This episode is brought to you by our awesome partners: Pet Sitters Associates, Start Scale Sail, & Texas Pet Sitters Association
Summary:
Understanding your “brand” and what it means for you and your business takes time. We share our experience rebranding our pet sitting business and our struggles working on a logo. We also talk about how we developed a deeper understanding of what we wanted our business to mean to not just our clients, but to ourselves as well. On the ‘Ask a Pet Biz Coach’ segment, Natasha answers, “How should I set my priorities?”
Topics on this episode:
Finding a logo
Learning what a ‘brand’ is
Giving meaning to your logo and colors
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Branding is about experience and connection.
Links:
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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The logo that about killed us.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
logo, brand, colors, clients, people, business, pet, pet sitters, service, evokes, sitters, website, hats, wanted, money, funky, dog, rebranded, imbue, connect
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
Hi, I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:18
I'm Collin. And this is pet sitter
Meghan 00:20
confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, and welcome to Episode 146. Hello, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you also to our sponsors, pet sitters associates and the Texas pet sitters Association. Thank you also to our newest patron member, Sherry. We are so we are so appreciative of you supporting us every month with the price of a cup of coffee. And if you would like to do so as well, you can go to our website pet sitter confessional comm slash support. So let's dive right into today's topic. We have been thinking about this episode for a little while now. And as a backstory early last year, we started to want to make a change in our personal pet business. We have been seen so many of your awesome logos and colors and brands. And we were really inspired to tackle it for our own pet business.
Collin 01:18
Right now, an important part of this is that neither Megan nor myself are artsy in any way in any stretch of the imagination.
Meghan 01:27
Now we are not very creative.
Collin 01:30
But but we wanted to give this a go and try and then do it ourselves and work together to do this.
Meghan 01:37
Yeah, we wanted to make a change to make something fresh and new. And with everything going on in the world. Last year, we thought that it was a great time to take some time and relook at our business, as I'm sure many of you did, as well, and to see what our business communicated and if that was what we wanted our clients to feel as well. So this entire episode is basically about us learning how we define our brand and continue to define our brand and realizing that just having a logo you like is the tip of the iceberg as far as branding,
Collin 02:08
right? So we dove right in, we started going through some branding exercises to pick out our colors. And what these exercises did is they walk you through what kind of emotions what kind of feelings you want your clients to feel as they experience and interact with your business. Basically, when they're done interacting with you, what do you want them to take away from you and your brand, we
Meghan 02:31
decided that our style of upscale contemporary and modern was kind of really what we wanted to go for also a little bit minimalistic as well. And we wanted our colors to evoke the feelings of confidence worth uplifting and exquisite for our services. And then we started focusing on a logo,
02:50
which just about killed us. Yeah. Or each other. I guess I don't know.
Meghan 02:55
It was tough for a while.
02:56
I am very picky, it turns out
Meghan 02:58
and I just wanted it done. So we went around and around with the designer that we had picked out for months, because we just couldn't figure out exactly what we wanted and just never felt like it was exactly what we wanted to evoke.
Collin 03:13
Yeah, I really struggled to put it into words exactly what what I wanted. And Megan, just at the other day wanted me to pick something I remember those conversations of you being like just pick anything, literally anything, pick it and let's move on.
Meghan 03:29
Well, because it was taking weeks and weeks and a couple months. And I was finally just kind of over it and just wanting it to be done.
Collin 03:36
I was really consumed with the what ifs of the logo, and I totally lost sight of the ultimate goal, which was to have something that better connected with their clients. I was way too concerned with ridiculous things like the pitch of the roof, or whether there should be a chimney or the color tones of the dogs and cats for or whether it was centered or how center it was or the exact radius of the circle was I am and I was a mess through all of that.
Meghan 04:05
Okay, eventually, colleges made it in Canva. And we are way happier with it than we were getting before.
