364: Essential Characteristics of a Thriving Pet Business Owner
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What mindsets and behaviors help a pet business owner thrive? Like high quality tools, the characteristics we exhibit should help us, instead of being a hindrance to our success. It starts with knowing yourself and the kind of business you want to run. Then, you can implement the best practices. We break down five essential attitudes of a thriving pet business owner and what it looks like to implement them.
Main topics
Organization
Education
Communication
Boundaries
Community
Main takeaway: Understanding how you need to work, will help guide the systems and processes you implement in your business.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, people, clients, communicating, painting, potential clients, tools, organized, pet sitters, business owner, post, connect, habits, aspect, realizing, sitter, taxes, day, understand
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:03
Hello, welcome to pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Collin 00:08
Thank you to pet sitters associates for making today possible and our amazing Patreon supporters for helping us financially every month by contributing whatever they feel comfortable with, they found value in the show that if you get value out of the show, and want to know how you can support us, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:28
If you've been with us for the past few months, you know that we have been painting our house and we are still neck deep in that repainting process, every room is going to get a fresh coat of paint. And it has been a lot from just picking the colors to implementing the plan. Realizing that we need to have caulk in places and scrape paint and other places, the taping and the prep work takes about three times as long as we thought it was going to and with the actual painting with a roller on the brush. It's taking a long time.
Collin 01:02
Yeah, well, in with this not just the prep work. But then there's also all of the tools, the things we've had to buy and accumulate through this. So we had to learn about rollers to learn about handles learn about which kind of extension poles that we'd need. And we actually just had to buy yet another ladder so that we could paint our staircase. So our ladder collection continues to grow. The tools that we've bought have really allowed us to tackle this project with a lot of confidence. And then we can do the work not just quicker. But really well. I think it's important to note that buying a tool doesn't make you instantly an expert, by no means I'm still really bad at painting, you still have to learn how to use these things and use them learn them well. But having good tools that are appropriate for the work that you're doing means that you're not fighting the tools to get the work done. And that's what's really important to understand not just when you're painting a room, but also when you run your business when you're doing things in life is that having good appropriate tools for you, allows you to do the work more seamlessly because the tool becomes part of you, it becomes part of the process, instead of a hindrance for you, which got us thinking a lot about the tools of a pet business owner, what do we have at our disposal? What do we need to be bringing on to make sure that we have the appropriate tools necessary to do our jobs really well, and make sure that we're not fighting with the things that we're using to do that. And so today, we want to talk about behaviors and attitudes that we need as pet business owners to do our jobs. Well,
Meghan 02:40
these are foundational habits every one will use at some point. And they're really places to build off of on your journey as a pet business owner. And so the first one is organization, if you are a business owner for any length of time, you know that you must be organized from taxes to scheduling and pain to bookkeeping, and accounting. And just booking for clients. In general, you can either pick a software, or you can do an old school with pen and paper or a mixture of both. But either way, it has to be organized because your clients will need to be have a smooth and seamless process in order to do that you as the owner need to be organized?
Collin 03:19
Well, I think about this in the context of when we think about buying tools and bringing things on for a project, we think about what goes into the toolbox. But what organization actually is, is we have to take a moment to consider what the tool box itself is. Because at the end of the day, if you're not organized, if you don't have a broader concept of what tools go where and how they're going to be used, this organization comes in, you're not going to get the work done. basically asking is the toolbox itself is the organizational system that you want to put in place. Is it right for the work that we're doing, and the way that we work?
Meghan 03:55
So like the tools that you always use the hammer, the saw the drill, those go on top? And then the ones that you use down below? are the ones that you don't use as much
Collin 04:05
right? Well, I was actually just in Lowe's big surprise here. Again, they see aforementioned painting process, and they have all of these insane toolboxes that are almost as complicated as flying a spaceship. And I know I don't need those toolboxes. It's the same thing in our businesses. There are software's and systems out there that will basically make you breakfast if you want. But not everybody needs or wants those kinds of things. So really understanding what is your business doing right now? How is it operating? Where do you want to go? And then ask yourself, what is your workflow in your business? Where are your pain points, so that when you go seeking for a solution, because I see a lot of people ask this, what's the best software? What's the best organizational system? What's the best process for this? You first have to ask how you operate and then go find things that either fit that or you can change to fit them if you think that's a better way of operating. But just to stay Can gluing on put trying to put organizational processes in and around you isn't going to work if that's not how you work if you're truly a pen and paper kind of person, throwing trying to throw everything in and make it digital. While that may seem appealing, if your brain needs to see things written out and outlined, if you need to see that physicality, having a purely electronic system will be detrimental to you and how you run your business.
