603: The Mission of Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates with Kristin Holzapfel
Time to Pet. Go to timetopet.com/confessional for 50% off your first 3 months.
Pet Perennials- Visit: https://petperennials.com/pages/register-for-a-business-account.
What does local collaboration mean in 2025 and beyond? Why should pet sitters care about it? Kristin Holzapfel, founder of Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates, joins us to share her journey of building a thriving community of pet sitters across the Midwest. She talks about the importance of educating both pet sitters and clients, how to move beyond third-party platforms, and why fostering an open-minded, collaborative culture matters for the future of the pet care industry. We cover how local organizations can raise industry standards, support professional growth, and create lasting connections that benefit sitters, clients, and communities alike.
Main Topics:
Founding Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates
Transitioning off third-party platforms
Building a local educational community
Handling client referrals & connections
Upcoming Pet Professional Summit goals
Main Takeaway: “We are not here to tell people how to operate their businesses. We want everyone to find the right fit for themselves and their clients.”
Running a pet care business isn’t one-size-fits-all. Every business owner and every pet has unique needs. That’s why at Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates, we embrace open-mindedness and foster a culture of support—not judgment. Whether you’re pen-and-paper or software-driven, whether you serve city clients or rural communities, your approach matters. It’s about helping everyone find what works best for them and their clients. Because when we collaborate instead of compete, our entire industry gets stronger.
About our guest: Kristin Holzapfel is the founder and executive director of Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates (MPSA). A professional pet sitter since 2017 and owner of Pampered Pepperinos & Pals, Kristin specializes in reactive dog care and education. Passionate about building supportive communities, she launched MPSA to help raise industry standards, promote collaboration, and connect pet sitters across the Midwest. Kristin also teaches pet CPR and first aid and actively engages in local and regional pet care initiatives.
Links:
https://www.midwestpetsitteraffiliates.com
https://www.facebook.com/MidwestPSA
https://www.instagram.com/midwestpetsitteraffiliates
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitter, Midwest Pet Sitter Affiliates, community support, pet care, reactive dog, third-party platforms, local business, education, networking, client connection, code of conduct, pet professional summit, pet safety, business growth, collaboration
SPEAKERS
Collin, Kristin Holzapfel
Collin 00:00
Announcer, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at time to pet and pet perennials. What does it mean to have a local community, especially a community that is focused on raising standards and encouraging one another in business and just in life. And so today, we're really excited to cover this topic with the executive director and founder of the Midwest Pet Sitter affiliates. That's Kristin hose awful on the show today to talk about her journey into pet care, the formation of this, this association, and the importance of this to the health of the industry. Kristin really excited to have you on the show and get to speak with you about this. For those who aren't familiar with you or the association, tell us a little bit more about all that you do.
Kristin Holzapfel 00:49
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I founded Midwest Pet Sitter affiliates in 2022 and we are a basically a collaborative group of pet sitters that started based out of Omaha, Nebraska, and it was originally Omaha area pet sitters, because that was our main focus. And over the years, we needed to do a rebranding, because we found that what we were doing was something that was needed all across the Midwest. We didn't have anything similar to this by any means, and so we wanted to create something that felt more inclusive of an entire area, rather than just one,
01:29
one little place. Nice.
Collin 01:30
I know where exactly the Midwest is is a hotly debated topic, but yeah, how did you get into pet sitting? So
Kristin Holzapfel 01:40
I actually started my business pampered paprinos and pals back in 2017 I was kind of at a crossroads of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be when I grow up. So I was like, you know, let's see what happens if I get into pet sitting. I have, I am the proud owner of a reactive border Collin. And so I really got into the reactive dog area of life, not on purpose, but he really taught me a lot about what it means to communicate with animals and how they communicate with us. And I also saw a huge need for other reactive dog owners to find that pet care that they so desperately need so they can go to work and go on vacation and everything,
02:31
and I quickly became the
Kristin Holzapfel 02:35
go to for reactive dog care, Which was fine, and my business kind of grew exponentially, pretty fast. By 2019 I was able to go full time,
Speaker 1 02:46
and then we all know what happened
Kristin Holzapfel 02:49
in 2020 so it was kind of like overnight. I had an entire year of of bookings, and they all canceled. And it was, it was terrifying, but one thing that I did was, besides the reactive dog side of everything, I also my demographic for clients was the medical community. So they kept me going. They got me through the whole pandemic. Without them, I would have been totally lost, and I don't know where I would be, but I take education very seriously when it comes to just the growing and changing industry of of the pet world, everything's different that you don't know what you're going to wake up to, right?
03:33
And so
Kristin Holzapfel 03:35
I started everything once the pandemic started to kind of fade away, and people started traveling again.
Speaker 1 03:41
My Calendar filled pretty fast, and that was about 2022,
Kristin Holzapfel 03:47
and the very, very small group of pet sitters that I did network with and communicate with, and we kind of just like leaned on each other, they were all getting very full.
Speaker 1 03:57
And it just kind of, it kind of expanded from there.