Collin 04:13
Right. But that's because I had direct control over it and spent probably 30 or 40 hours swapping between every possible combination of dog and cat available and then going through another combinations of all the hats and glasses and all of those things but it at the end of the day it was what my brain needed to hone in on exactly what I was trying to get to.
Meghan 04:32
So it's nothing fancy because we aren't very fancy people. What we ended up with with is a cat and dog close together. The dogs wearing a top hat with glasses and the cat is wearing a baray with the name funky bunch pet care and an arch across the top. The funky benches across the top Petcare is on the bottom, and it's pretty simple, but it evokes some emotions that we wanted to get out of it as well.
Collin 04:56
Right? Well it fit pretty much the only thing we could agree on through this whole process was that we liked a circle logo instead of a square.
Meghan 05:02
Yes. So through the process, we talked a lot about giving the logo depth of meaning. You know, anytime you make a change, it's really important to think holistically. Even if our goal, your goal is just to focus on a small component of it, it's a good time to take the opportunity to reassess how everything fits together. So how did we know or how do you know when it's time to change even if something is working?
Collin 05:26
So we were crazy busy before we did this, so it wasn't because we needed to juice business or get more clients coming in, we we changed because we just wanted to change, we wanted to update ourselves for the years to come. We wanted to focus some effort and energy back into thinking about who our ideal client was, and what we wanted, especially as things changed so quickly. Last year, you know, they there's that old adage of you don't want to be the buggy maker investing in new equipment when the first car pulls into town. So you have to judge by the right neck metrics, and figure out when that time is, is to change. And we're not saying any of those huge, big changes are coming our way. We just saw it as a perfect time to update ourselves and give us a new look, not just on our business, but how we felt about it, too.
Meghan 06:17
Okay, so as far as the logo, what measures do you use to know if your logo and brand is working
Collin 06:21
when you keep getting clients?
Meghan 06:23
Okay, so when you stop getting clients, that's when you know, it isn't working anymore?
Collin 06:27
Right? Obviously, then, then it's too late. So you have to start asking ourselves what as you mentioned, like, what is the right metric is, is just getting new clients, the right metric? And I would say no, like, Are your clients happy with what they're getting? Are they getting what they expected out of your services, or your clients, actually, even the clients that you want, you could be getting a lot of inquiries from people that you are going to end up saying no to. So obviously, then that's a much better metric, you may find that you rebrand, or you offer a different service or a new service area. And you don't get any better clients, you just get different clients.
Meghan 07:04
Well, you can do some research into what people are doing what people expect. You can talk to your clients or people in your community and pull them, you can give questionnaires. But you can't do that for everyone, obviously, or every potential client that you might have, you just have to go. Okay, I believe color theory enough to believe that when I put these certain colors together, it evokes this emotion. And I know that that emotion is what I want my clients to feel when they visit my website or when they look at my logo. So I have to trust the design language enough that when I put these two elements together, and I put this picture with this, that evokes a reaction that converts to a click more often,
Collin 07:47
which can be really frustrating, because I know that I can be get to the point where it's like, you know what, but I know I know, I provide a really good service, I provide the best service in town. What do you mean, if I change my colors? They'll communicate better? aren't my services? Enough?
Meghan 08:06
Right? Don't they speak for themselves,
Collin 08:07
right? But you start getting into some color psychology there. There's a reason why it's a science and people study it. It's frustrating, because you weren't supposed to have the same colors as somebody else. But if you have a good color combination, you know, you don't, you might not want to lose that just because somebody else is using it for a similar service in your area.
Meghan 08:28
Right? Well, and there's also only so many colors in the rainbow, right? Right. There's a dog walker a mile from you, and they have purple and gold, but you also have purple and gold, that's not really going to help you stand out from them, you have to differentiate your business in other ways, you have to differentiate it by using maybe other colors, or different shades of the colors, or use them in different amounts in your social media or on your website, you obviously have a different name than that dog walker that has the same colors or pets or that has the same colors, you probably provide different services, you likely have different clientele, and most likely a different approach to marketing as well. Someone had to come first. So if they copied your colors, maybe it's time to take a look at a rebrand. Or if you really like your colors, you can just keep them. And if you are an established business with colors and that someone has copied, people in your community already know your colors, so they're likely to keep coming back to you.
