612: 13 Years, 13 Lessons: What We’ve Learned as Pet Sitters
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Over the past 13 years, we’ve built, paused, and rebuilt our pet sitting business across multiple cities and life stages. In this episode, we share the lessons that have shaped how we operate today—from getting licensed and insured, to listening closely to clients, and setting clear policies. We talk about the hard decisions that came with growth, like raising prices and ending services that no longer fit. We also reflect on the emotional journey of staying connected to our work while learning to lead with boundaries. It’s a candid look at the evolution of a pet care business and the people behind it.
Main Topics
Licensing and insurance basics
Client communication best practices
Blocking and protecting time off
Evolving with your business
Valuing your time and boundaries
Main Takeaway: We had to make changes because they were right for us… They were what we needed, both personally and as a business.
After 13 years in the pet sitting industry, we’ve learned that not every decision will make everyone happy—and that’s okay. Whether it was shutting down boarding, raising prices, or walking away from house sitting, each change moved us closer to a business that aligned with our lives and values. You don’t have to say yes to every client or follow someone else’s path. You have permission to make bold choices that serve you, not just your business.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. We are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We appreciate you joining us today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and dog co launch for sponsoring today's episode. We also can't forget our executive producers on Patreon. They are people who find value in the show, love it. Listen, have been listening for months or years and want to help keep the show going. If that sounds like you, you can go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can
Collin 00:31
help out. Now, you said executive producers on Patreon. Technically, the level is great. Dane produce level on on Patreon. So if you go to Patreon and you look for executive producer, you're not going to see that title, but it is a benefit of being a Great Dane supporter.
Meghan 00:46
So we started pet sitting in July of 2012 so that means 13 years ago, so long ago. We wanted this episode to be about the lessons that we've learned over those years, because it feels like we've done so much. We started out just Collin and I doing a lot of house sitting and drop in checks. And then we closed down our business, moved five hours away to a brand new city. Had to restart, get all new clients, a lot of house sitting and drop ins again. And then we started having kids, so we had to close down our business, and then we moved several states away and restarted it, did some in home, boarding and daycare, and then closed that down once our kids got older and we were really out of the house, doing a lot of sports and activities. And now we've grown a team serve two different service areas and do alcohol only. It's been a crazy 13 years,
Collin 01:36
when you put it like that, I really am exhausted thinking about everything that we've done, and we have experience, it seems like just a little bit of everything and continuing to try and grow and adapt businesses that are going to shape and are shaped by what we need at this stage in our lives.
Meghan 01:51
These are in no particular order, but the first lesson is to get pet sitting, specific liability insurance and a city license. When we first started, we knew about the insurance, but we did not know about the city license. So it is important to know your city, your county, your state laws for exactly what services you're offering, if you can even offer them at all, and then going to your county's courthouse and getting a license for what you need.
Collin 02:16
Yeah, and this really has adapted, because as our business models have changed so drastically over the years, it got us asking a lot of questions about, legally, are we doing this appropriately? Is what we're doing, you know, appropriate for what we want to do and how we want to operate. And so when you ask the question, though, this is where it gets tricky, depending on where you live and the requirements. Sometimes when we ask, and this happened to us, when I, when I called our city and I said, Do I need a license to walk dogs? They said, No, you do not need a license to do that. However, if I asked, Do I need a license to operate a business? Well, they said yes, and you need to come in and fill out some paperwork. So this, this as wrapped in this is our mindset of, I am a business. I am running and operating a legitimate business, and therefore I should follow a legitimate business path, doing business things including getting a business license that shows I am on record, I am in the in public, and I am noted it down somewhere that I am doing these operations, and because pet sitting and dog walking is still so new, and a lot of a lot of cities, a lot of government officials don't fully understand exactly what it is and how we do it. It may be weird at first having this conversation with somebody, but your question should be, do I need a business license to operate
Meghan 03:41
well, because you also have to think about events that either you are participating in or going to be throwing. A lot of times, the events that we choose to attend do require a city license that you have to have on hand. And it's not just if you offer products or you're selling products, but it's any business has to have a license if you want to be a vendor at this event. Yeah. And
Collin 04:01
so the lesson here again is just go talk to people. Your go to whatever license office that is, and just tell them what you want to do, how you want to do it, and where you're going to be doing it, and get their feedback, learn from them, and then follow that. And the insurance side of this, this is just we have had so many things come up, or potentially come up over the years of running and operating a business that had we not had the appropriate insurance, would have been a potential major issue. And we see enough examples out there in the broader world, on Facebook and on the news that goes insurance, whether you are walking one dog or 1000 dogs, insurance is absolutely critical, critical because it just takes one incident to completely bury you in in bills and in debt. A second lesson from over the years is to listen to clients as they talk for both things, both said and unsaid, specifically pay attention to things that they're pointing out. Or words that they say a lot during a conversation. I know that one that comes up to us is maybe you walk into a house and you just observe that there are a lot of baby gates all over the place, but the client never specifically mentions them or talks about them, but they talk about their dog, follow up with a question about the gates, or pay attention to what they're pointing to, or the stories that they tell you about their dog or about their cat. This gives you a lot of history and a lot of connection points to them and their history with their pet.
