617: Building a Community Pet Store That Sticks with Morgan & Austin Weber
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What happens when pet sitters take the leap into retail? Morgan and Austin Weber, owners of Lucky Pup Adventures, share how they purchased and now run Woofs and Waves, a beloved community pet store in Sioux Falls. They dive into the differences between managing a service business and a retail space, including inventory, staff training, and community outreach. They reflect on their complementary strengths and how they divide responsibilities for long-term growth. They also share how they’re staying intentional about values, culture, and customer experience while preparing for potential future expansion.
Main Topics
Transitioning from service to retail
Staff training and team culture
Community outreach and partnerships
Inventory and product selection
Preparing for business growth
Main takeaway: “You don’t have to know everything about everything—you just need the right people passionate about the right things.”
Running a business—especially in the pet industry—can feel overwhelming. From inventory and client care to marketing and employee training, there’s always something new to learn. But the truth is, you don’t need to be an expert in it all. What matters most is building a team where each person brings their strengths and passions to the table. When your fish lover geeks out over tanks and your dog nerd knows every ingredient in your food aisle, magic happens. Hire well, empower your people, and let their passion lead the way.
Links:
https://www.instagram.com/woofsandwaves/
https://www.facebook.com/woofsandwaves
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitting, pet retail, Woofs and Waves, community focus, dog walking, pet store, inventory management, customer service, employee training, local rescue, product differentiation, tariff impact, business growth, neighborhood store, customer engagement
SPEAKERS
Collin, Austin W., Morgan W.
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, something that is happening a lot with pet business owners. They're looking to expand and grow and change some of their offerings. And what better couple to talk to than Morgan and Austin, who are the new owners of woofs and waves and talk about their journey into owning a store, how they've pulled from their service background. We've actually had Morgan and Austin on the on the podcast before, and Morgan as well, have links to those in the podcast, but I'm super excited to talk to you both about this kind of what the bug was that made you jump into this, some of the opportunities and lessons that you've taken from this. But before we get to all that, please tell us a little bit more about you both and what you do. Yeah,
Morgan W. 00:55
well, thanks for having us. Collin, we're excited to be here. So we started way back in 2013 as pet sitters and dog walkers, we started lucky pup adventures. And about that same time, Austin was also working at Petco, and he's been at some form of pet retail business since then, also helping along with Lucky pup adventures and the pet sitting in the dog walking throughout the years. And like you said, we've now bought a pet store. So,
Austin W. 01:24
yeah, it's been, I've worked in the industry, along with, you know, our pet sitting and dog walking businesses, yeah, for over 10 years now, close to close to 15 at this point. And I've worked at wolves and waves, the store we reached recently purchased for about nine years, so I've been a manager there, and kind of helping, helping run it, along with the rest of the managers and the previous owner. And it was a opportunity that we'd kind of hoped for for a while, and then it became a reality, and we had to jump at the opportunity
Collin 02:03
well, so talk to us about that, that that desire, that you had to go brick and mortar, and kind of how all that came about.
Morgan W. 02:11
Yeah. I mean, really, we kind of fell into, I would say, the pet retail world when we moved out of after college, moved to a new town, and they were opening up a Petco. And Austin has a background in industrial engineering, and they were opening a store, and they needed some folks to help get all the systems set up, and, you know, get everything working like it should. And he's like, Well, sure, why not? I, I'm in a new town, might as well. Um, and just never really left the pet retail world. And I did some read, like light. I called it fancy retail out of college, or when I was in college, I worked at a fancy food store, and so I had just a tiny bit of retail experience. And so over the years, as Austin's been working, we just kind of kept thinking about, is this something that we want to do more of. Yeah.
Austin W. 03:02
And I think as far as, like a brick and mortar versus, you know, like an online presence or something like that, I think an online presence is tough to be the only avenue, just because you have to have all of your shipping figured out. And if you're selling, like, most of our volume at the store is dog food, and it's really hard to ship dog food at reasonable prices, so you kind of have to have a brick and mortar. And dog food is what gets people to keep coming into the store week after week. And then you can hopefully get on by treats or toys or, you know, whatever, additionally. But, you know, dog food is kind of the core. It's the staple. It's what brings people in. And I think it's really hard to do that without a brick and mortar, unless you have the volume, volume of something like chewy, where you can kind of do more dictating your shipping costs, because shipping a 2530 pound bag of dog food is, I mean, you're very quickly going to price yourself out of being,
Morgan W. 04:05
yeah, and a lot of the online spaces that you see, it's a lot of boutique like pet supplies that are in a more boutique round range. And that was not something that we personally were, like super interested in, in running a really boutique operation. Our focus is very much more on the community and more on kind of like just, I call it like your average Joe pet store. You know, it's like the place where you can get all of the things you need, and it's quality, but it's not super fancy. And that was really more the vibe of wolves and waves before we bought it, and it was very much a feeling that we wanted to continue. And I think in the pet boutique space, there's just so much competition in terms of online retailers, I feel like there's just, it's a different world to be in than, like you said, the brick and mortar pet supply store
Collin 04:59
well, and so you. This transition into this, you know, Austin, you said you had worked there for what, nine years at various levels, and as a manager, what was that transition process like for you as you then took over the store and kind of started making
Austin W. 05:14
it your own? Yeah, so I will be honest, we are still a little bit in the transition period and figuring out what everyone's roles are and what I can do from my previous roles to the new role, kind of the biggest thing is, even though we have had our dog walking and pet sitting business, and we know about running a business, and you know, the background stuff, payroll, all that stuff, you know, that's not something I was involved in with the pet supply store, with wolves and waves. So going into that, you know, that's kind of been the biggest transitioning. Is one of my old responsibilities can I maintain? And then we were recently, about a month ago, hired somebody to take over to fill that gap between what I used to do that I can't fit on my plate anymore, so that I can focus on new stuff. Our biggest difficulty is as we're trying to make tweaks here and there with the business and trying to do more community oriented and in community presence stuff that it takes a lot of my time and energy to create those ideas and implement those ideas, and it makes it much more difficult for me to be on the sales floor and making sure things are stocked and interacting with customers in the same capacity that I used to be. So that's kind of our biggest transitioning, you know, as far as our customers and stuff, they all knew me before, right? Like they they'd see me day in and day out. So our customers are still know who we are. You know, have a face to put with the store, because our previous owner of the store worked in the store as well. So, you know, it's a lot of the same, ideally, from the customer facing point of view. But as far as us, it's, it's figuring out how the new roles fit together.
