638: Competing Smart: What Really Matters in Pet Care Growth
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Who actually wins when the pet care industry gets bigger, noisier, and more competitive? We break down how the market has matured, why growth feels harder, and why the old “post on Facebook and wait” playbook no longer works. We introduce three market layers—generic/basic, niche/specialized, and high-end/boutique—and explain how our choices determine the effort and spend it takes to get clients. We share practical tactics like building referral engines, forging one-to-one partnerships with vets, trainers, and boutiques, and crafting high-touch client experiences. Most importantly, we show how clarity about who we serve beats trying to be everywhere at once.
Main topics:
Industry maturity & shifting playbook
Three service layers explained
Client experience as differentiator
Referrals and partnership strategies
Avoiding burnout through clarity
Main takeaway: “Where you choose to compete determines the effort and money needed to get clients.”
If you’re fighting for attention in the same crowded “anyone can do it” space, you’ll pay more—in dollars and energy. Pick your lane: generic, niche, or boutique. Then design everything—from intake to follow-up—around that choice and the client you serve best. Partnerships, referrals, and a high-touch experience compound when your positioning is crystal clear. Stop trying to be everywhere; be unmistakable to the right people.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitter confessional, industry growth, competition, marketing strategies, client referrals, niche services, high-end offerings, client experience, personalization, business differentiation, social media, networking, paid ads, partnerships, self-care
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Oh, hi. I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the hosts of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters Associates, and our lovely Patreon supporters. They are people who have found value in the show. Love listening to the podcast and want to give back. If that sounds like you, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see the ways that you could help out. We are officially in q4 the back half of the year, and it's almost over 2025 so hopefully you are taking some time for yourself, some self care before the holidays kick off. It's going to be another crazy year, and it's been a wild year so far. And because of that, this industry itself is changing faster than ever. When we look back to when we started the podcast in 2019 it has changed so much. Obviously, there was this huge pandemic that happened that blew our industry apart, and then we're trying to put it back together. Then there was the resurgence of travel vacations, and now we're really leveling out, but
Collin 00:57
that growth has really come from two places. One, there's more entrances to the market than at any point in time. There's more pet businesses out there in some shape or form and capacity than there were five six years ago. And the businesses that are around or have been around, are bigger than ever. The number of businesses that we see here or know about who are hitting seven figures and up from there, are exploding and not in all markets, but in a lot of markets, you're seeing these two things, more businesses, and then more larger businesses. In
Meghan 01:28
general, the pet care industry really is maturing. It's taken 30 years, but we're finally getting there. The growth, the massive growth, really brings new opportunity, new challenges. You can try different services. You can test things and work things out in your business, there's a bigger opportunity now for you to take chances with what you do with your business. You can get
Collin 01:47
creative. Yeah, well, and with that, business practices basically the best way of operating 10 years ago, even from five years ago, really no longer work or effective, especially when it comes to things like marketing and networking and getting your name out there, it really is harder to grow now than ever. It takes a lot more time, takes a lot more money, skill and effort to start bringing in those clients that you need to grow,
Meghan 02:14
while there are solos out there who grow by word of mouth. That is becoming more difficult because of the increase of competition, it can be harder and more difficult to grow. You can't just put up a Facebook page and say, Okay, I'm open for business. Well, there's a lot more that goes into it than that. A maturing market really brings more competition, more sitters, more dog walkers entering every day. People see this a very easy way to have a side gig and and potentially grow it into something bigger. I know that since the beginning of the year, Collin and I have seen about a 20 fold increase in poop scoopers in our service area. There are so many so people are latching on to the easy things that they think that they can do. It's also
Collin 02:51
just larger, more well funded companies entering into the space or growing up in the space. And it's not just to know what you're thinking. It's not just rover or wag anymore that people are really thinking about or worried about as as threats to the industry. It's million dollar businesses, it's franchises, it's agencies with what the ad budgets right where they look, and they can spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars to grow their business and to get their name out there. That we just can't do
Meghan 03:19
that. Here's the kicker, though, everybody is competing for the same attention, the million dollar businesses, the solos, the people who just do this after work as their hobby. Everybody is vying for those pets. And because of that, it can feel very exhausting to know that this is not a passive thing that I'm going to be able to do. I have to go work for it. I have to go grind and hustle, and yes, that can be for a season, but it's not going to be all roses and butterflies, and I'm not just going to spit and get 20 clients. There is this exhaustion factor of constantly needing to up your game just to stay visible. I have to keep posting on social media, or I have to keep visiting coffee shops, or I have to keep going to the networking meetings,
Collin 04:00
even something like, oh, you can post a photo with a cute dog and get some attention and get some interactions with that to now to the point we're going, Okay, you can't just post one, you have to post multiple, and you can't just post photos. You have to be posting videos, and the videos have to be edited and done well and short in attention grabbing. And now you are trying to create that 10 second video, just like that big agency that's got an advertising company making same videos for them, it
Meghan 04:27
seems like Gone are the days of flyers and simple Facebook posts. Word of mouth, like I said, isn't really enough anymore. So the when you put in minimal effort, you are likely going to get minimal clients, even on rover and wag, it is so hard to stand out among hundreds of profiles, and you can't do anything with their algorithm. You can have more repeat clients, and you can respond faster, but at the end of the day, you can't put yourself on page one versus page three.
