186: Pressing Pause
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary
Stressed? Feeling overwhelmed? We are. The rapid increase in new clients has caught many of us off-guard and scrambling to meet the new demands. We want to give you permission to press pause for a few seconds and just breathe. We know there are so many things on your plate to get done today and this week. Which of them are mission critical to your business? We encourage you to seriously take 30 seconds to rest and focus on the emotions, fears, and stresses that bubble up. We share how we’re processing everything and encourage you to give yourself permission to rest. Natasha O’Banion answers the best way to scale to meet the new demand.
Topics on this episode:
BREATHE
Understanding our emotions
Handling our stress
Ask a Pet Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Give yourself permission to press pause, and focus on the core of your business, and yourself.
Links:
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, stressed, business, pet, busy, focus, support, sitters, people, pet sitter, associates, listen, confessional, capacity, hire, walk, feel, prepare, week, episode
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is pet sitter confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to Episode 186.
Collin 00:32
Hello.
Meghan 00:33
Today we are talking pressing pause. You u s e, not pa Ws. Although I guess if you want to think you heard it with a W Go ahead. Anyway, if you haven't already hit the subscribe or follow button in your podcast player so that you never miss an episode. We've been putting out content for about three years now. And we have no plans of stopping anytime soon. Nope. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members. If you have found value in this podcast, please consider supporting us every month with the price of a cup of coffee. We try to provide content that is relevant that's engaging and ultimately really helpful to your pet care business. You can go to pet sitter confessional comm slash support.
Collin 01:21
And as you may know, last week's episode was a pretty big one for us Episode 185. We received a ton of feedback that you all loved it that it really resonated with you. So we plan on doing more roundtables with different sets of people on different topics. So if you have ideas or things that you would like to cover, or even people that you would like to have included in a roundtable, let us know on Facebook or Instagram, we're at petsitter confessional.
Meghan 01:48
So this episode is going to be a little bit different than most. And I really want everyone to take a moment to breathe. So as we've recapped many times before, and as you personally experienced most likely last year, the bottom fell out of the pet care industry. When vaccination started to roll out this year in January and February, it really seemed as if people were excited about the possibility of traveling. And then spring break came and tons of sitters were busy and it was great. And now that summer is in full swing, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are busier than ever and June will be our highest grossing month ever for our personal pet care business. And it seems that sitters and walkers are really at max capacity right now and turning away clients left and right, because we just can't handle taking on any more. So we wanted to use this episode as a reminder of several things, to really take a minute to breathe, and reassess. A lot of times we talk about doing on the podcast. So we talked about doing social media posts, we talk about doing marketing, doing advertising, and doing updates and pictures for clients doing the actual walks and the visits, and on and on and on. A lot of our businesses are about doing. But right now in this insane time of doing walk after walk and visit after visit and meet and greet after meet and greet after meeting green. Let's take a moment to pause and breathe and not do anything, which actually we are doing quite a lot by stepping back.
Collin 03:24
Yeah, I like to call it being productive nothingness or even taking a productive rest. Just like when you're sleeping, you're not actually doing anything. But technically, your body is doing a lot, resetting your brain allowing your body to heal. There are so many psychological, physiological and mental buttons that reset when we sleep. And it's the exact same thing when we take just a few minutes to actively and very intentionally do nothing in the middle of chaos.
Meghan 03:56
Now, this sounds kind of super woowoo. And we're not really about the womb most times. But really, we are seeing tons of sitters stressed to the max because of this bubble of people traveling that really seems to have burst. It started the beginning of the year for us. And it's just every month is more and more clients more and more thankful revenue. But it's just the buisiness is insane. Right now we are really stretched and pushed to the brim of our capacity and yours probably too.
Collin 04:26
So right now, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I guess if you're driving, find a place to pull over and stop for a minute. But just be still focus. And just breathe focus only on breathing. For the next 30 seconds. It's going to feel like an eternity. But that's because we're all so used to being in motion. I don't know if you've had this experience of if you've ever gone spelunking or caving and you go into a cavern that's just big, open nothingness and you turn off your light and you stop Moving in everyone is still this, the silence is deafening. Because we're so used to having so much hustle and bustle and the harm of activity in our lives, that when we actually carve out a moment of space and silence and solitude, we get really uncomfortable. So prepare for the uncomfortable nest that's about to come, but focus on breathing, and just know that it's okay to be sitting still right now. So here's our 30 seconds of just breathing.