Collin 09:27
Right. And all this talk about colors, habits. And when we were really struggling with this through our process, you know, we have to come to this realization that our brand is so much more than just the colors. It's about being authentic and true to ourselves and what we want because there are tons of examples out there with businesses that don't have a logo, they don't have a website, they just kind of exist. That is kind of our, you know, they make that personal one on one connection with the community. Some of we know. They just walk around town and literally ask people if They have or need a new dog walker, the person becomes part of the brand, the person becomes recognizable outside and apart from any sort of colors or any sort of logo that they have.
Meghan 10:12
Yeah, the things we talked about aren't going to fit everyone. So not everyone has a logo, not everyone wants a logo. Not everyone has a website, not everyone wants a website,
Collin 10:21
right? Every business is totally different. So painting it ever with a broad brush or with a broad brush stroke is never going to work. That's not the point of this conversation. This is just merely talking through our process to accepting and learning about a lot of these truths of what branding actually is.
Meghan 10:40
Yes. And there are those outliers, the companies who basically do no branding at all, are an outlier. Granted, some of them are huge, and some of them have been there a while they're established, but they are still outliers. So again, it's important to remember that branding is not just about colors, it could just be a name, it could just be a person, if you are a solopreneur. And you have really established yourself in the community as a hard working dog walker, who brings this awesome mentality and skills to what you do. You know, if you provide education or teaching as part of your brand as part of your social media outreach, or your community outreach, it doesn't have to be all about the colors and the website, you yourself can be the brand
Collin 11:28
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Meghan 12:15
There are lots of coaches out there who talk about branding and branding really is about experience and connection. So yes, the colors and the logo really help communicate that. But at the end of the day, it's the experience. So what is the experience when someone calls you to get connected? What's the experience when your client pays, it's experiential. So that that's part of the brand how you feel. And I know you had an example about car,
Collin 12:39
right? I you know, for me, I take a lot of back usually used cars and technology. And so this is you know, and part of car culture is how you're taking care of when you go to a particular dealership, people know that you're going to be treated differently at a Lexus dealer versus a Chevy dealer, buying a McLaren P one, if you even know what that is, I have no idea, right? It's fine. It's a very different experience than buying a Mini Cooper. That's part of their brand and the culture around that brand. It's the kind of people that are attracted to that, and the people actually become part of that brand. So it becomes this all inclusive, this holistic idea. And I love that thinking about this experience brings in people which contribute to the experience, it kind of becomes this self fulfilling prophecy as these emotions are evoked because the people are being brought in. So if you want x kind of person and you Brand X, you attract x kind of person, your brand becomes for that kind of person.
Meghan 13:43
Yeah, it's important to remember that you are not for everybody. I think we said it multiple times on here, as well as many of our guests. So we'll say it again, you cannot possibly service all of the clients in your town. It's not possible you are not for every dog, you are not for every cat, you are not for every owner. So use the language on your website and social media that reflects how you want them to feel
Collin 14:05
we started off funky bunch of pet care as a luxury service. So language becomes part of that too. Again, pulling in the language becomes part of the brand, how we talk about our services, how we discuss it with clients, how we use that on social media, how you phrase things and communicate on your website, the words are going to become part of your brand, how you phrase sentences, what your key words are.
Meghan 14:28
Yeah, another example is y'all. So someone who uses y'all in your website is probably from Texas or the South. And they use that type of language because either you're from Texas or the south, or that's who your clients are. So think about what the dialect of your area is. How are sentences structured becomes part of your brand. So back to our logo. We have thought about titling this episode, logo episode how we almost killed each other. But it's hard to think about all that Because my first thought when I rebranded was, oh, I need a new logo. Okay, well, what else does my logo need to convey?
