426: Managing the Pet Business Triangle: Time - People - Money
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Do you consider yourself a project manager? Running a pet sitting and dog walking company, we face many unique challenges and have to be able to adapt quickly, while keeping everything organized and structured. We take the traditional project management triangle and adapt it to the pet services industry, with the primary focus being on people. Obviously pet care is a number one priority in our businesses, but the people aspect cannot be minimized and should be accounted for when taking on any visit, walk, or extended care.
Main topics:
What is the project management triangle?
How it translate to the pet service industry
Making the focus on people
Aspects of meeting client expectations
Main Takeaway: By understanding the potential trade-offs between time, people, and money, you can make informed decisions and navigate the complexities of running your business more effectively.
Links:
On project management: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/286
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, visit, project, pet, cost, pet sitters, people, quality, aspect, triangle, budget, constraints, scope, required, understand, service, business, money, work, financial resources
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:02
Welcome to pet sitter confessional and open an honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Colin. And thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show. If you don't know what a Patreon member is, because it's a little bit of a weird word, those are people who have found value in any of the 400 episodes, we've done now. And if that is you, as well, if you've listened to a few and you enjoy it, and you want to keep it going, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support. To see all of the ways you can help to keep the podcast going. If you've read some business books, or listen to some business podcast, you've probably heard them talk about the project management triangle. It's known as the triple constraint on businesses or the iron triangle or the project triangle. It's really a model that illustrates the constraints of project management is usually depicted as a triangle with each of the three sides representing one of the following. So the first one is time refers to the project schedule, or the amount of time available to complete the project and involves setting realistic timeframes and goals and really adhering to the deadlines that you have set for a particular project. The next corner of the triangle is cost, it refers to the budgeted amount for the project, whether it's big or little, it doesn't matter. It's all of the financial resources required to execute the project and complete it within the budget. The last corner is the scope of the project. So these are the specific goals, the deliverables, your action items that you have, and requirements for the project, the scope really defines what needs to be accomplished within the constraints of time and cost. And once you know these three things for any particular project, you can see how realistic it is. At the center of the triangle, there is often a fourth element, which is quality. It's not always depicted necessarily explicitly, but it is the quality that is the central concern. And it's influenced by how well the time, the scope and the cost constraints are managed. If any one of those three constraints are altered or changed in any way, it affects the quality of the final output.
Collin 02:11
So for example, if the scope expands, basically, you want to do more with whatever you had started with, that's going to require more time and or more cost to maintain the same level of quality. Another example of D reducing the cost of a project might mean a reduction in the scope or an extension of time to maintain quality. So in order to get the same product, the same output with a minimal cost, it might take you longer to do it. And then if you shorten the amount of time required, it's going to make an increase in cost by bringing in more resources staffing up bringing in more more training or whatever to make it go faster to maintain the same scope and quality of the project.
Meghan 02:53
So for instance, Colin and I were project managers on a school that was getting ready to get off the ground and micro school. And so we had to understand all of these things, the time the cost and the scope. So the director of the school had this very strict deadline that she wanted a year from now. And we said okay, well that's that's pretty much locked in, we're going to open next school year, then the scope, we had to discuss with her how big she wanted the school to be just a few students or much larger. And then the budget was she willing to take out a loan, how much fundraising were we're going to need to do, all while not sacrificing the quality of the school, we wanted this to be the best school it could possibly be. And so within the constraints of the time. So within the constraints of it had to open within a year, it wanted to be she wanted it to be 50 students. And that means we needed to increase the budget because her time was constrained. We didn't have five years to set this up and, and go brick by brick, we needed to basically throw all the money at this in order to meet the deadline.
Collin 03:58
Basically, as project managers of even our business or people will work for other companies. This model is used to understand all of the trade offs that they or those working on the project might need to make during a project and especially important here to communicate those potential trade offs to everybody involved. We really think it's a useful way to approach things that come up in our business, because it's not just big, big projects or big building, you know, launching schools or anything like that. Day to day we have all these constraints of I have time that I'm limited on I only have so much money, but I want to do a lot or maybe a little with that. So how do I make that work?
