282: The Roller Coaster of Business
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Summary:
Do you ever feel like you’re on a roller coaster? We know business is never static and there are things we can do to try to manage the business side of change. We cannot ignore the emotional toll the ups and down take on us though. We break down how to start preparing to embrace the emotions from the high and lows that happen, and how to make sure we don’t get derailed. Natasha O’Banion answers the question, “How do I get better at upselling my services?”
Main topics:
Emotions in business
Preparing
Healthy responses
Keeping a level head
Ask a Biz Coach
Main takeaway: You will have different feelings, emotions, and responses to things that happen. The hope is that those become healthier and less destructive towards us.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
client, business, highs, pet sitter, emotions, recognizing, pet, important, roller coaster, happen, offer, process, greet, feel, confessional, negative, upsell, deal, impact, talking
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin and we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hey there, welcome to episode 282.
Collin 00:22
Hello,
Meghan 00:23
today we're going to be talking about the rollercoaster of a business. First, we would like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters Associates, and our awesome Patreon members who support us with the price of a cup of coffee every month.
Collin 00:37
Folks like Anna, Desiree, Liz and Yvonne,
Meghan 00:40
we are very appreciative of you giving a little bit of your money and for all of you giving your time and listening to these episodes every week. Thank you. If you would like to learn more about how to financially support the podcast and to keep it going. Also, you have early access to episodes and a monthly meetup on Zoom. You can learn all about that at Pet Sitter confessional.com/support. There's a saying that there are two things guaranteed in life, death and taxes. And in business
Collin 01:13
change, yes, hopefully that,
Meghan 01:17
no, we're all gonna die. But taxes are important and essential. But one thing that is guaranteed in business is that it will never be constant. Yes, there is always something constantly changing. And it can be invigorating for a lot of people that there's always something new and exciting to solve or deal with. But it is something that we have to manage. And it can be something that's not very easy to handle, because we never know kind of what is waiting for us on the other side of the door. But today we are going to be talking about how to deal with the highs and lows in business and kind of riding that roller coaster. Because we're always bringing in new clients, or we're losing clients, we are hiring staff, if that's something that we choose to do or losing staff, we may be adding new services or expanding to a new area or decreasing an area because of gas prices, or just trying to figure out how to hone and refine what we do and what we currently offer. But regardless of the changes, there is guaranteed change in running a business, especially in a service based business where we are reliant on others. And so this means that we as the business owners have to address the ups and downs from really two different perspectives. There's obviously the business perspective. But we also have to address it from the personal and emotional perspective, we are the CEOs of our businesses, we are tied heavily into our businesses. And so we are emotional about a lot of things, but we kind of have to separate the two, you know, the business aspect to the business perspective is more the planning perspective, this is where most of us live and thrive and really focus on the majority of the time. So if we lost a client, well, we are now trying to figure out how to get a new one. If a staff member leaves, we are trying to figure out how to hire and bring on a new one. So in our business role, there are things that need to be done, there are tasks that need to be checked off, and things that we need to plan for and account for coming down the road. But what about in the personal realm. When you lose a client, we talked about the business perspective, you look to get a new one. But in the personal realm, it takes a toll on you. It's not very fun, for whatever reason, whether you had to let them go or they moved away or the dog died or whatever it it takes a toll on you emotionally. If you have a staff member leave, it impacts you on a personal level as well. Especially if you have had them for years and you've built a strong relationship with you know, either the client or the staff member that's leaving, it can seem like the rockiest times in business come when you are growing the most rapid. And that can be for many reasons. But it's because we're in flux. There's just a statistically higher likelihood of encountering high turnover. But it's also the most frustrating time to have ups and downs because we are growing so rapidly. And we're trying to accomplish so many different things. So if you remember back to last year, you know, we were coming out of pandemic of what was 2020 and having the really rapid increase of clients traveling again, and I think we're going to experience that this summer as well. It's just It's crazy Madhouse and so trying to deal with that growth rapidly.