Morgan W. 07:10
Yeah. And very much that. One thing I really appreciate for us working together is Austin is very much the operations person, and I am very much like the visionary person, and so it works well that we kind of take different roles within the business, and we're not stepping on each other's toes very much. And I'll say this is a work in progress, like we tried to work together in the pet sitting business. Gosh, like in 2022 I really needed extra dog walker. So I was like, hey, Austin, why don't you come and be a dog walker full time, do some pet sitting with us. And it did not go very well. We, at that point, we struggled more on how to work together, and also just, Austin really loves being social in the retail store, and you don't get that when you're a solo dog walker, kind of, you know, walking around neighborhoods and things like that. So we had kind of a chance to dip our toe into what working together full time might look like, and it gave us a chance now this second time around, to kind of have a better idea of what needed to work in order to make everything function. But a lot of what I do is still in the pet sitting business, and so I don't do a whole lot in the pet supply store. I help do most of the background work. I help with marketing and some things like that, but very much the operations is all on Austin and the wolves and waves team. But it's been for me, harder to I won't say harder, but it was definitely a transition to learn how to, like financially manage a pet store, as opposed to a dog walking business, because the dog walking business, if you have the right systems in place, is very easy to manage financially in terms of, you get $1 in when you you know you you invoice out a service your client pays for it, and You have a direct correlation to your overhead and your payroll expenses that are needed to make that service happen. But on a pet store side, you're dealing with inventory, you're dealing with payroll that is going to be a constant regardless of one person walks in the store that day or 100 people walk in the store that day. And so it was very much a different process for me to still and I'm still working on it, but trying to really wrap my brain around, you know, what's our actual staffing levels look like? What does that percentage of payroll look like? You know, how do we make sure we're having enough money set aside to buy more inventory? You know, all of those things have taken a little bit of a mind switch and just learning the kind of the difference of how to manage it from kind of the the quote, unquote C suite level, as opposed to some of the more like on the ground operation level for a dog walking business, it's a little bit different, and that's been kind of a fun challenge. But the other thing I really like is that we've taken a. A really community based focus for the pet store, which is very much how we've run the pet sitting business. And so it still feels, it feels like they, they go together. It doesn't feel like we're running these two very different businesses. It all, it all kind of flows. Our our values are the same, our mission is very similar. So it doesn't feel like we're running two disparate businesses, but it feels very much like they're all under the same umbrella. Yeah,
Collin 10:25
kind of the overarching theme to keep you focused and kind of going in the same direction there and Austin, you mentioned that little bit of a transition from kind of manager to owner there, of what are your responsibilities now? Like? How have you walked through that tension of, well, tasks you used to do versus some of your new responsibilities. And you know, what's that? What's, you know, working through that process been like,
Austin W. 10:49
I mean, the process started by just like, working 70 hours a week so that I could do the stuff that I used to do and all the new stuff. But that's not long term sustainable, as I'm sure many pet sitters and other entrepreneurs learn or know. So it kind of got to I had to use that time of working that much to figure out what are the things I want to carry over and continue doing myself versus what I want to delegate out, and is that somebody who's currently on staff that I can delegate that to, or is that, you know, is that a potential new hire, because nobody currently has that skill set, or do I feel like can grow into that skill set in the very short term? So that was kind of the biggest thing, was it took a while to identify all of the new roles that I had to take on, all the new tasks you know, whether it's, you know, partnering with local rescue groups for our new rescue partner program, our positive impact program, where We feature adoptable dogs or cats from a rescue, and we give back a portion of proceeds on a sale day during the month, and, you know, we collected donations for them, you know, building out what that program looks like, communicating with those rescues and all that stuff like, that's a new job that I have that I didn't before, well, and now I don't have the same amount of time to walk the sales floor and go, you know, every week we, you know, go through the back room and make sure arrow the back, you know, back stock items get restocked. Well, we did that on Tuesday, and then Wednesday, somebody bought all of that item, and nobody noticed that that's empty, and we need to refill it, right? So it's like I didn't have the time for that sort of thing that I used to. So it was, you know, finding who on staff can do the things I used to as my role changed. And once you can identify what you want to carry over and continue to do yourself and the things that you don't, then it allows you to either grow existing staff members into that or determine if you're going to hire what that job description looks like. And we ended up needing to, you know what we needed to fill. My role wasn't something anyone on staff was really suited for so we were able to create a job listing and do an external hire and bring in a new sales floor leader who's, you know, doing a great job of helping my life become less less chaotic and less getting pulled 17 directions at a time.
Morgan W. 13:37
I think it's been really good for us, and it's been good for me too, to realize there's a lot of work that I've been doing in the even the pet sitting business, that I don't have to do. Like, I could, you know, like, I've been empowering my other employees to take on some new tasks that I was like, Well, I don't have, like, why am I doing this thing? You know, I was doing it because I had the time to do it, but not because I loved to do it, but like that, somebody needed to do it. And so we're just, you know, hiring a VA and even just getting new things, like one of my employees today helped pack a bunch of gifts for our clients. It's like those were things that I used to do, but now I really need to focus on some of my, you know, the larger things for all of the businesses. And so it's like, well, these things don't have to be done. Have to be done by me. Who could they be done by instead? And one thing I think, is kind of the we were looking at, okay, how are we going to grow what positions need to be filled? It's also kind of the question behind the question. So at the store, we needed somebody who could, yes, manage the sales floor and making sure that the stock is out and everything's clean and put away, and it looks good. But also we have a bunch of high school employees who need training and they need some management. And so it was really not just can we hire somebody who has retail experience and so they can make sure the shelves are stocked, but can we hire somebody who has. Experience training teenagers to, you know, be good customer service people to, you know, look around the store and notice when things are missing. And that's a much different skill set. And so making sure that we hired for the right thing that the business actually needed, and not just kind of the first glance idea might be, always need somebody who can stock shelves and, you know, make sure things look good. But it's like, no, we really need somebody who can do that next level, deeper work, to take that part off of Austin's plate so he can do more of the business ownership things.