Collin 15:08
And I would say that your logo is going to be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. You make your brand as complex as you need it to be, we wanted minimalistic simple, and designer could come up with something that evokes that. But it's the level at which you're trying to communicate, because, you know, some things that I wonder about is, oh, is the font, a funky bunch, Petcare on the logo is that is the font communicating effectively what we are, and that's in addition to the cat and the dog and the hats that they're wearing, and an ad copy that's on their website, we're talking about complexity here, you can go through all of those different layers, fonts, colors, elements, ad copy, and you can kind of go insane on, you're trying to take everything into account to bring it all the little aspects for your brand, which is exactly why people hire out for these kind of jobs.
Meghan 16:00
And then you could pull some people, some random people in the community or your clients to get their opinion on your logo. And you'd have to do some A B testing, some market testing, and then you have to decide if it's all worth it. So we aren't coming down on the side of branding isn't worth it. But we tend to get very caught up in what it means to me,
Collin 16:22
which is hard. Because it's not about you though, right? It's not about me.
Meghan 16:27
Yeah, it's about what we want our clients feelings to be when they look at our logo when they read our website, when they see our social media posts.
Collin 16:35
Because again, it's not just about the logo, it's the brand that you build behind it. You know, I think of the the brands, the logos, like the Nike swoosh, it literally tells you nothing at all about what the company does, or who they are. And I know right now, you're screaming at this going No, no, no, no, the Nike symbol means blah, blah, blah. Well, that's because Nike has told us what the symbol means from their website, their advertisements, the PR people, the famous spokespersons, the athletes that they sponsor, all of that goes into telling you what the symbol means. Because as we've said, again, branding is more than a logo and a color. And so you have to not get too hung up on the logo, because there's a lot more behind it that you have to build.
Meghan 17:22
Yes, Colin, not get hung up on the logo, just get it done
Collin 17:26
six months later, you know.
Meghan 17:31
But if you do a passable job on everything else, the logo brings its own meaning. So we see this in podcasting, where people post their album art in Facebook groups, and people get torn up and down because people think they don't know what it means. It's a picture. Okay, well, so is NPR with three lowercase letters and blue, white, and red or whatever it is. And that doesn't mean anything, it only means something because you see it in association with other stuff. So how do you know if a particular logo is right for you?
Collin 18:00
Well, I know we just said this. But first and foremost, if you like it, because hopefully you are aligning your business enough with who you are as a person that you can connect with it, you know, you are not your client. So there does have to be some differentiation there. Yes. But you could brand to go after clients that you have more income than you live in different zip codes. And obviously, that's not who you are. But you can still pull in your values into it, you can still have a connection with it, so that you know you can like it, and you can be okay with it. The second way is to ask people, we've mentioned this several times, you can ask your clients fellow pet sitters family, what do you think of my logo? Yes, their family and they're your existing clients. So they might not want to give you honest feedback or constructive criticism. So you can just ask, instead of saying, Do you like my logo, you can say, How can I make my logo better? That way, you're at least steering it into a positive direction. And they know they can give better feedback because of it. And they know what you're trying to accomplish with their feedback.
Meghan 19:03
Well, and the same thing goes for colors as well. So they always talk about colors, evoke certain emotions. Ask people if what how they feel when they see your colors, what it makes them feel, and that will give you a good indication of if you are on the right track with what you want your clients to feel or not.
Collin 19:20
Right. So putting in that positive, positive perspective. How can I make this better, you can use that for your colors for your logo for your website for your flyers, all of that, to make sure that you're connecting as best possible because we can only do so much work and so much strategic writing in our brains before we need to put it in front of somebody else and get a second opinion.
Meghan 19:41
I was thinking of the word tinkering.
