140: New Year, New You?
This episode is brought to you by our awesome partners: Pet Sitters Associates, Start Scale Sail, & Texas Pet Sitters Association
Summary:
With all that happened in 2020, you are new! It’s time to take advantage of the new year and reaffirm, reapply, and reassess what we learned from last year so we can have a fruitful 2021. Also, Natasha O’Banion answers, “How do I get out of my own way?”
Topics on this episode:
Our 2020 review
The new world of 2021
Are you embracing being new?
Reapplying, Reaffirming, Reassessing
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? You ARE new going into 2021, whether you recognize it or not, and that should change how we operate in 2021.
Links:
Episode 58: Lessons from Covid
Episode 77: Reassessing 2020 Goals
Episode 133: Texas Pet Sitters Conference
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
year, business, pet sitters, clients, pet, people, goals, episode, lessons, change, reaffirming, habits, world, reapplying, life, momentum, bestie, moving, true, natasha
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Collin 00:18
Hi, I'm Colin.
Meghan 00:19
And I'm Megan. And this is pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode.
00:33
Happy New Year.
Meghan 00:34
Yes, 2021. It's finally here. We want to thank our sponsors for this episode pet sitters associates and the Texas pet sitters conference.
Collin 00:43
So it is 2021 How did we celebrate our new year?
Meghan 00:48
Sleeping
Collin 00:48
sleep I was in bed by nine o'clock. It was wonderful.
Meghan 00:52
We actually had a couple dogs get picked up early on New Year's Eve. So we actually didn't have any dogs over for
Collin 00:59
Yeah, we had an ice storm move in. And maybe people will cut their travel short and pick them up early. So it was a kind of a much more relaxing evening than we were expecting.
Meghan 01:06
So today we are talking about setting new goals. But before that we do that we wanted to review last year for us personally.
Collin 01:14
As for the podcast last year was phenomenal. We are continually blown away by you showing up every week to listen to us banter about being pet sitters. We know there are a lot of resources out there and to know that you're choosing to add to non coaching non experts, random people into your life is truly humbling. So we do want to thank you so much for an awesome, awesome leader last year,
Meghan 01:41
as we said previously, and many of you have shared as well. 2020 look to be a banner year, we set off to get 100 total clients, which we actually did hit. Very exciting. Yeah. Since we were not expecting to actually reach that. But while we did grow our client base, our total bookings were actually down. So we are in rural Missouri. Not a lot of people around us. We're in a small town. And so we didn't really didn't see any major impacts of the pandemic until late summer. But we have continued seeing a lot of impacts through even now.
Collin 02:14
Right, we lost countless bookings to last minute changes, or clients getting sick, as I'm sure many of you did as well. Last year, we got serious about our website, we rebranded and almost killed each other trying to come up with a new logo.
Meghan 02:31
That was fun.
Collin 02:33
And ultimately, we ended the year kind of on a mixed way, we lost one of our longest and best clients.
Meghan 02:43
Yeah, that was genuine, genuinely The hardest thing to happen to our business ever. losing them really rocked us and really stretched us in handling difficult situations. We are really still processing that. But we would like to cover it more in a later episode.
Collin 02:57
On a brighter note, we did get featured in our local newspaper, which was pretty crazy.
Meghan 03:03
Yeah, it was cool though. The newspaper reached out after seeing some of our social media posts. And it was all a little overwhelming because we had never done anything like that before. So we were pretty nervous about it. But seeing the article in print made it real.
Collin 03:17
Yeah, I did joke that we would go and we'd buy a few copies to keep and give to our parents if it was good. And if it was bad, we just buy the entire stock here in town in Burnsville.
Meghan 03:28
Thankfully, it was a good article.
Collin 03:29
Yeah. We're really thankful and fortunate to have had that experience.