Collin 15:33
Did you both come into this with a direction you wanted to take the business as far as, like, doing it differently than it had been done before, or did you want to just see it persist and exist in the community and now you're kind of seeing how you can change and adapt it. Or where's the where do you fall out on that, that that spectrum there?
Morgan W. 15:55
Yeah, I'd say a little bit of both. There was definitely the standpoint of, like, we really love the store, and we want to make sure that it can continue. And that was very much like, Austin's standpoint was like, Hey, I love the store. I would love this opportunity, and I want to make sure that the store can continue for our customers. And then my perspective of kind of the overlay, or the as the outsider, quote, unquote, was to say, I love this. But also, let's make sure that we're not just buying our own job in a way, like, what is like? What else do we want to do with this business that makes sense for us to own it and for us to take that big risk? Because it is a huge risk. When you take on, it's, and it's a very the store does very well. And so it's, you know, there's a lot that's riding on, you know, making this successful and making sure that we can continue it. So it's not just Okay, let's just continue what the previous owners were doing. But how do we take it and and put our own spin on it? And a lot of what, like Austin was saying, a lot of what's in the store hasn't changed, like, the customer experience, for the most part, is very similar. And so it's like, we didn't want to overhaul everything because the store didn't need overhauling. But it was like, What can we do to, you know, take our vision forward and make sure that we're not just owning it to own it, but we're owning it to do something with it that kind of fits us.
Austin W. 17:17
Yeah, like, like, Morgan said we didn't, we didn't buy a failing business. It wasn't like, oh my gosh, things are on fire. This is no it was a is, and has been a successful business and part of the community for almost a decade. The things that, you know, we kind of talked about is, we had been for a long time, very involved with, you know, some local rescue organizations and things like that, and we wanted to, kind of the biggest thing we wanted to do is we wanted to up our community footprint, because it's things that we're personally passionate about. And at the same time, I think, and I've thought this for a long time, I think we have a fantastic store. Think we have a great customer experience. I think we have knowledgeable staff that can help solve pretty much any problem people bring to us for, you know, from dietary issues to their pet to, you know, helping troubleshoot fish tanks, whatever it happens to be. I think our biggest issue is people don't know that we exist. Because Sioux Falls is a growing community. It's very spread out, so the more stuff we can do out in the community, as far as community outreach, especially in areas that we're excited about interacting with, from dog rescue fundraisers, this, that, or the other thing that was really the biggest thing that I wanted to change, is trying to get the word out that we exist in ways that are actually engaging with the community, not just buying a billboard or buying a radio ad, but but being out there, you know, that was kind of the biggest thing.
Collin 18:56
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Speaker 1 19:01
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Collin 19:20
If you're 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/confessional how are those opportunities different or the same compared to more of a service based business and how you partner and work within your community?
Austin W. 19:42
I think they're pretty similar in a lot of ways, where being like a brick and mortar retail space differs is, you know, if you're a dog walker and you host a booth at wherever it is, or your community event, or community event. Percent or like a 5k you know, you'll get to interact with people, but you don't have necessarily something to offer them in that moment. Whereas we there was a reptile expo in town a couple months ago, and we had a booth there, and I brought a whole bunch of reptile cages to sell and things like that. So now, when we interact with those customers, besides just, oh, I met them. I got their card, they can actually have that interaction, doing the thing that we offer right then and there. So they can meet us, and they can buy a reptile cage and be like, Oh yeah, that guy was very knowledgeable. The the cage was at a, you know, a good value, and I got everything I needed from them. Okay, so now, the next time I need something, I can go to their brick and mortar, whereas, so you can have that full customer interaction that you could get in the store, in a community, you know, experience, you know, at a vendor table or whatever. Whereas, you know, if you're a service provider, they're not like, okay, here I'll give you my dog take a lap around the you know, like, that's not, that's not an interaction you can have as a as a service provider,
Morgan W. 21:13
yeah. And very much. I think also, part of the the one of the values that we hold at Lucky pup adventures, for dog walking and pet sitting is being a community resource and being kind of an advocate for our clients and for their pets and so, and being able to connect them to other other providers within our community. And we kind of wanted to take that same thing forward in the pet store. And so knowing okay, like, who can you refer to? You know, who can you, Hey, you want to get a cat like, Hey, do you know about these rescues that are in town and just really being a space where people can bring their questions and people can, you know, find some solutions. But even, like Austin was talking about, we did a booth at a 5k for a rescue the other day, and it was kind of nice that I got to bring dog food samples to give away. And, you know, so, like, not only could you we were also, I call it, we were slinging pup cups. So we were making pup cups. And people came over, and I thought that was really cool. But it was nice to have one more thing to talk about them with, other than being able to say, Here, please take a business card, you know, talk to us about our dog walking services. It was kind of nice to have just some other things to to engage with people on that you don't get and, you know, in the pet store too, there's so many more people a day come into the pet store than I could reach as a dog walker, just because of the volume of business that happens in the pet store that doesn't happen in our dog walking business. So I feel like they do. They complement each other very well. And one of our thoughts too, was, gosh, how could we start to integrate some of our clients, like, you know, can we take some of our, you know, dog walking clients, and, hey, do you want us to start delivering your dog food? You know? Do you want us to start delivering your cat litter and vice versa? You know, when people come into the store, it's like, hey, don't forget, we also, if you need, you know, you're gonna go out of town this in a couple weeks. Do you need a dog walker? Do you need a pet sitter? So that kind of provides another opportunity just to kind of CO mingle, I guess you could say the two businesses together, so they start to act more as a whole and less as kind of separate silos. Yeah,
Collin 23:21
you find ways where there is synergy, where you can go, Hey, look, this is how we can support all everybody now on both, you know, each end of the equation of, you know, they're eating, they need to walk through all vacations, all this stuff, where you can bring that together. And I think that what, that's what really speaks to, you know, the what you guys are doing, how you're positioning your store here. It's an it's a neighborhood store, right? I love that you have that just right on your website. You've mentioned a lot about the community of it needs to be it needs to be integrated. It needs to be integrated. Needs to be a part, needs to be recognizable, to meet people with their needs, wherever they are,