Meghan 05:30
Language is super important. When we talk to clients on the phone and they say, I want pet sitting, or I want dog sitting, we have to say, Okay, what exactly does that mean to you? Because we know it means coming over multiple times a day, but to a lot of people, it means you come over once you stay a long time, or you stay overnight. It's kind of like reading between the lines, but more so just listening to what they're not saying, which is a skill definitely, which leads us right into our next lesson of always clarifying with a client and never assuming again that language really comes into play here, because we've had clients who will book every day, multiple times a day, for their trip, but they will skip a random Thursday afternoon, and we'll have to go in and say, was this intentional? Did you mean to do this? And sometimes they'll say, No, I thought I clicked that, but I didn't. Or sometimes clients will say, I feed one cup of food. Well, is it a measuring cup of food? Is it a solo red cup? Is it something they got randomly from a bar one time?
Collin 06:30
Yeah, it's really all about understanding that the clients have the information in their head. They know what they're trying to say, and it is very easy for us to just write down verbatim, right? Have them dictate to us what we need to do. However, what we need to do is we need to take that information, we need to read through it, parse through it, and then come up with a list of questions. Something that we've always done is okay, we're going to get the client information. They're going to fill out their profile, we're going to do the meet and greet, we're going to sit down and Meghan and I are going to parse through all of that, find the gaps, find the things that are confusing. Find things that don't make sense, the incongruities, the inconsistencies of that information, because it will be there. And this is especially important for us as we've grown a team of having people who are going to be going into here, they're one step possibly removed from this, and so having crystal clear information and instructions is imperative to how we operate, and it should be to everything that we do in our business.
Meghan 07:28
I think there is no greater example of being a pet sitting business owner than trying to take time off and clients still book you anyway, so you have to block time off. We have run into this countless times of we want to take a quick family vacation, and we want just a weekend away, and sure enough, somebody will come in and book those dates when you get to a client size of 100 200 300 people, people are going to need you. 365, days a year. So it is super important that you are intentional with blocking that time off?
Collin 08:01
Yeah, when we boarded, it was non stop. It was there was always something, and an entire vacation could potentially be ruined by the by one client booking where all of a sudden that would just suck away all of our time, and we would have to make that judgment call of, do we serve this client? They've been a good client to us. Would they've they've always pay on time, they always tip really well and or do we try and take three days off? And there were some times where we made the decision to serve the client instead of serving ourselves, and it was a hard lesson that we had to learn. Of this time is stuff that we never get back, especially with our kids, making sure that we are spending dedicated, specific time doing fun things with them at the expense of the business. Okay, we're going to put business stuff on on the side. We're going to put it on hold. We're going to deny clients, we're going to slow our onboarding process for new hires, or whatever that we've got to stop this and focus on this other thing for an intentional period of time. Well,
Meghan 08:56
and even when you have a team, it doesn't really stop until you have many, many layers in there where you can finally take time off, because if you don't have a manager of your team, you are the one answering the questions and potentially being the backup if a sitter gets a flat tire.
Collin 09:11
Yeah. So this lesson here, this far, fourth lesson here, is really based off of, we would try and play the game of, let's wait and see if anybody books this weekend. Let's just wait to see if this is a random open period of time before we schedule anything for
Meghan 09:25
us. That's a terrible plan. Let us tell you that don't do that. It
Collin 09:30
never works because you wait too long and people book, it's just going to happen. And so the biggest lesson here was, block time off. Block it off early and protect it aggressively, right? Tell people, say no, say no, say no.