Meghan 06:00
So how did that feel? Did you actually do it? So I hope that you took 30 seconds to just sit there and breathe. It's not often that we get to do that, but you deserve it. You deserve to not feel stressed, you deserve to find a minute or 30 seconds of peace and calm. We aren't meant to operate at 100% for weeks on end. And I feel like that's what we've been doing recently is just going and going and going. But what was your mind focused on in that 30 seconds? Was it focused on how late you are for your next appointment? Or what's for dinner? Or? How weird was it to do that, to sit there for just 30 seconds? And to not think of trying not to think about anything? What emotions came through? Was it fresh frustration, exhaustion, fear,
Collin 06:57
the more that we allow ourselves to sit and be still, the more we're able to, the more we're able to actually get out of those thoughts and those feelings as we process them. And the actually easier it becomes to know when things are out of balance in our lives and understand why we're so stressed. And actually, the more we sit still, the easier it becomes to sit still. And many times we have trouble sitting still because we are stressed or anxious about something. So why are you feeling stressed right now? Are you feeling stressed because you don't have any time in your day. Or maybe you worried about letting a client down, fitting someone in the schedule or having to turn someone away? I know that that's something for us, it is not easy for us to have to turn somebody away when we're at capacity. There are so many things that can be causing stress in our lives. And it's different for each and every single one of us. Maybe you're anxious about something going wrong, or you're starting to second guess yourself about a decision that you've made. I'm actually stressed right now, because our days are really long and fitting in all the clients is getting harder and harder as being more busy. And I'm stressed and anxious because I'm I'm really sad that I don't get to see the kids as much as I did even a week ago. Now something that isn't stressful or anxiety inducing is insurance with pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. pesters associates, is here to help for over 20 years pet service associates has provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or want to make your passion for pets into a profession. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connection and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet set llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets it llc.com. So what are some things that we can do to handle our stress and handle these anxieties. The first
Meghan 09:09
thing we can do is prepare. So this means mentally, the breathing and reflection exercise that we just did is very helpful. Again, if you only have 30 seconds or a minute, it can be done and then prepare physically, you eat healthy, you get a well balanced activity in obviously if you're a dog walker, you're already doing this but making sure that your meals are healthy, that you're not stopping to get fast food every day or every few days that you're preparing. One day a week what you're going to have even if it's just writing it down, you don't actually have to prepare the meal necessarily, but just knowing what you're going to have on Wednesday so it's taken off of your plate literally been taken off of your mind. So you don't have have to think about it. And the third way you can prepare is emotionally so be connected to others. If this fills your bucket in times of stress, having somebody to talk to is very helpful. Who do you vent to? Do you have someone close by that you can decompress to after a long day column. And I obviously have that because we're always in each other's space, and we enjoy it. But if you don't have someone, please reach out to us, we would be happy to help you through any tough time that you're going through, we may not be able to answer the call right away. But if you just need to scream and yell into the answering machine, or vent about a client, go right ahead.
Collin 10:39
Some people handle stress by needing to talk through it with somebody else. Other people get even more stressed out by talking with somebody. So what do you do if that's you, if you get stressed out talking through it? Well, I know that's me. And for me, it's all about systems and routines, they're just they're really helpful for me, they allow you to have some control in the chaos, time, Windows intake forms, office hours, all of those go a long way in processing stressful scenarios, recognizing that it's just for a time, it will not be like this forever. However, there are things that are in your control, again, those processes, the number of clients you take on, when they contact you,
Meghan 11:21
the self care that you may or may not do. And if you have time to fit that in. I used to stress out so much about saying no, when we were at capacity, it would really eat at me for a few days. What if the client went to somebody else? What if the client never came back to me? What if I offended that person, but it really doesn't matter what they think ultimately, but now I've accepted our limits and know that I can't help everyone and I shouldn't help everyone. We don't want to be the business for everyone. If they contact me when we're booked, that's not my problem. Now that we can scale and grow to try and meet that demand. But that doesn't help in the moment when I'm fully booked. So remember, a client's emergency is not our problem. As customer service goes, we can do what we can to help. But there are limits to everything.
Collin 12:13
So focus what's in your control. Realizing that there may be things that don't get done today, if you're slammed and barely keeping your head above water,
Meghan 12:22
which I feel like we're doing.
Collin 12:24
Yeah, don't worry about posting on social media. Don't worry about the blog post that usually goes up on Thursdays, you have our permission to not do those things. And instead focus on the core of your business,
Meghan 12:37
which is taking care of the pets.
Collin 12:40
It's kind of like a trauma, or er center, stop the major bleeding before you worry about the hangnail. Focus on your clients and customer service before you worry about doing something like AB testing your next ad spot
Meghan 12:54
or making sure you have all of your social media content ready for July or for August that can wait that can be put on hold while you deal with the insanity. That is petsitting right now.
