163: Insurance with Colleen Giles-Harris

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Summary:

The world of insurance can seem overwhelming, but Colleen Giles-Harris, Manager and Underwriter with Pet Sitters Associates, joins us to discuss what we need to know about being fully protected as pet care professionals. Colleen shares what it means to recognize the liability we're exposed to and how even with waivers we still need insurance to protect us. We also discuess why using your personal insurnace isn't the best idea and how not all insurance policies are created equal.

Topics on this episode:

• Basic coverage and common claims

• Release forms and waivers

• Adding employees or family members

• Biggest misunderstandings

Main take away? Get connected with a good agent and start making sure you’re as covered!

About our guest:

Colleen Giles-Harris, CIC, is the Underwriter and Manager of the insurance program for Pet Sitters Associates. As an Underwriter, she works with the insurance company to make sure that the association members have the proper coverages and that the correct premium is being charged for their exposures. As the Program Manager, Colleen works with the association to help with marketing and developing the program and she assists association members with tough insurance question. Colleen is passionate about what she does and feels strongly that every pet care professional needs quality insurance to protect their business.

Links:

Pet Sitters Associates: www.petsitllc.com

Give us a call! (636) 364-8260

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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com

A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

dog, pet sitter, cover, insurance, pet, coverage, people, claim, client, liability, situation, membership, vet, business, add, owner, policy, pay, daycare, limits

SPEAKERS

Collin, Colleen Giles-Harris

00:17

Hi, I'm Meghan.

Collin  00:18

I'm Collin. And this is pet sitter confessional,

00:21

and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter

Collin  00:25

brought to you by time to pet and pet perennials. The world of insurance is very murky and sometimes extremely hard to understand, especially when we're just getting into this and we have no idea what kind of coverage we could even be looking for as pet sitters. So today, we're really excited to have Colleen Giles Harris, underwriter and manager of the pet sitters associates group insurance. Now, PSA is a current sponsor of the show. However, the point of this episode is to talk in general, about insurance, how to make sure we are well covered, and some of the common misconceptions that pet sitters fall into when they are looking for insurance. So grab your pen and paper, our favorite note taking app This episode is dense, Colleen has a lot to share. So let's get started.

Colleen Giles-Harris  01:12

Hi, Collin, thanks for inviting me to join the podcast. Like I said, my name is Colleen Giles Harris and I underwrite and manage the insurance program for the pet sitters associates group. I've been in underwriting for, gosh, 18 years now. And I've managed this program since then it actually started in 1998. So the first few years, obviously, I wasn't involved quite yet, but I've been handling it since I started in 2003.

Collin  01:38

Wow, what I find fascinating about that is that over the course of 18 years, I'm sure a lot of things have changed in the industry. So I'd love to get your insight into that.

Colleen Giles-Harris  01:47

Yeah, for sure. The great thing about having this kind of program is there is flexibility. So we've introduced new coverages that are automatically included in our basic membership. And we've also added optional coverages that people can add on an alla carte basis. For example, maybe about 1012 years ago, we introduced our what we call veterinarian expense coverage. And that's the coverage that provides coverage for injuries to client dogs regardless of negligence or legal liability. Typically, an insurance policy isn't going to kick in or provide coverage, unless there's negligence and legal liability on the part of the pet sitter. So in essence, a pet sitter either has to have done something wrong, or there has to be something they could have done better to have prevented the claim for traditional insurance to kick in, right? Well, we found that there were situations where the pet sitter wasn't negligent, but they felt bad and they wanted to do something to help out their client because there been an injury to the dog, do we introduce the veterinarian expense coverage, and that provides $1,000 of coverage for injuries, regardless of negligence. So a good example might be, let's say that the pet sitter is playing with a client dog in the client's backyard, and it trips and falls on a hole in the backyard. The liability on that really is on the homeowner because they had a hole in their backyard that they didn't tell the pet sitter about traditional policy might not cover that kind of claim. But our policy is going to step in and provide $1,000 because there you know, there wasn't negligence or legal liability, we have that special coverage. More recently, just this year, we introduced a new coverage that we call expanded coverage for client pets, where you can increase that coverage from $1,000 to 2500. And then you also can increase the traditional insurance coverage for your client from 15,000 to 25,000 for an extra $50. Because we realized some people want a higher limit limits that we provide them the basic membership are pretty good and and you know cover the large majority of situations, I haven't really found that it hasn't been enough, though we've had people come to us and ask for a higher auction. And we didn't want to just increase the coverage to everybody and require everybody pay more. So we offered it as an optional coverage. In the last several years, we also introduced what we call our house bidding coverage, which provides coverage for caring for someone's house when there's no pets there. So we have situations where a pet sitter maybe they care for a client pet throughout the year but one vacation a year the owners take the pet with but they still want someone to come and what are their plants and taking their mail and you know, check on things do you can add the house sitting coverage to go and take care of the house when there's no pets there. So things like that we kind of look at what services people are providing what kind of coverages people need. We've increased some limit here and there when we realized that we didn't have the proper limits for things. So there's definitely been a lot of a lot of changes and then also just more pet sitters. I mean it's uh you know, in the last 15 years, it's it's I remember when we first had the program, there were a lot of people who were like, what's a pet sitter? You know, I'm like, what's, what's that or like, we cover pooper, scoopers, and I like, people do that for a living. Yeah, actually a lot of people do it for a living. So the number of people who need insurance has also drastically increased in the last 15 years.

Collin  05:18

Now, backing up a little bit here and just thinking about not nice, just basic coverage. As a pet sitter, as a business owner, what are some of the basic things we need to make sure we have covered.

Colleen Giles-Harris  05:28

So a traditional insurance policy is going to call the commercial general liability policy or CGL, for short, and a CGL policy is going to provide you with coverage for bodily injury and property damage caused by your business. And with a pet sitter, that would also include caused by a client pet. So some examples of that might be, let's say, as a pet sitter, you're walking a client pet down the sidewalk, and you come across the lady who's walking her dog and the two dogs get into a fight. I'll talk about the coverage for the client dog at the end of the example. But let's say the other dog, the third party dog, as we call it, is injured by the client pet. That's technically considered property. I know that's kind of cold, but our pets are considered legally properties. So even though, you know to you and me, they're members of the family, the law says its property. So when a client pet injures a third party pet, it's in essence, damaging the personal property of a third party person in our policy will provide up to a million dollars of coverage for that third party dog claim is never going to get that big. But that coverage is out there for that. If that third party person, that lady, she puts her hand in the middle of the fight to break it up and she gets hit by the client dog, we're going to provide up to a million dollars of coverage for her bodily injury. And bodily injury claims can get quite large. If the petsitter puts her hand in there and gets injured by the client, or the third party dog, we're not going to cover that our policy does not provide coverage for injuries to the petsitter employees independent contractors or family members, that's going to potentially fall into a possible like a work comp situation, which is not what we're providing under a CGL. Now the client, Pat, there's two coverages for him, I talked about the veterinarian expense coverage for the no negligence, or there's $15,000 of coverage if there is some negligence on the part of the pet sitter. So using that example, it doesn't take a lot to shift it into negligence, it might be something as simple as you know, they had the dog on a retractable leash, and it was 16 feet out, and they didn't have as much control over the dog as maybe they should have. Or maybe it's something too simple that they shouldn't have let those dogs interact. You know, if the pet sitters aware of the fact that the client dog doesn't always love other dogs from that maybe she should have stepped into someone's driveway, or stepped onto the grass and let the other lady and her dog walk past. So it doesn't take a lot to hit it into that negligence category. So that's sort of the basic thing. Also, within that the basic membership that we provide provides coverage for what we call damage to the real property of the pet owner. So I'm using air quotes, their real property is the house itself and anything attached to the house. So let's say that the pet sitter accidentally causes a fire or a flood in the client's house, not due to an electrical problem or a plumbing issue, that's going to be a homeowner's claim. But the pet sitter does something negligently to cause a fire or a flood, that's we're going to provide up to a million dollars of coverage to damage the client's house under that real property thing. In order to have coverage for what we call their personal property, which is anything inside the house that you can pick up and move around like a couch or a vase or the microwave or something like that the personal property, you have to purchase our optional broadened property damage coverage and bond. And that would provide $10,000 of coverage for damage to their personal property. It also covers staffed by employees or independent contractors, or third party persons due to your negligence that does not provide coverage for theft by the owner of the business, the main petsitter that we lift on a membership, because we're not really giving you you know, freedom to just go rock your client, right? You know, you can control your own ticket fingers, but you can't control what someone else is doing, you know. So that's kind of how that coverage works. So I say as a minimum, you want the PSA, basic membership provide bodily injury and property damage coverage, as well as coverage for the client. And I think the broadened property damage coverage and bond is essential because we really do see a lot of breakage claims. So I highly recommend that as well. Although it is truly an optional coverage. So we know some people don't want to spend the extra $100. So that's why We made it optional, but I do highly recommend it.