Meghan 09:45
Something you should definitely say yes to is pet business insurance. All professionals should have specific pet business liability insurance. And as a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet. Care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today@petsitllc.com and as a listener, you get $10 off with your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. We were not very introspective. Over the first few years of our pet sitting, we were just kind of going through the motions, accepting clients, getting bookings, saying yes to things, and not really thinking about the why behind what we were doing. We were just doing the thing that you're supposed to do. But as we've had a chance to reflect over the past several years, we've noticed a trend in ourselves of really making the pets first. And this is kind of silly, of course, as a pet sitter, the pets come first, but we've really had to make judgment calls for what's best for the pet, kind of regardless of what the client wants. So a lot of times when a client will contact us, they'll want every other day visits for their cat, or they'll want two visits a day for their dog, who's in a crate all the time. Over the years, we've developed policies against these things because we feel it's in the best interest of the pet. And we've seen over the 1000s of pet visits that we've done that this is the best. Cats get stuck behind dryers all the time. They get claws ripped in carpets. They get their collars stuck in air vents. We know that everyday visits are the best for the pet.
Collin 11:23
Well, it's really been about, over the years, developing a code of ethics and really defining our standard of care based off of our experience and knowledge and background. And what this does sometimes is it does put us in opposition to the client's expectations or what the client wants, and so we find ourselves more often than not having to educate the client about what we do and why we do it. You mentioned the two a days like that's really something that we get a lot of requests for. Hey, I have a dog. I've got an elderly dog, or I've got a dog. They just sleep all the time. Can you come twice a day and or I've got a cat every three days. Or can you just stop by once a week while I'm gone, then having to tell them no, and many times, the clients are pretty shocked that we say no to what they're asking, because they are used to being the ones who dictate what the level of care is going to be for their pets. And here we come along and say that is a line we're not going to cross. And here's why, here's what we do, here's why it's actually better for you and your pet, and then we have to leave it up to them to make that final decision and judgment call. But at least we've defined that care and where our standards
Meghan 12:32
are. And this could be extrapolated more broadly out to I don't do hide a keys, right? We do lock boxes or door codes. We require two methods of entry, lots of policies and procedures that we have developed over the years, but yeah, a code of ethics. Of this is the level of care we will not go below. And all of these are great things to make sure that you have in a contract, which is our sixth lesson. Have one. You need one. It protects you. Have something to point back to when clients question, or when they when they say, Well, I didn't think that this would be the way that it is. You can say, well, you signed this, and here is what it says. You know, people claim all the time that they didn't know all sorts of things. You know, when we had, when we signed up for our phones, we didn't read all of the terms of service, the 75 pages that it feels like it is, but it is important for you to have something in black and white that you can say, this is what it is. This is my cancelation policy. These are the days that I charge extra, because there are holidays, the
Collin 13:31
cancelation policy is a big one. That's when we get a lot Oh, I didn't know that. I that you had a cancelation policy. Well, that's interesting, because it was right here on page two that you signed and acknowledged when you came on board, and you also re acknowledged it every year since you've been a client. And this is just something to not that we're throwing it back in people's faces, but it gives us something to stand on and that say, No, you did acknowledge this, and we are holding it to it, whether it's cancelation, whether it's when it's payment due, whether it's communication style, whatever that is for you, having it in a contract or a terms of service, however you want to phrase that specifically for how you operate. Make sure that the way your business works and is outlined clearly for the client. We don't make it confusing. It's not hard to read. It's very plain language with lots of bullet points and simple phrases. Nothing's hidden. It's right there for them at all times to review. But having one gives us power in that conversation well.
Meghan 14:27
And we actually have had a few lawyers as clients, and so they they read line by line.
Collin 14:32
Those are always fun. I always sweat a lot whenever they're whenever they're on board.
Meghan 14:38
But thankfully they've never said, Oh, this doesn't this reads weird, or I don't agree with this, and I won't sign it. They've they've all read it, okayed it, and sign it. Our next lesson is more personal. Find something that you are going to connect to. This job can be incredibly lonely. You are just going into people's homes day in and day out, not really talking to anybody. Day, or seeing anybody really out on the street, and it can really feel like we are in an island alone. Let me be the first to say you are not alone. But find something to connect to, whether it's the pets, the owners, if you have employees, or the scheduling that you do, find something that really lights you up at the end of the day, that that you want to wake up tomorrow and go, Oh, I can't wait to see Baxter or Tomorrow is Wednesday, and I know I get my yoga hour in tomorrow. I can't wait for that.