Collin 13:07
And since we're operating our own businesses, and we've talked about before how we are all wearing many different hats to just function have our business function in any given day, it can feel like we aren't allowed to not do some of these things. The title of this episode is pressing pause. And that goes for many different things. And for this one right here, there are activities, there are things that go on in your business that you are allowed to press pause on for a time being so that you can go work and do other things and have your full focus on things that are going on. So that those actually get done. And part of this idea of being consumed by these activities being consumed by the business is that we don't give ourselves permission to put those things aside that we feel like they have to get done because they always get done. And that's always what happened. And when these busy times come up and we're slammed and other reasons we forget to put those down, we forget to take off those hats. And so you can give yourself permission. And if that's hard for you, again, you have our permission to not put out that blog post this week because you're focused on other things, and that's okay.
Meghan 14:20
The second way to really prepare for stress is to focus on our attitude and to feel grateful. The pandemic taught us many, many things and one of them is to be thankful in every season, but particularly in the busy times. We weren't really sure when or how the industry would bounce back last March. But here we are in a big boom of clients. Embrace it, be grateful. Remember that it wasn't always like this and it won't always be like this. You know when September comes around and people start going back to school and back to work the long week long boardings and the week Long drop in visits will probably subside. And hopefully, as more people start going back to work more midday dog walks will start to increase again. But it'll just kind of be this ebb and flow that happens, you know, every year seasonally, but especially this year, because it feels like so every every single client is traveling right now.
Collin 15:20
Well, you mentioned feeling grateful. I remember this time last year, saying to myself, I'll never get angry again at a red light, because that problem pales in comparison to everything else that was going on. And sure enough, you know what happened this past week, I got angry at a red light because I was worried about running late between clients, clients that we didn't even have this time last year, who are brand new to us. And I was frustrated and stressed about being late to one of the visits. And I in that moment, I was reminded to be grateful that this won't last and that these stressful moments, I need to be thankful that I am actually able to be stressed about being so busy, because it wasn't like this last year. And you can also think about being grateful for the wonderful clients that you have in your life and whatever else brings you joy throughout your day.
Meghan 16:09
So we wanted to let you know how we are doing in this busy time. For me, it is hard, I'm not really the kind of person that likes taking a step back. If you know me at all, I'm type A or if you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you know that it's not easy for me to not do something, I get a lot of satisfaction out of being very busy. So I struggle with sometimes fighting with myself between the need to constantly be busy. But also recognizing that is not healthy for me in the long run. As I mentioned before, going at 100% for weeks on end is not okay for your body or your mental health. So I use my calendar, I focus on one day at a time, I recognize that if I don't get to something today, it'll still be there tomorrow. I didn't post anything on social media today. And I had to be okay with that. I just couldn't fit it into my schedule. I keep things into perspective, if I don't put out the blog post on Thursday, this week, it's going to be okay, my clients will understand. Some of them enjoy reading the blogs, and most of them, don't read them and don't care. So you know, the end of the world is not going to take place. If I don't produce something this week, I need to be focused on the care of the pet and myself as well, the 30 seconds, every couple hours, or the five minutes every day really helps to reset me. And to help me to remember what is truly important,
Collin 17:37
I'm a lot more sensitive to being busy, I do not thrive on constantly doing things, unlike Megan. So during busy periods, I really have to focus on one task at a time. And and thankfully, I'm able to do that by having good procedures for everything that we do. And everything that is required, specifically, our calendar it live and die by that if I did not have the calendar in place, I would not be able to have peace of mind about what I was doing throughout the day. So one thing that I've started to do more than I was doing is to give me a little bit more peace of mind as I'm reviewing and regularly reviewing client information before we care for their pets and rehearsing and walking through processes in my mind before you actually do them. This allows me to know exactly what needs to be done. And I'm practicing it to it's always perfect in my mind. And then I can count for things as they come up. Again, it's it's how do you eat an elephant, one bite at a time. So instead of focusing on an entire week's worth of walks and drop ins, I focus on the key that I'll need for the next drop in at 6am. I cannot allow myself to get ahead of my own schedule. Otherwise, I start to feel overwhelmed. And I can't be stressed about that walk that I have at 9pm. On Friday, when I'm walking up to my walk at 6am on Monday. There's so much between now and then that I have to focus on the here and now. Now again, that comes down to having good systems and having things on the calendar and in our software. And that's again what allows me to focus on those tasks at hand.
Meghan 19:12
So we encourage you to maybe take another 32nd breathing break when we're done with the podcast here. Send us an email or a voicemail with your frustrations or your stressors that you're dealing with right now. And again, if all you need to do is scream or yell into voicemail Go right ahead. As we just talked about being very, very busy. Natasha opionion, a pet business coach is going to be answering the question of scaling to meet the new demand.
Collin 19:36
Businesses are recovering at a rapid rate as everything's opening up and people are going back to work and traveling a lot more. What are some ways that we could scale quickly to meet that demand so that we are supported as we grow through the rest of this year?
