124: Transitions in 2020 with Isabel from The Wag Pack
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Summary:
2020 has been a year of change for many of us. For Isabel Alvarez Arata, it meant closing down after 12 years in business and 100,000+ visits. Isabel shares how she grew her business and the big transition for The Wag Pack in 2020. From communicating to clients, to how it’s impacted her emotionally, she encourages us to embrace change and the challenges.
Topics on this episode:
What makes good policies
Role of education as a pet sitter
Why close after 12 years?
What the process has looked like
Main take away? You already have the NO. If you ask and they say no, nothing changes...go for the YES.
About our guest:
Founder of The Wag Pack, Northern Virginia's premier pet care company for over 12 years, Isabel set out to make a positive impact in the pet sitting industry from the start. The daughter of astute entrepreneurs, Isabel knows customer service and efficient processes are the key to running a successful service industry business. Having been invited to speak at various industry events, worked individually with many pet sitting businesses to improve their operation, and earned numerous national and local awards and recognition over the years, Isabel worked tirelessly to advance the pet sitting industry since she entered it in 2008. Upon closing her operation due to Covid-19, Isabel chose to sell her business and employee forms to those that will carry on the torch in pet care. She didn't want the knowledge gained over more than a decade and 100,000+ pet care visits to go to waste. While saying goodbye to her previously thriving business has been difficult, Isabel is refocusing her efforts and energy on the premiere of her own show on Pet Life Radio in January 2021. In Covered in Pet Hair, a boozy web show for pet lovers, Isabel will toast to a life ‘covered in pet hair’ with some of the most interesting people in the pet industry. Isabel shares her life with her husband, Chris, 3-year-old, Noah, 9-month old, Mila, and her dogs, Titan, Radar, and Caera. They are a military family currently living in El Paso, TX, where Isabel hopes they will stay.
Links:
Her group for pet sitters and her group for pet owners
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, business, pet, people, policies, staff member, employees, pet sitter, business partner, called, started, key, year, refund, sharing, decision, money, dog walker, thought, home
SPEAKERS
Isabel, Collin
Collin 00:17
I'm Collin.
00:18
And I'm Meghan.
00:19
And this is pet sitter confessional,
00:20
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter
Collin 00:24
brought to you by time to pet 2020 has definitely been a year of challenges and transitions. Some of those have been relatively easy for us and many of them have been really hard to accept and implement and just get over that hump. Today, Isabel Alvarez urata talks about a big transition that she's currently going through former owner of the wag pack, she shares how and why she decided it was finally time to close her business after 12 years, how she accepted that and how it was really for the betterment of everybody involved. Let's get started.
Isabel 01:04
Hi, I'm Isabelle Alvarez Arata. I was the founder and general manager of the waguespack LLC in Northern Virginia, for 12 years, until August 31 of this year where we ceased operations in Northern Virginia, forever. Thanks to COVID, we made the decision to cease operations. And so now I am kind of in transition, like you said, we did over 10,000 petsitting visits. And in 12 years, we had a team of 18, almost 20 people. And in February of 2020, we had hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of active clients, and COVID, Pitt, and it just didn't make sense to continue the business any longer based on the demand that we were seeing and how long this is going to probably take place or last. So we made the devastating decision to close up and it's been a rough year. But you know, here we are. And I'm I'm excited to be here to talk to you because it's important to me, as I said a lot in my group. I've a pet sitters group called pet sitter place on Facebook, and I've said it since we made the announcement that even though I'm leaving the industry, the pet sitting industry, I don't see myself going back into it anywhere else or in the future. But I want to leave the industry as well as or better than I found it 12 years ago. And I do think if I may say so myself, I have made some good impact in the industry. I have hopefully helped people inspired others. Share just experiences with others. And I've met amazing people in the industry. So I'm excited to be here to kind of make this one of my goodbyes, I guess. And one of my contributions before you know, I take my life in a totally different direction. Maybe? I think I don't know. I haven't made any decisions yet. So we'll see.
Collin 03:23
Yeah, well, and yeah, I appreciate you coming on and being willing to talk to us about that. And definitely want to pick your brain about some of your past experiences and what the process of closing down has has been like for you. So, you know, thinking back 12 years ago, why did you originally start petsitting
Isabel 03:40
um, what's interesting is I this actually just pops into my head. today. I was in the hospitality industry. I was a sales manager for Hyatt Hotels, in on Capitol Hill, working with you know, associations and government entities doing conferences and conventions. We were conference hotels, we had 20,000 square feet of meeting space, 800 guest rooms, all that and I was selling packages, guest rooms, meeting space for conferences and such. So I guess I still be out of a job. And I stayed in that industry right. Now the industry has been so affected. So regardless, I feel like no matter what, I was going to end up making a huge change in 2020 no matter what my career was prior. So I was a sales manager working from 8am to 6pm in the office and then entertaining clients and attending events in the evenings. And I wanted a puppy so badly but I couldn't, you know, take care of him myself, because of my super strenuous work schedule. So I started looking why I got the puppy. And when I was being interviewed by the rescue the puppy is now 13. He's Titan. And when I was being interviewed by the rescue organization that I got him from they were So what is your work schedule? You know, they were really digging to make sure I was a good match for him. He was four months old when I got it. And they were like, what are you going to do during the day? And I said, I'll get a dog walker, right, because like, I tried to actually I could afford one i was i was the typical professional that needed a dog walker was not a luxury, like if I had to pick, I had to get help for that pet. So I started looking for a dog walker in my area, and I knew they existed, DC has had dog walkers forever. Northern Virginia is a suburb of DC. And so I knew they existed, I just hadn't really done anything until I already had Titan in my house, was ready to like, hire somebody to, you know, start getting started tomorrow. So I started looking, and I honestly couldn't find anybody that gave me true peace of mind. Um, my I was in a relationship at the time, and I was in a relationship with a secret service agent. So of course, the Secret Service agent, a federal, a, you know, a federal law enforcement agent was like, What are their background checks, like who's coming in my house, like there isn't firearm in here, that's a federal government issued firearm, all the stuff, right, all the things and I couldn't really find anybody that was really doing their due diligence, or at least they might have been, but they didn't share that on their website, I didn't know what their inner workings were, I did call a few places, and I never got phone calls back. Hmm. To this day, I'm still waiting on those calls to come in. So I said, you know, pets had always been my passion, I pet that for friends and family, in college. And after college, I wanted a pet I was 28 years old when I finally got my first own pet. So in that, you know, from college, to that time, I was petsitting for neighbors friends. So I was like, I can do this better. Like I, I have the skills, the love of animal, but I also am an entrepreneur, my parents are entrepreneurs. And I'm super organized. This is one of those things that needs to really be done properly to do you know, in home pet care is a really interesting industry, because very few industries allow people to go into other people's homes when nobody's there, right? Even your general contractor, somebody's home, most of the time, your cleaning person may be the only exception. But a lot of times people schedule their cleaning services on the weekend so that they can be there. Because you know, they're going to be going through stuff and you don't know if you can really trust them. And I was like, This needs to be done properly in order for the company to be so you know, successful and for the client to be to have that peace of mind, just like we need it for Titan and for our home. So I said I'm gonna do this, and the person I was in a relationship with was like, I totally support you, I totally believe in you. Let's do it. So I started the business from our then, um, you know, office in our home, and I i canvassed the neighborhood with flyers. And he did too, with Titan. And we still to this day had clients that we got off of those flyers, I don't think flyers work as well anymore. But it was because we were out there on a Saturday morning meeting people that like, you know, it wasn't like we were we didn't do it during the week when people are at work. We did it on Saturday, introducing ourselves, you know, this cute little puppy with this, you know, it was lanky and like, four months, so you know, awkward. Um, so we, I still had clients from that experience. And and it took off. I mean, I started the web pack, officially named it, January of 2008. I left my corporate job, March 15 of 2008. started taking clients, maybe March 1, because I was kind of, you know, on the way out of the other ones prepping or revving up the new job. Um, by August, I was hiring people. Wow. I mean, talk about I would take clients anywhere I could get them, I could I I would drive 40 minutes to walk a dog and make pennies on that walk because my vision was I'll get territory started again, the salesperson in me was like, I'll get territory started. And then I'll hire somebody to take over so once I had a couple few dogs, consistent dogs in every area, I would hire somebody we really like ramped up really quickly. And it was amazing. Um, because the need was there. And we set out to do it better. And I did. So I was really getting some market share. And it was an awesome, awesome ride.