Collin 15:27
Yeah, your business is going to change, and you're going to change relationship with your business is going to change you especially you start off with just a handful of clients, and it's really easy to stay connected with them, and you know them really well. You grow and you expand. Those clients move away, and now you have different and changing relationships with your clients, with their pets. If you bring on an employee, now it's even more different. And now you're doing more administrative things. You're doing more behind the scenes work, whatever stage you are in your business, whatever you are involved in, you have to be connected to it. And when we talk about that, we mean finding purpose, finding meaning, finding something that, Meghan, like you said, it lights you up. It fills you with excitement, and that keeps you going, no matter what that is. And I know our business has changed and evolved drastically since we first started this 13 years ago. And we all we've tried really hard to just stay connected to one or two things. You know, for me, I have really grown to love and enjoy connecting and training and onboarding staff. It can be hard sometimes, but seeing somebody else get excited about this work and learn and grow in this profession is really cool and fun. And so it's about going, Okay, well, I don't get I don't interact with the pets as much as I used to, but I found something else that's really cool, and I really enjoy
Meghan 16:47
this may sound silly, but for me, it is the route planning. When we have a bunch of visits in a day, and I have to route plan 40 different visits between eight different people and getting their routes correct and making sure that their drive times are precise. I love that, that meticulous part of my brain, that very detail oriented part of my brain, is on fire like, Yes, I accomplished this. I have made the best route possible for for Janie, and she's going to be excited about going to work, because I have done my job.
Collin 17:19
You also like putting together puzzles. So this, that's true,
Meghan 17:23
that's true, but that's just been a very recent development. A few years ago, it was I loved getting to meet the variety of pets that we cared for, and going into their homes and and figuring out the nuances of their setup and and what they liked and what they didn't like. So your connection to what you love is going to change over the years, and that's okay. So you are going to change over the years, and that's okay. Your business is going to as well. Ours, again, certainly has. You have to make decisions that are right for you, and that's our lesson number eight, make decisions that are best for you and no one else. We closed down our business several times, actually, when we were moving cities and states and having babies, these decisions were very hard, but we knew at the end of the day that it was it was just not going to be possible to serve both our family and our clients in this new season,
Collin 18:14
or like when we stopped doing boarding. That was our bread and butter for a very long time. We did boarding and take care. We had to stop doing that because our kids were older. We wanted to have a different kind of life. Or when we stopped doing services, that was just Meghan and I, and we brought on a team of employees. We stopped offering services in this large service here. We scaled back, we made it different. We had to raise prices, right so we had to stop offering services at a lower price, and instead raise prices to accommodate pay for our employees and rising prices of everything else. These were all decisions that didn't make our clients happy. They were tough transitions. They were tough periods of time for both them and for us. However, we had to make them because they were right for us. They were what we needed, both personally and as a business. And that lesson has been hard learned and hard fought, because when we have tried to make decisions that would make everybody happy, when we've tried to make decisions that were for somebody else, we would look at it and end up we were running a business. We were doing things that we hated, that were not good, that we're actually putting us behind and taking us further from our goals instead of faster
Meghan 19:25
towards them. Well And truthfully, if you have more than five clients, you are not going to please everybody. So it doesn't really matter what decision you make there nobody, not everybody's going to be happy. So that's why it is important to truly put yourself first before we continue, we have a word from Michelle Klein with dog co launch.
Speaker 1 19:44
Are you attending the dog co Business Summit located in Winston Salem, North Carolina, September 26 through the 28th This is a place for scaling pet care companies to come together, learn from industry leaders and level up your pet care business to the. Next Level, go to dogco summit.com to learn more and to purchase your ticket before they are all
Meghan 20:06
gone. Our lesson number nine is sometimes you want your business to look a certain way, or you want to try new things, but it doesn't work. You fail. That's okay. We have tried to grow a few of our services, and we have found it extremely difficult over the years to get them off of the ground. We tried different marketing tactics, different wording, trying to get it out to different groups, but ultimately the market said, No, this isn't what we want right now. And we had to sit in that and be okay. This thing that we really, really wanted, that we tried to push for for a long time, just didn't work in our pets and eat business.