Natasha 19:53
Perfect. So the first thing is to look at new holes, look at the holes in your business right now. If you have all of a sudden, as a Rapid amount of clients that are contacting you figure out where are they contacting me? Because that's the first step. First of all, I'm in business, I'm getting contacted. How is it via the phone? Is the email? Is it via text? Bigger? My texts are off the hook right now the phones are off the hook right now. Okay, well, what do I need to put in place to not have the phone's off the hook to not have the text off the hook? Do I have enough staff members even support that? Or is automation supporting me to where I don't even need that? So that's number one. Number two is being okay with letting the client sit for a second. So if you have all these over bookings, okay, it's okay to say, listen, let me take a peek at my schedule. And let me get back to you to make sure I can support you properly. If all of a sudden you're getting so overbooked to where you can't support them say, listen, right now we are booked. But I'm going to go ahead and hire someone. So your next booking we can take it right away. How does that sound? They're like, that sounds fair. Thank you. Um, same thing on my time window. Sometimes I have a client that says, oh, listen, I want this ideal time window, because I go to work at 5am. And I'm saying, Listen, thank you for letting us know, we're gonna stick with our time window. But now that I know what you need, I'm gonna go ahead and hire someone to begin to offer you more options. How does that sound? They say sounds good. So just be honest with how fast you're growing and where you are. But you can also slow it down. You don't have to say yes to all the bookings. Because one thing you don't want to do is have bad reviews or bad client experience or that one shot you got with the client was a really bad one. So Wouldn't you rather have no shot than a bad shot. So just let them know, Hey, listen, we are fully committed. And to be honest with yourself, I only can take 10 onboarding clients around, they can take 12 that's my capacity. I have a client right now who is doing house sitting and boarding. So she has boarding going on at her house. And then she has house sitting at people's homes. And I'm like, How the heck are you doing this? And she's like, I don't even know. I'm just saying yes. Like, you just need to go ahead and say no. So the first thing we did together as we formulated a text message that she sent out and said, Listen, I realize that I may have overextended myself, what I can offer you is boarding in my home because we're no longer going to offer house sitting. She gave them an option, but something that she could scale. And the client said, You know what, that sounds great.
Collin 22:25
And that's just as you said, being honest with ourselves, and not just what we want right now. But what we want out of the business down the line so that we can continue to be consistent with our decisions as we continue to lay that foundation and then grow towards that ultimate goal.
Natasha 22:40
Absolutely. I mean, that's the main thing with a solopreneur is like, really exist that fear of hiring and getting somebody on board. But you only can you only can scale as far as you can reach. So you know me I always say hire more than what you need. Always keep bringing people in and keep your hiring funnel open. Never close it don't hire when you need to hire hire all the time, because my ads always running. But I don't always say yes, it's just running and running. And then I find a rock star that comes in and I'm like, Hey, why don't have a whole shift right now. But let me give you a couple. And then I know that you're here, I'm going to go ahead and do some more marketing and fill you up. How does that sound? They say it sounds good. And I do that over and over. It's a rinse and repeat. When you have a process, you rinse it, you repeat it because it works. And now you know cool. I'm getting like enough staff members on auto. So when clients come in, I can continue to say yes, now because I'm actually having a scalable foundation that supports the growth,
Collin 23:41
you're setting that capacity of overloading that capacity of going okay, if I'm always working at 110% I there's no way that I can grow beyond that. But if I set my capacity to 200% now I've got some wiggle room to grow and relax as the as the market demands that for my business to expand or meet needs as they change.
Natasha 24:01
Yeah, and let's talk about the flip side for my solopreneurs I know you guys know I like to hire but I want to support myself and ours too. If you are adamant on staying a solopreneur you need to set your capacity just like Colin said. So if you're like Listen, 20 is my max 20 is what I can do on my own. That's what I got. That's, that's what I can give a backup company in case you know, shit hits the fan. So if you know that's your max, don't go to 21 don't go to 22 you said it was 20. So stick to your word to yourself. 20 is my max. That's as far as it's gonna go anything more than that liability can start happening. Now. Do you want to say yes to liability? Or do you want to say yes to sanity? So know what you're saying yes to it's true is to know what you're saying yes to because clients are totally fine with finding another option. People are so afraid to say no, but they're like if you would have just been honest with me and said you couldn't do it. I could have found something else but now we're arguing with each other They're in having kind of a bad experience when that would have never happened before. So stick to your guns Know your limits. And you know, don't you know overextend yourself, it's just gonna cause you more harm.
Meghan 25:15
If you would like Natasha to be your pet business coach, you can go to her website, start scale sale, calm and use the code p sc 20. For 15% off her coaching, thank you so much for taking your most valuable asset, your time and listening to us today.
Collin 25:29
And it's even more valuable as the times go on as you are busier and busier. And so it really does mean a lot that you take moments out to listen to us and to share and give feedback. We really can't tell you how much that mean. Thank
Meghan 25:42
you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode and we hope you join us next time. Thanks