Meghan 03:34
Yeah. And from that article, we really saw an increase in our website traffic and some inquiries as well. From that we're hoping to take that momentum into this new year with some of our goals, which leads us into today's episode. So we've titled this one New Year new you for a big, big reason. Well, there's a question mark after that. So it's no understatement that 2020 completely changed the landscape of everything really, if we approach 2021, the same way that we were approaching 2020 we're really planning for a world that just doesn't exist any longer. Whether you like that or not, it just doesn't exist. So as part of your year end review or your quarterly review, think back to what December in January, we're like a year ago, so December 2019, and January 2020. It's honestly hard to recognize the people we were back then at least for us, you know, making those plans thinking about 100 clients and our revenue that we were wanting to the goal for our revenue that we were wanting to hit. So it's been a little difficult to try to make new plans for this year, because we don't really know what's in store for this year. It may look like last year, but maybe not. But at one point. Last year, a staggering 33% of the workforce was working from home. And if surveys are to be believed that really won't be changing anytime soon. And I'm sure if you've turned on the news at all. You are obviously a dog walker a pet sitter, you know that more people are home now than ever. At the same time though many people living in expensive cities are considering moving out of town into more suburban or rural areas because they're able to work from home and don't need to go into the city to work in an office anymore. And again, if you paint it been paying attention to the News, New York City people are basically we're mass exiting out of their Los Angeles the same thing.
Collin 05:27
And to make that shift, many of these, many of our clients are actually moving to part time in their quest for more flexibility to make these kind of things work for them. On top of that, companies delayed or having canceled entirely any sort of pay increase for their employees, or actually ended up laying them off, as we were all really well aware of unemployment currently sits just below 7%, in the US and Australia, is hovering around seven and a half percent in the UK, and just around eight and a half percent in Canada, with unfortunately real no real path forward at this point.
Meghan 06:03
But that number could be because many have chosen to not look for work so that they can stay home and care for the kids and family with a bunch of schools doing virtual learning,
Collin 06:13
right, which leads us to the fact that of those that dropped out of the market, the vast majority of them were women, four to one. So for every four women that dropped out of the the labor force, one man did, and on, we're also seeing a mental health crisis, like the world has never experienced before because of all this.
Meghan 06:34
So we aren't the only ones who are exhausted and completely overwhelmed by the situation our businesses are facing, and our clients are facing our clients are are experiencing it, too. So how does our business fit into the world? We just described? How do our services meet the needs of the clients of 2021? And then also, why even talk about this
Collin 06:55
right? Well, it's because the world that we just described back in 2020, that world is still here, nothing magical changed when the clock struck midnight, however much we wish that would be true. And we so desperately wish that something would have happened at the end. But it doesn't, it doesn't change the world. So all that we were concerned about in December 31, those are all still going on right now.
Meghan 07:19
That's true. However, inherent in how we celebrate New Years, there is a forward momentum in our mind shift there is a positivity around it because it's New Year's is all about Out with the old and in with the new. But our circumstances haven't changed this year. What's changed is our mindset about them. And we've talked a lot about mindset in the past with interviews and our topical episodes. But we inherently look at things in a different light. And we approach them differently than previously than last year, because this is day one of 365 or as you're listening to this day four or five of 365. And we can write whatever we want in this year's book. It's how we view New Year's, it's new, and we want to be part of that newness. So for our businesses, even though the economy is basically the exact same even though we are still at 40% capacity of our clients or 30% or whatever you're at right now. You are looking at it from a different lens, and we need to capitalize on that.
Collin 08:25
We're gonna take a break right now and tell you about our first sponsor pet sitters associates. They've been sponsoring us for a while now and we absolutely love working with them. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, pet sitters associates has provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, which you do because you're listening to this, or maybe you want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet sit llc.com you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets it llc.com
Meghan 09:19
What does that mean when you are more optimistic in your business? New Year new you. It changes how you talk to people it changes how you approach people it changes your openness to new ideas. You are in a growth mindset. You are in this attitude of show me the possibilities. Show me what can happen. Show me what my options are. We should be more open to these year round, right? Especially after a year like 2020 when we were all beaten down. Now we are taking that experience that we have of having gone through 2020 and how we managed our business
Collin 09:56
experiences like leaning into new and different services. Maybe you had to fire people or add new services. We went through all of those changes to get through 2020. Now we're able to look back, and we're able to see where we are and what we've done. And with this growth mindset with this, this new mindset of opportunities, we're able to apply that to things as they come our way in 2021.