Collin 20:42
And that happens with all sorts of things you may want to have. You may dream a vision for a business to have certain hours or certain service ranges or a certain service radius, or certain things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as much as we say that you you should run a business that is one that you want and that you like and that you are connected to there, there are going to be times where the market is just going to say, No, I'm not ready for that. This isn't something that people want, and it could be they don't want it for a time, or it's just not going to pan out for whatever reason that is. And this is the feedback that we get as being a service business. Running a business means you get feedback from your community in the sense that the market is out there, and they're going to say whether they want your services or not. And the entrepreneurial side is figuring out what that is, what's that gap, where is my niche, where I can fit? And we may think we've got it, or we may see somebody else running a business and go, Man, I really want to have what they do. Man, look at that. Look, look what they get to do. I want to do that where I live and in my service areas. And sometimes it doesn't pan out. And that is okay, because it just means that we have yet to figure out how to actually serve our clients well. And you can balance this and go, Okay, I have a vision, but I'm being told no by the market. How do I make these two work? You adapt, you change, you substitute, you market, you change your language. You continue to try. At some point though, you may have to say, Okay, I can't do this, and so I need to find another thing to offer my
Meghan 22:13
community. Yeah, and it could even be that what the market wants you aren't willing to do. Our market really wants house sitting, but that's not something that we are able or willing to do at this season in our life. We were at one time, but not right now, and maybe in the future, but we are not able to fill that niche right now. Our lesson
Collin 22:32
number 10 is really one that we have learned as we've brought on employees and trained them in our policies and procedures, and it's that having an attention to detail is more important than having the right answer or knowing exactly what to do. We find all sorts of injuries and irritations on pets. We find all sorts of things that are out of place. We find sorts of things like doors unlocked or windows open or whatever. You know we walk in, the client has left those things like that. We might not know why the dog is limping. We might not know why the cat is throwing up while we're over there. We might not have all of the answers, but the important thing is that we caught it. It could be that we don't know why, that there's a mess over here. We found the mess, though. Okay, that is first and foremost. The most important thing is that we are catching and finding things that's more important than knowing the immediate right answer or having a solution immediately. That may take time, that may take working back and forth with a client or within the team to put together a plan, but the first thing that we have to do is just know what we're working with. We have to know our starting point, so that we can then plan a way forward.
Meghan 23:43
And if you are solo, this can sometimes be easier, because you are the only one doing the visits. So you know where you put the paper towels and don't have to go searching for them because that they are where you put them. Last time with a team, you have to have a sense of collaboration and communication in order to really execute especially long term, pet sitting visits really well, because the paper towels may move from visit to visit, or the somebody washed the bowl and it's now in the sink, or somebody may have noticed a chewed bed where before the previous visit, they didn't catch that. So whether you have a team or you are solo, attention to detail is really everything, because with pet sitting visits going into people's homes day after day, there are so many intricate things that we have to pay attention to in order to execute well,
Collin 24:29
another lesson from growing and expanding our team has been it's better to pick up a poop or a pee mess than it is to bandage a wound. As we have worked to train and be better trained ourselves on animal behavior and communication and body language for dogs, cats and all sorts of things. The important factor here of not forcing pets the importance of being fear free in everything that we do, it's better to clean up that mess than to potentially bandage a wound on ourselves. Themselves in that we don't force pets to go outside with us, or force pets into corners, or force pets on these things. If they are not having it, we will not force them into those situations. Now, the caveat I always get, we're walking a dog. Okay? Pretend we're walking a dog. If it sits down in the middle of a road and a Mack truck is barreling towards us, okay, for the health and safety of that dog, we're going to get them out of the road. But when we're in a visit and that dog is on high alert, it's a level four or level five on the FAS scale there, or the cat is, we are not going to try and force ourselves onto that and involve them in a relationship and pet them and get the collar on. If we cannot do that safely for the pet and ourselves. We're not going to do that. We're going to give them space, right? Sometimes you're just not going to be able to get the dog or the cat out. Okay, that's fine, but we have to be communicating with the owner, taking good photos, getting good video, working together to put together a team and a care plan for what we're going to do and how we're going to execute that moving forward, it may mean more questions with the owner calling in their emergency contact, figuring out why this is going on, but our safety is first and foremost, and the pet safety is equally as important, and anything that we would potentially do that would compromise one the other or Both is completely off the table for us and so really empowering ourselves and our team to know if so, if what you're trying to do with a pet is not working, do not force them into situation where they have to act out against you. Instead, pull way back. Let's reassess and figure something out and do it a different way. And
Meghan 26:41
for us, that really goes back to the lesson of developing that code of ethics where we put the pets first. Because there are definitely been times where clients have not been happy that we haven't gotten their pet outside. They've said, we hired you to do the job. We just want you to do the job. We're away at work. Just get the dog outside. I don't really care what you do. And we have to come back to our morals and our mission and our code of ethics that says we are a fear free company. We will not force your dog into a certain situation just so they can go pee outside, because, again, we'd rather clean up a pee mess than have us bit. Unfortunately, not every client understands that, but we can only do so much. This is part of a bigger lesson that we've taken away over the past 13 years of Think, plan and act as a business, not a person. It is very hard, because this is your baby. This is our baby. We built this from the ground up 13 years ago, and this is very precious to us. We hold it dear. We don't want anything to happen to it. We don't want clients to say bad things about it, or employees to get mad at the policies that we have, but we have to remember that we are a business. I am a person, first and foremost, and then a business owner.