Meghan 04:36
Yeah, because in this business, we are a people business, the dogs and cats don't pay the bills the people do. So we do with people all the time at meet and greets and client communication afterward dealing with issues or they had a great experience. You know, we're constantly involved with people we are in the people business. So how does that change this triangle? Well, we call it the pet business triangle. So We instead of time, cost and scope, we have time, money and people. So here's how we think they integrate with one another and interact within the framework of this project. So we have time, same as the project management triangle. Here, again, time, our concept of time is it refers to the schedule or duration needed to complete a project. So managing our time in our pet business is crucial. It's not just the I have to get this visit done in 30 minutes. It could be I have a deadline for taxes, or I need to get this request in process ASAP. Because the visit is tomorrow, managing our time efficiently is crucial to ensure that our project objectives are met with the established deadlines that we have,
Collin 05:42
and particular to the pet business and the pet industry is the fact that our projects aren't just one visit, we can view them as a visit. But also think about the total duration of a vacation visit. If this really came to light for us over this past summer, where we had a client who left for Japan for a month and a half. And we came over four times a day for a month and a half. That is a massive project to take on for somebody, or even our senior support services that we offer where we come into assisted living facilities to care for pets that their owners are in assisted, assisted living or enhanced assisted or memory care. These are big long term projects that are going to be three times a day for six months, 10 months, a year or more at a time. How do we as a business as somebody understand the time not just constraints, but long longevity of something that we are committing to as this project goes on.
Meghan 06:37
Within the project management triangle of costs. Our concept in the pet business triangle is money. This aspect involves managing the budget and financial resources allocated to the project ensuring that the goals are achieved without exceeding the budget. With the example of our client going over to Japan and US coming over four times a day. If we did not know our budget, if we didn't know how much it was, it costs us every single time, us or our employees walk out the door and drive to a visit, it may have actually cost us more than it was profitable for those month and a half long visits.
Collin 07:11
This is where you take into account the drive time, your time out of visit the fuel costs, the mileage, the wear and tear on your vehicle, any supplies that you're gonna have to buy to make this work. Maybe Maybe you're going over and you're doing, you're taking care of a hobby farm for the first time, well, your tennis shoes probably aren't going to count, you aren't going to do well for that. So do you have to buy muck boots do you is that something you have to purchase. In order to do this one visit? Well is the visit going to give you enough money to even pay for the muck boots required to do the visit in the first place. These constraints allow us to fully understand exactly what we're committed to. And especially with these long term ones, where people go away for a month and a half, where we're doing the senior support services where we're coming over day in day out. Something that we have to work with can you know, helping our clients understand is, if it's not profitable for me to show up to the first time to your house, it's not going to be profitable for me to show up the second time, or the last time to your house. So asking for a discount, that's totally fine. I understand that's what people come to expect and what they you know, it can be part of a bargaining maneuver. But for us, our prices are non negotiable. Because we know our costs, we know that if I discount you by 30%, because you're going away for a month and a half sure, at the end of the day, the total bill is a lot of money. But it's still not going to be enough to cover our costs, our labor costs and everything that we required to do that. So fully understanding that that the money aspect of your business is important in this and that these big projects that come on, really never go away. And then another aspect of this is also our clients have money, and they have their own budget that we have to understand and account for that that impacts their decision making process when they're working with us. And that is not our problem. But we just have to go they've got their own budget, they have their own money issues that they're dealing with. And so we present our case, we understand our financial aspects from it, they have their financial aspects of it. And if they if they work together, fantastic. If not, we have to move on.