Collin 09:43
Yeah, absolutely. And you see you you're able to pull together this history and the hospitality and the desire to care for the client to the customer, the human, make sure they were taken care of cared for and they were their needs were being met. And you saw that whenever you experience that of like, Hey, this is Not how you care for the customer, I can I can do this. And so it's really neat to hear that you notice that that was where you could really make an impact and make a big difference.
Isabel 10:10
Absolutely. So I was in sales. So I mean, calling people back like, one on one sales one on one, you have a lead, call the lead back. And that wasn't happening. And I know, in 2008, the economy was actually not doing well. But Northern Virginia is very insulated, a lot of government work, a lot of government contractor work, so that the bubble bursting, and then the recession in 2008, didn't really affect my area that much. So it was a good time to hire, because we had a lot of people who were maybe coming in from other areas looking for work, part time work, whatever work they could get until they found a job. I remember my first the first time that I put an ad out for job for employees. on Craigslist, I got like 250 applications, that's how different it was back then, to what it is obviously now. And we did not that did not remain. I mean, we struggled with hiring was always a challenge. Because we always either had too much business, not enough staff, or not enough business too much that kind of thing. So it's hard. That's a hard part of the industry. But at the time, you know, we had so much work available or work in so many workers available for the work that we had, but it was beautiful. It was awesome. And we just because of my Yeah, like my, my training with kind of closing I was able to like not only close clients, but close employees. Right. So like, I was able to recruit clients and employees very, very simply very easily. And yeah, the follow through was always there. I mean, I've had clients tell me like you are really on top of it. You are so on top of it almost to on top of it because you know, I type A personality, planning meetings and selling guest rooms is actually very similar to booking reservations. For hexing. You know, it's very similar. It's, you know, this is a finite product, we only have one or two pet sitters, just like we only have one huge meeting space that meets your needs. You know, it's very similar, that there are so many similarities and customer service at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you're selling. It's customer service. It works the same way. Whether you're, you know, selling dog walks or selling Rolex watches, it's customer service,
Collin 12:37
what would you say is your secret sauce for that? And what you know, what got you to that?
Isabel 12:42
as well, I think the awards like let's start, I think the first award we got was naps, 2012 Business of the Year. And I think I love naps. I was on the board of directors naps later on not when that happened. But I think maps, I think it was the confidence to just nominate or ask somebody to nominate me. I think that was really the basics of it. Um, I was like, What do I have to lose? And maybe it's just the, my, the way I was raised, my mom is like my, you know, my biggest cheerleader. And I might have said, like, you know, there's this thing, and she was like, I'm glad I do it. So I was like, What am I and she always says she's my mom's biggest thing is always like you already have the know, like, the know, is basically what you have. Because if they say no, nothing changes, right? Go for the Yes. So I applied and I asked one of my clients who had sent me this beautiful heartfelt letter because I had done something for her when her pet was passing on, when it was time to say goodbye. And she sent me this beautiful, heartfelt letter. And I said, thank you so much for this letter, would you nominate me, based on what you've said, include your letter nominating me. And that just kind of started the process. I was also writing a column for a local newspaper at the time. So I think just I want it because I was trying my hardest to educate and do the right thing for my clients and for my community. And I think that's why I want it and I think so many pet sitters do that in their own way, but they don't recognize their value and their worth and what their their impact is. So they don't nominate themselves they don't ask them to nominate themselves. Um, so that was I think that's really what it came down to. Because I want only because I was I put my put myself out there a little bit.
Collin 14:35
Yeah, you have the self calm. You had the self confidence you had you had the backing of mom, go and go for the Yes. And you're able to say exactly able to say yeah, you know what, what I do is important what I do I do it well, right, recognizing that putting that and being proud of the work that you do is that first step of going yeah, this is I can I can ask for this.
Isabel 14:58
Absolutely. And then also So, you know, with Washingtonian we had, we want and pretty much every they, they do it every other year. So we want 13 1517 and 19, best pet care in our area. And it's a list of different areas. So we were amongst all of the best. And that's another one asking people to vote for you saying to your clients like this really means a lot to me, if, if what I'm doing is making a positive impact in your life, please help me make a positive impact in my business. And people were always helpful with that. And then for the naps President's Award, it's, again, helping the community I was involved in naps, I was trying to make it better. There are still nap still offers some products of my efforts, as webinars, I did a series with the member benefits committee that I was in charge of a series of pet sitter training, so petsitter, 101, petsitter, 102103, and 104, where we basically broke down how to get into the petsitting industry. And that did not happen overnight. And that was a labor of love. And that was taking time out of my day and my life and my, you know, my grind to contribute to the organization and the organization contributed to me, right? That's basically how to me it works is the symbiotic relationship of the business owner, with the employees and the business with the community, the individual with maybe like an organization like naps, lifting each other up helping each other out. And at the end, you get that positive relationship and all the awards and all the recognition because it really is a labor of love and a team effort, a cooperative, basically.
Collin 16:46
And on that, you know, you mentioned you were involved with some education things. And you do have a saying that we believe that educated pet parents and pet care providers are empowered pet parents and pet care providers. And I love that so much. So how do you do that? How is that? How do you have that manifest in your daily life? And and why is that important to you? I guess.