Collin 04:04
I loved you. So it sounds like you already had a core group of people that you were already kind of loosely working together and referring back back and forth from
Kristin Holzapfel 04:12
Yeah, absolutely. So there was a very small group of us that actually got started on rover in the area, and that's kind of where we started our our goal has very much been to educate pet sitters and how to operate their own businesses and not necessarily have to depend on third party platforms. And so we all kind of work together because we were able to just kind of like shoot each other some businesses,
Speaker 1 04:40
and we all were. We've
Kristin Holzapfel 04:43
all kind of had the same mindset as far as how we operated our businesses and everything and and, yeah, so everyone, and everyone was kind of located in very different parts of town, while Omaha is is not huge by any means. We all know how important it is to have a set. Service area, and so it was kind of nice to have people in every corner of the city to be bouncing
05:07
work off of.
Collin 05:08
It can be frustrating when you do have that service area right, because you already said, we know this is important to my health. I cannot be driving 58 miles that way and then 33 miles that way. I can't, it will run us ragged, and we won't actually have that good balance. But then when we do that, it does come with the inherent boundary and inherent no of, well, I'm not going over there, and that hurts us. I know that hurts every time somebody's outside of our service here, I get that little twang of like, oh
Kristin Holzapfel 05:39
no. I'm still guilty of opening my calendar, calendar and being like, Can I can I do it? Can I make this work? Can I make that? Can I fit them? And then I have to, like, sit back and be like, no, no. Well,
Collin 05:49
especially if you know, well, I can't help you, but I know Kathy over there, can or Sarah's over here, she's fantastic, or Tom's over on the south side. He they will, they will love you and take care of you. You know, as good as I can, it really gives us a lot of confidence and kind of gives us that absolution of guilt to be able to just set that aside and kind of move on with our day.
06:09
Yeah, absolutely. You
Collin 06:11
said a phrase there that it was, it was important for you all to educate people to not have to rely on third party platforms and things like that. Why is that important to you?
Kristin Holzapfel 06:21
So the main goal, I know that a lot of communities are like this, but Omaha is very much support. Local support, local support, local we like it when our money goes back into our communities, and
Speaker 1 06:34
after doing my taxes,
Kristin Holzapfel 06:37
after my first full time year of being on those third party platforms, I don't know how to describe the sticker shock that I had when I saw all the different fees that I had
06:54
paid out through the entire year.
Kristin Holzapfel 06:58
It was very overwhelming and frustrating. And after that I got I started getting emails about how those fees were going up, and they're going to go up again and they're going to go up again. And I just like, I realized that there had to be another way of doing things. And when I got started, I was completely unaware of things like time to pet or pet pocketbook or pocket suite, like any of those, I had no idea of their existence. I did not know that they were a thing.
07:29
And so when
Kristin Holzapfel 07:32
I started this, I, you know, I framed it as you know, if you are doing this on your own, your money is coming to you, and that money is going back into your communities, and so that was why that was so important to us, and just being able to, like, educate people on how to do things. Now I'm guilty of it. When I left those third party platforms, I was very paper and pen
07:56
all the time, and it
Kristin Holzapfel 07:58
when I didn't do it, I felt like I was missing something. And I just, I could not switch to any other platform after I left those. And I was like, I panicked when that the idea came around that I was gonna do that, and and I tried out a few of them, and some of them, I mesh well with. Some of them I didn't. I can honestly say that I am officially on a software but paying them $25 a month is significant, significantly better than the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars I was paying out
Speaker 1 08:29
to a third party throughout the year. Yeah, I
Collin 08:32
love how you start with the community focus there, because that is an aspect that is often overlooked. Of what am I? It may just come down to, oh, well, I didn't get all of the money. I thought I would like. That's one aspect. But then there's also these bigger implications of, well, if I didn't get that money, that means that that's less money that I could spend or use on other services or in my community and go back to that, or if I could give back, if I had a donation program set up in my business, or things like that. It really unlocks a lot of potential, and especially when you can sit down and kind of put pen to paper, it's fine. I'm a pen to paper first. Here's my notebook, right? It's I have a paper desk. I have a paper planner here. There's one on my wall. I'm right there with you. Put that pen to paper and start adding up those fees and the expenses, and really start doing a comparison of what am I actually getting versus what are the potential that I'm losing out on? I think that really is very eye opening to a lot of people.
09:31
Yeah, absolutely.