Meghan 09:10
Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's a business decision. It's a business transaction, just exchanging money. Yes, it's very this is this business is very personal, and relationship based. But it's also transactional. And so we shouldn't necessarily get offended just because somebody doesn't use us anymore, because we've raised our prices, maybe they just really don't have the money. They love our services. But at the end of the day, they have their own budget and we aren't in it anymore. We talked about the scope of the project management triangle, and maybe the scope is your client is going away for two months. Maybe it's just a singular visit. But we want to equate that to the pet business triangle of people, our concept of people and it's not necessarily a direct match, but it is relatable. People might refer to the team that you have or even just yourself anybody who is needed to accomplish the project's objectives. This can include their skills, the expertise needed, maybe you have a cat that requires insulin injections, and you are the only one able to do that. Or maybe you've trained another staff member to do that. It could also mean the productivity of the people involved. If you have a more well skilled team, then you're probably going to be able to handle a broader scope within the same time and budget constraints or if you've done a massive amount of training for people and you know, okay, we can take on this more complicated visit, the people
Collin 10:31
aspect may also be relatable to your clients, our clients, as a people business, yes, we do dog walks, we take care of hedgehogs, we will clean aquarium, but at the end of the day, there's a person that has called us who has reached out through our online forum, or a direct message on social media that has a problem that we're trying to solve. So let's look at the people aspect as though they are our clients. And the of this there are four aspects that we need to keep in mind. There's the client satisfaction and retention, there's client engagement, and communication. Then there's customization and personalization, and finally, quality of service, and deliverables. And each one of these is related to the time, and the money, that cost aspect that we've already talked about. So clients satisfaction and retention. When we're relating this to the time component, this can refer to the timeliness of delivering your project or your service. So this is you showing up on time for the meet and greet. This is you showing up when you say that you're going to be there and you're staying for the duration of that total visit when you're taking care of the cat,
Meghan 11:32
even if the client says I only need a quick 10 or 15 minute visit, but your standard is 30. You continue to stay for 30 Because that matches up with the integrity of your business.
Collin 11:42
The money aspect relates to client satisfaction and retention. Because your budget or the costs associated with meeting the client's requirements means that you can ensure that their expectations are met without overshooting the financial resources that you have for the total budget of the project. What does this mean? Okay, let's go back to that example. Or another example of let's say, you normally only do solo walks for dogs. But a client reaches out to you and says, Well, I have three dogs, I'd like them walked all at the same time, and you commit to that, but you don't have the gear necessary to make that walk work or feasible for you. So you go and you spend a bunch of money on gear for this visit. But you're not bringing in enough resources to make that that that feasible for you for that visit, meaning that you've overshot those, and probably aren't meeting their expectations anyway, because you've never done this before. And so you've spent a lot of money, you've gone over budget to make this project work, when in the end, we probably should have just said no in the first place.
Meghan 12:38
However, if you know that this is going to be a good repeat client that is directly in your service area is not going to cost you a whole lot. Aside from the equipment to do this, that would be a good way to increase your client satisfaction and retention that they're gonna keep coming back if they have neighbors that also want this or if they you know that this person, this client is well connected in the community and is going to give your name a good referral, then yes, it may be okay to invest in that equipment.
Collin 13:03
The second aspect of our clients are their engagement and communication. So when it comes to how time influences this, this is where regular and timely communication with our clients builds the report and fosters that healthy working relationship and trust with them. Always sending those updates those amazing photographs, checking the check boxes, sending the videos, not just when you're at the visit, but when anything else comes up during the visit or checking in ahead of time. So if your software doesn't do this, or if you just want to do it on your own anyway, sending that pre flight emailed to them before they leave saying Hi, it's 24 hours before I'm supposed to start my first visit can't wait to see fluffy and Baxter. Don't forget, here are the things that we discussed that you need to do of shutting the door, set it for logging in the field way diffuser, blocking the entrance, setting out your additional backup key or whatever that is sending that to them so that they can go right yep, hear these things? This is timely. It's necessary, not just timeliness, isn't it? I'm telling you something when I told you I was going to tell you it. But also, I need this information right now. So I'm also getting the detail and the data necessary to make this actually work for us. The money aspect relates to the engagement and communication in that when we invest in client engagement strategies like a CRM, these actually enhance the client experience, but involve costs to make that happen. So we want to give them a good experience. We want to keep them engaged. So we're going to go and spend money on the software to make that happen. So it's not a $0 input, we have to find a balance between investment and value derived from improving our relationships to make sure that we're not not over allocating, we're not we don't have this big, massive CRM or this big, massive ad spend or engagement on Facebook. When really, we could get away or do more with actually spending a little bit less and stay within budget.