Collin 04:51
When was the last time you were on a Facebook post asking for a pet sitter or dog walker? And you did? You did you scroll through the hundreds and hundreds of comments of people? Doing that, that's becoming more common than ever, of people not just saying, Oh, I have time for this, or I can do this, but hey, I own a company, and here's what I do, and here's the thing. So standing out there and getting attention with those is more difficult.
Meghan 05:12
Paid ads are also confusing, whether it's on Google or Facebook, and they can be expensive to really track that. Roi, well, did you come from my Google ad? Or how did you find me? These are important questions to ask people.
Collin 05:23
Or did you put an ad in a local newspaper or a local magazine? Or did you get the kind of phone call where the local golf course is trying to sell you a sponsorship on one of their scorecards? It's harder, but it's not hopeless, and I think that's what's really important
Meghan 05:36
to remember. The good news is that more layers in the market bring more opportunity. When you have these market layers, it creates chances to stand out if you can differentiate. One of the things that we've done a couple of years ago was add wedding pet attendant services. Nobody else in our area was doing that also poop scooping. But like I mentioned, a lot of poop scoopers have come in recently, right?
Collin 05:56
You have to think of the dog walking, pet sitting market in three different layers. There's the generic or basic services, there's the niche and specialized services, and then there's the high end and boutique offerings, those generic and basic services. These are the anyone can do it level. These are the quick, you know, 15 minute potty breaks. These are the short walk around the corner. These are the a lot of the basic services that clients are asking for, that are out there that you can grow a very big and large business on, offering these straightforward, simple, not complex, no variation, kind of copycat or cookie cutter services that you apply to every single person. Next Level in that is the niche or specialized services. These are where you're working with some specialized behaviors. Maybe you're going cat only, maybe you're focusing on intensive medical care or particular breeds, or maybe you're thinking of only particular services, like only doing adventure hikes or only doing treadmill walks or only doing those things, the high end and the boutique offerings. These are where, these are premium. These are personalized experiences. This is where, honestly, if you look at your business right now, I guarantee you that the word personalized experiences automatically puts you into the high end and boutique services. So you're already probably high end and boutique you might, might not just be charging for that, but this is where you take every client by the hand, and you hold them and you say, Okay, here's what I'm going to do for you. Here's the personalized care plan that I have that I'm going to build for you. Here's the specific per visit SOP that I have. Here's the 2800 questions that you're going to answer and fill out so that I know exactly what you want, and that client experience is way above that. So here's the important part. Where you choose to compete determines the effort and money needed to get clients. Which one of these three is the generic, the niche, or the high end, where you choose to market and look for clients, it will determine how much money you have to spend to get them. Where are the most of the eyeballs in your market? Well,
Meghan 08:04
and that's a good point, because I know a moment ago, you said, with the generic and basic services, you can build a huge list. That's not necessarily true. If you are more in an affluent or bougie area, your clients or potential clients may only want the premium, personalized experiences. So you do have to look at your area, the clients that you currently serve, and then the clients that you want to go after or that are contacting you, and think about which one they fall into. Of course, you can go after a certain demographic, and that's, I think, what you are getting to with these three areas. But you do also need to go, Well, if my area is only asking for basic services, I'm probably not going to be able to get to the premium and personalized and vice versa. If they're only asking for Super bougie services. I'm not going to be able to get to the anyone can do it level or the basic we just go on a walk and come back and that's
Collin 08:54
it. Well, so again, where's most of the attention in your service area and what are your clients asking for. If you see most people that are just asking for, or most of the businesses are only offering those basic level services, think of ways to go to niche or boutique or high end if, again, if you are in an area where there's a lot of boutique and high end requests clients and businesses, there are still ways to find to stand out and differentiate that things that they are not doing that, then all of a sudden, puts you in a place where more eyeballs are able to get to you specifically, as opposed to just the crowded room of people waving their hands saying, I'll walk your dog.
Meghan 09:34
But this goes to a discussion that we have had before of a dog walk. How do you make that special, a 30 minute dog walk? Well, anybody can really do that. How do I make it high end and boutique? And that's where we have to go off and say, Okay, what if it's not other services I want to offer if I only want to do dog walks? How do I make that special?