Collin 04:41
And there are things in business that you can do to help smooth out those highs and lows maybe avoid them. That's something you can absolutely do. But does that mean that the highs and lows will have any less of a mental or emotional toll or impact on you? Probably not. It's the end of the day the business is going to function and then we You're going to have a personal reaction to what is going on there. Because regardless of how well we try and prepare for this, things will change, there will be highs, and there will be low. So that's something that we have to make sure that we recognize. And that is the very first thing that we need to realize, when it comes to dealing with the emotional rollercoaster of running a business. There will be highs, and there will be lows. You have to stop the recording and listen to that and say that back a couple times just to get that and start recognizing that please go ahead. But why is this so important? It's important because if we live with blinders on, we'll be completely caught off guard when something changes. Well,
Meghan 05:43
and this is not to say, as we've talked about many times in the podcast, you cannot be prepared for everything all the time, you just can't whether it's natural disasters, or clients up ending your business or leaving negative reviews, or you just dealing with personal stuff that is affecting your business, you can't really be prepared for everything all the time, but we
Collin 06:04
do our best. Now we spend a lot of time preparing for emergencies in our business, especially with the animals that were caring for you take emergency preparedness classes, pet first aid and CPR, we practice through different scenarios. And why why do we do that, because you know, things will happen, you know, bad things are going to happen. And if we keep our head in the sand and pretend that bad things can't happen when we're running our business, we will actually be physically mentally and emotionally unable to respond in a coherent manner. And keep a level head. And that's what a lot of this centers around keeping a level head through the highs and lows in business.
Meghan 06:43
In business. When problems arise, we typically look for solutions. But our personal life, there aren't necessarily solutions for the emotions that we have, you know, there's managing and there's coping with your emotions, but how you feel with your emotions, going through the highs and lows, the roller coaster of your business is just how you feel. And that's okay, you have to be able to handle that. And make sure your emotions don't do as best as possible. Try not to have them impact you or your business in a negative way. Because also remember that what your high is, is not necessarily someone else's high. And that's the same thing for the low as well, because everybody handles situations differently. So somebody else may get a negative Facebook review. And you may just brush it off and not think anything of it. Because you know exactly how to handle that and are not too emotionally involved, you just stick to the facts and respond to the review, or whatever the situation is. But don't compare your highs to somebody else's high and your loads just somebody else's low. Because there will be highs and lows regardless of how much planning or prevention or processes you have in place, a lot of them are unfortunately going to be out of your control.
Collin 07:57
Absolutely, you don't have control. When clients come to you, you don't have control when they leave you, you don't have control when they leave you every view, you don't have control whenever they pay you more than you're asking for. You can again have processes and things where you try and implement them in marketing and getting your messaging out there. But at the end of the day, you don't have control over that person's purchasing decision and buying power behind them. And we have to recognize where our influence stops and where somebody else's influence begins. And that is really key to understanding how much control we have over these scenarios. And that's part and recognizing how much we can stress or should worry about these scenarios of where our control and where our limits actually are.
Meghan 08:38
And it's important to get in the mindset as well that there is going to be this fluctuation in our business of good things happening and bad things happening. And it really leads into the second step here of preparing. But first, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members at pet sitters associates, they are here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Since you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pets and Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at petsfit llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. As I just mentioned a minute ago, we cannot prepare for everything all the time. But you do need to equip yourself with maybe a support group or business tools or healthy coping mechanisms. So a good support network of other pet business owners or business owners in general or friends, family therapist, whatever that support network and community looks like for you. You do need one it's really critical because it's someplace or someone to take your concerns to, you know a group of other profession animals or business owners will be able to empathize with you and help you have a clear and a level head while you navigate whatever you are going through.
