648: How to Build a Business That Runs When You Can’t (Part 1)
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What would actually happen to your pet sitting or dog walking business if you couldn’t show up tomorrow? In this episode, we share how a scary experience during COVID forced us to confront just how much our business depended on us personally. We walk through the first four ways to build a more resilient business: having a backup as a solo sitter, creating a team-based system with employee backups, handing off admin tasks, and getting your “in-your-head” knowledge documented. We talk about the mental load of being the only one who knows how to run payroll, schedule, and respond to emergencies—and what it looks like to slowly share that responsibility. We want you to start building a business that can keep caring for clients and supporting your family, even when life forces you to step back.
Main topics:
Facing “What If I Can’t?”
Solo Sitters and True Backups
Team-Based, Cross-Trained Staff
Handing Off Admin Tasks
Systematizing In-Your-Head Knowledge
Main takeaway: “Being without a backup is just one emergency away from losing everything and having a real catastrophe on their hands”
It sounds dramatic, but it’s the reality so many pet sitters and dog walkers quietly live with. One illness, one family emergency, or one injury could leave clients stranded and your business hanging by a thread. In this episode, we talk about how to build real backups, not just in theory, but in practical, everyday ways—from connecting with another sitter to cross-training a team to documenting what only lives in your head. You don’t have to build a massive company, but you do deserve a business that won’t collapse the second you need to step away.
Links:
Loom (Suggested for Screen-Recording SOPs): https://www.loom.com/
ChatGPT / AI Tools (Implied for Turning Transcripts into SOPs): https://www.openai.com/chatgpt/
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitting, dog walking, business resilience, backup plan, admin tasks, team-based system, client communication, payroll, scheduling, emergency preparedness, systematizing, employee training, business continuity, mental load, standard responses
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:00
What would happen to your pet sitting or dog walking business if you didn't show up tomorrow? Would it keep running? Think about it. Would clients still get care? Would payroll go out? Would marketing stop or would it all collapse? We are doing a two part series on this. Part one is going to be about why this is so critical, and four of the steps to take. Part two is going to be about more of the ways to build a resilient business, plus the other benefits that come from it. That's what we're going to talk about today. 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. We hope that wherever you are joining us in the world today that you are having a great day. We thank you for listening. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our lovely Patreon supporters, who love the podcast. Have listened for a few episodes or a long time, and they want to keep the podcast going to 1000 episodes and beyond. If you are listening and you're thinking, Well, I don't want the podcast to stop, I get a lot out of it. I enjoy listening to other pet sitters, tell their stories and hear what the lessons they're learning. You can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can help the podcast out, and we appreciate every one of them. Whether you have been in business one day or 30 years, you have to think about the longevity of your business. Building a business that can operate without you. What happens if you get sick or injured or just want to step away and go on a vacation? What happens to your business when you aren't there? Well,
Collin 01:29
this really hit home for us back during covid, where I got really sick, it was just Megan and I at the time, and we were slammed with visits, really, really busy, and I was sick with covid, and we were in contact with all of our clients, making sure that they were comfortable with it. They weren't getting back for many days, and they we were just working through the process. And I'll never forget, I was doing a series of visits in the afternoon, and I was just really dragging. And in the basement of this home, they were doing this big renovation, and they had a mattress in the basement of this house. I sat on it, and then I woke up, like four hours later, realizing that I had just completely conked out in this person's basement. And in that moment, I had the thought, I can't do this forever, right? This is not how we need to run our business, and that if something were to happen to me, the business would be completely gone, and Megan and our kids, the business wouldn't be there for them to support them. This wasn't a dream. This didn't start with me thinking about, Oh, I need to step away to get a break, or I need to step away because we're burned out. This was about like almost just the survival aspect of our business, making sure that it could run and operate if something happened to us. Now it's more about that, that balance, the resilience, the freedom that we can get out of our business, but it started back with just a very real implication of, if I couldn't show up for visits, what was going to happen to our clients and our business.
Meghan 03:04
The business really was running on our backs, and so we had to think outside of ourselves, of what do we need to do? What steps do we need to put into place? You know, to build a business that truly supports your life, you must build one that doesn't rely on your constant presence, even if you are solo, you have to have steps in place in case you fall down and break an ankle.
Collin 03:24
Right? Yeah, clients will still need care. Our business when I was sick, it still needed admin time. It still needed scheduling. It still needed the actual field work of the visits done, and all of the meet and greets and everything that we were doing and going on, right? I realized that if I can't work, everything stops. And so we'd like to ask you, like, what would happen if you stopped working? Would clients be served? Would income still come in? Would your family be supported? Would the business grow or would it disappear?