Meghan 05:27
I think a lot of questions that we ask of others, we really need to internalize and first ask more questions of ourselves. It's not bad to ask, you know, what software is the best? Or what task management system? is the best? Is Asana really the best out there? Or is it Trello? Right? And so or is slack a great or some other program? Is it Google Voice? Or is it grasshopper, you know, these these things? Aren't these questions are not bad. It's just what do you ultimately at the end of the day need as a business owner, because you know yourself best and nobody else there, people are just going to throw out recommendations. But then you need to go in and and not necessarily just trust everybody's word, but go in and see if it actually fits you and your business.
Collin 06:10
And that's really hard. That's a lot of hard work to know what I need, you know, early on. But 1015 years ago, I came across somebody who his whole entire organizational system was using three by five note cards. That was his big thing of how he organized his life and wrote down notes. And I tried to emulate that. But I'm not organized enough to not lose individual three by five cards. So I quickly realized, oh, they have to be bound together, oh, I need a notebook, I can't I need a notebook, I can't use loose leaf things. And then that went on in a different trajectory. So knowing these things, and the habits and aspects about yourself, is really going to drive where this organizational aspect comes from, as you're trying to apply it to your business.
Meghan 06:50
I think a great way to stay organized is to block off time in your calendar. So every Tuesday at 11am, I do this task, I do some part of my taxes or I go to yoga,
Collin 07:04
it's a great way to make sure that you don't forget something, but also helps you understand how much of your time is committed to other things. So as you block off time, you can really see how constrained you are with prior commitments. And if it's a larger project, like taxes, breaking up into small chunks, and sprinkling it in an hour here an hour there. And but I know it's hard because some people really don't like only doing small chunks of something and then moving on, I know there are people who like to try and get it all done in one sitting because it's very satisfying. And then they don't feel like they have all this mental burden of the remaining project out there.
Meghan 07:41
I feel like you're talking about me right now. But also recognizing that there are some people who enjoy you know, the chunks of 15 minutes every day, they're blocked off 15 minute chunks, or an hour chunks or whatever. But there are other people like you don't enjoy their day being so segmented and that they enjoy more of the free time. But for the really important things, you need to get out your schedule and to block off time. So ultimately, you need to choose systems that work for you. And that's
Collin 08:10
a process of learning and education, and not just about yourself, but learning other things about running your business. And education really is probably one of the best tools, one of the best habits that you can equip yourself with. It's that knowledge aspect. And it really is a habit of learning of habitually going and looking for new things to better yourself, how you run your company, and better how you interact with others.
Meghan 08:36
Yeah, the knowledge of running your business. So again, everybody's favorite topic taxes. How to do them? What that looks like for you. Are you a sole prop? Are you an LLC and S Corp? If what are you what does that mean? What are the tax implications? And how much can you write off versus what can you not write off, you know, setting up your business structure that works for you were potentially looking at an S corp, but then realizing that that's a lot more heavy handed than we thought it was going to be. So maybe we hold off on that for another year abuse so we can educate ourselves more about what exactly that looks like. Because it's not, it's it's relatively easy to get into. But then there's a lot of upkeep and it's hard to get out of. And then there's also getting a website, getting a Google My Business Learning marketing tactics, all of the little intricate things that you may not realize when you start a pet sitting business. But then you get into it and you go, Oh my gosh, there's this and this and this and it's it's it can be overwhelming, but knowing that you can take little steps and you don't have to know everything right off the bat. But it's the continual process of the education that will make you a better person, a better business owner. I mean, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, when we started we didn't know hardly anything of what we know now less than zero. Yes, but, but it's seeking out those resources. It's seeking out the trainings and the certifications and the podcasts and the books, you know, just general business bucks, if you can't find a pet sitting specific book, there are just general business books out there that will help you.