Collin 10:10
When it comes to the business tools, this could be anything from having somebody to hand off all or part of a business while you focus on recovery mentally and emotionally. It could also mean having something as basic as a good accounting software. So you can quickly look at your numbers, and understand that just one client leaving you is not going to make or break your business. Sometimes when bad things happen to us, we immediately catastrophize them to the worst possible case scenario, can I get everybody to raise their hand right now because that's a man. But something as simple as being able to look at hard numbers and hard data can actually combat the tendency in our brains to catastrophize we are confronting our emotions with facts and data in front of us, it doesn't always work. But it is, again, a tool that we can implement in our business and have that in place to help us as we process the roller coaster that we're riding on. So being organized around your business operations. And at least having tools and data accessible to you can really help you smooth out some rash reactions that may happen.
Meghan 11:15
It's important to have healthy coping mechanisms because it ultimately builds resiliency. And the one thing about roller coasters is that they tend to go really fast. I don't think I've ever been on a slow roller coaster, it's kind
Collin 11:28
of antithetical to roller coasters, right?
Meghan 11:30
I mean, I guess as you're going up, it goes slow. But then obviously, the down is pretty fast. But we feel like we don't have control over them. Obviously, you're not the one controlling the roller coaster, but you mean you are in charge of your business. However, because there are things that are not in your control that are happening to your business, it is important to slow down in the midst of the roller coaster as much as possible. Because that's one of the most critical pieces that you can do for your life.
Collin 11:58
Well, and unlike a real roller coaster on the roller coaster of business, you actually do have a break that you can pull. And that starts with recognizing that you always have the option to say, no, that alone is so empowering, you don't have to take on that next booking you don't have to go on that walk. If you don't want to you don't have to take on that client. Again, you don't have to go outside of your service area, you don't have to walk on the weekends, if you don't want to.
Meghan 12:28
The most fundamental thing is stopping the inputs in your life when you feel overwhelmed, and you need time to process things. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to close up shop for three years when you while you handle a negative review that you received on Facebook. But it does mean that you need to process things in real time. But don't be afraid to feel the emotions that you're feeling because they are okay. And you need to address them. Because you still have to get up every day and run your business
Collin 12:59
reminds me of a story whenever I was actively doing CrossFit back whenever I don't know why I was doing that. But the CrossFit instructors talked about how when you got calluses and you got blisters on your hands, you had to address them immediately. Otherwise, they were gonna get really bad. So this meant sometimes popping blisters or sometimes medicating them and wrapping your hands to make sure that they didn't get infected that they were well cared for. And if I didn't actually stop and actively deal with them in real time and assess how my hands were doing. Over the next week, they'd be completely wrecked and red and awful and be painful to use. The exact same thing happens when we are processing our emotions, we need to be in a mindset and have an ability, time and space to address them and see how we are doing. And that comes with pulling that break and saying no, I don't have to do these things because I need to process it and feel the feelings from that negative review or from that client leaving or maybe it's from feel the feelings of the big high that I got for landing a really amazing client who's going to book me for lots of travel, I still need to feel that high and be aware of how that's impacting me so that I can continually move forward in our business and make good decisions.