Collin 09:35
And so you all came together in 2022 and you officially launched as the the Omaha network. And so what were those early days like, as you were getting off the ground,
Kristin Holzapfel 09:45
cool, um, I want to say that it was a slow moving process, um, but it wasn't. It actually moved very fast into, like, the whole thought process of, like, I may have girl boss a little too close to the sun, uh. But I would say, in the first week of, you know, advertising to different Facebook groups and saying, Hey, we're, we're starting something like this. I had no idea how I wanted to organize it. I had no idea what I wanted, what I wanted this to look at like in the long run. But what I what I knew I wanted, was I wanted everyone to have a safe landing space to, you know, lean on other industry professionals. You know, sometimes we can talk to our significant others or our family or whoever it is you talk to, but if they're not part of the industry, you know, sometimes they just like, sit there and they nod and and they're like, yeah, that's, I'm so sorry, or, or, that's so great, or, you know, but then when you actually talk to somebody that's part of the industry, they get it, they can actually sit there and have a conversation with you, and, you know, maybe they've got experience in the same situations. So it's just totally different. And just being like, finding yourself at like, a crossroads of, you know, I'm struggling with this, this and this, what can I do to fix it, or what can I do to change this? And having those people that have probably experienced it,
Collin 11:13
have you heard of time to pet? Susan the pet gal, has this to say, time
Susan M. 11:17
to pet has helped us grow exponentially. We believe the platform's features make us by far more professional than other companies who use conventional dashboards. They are the software gurus constantly developing and improving the platform based on user feedback. This decision was a good one. If you're
Collin 11:35
looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confession
Kristin Holzapfel 11:45
I also, when I started this, I wanted people to know what was out there for them, so things like pet sitters International, and naps and just all those different networking you know, whether it's national or international, Just like those kind of things that are out there for them, including, like the continuing education portion of all of those different programs. It's kind of one of those, like, I suffered, but you shouldn't have to, and I don't want
Speaker 1 12:12
you to, kind of mindsets. So that
Kristin Holzapfel 12:16
was a huge building block. So we reached about 50 pet sitters, and within the first week, we did, you know, make sure that our main building block was, you know, hey, it's important that, you know, you remain open minded. It's important that you understand that you're not here to steal clients from other sitters. Omaha is, while it is big, it is it's definitely got that small town vibe to it. Everybody knows everyone and and it's just not, this is not what's going to happen if you're part of our group, right? And so when we started it, we had about 50 sitters join us right out the gate, which was great. I didn't really know what to do with that. And it just kind of became a place where we could just sit and chat and just like, build off each other. And it was, it was definitely a great start. It was very exciting. We quickly were like, hey, you know, would everyone want to get together? To me, you know, in person, a lot of us kind of knew each other, you know, it's like a spider web of of people, like, I know you and I know you, but I don't know you. And so we ended up having a really when our very first get
13:32
together within that was March.
Kristin Holzapfel 13:37
We ended up having our first get together in June. So it only took us a couple months before we were planning events with the whole group and everything. Now, I started this all by myself. I didn't think to get any help by any means. Obviously, I just kind of like, obviously, I
13:59
was bouncing ideas
Kristin Holzapfel 14:00
off of people that I had worked with in the past. And Omaha did used to have a pet sitter Association type thing. It did eventually kind of
Speaker 1 14:11
fall apart, I think. And it was in from
Kristin Holzapfel 14:15
what I understand, it did sort of fall apart for the same reason. You know, most of the industry doesn't get along just butting heads and and just kind of not agreeing with each other and not finding
14:28
any common ground, basically,
Kristin Holzapfel 14:29
which is, again, something that I wanted to avoid right out the gate. And we've, we've done a pretty good job of that, for sure.
Collin 14:38
I know on your website you have that we remain open minded, phrase, and you have a little section about that, like, Why? Why is that so important to your group and and how are you building that into everything that you guys do?
Kristin Holzapfel 14:53
Yeah, so I, you know, built my own personal business off remaining open minded. And so the whole thing was that. We wanted people to understand that not every sitter is going to operate their business the exact same way. And the way that one sitter does something might work for them and it may not work for another, but it's not our position to tell people what is the right or wrong way when it comes to operating their own businesses. Like I said, I was very paper and pen, while other people were very I must have some sort of scheduling software. Or, you know, I have all these documents for my clients that they get, and I have them manually signed, while others say, Hey, I've got this document
Speaker 1 15:36
e sign it, and that works for them. The other side of that was, we are not here to,
Kristin Holzapfel 15:47
I guess the best way to describe is we're not here to tell people how to raise their animals. So if, if a client says that something is working for them, then that's kind of what we go with, unless it's obviously a danger to the sitter or the animal. My whole thing is that I work with many different trainers in the Omaha area, so that I am familiar with
Speaker 1 16:13
all of the tools that are out there, so that way I can help more clients.
Kristin Holzapfel 16:20
And so that was kind of one of the biggest thing that we wanted people to see is like, you know, we need to be open minded to how people are operating their businesses. We need to kind of be open to change where it's needed. Or, you know, maybe it'll help people realize that, you know, there are easier and more efficient ways to do things and or maybe they'll realize that they they tried something and it absolutely did not work and, and that's fine, but our whole thing is that we want everyone to find the right fit of literally everything, whether it's client or software or insurance or literally anything. We just want everyone to find what is the right fit for them.