Isabel 17:09
So it's so important to me, it's probably the most important thing to me. And that is where I kind of keep thinking, I don't want to give up the wag pet brand. And I may do something with it, where I continue to educate pet parents, pet sitters, small business owners, because I've coached I've done professional coaching for business owners. But it's not only been pet sitting business owners, it's been hairstylist and restaurant owners too. So I love education, I think people always have the best of intentions, but they don't always have the information to make their intentions come to fruition. Every single day, I get a message from a friend or acquaintance on Facebook being like I have this issue with my dog, I have this issue with my cat. And I may not have the answer for them. But I know enough people in the industry to point them in the right direction. And I feel terrible kind of walking away from that. Because I feel that I have so much to give just with my contacts just with my experiences doing rescue, doing pet care professionally doing pet care individually as a parent myself. So I love education, I think it's important to share what we have. I think that's every single one of our purposes, we have many purposes in life, but one of them is to share the gifts that God gave us. And if you're not a God fearing person, just that your genetics gave, you know, you have gifts, everybody has gifts. So like sharing those makes for a better world and community. And I think that pet sitting and and seeing other people's experiences has allowed me to learn more than I would have just taking care of my own pets. Granted, I've had so many pets in the past 12 years. And I've even you know hand fed padres kittens, because they just kind of ended up on my lap, and I've taken in strays, and I've fostered. And I've done all the things. So But still, I mean, I learned from my clients and from their experiences and from my employees and from their knowledge because I had some amazing employees. And so learning all that I feel like I have all this knowledge to share. And I just I'm not sure that I want to end it here. But we'll see.
Collin 19:25
Yeah, and recognizing at each stage, there's still something else to learn and you learn something. And you can learn from anybody. And I love hearing that you said, you know, you learn from employees to being open even as you know, the founder of the company being like, record being able to recognize Wow, that was really great idea. I had no idea. You know, tell me more about that. And that's that, that that's an attitude that more of us should have been open to learning from everybody around us and that takes getting to know people and just having a conversation with them and admitting to yourself that you don't know everything and that's okay. That's good, but Cuz that shows you can grow, and it shows you can continue to learn from others.
Isabel 20:04
Yes, absolutely. There are some things that I'm kind of like a staunch believer in, you know, like, dogs should wear harnesses, on walks, and not just collars, those kinds of things. I'm not going to learn from anybody about anything because I need everybody to be on the artist, those things I'm really like, but like when it comes to pet nutrition, pet behavior, I'm not, I'm not a behaviorist. Oh, I'm not a dog trainer, I've taken courses, and I plan to continue to take some courses that I've already signed up for. But there's so much in science changes and knowledge changes and products change. So it would be so cool for me to be able to continue that learning and helping and sharing. And I think that's something that pet sitters who are kind of stopped right now who don't have a lot of work right now. That's what they should be focusing on is becoming a resource for their clients who may not need them physically, right now, they may not need their services in their home, but they might have questions they might, you know, just have gifts to give to their community and to their clients and to their employees just to maintain their kind of their place in the industry until they're back at it. Right?
Collin 21:15
Yeah, absolutely. I like to think of it as the a wheel with a hub in the middle of it. And, and we as pet sitters can put ourselves right in the middle, and connect all the spokes from the others on the pet care team, to make sure that each client's taken the best care of and that we can connect the owner to that information we can be that where they go to their go to source.
Isabel 21:37
Well, what's really cool for me is, um, and I've said this, I've presented a few times in different conferences. And one of the things that I remember always being kind of annoyed with with like the participants, and there's always like that question of, but like, I can't let go of the reins of my business, I don't want to hire, because nobody's gonna do it as well as I am. And I am here to tell you that that is not true. I hired people that made me look like a bad pet sitter. Because they were so good. Because they did stuff that I maybe would not have thought about doing. Just because I was focused on something else not because I didn't have the the interest or the you know, the intention, or the will to do it just because I was maybe focused on something else. Um, I have seen pet sitters do more and be more successful. I have a very upbeat personality and upbeat energy. I'm always like, go, go go. I've seen people do better with animals with a different energy than my own. Right? So I always used to say, like, don't think you're the only person that can do this job. There's so many other people who can do it. And you can, you can, you might be amazing at one thing, but somebody else might be amazing at something else. And to think that you're the only one who can be trusted is really kind of a sad place to be, um, I really knock on wood. I mean, I guess I don't need to knock on wood anymore, because we're not providing services anymore. But we had one insurance claim in 12 years. And it was a full accident. It was a full accident. And it was one of our favorite clients. And it was a midday dog walking client, whom we adored. And it was my best pet sitter in the history of the wag pack are one of I guess, I should say, because we had amazing people. And it was a total total accident. And it was granted. Really, we got really lucky. The dog got off the harness, the harness was too loose. They probably should never have given it to us. Apparently it happened before, but they never really thought it would happen again, the dog was skittish about certain trucks driving by and she got off the harness ended up pinned under a cart not hit by the car, just pinned under it. Because she was small enough. She had some damage to her belly kind of like scrapes and stuff. They had to clean out they had to stitch up a couple. But I mean in the grand scheme of things, it was tiny one and we did 10,000 plus pets, it's in 12 years. One, so people can be trusted people need to be trained. Sometimes people may not know how to do the job, you need to teach them and tell them what the expectation is. But you can trust people and that's one liability insurance claim. We had zero bond claims, zero theft situations. We had one situation where a client accused us or accused the petsitter but she didn't really she called and she was like I don't want to say this. I feel terrible saying this. I think she may have stolen my wedding bands. And we knew for sure 100% without a doubt if she hadn't. We called the police and we went through all of the you know all of the things that you do when you have a bond we talked we always used business insurance or the Carolinas They would call them What do we do, they told us what to do. We followed all the instructions. My, I was not interviewed by the police because I was no longer local. But my business partner was interviewed by the police, the employee was interviewed by the police. Turns out somebody she knew had stolen them. Somebody she was dating or something he had stolen them. We never heard again, from her, we never heard again, from the police. Nothing ever came of it. So that was one bond situation where we didn't have to use the bond. And then one situation where we have to use our liability insurance. worker's comp, we did use again once, because somebody fell tripped over a leash and broke her nose in 12 years, out of 10,000 pets, it's a plus. Because that's, that's, that's just like my kind of round number that I use. I'm three different situations, and everything else. I mean, was just, it's not always smooth sailing, but you people think of the worst, people think they're going to lose a pet, they're going to steal from my clients. But that's not the case. And there's so many good people out there that you can use to, you know, to build your brand and, and see your vision come to fruition. I mean, I just, it's limited. It's a limiting thought process. And it's one that thankfully, I never had to deal with. Because I always believed in my team. And I always believed that the right people were out there and would find their way to be employed.
Collin 26:29
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's the client originally trusted you enough to go into their home when they weren't there. Yeah. Why? What What is it about someone else that you can give that same trust to that you can't give that trust to them? And and I'm sure, and so part of that is having good policies and procedures in place for hiring processes, and all of these kind of things. So talk about that a little bit about the importance of having a good, maybe what makes a good policy and procedure and how it's beneficial to a business.