Meghan 10:19
Yes, so 2021 is an open book, you can choose to take the lessons you learned in 2020, and apply that to 2021. Or you can choose not to, are you going to be new in 2021? It's a new year. We all agree on that. But are you new? Are you new after having gone through? 2020? Are you going to embrace that change and continue pushing forward with this momentum we all have going into the new year? That's really what it comes down to deciding that I'm going to continue the change and be new.
Collin 10:53
Yeah, but so practically, what does that look like for somebody in their business?
Meghan 10:57
Well, I think it means figuring out what you want for this year, taking the momentum that you have, it's a brand new year, you can do anything you want, you can grow your business, and know that you can be new this year.
Collin 11:11
This is that time of year that people always talk about goals. And we've talked about goals and setting SMART goals back in Episode 19, and Episode 77. And side note here, it's hard to believe that episode 19 was released just over a year ago, or that seems like
Meghan 11:27
forever
Collin 11:28
10 years, I don't know, I don't I don't know after last year.
Meghan 11:32
So of course, we still believe in goal setting, you should do that you need to set things for your year that you want to accomplish, because otherwise you are just doing for no reason, you aren't moving forward, you don't have a clear objective. So you just go about your days doing for no reason and no purpose. Obviously, you need to have things you want to accomplish, set those. But take that next next step and ask what you need to do in your life to get there. If it's, I want to grow my client list this year. Okay, well, that's a good goal. But what is the number that you want to get to what is the plan that you have, you have learned that the market is different, because of last year, you are different because of last year, we are different because of last year. And that will influence how you go about looking for clients. And the marketing message that you put out there. Because of that. We noted earlier that four times as many women are home permanently than men, there are now more women home full time than there were last year in 2020. And maybe they're taking care of their kids or their dogs or whatever. But does that change your marketing message? More people are moving to rural areas? Does that change your marketing message? You change services? Does that change your marketing message? And then once you figure that out, build that into how you operate make it the habit,
Collin 12:53
right? I like to think of habits for personal life for the same thing as standard operating procedures in business. So what new procedures are we going to have in our businesses? Or do we need to put it in place? And I really want to reiterate that this may all sound familiar, we've talked about this before, and it comes up an awful lot. The reason we talked about it right now is because we're trying to capitalize again, we're trying to capitalize on that forward momentum that we all have going into this new year. There's always forward momentum in any new year. But there's even more so when we really have a crappy year like 2020.
Meghan 13:30
Why was it crappy?
Collin 13:32
Which basically everyone suffered. Everyone went through and is still going through something, we have to recognize that as we're talking. So we had that mindset of Oh, we can't wait to get rid of 2020 and get straight into 2021. Well, in order for that to be true, we we have to be part of that change and continuously seek it out. The surroundings haven't changed, the world is still the same. We are still in the middle of a global pandemic. And while we are at the bottom of that, well, we have the opportunity right now to do something with that momentum that we have. Many of us retired at the end of 2020. We still are tired, but using the energy that we have right now we're able to reapply, reaffirm and reassess what's going on.
Meghan 14:18
Before we dive into those we want to tell you about our friends at the Texas pet sitters conference. We interviewed Jessica Milan back on episode 133. They're going into their sixth conference this year. And conferences are an essential part of growing as a pet professional, they offer so much knowledge that that consists of these two factors, one the pet care and to running the business, we need to always be learning more about caring for the pets that we care for. And that's our primary purpose and passion. But equally as important as in the how to run and operate as a business. Something most of us definitely, for sure need help in the 2021 Texas pet sitters conference is packed this year with speakers covering both topics and we're really excited about seeing Jillian Verdun. Talk about accounting and preparing for a rainy day. It's not something that's always fun to discuss, but it's necessary when you're running a business. So check out TX pet sitters.com and get registered today for free.