Collin 17:01
Now, you said, you know, it's easy from my perspective. I think it's easier to be open minded in the sense of, I need to be, I know I need to be accepting of how other people are going to operate their business. I think that's the easy part of being open minded. The hard part of being open minded, though, is the I need to be open minded to changing if I'm in the wrong, that is, and being open to learning and changing when necessary. But having an environment a group of people who are also in that same improvement process, or looking for those opportunities or possibilities out there, that's so huge to be able to it makes it easier to accept when you see other people who are doing it, or at least struggling through that process. Of man, I was paper and pen for so long, and I struggle with this, but it got to the point where I needed to do this. Or I, you know, I thought I understood my insurance policy. This is one we see a lot, too, of, man, oh, I've got insurance. It's totally fine. And then you go, Well, did you actually read your policy, like, Do you know what it includes? You know, going, Oh, oops, I need to change that really quick, don't I? And, and that that's just a process. And so there's this outward, open mindedness, and there's this internal, open mindedness that we have to have as well to ourselves and the way we run our business. Have you ever run into issues with that in the into the group that you have, as far as people clashing over how to operate their businesses,
Kristin Holzapfel 18:27
we did in the beginning, and that was kind of a learning curve for myself, and kind of what we were getting ourselves into when I started this. And so we very quickly started, well, I started creating a code of conduct that anyone who joins part of our program has to agree to. And we do kind of have a three strikes rule. So if they violate anything in the code of conduct, you know, they get, you know, the first time, it's like, hey, you know, remember, this is what you signed. Make sure you're being a little bit more aware of whether it's how you're addressing people or how you're talking to people, or, you know, if you are advertising that you're part of our program, you know you need to be aware that the community is seeing that, and that it reflects on you your business, but also us and all of our businesses as well. So the code of conduct has definitely come in handy when it comes to kind of mitigating those issues.
Collin 19:32
Yeah, that's a really good reminder of when you're part of an organization, it's not just that, how that makes you look it's not just another letters or things to add after your email signature or to put on your website. It's it is all of a sudden you are part of something bigger, and that when you do things that immediately ties you to that other Association, and it will reflect either positively, positively or poorly on them. And so it does add a weighting. And responsibility to every member to make sure they're abiding by those,
Kristin Holzapfel 20:05
yeah, absolutely. And that's I we also like to, you know, hold people accountable for, you know, their their actions. Nobody likes to be held accountable for anything they do, especially when it's it's not necessarily in a positive light. So, but having that there, I think, really helps everyone hold themselves accountable and makes them step back real quick and be like, Wait, like, would this reflect positively on my business? Would it reflect positively on on anyone else's business and the way that I'm handling it? So
Collin 20:35
do you view yourself as more of a networking and referral thing, or as an educational community aspect, or maybe a little bit of both.
Kristin Holzapfel 20:46
So we are a little bit of both. When I am out there doing networking with other businesses, whether it's locally or nationally, I do explain to them that we are a pet sitter education platform. So we are here to educate pet sitters on how to grow and maintain their businesses, while teaching them how to, you know, make connections and nourish those connections in their communities. I will even do like, one on one sessions with people from all across the country. And before I do those sessions, I will get in and, like, do research on their communities and kind of figure out, like, what it is that we're working with before I do a one on one session, because most recently, I went to naps, and I spoke about the importance of collaboration over competition and maximizing our communities. And while we were there, I handed out coupons and stuff, and people were a little confused, like, why is this random girl from the Midwest trying to teach me how to network, like, what is she gonna know? And I just, I feel like it's really important to know, like I do my research of everyone's individual communities before our meetings. And so it's just been very important. I know I lost my train of thought,
22:01
but
Kristin Holzapfel 22:03
yeah, just I tell everyone, you know, we are a education platform, but then we are also a client connection service. Right now, our whole target area is the Omaha area, and that's predominantly where our requests come from, where clients can get on our website, fill out a form that's super detailed about, you know, what services they need, what dates they need, it for information about their animals, where they're located in the Omaha area. And then we have, we send that over to all the sitters in our program, and we're like, Hey, who is this? Does this seem interesting to anybody? Is anybody available for this? And then we connect them with those pet sitters, and then it's our pet sitters responsibility to take the information that we've given them and reach out to the client and like, that's where we kind of, like, that's where our responsibility kind of, like, forks off, like, we've we've done our part. And so what our whole goal is, when it goes, like, full circle, it's like, okay, we gave you all the information. Now it's your turn to do the work and make that connection with the client. Make yourself stand out. And because of who we are as an organization, you know, our goal is that we want you to stand out. We will sit there and we will talk with you about, like, Hey, if you're not getting these jobs that you're interested in, what are you saying to them? How are you reaching out to them? What can we do to help you stand out a little bit more? What makes you different than everybody else, while also making you seem like a collaborative partner in the program?
Collin 23:35
Yeah, that is that is hard. I mean, what you're talking about there is just that, that sales and intake process, and I think very often, especially in the early days of business, when we when we get started, it tends to pick up kind of quickly. Our immediate connections and our immediate circle kind of takes us a long way into our business. But at some point, all of a sudden, we are, we are being reached out to by very cold leads, very cold people who don't know. They just want something, right? And now I have to go, well, I need to turn that person into an active client who I've never done that before. That's a skill set that I don't have. And now, how do I do that? So to have a network around you. Sorry. Are you doing like follow ups with people of, Hey, how did that connection go that we sent over to you, and how do you you know, or what help Are you needing there? Or do you just kind of wait for them to reach out?