Collin 27:50
Well, just think of it as this way, okay, where I'm standing here, and then there's a screen in front of me. That's my business. It's a legal entity. Sometimes, if you're an S corp, it's a tax entity as well, involved in this. But if you're an LLC, if you're a sole prop, these are just pass through entities that come to you, but there's a legal protection sitting out there in front of you. At the face of it, you're doing business as, insert name of your business. That's what's going on. And too often, we can get this flipped and think of it's just ourselves out there, first and foremost. And this can be difficult, because if we're putting our face out there, we're the ones on the videos, on social media, we're all over the website, all of the stuff. However, your business exists in front of you. Your business has a voice, your business has policies, your business has procedures. Your business has a way of doing things and of working, of pricing, of everything. When people react against this, this especially comes up when people have negative comments, or they have bad things to say they don't like the way that we operate, or they don't like something about us and our business. See, I even messed up there. They don't like something about us and our business. No, they don't like something about our business. It's not a personal thing against Meghan. And I when somebody doesn't like something that the business does, because it's not Meghan and I saying something, it's what the business is doing to operate at that and this kind of holding, this in our mind, of how you know, this kind of mental model of how the interaction is going has been so beneficial in Meg and I, being able to let go of things that person's not happy with the price. Well, that's not a that's not an indictment against me. That's what my business needs to charge in order to survive and pay the bills. That's just part of this. And so doing this one step removed, gives us a little bit of distance and space. Now it is still important. To remember that we can still be compassionate. We can still be, you know, full and foremost, and be a very personal business, but understanding that our business operates one way, and then we can operate in this, you know, in a different way, but it can.
Meghan 30:00
Be hard, because who created the policies and procedures? Okay, we did, right? So if somebody doesn't like my cancelation policy, well, I'm the one that created it, sure my business is the one that sets it forth, but it was me behind the screen typing that on the computer. Well, and I think that's wise. It's good to remind ourselves that we shouldn't be too you like to use the word precious about the things that we create. It's okay to say if something is not working and to change it and adapt it and mold it into something different that ultimately is better on the other side,
Collin 30:35
yeah, having this distance is not the same thing as being impersonal. I think that's a really thing, really thing, really important thing that we understand and that Meghan, we've got a we've worked on our own business of I need distance between me and my business, because otherwise I'm going to take everything personally and I'm going to get offended by things. It's going to hurt and it's gonna be harder for me to adapt and grow, because I poured everything of myself into this. However, I don't have to be impersonal to my clients and to my employees, I can still have a connection. I can still build a relationship there, while also understanding that sometimes I have to make decisions as a business that are different than what I would make personally, again, personally, I really want to react very differently to negative comments and negative reviews, but I know as a business, I can't act that way. I need to respond in a certain way and represent the business well. And this is two things. We carry both of these things with us as a business owner and an entrepreneur, yeah.
Meghan 31:36
And if you have employees, this also comes into play. Of if an employee flies off the handle at you, starts cussing at you, throwing things at you. Well, you can only say so much, right? You can't go back to them and and say the same things that they were saying to you, because there are HR policies against that and
Collin 31:54
labor laws, right? So again, yes, yeah. Oh, now all of a sudden, I'm an employer. There are laws that dictate how I am to operate. I may personally want to respond very differently, however, labor laws and HR policies and all sorts of things dictate and mandate that I behave a certain way. And so here again, we're going the line has been drawn. I as a business will say this personally, I may think and feel something different, but I can't go that way. And this has been this is hard to walk because as a small business, it's just Meghan and I and our employees, and we have to figure this out and work this way. And so I have to think as a business, but it's still a very personal thing, and I imagine that this is something that will continue to grow and evolve, as our business does too.