Collin 15:13
So this year, we're going to be reapplying reaffirming and reassessing. So what are we reapplying? Well, we need to spend 2021, reapplying the lessons from COVID. And from 2020,
Meghan 15:24
there are probably too many lessons to count,
Collin 15:26
right? There's there's a lot out there. And they're going to be unique and in varied for every single one of us. I know for us, one of the lessons was the need for quiet space and time in our life. We also learned what it means to be content. And that's not the same thing as complacent, but contentment, being satisfied with what we have in business in our personal life. The world change completely around us and is constantly changing. And there's no way that we can control or keep up with any of that. At the end of the day, we have to know that what we have what we're putting out there satisfies us and our goals, and be and be content with that.
Meghan 16:03
If you haven't thought about the lessons that you've learned from COVID, or from last year in general, think through what you changed, and then why you made that change. We talked about some of the lessons that we've learned in Episode 58. But the pandemic was the ultimate cause of these things. But the proximate cause was a decision that you made. And that's what we need to tease apart to find our lessons. Maybe it's a lesson for your personal life, where suddenly we were forced to be separated from others and had to really rely on ourselves a lot more. What did we learn about ourselves from that now that we have our lessons, we cannot forget them, the exact same situations most likely won't come up again in 2021. Hopefully not. But by reapplying the lessons that we learned from last year, two things as they come up, we'll be in a better position overall.
Collin 16:55
That second thing that we're going to be doing this year is we're going to be reaffirming our purpose. reaffirming our why your Why is your secret sauce, whether you believe that or not your it's your rock in a storm and your motivation to put in the hard work when things get rough. As we've mentioned, when when we're working without understanding our why we burn out faster and find less satisfaction in our work. When we're working in opposition to our why our businesses divisions suffer. And we don't have harmony in our life, we have this constant tension and battling to figure out what we should do and why we need to do it. If you've never thought about your why, as a pet sitter, take some time this week to write down some ideas and share your insights with friends family, or reach out to us, we'd love to talk to you about that and help you discover that.
Meghan 17:45
But maybe you haven't thought about that in a long time. And it's okay to change it. Our y has definitely changed in 2012. We started petsitting as a way to make extra money while in graduate school. And it's really morphed into a way to gain independence as a family and set examples for our kids on hard work and dedication,
Collin 18:04
right. And once you know your why write it down and post it everywhere. Using post it notes, you can put it in your car at your desk. One of my favorite places is by the mirror in your bathroom. And I love the idea of creating something in Canva or another app like that, and then setting it as your phone background or your computer background as a way to just constantly remind us having these visual reminders everywhere, helps us physically see it in good times. And bad. It's always there. It's outside of our brains, and it's out in the world around us. And it reminds us what it's all about.
Meghan 18:40
Finally, we need to be continuing to reassess our goals. And that's really the entire reason for this episode. It's the first week of the year, so why not reassess your goals, our goals. As Natasha also mentioned a few weeks ago, we should be doing regular check ins throughout the year. she recommends a quarterly check in some people just do a yearly check in but ask yourself after making it through last year, have your goals shifted for your business? Do they need to shift given how the markets have changed. Keep in mind though, changing a goal is not failure. Far from it actually changing a goal shows that you're adaptable. You are malleable to new information, and that you are working to stay relevant and meeting the needs of your clients. Once you have your goals formed habits to help you reach them. We've talked about habit stacking before. It's a great strategy. Or you take small things and build upon each other so that you have this whole routine that you know is cemented and you're going to get it done every single day. So if you just say for example, I'm going to lose weight, that might not be enough, that's probably not going to be enough you have to have a plan you have to have action steps and then habits in order to reach your destination.
Collin 19:54
So work through this process. Understand that you have changed. You are New again, I you said that earlier, the the new year is new. Do we recognize ourselves as new. That's the title of this episode is understand that we are new, we are changed from last year. And because we have changed, that needs to inherently change us and how we operate moving forward. So as we work through this process, think back on those lessons that you learned from last year, make sure you're still petsitting for the reasons you want to be. And then set goals and build habits from that. The foundation of your business is your why change your why as necessary, and then build your habits to meet your new goals. from that. I think this the I think the thesis statement for this entire episode is we are different, whether we recognize it or not 2020 changed us. So because of that, how are we going to operate in 21? Given the fact that we know that we are different because of what we experienced last year? How does that impact our decision making our procedures, our policies, our services, how we market and all of that going into 2021? That's the question that we need to be asking ourselves.