Kristin Holzapfel 24:25
Yeah, so it's kind of been interesting, because our whole program and everything kind of skyrocketed over the last few years, and in the beginning, I was very much hands on every single area of the entire program, and I was able to even, like, connect specific sitters with specific jobs, because I knew everybody I was so aware of, like, who everyone was, what their what their specialties were, if they were available, if they were taking new clients, as it continued to grow very,
Speaker 1 24:58
very fast, I. I realized that's
Kristin Holzapfel 25:01
not super realistic anymore, and I, as much as I love my sitters in our program, and I know who they are and I know what they do, I no longer know who's available and who's not, because everybody's everybody's filled at all like so many of our sitters have boosted their businesses like crazy. We've had a couple sitters that have been able to go full time since starting this because of the organizational aspect of collecting all these leads and handing them out and doing what we need to do to do some vetting. And so our rule is that once our client connection specialist, which I'll circle back around to that here in a minute, but our client connections specialist will send out the leads to all these sitters, and the rule is that they have to send us an email back
Speaker 1 25:46
stating I have reached out to this client, and that gives us
Kristin Holzapfel 25:51
a timestamp as to when the sitter reached out to the client. And they don't have to tell us how they reached out to them, but most of the time they do, they'll be like I either emailed or called or I texted, even though they're supposed to do all three. You know, sometimes they will, sometimes they won't,
26:08
and that's okay, and
Kristin Holzapfel 26:11
as long as we have those timestamps, that's where we are. We're comfortable. Now, if we had to go back and chase down every single lead, that would be more time consuming, and considering our program is ran about, I would say, 90 ish percent on volunteer work, it's very hard for us to justify going back and following up on every single lead. We average about 300 leads a year right now. Wow, yeah, and that's just for the
Collin 26:41
Omaha area, yeah, that's a lot. That's, that's a full time job, just to track down Tracey, how it goes, follow up, and all sorts of stuff with that. You know, as far I do want to touch on you. You mentioned a position in there, the client. You said client leads, coordinator, or what was that? Was the name of that position?
Kristin Holzapfel 26:57
Yeah. So it is the client connection specialist, okay, I
Collin 27:01
was completely wrong. Sorry. I
Kristin Holzapfel 27:05
thought I had it like I had said in the beginning. I didn't reach out to anybody for help. I didn't ask for anybody's assistance on how to run this. And within the first year, I was like, I cannot. There's so many things that I want to do. I have so many ideas in my head, but I don't have the bandwidth to make them all a reality.
27:25
And so what year is it? 2025 2023 I think, yeah, 2023
Kristin Holzapfel 27:36
I was introduced to my now best friend and amazing colleague and amazing business partner, Roxanne. She is the other half of my brain. She she takes all of my ideas and she makes them beautiful and pleasing to the eye. So she does all of our IT work. She is the IT director. She also teaches CPR and first aid classes with me. We are basically the two, the two in, in,
28:01
in the position of,
Kristin Holzapfel 28:04
I don't know how to describe it, we are just, we are the yin and yang of this whole program. I have ideas. She has ideas. She just knows how to make them pretty and like, make them come to life for me, and keep them all organized so that way, you know, when we're doing events or anything, and we have forms that need filled out, or she organizes all of our application processes. She just does all these things, and her and I were both targeting all of the different leads that would come through and quickly, as I was getting more ideas and she was having to make them become a reality. We were like, Okay, we can't do this. And I said, we're either gonna have to get rid of it and not offer this as a service to the community anymore, which would have been very sad, because so many people have benefited from it, or we're gonna have to find somebody that is willing to take on this task. And it's not like a simple like, Hey, we got a job lead. Here's the information, here's like that. It's, I wish it was that easy, but we have to go in. We have to, you know, take out all of the super identifying information. So we don't put any client names in the job leads until it's handed off to the sitters that are interested. We don't hand off any addresses. We don't hand off any contact information, so no phone numbers, no email addresses, nothing. We have to take all of that out of the job lead and then submit
Speaker 1 29:32
it to our sitters. And
Kristin Holzapfel 29:35
so we needed somebody that was able to do that whole process while also making sure they send out all the job leads and marking that all the job leads have been submitted and completed, and just making sure that, you know, our streets are paved nicely, and in case there's any concerns later down the road, we all we have to do is open one screen and we can be like this that are reached out, this, that are reached out this, that are reached out. This is when it was posted,
30:01
and just so we brought on Kylie,
Kristin Holzapfel 30:06
who is a former pet sitter, which I think has been so beneficial to us, because she understands the needs of clients, what they're looking for, and how to pick the correct setters that are going to be the best fit for each job, and it's been very nice. So we have Kylie's our client connection specialist, and she has saved us so much time while making sure that we are still able to provide this service to
30:33
the community.
Collin 30:35
I love that, and knowing that you have somebody there, and I know you have a lot other a lot of other people involved in the group and the running of of the the day to day operations and things like that, to know that you have people who are specialist or at least passionate about particular things that are right in their wheelhouse, which helps the the entire organization be better than it would have been otherwise, right? And trying to have one person run everything, it doesn't, doesn't work for very long, at least.
Kristin Holzapfel 31:00
Yes, it's okay to admit when you need a little bit of extra help.