Morgan W. 24:00
yeah. And like Austin mentioned earlier, Sioux Falls is a really large community, so I think the actual city population is around like 250,000 or so. But then there's a greater kind of outlying metro area that's almost 400,000 people. So it's a really large, spread out area. But with that, so first, I'll say South Dakota is a very rural state. So if you live outside of a major metropolitan, you know, community and major, you know, we'll use
Austin W. 24:28
that, there's one major metro area, it's Sioux Falls, maybe two, but
Morgan W. 24:33
yeah, across the whole state. So like most of the state's population, lives in Sioux Falls. And so if you live outside of Sioux Falls, you're willing to drive an hour to go get things because it's going to probably take you an hour to get to a mall, or it's going to take you an hour to get to maybe your favorite restaurant or something like that. And so people are very used to driving. But once you've lived in Sioux Falls, if it's more than about 15 minutes away, people are uninterested. Interested. And so it's very much you get these really like localized communities. Because people say, Well, I've got, you know, my donut shop is on my side of town and my pet store is on my side of town, because people don't want to drive a half hour across town to go get their dog food or their dog treats or their cat litter. And so part of that, being the neighborhood focus is we want people to be able to walk in the store and the staff knows their name, and they know, you know, oh, hey Joe. Well, you know, great to see you again. You know, how did that new treat go with your dog? You know, did they like it or not? And so we really wanted it to be a place where people feel welcomed and they feel recognized, and they feel seen, and they really do get that, you know, for those of us who know the show cheers, you know, you kind of get that cheers vibe where you walk in and people know your name, and that's something that we are. You know, part of our goal is to be able to eventually grow to maybe multiple pet stores across our community, so each store gets to be their own, you know, their own neighborhood pet store, even though, again, it's part of our larger group. So that's kind of the far off goal. But it's, you know, those things that, when you asked earlier, kind of, did you start the store with a goal in mind? You know, those were things that we talked about was, how much do we want to grow this? Do we want this to be one pet store, or do we want to grow it to be multiple pet stores? And so if our goal is to grow it to be multiple pet stores, we have to start thinking about those things now. And how do we run the business now? So it sets us up in the future. So if we're going to open a new location, and you know, say three to seven years, okay, well now what kind of needs? We're going to need a new general manager, or we're going to need a new store manager. You're going to need additional team members who have enough training to now be a store lead in a new store. So all of those things you have to start thinking about now, even though it's a far down the road item well,
Collin 26:52
and both of you have mentioned several times, this knowledge, this expert advice, this stuff that really starts to speak to how you want to be serving people. How are you or how do you go about teaching people how to we have this information, you know, because the number of products that you sell are, you know, it's, I feel like, I mean, it's just an infinite number of possibilities. And, you know, from fish to cats to dogs and everything in between. You know, what's it like nurturing that culture in your in your business, with your employees, to seek after that knowledge?
Austin W. 27:27
I mean, so the biggest thing is it does take time, right? Like I have a couple, we have a lot of high schoolers that are juniors right now, and they've almost all worked for us for at least two years. Like they they start with us right away, and we provide a good work environment and a fair wage and all of that stuff, so we don't have a lot of staff turnover, which is a huge part of allowing us to build up knowledgeable staff members. On top of that, the previous owner, who still works for us, he's got 30 years in the in the industry. Are essentially our general manager. She has 20 years in the industry, and I have 15. So we have a lot of pet retail experience. We choose products that we carry that are different from each other, right? If you have, there's no reason to have four different dog foods that are essentially the same thing, but from different companies. So you want to have products that actually have differentiating features, so that you can know about them and learn about them. And we take a lot of time, like we I have went over, like, our different dog food brands and what separates them, and what you know this one's good for and that one's good for, and whatever, with our new manager person, and she's been with us for three weeks. I've probably spent four hours with her, just talking about, like, our seven different primary dog brands. We carry dog food brands because those are things that are valuable to our customers. And on top of that, we really try to let people learn in something they're passionate about, especially, first, I don't need a whole it would be great. In an ideal world, every staff member would be super knowledgeable about fish and cats and dog and dog supplements and reptiles, and that's just not realistic. However, if we bring somebody on and they are, they are cat owner, they really like cats, you know, but fish isn't something they're interested in. I'm not going to be like, Okay, I need you to learn everything about fish. I already have people that are really excited about fish, and they will choose to learn more about fish on their own. Like, those are the answers they seek out. So if you're interested in cats, I'm going to try and teach you as much as I know about cats so you can become. Um, our, you know, our cat expert, or one of our people that know the most. That way, if a customer comes in with cat questions and one of us super experienced people aren't there, you are gonna, you know, whomever that is, is going to be able to provide really good service and knowledge about cats for, you know, whoever needs it. So we really try and let people focus on what they're the most passionate about. And honestly, we try and let them really dig into that and grow in that area and learn about that, you know, for probably the first six months to a year before I'm going to start pushing them to learn deeply the other things, because I want them to know as much as they can about all of our products, kind of in that department, so that we have really knowledgeable people focused on different things. Because you don't have to know everything about everything. We have, again, we have people that are excited about the different dogs, cats, fish, and if that's what they're the most interested in, they're going to retain the information better. They're going to be able to share the information better. They're probably going to have more personal experience doing or interacting with that. If you're excited about fish, you're going to set up your own fish tank, and you're going to learn more by doing. So maybe that's
Collin 31:20
maybe not a 400 gallon fish tank, but they'll have a fish tank.
Morgan W. 31:24
It is addicting, though. Collin, you start with a, you know little you know 1020 gallon fish tank, and suddenly it's 125 gallons. You just, you never know.