Meghan 21:13
If you'd like to share some of your lessons that you're applying to 2021 we would love to hear them. We'd also love to hear if you have any new goals or habits you are setting for this year, you can give us a call at 636-364-8260. Or you can find us anywhere on the Internet at pet sitter confessional. Natasha obion is back for another question this week,
Collin 21:34
I am having trouble quote getting out of my own way. In my business, what can I do?
Natasha 21:41
Get a mentor. You gotta get a mentor. It's true. I was just having this conversation with my sister in law, you cannot learn behavior, you cannot unlearn something on your own. If you've been doing something for so long, so many years, it's not gonna happen overnight. Now, if you want to read, you know, self help books, and take the slow walk in process and finished chapter after chapter after chapter and say your prayer, you know, more power to you. But at the end of the day, it's like a relapse, we're always going to someway somehow fall back into our own patterns. So if you're getting in your own way, hire someone get him in toward an accountability buddy, write down what your goals are. Okay? They need to be on paper. So then we can just like, say, I told you so later, like you said, okay, it's on paper, and you can't get an IV with you with me, you told me in the beginning that you didn't want to do that anymore. Yeah, but you need a person to kind of keep you accountable. And then you need to prove that you can trust. So I always like to you do get to a certain point in our business where you have to hire a mentor, like I hire a mentor for my business, both of my business have separate mentors, because you need a second opinion, you need an extra look into what you're not seeing. And then you have to trust them and trust the process, that they're leading you in the correct way.
Collin 23:03
Yeah, it's getting an external voice. Like if you're having trouble getting out of your own way, have an external voice that's pushing you out of your own way, right, you know, who talks about externalizing, an external these processes that you have internalized? Well, if it's also inside, getting somebody else to help, push, encourage and get you out, get you out of your own ways, one of the best things you can do?
Natasha 23:23
Absolutely. And it's not the one that's your bestie that's afraid to tell you now, you know, it's someone that's even if you have someone that's a tiebreaker, someone that's gonna say, remember, you told me you wanted to do this, I agreed to be your accountability partner, I'm going to make sure you do what you said you were gonna do. That's my job. And I'm like, Oh, damn, okay, fine. A new, you know, we all know, okay, yeah, that's true. That is why I asked you to do this, you know, but you have to have help. It's like, it's like your team, you know, they always say you're only as good as people you surround yourself with, it's very, very true. You want to surround yourself, people who are going to, you know, growing, not people who are just going to agree with you, and let you stay in your own way.
Collin 24:04
give somebody an unbiased opinion, it's best there, as he said, not getting a bestie not getting a family member, you know, those are good opinions to have. But when it comes to yes or no, these kind of cut dry decisions or to help you deal with yourself, that third that that external, nonprofit, nonpartisan opinion can be really great.
Natasha 24:24
It is and you have to keep growing, you have to keep educating, you know, just you know, we can do the same thing every single day. This is one of those businesses that you literally can do the same exact thing every day. It could be different, always gonna be the same thing. Every single day. And if you're growing out of love with your business, it's like anything you fall in love or fall in love with. You have to keep being intentional. If you just can't say, oh, we're just doing the natural thing and we'll see how it goes on. You have to have a plan, be intentional and bring people in that's going to help you do it.
Meghan 25:01
Natasha not only runs her own pet business, but she has a pet business coach as well. And if you would like her to be your personal pet business coach, you can go to her website start skill sale, calm and use the code p sc 24 15%. off any of her coaching, we would like to again thank our sponsors, pet sitters associates and the Texas pet sitters conference for sponsoring today's episode. And also our listeners. Thank you so much for taking your most valuable asset, your time and listening to us today. We are so appreciative. And can't
Collin 25:30
tell you thank you enough like just how humbling it is how humbling this past year has been in all things and being able to engage with you get to know you, and continue to build relationships and we're really excited and thankful for all of the feedback that you give and and all the insights that you give and share with us as well. You have no idea how much it means to us. So thank you so much.
Meghan 25:54
will talk to you next time.