Collin 31:06
As pet sitters, we're there for the joyful moments and the heartbreaking ones too. When a client loses a pet, finding the right gift can be hard. That's where pet perennials comes in. They make it easy to send thoughtful, sympathy and milestone gifts with a handwritten card, colorful gift wrap and shipping included in the US and Canada. You choose the gift to handle the rest, sign up for a free gift perks business account and get discounted pricing with no fees or minimums. Learn more@petpurnios.com or check out the link in the show notes. Kristin, I was curious, from your perspective, why is having a local organization super important. I mean, I know you're going to be maybe a little bit biased in this answer or whatnot, but, you know, there are national organizations. There are international organizations, you know, but you you decided that something local was also important and necessary to the life of a pet sitter. Why is that? Yeah,
Kristin Holzapfel 31:58
I just think that the industry is a very different and in every area, I do think it's it's relatively uniform across the board when it comes to like different regions. So that's why we chose to go with the Midwest rather than just Nebraska. I was actually completely unaware of things like the Texas Pet Sitter Association or the Florida Pet Sitter Association, until I attended my first naps conference
32:26
last year. And so when I
Kristin Holzapfel 32:31
learned about them, I was like, Oh, holy cow. Like we're kind of doing like the same thing, like I was unaware that they existed. And so it was kind of cool just kind of see how they have built out their whole networks themselves as well and so. But I did, I did find that it would not be realistic to do a Nebraska Pet Sitter Association, just because, you know, we have all these rural areas, professional, full time pet centers. We're not going to have enough
33:02
across the state to
Kristin Holzapfel 33:07
justify having an association for one specific state. I think it's more justified to have it. You know, from the entire Midwest, again, lots of controversy around what the Midwest is,
Collin 33:19
but not for this episode. We're not doing that.
Kristin Holzapfel 33:24
We consider it anything from Nebraska to Ohio, for some reason, it is what it is, but and then anything from like North Dakota down through Kansas. But we are obviously open to sitters anywhere. And so I just think it's important, and we are very grassroots in the whole thing, so we do a lot of hands on, reaching out to different businesses and everything, kind of introducing ourselves and and it's giving me the opportunity to travel quite a bit, which has been nice. I really have enjoyed that. But I do appreciate the national organizations as well, because I feel that I have made so many amazing, valuable connections across the entire country. I tell everyone you know, I've got someone in California all the way to New York. I've got people, you know, in Canada, down to Texas, you know, just kind of everywhere and and having those different connections is so important, I believe, and so and then just having like a local organization that works together to you guys can work together to help local issues and local local rescues and do it, having it be the Midwest, it kind of opens up our opportunities to travel to different areas and do different events while helping different, you know, nonprofits and everything in those areas as well.
Collin 34:49
When you mentioned, you know, geographically, the regions, they are similar in a lot of different in a lot of ways, I know one of those can just be, you know, a. How the local economy is doing, and what drives the local economy. You see this, and, okay, well, if you're in outside the Washington, DC area and the surrounding area, well, you're heavy government, right? There's a lot of government up there, and that drives a lot of business. And so that's going to impact you differently than somewhere where it's mostly manufacturing or it's more blue collar kind of work, and that helps you know the ebbs and flow of the business too, and helps people see trends and understand what's going on in your local market when you look at seasonality, or when you look at pricing, when you look at things. And I've even thought of things like you mentioned local issues and rescues, but also local legislation. How are we staying on top of that? Do we understand how things are going to impact us as a business, as things are going through our local Senate and our local house and our local or government organizations? Because that's something that is going to be very near and dear to our heart, and we can speak up a lot more powerfully locally than we can at a big national level, in a lot of cases, and actually have influence and impact where it's needed. Yeah, absolutely. I know you work really hard to bring people together, and you're you know, in your local area, what kind of barriers do you see? Do you ever get pushback from people, as far as you know why to join, or you know, necessary things, or, you know, not being able to overcome certain issues when they want, when you talk to them about becoming a member?