Isabel 27:00
So we at the ag pack, we always over communicated, that was something that was really important to me, setting expectations is not something you just do with the client. It's not just something you do with the employee, it's with everybody, you set expectations, everybody, I mean, I set expectations with myself, you know, of how things should go. And even when I'm failing, you know, when I'm not quite meeting that expectation, I hold myself accountable. Because setting expectations is really what makes it either go smoothly or not, you know, good service to different people is different to different people. That's one of the things I always interviewed people with was a question about what's good. And what Tell me of a situation where you had awesome service customer service, because what's good customer service to me might be intrusive to you. Right, it might be too much for you. You might not want to be on a first name basis with the person at the front desk, you might just want to sneak in and out of the hotel with people not really on your tail, right. So like good service may not be to me what it is to you and vice versa. So policies for clients are super important because they set an expectation. And this is how we do what we do. That's the procedures part of the policies and procedures. And then this is what we won't do, which is basically your policies, right? They're your limit, they are your boundary. And what makes a good one is if it's enforceable, if it's not enforceable, it's not a it's not a policy, it's junk, it's a waste of your time and the client. So that's the biggest thing. And then a second most important thing is that it's sustainable. And I'll give you kind of an example of those. Because enforceable and we don't we never did refunds, we would always say you can get a credit towards your next pet care visit. But you're not getting a refund. Why did we do that? And there's always a reason there has to be a good reason for your policy can't just be like, oh, somebody else down the street did that. I mean, that's not a good policy. The reason we did that is because when people pay up front, which is what we required for confirmation of services, they're serious about that trip, they're not just kind of penciling you in and then expecting a refund. If it doesn't, it doesn't if it falls through, right. I didn't want to commit my staff to something that wasn't going to actually happen because everybody has a life everybody has things going on. Nobody wants to be like waiting on a Friday night. Do I start tomorrow or not? You need to know what how to plan your weekend. Everybody has stuff going on. So out of respect for myself and for myself because I provided services for seven years full time. 24 seven, um, I that was a policy that we really kind of held strong on we never gave refunds never gave refunds. The only time we made an exception is if the pet passed away. Obviously, they only have one pet and the pet passes away before they go on vacation. I'm not going to keep that money. That was the only only reason I mean we had people who got sick. And still we didn't get a refund. I mean, I never offered it, they never bought it. So they eventually used it when they were better, that use the credit when they were better. But that was one of the biggest things. And I had a client be like, I want my money back. And I said to him, but our policy is that we don't give refunds. You agreed to that when you became a client. And he said, I mean, I get that being a policy but enforcing it, and I said, all of our policies are enforced. I wouldn't waste your time or mine. Making you read something I've part of your policy agreement that I had no intention to enforce. So every single thing that you signed on, I thought about, I really made sure that it works. And I enforced with you and every other client. I don't make exceptions. And he was kind of like, oh, okay, well, I guess that makes sense. Okay, well, I'm glad you think so. Because I think maybe sometimes people in our it because it's a pet care industry. I think people think it's like cute or like a hobby, and they don't realize how serious it is for us and how many balls we have in the year. Yeah, it's not like an ice cream shop where every client comes to me. I'm sending people out to different homes in different areas, I need to have backups, I need to do a lot of things, just so that that dog walker can be in your house at noon on Tuesday. So I don't think people think that far into it. So he was like, What? Why would you enforce this? And it's because I have to because if I didn't, if I gave refunds left and right, then what would I have at the end of the day? Just a bunch of cancellations? Yeah. And then I'd be working. Because a cancellation is work for me like I already booked it, I approved it, I sent you a confirmation, I assigned it to the client to the staff member, the staff member got the key and all that and now I know I did all that. And now I'm gonna have to work to give you a refund, get the key back, Baba ba who give you the refund, john might take it off the schedule. I mean, that's time and effort. So I'm not doing that for everybody, just so that I mean that when people do that it really makes me nervous if they're wasting all this time and making zero money, because you're just people take advantage of that cancelled, like, freebie cancellation and you're just working for no reason. So that was that's one of the enforceability situations, but sustainability too. When I started the wack pack, I was way more. I guess I had more strict policies, and I might my policies are pretty strict still. But I had more strict ones like I made a difference between like the cancellation policy for holidays, versus regular time. And honestly, it was not enforceable. I was too busy to be like, what day did this get cancelled? And what can i refund and announcing to clients that this week is a no cancellation, we I dropped it because it was not sustainable. So my policy for basically the maybe 11 years out of the 12 was a 24 hour cancellation policy that we enforced as of 6pm, the day prior, so it's technically a little less than than 24 hours, but 6pm the day prior, if you help, if you let me know, you'll get a credit on your account. After 6pm. One, I'm not on my email. So I'll see the next morning. And to at that point, I feel like I need to pay my staff member. So you don't get your money back. And that was it. And that was that was simple, sustainable, enforceable. And it was fair, I felt it was really fair
Collin 33:26
for everybody. The key to that sustainable part is it's it's sustainable to you, right, it's sustainable for you to keep your head wrapped around for you to understand it for you to enforce for you to go to bat for that every single day. It's not. That's sirki many people think the policies are for somebody else. So once I once they right this is this is for them. So they know it's like, No, no, no, that's, that's for you, right, you're the one that's going to be enforcing it, you're the one that's going to be reminding people that balls to you
Isabel 33:53
1,000% I feel like policies, whether it be for the employee or for the client, or for the independent contractor, that's for the business, and it's not for everybody else. And the goal should be that it be mutually beneficial. And all of these policies be mutually beneficial, of course, but at the end of the day, the business is providing the policies as a protection for the business and the business operation. Just like for the business operation on the employment or the icy end. It has to be in a in a way that the business is better for having it rather than not, right. If not, this is not better for having it and why even have it.
Collin 34:36
Right. Right. That's that's a question you got to ask yourself, like, is this actually beneficial? If not, this needs to go.
Isabel 34:44
You have to believe in it because there is going to be a client that questions you on that policy. And you have to be able to very quickly defend it and explain why it exists. clients. I feel like people who have never worked in a customer service situation I was a server in college. So I think that's one of the best. That's like a customer service boot camp. It's a time management group, you know, waiting tables is, is everything's at the same time. It's, it's time management, it's come, you know, condensing trips to make sure that you're like, using your time properly. It's customer service. It's gift of gab, it's all the things. And I mean, I've always had, you know, that customer service experience, I started working when I was 14 years old, and I've been in customer service this whole time. And you need to be able to concisely just, like really defend that policy. And if you don't believe in it, you're not able to do that. Right? Yeah. If you're just copying, because it's an industry standard, well find out why it's an industry standard, so that you can defend it, because otherwise you're just kind of giving this explanation that's gonna sound disingenuous, and the clients not gonna buy it.
Collin 35:56
No, no, yeah, that policy you have to write that is within mind of someone in your face with the finger pointing at you going, why? Why is this right? You need, right? You said you'd be able to look at that and go, Well, this is why and this is this is, you know, if I
Isabel 36:12
really, truly explain it, like, you know, one of the policies that we had was always a key drop fee, when people wanted to return their key was to return their key after their trip, I don't want to have to do that. I don't want to deliver your keys, I want you to keep them on file so that every time that you are in a bind, you call me. Right? I also if I'm sending a staff member to you, it costs money to send them to you. So I need to cover that cost. So I'm going to make it so that that is I didn't make it prohibitive, but I made it a fee. Because I don't want you wasting my time. I don't want to make multiple trips, I want you to schedule seamlessly, because I know it's a benefit for you. So all those reasons I can pop out in a second, when people are like, Well, why it's my key, why do I have to get paid to get it back? Because you gave it to me and it's in my possession? And now it cost me money to get it back to you. That's why Yeah,
Collin 37:06
absolutely. Yeah. And it just shows that like, you know, those kinds of policies show that you take it seriously because it is serious, and you value yourself, you value your time you value your employees time. And and all of that is wrapped up into those kind of policies and procedures is that when you value yourself enough, those kind of policies get put into place.