Collin 19:42
tinkering Yeah, tinkering is a good idea. I am a tinkerer for sure. You can also see if your logo fits in with other logos that may be associated with or is it way out in left field. It may help you stand out for
Meghan 19:57
us to stand out. We added hats Because it was kind of funky. So we had a cat and a dog. And it was just kind of boring. So to make it funky to play on our name, we added hats and sunglasses to them. And it's fine, because then my hope is that they become characters of the business. And we can put different hats on them for that different holidays, or put them in different positions,
Collin 20:19
they suddenly become proxies for ourselves. And we can start adding personality to them based on what they're wearing, and how they're interacting. I can I can put my personality on a cat without having me be there. Because obviously, I would never go outside wearing a top hat. I don't know, well, maybe I haven't read all of it. But But what it communicates is that there's some sort of, of wimzie. And I feel like I can be be whimsical, and how I behave and kind of goofy at times. I mean, going through this entire process, I truthfully, don't think that if we could spend 1000s and 1000s of dollars on it, it would have made me feel any better. Because I think I'm just one of those people that's always going to ask what if,
Meghan 21:02
and that can be exhausting,
Collin 21:03
right? Because again, back to those what ifs, you know, if the circle was one degree wider, or one degree tighter, what if the hat is tilted more to the right, or to the left, or was dark plum or working through all of these different colors? You know, I I have such a hard time conceptualizing many of those, that getting them concrete in front of me is just part of that process that I have to work through to see what's going to click with me and what I feel like is communicating best.
Meghan 21:33
So it's not even an issue of if I had more money to solve this. It's an issue of personal desire and need.
Collin 21:40
Exactly, I think there are some personalities, that would go great. I have $10,000. And I don't care what the colors are, I don't care what the logo looks like, what any of the braiding actually is, as long as that money gets me the clients I want. And I think that's a perfectly legitimate attitude to take towards rebranding, that's perfectly fine, throw all the money at it, solve the problem, and move on. But the number of sitters that have that problem and have the money to solve it is little probably very small. I think that the other extreme is that I'm I'm a business owner, and I have no money. And I don't care what it looks like. So it doesn't matter to me at all. So I'm just going to throw something together in move on, you told me I need a logo, great. Here's a doc, you know, I'm gonna go out and I'm going to provide service, I'm going to get busy doing what I want to be doing.
Meghan 22:31
Right, a lot of people don't want to get bogged down with a logo and colors and all this Fufu stuff, they just want to go out there and provide excellent service. And I'm not saying that if you have a great logo and great colors, you're not providing excellent service, there's just everybody's personality is unique and different. So you can really put these people into four different quadrants. So the first one is somebody who has lots of money and doesn't care. The second one is lots of money, but does care. The third one is no money and doesn't care. And the fourth one is no money and does care,
Collin 22:57
right. And I think the person who cares a lot, and has a lot of money is going to be really happy with this process because they can just spend 1000s of dollars and hone in on exactly what they want. It's that last one though no money, but they do care, which is I feel like with us, where we find ourselves, we find yourself in this DIY situation. We don't
Meghan 23:19
have a lot of skills, we aren't very creative, you know, we have Canva. But that's pretty much it, we don't really have the language or the understanding to do it. But that's when you learn about it. You take design classes, you get software on your side, but then you're investing time and not money, which is really difficult for people who don't have a lot of time, and who don't have money in the first place to invest because they typically are so busy, they don't have the time or the money,
Collin 23:45
right. So right smack dab in the middle of all those is someone who has a little bit of money and who cares a little bit, they're just going to get whatever they can to satisfy their needs. They know it could be better, but hey, you know, they've just got the what they can do to put into it, and they're going to be fine with it and probably go back and revise it later. Because at the end of the day, we keep saying this over and over. Your brand is so much more than your logo and your colors,
Meghan 24:09
but it has to be imbued by you regardless of whether you paid $10,000 for a branding campaign or you pay $5 for a quick logo on Fiverr you as the business have to imbue the logo imbue the colors imbue the other elements, with meaning with how you operate as a business. Someone who has done a great job on their branding is the Texas pet sitters Association. There's only three weeks left to get signed up for the free conference. Yes, it's free, and it's hosted by the Texas pet sitters Association. This year they have Michelle woods and Heather Eaton giving a talk on farm care for pet sitters. Michelle will be talking about everything about horses. While Heather is presenting on city farms and how we as pet sitters can give the best care for all the other pets and animals we may run across the most exotic pets. We've cared for our hinge back tortoises Which was really cool. So this will be a good talk to attend for those of us looking for more experience in pets other than cats and dogs. So you can go to TX pet sitters calm and register for their free event, which is February 19, through the 21st. And it's all online, and you do not have to be a member or resident of Texas at all.