Kristin Holzapfel 36:32
Yeah, absolutely. So there, when we first got started, there was a lot of confusion about whether like what we were doing and and I think the thing that we ran into is that people didn't want to ask questions, they just wanted to make assumptions, and so they kind of saw us as, like, obviously, you know, we all have competition, and for some reason they there's just some people that cannot Get behind the idea of working with
Speaker 1 37:00
their competitors. And right
Kristin Holzapfel 37:03
out the gate, I was like, I know that there's going to be people that don't agree with this and don't think that it's going to benefit them, and so it was really important for me to have that mindset that not everyone is going to want to be part of this. And I think because of that mindset, it's really helped the way that we tackle other issues that we've had. So you know, some people you know have joined and they've signed our agreement and everything, and immediately, within like, the first few months, we get concerns about them, either stealing content from other people's Facebook pages or making comments about stealing clients and everything, and those are kind of two big no nos, like two, like, really huge things that we don't allow, obviously, with the whole ceiling clients thing, you know, we kind of have to make the decision like, does this justify a three strike thing, or is this Just somebody that's not going to benefit from our program, because immediately after signing our code of conduct, there's talking about stealing clients. It's kind of like one of those weird issues. We've had people you know, who have joined our program and didn't, I guess, didn't understand that we are first and foremost an education platform. We are here to educate pet sitters. We're here to educate clients on you know, what it means to have and provide safe and reliable pet care. That is first and foremost what we are. And they would think that they were there to get jobs. They were there to get job leads and make money. And that's all they were there for, and that's what we were there to provide. And they would leave. And then when we would start advertising for, you know, hey, sitters, you know, join our program. Like here, here's the deal. And the other thing is, when sitters initially join our program, it is entirely free. We operate everything off of a Slack program. And so you literally get a welcome email after your application has been reviewed, and it has all of our Slack information. You get access to all of like, our general information. And then there are opportunities to go up from there once
Speaker 1 39:14
you're in the general program. And so
Kristin Holzapfel 39:20
I think that some there's just been some confusion about whether we're there to be providing job leads, or whether we're there to be providing education, or equally both. And so that has just, you know, caused us to make some changes in our code of conduct or in the rules that we're providing, or kind of, you know how we represent ourselves in the community, for sure, and so, you know, we do things in our community like Pet Sitter amas. So I'll go out to different community events and be like, hey, you know, I'm here. Come ask me any question you would ever want to ask a pet sitter ever like, I don't care if you don't work with me. And that's another thing about our. Program is that we want to make sure that our clients have the pet sitter that is the perfect fit. So we tell people, you know, you can fill out our form if you get connected with a pet sitter and you don't feel comfortable asking that pet sitter X, Y and Z questions, or you're getting red flags for whatever reason, come back to us and we will be happy to answer any and all questions you have regarding to hiring the right pet sitter. And kind of, you know, is this normal for a pet sitter? Because some people are kind of confused, you know, why is this pet sitter charging for additional animals? And this pet sitter is not, and
Speaker 1 40:36
stuff like that. And so I think it's just important that, you know, we let people know
Kristin Holzapfel 40:44
kind of what we're there for and how we're how we're helping the community, for sure. And another thing about our our whole thing, is that we do raise money. We we sell shirts, got shirts. We when we do community events, if we have to pay to be there, we offer that opportunity for sitters to join us, to come there and advertise their own businesses from our table. But if we have to pay to be there, they have to pay, in a little bit, obviously, to cover the cost of the table. And I think that also helped
Speaker 1 41:15
us, you know, it kind of helped us teach pet
Kristin Holzapfel 41:18
sitters how to do those community events, because we think that those are seriously one of the most important things that you can do for your business. And we are constantly out at those but we initially it's entirely free to join us and just different like paid opportunities. We do different classes, and if we have to pay the instructor to be there, then obviously we charge a small fee for sitters to join us. It's definitely like an all a cart option, but if you're part of our elite sitter program, you get
Speaker 1 41:49
easier access to those types of things.
Collin 41:53
Well, I love that you brought that up as far as making sure people understand why they're there and the importance of showing up. I definitely understand that frustration of of somebody going, Okay, now, now it's time for you to give me things, right? And they just kind of want, they just show up to be given things. They don't want to contribute. They don't want to be an active member, play an active role. They don't want to be part of the community, right? They're just looking for those leads and that revenue and having to kind of put up some little, you know, stop signs there and go whoa, up here, like this is so much more. And, yeah, we can be a lead source to you, but also we're here to help you be better. And the hope is, is that as you raise the bar of yourself in your business, the leads will generate from your own business, right? And so it's this raising everybody up, whether that is through the leads that come in every year, or if that's just from the educational, the outreach, the community aspect, and that's a big thing too, of knowing that, if you're in the area, having a community that in an organization that's showing up and educating people on pet sitters, because even though a lot of us take it for granted of going, Oh, everyone knows what a pet sitter is and what a pet sitter does, right? Like the answer is, no, a lot of people still have no idea what to expect from a from a professional pet sitter, and that, in and of itself, is a barrier to using the services that we offer. And so knowing and having a way of educating the community at large that is definitely a way of helping break those down and ease the access to the services that people are looking for.
Kristin Holzapfel 43:31
Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, we can only do so many like online amas like, Hey, here's our post. Ask us questions, right, and hope that people comment on it, versus when you're at a community event where people are constantly stopping by your table, like and one of the first questions that we ask when somebody stops at our table is, do you have a pet sitter? Or even, shockingly, at a lot of pet specific events that we go to, we've had to kind of tailor our question more to being like, Do you have pets at home? Because we've had so many people just, like, stop at our table and like, like, be so interested and everything, and we'll get, like, No, not right now. Like, Oh,
44:15
all right. I mean, I guess I
Kristin Holzapfel 44:16
would also come to a dog event if it just meant that I got to pet dogs. I i would probably be okay with
Collin 44:21
that, yeah. I mean, you know,
Kristin Holzapfel 44:26
but it's been very nice connecting with the community. And for a while, there it was like, Oh, I've never heard of you guys. And then even after we rebranded and changed our name, we kept our logo the same. And so branding is super important to us, so that way, when people see that logo, they automatically know who we are. And it really went from, oh, I've never heard of you guys to Yeah, I follow you guys on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. It's been so nice, kind of seeing that grow and just like the fact that we are becoming a visible brand, and people are recognizing us, and I. Crossing our fingers that our reputation is remaining positive.