Meghan 14:18
It can be tough though, because there are usually compounding inputs if you had a bad review and then the next day you had a dog bite and the next day you had a client cancel. So you have to be able to process all those and obviously all those were negative but there are positive things that can happen to you too that you need time to process your reactions don't and should not depend on each other. So don't let the first thing impact the last thing so that the first thing on Monday morning you got a bad review and then things happened all the ways till Friday a bad thing happened every day. You should not let the bad thing that happened on Monday. Impact The bad thing that happened on Friday and I know it's really really hard because You just keep feeling down and down and down if there are bad things that are happening, but you really do need to compartmentalize things, because the emotions from each event that happened, whether good or bad are not contingent upon or connected to the previous, or the next event that comes your way, of course, unless you have one client leave, and they tell all of their friends who also used you. But that's catastrophizing. Anyway, that is very unlikely to happen. But just keep in mind that these are singular events. And they need to be treated as such, even though that can be really difficult. Sometimes
Collin Funkhouser 15:39
this is something that was really driven into my head when I was teaching classes, and the first class was awful. And then the second class was really good. And then the third class was also awful. And I recognized that myself that I tended to react overly negative to that third class, because I was still stewing and thinking about that first class that really ruined mine, that I allowed to ruin my day. And it took a lot of time to go no first class, they're gonna act, how they're gonna act, and I need to respond appropriately to them, and do the same thing to each individual class because they're not going out and talking to one another not, they're not saying, Oh, go, go try and make Colonsay even worse, they're just reacting and they're having their own experiences. Same thing with our clients. One client cancels one client books, they're not talking to one another to try and coordinate these events. And they need to be treated as a separate events that they are and that includes our emotional response to them. And we're recognizing that
Meghan 16:32
for us in the past few weeks, we have recently gone through a rash of meet and greets that have not really panned out. And it was frustrating. But an option that we have is to pump the brakes on taking new beat greets, until we really figure out what exactly is going on. Is it something with our messaging, are we not clearly communicating? You know, what, what is happening are the clients just not ready to book or not wanting to book or whatever it is, you know, until we assess the situation and look at it with a clear head, then we can move on. But we don't want to quickly spiral out of control,
Collin 17:08
because what can very easily happen here is that with each successive meet and greet that doesn't pan out into something, we become more and more pessimistic, we become more and more jaded about that process. And so how I try and sell services or talk about our business to that the last person is very different from the first person, I'm not as optimistic, we're not as outgoing, we're not as upbeat, we're not as joyful, we're not as in an energetic throughout that process. That's what we mean when pumping the brakes to just say no to a few things to make sure that we are well, and that we are okay before going into new situations, because we don't want to continue to compound them and make it worse for ourselves and in the business. And that all starts with recognizing our emotions and how we are processing that.
Meghan 17:52
And so slowing down when you're really feeling the ups and downs of the business, it may mean that you take on fewer clients for a period of time, while you make sure that you are meeting your own personal needs. It could also mean that you if you have staff, you don't hire as fast as you were hoping to because you have to make sure that you are okay first. And I know that when I ride roller coasters, I can definitely feel like I am not in control at all. And that is by far the most unsettling aspect of the highs and lows, you know, you slowly go up up and you're anticipating what is going to be on the other side. But we can't always do that in business. And so we have to deal with the emotional things on a personal level as well. But in the business, there are things that we can do, we can raise our prices or lower them, I wouldn't suggest that but you can do more marketing, you can change your job ad you can add benefits, you can run a sale, you can do more marketing and advertising. But when it comes to how I react and how I respond, well, there aren't as many guidelines to that. And that's because everybody reacts in their own unique way. Everybody is different. There's no set standard for how you should or should not respond to an event whether it's positive or negative. You are unique, and you can feel exactly how you feel you can sit with those feelings and then figure out an outcome from there.
Collin 19:12
But just last month, we had somebody complain about our quote, outrageous prices on a public community group. That did not feel good. And no, it didn't. It was from somebody who requested a quote for service something like three or four months ago and they never actually booked us or used us and it it kind of hurt a little bit to see somebody talking about that when they had actually never used us at the end of the day. But after we saw that comment literally the very next day, somebody booked us for her multiple dogs to come over and visit them four times a day for several days in a row. Talking about whiplash first. Honestly, we did feel a little proud that someone was complaining about our prices because that means we are marketing and niching away from the people who we may have serviced even a year or two ago. So that means we were doing something something right. But it didn't feel good in the moment. Like just being very honest here. did not feel good to see that it hurt. And I, we've reacted each a little bit differently to that kind of some some anger, some frustration, some fear of how other people would perceive and read into that message that somebody wrote about us about what people would think, and how much that would impact their decisions to us or not. So we did take it personally, that was a business transaction that we took personally. And then only the very next day, the reverse of everything that we just experienced to have happen. So we went from this really low, the bank take this personally, to very high to again, also taking that personally, because we believe in our business, we've invested in our business, and we are our business. So when somebody says yes to our services, it does feel good that they're saying yes to us, or our staff that we have trained. So processing,
Meghan 20:47
both of those events took a lot of time, it still does even after 10 years in business. And that's something to remember that this is something that you're probably going to keep working on forever. Ray forever homework, yes. Because you will be a different person tomorrow than you are today. And obviously, in a few years, you're going to be different than you are a few years ago, you will have different feelings and emotions and different responses to things that you then you do today because we're always learning and growing and changing. And the hope is, is that those coping mechanisms will become healthier and less negative towards us.