Isabel 37:26
And I have client, staff members who would have done more, you know, what would have done would have done the key drop for free? Yeah, they would have because they were that good in that committed in that loving and that, that willing to help. But I didn't think it was fair for them so that I felt like I was there to make it again, mutually beneficial, it should be a benefit to the client to have us and for the staff member to have that client. And if they're being you know, abused back and forth with the key, then it's no longer beneficial for the employee. So my job as like, kind of like the head of the captain of the ship was to make sure that everybody was getting what they deserved. The client was paying a lot of money, we were the most expensive petsitting service in our area. They were paying a lot of money. So I was expecting them to get top notch service and our staff members were giving it their all I was expecting them to have every single visit every single trip they made to that house, pay them enough to make it more than worth their while. I mean, if it wasn't that case, why would they even get off the couch? Right? So that was my priority always is those policies to protect everybody. It's to make sure that everybody's getting what they expect that setting of expectations.
Collin 38:41
Have you heard about time to pet Claire from acting critter sitters has this desire,
38:46
time to pet has honestly revolutionized how we do business. My sitters can work much more independently because they have ongoing access to customer and pet information without relying on me. I save hours upon hours of administrative time on billing, processing payments and generating paychecks
Collin 39:02
if you are looking for a new petsitting software for your business, give time to pet a try. As a listener of pet sitter confessional, you'll get 50% off your first three months when you sign up at time to pet.com slash confessional. And now you've been doing that manage it management remotely for a while now talk to us about that because I'm really interested to hear how that's working.
Isabel 39:29
And you know, it was working amazingly well and so COVID Um, so, my, in 2015 I got married to my husband, who is active military. And since 2015. We have moved three times. Oh, yeah. So the army life is not for me. It's tough. It's hard. There's a lot of moving um, but it's it's you know, it's it's, it is what it is right. Ask any military family. It's just It is what it is. It's your life. And we've left to rural Louisiana. And so before, obviously, we knew that he was going to move probably around December of 2014. And I had a business partner at the time she and I obviously, were like, what do we do? I'm where the business is based in my dining room, what do I do with it? So we kind of started considering we were big enough and profitable enough that we could look at meeting space or office space. And so we did one day kind of drove in January of 2015, in snow driving around together looking at like lease signs and professional areas. And we found a place that was a super steel, super, pretty awesome place. And we set up shop there, it was a labor of love, we poured ourselves for a month into that office, transitioned everything there. That was February of 2015. And I moved out of the area in July of that year. And so I kind of left everything, as it was basically like a self service office for our employees, which was awesome. Everybody had a key to go in, we had equipment, we have keys, we have cubbies for them. It was awesome. It was a really great space. For a long time, before I became a mom, I was going back and forth about three times a year, for two weeks, and I would stay there, I would train my staff and pet firstaid, I would do staff meetings, I would do all the like, you know, staff events, so that you know, to build rapport with the employees meet the new staff that I had hired over Skype the whole time, I've been running the wide pack remotely. Because my team was so good. And my business partner was local for a long time, but then she moved out of our service area, but still closer than I was. And our staff members were just really reliable and really good people and our office setup was really seamless and helpful. Our location was really central to everybody. So it was basically like smack dab in the middle of our whole service area. And it was an awesome, I was living the dream, I was truly living the dream. And then COVID hit and our business diminished so much that we couldn't really cover the rent with zero business, right. Um, so luckily, we have the most amazing landlords who loved us and who really supported us. And they allowed us since April to be at 50% rent. And then they let us out of our lease without penalty. And we actually asked for September 30 to be the last day and they were like, Why just be out by September 1. Because you you we all know it's not gonna get any better with that month and save that money. And they're wonderful. So they let us out of our lease. But that was really the thing that made it possible for me to be remote because we still had that like meeting area and that space where the wag pack lived, even though I was physically not there. We had snacks for staff and we had it beautifully decorated. And every time I went over, we had breakfasts or happy hours or something. Um, once I had kids, it was a little harder. I was going maybe twice a year. This year, I didn't think I was going to go at all because I just had a baby in February. Um, but yeah, I mean, it was it was the office space that made it possible for me to be remote. And we had a big office safe, kind of like a utility closet that we turned into the key safe. All that we thought about everything It was truly, it was truly like a work of art. And I we just had to sell everything in there. And that was so heartbreaking. Yeah,
Collin 43:39
yeah. So, you know, after after 12 years, and after everything that you've poured into this, you had to make that call that it was time. You know what, how did you know that? It would that it was that it was time you had to do it?
Isabel 43:52
Yeah. So I'm a really intuitive person. And again, please do not make decisions based on me. I am not a witch, I'm not sitting here with a crystal ball, please do not make any decisions based on what I'm about to say. I only have intuition about what affects me personally in my life, not everybody else. And so I it was we called we closed our operation because of COVID on March 23. I laugh and I joke because I called it before the local government did twice. Um, and I called it on a Sunday I sent an email to everybody. I think it was March 22 23rd. And the reason I called it and I said we're not going to provide services because of this pandemic is because the vast majority of my midday dog walkers are over 60. So they were in the high risk categories. And I asked my staff member one of my rockstars Sherry who we've talked about her in a second I will I want to talk about Sherry. She is asked her over text just on a random Sunday, when this was all ramping up, how do you feel? And she said I'm scared and I called him I said I'm not sending not for what we pay for Not for what they pay us. Am I sending somebody into somebody's home who may or may not be even taking this seriously because it was so early on? I'm so I called it my clients, we're all fine with it. We thought, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you know, we'll see you soon. Um, but then I think it was a week later, March 31, or something. When the government of Virginia, the governor of Virginia shut us down through June 3. So on March 31, he said, We are shutting down, everybody's quarantined, we are not considered essential, because we didn't have any essential workers as clients. All of our clients were already home, they were really just booking us to help us work shut down. So June 3, or June 10, June 10. So we're talking two and a half months. And I immediately said, there's no coming back from this. Not because of the because of the way that we operate. One because we have a lease and we pay rent in a high rent area, right? It's not just like we pay rent, we pay rent in a high rent area. We I am remote, so I'm not going to be there to pick up the pieces. My business partner is not like me, she and I complement each other because she's not, she's not the networking person, she's not going to be the one going to the, you know, Chamber of Commerce meeting, she's not going to ramp things up. She's a really good processes person. She's great at managing things. She has great, wonderful ideas. She's awesome with tech, but she's not your sales person that's going to go ramp things back up. And I'm not there to do it. And if I even if I was I have two young, very young children. So like the amount of work that I put in, when I was single, without children, with two dogs that, you know, I have dog walkers to care for so that I could go do my thing. That wasn't the case anymore. So I just said, this is not sustainable. And I called my mom and my mom was like, again, my mom, my mom is amazing. And she's an entrepreneur and she's a VP for a bank. She's you know, she's all the things and she said, Would you start this business today? And I said, No. What I started this business and a pandemic? No, what I start a business that is so time intensive. I'm even in my own city with I with two young children, probably not. And would I start a business in another area that I don't live in? No. So all the answers were