Collin 45:06
Well, Kristin, as you've continued to grow, what are some things or what's up next for the the affiliates and the association? What are you most excited about for or working for in the future?
Kristin Holzapfel 45:18
So one of our biggest things that I've ever since day one, one had wanted to accomplish was creating an angel program where if somebody is in a tight space or having an emergency or something, and they need somebody to watch their animals, but don't necessarily have the funds, we want to be able to cover the cost of those pet sitting expenses for those individuals. So that is our has been one of our long term goals. That does mean that we need to continue to keep growing so that we can get more and more sponsors, because, again, entirely free program for clients to use. So it's not like we're sitting here, just like taking in a whole bunch of money and just, you know, having fun with it. And so in order to build something like that, we have to continue to keep growing our entire brand,
46:05
and
Kristin Holzapfel 46:08
so that, that is our biggest goal. We really want to be able to do something like that. I think it would be very helpful for our community, and we don't want to just limit it to the Omaha area. We want to be able to provide something like this across the entire Midwest. So hopefully in the next few years, we'll have something built out that we're able to provide that. And then our short term goal sort of, we were supposed to be hosting our pet professional summit in June, which is it was like less than 10 days from today, and I woke up last week, and again, it is important to know that you you need to identify your limits. I woke up last week realizing that this was not ready by any means to to give to the public. We've done a lot of events like this in the past, where it was free for pet sitters to come hang out, Eat Food Network, we had a couple educational speakers, but this year, we're opening it up to the entire pet care industry across the Midwest, and so anybody that works with animals is invited to come, and it's going to be a two Day Summit. And since it was originally scheduled for June, we have now pushed it to October, so October 11 and 12th, we are hosting the MPSA pet professional Summit. It's going to be a two day event. The first day is going to be all about pet safety and nutrition, including a pet CPR, and first day in class that comes with a two year certification,
Speaker 1 47:44
the second day is going to be all about just fun stuff.
Kristin Holzapfel 47:48
We're going to have, like vendors, we'll have a ton of raffle prizes. We'll have, it's going to be just like business basics, you know, bookkeeping, hiring processes, and it's all super universal to all pet care industry. So it's not like one specific industry is going to benefit more than the other, and so we're going to have that Saturday night is going to be like a big social hour where we're going to have like, trivia and food and drinks and everything. Originally, it was literally just going to be CPR and first aid on one day, and then educational vendors on another day. And after sitting down and talking with Arden Moore, who I'm not allowed to talk to for more than 30 minutes, because we will not stop talking to each other, we managed to come out with a very detailed two day schedule that when I looked at it, after confirming it with everybody else, when I looked at it, I said I would spend money on this. I would pay money for this specifically. And then it's October in Nebraska. It's not going to be a million degrees. It's not going to be wet. We have a bunch of haunted houses in the area, pumpkin patches. There's actually so much to do in Omaha, and we're going to have an entire flyer and everything printed out and emailed to everybody that attends, you know, with different hotels and food and just different activities, we have the nation's best Zoo. Actually, I think it might be the best zoo in the world now, I'm not, I can't even remember, which honestly takes about two days to get through sometimes. So we are just, I mean, it's just going to be a full fun weekend, and I've been having a lot of fun connecting with businesses in our area and outside of our area. I've been having fun traveling and getting the world word out about the whole event. It's really built up more connections. I think, just kind of whether people are able to be involved or not. It's just fun, you know,
Speaker 1 49:54
letting them know what's happening and what we're doing here. Yeah. Well, that sounds
Collin 49:59
right. Really excited Kristin, if somebody's interested in attending or learning more about either the summit or more about Midwest pet sitters affiliates, how best can they learn about that and get connected?
Kristin Holzapfel 50:13
So you can find us on Facebook and Instagram under Midwest Pet Sitter affiliates, or our website has everything that's Midwest, petzer affiliates.com, and that has all of our schedules. It has all of our events that we're doing, and just all in all, everything that you need to know about,
50:31
everything that we're doing. Cool
Collin 50:34
Kristin, this has been so much fun. I've really appreciated getting to speak with you about the organization and how you're working locally to empower power other people and to lift everybody up in the industry and make an impact. I'm really excited about this, and the conference sounds like a lot of fun. So this has been, like I said, an immense pleasure, and I'm so thankful for your time today. Kristin, thank you for coming on the show. Yeah. Thank you so much. In community, there is no one size fits all approach, and this is one of the beautiful aspects of having a local community that we can lean into and be a part of. Not just that the community looks different, but every person, every business that is there, looks different as well. It creates such a wonderful and beautiful richness of diversity of ideas, experiences and ways of doing things that it makes us all better. Yes, there are things that we have to abide by legally and that does put constraints on us as businesses, but around those and those boundaries help us be more creative in our processes, more beneficial to us as we look to run a business that follows the legal guidelines and serves the needs of our clients the way we want to do that, the future of the pet care industry is dependent on people continuing to find community, share ideas and thrive together. We want to thank our sponsors today, time Tibet and pet perennials, for making this show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
52:10
You