Collin Funkhouser 21:23
So how do you handle and manage riding the roller coaster of the emotions in business? What have you picked up? What are some ways that you cope and manage those? How do you pump the brakes when you need to? We'd love to hear about that and share those with others so that they can start equipping themselves with those mechanisms today and be prolonging their time in the industry and not suffering from emotional or mental or physical burnout. From everything that happens as a pet sitter and a dog walker.
Meghan 21:50
You can let us know on Facebook or Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional or you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com.
Collin 21:58
This week on Ask a biz segment with Natasha Banyan from automated CEO. She answers the question, how do I upsell my services or
Natasha 22:07
upsells are my favorite. So you want to think about your upsell as being able to offer your client already what they're looking for. So if I just got a new dog, and now I need to get a crate, now I need to get a dog walker or pet sitter. Now I need to get a harness now I need to get a leash. Now I need to get a lockbox, you already know all these things that your client will potentially need. So why not have a new dog starter kit for them? Why not have harnesses you sell on your meet and greets for them. So when you think of upsell, it may seem salesy, or oh, I don't want to offer them more things. I don't want to keep pitching them something. But they're like, oh, sweet, you're here on the meet and greet. And I need these things. This is the list that you're that you're recommending anyway, and I can actually just click and get them from you. Perfect. So now you just turned a potential free Meet and Greet into, you know, a 30 $40 profit by adding a harness by adding a leash for them going ahead and giving them an opportunity to get the lockbox from you all at once. So that's essentially what an upsell is having one original product and offering them a few additional items on top of it. My best example is, you know, the TJ Maxx and nieces or the home goods or the Marshalls, when you're standing in line, and you've already gotten all the things you wanted. And I think they call it the target method. Actually, I think it's officially that method where you're standing in line. And before you check out, you're like, oh, yeah, let me go ahead and grab a lighter. I'm in here. Oh, let me go ahead and grab a candle. While I'm standing here. Because these are things that you've been looking for you wanted in your home or your services anyway, it's just good that you can use one stop as the original purchaser.
Collin 24:04
I think what's important there, as you said, as you already know, a lot of these pain points that your clients have in their life and through this process. And so kind of front loading or putting a lot of this information or these resources for them from your business really does also allow them to start viewing you as a great resource for them moving forward.
Natasha 24:24
Absolutely. One of my coaches always says the offer you don't make is the offer they can't take. So if you know they need something just asked, Hey, here's a list of some other things that we offer as well if you need anything. Here's the link. I see a lot of pet sitters doing a great job at it in their email signature. They have all the ways where you can find them and all the stores where they are in the podcasts that they're on. So it's great. You just have to offer it. No no it's there
Meghan 24:58
if you would like to join Natasha as much Lean membership group you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code P SC 20. For 15% off. Thank you for joining us for the 200 and 82nd episode of petsitter confessionals a lot.
Collin 25:14
If you ever want to be interviewed or you have topic suggestions for us, we would love to hear them. And thank you for joining us also, thanks to pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, absolutely. We always ask for recommendations for people to interview and don't feel like you can't shouldn't be interviewed. Everybody has a story. Everybody has things to share. We would love to hear what you are doing and what you have learned from your time in this industry. So again, let us know send that email and thank you to everybody who's listening, sharing and engaging with the stories that we share. We really really appreciate it.
25:48
Thank you