Collin 31:34
And sometimes it's four times that who knows 400 gallons? Yes, I love how you walk through that Austin, because it also helps that person feel really valued, and gives them a sense of importance and contribution to the team. Because if everybody's just kind of this interchangeable autonomaton And they're just doing they're just Widgets at that point, this really helps brill. I'm sure it helps build this, this sense of camaraderie and closeness of the team too, of going, Oh man, I can really rely on Jackson for XYZ, or man, Sarah's coming in and she's going to help you on this, because I have no idea like that helps build this, this trust and this reliance, and I'm sure just a lot of team, you know,
Morgan W. 32:19
culture there too, Yeah. And I think it's also something that for people to think about when they're looking to hire, it's okay, what is, again, kind of this question behind the question, like, what is the thing that I'm looking for? And when you hire, for example, high school kids, this is probably their first job. So now, not only are you trying to teach them everything about all of the, you know, the products in that department or across the store, you not only have to teach them about that stuff, you're also teaching them how to, you know, learn to be an adult, how to learn how to have a job. You know, all of those things that you don't think about necessarily, if you're an adult, you know, if you're a 30 something, hiring another 30 something, you kind of expect them to, you know, know how to look around, make sure things are clean, you know, all of these things that come with time and experience. And when you're looking to hire the teenage crowd, it's very much okay. Now are we going to do service to them as a human, learning how to be a human, you know, learning how to, you know, take responsibility, how to take constructive feedback, how to, you know, communicate. You know, even little things that we don't think about having learned in life, like how to take a good note when somebody calls to leave a message, you know, what is the topic? Who called? What is their phone number? Who are they like? Who is supposed to take this message? You know, who is this message going to? What is your name? You know, right? So if we when we have questions about this note, we know who to go ask all of those things. Take a lot of brain space as a manager, and so being able to have, like we talked about earlier, wanting to hire that person to help, you know, help the teenagers grow. You need somebody who can think about all of those things and thinking about, okay, if taking notes is really difficult for them, how can we make this easier? So I went and I ordered little notepads that have, all, you know, a lot of those boxes labeled so you don't have to think about it. You just follow the list, you know, some of those things you don't think about always when you're teaching somebody new. How simple do we need to make this so it's easily accessible, and that works whether you're trying to teach retail employees or you are, you know, taking on a new dog walker, a new pet sitter, thinking about all of these little things that you don't think are like trainable teachable moments, but for someone who's never done it before, like they need to learn these things, and that can be just a big like energy, like brain energy suck that you have to consider, okay, if I'm spending my brain energy doing this, what am I not spending my brain energy doing instead?
Collin 34:59
Right? So you can focus. I mean, there's just an infinite number of things that you need to and have to be focused on and doing other stuff. So when you're when you're looking for employees. I mean, how would you describe what makes a good retail employee and somebody that would you know you would check your all of your boxes? Sure. I mean, the the
Austin W. 35:18
biggest thing is they have to be comfortable interacting with people, right? Especially with us. We're a specialty retail store. If it's Walmart, and you're hiring somebody to just stock the shelves, that's absolutely different than what we're doing, because we are providing expert advice and knowledge and interactions. So you have to be comfortable interacting with a person you know. So that is kind of the biggest one is how comfortable you are. Can you make eye contact? Can you speak directly to somebody? Can you, you know, do those basic human interaction things? And when you're talking about high school kids, we have to teach that sometimes. But then after that, it's just one thing that I like to ask people when I interview them, is, what are your interests outside of school? Slash your job? Because if you're not excited about something outside of work, you're probably not that excited about work. So like, I, if I can, if you're like, Yeah, I, I'm really excited about, you know, motocross, or, you know, going on walks or bicycling or whatever it's like, I can get you excited about the stuff that we have, or even just providing good customer service. A lot of people try and stick just to the work type stuff, but I think one of the biggest things is kind of learning, like, Is this somebody who can get excited and be passionate about something, and ideally, we can help them, you know, be passionate about providing really good service towards, you know, towards pet parents that have have questions. But that's one of my big things. Can you interact with people? Memory is cool? Like, yeah, if you can retain information. But if I have to go over something with you three times, as long as you tell me beforehand, like, I don't have a great memory, I may need a couple reps on this. I'm willing to invest that time if I know that you're going to try and you're going to care.
Morgan W. 37:23
I think another big like the confidence thing can also be something you have to really cultivate again, especially when we're thinking about the high school kids. But also, you know, even as adults going into a new job, it can be really hard to feel confident sometimes. And so it's like, okay, how do we give people wins to help increase their confidence and help them feel good about being here? And that can be another kind of hard thing, or, you know, really again, when we think about one of the things I really like about the high school employees is really teaching them, like, how to exist in the world. And I know, Collin, you're a former teacher, so you kind of, you get this as well. But even things like, you know, some of the gals that we have in there like, Oh, they're always apologizing for just like, taking up space in the store. And it's like, no, that's your don't apologize for taking up space, right? So you get to really be an impactful person in their life and helping them learn how to how to expect, you know, from their work experiences going forward. So if we can give them a really positive, encouraging experience when they are 1516, 1718, it's going to give them a bar that they are going to have an expectation of going forward, because there's a lot of not great bosses out there, right? There's not there's a lot of not great work environments out there. And you know, something that we've talked about is, okay, how can we create a work environment that people want to stay at so we do have good client retention or employee retention, but also help the younger people have this expectation of what they are worth, essentially going forward and helping them know that, you know that other experiences, if they differ from here, it might not be a good thing, and maybe they should, you know, look at other options. So I think that's something too, and used it goes so much more than selling dog food or, you know, selling a dog walk, like there is so much more that goes into being a business owner, especially if you want to be intentional and impactful and purposeful, that you get to think about and but you also need the space to think about those things. And so it was kind of nice being able to buy and exist for us, we bought an existing business. Yeah. So a lot of that groundwork was already done, and we can think about some of the higher level things, as opposed to if we were going to go out and start a brand new pet supply store on our own, and you're trying to just build some of the brand recognition and some of the customer loyalty, that's a much different place to start at. So we get to have a different comfort. Station than we would if we had just started from scratch
Collin 40:05
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Austin W. 40:46
Yeah, it's been pretty great. And I think that goes mostly because the previous owner is, he's a really, really good guy. He's very grounded, and he's down to earth, and he he likes the pet retail side of it. He likes interacting with customers. He is one of the best like customer experience, customer service people you'll ever come across. He hates all the background stuff. Like he has zero desire to do that. And he kind of got to the point where he was like, Well, I can now sell the business. I can offload the stuff that I don't like to do. So he's like, he's happy as heck when he comes into work now, because he shows up, he helps customers. He cleans aquariums, like, he's like, Yeah, this, this stuff's all easy and great. And he likes to do IT staff, because he doesn't like to do that background stuff, as far as, like, managing staff and things like that. That was actually my role before I bought the store. So the staff still kind of, for the most part, reports to me. There's still customers who will come in and they're like, the previous owner's name is Mark, and they're like, is mark here? No, not today. Oh, well, I need to, I need to sell, you know, we buy, you know, fish from people getting out of the hobby or things like this, if they're tearing down their aquarium, or this or that, and they're like, well, I need to sell this thing. Or I want to sell this thing, curious if he'd buy it. And it's like, well, that's not really a mark call anymore. That's, that's a me thing, yeah? And they're like, Oh, yeah. You know, it's because, you know, we've put out a press release and, you know, had stuff on social media, but it's not something that we really were too crazy about promoting. Like, hey, Austin and Morgan are the new owners
Morgan W. 42:37
management. You know, it really wasn't this, it really wasn't this big shift again, like, it was very, we super respect everything that has that happened at the store up until this point. So again, it wasn't like, oh gosh, you got to kick out those old owners and do
Austin W. 42:52
what we want now, yeah, and we need to. We need to tell everybody, hey, those old owners you didn't like, well, they're gone. Like, no. Everybody loves mark, like everybody thinks he's fantastic. He is a huge part of what makes our retail store successful, and just his reputation and how he treats people. So the I guess, like the biggest thing, is with customers still not knowing that I'm the owner, and they come in and they want to talk to Mark about something, and a lot of times I'll just let them until I find out what it is, and then I'm like, yeah, actually, I guess that's a, that's a me thing. Now,
Collin 43:29
you take off the the manager hat, and you put on the owner hat, and you say, yeah, have some information for what's it has that has, has that you know what you're talking about. You're continuing on this, this community, this, this neighborhood pet store, and says, supply store, you're serving people with excellence. Does that legacy ever kind of weigh on you, you know, as you are working and making changes to this?