Collin 09:51
You have to focus on the client experience. What effort do you place? And here's really the difference in high end and luxury services versus. Is the generic everybody can do it. How much effort do you place on the client? If you are saying, I offer high end dog walks, but the client is the one who has to fill everything out, answer all the questions. They have to book. They have to do this thing. They have to, they have to, they have to, they have to, they have to, they have to. That's not a luxury experience for that person. So focusing back on the person is really where you start differentiating that. What's your intake process like? How do you show up to their home? What kind of questions are you asking them? What kind of recommendations are you giving? Are you stepping forward and you applying to their specific need and want? That is a very important way of shifting from the basic and generic to the high end and luxury and more boutique offerings as a business is when you take that personalization and go, I am going to step in and I will take the burden away from the client in order to make this happen.
Meghan 10:54
Okay, so we all have the same goal here is to get more eyeballs on our business. So what does that look like in practice? How do you stand out without burning out? Really, that's not what we want either. If, even if we're generic, and anybody can do it kind of thing of just, I just come in and walk your dog, you could still burn out if you're not charging enough, if you're taking on too many clients, if you're not prioritizing your self care. So what does this look like? It means focusing on client referrals. You don't always have to pay for them. Sometimes you can just ask and have that goodwill built up of, okay, I've walked Marcy for two years now. I can ask, Hey, would you recommend me to your golf buddies or your ladies at the salon? And you can even tell your clients your growth goal of, you know, we're hoping to add 10 new families for before the holidays. Do you know anyone or but in the year 2026 we want to do serve 150 new clients. Can you help us achieve that goal? You may also consider offering a free visit or a small perk if needed.
Collin 11:52
Yeah, start with that goodwill. I think it's really important to recognize that you have a lot more goodwill built up in your client base than you recognize or no, and the reason is, is because we've never had to ask them for anything. We've never asked their help in building our business and helping us grow. But by you showing up, by them continuing to book you, there's goodwill, there's trust in that. And when we can turn around, and after they've had a good experience, we can turn around and say, Hey, thank you so much for the wonderful review, or thank you so much for the kind words I'm if you know anybody who would love to have that same experience, please give them my name and number, and I'd like to talk to them about how I can help them. And then, yes, if you find that these are slowing down, that these client referrals that can this is, this is the word of mouth thing, if this is slowing down, how can we make this better? Is it a free visit? Is it an extra chew toy? Is it a birthday thing? Is an extra perk that you give them in some capacity, find ways that give them value, though it's not always about dollars and cents again, when we focus on, how do I make a better experience for my clients, for the people that I am serving? What does that mean for you and how you run your business? Is it they can book later, book earlier. They can get preferential treatment on certain things, whatever that is. You can apply that to your client base to make sure that they are getting their
Meghan 13:09
needs met no matter which type of client you're going after. You need pet business insurance. 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 at petsit llc.com as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. If we are a small to medium sized business, it can be nearly impossible to compete with large company ad spends. We have to find other ways to do this. We don't have $1,000 a month to just throw at ads, but we can build partnerships over pay to play marketing. You don't need every vet or every groomer or every dog trainer to recommend you. You You just need one of each, one vet who recommends you, or the vet that you take your own dogs and cats to, one groomer who raves about your reliability. Or it could be a dog trainer that you took your dogs to, or that you've worked with in the past or seen at events. You want that one dog trainer who's in your corner. This also applies to pet stores and pet boutiques that put your info on the counter. You don't need all of them to do that, although, of course, that would be great, but you just need the one who really is going to be a rock star referral for you.
Collin 14:31
Well, again, this is a partnership. This is not just the vet shouting your name from the rooftops. This is you doing stuff with the vet,
Meghan 14:38
and this means events that putting them in your email newsletter, partnering on social media posts with them, doing events, doing client appreciations,
Collin 14:46
doing blogs with them where they're answering questions and you can share that out to your clients, or on social media again, where you are showing up alongside them and going, I and this vet are doing this thing together. See how we're working. Alongside one another. And I will also add to this list, you need to have other dog walkers and pet sitters in your area who are doing this for you. Have that network of other pet business owners who are coming alongside you, sharing and then championing you and giving you referrals when they're too full they're outside their service area. It's something that they don't specialize in. Again, all the more reason to specialize in something. Because what that does is that gives somebody a reason to keep you top of mind, being the generic, oh, I just kind of do everything, but kind of, I don't know it's all kind of basic and whatever it's mass market stuff that's not very memorable. That's where you have to spend a lot of money and time getting your name out there, getting your brand recognized, getting your colors doing your colors, doing all that stuff. If you're known for something, when the vet has a client or a customer come in and has a problem, that vet doesn't have to think about who to refer to. You're known for something, you're known for something that the groomer can share out and give your information about. That's really the power of niching in that way. And then you take that person and you give them an amazing client experience, where that onboarding is really smooth, where everything is really well done in high touch, and then they want to rave about you because somebody referred you solved the problem. Angie did it in an amazing way. And now they're going to go out, and you can ask them to help share that information.