Meghan 14:54
This could also even mean hosting a client appreciation event. And if you don't want to rent out a building for the If you can simply meet at a park, you'll have to contact your Parks and Rec Department to find out the exact limitations of that if that you need to pay for it or fill out for Yeah. But that's a great way to say hey, thank you for using my business, I appreciate you, they will feel valued because of that something that brings a lot of value to you is pet sitters associates 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've 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 use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. And relating time and money back to our clients who we are serving, it can really ultimately be the personalization and customization of our services, which is crucial because that is really kind of our bread and butter of saying we can make this walk how you want it to we can make the visit how fluffy needs it to be and customize it that one on one personalized attention and care, which takes time it takes time to understand the client preferences and needs and offering these customized solutions. But it can also enhance that satisfaction of the client of saying, Oh, I don't get this with any other sitter because they this person understands my needs and my wants and ultimately understands my pet. It can also mean the money aspect of offering the services might sometimes involve additional costs. If you want to do a Christmas photoshoot with the dogs that you take on walks and have them wear a little Santa outfit that may require you to buy certain items, it can really be about balancing the level of customization with the cost associated to maintain the profitability while also satisfying the client's needs. The last aspect of how we impact our clients is through the quality of service. And with the time and money aspect. That can mean that it's often influenced in order to make sure that it's high quality, it can require more time or financial resources, which some clients might be willing to accommodate for more of an outcome for a better dog walk for a better cat
Collin 17:16
visit. This is where seeking out additional training, attending, getting pet first aid and CPR certification or going to different conferences, networking with other individuals, whatever that means, or just brainstorming on how you want to elevate the service to your clients. There will be clients who would like that for their pets, and they're willing to give more money or have you spent more time to make that happen. You may be listening to all of this and thinking, Well, I'm not a project manager, right people aren't coming to me with this big thing that they're trying to get done. But you are in running your business and pet sitting and dog walking. The things that you do for your clients are our projects. And we think of them across all different scales, everything from a specific feeding regime and how we manage that to a particular visits to the entire duration of a vacation clients to the long term management of the project of daily dog walks and beyond, we have to fully understand the relationship between the time between the money and between the PayPal aspects of everything that gets put onto our plate. So to kind of walk through how this works. Let's say you get a request from somebody who is going to be gone for a particular weekend. We should approach this with this mindset of this particular triangle to help us understand and judge how we are going to get our hands around exactly what is not just expected but also required of us and whether we are able to take that on or not. It's not merely a decision of are they in my service area? Or do I like this person? Or do they have a cool pet that I want to take on? There's a lot more that goes into this. And this process is is formalizing it down to these three constituent components that are interrelated to one another. So somebody contacts you for a vacation visit? Well the time aspect, okay, the time is both? How long are they going to be away? But also, how long are my visits with them? How long do I need? To do that? In order to answer that, we have to get back to asking questions back to the people. And this is where we understand their expectations and what they are looking for and going okay. Tell me about the pets that you have. What kind of care do they need? Do they have any medications? How are they around strangers? How will they do getting into the yard? Will they come to me when I'm calling them? Do they tend to hide or whatever that is or they have extensive feeding requirements and feeding regimes that a have to adhere to otherwise something is going to happen? All of those expectations will dictate your time at a particular visit. Now as Megan mentioned earlier, You have minimum time requirements of that 30 minutes. But given what you are expected to do that may need to lengthen. If you can't fit it all within that timeframe, then we go to the cost aspect. And now we start talking about how much does it cost me to get there. If I have staff that's one particular costs, but even if you're solo, you have costs associated with that you have the wear and tear on your car, you have the gas, you have the insurance, you have your your software, if you have that are those supplies it takes for you