Collin 10:06
So there's the business aspect of this. And that's where I know many of us have a lot of work to do, we've got a lot of educating of ourselves. So seeking out those good resources is critically important. But then there's the knowledge of learning more about the pet care side of things. A lot. Most of us enter into the industry with a passion for pets, but we don't know a lot of actually how to take care of them and the intricacies and the specificities around breeds are different diseases or different medications. So then we can go on and go okay, now I need to learn more about the latest practices here, I need to learn what fear free is, I need to learn how to pill a cat not just one way, but probably five different ways I can build a cat, what is walking a dog safely mean, I tried to describe that to a barista, barista the other day. And they were blown away by all the aspects that we think about how we approach those. Another aspect of this is learning to ask good questions, during and specific, really before a meet and greet, so that you have more on hand and can really parse through what that person is asking you. All of those aspects, just like learning about a business, those come with a little bit of time, but those come with us exposing ourselves to new ideas or new topics so that we can better ourselves in that particular area.
Meghan 11:16
And then there's the people aspect to the customer service of this, again, we serve pets, but we ultimately serve their owners. And it's so it's something that often gets overlooked. And many people don't really think that it's necessary the customer side of this because we get into it because we want to do puppy cuddles and Kitty kisses all day. But it's learning how to talk to a potential client or even an existing client, if you're going through something tough with them right now, if you've increased your prices, or they come to you and say, I need to decrease the amount of services I have, or they are struggling with something in their personal life, and they've come to you and it kind of burdens you with this. You know, we have we need to be empathetic to our clients or potential clients, we also need to be tactful with them and know how to talk to them
Collin 12:01
and have good boundaries. It's educating how to what's going to work for me, what's my boundary line for how personal is too personal to get involved with the client, for how much they're going to share with me before I need to step away before I know whether I can take on that mental burden of that hardship that they're going through. We have to educate ourselves and about learn more about ourselves for what we can take on and then go and go Kate, what how do I need to phrase these things to talk to potential clients or existing clients with their problems or concerns that they have?
Meghan 12:32
Fetch find is a great resource for continuing education. They've got a whole ton of videos and webinars on there, from dog behavior, training, feline fundamentals, all of these great aspects of what being a pet care provider means.
Collin 12:46
So if you are either new to the industry, or maybe you haven't looked at information in a while finding a course, whether it's through fetch, find whether it's through somebody else, YouTube videos, I know there are a lot of channels out there as well, attending a conference, listening to podcasts, reading books, do something a little bit every day, that's going to help educate you on something that you didn't know the day before.
Meghan 13:07
Part of running your business is knowing that you need insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because 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 in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at pets@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. Another great habit of a pet business owner is communication and we all know but this is critical because it connects us with clients and potential clients. And it's not just the way that we connect but how we connect as well. You know, through texting, phone calls, social media, blogging, emails, software, all of that good stuff, it each has their own place. And each are good for communities, communicating certain things and not others
Collin 14:19
communicating very complex detail oriented things. Not really the best place for a text message or sensitive conversations to have where you do have personal things coming or there is a sensitive information that you need to share. Maybe that's not a social media post, but that is an excellent phone call that you need to have. Whatever way you do making sure you understand what's the appropriate channel that I need to use to share this information and to whom and I sharing that with
Meghan 14:48
because how you operate your business is going to determine the channels you communicate through. Maybe you don't even do blogs at all. So you are going to use your email list for something else. Or if you
Collin 14:59
don't do that at all, you're going to have much longer Instagram posts or Facebook posts on your social media and understanding what are the limitations that that gives you? Or what advantages do you have in connecting with your audience.