Collin 25:19
You mentioned that word imbue. And so what's really important here is to remember that it doesn't matter if you have the most extensive logo and color scheme imaginable. You still have to make it mean something. And that's where this experience comes in. That's where this customer service comes in. That's, you know, all the on how are they on boarded. That's an experience, what's the communication like between you and the client, that's an experience that they're going to have. And they're going to start associating with your brand, are you a brand that responds within five minutes, or your brand that responds within two days, that starts building who attracts who gets attracted to you, you know, this experience is also part about the phrases you use the ad copy on your website, all of that becomes part of what your brand means. The logo is the front face and what people are going to see first, but you have to make it mean something to those people, that Nike swoosh, a Chevy sign, the Starbucks brand, literally doesn't mean anything in and of themselves on their own. But millions of dollars have been and will be spent trying to hone those and change them over time to do what to reflect what they want the brand to mean, and make sure that it's associated with the feelings and the experience that people can expect when they see those.
Meghan 26:40
Yeah. So think about the Starbucks brand. What do you think of? Well, I think of fast, relatively easy, accessible coffee, the social activism that they are involved in, I think of the progressive things that they are putting into their company. And all of that comes from how they market using that logo. So yes, the logo and colors are important. You need to get those, if that's what you want. And you need to put in the effort, however you want to do that, whether it's a little or a lot. But then if you don't put in the hard work of building the actual brand around it, the actual business ends up kind of being meaningless. It's a branding is huge. That's why they say you have to, quote, build the brand. Because big brands have to be built, it doesn't happen overnight, obviously, and you have to do the work to make it mean something. So whether you choose to have a logo and redo all the colors on your website, or whether you choose to only have a name, and be known by your name, that still means something because you have to work hard and be dedicated to make that mean something.
Collin 27:47
I think many of us have that idea of making a name mean something, because we want our personal names to mean something we want ourselves to be known to for certain things that we stand for certain things. I want to be known as somebody when they say yes, they mean yes. And then when they say no, they mean No, that's something that's kind of a personal part of a brand. And I think that hits home a lot easier many times, then what we want our business to stand for. So what you just touched on there is your business name can mean something apart. And in and of itself, it can mean something to people without having a logo without having colors. Because how you interact with people through that brand name becomes how they associate with your brand.
Meghan 28:39
True, but then a branding expert would probably go, Okay, what you just said is actually the word trustworthy, right? So trustworthy, that emotion comes from this color. When somebody sees this color, they feel like you are a trustworthy brand. So that's probably I understand what you're saying. But the branding person would then try to extrapolate that into a color or a logo or whatever,
Collin 29:02
which is what you can do if you want your brand to be associated with trustworthy find colors that elicit that response to give that holistic top down approach to it.
Meghan 29:12
When we rebranded we changed up how people booked streamline their online forums and we set up some automatic replies. So we really tried to automate more of our processes than we had before and that became part of the brand. We changed up our social media posts. We revamped the blog and the topics that we shared on there and all of that plays into what we are communicating. So you can think about Rachael Ray, her brand is Rachael Ray. That is, that is, you know, easily accessible, quality cooking gear and accessories. You can also think about Martha Stewart, that's her brand her she was a TV personality. Her and Rachael Ray were both chefs and still are I guess, and they they took who they were, and said they wanted to make that into people. products. So you have to take who you are and turn it into your services. And that can be scary. Because you may say, I'm not who my clients need, but you have to be comfortable selling and doing what you are selling, you have to be comfortable with that you have to put your head on your pillow at night and understand that, you know, I did my best I invested my whole heart and myself into this. And you can't do that. If it's misaligned with who you are.