Austin W. 43:53
I would say, No. I mean, the one thing is the legacy of like, Hey, this is a successful story. Like, don't screw it up, right? Like, that's kind of the biggest, that's the biggest thing as far as, like, generally speaking, you know, all the changes that we've made, I one, for the most part, they've been fairly small, but two, they're things that we think will make a difference, right? I'm not changing things just to change them, right? Like, if we were again, if we were taking over a business that wasn't as successful, like, it's like, okay, we need to make changes, and we'll see which ones are good. It's the changes we've made have been very, very measured, and things that we're pretty confident are going to be positive changes, whether for the long term or, you know, most of them have been kind of long term focused. You know, we're not, we're not looking for quick turnaround. So there, I don't feel like there's a lot of like stress associated with the legacy of the store having been successful, because one, I mean, the stores. Been open for just about 10 years, and I've been there for about nine so I'm a huge, you know, I've been there for most of the time as well. So it's not like it's huge transitions, and I've been in a pretty serious manager role for, you know, four of those years, probably. So I've had a big part in shaping the direction of the store over the last while. So there's only a few changes that we've made now that I couldn't have made
Morgan W. 45:30
before. I would say, also part of it is understanding, really understanding what the store was before, and making sure that we understand, like we understand why the store was successful before, and making sure that we still uphold those parts of the store, and making sure that we're still in alignment with that, which, again, feels very natural because we've been involved with the store for so long. And so I would say there's that aspect of it, of making sure that, you know, we talked about, again, it's the customer service. Like when you walk in, people know your name, they know who you are, they know what you like. And really emphasizing that with the team as well, to say, Hey guys, this is like making sure that we continue to uphold some of those values, I guess I would say, and, and we, you know, Collin, and you and you and I talk a lot about values and culture when we get together. And so that was something that we use oftentimes when we think about these new things that we want to do at the store. And we like, we had something that we were talking about one day, and we finally said, okay, hold on. Hold on. We've been going around in circles on this for maybe a half hour. What our values say on this. And you know, what would, you know, what, what would fit for the store in terms of, like, a value standpoint, not necessarily an operation standpoint. And it's like, Oh, yep, okay, easy answer. Done, moving on now. So it's more, I would say, like that part is, is more of what we are making sure that we uphold is kind of the the spirit of the store, as opposed to some of those operational
47:05
things, yeah,
Collin 47:07
well, that influences, I'm sure, you know, the kind of brands that you bring in, the kind of products that you have, you know, Morgan, you mentioned earlier, kind of this average Joe kind of store of, just like we have staples, we're dependable, we're not going to be swapping stuff In randomly, or bringing in weird off the wall things for you, and try and convince you that it's necessary. It's like, no, what do you need? We're going to have it all the time. And then, you know, kind of what else? How else can we serve you in that? So that people can come to it's this, it's a reliability thing. Like, people want to know I can walk in and I can get the thing that I've always gotten. If you're like me, you know the color of it, you don't know the name, and that's and it's just, it'll that we forget how, how ingrained that becomes. And then anytime there's a little bit of friction in there, how easily this throws people off, and can, can kind of send them into a panic, yeah, and that's definitely
Morgan W. 47:58
sometimes I get, I'm the wild card, because I'm the, you know, the quote, unquote outsider. And I was like, Hey, you guys, I heard about this really cool product. Like, we should, we should think about carrying it, and then in the store, they're like, No, we're not going to do that. Because that's not, you know, that doesn't fit with all these other things. Or, you know, the other problem with the brick and mortar store is you only have so much space. And so we've also had a lot of conversations about, like, what do we want the store to feel like when somebody walks in? And so therefore, we can't carry everything, because then the store is too full and you get overwhelmed by how many options there are. So, you know, we've had those conversations of, do we need to have three shampoo brands, or do we just whittle it down to one shampoo brand? Or, you know, like pill pockets. Do we want to have four different kinds of pill pockets, or do we want to just have one kind of pill pocket and and, like you said, people get their their thing, and they like their thing. So, like one thing, when we started talking with our dog walking clients about having the pet store, the pet supply store, and they said, Oh, that's great. Can I get my Purina Pro Plan from you? And at first I was like, Oh, of course you can. Like, we'll add a new brand. But then you find out that brands like Purina have really mass scale based goals, and so like, what we can buy a bag of Pro Plan for at Wholesale is what you could buy it for in Petco, PetSmart, Walmart, whatever, because of the way their pricing structure works. And so you get, we have a lot of customers who say, Well, I'd love to buy it from you, but I really don't want to switch my dog food brand, because I really like my dog food brand, you know. So we've had a little bit of, you know, those kind of things where I was like, Oh, I'd really love to carry all this food for all of our clients. And then we learned that it's just really not possible based on the economics and the scale and the supply chains and all of these things that you don't always think about when you come from the outside position to say, well, of course, we can do this. And you find out, Oh, well, I mean, we could. But they're gonna have to pay a 30% markup because, you know, of the way that the politics of of distribute distribution work.