no, I would not today start the lag pack in Northern Virginia. So she said, there you go. So there you have your answer. So we kind of I called my business partner and she that's, you know, we had that conversation of did we really just lose our business to a pandemic? And yes, we did. They just made the most sense to us based on our logistics to shut down. And I'm a very, I'm not, I'm a very intuitive person, but I'm also I'm a very analytical person. So I said, Okay, I this is my my Godstone. But let's see, let's, let's see what what our clients say. So what we did was we sent, we waited until end of May. And we sustained things because I, you know, my thought was, maybe we take this online, maybe we do online training, my business partner is a dog trainer, maybe we do a lot of online thing. Um, so I sent an email a survey to my clients, a really big client base, and ask them what they foresaw their need for dog walking, or pet sitting to be from that day through the end of 2020. And we got 34 responses. hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of clients, we got 34 responses, people were not they weren't even thinking about their dog walker right now. Um, and the vast majority said they had zero need for dog walking, they weren't going to travel, they weren't letting service providers in their house. Again, a lot of my clients are older and in the high risk groups, and you can't control what the clients do, you can control what the staff members doing. I can't vouch that my staff members aren't going out on the weekends or doing things that they shouldn't be doing. I don't know. So nobody ever all all the signs showed that it was not going to be sustainable for the rest of the year. And again, do I really want to maintain a lease for when things are going to start ramping up again? I don't live in the area. No. If I lived in an area be totally different. The business wouldn't have an office space, it would still be in my house. We wouldn't have that overhead. We would probably you know have just kind of taken a little hiatus you know, hibernation of some sort until things ramped up because regardless, I still have my house I still pay my mortgage. You know it's not it's not costing me anything tomorrow. maintain it. But in our case, it was costing us a lot of money. Even with the, with the 50% that our landlords offered us, it was still costing us money. And the reality is they want somebody who can pay full price. They don't want to hold off indefinitely at 50%. So it just, it just made sense,
Collin 50:17
you know? Right. And the key to that, you know, you started off by saying it made sense to you for your business at that time, you know, and that question that your mom asked your mom, your mom's awesome. It was just we needed that makes you say that? You know, the question that she asked you, it's just so powerful of would you do what you have, right now, if you had an option? like would you start this exactly as it exists? And you're like, no, like, this is this is not not in this environment, not the way I'm managing it. It's not what I want right now. And it's not going to work. And that that little simple question is just so powerful to ask yourself, Is this what I want? Right now?
Isabel 50:57
Okay. Yeah. And I think that that's a really good question for other people who are in the same situation to ask themselves because would you start your business right now? In a pandemic? Okay, maybe no, but let's take out the pandemic completely. I'd say when I start this business today, outside of a pandemic, what I do this again, I'd made this decision 12, five, seven years ago, whatever, however long the business has existed, I made this decision 12 years ago, when I made that same decision today, let's even assume that the market was the same that the global situation was the same. Would I make that decision today? A lot of people would actually say no, maybe they went into it, not realizing all the effort that it was going to take all the logistical nightmare that even the key situation just like I can't wait to get rid of key. I'm one of the probably one of the most, most cathartic things for my business partner who managed the keys was probably getting all the keys that were not claimed, and throwing them in the trash was probably the best thing that's happened to her 20. Keys are a nightmare. So like, all those things that people didn't really realize, before they started their business. Maybe that would tell them no, I don't want to do this. Yeah, and it's a good time to have an exit strategy. If you have one. If you have one, or you want to create one. It's a great time to do it.
Collin 52:14
Right. So yeah, what what advice would you give someone else is in this position? And they're going yeah, I don't know if this is where I need to be right now. How do what what does that exit looked like? What has it looked like for you? What's that process been like, as you've transitioned out of the industry,
Isabel 52:28
um, again, I love my brand, I love what we've built. So I don't want to give that up. I'm gonna have my, my business partner who's already on to bigger, better things like she has her own. She's gonna start her own boarding in her home. She is a dog trainer, trained by Victoria Stilwell. So she's, I mean, she's got everything awesome. Um, she is going to just give me the brand. There's no value to it right now. So she's going to hand it over. And you know, I'm going to keep it I don't know what I'm going to do with it. But but the wag pack, the website I built in October with all this intention of like, blowing it out of the park here, like this year, 2020 was going to be amazing. We had like, 18 new clients in in January, and I was pregnant, I was like on maternity leave. And we had, we were just doing so well. Um, all of those good intentions, I'm just gonna hang on to that I'm not ready to part with it. So I haven't really dissolved the brand. I'm going to close the LLC in Virginia, because I'm in Texas, so I don't need that anymore. We don't have an office space there anymore. So I don't need that anymore. I'm the most time consuming thing is like, you know, QuickBooks shutting that down, getting you know, all the accounts that you build as a business getting everything close, so you don't keep getting billed for it. That's a big one. Um, the, the whole, the whole clients kind of understood that they knew this was happening a lot. A lot of them responded being like, I was afraid this was gonna happen. Some of them were giving us money, you know, just literally charged me for dogma, but uh, you're not doing and I stopped doing that because I thought to myself, like I kind of did it April and into may, I said, you know, what, you don't know how this is gonna affect your family. So I'm not trying to like just keep taking your money I did for April, just because I thought, okay, it's a month. They're still employed. Um, but a lot of clients just were like, I, we figured this was gonna happen throw away my key, like, there's no need to even give me back my key, I'll get keys made whatever. And then we also did two days in our office, thankfully, we have office space for for to do it. But we did like three hours on a Saturday and three hours on a Thursday or Friday evening, where we said, Come get your keys if you want them. Wherever your mouse is. Come on in, let us know that you're coming. So we have it ready to go in an envelope and give it to you. Um, so we did that. Some people asked us to mail the keys at their expense, which you know, we did um, some people Most people just said, discard my keys and best of luck to you. And thank you for everything. So that was a pretty easy process. employees were already kind of for like furloughed or laid off, I guess the great thing is we did have a couple of employees that were willing to just take whatever they could get through the end of it. And we gave clients the opportunity to use credits that they had. So even if they didn't need us to walk their dog, they let us walk their dog just so they can use their credits. So we had staff members do that, for the end of it, it was kind of till September 11, we still had somebody scheduling. And so our staff members were willing to take that on, um, it kind of just all fell into place people are, they're reasonable under the circumstances, right, they get it, they didn't expect us to stay afloat indefinitely under the circumstances. So closing down has been really kind of easy. I mean, emotionally, the selling of stuff was a lot. And I know my business partner, because I'm not there, my business partner had to do a lot of legwork on getting stuff sold, so that we could take something from our business, like literally, whatever, hundreds or thousands of dollars, we might be able to make off of the furniture. Um, and that's not a lot of thousands, few thousands, that we might be able to, you know, take we're trying to take. So that was a gruesome process for her I'm sure. And for me emotionally pricing that stuff from afar. Was it sucked, it was sad, it, you know, returning. returning the keys, um, was hard. It just, it all sucks. But it's been it's one of those things where I feel like everything happens for a reason. And at the end of the day, I don't think we had another choice. So what why am I gonna fight it? Right? I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get all sad about something that happened. That is no reflection on me. It's no reflection on my business partner. It's no reflection on our business. It's just, it is what it is.