Collin 30:26
So misaligned there what's an example of a brand that could be misaligned with who the owner is?
Meghan 30:32
Well, I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I can think of one for us. So we've had comments that the name funky bunch, and the the expectation there is bell bottoms and tie dye, etc, funky colors, craziness silliness. And that is, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, or seeing pictures of us, that is not who we are at all. And we could pay someone 1000s of dollars to create that brand that look. But that's not who we are, that doesn't align with literally anything we are about, you can only do that you can only create that image for so long, if it's not who you really are. And we don't have this figured out yet we are not we are comfortable with where we are in terms of our brand. But we still want to continue to hone our skills in this area, we are still kind of in the trenches of figuring all this out for our own business and trying to reconcile our name with our brand and our colors. And we really love our name, but it almost killed each other. When we went over colors and fonts and all that
Collin 31:41
and the logo turns Yeah, really, here. rebranding was not easy. It isn't easy. And it wasn't exactly fun for us, either. You mentioned, you know, yeah, we're satisfied right now. And that's because we're able, I think we were able to make the connection with the cat and dog that we put in our logo that we make them characters, and we can play with that with our brain and fusing them with personality.
Meghan 32:04
Yeah, but if you don't connect with it, as the business owner, you probably aren't going to be happy. So it needs to connect with you. And it also needs to connect with your clients, you can be head over heels in love passionate about your logo or your colors or whatever. But if it's completely missing the mark with your clients and the people that who are willing to pay you money, you have to change that, that really is an error on you, the business owner. So I think of it as a Venn diagram. So the left side is what you think looks good, and what you enjoy. And the right side is what your clients like and enjoy. You really have to mesh the two in the middle, because you both have to connect with it.
Collin 32:45
But some people may say, Hey, you know, again, as long as the client is happy, it does not matter. The business owner just needs to suck it up and be fine with it. That's where that character comes in from our four quadrants earlier, the person has lots of money and does not care. Because you know, at the end of the day, you know, you have to step aside and realize what's going to be best for your business and be okay with that. Is it your feelings about the logo is? Or is it the success of your business, there does have to be some sort of realism here. It's not all just what we're passionate about.
Meghan 33:20
Any company could look at their logo and redo it. And if you want to listen to one, Amber's from Adeboye, and Episode 51, has an awesome explanation of why she rebranded and how she went about doing that. But through 2020, we realized we wanted to change and gotten kind of way over our head. You have to realize that you need to step away and be okay with it. If you just need to tinker all the time, at some point, you're gonna have to just be okay with whatever it is you're trying to work on. And that's why you go through this process and you kind of find a compromise, obviously something that you're going to be happy with. But you can't Tinker forever. You can't change everything forever.
Collin 34:04
Right? Ultimately, after six months of grinding gnashing of teeth and Hellfire and brimstone, Oh, geez. I had to to just click download and be done with it and step away and actually start using it. And start putting it on pictures, putting it on the website, putting it on social media post, seeing what it looked like out in the wild and how I felt about it there. And once I've made that step one, so I just decided done is better than perfect. I'm never going to be 100% head over heels in love with this because I'm not good at this and start using it. I actually started liking it a lot more because it was being useful to us instead of being this terrible thing.
Meghan 34:47
Well, and we aren't saying that you shouldn't strive for something that's awesome and wonderful. And that just you're never going to be satisfied with your logo. There are plenty of sitters out there. Many who listen to this podcast who have have incredible logos
35:01
I'm very jealous of all of them.