Collin 50:10
Yeah, I have certainly been in pet supply stores that feels like I have to put on a spelunkers hat and break out my flashlight and, you know, like peeking under things and trying to find everything in the nooks and crannies and crevices. And I'm sure it is tempting to like, maximize space, maximize space, like every square inch is now valuable, while also understanding this be a good experience for the person that's in the store and they don't get quite so overwhelmed. You mentioned the word tariffs there, and I am curious. You're in, you're in the product space now, and so I was very curious, kind of, how you are both thinking about this, navigating about, you know, discussions that you're having around that and the products that you're carrying.
Austin W. 50:51
Yeah, so as of right now, we're planning on continuing to carry pretty much everything that we have been the benefit for us is, I would say, for our dog food, dog treats, dog toys, I would say we're probably 80 or more percent USA made, which makes it much easier to not have big changes in that. We do definitely have some we have a dog food brand that's made in Canada. We have two that are made in Italy. The prices on those may become a little more volatile. They may go up. Where we're actually going to see kind of the biggest price changes is actually going to be in fish, because a lot of the equipment, you know, filters, heaters and stuff like that are, you know, they have small electronics in them that control this or that, you know. So a lot of those are going to be made overseas. And then something that a lot of people don't think about, saltwater fish. Saltwater fish are collected all around the globe, very you know, the really neat saltwater fish. Almost none of them are coming off of, you know, us coastal waters.
Morgan W. 52:04
Or they're not. They're not bred captively, like they don't do well in captivity in terms of breeding breeding stocks, you know. So they have to collect them from the wild instead. So
Austin W. 52:15
that is something where I see a lot of that on our on our invoices for live fish. It's, you know, tariff surcharges, tariff off charges. We just, I just had a fish order. The whole order was about $4,000 wholesale cost, and there is about $300 so of tariff charges on it. So when you look at that and they put it right on the invoices. So, you know, that's increasing our costs by, you know, 8% or or so. And then we get to decide whether or not we keep pricing things how we have been, whether we, you know, raise prices on them. You know, that's, that's something that I'm still kind of figuring out what the best approach is to do. But, yeah, so that's surprisingly, you know, our dog stuff, cat stuff, most of that's untouched by by that part of it. But fish is actually a world where it's going to have a pretty, a pretty noticeable and real, real effect. Yeah. And I
Morgan W. 53:21
could see things like maybe some boutique type stores have a little bit of a harder time, because you think about toys, and so you think about like a licky mat. So a licky mats made out of silicone. We can't source silicone in the US, and it has to come from abroad. And also it's probably manufactured abroad, because that's where it's being sourced. And so some of those, I think people who are selling more of the more manufactured items might have a harder time, whereas a lot of what we're doing, like Austin was saying, is it's food, it's treats, chews. A lot of that stuff is already over the last probably 20 years, a lot of that has already kind of moved to more US based manufacturing, but that's another cool thing we can talk about. You know, these foods are made in our region. You know, these treats are us made these you know, deer antlers are collected here in the US. You know, some of those things can be a talking point, if you wanted to make them a talking point, but kind of that. But we, you know, when the tariffs were announced, we did say, okay, what are we gonna do about these food brands? Like, what if these food brands jump, you know, twice as expensive? Well, now are we gonna have to replace them with a different food that's made in the US? You know, a lot of those conversations, we kind of had to start thinking about, but thankfully, it hasn't been a
Austin W. 54:39
hasn't been too bad yet. But, I mean, the reason we're carrying those foods that are not made in the US is because they do something different or better at x than the foods that we have available to us. So it's, I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, one of them is one of the foods that we get from Italy. Is very specific for dogs that. Have a lot of allergies. And you know, nobody else is doing that, you know the way they are. And you know, if that price jumps up, hopefully it doesn't, you know, cause pet owners to have to do something that's not going to work well for their animal. So hopefully, hopefully, you know, stuff from Italy doesn't take a huge, huge jump, yeah.
Collin 55:23
Are you seeing people having, you know, customers coming in asking about that? Or, you know, are you seeing concerns from from their
Austin W. 55:30
perspective? Um, not too much. Yet. I will say, one of the benefits of being where we are in the Upper Midwest is, as a region, we are fairly resilient as far as big swings or insulated, I guess, like they happen and we feel them, but the effects of of a lot of the political or social economic like scary things that have happened over the last five years, like they still reach here, but I think their effects are notably muted from where they are a lot of places. So we are lucky in that regard, nice
Collin 56:12
well. So for those who are listening to this inspired, or they're getting the itch and start looking at, you know, if they've got retail space pulled up on, you know, retail finder right now, and they're looking to start a store or take one over. Any advice that you'd give to somebody
Morgan W. 56:26
listening? Oh, I would say one thing that for me was the sticker shock of like rental rates and kind of like the commercial rental space is shocking, I would say. And so for me, that was a huge, like, I just couldn't believe I'm like, How many bags of dog food do we need to sell just to pay rent? You know, those things were, were definitely, you know, kind of Top of Mind. And just kind of the scale of investment you need, depending on, do you want to buy something that's existing? Do you want to start your own? How do you plan to grow this? That was definitely something that very much surprised me, I guess, as an outsider,
Austin W. 57:10
my kind of first thought for somebody who's looking to do something like this is, you know, like most businesses, you need to have some sort of value proposition or niche that's different than what people have. You know, if you're in a town that already has or in a neighborhood that has two or three boutique pet supply stores that focus on, you know, dog mom apparel and that type of thing, don't do it like it's not going to pan out. But if, if you're in a space and you have three, you know, more boutique type stores, but there's not a good basic supply store, you know, or that you know, something like what we have, you know, go for it. You gotta find something that is going to be different, because it's really hard to break into a space that's already saturated. Already saturated. That's part of the reason that we have had the success we have, you know, from before we bought the store. You know when, when the previous owners had it is, we were in kind of a location on at the time, it was kind of on the edge of town, but we were the first ones here, where we were, and it allowed us to capture a lot of our local market, you know, everybody within a 20 minute drive. We were kind of the only option for a while. And then, you know, three years in, actually, Pet Smart opened a quarter mile away, basically directly