Meghan 32:43
Our last lesson is probably the one that we have worked on the most and try to improve as best we can, and is valuing our time more be compensated for our time. We do so much in this business. When we started 13 years ago, we were charging an embarrassingly low amount of money for a house sitting. It was $25 a night for essentially round the clock care. We would only leave for a few hours during the day, like three or four hours, and the rest of it was just, it was just $25 a day. And you were getting both of us what a deal,
Collin 33:18
what a deal it was. And we thought we were making bank, right, and that this is the easiest 25 bucks we could ever earn. We did so much that round the clock care. And what's interesting is, very shortly after we started this changed, because we had a client with a dog named chiefy who had his his his spine was narrowing and he was losing control over his back legs, and he took 33 pills every day, and it was round the clock care. And it was, it was pretty intensive of watching and monitoring him. And they paid us get this double our rate, $50 a day, 50 Hold on. I remember thinking like they made a mistake, that whenever they offered us this and they were going to give us this money, and that, I think that very soon after, started to change our mindset around what we were doing. Now, we still grossly undercharged for every other client for way too long, but understanding that it wasn't just my time in the visit, because that's valuable enough. It was all of the prep work beforehand, it was all of the debriefing afterwards, it was all of the training, and it was all the skills, and was then it was then it was all the experience, and then it was all of this other stuff that goes into just us showing up at the door. That's an immense amount of work and effort that if we're not charging appropriately, sometimes we give away that for free, and we're only charging for our time when we're actually at the visit or doing the walk. And that's really dangerous, because the larger we got, the more we expanded, the more clients we brought on, the more administrative overhead there was in now, managing and running the business, not just executing the visits. And so there were two folds of our time in the admin and our time in the field, and we were only compensating ourselves for the field work. No. Not the computer work, and we really start to you really get burned out fast when you're doing that way. And so thinking more holistically of okay, in order for me to do this walk or take on this new client, it takes me three hours of admin work and interview time and meet and greet time in order to get to that front door. Is my price taking into account that kind of work, or is it not?
Meghan 35:23
Now, to be fair, we didn't know what we didn't know. And I think that's a lot of the case for most people, is you just you until you get more educated, you attend conferences, you listen to podcasts, you read books, you hear other pet sitters in your community talk about these things you don't know, what you don't know. We did not know that we were grossly undercharging. No.
Collin 35:45
We had no clue, nothing to compare to. We had no we had no knowledge. And so
Meghan 35:49
if you are sitting in the same boat, please give yourself grace and time and know that it's probably not going to happen overnight. So set a plan for how you're going to increase your prices, and you will get there or
Collin 36:00
work to set those boundaries of maybe you are have weak boundaries with clients, and they're demanding too much of you. They're asking you to get the coffee or pick up the dry cleaning or to get groceries or whatever that is, and you don't want to do that anymore. You'd rather spend your time doing other stuff for your business that actually generates you income and revenue.
Meghan 36:19
Yeah. So we when we say value your time more, that doesn't just mean monetarily put a higher price on it. It could mean I'm going to reduce my service area so that I don't have to drive as far so I have more time in my day to do the things I want to do, or I'm going to say no to this client who really doesn't enjoy my work very much, but just uses me begrudgingly, because there may be no other option. I don't want those kind of clients, so I'm going to say no, so I can actually get my time back and and reinvest it into other clients who actually enjoy what I do. So it's crazy for us
Collin 36:54
to think that we're going into 13 years of doing dog walking and pet sitting and looking back and reflecting over that time of not just how different of a business we run now, but all the little interim steps and the lessons that we've learned along the way. I know there's probably a million other more, so you know, and we know we didn't capture everything here, and we would love to hear some of your biggest lessons, or biggest takeaways from your years in business, or things that you've had hard fought lessons and hard won lessons for your time in the industry. We'd love for you to let us know you can send us email Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or we're on Facebook and Instagram as pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 37:32
thank you for listening today, taking your time and listening to this your valuable time. We appreciate you. We would also like to thank pet sitters associates and dog co launch for sponsoring this episode, and we will talk with you next time bye. You.