Meghan 15:11
And so with that communication, we have to work on honing our marketing. I feel like we talked about this all the time, but knowing who you're talking to what you're talking to them about what problems you're solving, it's your marketing, messaging. And it's really one of the most powerful tools to keep your business running, because you want to connect with a new audience, basically, every times new people coming in the door, knowing now who you are, and trying to target those people in a different way. We had somebody reach out to us today who's been following us for several months. And I had made a cat post basically saying, not every cat is super friendly, and a lot of them take time to warm up. And we take the time and provide different activities and different ways of going about building trust. And he had commented on the post saying, Wow, I, I love this, I'm going to, you know, sign up and start using you guys. And it was a little I was taken aback because I had seen him like many of our posts over the past few months. But for some reason the the words that we used in the post really spoke to him today. And so he felt the need to finally say yes, okay, we bridge the gap between the problem that he had, and the solution that we offer,
Collin 16:27
recognizing that people are going to have a certain threshold that you need to meet. And sometimes you don't need it, because they don't see what they're looking for. And that's that trial and error process of really going to whom am I communicating with right now, when we talk about marketing, we talk about as you're having a conversation with somebody, it's a one sided conversation, until they reach back out to you. That's exactly what happened today with our post, we were having a one sided conversation of telling people about who we are and how we operate and how we can help. Somebody responded, now we can have a two way conversation moving forward with that person. But what you put out there to start, think of that as starting the conversation. You're starting a conversation with somebody new. How would you do that? What kind of words would you use? What kind of language would you craft to start a conversation with somebody. And they only typically respond by booking your services or reaching out more inquiries about more information about your business, but really just boiling everything down to I'm communicating with my messaging, I'm communicating with my existing clients, with my potential clients, I'm communicating with my staff, if I have them, I'm communicating with everybody in my little world around me. And I need to make sure that we do that well and represent our business well, throughout every day.
Meghan 17:48
But that's why social media is so important and so critical, really, to the survivability of your business, because anybody can post cute dogs and cute cats all day. But it's what do you put in the caption? What do you put in the messaging behind it? If you do blogs, what are you saying in your blogs, because it really is about connecting. And I think we're going to do another episode on exactly how to craft strong social media messages and really connect with people that you need to be getting in front of, well, yeah,
Collin 18:18
because remembering at the end of the day, what you choose to post, whether those videos, whether it's photos, whether it's tax, whether it's something edited or whatever, whatever you choose to post will determine the clients that are either attracted or repelled about your company and to you for
Meghan 18:36
communicating your marketing message. Well, I would look at what other industries are doing and how they're implementing marketing frameworks like the story brand framework, it can be very easily molded into any type of industry. And so what that really is, is having your potential client to be the hero of the story and at you as the guide, guiding them and helping them solve the problem that they have. And whether it's
19:01
marketing or just getting better at communicating well during a meet and greet to existing clients or people that you see on the street. It all comes down to practice practicing not just your talking points, but how you are going to communicate, where do you put your hands? How do you stand? Are you going to look at somebody in the eyes, you're gonna look at them in the forehead? What kind of tone of voice are you going to try and use? What's your style? And well, how is that going to fit with you personally, that's where all this comes from. At the end of the day communication, marketing, whether that's directly on social media or to people that you see is how are you going to do that and just practicing some of those things will really help you feel a lot more comfortable in those situations.
Meghan 19:39
Another essential characteristic of a thriving pet business owner is boundaries, setting them, keeping them having them
19:48
really everything about them. When it comes to this business. It is so personal. It does suck up all of your time, attention, energy and focus. Whether that is being worried about pets, whether that is stressing about a sketch. Whether that is having to deal with problems that clients bring to you, there's the emotional side, as well of the clients may come to you with their personal burdens or with their struggles with their things that they are walking through and dealing with. And they can talk to you about that. Well, you were taking on that burden that now you have to figure out what to do with, then there are the clients who are contacting you at all hours of the day, night and everything in between demanding more of your attention. Nothing really from a nefarious reason, but because they want help, and they need it right now. And you have to understand that time that you have for yourself truly is sacred to you. It protects you from being burned out in an overworked.
Meghan 20:40
Yeah, at some point, you can no longer trade time for money, there's just not enough time in the day,
20:45
which is a good point to remember that even though we may try and raise our prices continually to try and claw back time to limit the people seeking after our services. If you are quality enough, if you are in demand enough, it doesn't matter how much you charge, people will still demand more of your time, whether they're paying $100 An hour or $10 an hour, some kind of clients will just want more of you,
Meghan 21:08
which can be hard to do if you want to grow and scale your business to add staff and still, you know, maintaining those boundaries, making sure that your staff have proper boundaries within your business as well, because you don't want them to work 6am to 10pm, seven days a week and burn out themselves. So it is really important, no matter who is in your business, who's in your company, for them to have boundaries.