Collin  10:02

Yeah. And it's all about understanding what services you're providing where those services are going to be. And what, again, what that liability is, and you touched on that of like, what what considers negligence there. And that's, you know, if the owner told you something, and you did it anyway, or you ignored that advice. So it's really important. You know, when I hear that I go, yeah, we ask all of these questions during the meet and greet, we have them fill out all these forms, we really need to be reviewing that each time we go to that pet instead of just saying, Oh, well, it's in the app, or it's Oh, it's in my documents, like those mean something, and we'll hold you liable if something were to happen, because they told you about it. So you need to be following that.

Colleen Giles-Harris  10:39

Exactly. And that's why it's so important to have those conversations with your client. And to get it in writing. You know, we're big proponents of contracts and waivers so that you have all that stuff that you can refer back to, you know, if they say that, I'm gonna say that you've got a client who has two dogs, and you know, fluffy is allowed to have free roam of the house. no restrictions whatsoever. But little Max Max has to be an account, right? And let's say that you don't put max in a kennel, and Max gets into the garbage and eat something and get sick. Well, that's pretty obvious negligence, because they told you that that max had to be in a kennel. Well, if fluffy, gets into the garbage and gets sick, that's a little bit more questionable. You know, was there negligence on the part of the pet sitter, because they were told max or that fluffy could have free range of the house? So you really have to look at, you know, what were the instructions? Did you follow them? In all of those things? So yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah,

Collin  11:34

you mentioned that like, yeah, the number of times we've had Max's food aggressive, but fluffy is not. So Max has to be kept away from fluffy at all times, when you're feeding them. Like that's really common. And at least for Megan, and I've the dogs we take care of so yeah, Max always has to go outside, because you told us that and that one time? If it does, if you don't, right, then then you run into some issues of that coverage. And

Colleen Giles-Harris  11:55

you know, at the one time you don't there's going to be if I

Collin  12:02

when we start talking about coverage, I know one of the things that I hear an awful lot is well, what if I'm doing this part time? Do I really need all of that coverage? I'm just doing this, you know, two hours, five hours a week maybe? Or on the side when I can?

Colleen Giles-Harris  12:16

I would say yes, you definitely need it regardless, because it only takes five minutes for a severe claim to happen. And, you know, we hear a lot of people who say that I only take care of my friends and family's dogs, you know, I don't advertise or market to strangers, either people I know. Right. So my uncle is not going to sue me if something happened to his dog because I'm It's nice. He loves me, you know, it's all gonna be well and good, right? I hear that argument all the time. But let's say that your uncle's dog has a pretty severe injury that's due to your negligence. I have the pet sitter, I screw up. And I let the dog off leash when I shouldn't have tears that ACL. No, we got a $5,000 surgery, my uncle was going to expect me to help him with that, because he can't afford that. Right? He wants me to help them out. Or worse, let's say I'm walking my uncle's dog and the dog bites a third party person, that person doesn't care at all. But as my uncle's dog, they're gonna sue me as the pet sitter. Right? Yeah. Doesn't take much for there to be a situation. So I definitely think even if you're part time, even if you're a gig worker, and there's the people who are very little bit here and there, and it's not as as steady as maybe a full time pet sitter, like you guys are. Or even if you're just taking care of your families and friends, or insurance for pet sitters associates is not expensive, you can get the basic membership to cover one person for less than $200. I mean, that's a major peace of mind. It's get just the basic, you don't have to get anything else. And it's going to cover that bodily injury and injuries to the dogs. For less than $200.

Collin  13:55

A year we should add a year, right?

Colleen Giles-Harris  13:57

A year per year. Exactly. That's the annual Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes people are like, Oh, that's per month, right? No, that's the year that's for sure.

Collin  14:04

Yeah, because when you when you sit down and you do kind of, you know, a risk assessment of your business of when you start trying to draw on these third parties, or these potential third parties, that it gets an awful lot real fast, especially if your uncle has people coming over to do yard work or a cleaner or anybody you pass on the street during a walk, all of those kinds of things add up really quickly.

Colleen Giles-Harris  14:26

And I think that's a good point. If you are aware that they there's going to be other people in the home, that's something that you should get documented. So if you know that you're taking care of a dog, well, there's going to be a cleaning lady that comes in every Tuesday. Or we hear sometimes about people who are splitting jobs. You know, they've got the neighbor kid comes and takes care of the dog at lunchtime, but they need someone who can come in at night. You want it to be fully documented, who's coming into the house. If you're splitting the job, who's coming when and what the responsibilities of each person, aren't everybody You should have that documentation. So if later on, there's an issue, like, theft, let's say that like, suddenly their watches disappeared, and we find out that there was also a maid in the house. Well, we need to make sure that wasn't the maid that stole the watch. I mean, there's other people that were there. So I think that's really important. I'm glad you mentioned that get that kind of documentation that there's other people that are going to be involved in the patterning, or that are just accessing the home.

Collin  15:24

Yeah, my big thing for us is always who's locking the door? And do I know that that door is locked whenever I leave? And you know, what's the status of that door at all times, especially if they've got other people coming in and out because then that liability goes through the roof. If you have no idea, if you're like, oh, I've got roommates coming in, I've got a cleaner, you know, I've got this stuff coming in. Don't document all that. So that you know that, you know, that's not on you, if anything were to happen.