Meghan 16:19
When we talk about getting more eyeballs. There's also, of course, the brass tacks, Gorilla marketing, things that you may not have done in two years or five years. You know, of course, posting flyers, yes, social media, posts, getting out into the community, door knocking, telling people about your business, going to events. But it can also be doing things that no other dog walker or pet sitter is doing in your community. And this doesn't just have to be services. It could be putting on different events. Maybe you want to organize a community dog walk one day a month on the first Saturday of the month, or something. You want to do pet loss Memorial events where clients can come and mourn the loss that they've had this past year. It could mean doing yard signs or doing postcards. These things do cost money, but they may be things that nobody else in your area is doing. And it's
Collin 17:08
important to know is that we are saying a lot of well, you could do this, you could do this, you could try, you could try, you could try. And that really is the center to why the exhaustion is so real, because we as small business owners, even if you are running a $500,000 and up business, you're running a million dollar business, you still have rover and wag, who are over here, kind of lording everything over and you have franchises, and you have all this other stuff. And so there's so much attention out there that we then internalize and feel like we have to do what everything we feel like we have to show up everywhere, in every way for it to everybody, just like the big behemoths that are in our area, or just like everybody else. And so what you're talking about there Megan is like, find your thing where your clients are,
Meghan 17:52
or the clients that you want to go after. Maybe you don't really have any clients that you're excited about or really want to be serving anymore, so you need to pivot your business and go to where nobody else is right now,
Collin 18:03
yeah, again, one of the dangers of being in the generic kind of mass market service and business perception is that you're kind of for everybody, which sounds easy at first, but if everybody thinks they're for everybody, then everybody's for nobody, and then nobody's for you. And so by finding that, who do I want to serve. Maybe that's your niche. Your Niche isn't in services or in how you treat people, but it's in who you're serving, who's your target demographic. Where do they live? What kind of jobs do they have? All of those things help you niche down and help you communicate to people. So to cut out the exhaustion, one sure fire way to do this is get hyper specific on who you want to serve. Who do you think you help best when you think of somebody and they come to you, who is that person, right?
Meghan 18:51
And it could be incredibly personal. Your grandma had dementia, and you want to go serve elderly people who have dementia in assisted living facilities with their pets, because you have several pet friendly assisted living facilities, and because you have a personal connection, this is now your mission for your company.
Collin 19:08
Yeah, see how much more powerful that is than a flyer that says, I'll walk your dog. You just feel that story there. That is what connects with people, that genuinely is what drives people to your business, does it? Yes, also return push people away. Well, okay, that's not my problem. Okay, I don't need that company, exactly. But you want that because you want the people who to be knocking down your door by the time they hear about you because they immediately see, know and trust you based off of your marketing. That is the power of branding and niching down into your target market and your target avatar, as people will say. And now everything else comes around this the client referrals. That's really powerful whenever you have your known client avatar, because who are they referring to other people like themselves? And they immediately get it and. Whenever you have that avatar, you have that niche, when you have that partnership with a groomer or trainer or boutique or veteran other Vet Centers and dog walkers, when they know they hear that keyword, ah, nursing facility, boom. I know who does that work in there, and you're going to love this person. Those are really powerful and personal, and they're persistent because they stay for a long time, because you're always solving that person's problem.
Meghan 20:24
As we've discussed, the past 30 years, the pet sitting and dog walking industry has just ballooned up. But the growth isn't bad. Yes, we may not really like rover and wag lording over us, but they are here. It's a reality, and we just have to kind of live with it. It is really this evolution of the pet care industry though over the past 30 years, and to thrive and to keep it going, we have to mature alongside it. And what that means is we have to kind of as much as we don't want to. We have to embrace the other businesses around us. We have to look at where the opportunities are, because those opportunities belong to those who differentiate and serve deeply from within their mission. They know exactly where their company is going. We do not want to compete by being louder, by spending more, going to more events or doing more. That's just doing more for the sake of being out there, and that's going to lead to burnout of you doing too much too often and not taking enough time for yourself. You want to compete by being clear about who you serve, why you are here, what you want to do in the future and how you want to get there. So think about where does your business fit into the three layers that we talked about, the generic, basic services of anyone can do it. Then there's the niche, specialized services of behavior or reactive dogs or cats only or medical care, and then the high end boutique offerings, the premium, personalized experiences, which one does your business fit in. You can let us know if you want to share by emailing us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or look us up on Instagram and Facebook. At Pet Sitter confessional, we appreciate you listening today. Hopefully it was helpful to you. We also want to thank pet sitters, associates and our Patreon supporters for helping keep the podcast going. We will talk with you next time bye. You.