across the street. And that actually hasn't ever been a bad thing for us, because it, you know, kind of like the reason why Petco and petsmarts are so near each other often, or, you know, restaurants build so close to each other, but you have to have something different, right? You're not going to have two McDonald's within a few blocks of each other, but a McDonald's and a Burger King, because then you're like, Oh, I'll go over there and I'll figure out what I want at the time, you know. So don't let if you do have a decent location that's away from other independence, or that you do something a little different than, you know, PetSmart refers people to us all the time. Hey, we don't have that product, you know. We don't have that knowledge base. We don't have that, you know, we don't carry that fish drive across the street and see what they have. And we do the same like, hey, somebody comes in. Hey, we're looking for Pro Plan. We're looking for pet stares, you know, stuff that we don't have the space to carry a wide variety of. We send them across the hill. So like, having a smart location where you're can find a level of maybe some synergy with something that's around you, or at least you're avoiding direct competition from what you're exactly trying to do, I think is probably a wise space if you're looking to to start new
Morgan W. 59:59
and also. So if you don't have any retail experience, or you don't have any pet retail experience, it would probably make sense to try to find somebody who does just to help you out. Because if you have zero retail experience, learning how to order you know, how to find a distributor, how to figure out how to even get things in your store, how to price them. That's all a really big knowledge lift. And so if you don't have that yet, making sure that you're willing to either invest the time yourself or being willing to invest in another person who you can maybe bring into the store with you as an employee who can help you do those things, just because there is, there's a lot to learn. And, you know, learning what kind of products you want to carry, what works, what doesn't work, you know, your distributor is going to try to sell you whatever they've been encouraged to sell, or whatever, you know, they think is going to be the cool new thing. And sometimes the distributor comes in like, Oh, I've got this great idea for you, and it's like, no, we've already tried it. It doesn't work. You know. So not just relying on somebody who wants to sell you something, but somebody who has kind of a greater knowledge base can be really helpful. Because I think if I had just tried to start a pet store without Austin's knowledge, it would be very, very harsh, and I don't think I would have a very good time with it. So again, either be willing to spend the time and the effort to learn it yourself. There's some really great programs out there, are some really great groups out there to help you, or finding somebody to kind of help be that role for you. Yeah,
Collin 1:01:28
I was just about to say, you know, with Austin and your background in this exact thing, right? It kind of makes streamline and makes that process a lot faster. Of like, Nope, we're going to do it helps cut through that clutter, too. Of whenever you have that background, that experience, of when you have all these outside influences, or saying, Oh, here's the next big, hottest thing, especially like both of you two, like, you know your market. You know your customers too. You know what's going to fly and what's not. If you tried to put something out there, which also helps. So it takes, it sounds like a lot of this, be present. Be aware, right? And just be, be. Try remember who you're trying to serve ultimately, in everything that you're doing.
Austin W. 1:02:07
Yeah, very much. Self awareness. I got,
Collin 1:02:12
got to work on that. Hold on. Let me take that note.
Morgan W. 1:02:16
Yeah. And I think knowing what kind of impact do you want to make, and when you know what kind of impact you want to make, then you want to make, then you can kind of work it backwards, and you can figure out all the other things, and just knowing that everything is really connected. And so you make one decision here, and kind of what's the ripple effect of of that decision? And yeah, it's, it's a fun world. I've really enjoyed getting to be part of the store, but it's definitely it's a much different world than being a service provider, as a dog walker, pet sitter.
Collin 1:02:48
Well, I'm, I'm super excited for both of you on this journey, and as soon as I saw your announcement and everything I knew had to jump on and talk about the experience and how it's been going so far for you. And I know it's not the end of it, so it so it just means we have to have a follow up episode about, you know, one year, two year, whenever you make that first expansion to, I'll be waiting for that. But yeah,
Morgan W. 1:03:09
we too, I'll be ready for that. Well, that's, you know, again, just thinking ahead, you know. And it's like, okay, gosh, there's so many things between now and then and knowing, like, what's important, what's not important, and trying to get to be intentional with how things are going. So yeah, hopefully when you know we talk in another year, we have good things to report.
Collin 1:03:31
Well, I look forward to that very much. And for those who want to follow along, check out everything that you both are doing and check out the store. How best can they do that?
Morgan W. 1:03:41
Yeah, so on social medias, Facebook and Instagram, we're at woofs and waves so spelled out, like, woof, like a dog barking, and waves, like water for an aquarium. And so you can, yeah, so you can find us there. Our goal is to, you know, like, start maybe a Tiktok account and, you know, a YouTube account and things like that. But for now, we're on Instagram and Facebook, so you can follow
Collin 1:04:07
us there. Okay, well, perfect. Well, I will have the links to those in the show notes and on our website, so people can follow along and see all the cool stuff that you guys are doing, the community events that you're putting on, and just, it's very exciting, and I'm just so excited for both of you. So thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedules and coming and talking with us today. It means a lot, and I'm so thankful for both of you.
Speaker 2 1:04:30
Yeah, thank you, Collin, yes, thank you.
Collin 1:04:34
You don't have to know everything about everything. You just need the right people passionate about the right things when we look to our businesses and how to make it better and how to grow. Many times we are me, my myself, I am the bottleneck, and that's one of the beauties of bringing people onto your team, as employees and training them, you get to see people that are passionate and sometimes. Way better than you are at a certain thing you get to provide that for them as the business owner, how wonderful that we get to do that. Running a business, especially in this industry, can feel really overwhelming, from if you have inventory and products to all the different kinds of care for the pets that you're taking and managing. Everything in between, there's always something new to learn. But the truth is, again, we don't have to be the expert. We should not be expected to be that expert. What matters most is building that team around you. Start with that. CPA, start with that. Va, start with that marketing. Start with that website designer. That's what we're doing. I need a website. I'm bad at it. Who can I find to do that for me? And then when you build that team around you, your entire business is better for it, how are you building your team? We want to thank today's sponsors, tying to pet and pet perennials, for making the show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We could not do this without you. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
1:06:10
You