Colleen Giles-Harris  15:48

Yeah, document document document that's like in the insurance model. So

Collin  15:55

of all these things that can happen. And this can sound like a really scary, really kind of down conversation. But I think it is really important to have to think of just how serious this can and should be. And we should all be taking it really seriously. I know that all those the some of the big claims that you mentioned earlier, but what are some of the more common things that you see come across your desk,

Colleen Giles-Harris  16:15

our most common claims are probably small injuries to the client pets, you know, dog goes for a walk and stepped on a piece of glass, or you're out on a walk and they ingest something, you know, they you know, dogs noses are always on the ground, right, and you can try to watch what they're eating. But the next thing you know that eating a sandwich baggie, or something, and it's caught inside their stomach, right, that happened to my dog. Luckily, we found her to throw it up. And it wasn't a big deal. But you know, you just never know. So lots of little things like that, or lots of small scuffles between two dogs. So if someone's got a pet daycare or boarding operation, and two client pets get into a scuffle, I want to both of them get injured or a small issue at a dog park situation. That happens all the time. And a lot of times, it's not even a fight like I don't wanna say their dog fights. But you know, they're they're both going after the ball the same time. And one of them's tooth catches the other one, you know, those kind of things happen all the time. And it can be a couple $100 or can be a couple $1,000, especially if it gets infected, or you know, they need a surgery or anything like that. So we see a lot of that kind of stuff, we also see quite a few of breakage claims that fall into that broad into property damage coverage and bond. silly things sometimes, you know, like, they were warming something up in the microwave and the microwave broke. Or we had someone want to put our purse down on a glass coffee table on the table just shattered. You know, it was just one of those weird things are within that, you know, I talked about the real properties of the house itself. Sometimes we've had situations where the pet sitters closing the window blinds and the blind brakes, you know, it's gonna fall under real property because it's attached to the house. So things are weird, random things like that happen all the time. I see a lot of ACL tears, my dogs currently going through an ACL tear. And I see at least one a week probably, you know, and a lot of times it's not the pet sitters fault. So sometimes it falls into that no negligence category. But I see a lot of that that's a really common situation where they're just running around the jump off something funny, or whatever the case might be.

Collin  18:26

Yeah, and as you mentioned earlier that those things happen in the blink of an eye and you might not think of it Oh, the dog tripped and it kept running, right, or the dog just, you know, ran into the wall or something, you know, the playing kind of hard, but being mindful of those things, writing that down taking him to the vet when you can, you know, immediately and some of those cases and those scuffles you mentioned Yeah, sometimes it's not even Oh, did they even make contact? I don't think they did. But you know, it just happens really fast.

Colleen Giles-Harris  18:53

Absolutely. And with taking your dog to the vet, I always like to mention this, whenever I think about it, it's really important in insurance that the pet sitter never pay for a claim unless it's a true emergency. So if a dog is severely injured, and the owner is not available, obviously take the dog to the vet, and we understand that that is not going to take care of it. And once you pay, that's all that's work, right, very few vets are gonna let you, you know, give you an invoice. So if it's an emergency, do what you got to do, the animal comes first. But if it's something like, you know, the dog is limping a little bit. Does the dog have to go to the vet right now? Or can you wait and talk to the owner and have the owner take the dog to the vet, or is the owner available to connect with you over the phone and give a credit card to the vet over the phone? whenever possible. You always want to have the owner involved and the owner should pay the claim if they're available to do so. The reason for that is is there's this legal term called voluntary payment. And it's every state handled a little bit differently. Not even an insurance That's a legal thing. If you make a voluntary payment on a claim without talking to a claims adjuster, it can make you look negligent. And it can cause some serious problems with the claims. And in some states like California, it can require the insurance company to deny the claim, even if it would have been covered and would have been paid and the insurance company wants to pay the claim. They can't, because they've made this voluntary payment, and therefore have admitted negligence without ever having submitted the claim. So you want to be really careful in those scenarios. And I get a lot of questions about it and a lot of confusion of like, well, I want to help the dog the dog needs help, I get that. But if the owners available, they should pay. You know, there's some situations where owners have credit cards on file at the vet's office, and they can do that. But we also understand, you know, this is a future scenario. But maybe you've got an owner who is on a cruise, or they are in Europe or something, you know, this is 10 years down the line. Again, not that long. But you know, we get it, sometimes they're just not available. And again, you got to do what you got to do. But if they are available, you should always have the owner pay the bill, and then the insurance company will pay them back.

Collin  21:14

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Collin  21:35

if you are looking for new pet setting software, give time to pet a try. listeners of our show can get 50% off their first three months when they go to time to pet.com forward slash confessions. Well, and I know many of us have vetinary release forms, right? So what is what does that fall in line with that, that pay first pay later kind of thing?

Colleen Giles-Harris  21:59

Well, it's a great idea to have that kind of thing saying that they give you permission to take their dog to the vet, I would add on to that request that if they, if they're that allows it to have their credit card on file at the vet, because then that way, you've got documentation saying, yep, I have permission to take fluffy to the vet, they want me to go to ABC veterinarian hospital, that's their preferred vet, and that that has a credit card on file. And when I take fluffy to the vet that that's gonna charge that credit card, I think that would be another step in the right direction of a veterinarian release. If the that doesn't allow a credit card on file, cuz I'm sure there's some that don't do that, then I would just say, you know, I add to your contract that, you know, I'm gonna do everything I can to reach you and have you pay over the phone, you know, whenever possible. I love waivers, I think they're fantastic, highly recommend to them. But even the best waiver can be torn apart in a court of law. And that's why it's important to have insurance. So, you know, unless you have like, you know, the best lawyer in the world putting your contract together, there's always something, you know, it doesn't take a lot for some other lawyer to be like, No, no, you know, so it's important to have that waiver. And it's also important to have insurance at the same time. But having that waiver might help you out if you do have a claim, you know, to everybody understand what the expectations were

Collin  23:22

13 many forms that say, you know, I give permission for the company to spend X amount of dollars to be put on my account for reimbursement later. That sounds like that's not the right way to go with this.

Colleen Giles-Harris  23:32

Actually, I don't I don't think that would be the worst thing, because as long as they know, I guess it depends what you mean by account? If you mean your account, then no, but if they mean their account at the vet's office, then yes, you know, I think like, you have my permission to charge up to $5,000 on my credit card at my vet. And I think that would be great to have you pay for them up to a certain amount that might be a little bit more sketchy. Because again, you're now making a payment on something when it's not an emergency. You know, again, I want to make that really clear. Again, if it's an emergency, it's okay. Like we get it. We want the dog to be taken care of. I don't want to make it sound like that's not important it is. If it can wait, you should because there's there's some things that obviously the dog got a broken bone, there's a bone sticking out of his leg. You better take it to that now, right? Yeah, the dog ate a candy bar, or a box of reasons. You got to take it to the vet. Those are serious situations. Right. But you know, the dogs limping a little bit. So maybe wait till the next day, because sometimes that might resolve itself a little bit. Or, you know, the dog just doesn't seem right. You know, you can always call your vet, talk to them find out what they think you know. So I think there's some things where Yeah, you got to go now and maybe there's some that you can wait and talk to the owner before you decide what you want to do.

Collin  24:50

Switching that a little bit and thinking about coverage for when we're going into people's homes. You've mentioned a few of them, but is there anything specific we need to make sure that we're covered for

Colleen Giles-Harris  25:00

I think they already talked about but I would recommend the broadened property damage coverage and bond. Some people also like to get what's called the dishonesty bond. That's not something that we offer through pet sitters associates. So a dishonesty bond covers you as the pet sitter yourself as the owner of the business, it typically requires the background checks through the police department. And it typically requires a conviction in order for coverage to come into play. So I've been my client has accused me of stealing some jewelry, I actually have to be convicted before a dishonesty bond typically is going to actually cover me, right? Our broadened property damage coverage and bond does not require a background check. And again, this is for employees or independent contractors, but not gonna require that you get a background check on your employee, and it's not going to require a conviction, just the assumption that there was a theft, the insurance is going to come in and start asking questions. You know, if we find out that there were 12 other people accessing the house that week, they might be like, Well, you know, it's hard to prove that it was the pets that are and not the maid or not mermaid or whatever. They're going to ask some questions. Our bond is also going to cover defense costs. If the pet sitter is blamed for stealing, we call it mysterious disappearance. So I'm the pet sitter. The client says my jewelry has mysteriously disappeared. I'm like, Well, I didn't steal it. I know I didn't steal it, right. But they blame me and they take me to court, our policy is going to cover defending me right as the auditor. But if we end up finding during the claims investigation video of me at the pawn shop selling the jewelry, well, now I'm not going to be covered because I actually did steal it. But I get defense costs as the owner of the business. But if my employee steals that jewelry, even if we see her at the pawn shop, there's still going to be $10,000 of coverage, because it's my employee, and I can't control what she does. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Collin  27:01

Yeah, it does.