21:31
And I think that's the single best thing you can do for your business, Megan, right there of setting office hours, hours that you will, and you will not communicate with people who reach out to you. And this can be maddening when it's six o'clock at night at 601. Right in your office hours ended at six and somebody texts you with a question about your services to be staring at your phone going well, it's only 601, right? But we all know where this goes. And suddenly it's 830 at night and you're still having a conversation with this person or you find something else to distract you and you bring your your attention to you. So now going at six is the heart out or whatever that time is for you that's going to work for your business and the way you work.
Meghan 22:10
We always talk about boundaries in terms of time and making sure that your time is your own and your company is not and your clients are not running your business. But there's also you know, spatial boundaries in terms of making sure that you separate a little bit. Making sure that you try to separate your personal from your business because we are are intricately linked. And ultimately, there's not going to be 100% separation, but making sure that you are enjoying hobbies, doing other things outside of the business so that your business is not all consuming you. The last strong behavior that we really want to talk about for pet business owners is community. And I really think it is very much under utilized by far. Yeah. And it's really because we're so busy. We're doing visits from 6am to 10pm. And we still have to do all the little intricate details of our businesses from the taxes, the scheduling all of that and
Collin 23:04
have a personal life to and see family and friends. And let's not let's not forget that meeting new people can be awkward, it can be weird, it can be scary. It's putting ourselves out there as being vulnerable,
Meghan 23:16
especially for introverts like me, it's not fun. So it's great to have a partner come along and kind of help you through that process.
Collin 23:24
But it is it is so powerful building community and reaching out to others to have that because but first, as you said, it can be hard to do that. So you have to first want to have this as a part of your business as a part of your personal life as well. reaching out to others. joining a network of local sitters, and things like that are going to first are going to help you feel not just like you are seen. But it also a great way to bounce off ideas for when you're struggling or working with something. I really love the way when you get connected with realtors, they have really super tight knit local groups of realtors who are sharing information, they're strategizing about the economy, they're forecasting together. They're doing all of these things. They're doing team building, they're doing educational things, they're doing it out, involving themselves in the broader community. And they really see each other as resources to assist each other and and really pour a lot into one another in that way.
Meghan 24:23
While putting yourself out there in the community is hard, especially for introverts. The opportunities really are endless from going and walking dogs at the shelter to hosting a pet loss memorial event to hosting a client appreciation. Meeting, you know, for a couple hours. There are so many possibilities, so many pet friendly things that you can do. I think it's well again, while it's hard. It's also easy at the same time to come up with these ideas
Collin 24:55
or even if it's not something that you want to do a hosting event or pate taking part in it. Find a fundraiser where you can give a $50 gift certificate for your services to help raise money for a certain cause. That's being a part of your community, you're not up there leading the charge or doing these things or running the event or anything like that. But you are building towards something bigger than beyond yourself just for that. And that's, that's those are the local things. And then I tying a little bit into some of the education and other things we've talked about today. There's also a big part of community as attending a conference. You know, Texas pet sitters conference just wrapped this past week. And it looks like it was an amazing time. I know naps, we are packing our bags right now to go to New Orleans, to give it deliver a talk and meet everybody there. And psi has conferences coming up as well. There are opportunities to go and get both community and education. And by far and away. When you talk to people who go to conferences. It's the community aspect where people are seeking that out, they go, you know, I may know this thing, or I really liked this speaker, but man seeing my friends, once twice a year, seeing these people and getting connected with them, again, is priceless for me and really helps me be better
Meghan 26:11
you need a cheerleader in your corner or 10 of them. You need to be connected to others going through this three crazy thing called running a pet care business. So it may not be you know in your local community, but you may have national pets that are friends or in a national network of others. These are just some of the habits that make a thriving pet business owner. If you have other ones that you know of or you implement in your business, we'd love to hear them. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com.
Collin 26:43
Thank you so much to today's sponsor, pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon for making today's show possible. Again, if you want to learn more about that you can go to petsitter professional.com/support to learn all of the ways that you can support the show
Meghan 26:56
and we will talk with you next time. Bye