Collin 57:00
Yeah. Well, and and so, you know, when a question comes up, there is the client list, you know, what did you ever think to sell that to somebody? Or to do that, you know, what, what was your processing of that?
Isabel 57:13
So I don't think and this is my opinion, I don't think that a client list at this point has any value at all, at all, when my clients are telling me that indefinitely, they don't know, they're going to be working from home I just shared on my Facebook page, I did not in my facebook group. Um, I shared again, I have a pet sitters group called pet sitter place. And I shared in that group, um, an article from the Washingtonian that said that 72% of office workers in the DC in DC proper, are going to be working remotely until summer of 2021. Right, and many corporations all over the world and all over the country specifically have made that kind of taking that stance saying that, you know, at least your January, everybody's gonna be working from home till there is some, Merrill Lynch, I think, has said through third quarter of 2021. And they're doing work from home. So I don't think that my client list has any value whatsoever. Um, so it I thought about it for a very quick second, and then I came to that conclusion. And I, I mean, just when you think about selling something like that, um, you think the legal fees, and you think of the valuation and you think of the you know, that those all costs money, right? So you have to be priced high enough to cover at least those costs and make it worth your while. And I just don't think that that's possible. That's my opinion. I didn't even look into it. That's just my again, my gut feeling is that. So what I did instead was I asked my staff members who have helped me build my business and some of them have given every single thing that they had every holiday every it's every bit of energy, they broke their nose, walking dogs. They deserve the opportunity to take over those clients. And that's what I did. I asked them are you interested in taking over your clients, whether as a business starting your own business, or just as a friend, you know, like, they already have a rapport with you? Do you want them to call you when they travel next year? And a few of them said, Yes. So I just I told my clients when we announced our closure that if they wanted to get in touch with their staff member, I would ask the staff member if their permission and I would put them in touch if it was ago, and we did that we put a lot of people in touch. My staff member who broke her nose, um, Sherry, who is amazing, she like blood, sweat, tears, literally. Add over the wack pack as an employee as an employee, she was she she took it so seriously, she was that committed. She started her own pet sitting business and she's I think it's Sherry's pets. And she's now taken over her clients, her clients are thrilled to still have that resource. She's amazing. She's one of these people that has taught me how to be a pet sitter. She's one of these people that makes me look like a bad pet sitter, because she went above and beyond way, way more than I would have done even just logistically, and with policies and stuff, like she was just like, so, so dedicated. So she's has her own business now. So that, to me, is a win win for everybody. And it makes me happy to see that somebody is taking it taking what they learned from me, whatever it was, and making it their own. Right, and
Collin 1:00:37
I'm sure it's also kind of a cleaner break to, for you to be able to see these people to continue to go out and flourish, be well cared for and be be rock stars, and take what they've learned and continue doing that in that area.
Isabel 1:00:51
You know, it's funny, you say that, because I don't know how many businesses, my competitors, I would have been 100% comfortable handing that list to even with money involved. Because we did things so specifically and in such a very, very cognizant way that I felt, I feel like my clients were expecting something that they may not have gotten, not a not a dig on any of my competitors. And some of my competitors may have even been doing things better than me. But I just wasn't positive of that. And I wasn't sure how that would work. And I just wasn't comfortable even pursuing that just because of the payoff not be I didn't want to have that transaction close, and then be like, I hope they're doing a good job for them. I hope, I hope they don't make me look bad. Because at the end of the day, when you sell a client list, you're kind of standing behind it. Yeah. And I just didn't, I didn't feel that it was the payoff was enough to take that risk. So I 100% stand behind every single staff member that took those clients, and I can sleep at night knowing that they're going to do the best thing for those people.
Collin 1:02:03
And that's good enough for me, as you're closing down your business, you looked around and you saw those policies and procedures that we had touched on earlier. And you saw those and you kind of use those as a resource, I guess and and now you're, you're looking at those and they're they're available to people who are interested in and in making them part of their business. So what was that process? What What made you think to do that as you were shutting everything else down?
Isabel 1:02:32
I don't know. I don't know what I mean. So years ago, my plan was to franchise the Why? Because we're that good. I like to me that that was it. Like we have these processes. We we know how to do it. We do it right. My husband says when we started dating he he said to me, I was kind of explaining the wide pack and how we do things. And he said so you're what right looks like ri gh t? And I said yes, exactly. We're what right looks like. And that's what came to me is because we are what right looks like, but we have no use for these things that we have poured over. And I really want serious about franchising. So I really organized all of our policies, we had attorneys look at things, all of our employee manual was revised and edited, and even, like, just really made more robust by a legal team. So I mean, these things have value because of what I planned to do with my business franchise it. Um, so I said, let me just sell this to people, any, again, trying to make what I can salvage what I can out of the investments that we made in these things. So I said, let me sell these and my business partner was like, Yeah, like, again, she truly believed were what right looks like, let's do it, people need this stuff. So um, we were basically selling three things on their packages, their digital downloads. Um, the first one is all of our client forms. Everything that we've ever used with clients, our policies and procedures, frequently asked questions. Um, gosh, forms that were very specific to situations like us unsupervised access to the yard waiver, where people who have doggie doors aren't expecting your insurance to cover you that you and their pet when you're not even there. Right. So we had a waiver that we made with our legal team to protect us. So yeah, you want your dog to use a doggie door Well, I need you to sign this. So I'm just a bunch of things. We had a rewards program that we just conceptualized last year. That is awesome. And clients we're super excited about, um, really, truly like elevating our business to really truly like almost a corporate level and in the sense that we really wanted that bang for your buck, when you book to the wide pack, you got more than that value add, you know that value add that you get from Nordstrom or whole foods or something, something that you think this brand really stands out because of all the things that the extras that I get or, or just like the quality that I get. And I'm so we really had some awesome forms and some awesome documents that we use with our clients to really stand out from the competition and from whatever their preconceived notions of a pet care provider would have been. So those are the client package that's we're selling for $100. There are like 19 downloads, I think, in the client package. So I mean tons of information for 100 bucks. And then we're doing the employee package, which is for somebody who maybe doesn't even have employees right now. But once I'm in the future, you have to get this. It's $150. And it includes our 10 page employee manual, amongst a ton of other things. And then we have our insider package, which is both the client and the employee package. But on top of just getting like the downloads, which I think is 36 downloads total, you get access to a special Facebook group where I manage it, and you can ask me questions about all those documents. Um, so that you can kind of be like, what the same conversation we just have, like, what is this sustainable? What if I change this policy? Why did you have this policy? Did you ever use this, that kind of conversation that you maybe want to have with somebody, when you download something, but you don't have access to the person, you'd have access to the person into the, the, the, I guess insight behind why we did how things how we did them, and why we did things, when we did them, etc. So I mean $250 for the insider package, which is literally the cost of both packages, and then you get the bonus of the group. And then the group two, I plan on just sharing other stuff, I have to clean out my my computer. So I just plan on you know, when I find something, sharing it in there, so that I can really just give, give, give, and instead of just deleting and emptying this trash, you know this document that I put so much effort, you're sharing it with somebody obviously getting some money for it, because we really the thought process, we would that we priced it so that most it would be accessible for everybody, even in a pandemic, right. So like $100 to invest in, like 19 downloads of for your clients alone, that you could probably make that work. But there's so much to it. And so good, such good stuff that I feel like people who really want to do it right, but don't know how are going to benefit from this. And that's where like, again, my heart is like I want to leave things better. I want people to get to be accessible to people I don't want, you know, I don't care that my competitors who you know, have multi million dollar businesses can access this, they have access to attorneys that I'm not worried about them. I'm worried about the people who really have all the best of intentions are very serious about their business, but they don't have out I mean, our employee manual, it costs over $1,000 to have it just looked at by an attorney Sure, just looked at, then all of the additions and subtractions. And conversations were more than that. So don't most business owners don't have that, especially new ones. So whether you're thinking of employing is down the line or not, I would suggest getting the insider package is $250. And you get so much more and you get the access to that group, the group, I plan to manage it through December 31. Because I don't know what 2021 is going to bring. But the group will be accessible to its members. So all the downloads are going to be there, the conversation can continue, maybe not with my guidance, but the conversation will continue. So I consider it maybe like kind of like a coaching group, but a self sustained one after you know after 2020. So I think if anybody is kind of has that a little bit of money to get something I know sometimes there's a lot of digital courses online right now that are very, very cheap, and you get a lot more you know, your head, we have access to a lot of good things right now, this is more than about a course this is way more than a course this is a this is literally the bones of my business that I'm sharing with everybody. It's proprietary information that I was going to franchise sell at a lot of money to somebody who wanted to start their business under the wack pack name. And I'm basically giving it away for $250. So I'm not saying that because it's going to line my pockets. At the end of the day, we've lost a lot more than we're going to make, you know, because we had to shut down a 12 year business going to kind of like end it 1231 and start fresh in 2021. And I don't know how but in some other way. I may just both take a sabbatical. I don't know I have no idea.