Colleen Giles-Harris  27:02

So I think that having a some version of a bond is a good idea. And, you know, it just depends on obviously, no one, I don't think anyone plans on stealing from the client. But, you know, if assuming that you're an honest person, and you're not going to steal from your client, the kind of coverage that we're providing is sufficient, because it's going to defend you if accused. And it's going to cover your employees and independent contractors or even an incidental helper. So maybe it's Christmas time, and you have to have someone come and help out just a little bit here and there, but they're not a full employee. And they steal something. Or let's say, as the pet sitter, I negligently leave the front door unlocked, you sound like you do a great job of making sure the doors locked, but everyone's throwing it on, like forget to unlock, the door gets locked unlocked, and someone breaks in and steals the jewelry. We've covered that up to $10,000. If someone breaks into the house, and you didn't do anything wrong, you know, you locked up everything you were supposed to you left the light down like you were supposed to, that's gonna be a homeowner's claim. But if you as the pet sitter negligently left the door open, you know, or what something like that there's going to be some coverage for third party FAFSA as well. I think that's something to think about, depending on how you want to handle the situation. I should mention, too, that what they brought in property damage coverage and bond, if you have an employee or an independent contractor, who you are aware of has a previous charge or conviction of theft, we're not going to cover that person for that. So if you choose to hire john as your employee, and you know that john, you know, back in his teenage years, or his college years, you know, little sticky fingers, you can still have hire him. That's your prerogative, but we're gonna cover him for injuries for dogs, we're gonna cover him for regular liability. But John's no longer going to have theft coverage because you knowingly hired him. We're not asking you to do background check. But if you know, then it's not really fair to have us cover that if you know he has a history of it, though. Right? It's a little caveat.

Collin  29:02

Sure. I'm sure there's a lot of those in your line of work. Yeah. Now, you mentioned employees, and this was something I did want to get to was, you know, what kind of coverage options should we be considering as we grow and add people as we add employee? Yeah,

Colleen Giles-Harris  29:16

so definitely, it's going to depend on where your insurances through, I'm sure that there's situations where maybe it's not, you don't have to add them one by one. But with the pet sitters associates, we do require that employees be added an independent contractors, we want to have them added if they don't have their own insurance, or if they have insurance or somebody other than pet sitters associates. So if I am the main pet sitter and I have Susie as an independent contractor, and she's also a member of pet sitters associates for her own business, but then she works for me as an I see, we don't require that I add Suzy to my membership, because any claims involving Suzy will just go on Sue these membership. And we kind of feel like we're doubled. Merging if we did that, which isn't really fair, right. But let's say Susie doesn't have insurance at all, or she has insurance through somebody other than pet sitters associates, then I have to add her to my membership, because that's the only way that I know that she has the same coverage that I want her to have. So it kind of comes down to employee course, that's going to be a W two situation, they have to be added, independent contractor which the 1099 type situation, if they don't have insurance, or insurance to somebody other than PSA, then you have to add them. So that's kind of a little special thing with our policy, but you want to make sure that you have them covered under your membership. And again, if you have insurance to somebody other than pet sitters associates, you want to look and see how their program works or how your insurance works with them. And if you have to add them or not them sure it might be a little different for other other groups, I did want to touch on this, you've used the word membership when referring to pet sitters associates, what makes pesters associates different in the way they administer their insurance policies. So first of all, from an insurance perspective, that perspective, it's called a master Policy Program, which means that we have one master policy with one policy number that covers all the members that are added from July 1 to July 1, that's our policy term. So everybody in that time period is going to have the same policy number. But each individual person has their own five digit membership ID number that's distinctive to that membership. And they each have their own limits of insurance. So one person's claims aren't going to deplete somebody else's limits of insurance. So that's an important thing. But by having everybody on one master policy like that, we can avoid policy minimum premiums, which is what makes insurance expensive when you go to like a regular insurance agent. Insurance companies require, you know, if you're going to write a policy with us, we need $500, that's the minimum we need, right? Or what, whatever the number might be, we don't have to do that. Because everyone's on one policy, we can just charge the rate that we feel is appropriate, which is the $190 for the basic. So that's one thing, but how our insurance is written, it's a membership, because there's other things too, they have a quarterly newsletter that the association sends out with got tips and tricks and fun little things that help that surge grow. There's some discounts available through educational opportunities, or, you know, different things like that, that you can get, because you're a member of pet sitters associates, obviously, the biggest benefit is the insurance, they also have a directory that you can be on. So if you want to be part of their directory, it's another opportunity to market your business. I don't really understand any of this. But my understanding too, is that if you are on a search engine like that, it can help your Google ratings because the more places your website is listed, it helps Google I don't know, that's what I was told. I don't really understand. But you know, anything that helps you get up on the Google rating, I suppose is a good thing.

Collin  33:03

Right, making that clarification of it's being underwritten under that one group policy, kind of like if you've had insurance, you know, like health insurance through a company beforehand, right? You everyone's covered under the same policy, but you get your own individual number that has your own limits and everything underneath that. So it sounds like it's very similar to that.

Colleen Giles-Harris  33:20

Very similar. Yeah. And that's also why when you get your health insurance through, you know, your company or whatever, under a group policy is typically cheaper than if you go to a insurance agent and get your own health insurance policy just for your family. It's gonna be more expensive. So yeah, that's a great analogy.

Collin  33:37

Okay, because that was one question I had was, you know, can I just use my own personal insurance for my business? And why would that not be a good option?

Colleen Giles-Harris  33:46

So personal insurance and commercial insurance are two very different things. So your personal insurance, like your homeowner's policy is going to provide you with coverage for liability on a personal basis. Thinking about dogs. So my personal dog is covered under my homeowner's policy. I have liability coverage for her if she injure somebody in my house or on my property, if she's with me, or even if she's at large. So if my dog, runs out the front door and runs away, and she's at large, and she injured somebody, my personal liability insurance through my homeowner's or renter's insurance is going to provide me with coverage for those injuries that she caused, but it's covering me on a personal basis. Once you form a business, you need what's called commercial insurance to cover the business liability. So there are two very different things. I highly recommend homeowners or renters insurance for everybody. I think that unfortunately, a lot of people in the world don't have renter's insurance, and that's very scary to me. And I don't even really care like my I have a 26 year old daughter, and I don't really care if her stuff gets stolen. She doesn't definitely have like the highest quality of furniture and stuff yet. He's only 26, right? If your house gets robbed, whatever, she needs that liability insurance, she's got a couple of cats. And if someone comes over for a party and the cat scratches them, and that gets infected, and they end up in the hospital, she needs liability insurance is going to cover the liability caused by her cat. That kind of makes sense.

Collin  35:19

Yeah, yeah, it does it just it just seen where those lines are and what activities you're involved in, whether that's personal or that sort of your business and how you have that set up?

Colleen Giles-Harris  35:27

Absolutely.

Collin  35:28

I know, you mentioned earlier, you really like waivers and signing forms like that. And I know one of the first thoughts that Megan and I had when we first started at sitting was okay, we just like make a waiver that says I'll never sue you regardless, and have my clients sign that is that is that? Is that an option?

