop, don’t worry—people like animals way more than they like other people, which is why you were able to get this business running in the first place.
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