Meghan 35:05
So we're not saying that it can't be done at all. And we don't want this to sound like a Debbie Downer episode of the, you know, we had a not awesome experience and we aren't super ecstatic about what we have currently no,
Collin 35:18
again, very happy with it, because I have, it's grown on me. And I've enjoyed using it. I think it was just the series of this process of learning of kind of this naive optimism at the beginning of Oh, how hard can this be, we'll just get a logo and change some colors. And then realizing that what we were actually what I was actually struggling with was, who I saw myself as and what I wanted our business to be in what I wanted communicated to the clients. And that's where a lot of things started to get in conflict one another because I wanted it to be good, I wanted it to be the best thing possible.
Meghan 35:57
Yeah. And you can literally do anything with your logo and colors, the The possibilities are infinite, which is why I think you maybe got a little paralyzed thinking about that. So part of this episode, I think, is a little bit of therapy and just talking that out
Collin 36:12
and just admitting to the world that you may not be like me, you may be more like Megan, who has a much clearer vision, and is much able to make better connections between what she wants and what she sees, and what she wants the outcome to be
Meghan 36:24
well, and also we are in a transition of not promoting some services as much as others. So we started off with the logo process of a house. And then we ended up taking that away,
Collin 36:34
right part of the branding process is that you can use things and cues to communicate first and foremost, what you do or what you're wanting to do differently. If you primarily do dog walking, you'd likely have a dog on a leash, or at least something like a dog in your logo. And we had thought about the house. But we're, as you said, wanting to promote other services. So we abstract it out a bit. And we just left the cat and dog with the top hats and sunglasses.
Meghan 37:01
We also wanted to think down the road a bit. So not just for the here and now. But for years to come. Obviously, we could redo everything. Nothing is set in stone. But we wanted to think about what else we could offer in the future, what else we wanted to add, whether it's products or services. And I foresee us, like I said, doing this again with a different approach next time or maybe working with someone else or not necessarily doing it on our own.
Collin 37:29
Right, right.
Meghan 37:32
So we would love to know if you have ever rebranded How would you describe your brand as a business before and after? And then what was your process like your experience of rebranding? Was it super easy or a little bit painful? You can let us know at feedback at pet sitter confessional.com or anywhere on social media at pet sitter confessional
Collin 37:52
in our ask a pet biz code segment this week, Natasha opionion answers the question. How does she set her priorities?
Natasha 37:59
Oh, you know me, I'm super boundaries. So for instance, just coaching I only coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So for me, I have two small children. You know, I create business, you know, business has to work for me. I don't work for it. Right. That's why we got into this. So I am a when someone says, Hey, can I put you on a Monday or Wednesday? No, I only have Tuesdays and Thursdays available from this time in that time. I don't need to think about anything except giving all my clients their full attention on those days. And then all the other days of the week, I can enjoy my family. And the reason why I started to do this. So boundaries is really starting with that schedule, you know, setting your intention, making sure it's super clear, and then sticking to it. Because there's many times it could have said Sure, I can probably you know, ask my care provider to come over or sure I can probably bug my husband and do it. But you know what, why, you know, set the boundary so you can live exactly the way you said it.
Collin 38:59
If you'd like to Tasha to be your personal pet business coach, head on over to start scale sale.com and check out her services that she offers. And if you want to get connected with her, use the promo code PSC 20 for 15% off any of her services.
Meghan 39:13
We really appreciate you listening to this episode today. It was a little bit different than what we've done previously. But we hope that you connected with something and we would love to hear any feedback that you have. On Wednesday, we talked to Christina Walker from top dog petsitting,
Collin 39:28
where she talks about making the leap from corporate America to full time petsitting back in 2012. And what's worked best for her business over the years.
Meghan 39:36
We also want to thank our sponsors, pet sitters associates and the Texas pet sitters Association, as well as our awesome patrons who support us every month. Thank you so much, guys.
Collin 39:45
Thank you