Colleen Giles-Harris  35:45

Well, you can, you know, go for it. I love that idea. You know, I'm sort of a dirty little secret about waivers as we're hoping that it deters people. So let's say you know, you go to the fair, and you're going to go on one of those like, trampoline things with the harness, right, and you like jump up really high. I don't know if they have those where you are. But those kinds of sometimes when you're at the fair, you have to sign a little waiver saying, I'm not going to sue you if I get hurt, right? Great. They're hoping that if you get hurt, you're like, well, I signed a waiver. Right? But that doesn't necessarily stop my husband from suing them. Right? I signed the waiver. If I die on that trampoline thing, I guarantee my husband's gonna sue them. He's not gonna care. And a waiver, right? Yeah. But the hope is that if you get hurt, you're like, Oh, I signed a waiver. I'm not going to sue you. So, um, we want people to sign waivers because obviously, they're acknowledging that there is something going on, and that there could be an incident. And yeah, I get that. I'm not gonna sue you. So my dog goes to a dog daycare. And I signed a waiver saying that if my dog gets hurt there, or injure somebody else, I will take responsibility for it, which I would, because that's kind of person I am. But and I'm not going to sue the dog daycare, but doesn't say anything about me not suing the other dog owner. So if another dog at the dog daycare, viciously attacks my dog, I could still Sue that other person. Right? So there's all those little like caveats. And I should make this very clear. I'm not an attorney. I'm not, I can't give you legal advice, though. This is just things I've learned over the years. I am not an attorney. But, you know, waivers are going to hopefully deter someone from suing you, because they acknowledged previously that there was an exposure there. And you know, everyone understands that, but they still could, which is why it's so important that you also have insurance,

Collin  37:43

right? You mentioned earlier about the a good good lawyer is going to be able to wiggle through any most of that wording in any way possible. So still having

Colleen Giles-Harris  37:51

even just the defense. Right, you know, that's like, I don't think people think about that sometimes. So, you know, you might have a claim situation, that's not going to be covered, the claim isn't covered, because there was a waiver or something like that. And let's say it's a great waiver, and it stands up, and we're not going to cover because the of the waiver, but the person still sues you, you still have to go to court, you still have to have a lawyer expenses. And those kinds of things, the defense costs are still something that you want to have covered in that scenario. And an important thing to always look at in your insurance is are the defense costs inside the limits or outside the limits? Right? So our policy is outside the limits, meaning that any defense costs that the insurance company incurs well, defending your claim are not going to deplete your limits. So we have a million dollar bodily injury occurrence, one that let's say someone is seriously seriously hurt. And it's, you know, $800,000. And we actually did have an $800,000 claim that got paid out a couple years ago. The defense costs were $350,000. So our defense costs were inside the limits, that would have lowered our limit from a million dollars to 650 $650,000. Right, my math skills. That's all that would have been left. And when the court said, you owe $800,000, the insured would have had to come up with $150,000 because our limit had been depleted. Right? Right. But our defense costs are outside the limit, though it didn't matter that there were $350,000 of defense costs, there were still the full million dollars available to pay the loss. Some insurance policies do have inside the limit. So that's something that it's important to look at and your insurance, how is your defense costs set up? Because you always want whenever possible, outside the limits.

Collin  39:48

Think about that really big claim that you said, you know, what, how large can these claims get when we're when we're talking about court costs or anything like that.

Colleen Giles-Harris  39:59

So obviously, like we said, Earlier, the majority of the claims we see are going to be on the smaller side a few $100 to a few $1,000. So definitely the more common claims, the 800,000 claims $800,000 claim was a situation. What happened in that case was a pet sitter was walking a client dog. And I don't even believe the dog made contact with the person. But she was startled by the dog jumping up great. And then she fell over, and she hit her head. And there was like brain damage, she was hospitalized for a long time she couldn't work, it was really bad. And $800,000 for all her medical expenses, and all the other things that come into play when someone has that severe of an injury. Definitely unusual, but a big one. We also had a couple of claims that within about a few months, we had a pet sitter who was walking the dog, and the dog bit somebody in and we paid that claim, and it ended up being about 200 or $300,000, that pet sitter continued to walk that thing, dog and only within a couple of months later, the dog bit again. And he actually took the dog the second time into a cafe or something with people. So like he wasn't even trying to avoid people he like, you know, went someplace where there were a lot of people. And so the second claim, also, the medical bills and whatnot, were in the 200 to $300,000 range, but double liability came into play. So that's another legal thing, every state's a little bit different button, Wisconsin where I am, if you have a dog that you know, has a history of biting, and it bites a second time, there's double liability. So automatically, you have to pay twice as much for whatever what costs what have been, because you knew that this dog had a history, right. So in that case, within a matter of a few months, we paid out about $300,000 on one claim, and $600,000. On the second claim, I think that's something that people need to keep in mind. You know, I know we insure some pet trainers who work with aggressive dogs and dogs that have history of biting, I'm certainly not saying that you can't work with those kinds of dogs. But I think you need to be aware of the fact that your state might have a double liability situation. And you want to be extra careful, if you are working with a dog who has a history of biting, that's definitely a time where you want to get something in writing, you want to have the owner acknowledge that, hey, my dog's got history here. You know, you might want to ask them, even your homeowners still covering this dog. Because in some situations, the homeowners policy is going to now exclude the dog and they have no coverage for the dog anymore. So he's want to if you know the dog has a history of biting, you might want to ask a few more questions. And you also might want to keep in mind that there's no coverage, at least under our policy for injuries to you. So sometimes you might just want to like think about it. Do I really want to take care of this dog? You know, and I know it's hard, especially right now in our economic climate to turn jobs down. But sometimes that is the right answer. And you know, sometimes that's just the better thing for everybody to step away from the claim, or the dog. I mean, cuz it's gonna be a claim.

Collin  43:18

In that case, yeah. But yeah, no, you know, you take that of like, yeah, we doing those kinds of assessments of going, Okay, this is at Dollar trading session for an hour. The liability on this could be $800,000, if something goes wrong, is that, right? Is that worth it at right now? And just thinking about that, and making sure as you said, everything's documented, that may cause you to change up with the schedule of your training or offer different services and a new way to meet that need if you still want to serve that path, but doing things differently with them because of the history of them and taking all that into account.

Colleen Giles-Harris  43:53

Yeah, or even like using a muscle or something. You know, I know a lot people don't like muzzles, you know, I don't necessarily want to put one on my dog. But, you know, if my dog had been somebody before, you know, maybe a walker with a muzzle, just as an extra sense of protection, you know, you know, I don't want to have a situation where my dog bites somebody, I'd feel horrible if there was a severe injury, you know,

Collin  44:16

yeah, that and changing where and how you walk them, not taking them to a cafe or into a crowded market or, you know, into a little school with children, right? Don't take them there. You know, take them somewhere else, and start working on them and recommend training and all that kind of thing. Like take the holistic approach to that instead of just going, we'll be fine. It won't happen this time. Right?

Colleen Giles-Harris  44:35

I think that's really smart. Other large claims that we've seen not related to dog bites are things like floodings of homes. For example, we had a situation where a pet sitter was told you can use this bathroom but you can't use that bathroom that toilets broken and they use the wrong bathroom and the toilet overflowed and flooded and they were in an apartment building actually. So not only did it flood the apartment of the client, but it also caused water damage the apartment below. And that was several hundreds of 1000s of dollars. You know, if the owner had not told them that they couldn't use that toilet, I think there's a possibility that would have ended up being a homeowner's type situation. But because they had had that communication, and they were told not to, and they did anyway, now they're negligent. And now there's, you know, whoops, these

Collin  45:26

expensive whoops. You mentioned dog trainers, and I was curious about what other kind of you know, if they needed any special insurance for other services, as we're all kind of niching down and figuring out and offering new services. So things like if we're offering grooming or pet taxis, you know, what kind of coverages would we need for those kind of things?