Collin 1:09:49
We I did want to touch after 12 years and after everything that you're doing in this entrepreneurial entrepreneurial spirit that you have, and I'm sure your mom's asking you about what you're going to be doing next. I'm going to ask what's what's the future hold for you?
Isabel 1:10:02
My mom is like, how are you? How do you manage these two children? That's when my mom being a parent in 2020 is a lot harder than it was when I was born. And I'm not gonna say what year that was like, let's keep that a secret. Um, but yeah, my mom's like, how, how are you doing this, and she's kind of seeing that, that it would have been unsustainable to be a full time mom, to my children with my husband as much as he travels, um, while trying to rebuild a business, she sees that that would not and the uncertainty and all that she she definitely supports the decision. She is such a She's so funny. She She thinks that I should she, I'm gonna do awesome no matter what I do, right? She believes in me, she thinks I'm great. She's my mom. That's her job. But I don't know why she doesn't want me to get rid of the brand. That was the biggest, the biggest thing she said to me was you've worked so hard. That brand is so you, it's your heart and soul. Don't get rid of that brand. Um, I try to continue in any way that you can I write I've been writing for a magazine recently in South Carolina, where I've been just, you know, freelance writing for them and their pet. issue, I have a couple articles. Um, I used to write a column for the Alexandria times. So writing is something that I'll do, I kind of am thinking of maybe the wag pack becomes a resource website for pet parents. I'd like to continue podcasting. I have a podcast with Beth, who would obviously just be me at this point. It's called covered in pet hair. And I would like to continue podcasting. And I'm thinking, also of maybe doing something fun. I don't know, if you watch watch what happens live? No. Okay. So it's it's like a Bravo specific, late night show where there's interviews and like banter and stuff. So I was like, maybe I do that. But in the pet world, like maybe I, you know, maybe do something fun on YouTube, just, you know, sharing what I love and sharing myself and interviewing people or not, or just kind of do something. I don't know. So I'm kind of like tossing some ideas out. Um, I love entertainment. I have been doing, I've done somewhat videos there on our YouTube page. Um, I think pet Parents need resources that they can count on. I think it's hard for pet parents to get all the information that they need. Um, because there's so much of it, but not all of it is quality. So my goal with anything that I do would be to kind of point people in the right direction, I may not be the expert they need, but I might know them. Um, so I think that that's something that I'm considering, again, the details, I'm kind of still working on them. But we'll see. I think I think the wack pack will have a second life. I don't know what it will be. And I don't know how long it will last, you know, because I also have other interests outside of pet care. And parenting is not one so like, I'm not going to be a mommy blogger. That's definitely not what I need the help of mommy bloggers, I am not going to become one. Um, parenting is harder than I ever imagined. So I have a lot to learn in that space. And that is going to take a lot of my time, especially because of my husband's work schedule. And living in El Paso where I don't have family and in a quarantine where we can't have childcare. Um, it's hard. I mean, my kid can't go to the school that I had planned to send him. You know, this this semester, I planned on sending him to school for the first time. And he's three and he's home. And so I I have a lot to do. But I do want to kind of make an impact, even if it's just once a week podcasting? I don't know, we'll see. Yeah,
Collin 1:13:59
no, there's a lot of exciting things. And I know, you're probably still processing everything that you've experienced this year. So that's understandable. I just, you know, I'm looking forward to everything that you've got in the pipeline. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on there. Yeah. This has been really informative and a real pleasure, Isabelle, thank you so much for coming on, talking about how 2020 is, you know, impacted you and have you processed that and, and all that you've learned all these experiences. It's just it's a lot. And I'm looking forward to the impact that you're going to continue to have. So if people want to get connected, find out more stay in touch. They don't miss these new and exciting things that you're working on. How best can they do that?
Isabel 1:14:42
as well if you're a pet sitter, definitely join pet sitter place on Facebook, and then our Facebook page. The wack pack is on Facebook and we I haven't posted anything since we shut down other than my very sad letters, saying thank you so much to you. clients in the community and our peers in the industry. But you know, once I have something to share, I'll definitely be sharing it there.
Collin 1:15:07
Yeah, very excited and can't wait to see what you've got coming as well, again, thank you so much for this and wish you all the best.
Isabel 1:15:14
Thank you. It's been a true pleasure. I
Collin 1:15:16
really enjoyed meeting you. Throughout my conversation with Isabel, it was a constant reminder to take ownership in your business, to make decisions that are going to be best for you, and for your employees, for your business partners. And ultimately, that's going to be able to give the best care possible for your existing clients. It was a hard decision that Isabel faced in the face of everything that 2020 was throwing at her business. And it's important to remember that we all have our individual decisions that we need to make that are going to be best for us. And nobody can tell you or fully understand exactly all of your reasons for operating the way you do. And for the decisions that you need to make be empowered by that know and have confidence that you know your business and that you're going to make the best decisions possible for both you and everybody involved. And really only you can do that. Megan and I want to thank our sponsor for this week. Time to pet for making this week's show possible. Head on over to time to pet.com forward slash confessional and check out that discount if you're looking to changing up your software this year. We would love to get in touch with you and hear how you're doing and everything going on. shoot us an email at feedback at pet sitter confessional comm check us out on social media we're everywhere basically at pet sitter confessional or PS confessional check out our website too for a ton of resources and all of our back catalogue of episodes. We'll talk again soon