to get there and whether all of the costs are going to outweigh what you're going to get back from this financially is something that you have to make sure that you have nailed down. And then you have to understand that the client and themselves has a budget that they are expecting to stay within or understand the value of No, we have no control over that. Ultimately, we don't wouldn't get there's nothing we can do with that. But we do have to understand that that that is a real thing, in this whole discussion. And let me circle back to the people aspect of this. Okay, understanding what their expectations are of us. Understanding what do I have, for me personally, as a person? Do I have the skills, the expertise? Do I have the training to have the gear? Do I have what I need to actually make this work? If you have staff? Do they have what they need? Do they need something else? Maybe if you're going for an extended extended period, where you're going over like we did for a month and a half close to two months, coming over four times a day, if at everything from 6am, down to 9:30pm? To make that work? Do you have enough people to make that work without burning any one of them particular out? Do you need to staff up to make this work? That's the process we went through. When we started taking on our senior support services, we had to staff up to make sure that these three visits a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year didn't burn it out any one particular person. And we approach this from the team approach. That personal aspect is where we have to start an end in our discussions with our clients. Because at the end of the day, there's a person on the other end of the line, calling us texting us who needs help, who is looking for us to help save them from a predicament that they have found themselves or needing us to give them peace of mind and absolution to go on that call. When we lose sight of that aspect. We lose sight of the kind of care and the service that we're actually providing to people in our community. So by focusing back on that people aspect by elevating that to the first and the last in our triad, there's who walk through, what's the person's expectations, given that person's expectations? What's the time requirement for me to do this now? What's my budget, my personal business budget, what financially do I need to commit to make that time work to meet this person's expectations? And then what kind of people expertise training do I need to make that work to meet that person's expectations? As we walk through those steps, you'll start to see a pattern and understanding of things that are going to work for you. And that just don't work for you. Because don't forget, and the center of all of that is quality. And you have a high level of quality of care for the pets, that you see every single day. That quality is something that we refuse to lessen or decrease in any way, shape, or form, we refuse to change that. And so because of that, how does that impact, the time required to meet that quality, the finances, the money required to meet that quality, and the expectations and the people power to make that actually work,
Meghan 23:36
we are effectively managing the relationship between the people, the time and the money to achieve the project that we have set in order to develop that real long term relationship. And those repeat clients that we all want to have that quality because remember, that's at the center of the triangle here. Between time, money and people is the quality of the outcome, the right combination of these of skilled people the appropriate time and then the appropriate financial investment can contribute to the high quality of the visits that you do. And it can help you elevate your business above everybody else. Because nobody wants to compromise any of these aspects or the potential quality because that is going to lead your business into possible negative reviews
Collin 24:19
and a much broader sense this time, people money just this pet business. Triangle concept can really be seen as a real world application of that project management triangle where we are continuously needing to balance the critical resources that we have that are limited in every aspect. We don't have all the money in the world. We don't have all the time in the world. And for the people aspect. We don't have all the staff. We can't be in all the same places and we have clients that we're needing to serve as well because we want to achieve these high quality outcomes. We want to do the best we possibly can for our clients and sometimes we feel like we are running uphill to make that happen. When we understand the interdependencies here. In the trade offs between the time that we have the people we're working with or for and the money, we can make better and more informed decisions and navigate the complexities of executing high quality, pet visits and dog walks for our clients, we would
Meghan 25:14
love to know how you execute this pet business triangle in your own business. If you would like to share you can do so at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you for taking your time and listening to this today. We hope that you have found it valuable and maybe learn something new. Thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode. We will talk to you next time. Bye