Colleen Giles-Harris  45:48

Great question. And again, every Association probably be a little bit different. But with pet sitters associates, ours is an Alec Hart program. So our basic membership provides you with coverage as a traditional pet sitter, our dog walker, going into the client's home feeding the pets taking the dog for a walk going to the dog park, it does automatically include pet taxis. We provide coverage for pet taxis up to a 200 mile radius. We used to cover long distance pet taxis. So early on the conversation, you asked about changes that have been made. So we found a situation where sadly, a lot of dogs were dying in cross country travel, you know, they would get left at the back of a car overnight. And you know, they would die from exhaust fumes and stuff. So we just decided that wasn't something wanted to be part of anymore. So we limit our pet taxis and transporters to 200 miles because that's not normally going to be overnight. The majority of our pet taxi people are doing like taking the dog to the groomer or the that you know, for like an elderly client or something. But we do have some situations where, you know, maybe a puppy is purchased two hours away, and the pet taxi will pick the puppy up and then bring it to the new home, you know, that kind of thing, right? So that's actually covered under our basic membership. But within the pet taxi, we're really just covering an injury to the client pet in a car accident, we're not providing automobile liability, the pet taxi gets into a car accident and injures a person or something like that that's gonna fall under auto insurance. Ours really is just kind of covering for lack of a better term, I'm gonna say the cargo of the dog, you know, that kind of thing.

Collin  47:28

They're considered property. So that kind of terminology would fit there. Right?

Colleen Giles-Harris  47:32

Yeah. So I mean, that's the best kind of way of looking at we're going to cover the animals if they get hurt. Then we have all a cart coverages for the house sitting which again, we mentioned earlier, it's going to be taking care of someone's house without a pet, we have an optional coverage for grooming, we have an optional coverage for dog trainers, dog and cat trainers, we actually have a few cat trainers I knew thing I had never really heard of. But it's more like behavioral training for the cat, you know, maybe training how to use the litter box or that kind of thing. So dog cat training is one category we just introduced last year a coverage for show dog handlers. So it's not going to cover if you are your own, showing your own personal dog. But if you actually are training and handling, show dogs for other people, that some new coverage that we just added, our most common probably are the pet daycare and boarding operation. So if you aren't going to be bringing client pets back to your home, even just one at a time, you now are operating either a pet daycare, if it's during the day, or boardings duration, if it's overnight, so you need to add that coverage onto your membership to extend the liability insurance to cover your home. So it's not going to cover damage to your house. But it's going to cover let's say you've got client pet come in for the day. And a friend or the mailman stops over to your house and that person gets bit by the client dog. It's gonna cover that kind of scenario. Or if you have two dogs staying at your house and they get into a fight, you know, that kind of thing. So it's really important to add that pet daycare and boarding coverage on because unfortunately, at least a few times a year I get a phone call from a pet sitter who had a situation happen at their house and they didn't add that coverage on and I was like I'm sorry, you don't you don't have the pet daycare on boarding. And they're like, well, I don't really operate a daycare. I just bring one dog back. Well, that's a daycare, you know, you don't have to have multiple dogs for to be daycare, just one dog now it's a daycare. So and we do in our program limited to 10 dogs during the day or five overnight and that would apply to cats too. So make sure that you're doing the cat boarding, you know it's 10 animals during the day or five overnight. And we limit that because we're not really looking at covering the large operations. You know, the facilities that people have the dog daycare that my dog goes to is too large for our program. They have like 30 dogs although they keep them in smaller groups. Which makes me very happy the dog Mama. But they actually have 30 dogs there and then they also are a kennel. So it just that is too big for the kind of program that we have.

Collin  50:12

The death of a pet that we care for is always hard to deal with. And as a pet sitter, sometimes we can feel a little lost as to what to do to help out the owner. Well, thankfully, pepper anneals makes it easy as 123 to send a heartfelt condolence gift directly to someone with a broken heart. They have this awesome direct client gift service that takes the effort off of us and ensures a thoughtful, personalized sympathy gift reaches our client or even our employee. All gift packages include a handwritten card, colorful gift graph and shipping fees across the US and Canada. Now they're releasing an array of milestone gifts and greeting cards throughout 2021 that can be sent to celebrate birthdays, extend, get well wishes and to welcome new or even rescue pets into a family. They also have a few gift options in case you need to send a sympathy gift in memory of a special human client. If you're interested register for a free account to receive discounted package pricing. Rather than paying the consumer prices. Since the service is leveraged on an as needed basis, there are no monthly or annual obligation or minimum number of purchases. And that's really the best part. It's an as you need it service. But you get a discount as you sign up for your business. So learn more and register perennial comm forward slash pages Ford slash GPS, and use the referral code PS C at registration, where you'll get a unique coupon code to save $2 off any package you send in your first 90 days after you register. Now on that, if we're bringing them back into our home, is there a way? Or do we need to try and add our partner or kids to a policy or that fall under the homeowners policy?

Colleen Giles-Harris  51:52

And really, it's going to depend on how you operate your business. So I get that question all the time. If um, if you are, your spouse is going to be helping you with the dogs, you should add them as an extra, it's $90 to add them. But if your spouse isn't, I mean, you know your spouse better than anybody else. So I know you and Megan are different cuz you both pet sitters. But let's say that it's your business. And Megan's like, I want nothing to do with these dogs. I'm not helping, right. So you don't have to add her because she's not going to do anything. But if Megan's gonna feed the dogs, or even just let them in and out the backyard, it's better, in my opinion, to be safe, and just pay the extra $90. So that if she does something wrong, there's coverage, children's a little different. So we do not require that you pay to add minor children who still live with you. And the reason why we don't require that is we feel in the American culture, it's very normal to have people's children helping with business. So if you have a 16 year old daughter, and she wants to help walk dogs, we're fine with that. You know your daughter, if you trust your daughter, and you've trained her, and you feel like she can walk dogs, you don't have to add her as an employee or independent contractor because she's your child, and she lives with you. I will remind you, there's no coverage if she gets injured, though. So keep that in mind. Some parents might go, it's not worth the risk, I don't need my 16 year old daughter to get mauled in the face. So some people might not. But if you have an 18 year old child, they are no longer a minor, according to the law, to an 18 year old child who is helping with the business should be added as an employee or independent contractor because they are no longer considered your minor child even if they live with you. So it's one of those kind of weird things. But if you I know you have kids, so if you guys had a dog at the house, and your kids were playing with it, and you know they're playing a little too rough and the dog hurt itself, you don't have to worry about the fact that your kids not lifted because we expect that that's a normal thing in American culture,

Collin  53:49

you know, your spouse, you know your partner better than anybody else. And but that simple fact of like, they may have to help out one time or two times periodically, and just having them covered really is a that peace of mind again. So knowing that everything would be taken care of.

Colleen Giles-Harris  54:05

Yeah, I think it's a smart thing. I mean, I think I mentioned it earlier, we do provide coverage for incidental helpers, we define an incidental helper as anyone who helps you out less than 30 days total within your membership term. And you pay them less than $600 annually, which is kind of an IRS thing. But we cover the incidental helpers for free because we understand there's going to be situations where you're going to need help, just a little bit, and we don't want to make you pay for it. So maybe it's Christmas time and things are extra crazy because everyone's got stuff going on at Christmas. So you need to hire an extra helper for like two weeks at Christmas, right? That's less than 30 days and as long as you pay them less than $600 they're automatically covered. Or let's say you have the flu, and you have jobs scheduled for tomorrow or sadly right now you've got COVID and you need someone else to come and jump in and take care of your dogs for a couple of weeks while you quarantine. We don't want you to have to add on somebody The $90, because you need someone to help you out for a couple of weeks. So that's a really special thing within pet sitters associates, I don't know how other programs work. So something you'd want to look at if you are a member elsewhere, but we have that sort of extra thing. The only thing about incidental helpers, it does not apply to a pet daycare. So if you wanted to have someone help you out, and they're going to take dogs back to their house, you do need to add them on. And you do need to add on the pet daycare for their house, because the pet daycare coverage is location specific, we're actually covering the location, which is why it's listed specifically on your membership. So as long as your incidental helper isn't going to go and bring them back to their house, you don't have to pay anything, all those

Collin  55:43

little things to keep track of in your mind with all of this these terms and all these definitions that we've broken down today, like what would you say is one of the biggest misunderstandings or confusing things about insurance that pet sitters have?

Colleen Giles-Harris  55:56

Well, kind of like we talked about earlier about people thinking maybe they don't need it, because they are, you know, only working with their family and friends. I think that's a big thing. When I look at the number of pet sitters in the United States, and then the number of members that we have, and the number of members that I know other associations have, I know there's a very large portion of uninsured pet sitters. So either they don't think they have an exposure because they're only working with their family and friends, or they incorrectly think that they've got coverage through their homeowner's policy. Some companies provide coverage for home based businesses, to your homeowners insurance, you can add on an endorsement for a home based business. And without really thinking about it. Some pet sitters think oh, that covers my business. Well, it might cover some things, but it's definitely not going to cover the client pet if it gets injured, which is, again, one of the biggest claims we see our interest to the pets. And it's probably you know, like, can you have a major claim your homeowners insurance probably gonna be like, yeah, you bought the endorsement, but I don't really know. But we didn't really know what we were covering. So I think the biggest thing is people either not thinking they need insurance, or ignorantly. And I don't mean that to sound bad using the word ignorantly. But no, I'm not understanding the insurance that they have thinking it covers more than they do. I think that's a big thing. And I would say just having a good insurance agent would help you. So a lot of people these days by their homeowners or renters insurance online through a direct resource like Geico or progressive or whatever. And that's all well and good for just a simple homeowners or renters policy with nothing special on it, but you have a business, you probably want to look and talk to somebody, you know, a website that you can go to with questions like our program does, or actually like going to someone's office and speaking with them, you know, traditional insurance agent, you really want to make sure that you've got really what, what you need and understand what you have

Collin  57:56

this hour, we've been talking so far, like the number of circumstantial kind of conversations that come up of like, ooh, am I covered under this? Or under this? Or what about all of those kinds of things that come up that you may think of? Those are hard to answer during an online FAQ, that's because they're not going to take the time to print out every single possible scenario,

Colleen Giles-Harris  58:18

every hypothetical claim scenario that possibly could come up the ones that wake you up at two in the morning and are like, yeah, those aren't gonna be on there.

Collin  58:26

No, they're not. So having somebody to talk to is is really huge. Thinking about that, you know, maybe over the last 18 years, what's been one of the more surprising planes that you see are more, you know, shocking, or whatever.

Colleen Giles-Harris  58:41

I would say one of the weirdest claims I've ever seen, probably a good 1015 years ago, and how it's gonna remember how the claim turned out. But there was a dog daycare situation where there was a unaltered female dog who was a breeding dog, it was a purebred dog that was intent on breeding, right, and it was in heat. And for whatever reason, the pet owner and the pet sitter thought it was fine to have this in heat dog at the dog daycare with unaltered male dogs, right? Like, I don't know what they were thinking, but they apparently thought that was okay. So the pet sitter was out of the room. And when she came back in a whole bunch of dogs, you know, together, right? And she separated them thinking it was just a fight. Well, the owner of the female found out the dog was pregnant. But the The worst part of it was, well, one's dog was meant to breed. So they were losing money because they had intent on breeding her right. So there was that part of the situation. But then the other question was, which dog impregnated her, she was a little dog, and there was a big dog and a little dog that could have impregnated her. And the concern was, if she'd been impregnated by the big dog, the puppies will potentially kill her, you know, because there'd be too big for her to deliver, they'd have to have a C section. and whatnot. So there was this big concern about one the loss of money because they couldn't read it now until the next heat cycle into which dog had impregnated her. Luckily, in the end, I remember it was the smaller dog that had impregnated her. So there wasn't a concern about the injuries, you know, we're a C section or anything. And I do believe that they were able to, you know, adopt out all the puppies because they were still really cute and everything. But I can't remember how much we paid on it or any of the details that long ago. But I remember thinking that is probably one of the weirdest things I will ever have to do. I

1:00:35

didn't know you get the the puppy version of Maury out there trying to figure out

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:00:42

today on Jerry Springer, you

Collin  1:00:45

are the Father.

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:00:49

You never know what you're gonna see in my industry. Yeah,

Collin  1:00:52

you never know. And it's always new, indifferent. That's I'm gonna be thinking about that story for a long time. too. There's, there's kind of two things to consider of insurance like most the time it's either you're just starting out, and you need consider insurance? Or maybe you've been in the business a while How do you reassess? So? We'll take with those both at a time. Like, what advice would you give to somebody just starting out and getting insurance?

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:01:17

Well, from an insurance perspective, I definitely recommend, you know, looking around at your different options, or if you have friends who are in the patenting industry, asking them for references. Typically, people are not shy to tell you if they're unhappy with their insurance. So I mean, I would listen to people, but also like take that with a caveat because sometimes people get grumpy about things that really aren't the insurance company's fault. But I would ask people for advice on who they recommend for insurance and you look around on the internet. Outside of insurance, I would recommend to a new pet sitter that they contact their city, county and state government to find out if there's any licensing requirements, every area is different, some require licensing, some don't. Some situations, you're going to find that the dog park or the county park requires that you have insurance to go there as a pet sitter in Marin County, California, which is the San Francisco area of California, all pet sitters and dog walkers must have insurance in order to bring their dogs into any of the parks and we're in county. So things like that are good to know. I also recommend contacting an attorney to help you put a contract or a waiver together. Or if you don't want to spend the money on an attorney, you might want to look and see if your area has a small business bureau. Some small communities have small business bureaus that will provide you with either inexpensive or sometimes even free legal advice for small businesses. So that's a resource for you. And then just make sure that you know what kind of services you're going to provide starting out so that you have the insurance to cover those services. as your business grows, likely, you might be adding services. But I think it's important to think about that. A lot of times, you know, a pet sitter will join the pet sitters associates with the basic insurance or maybe just one or two things, and they don't think about it again. Suddenly, they're offering grooming, and they don't think to add the grooming coverage on because they just don't think about it that insurance isn't the first thing people think about right. But whenever you're adding a new service, whenever you're going to be doing something new, you want to make sure that that is going to be covered by your insurance policy. And maybe it already is, or maybe you have to add something on. So I'm an example of pet sitters associates, go to the website, look at the insurance options page, look at the FAQ page. If your answers not there, reach out to the association, you're probably going to talk to Elizabeth is the office manager at PSA. She's fantastic, super helpful, real friendly. She can answer a lot of the basic questions. But if it gets really insurance specific she's going to give you to me, and then I'm going to talk with you about this specific scenario. So you know, and I'm always happy to do that. And I've tried to like really take the time to talk to people not just getting through their question, but I want to make sure that people understand what they have. So that later on if there's a claim, and they didn't purchase what I told them to be like, well, we did talk about that. So don't yell at me. I can feel that sometimes I'm like, I'm not my fault. Don't yell at me. Right?

Collin  1:04:17

Well, that's a good reminder of, especially as a lot of us, pivoted, and they're offering new service or different services because of COVID. Like, we may have done that just to start bringing in income or keep this lights on, but didn't think about the insurance. So thinking back and going, Oh, I offered grooming I started offering grooming. I'm not actually covered for that. So let's go back and get that coverage. And as you grow, you know those things just happen but especially now we're a lot of us changed some of us really drastically, making sure our insurance keeps up with us as we change our

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:04:49

thinking of COVID I know that there's a lot of people who are struggling right now, you know, if their clients were mostly people who were going on vacation, and now people aren't going on vacation, Or a lot of their clients are now working at home. And perhaps they don't need the daily dog walk because they're at home, we've got a lot of questions from people about just ideas on how to branch out, and how to, you know, expand their business during COVID. Some of the ideas that I've heard from people are reaching out to essential workers who maybe you weren't working with before. But now you've got a nurse who is working longer hours, and perhaps they need a pet sitter, they didn't need one before, but now they do. or looking at your clients or working at home and offering dog walks during zoom calls, you know, you have an important business meeting on zoom, and your dog is barking in the background, some companies not gonna be a big deal, others are gonna be a little embarrassed, you know, so reaching out to them and saying, hey, and I realized that you don't need me to come every day because you're home. But if you've got a zoom call every Tuesday and Thursday at two o'clock, maybe I can walk the dog during that time, so you don't have to worry about it. So trying to like just think about what, it's different people don't need you in the same way. But maybe they need you in a different way. Or we've had some dog trainers who are no longer meeting with people in person. They're now offering Dog Training over zoom. You know, you still need insurance for that. They are still offering training. But it's okay to do it over zoom. But there's things like that then just kind of think about think outside the box a little bit.

Collin  1:06:26

I know one of the big ones that start people started offering were poop scooping and pet taxi. And, you know, that's a great option, especially if people are staying at home needing things to get done run errands. But if that's not something that's covered under your existing policy, right, like you need to be careful with that and just double check those kinds of things to make sure it keeps up.

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:06:45

Yeah, and what customers associates both of those are covered under the basic membership. And I love pooper scoopers mostly because I love the names. Like if you're gonna pick up poop or loving, they always have the best names like our local guy who picks up poop for my house. The name of the turd burglars and I think that's hilarious. You know, you got to have a good sense of humor about it.

Collin  1:07:09

You do you if you got it, you got to just be open and honest about it and be like, yep, this is what we do. And we do. Awesome. So yeah.

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:07:17

And we have some pooper scoopers just do pop pick up in people's yards. But then there we have some pooper scoopers, who, you know, you go to the park and there's the little post with the you can get the doggie bags and throw the poop in nothing. So city parks require that the pooper scooper have insurance for that. So that's an interesting way to branch out if your city doesn't already have that or in our small towns don't necessarily have that. It's an interesting opportunity you're not doing a service for the community in the in the city typically pays people to do that kind of thing, because they don't want to pick up the boat. Right. So you know, it's a great little, a very interesting add on to people's services. I think another thing I've heard a lot of people are doing is, you know, they've got extra free time, because, you know, they're not working as much. So they're volunteering in their community. You know, they're volunteering at the local humane society or the local food shelter. And obviously, helping your community is number one priority, but sort of a secondarily, it's a great networking opportunity. You know, you're meeting people who maybe you wouldn't have met before. You know, maybe you meet somebody at the food bank, you know what your stocking shelves with them, and maybe they don't need a pet cetera like, Hey, you know, my aunt uncle probably could use a pet sitter, though, which is another opportunity to get your name out there your face out there and, and also help your community at the same time.

Collin  1:08:33

Yeah, which is something that we all all want and should be involved in doing. Coleen, this has been a wonderful conversation, I really appreciate you taking the time to break down all of these things and talk through some of these scenarios and help us understand how we're currently covered and maybe how we can help shore up those sides to make sure that we're better covered moving into the future. I know there's a lot more questions out there, though. It's a big field with lots of possibilities. As we mentioned, though, so how can people get in touch and learn more about their insurance and what kind of coverage they need for their business?

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:09:08

for pet sitters associates, it's going to be the website, which is pet sit llc.com. The insurance options page and the FAQ page are very detailed. I helped to write them. So it's really explaining all of the coverages that we have. Obviously, not every question that anybody possibly could have would be on there. So I would if you don't, if your question isn't answered, then I've reached out to the association. And like I said, Elizabeth would put you in contact with me if she couldn't answer the basic type questions that you have. If you're not a member of pet sitters associates and you're not sure about your insurance, just ask questions, you know, a good insurance agents going to take the time to talk to you and answer those questions for you. And if they're not taking the time to help you then maybe that's a sign that they're not the right insurance agent for you.

Collin  1:09:53

All red flags for sure on that they're not helpful. Look for somebody who is going to be because when you need You need them to be helpful.

Colleen Giles-Harris  1:10:02

Yeah, I always joke that there's only two times in life where insurance matters. One, if you have to prove it to get a job, right, you have to provide proof of insurance to walk the dog and the dog park, or you know, your client wants proof of insurance before you start working for them. Right. That's number one. And then number two is when you have a claim, right? Otherwise insurances, just peace of mind that you want to make sure you've got a good experience with proof of insurance and a good claims experience. Nobody wants to have a claim, but they want a good claims experience. And with pet sitters associates, the insurance company that we work with has a dedicated claims group that works on these claims. So if not just go small claims adjuster, they understand our program, they understand what pet sitters do, you're not going to have to explain what you do on a daily basis, they already understand it all. And they really like work hard to make sure that they are covering the claims that they should cover, obviously, denying the ones that they shouldn't. We're gonna be covered. That's just the way the world is. An insurance policy can't cover absolutely everything. But we want to make sure that if we do have to deny a claim, we've explained it to you. So you understand why. And, you know, take the time to do that. It's very important.

Collin  1:11:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's that time and that attention. That's that's that service that you need in those times of uncertainty. Thank you. Thank you, again, so much for coming on. Colleen. It's been a real pleasure.

1:11:22

Thanks, Colin, anytime,

Collin  1:11:24

the importance of having a good solid, robust, well covered insurance policy for you and your business cannot go understated here. And regardless of where we get our insurance from having quality insurance coverage, that is covering the services that we provide, that has an agent that can walk us through particular scenarios and work with us and become a partner in helping us to run the best possible fitness. That peace of mind is absolutely priceless. So if you haven't looked at your insurance policy in a while, dig that thing out, blow off the dust, and flip through it and make sure that it's still covering you the way you want to be covered. And if you don't currently have insurance, start calling around today. Get connected, reach out to other pet sitters and see what they're using, see what kind of coverages they have, what's worked for them in the past? What are they hoping to change in the future. When we can look around us and assess the liabilities that we are exposed to and start protecting ourselves against those, we can run a more confident business, and we can give better service to the people who we want to be serving. We want to thank our sponsors time to pet and pet perennials for making this show possible. And thank you so much for listening. It truly means a lot for you to show up every week for you to listen for you to share our episodes. You can see our entire back catalogue in whatever podcast app that you're listening to or head on over to pet sitter confessional calm. We're on Facebook and Instagram at pet sitter confessional. We'd love to hear from you. So send an email at feedback at pet sitter confessional comm let us know what you're learning. Let us know what kind of insurance you have. And if you've ever had to use it, and what that was like we'd love to share those kinds of stories as well so others can get an idea of that process. So, again, thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back again soon.