Meghan 03:58
These answers are going to be different for everybody. Maybe you're in a dual income household where you are not the sole provider, or maybe you do have a husband that helps you out, and you can tag team, and so if you get injured then or sick, then he can take over more of it. But the crux of this really is thinking outside of the day to day grind. And I know this is hard, because we're about to go into the holidays, and that's just a crazy busy time for everybody. So this is not the most opportune time to be thinking about this, but it is something that needs to be on our mind so we can have a plan.
Collin 04:27
Actually, it isn't the perfect opportune time to be thinking about this, because we are going into very busy seasons. What happens if you can't show up to take care of the busyness? What happens when that takes place? Right? This isn't about having a business that we can just step away from completely. We need businesses that don't collapse if I'm not in the room. I don't want my business to only survive if I'm here, because then that means that it is only existent because. Because of my presence, and when I need to, it's not just a, oh, I don't want to be involved anymore. It really, truly is. What if I can't be involved? What then happens? And
Meghan 05:12
this, we're not just talking about field visits here. This could mean any of your admin work payroll, who does the scheduling, who approves the visits in your software, who's taking the phone calls? There's so much more than just the dog walking and pet sitting that needs to be done. So have you trained somebody else on your payroll, or at least told them the name of your payroll provider, or do they know what software you use? Do you have a trusted friend or another pet sitter friend who uses the same software or is familiar with your business structure in some way?
Collin 05:43
Yeah. I mean, I know for us, like, if, if something were to happen to Megan and I Right? Like we have things in place to make sure that all the assets and everything are taken care of, and our kids are going to be cared for. But we also have to plan for oversight of the business and operations of it there, right? This isn't again. This is not about just having a fully passive income. Megan and I love what we do. We love our business. We love working with our employees. We love serving our clients. It doesn't mean that we never have to work again. It doesn't mean that you abandon the thing that you love. I mean, you got into this for a reason, and the reason we're starting with this talking point of what happens if you can't show up is because I think many times people talk about, oh, don't you have a dream of never working in your business again? Or what if you could just step away and travel for a year and have things run and take place, and that may feel a bit too far reaching, or that would be too grand of a vision, but at the practical level, is where we're coming from, because that's where we started with this change in our mindset around our business, was, what if we something happens to us? Right? So this does mean that we stop being the bottleneck. What can I put into place so that I'm not the one that's holding everything back or holding things up. This does mean developing backups and systems and structures in our business so that our business can continue, whether we're sick, on vacation, taking a mental break, needing that day off, whatever that is, and so that our life and our business don't implode when we need to step back. And that that word there, when it's not if I need to step back. Because here's the problem, most people start businesses. They we started what we see a lot of, and what happened with us too, is we got into business. We started doing this when we were when younger, right? We're younger in this and you kind of have this idea of you're invincible, and surely nothing is going to go wrong. And what's the worst thing that could take place? And I'm always going to be able to operate like this and and walk like this, and work like this, and put in these hours and and this is going to be fine until it's not. And then life hits you. Things take place, and you have to get you have to step back. And we see these posts a lot of I need to go do XYZ. I need to go see my parent, who's in the hospital. I need to take care of this for my own health. What do I do about my business? And when we can think ahead and we can have some things, and not big things, not massive changes, when we can have a few things in place. It takes the burden off of us so that when we need to, it's easier for us to do that, instead of continuing to feel like we have to push through just because we have to a
Meghan 08:31
lot of times, we don't think about this until we have that, oh crap, a moment. I have to do something immediate right now. I have to find coverage. I have to give this task over to somebody else because I don't have the capacity to take it on because I have this my medical emergency, or a family medical emergency. But what we really want to stress in this episode is you need to be thinking about it now before it happens. It's just like when we plan for natural disasters and hurricanes or tornadoes, or when we prepare for snow in winter, doing a little bit of prep work now is going to save you a ton of time later when you're actually in the emergency. So
Collin 09:06
we want to walk through eight ways to start building a resilient business, a business that doesn't need you around as much to operate and continue to thrive. And the first one is that if you are solo, you need to have a backup. I We see a lot of people who kind of have this mindset of backups are only for bigger teams. That's whenever you get multiple employees, and they're covering different shifts and they're doing different walks. And it's that's whenever you have backup.
Meghan 09:35
Or you may be saying, well, I don't want to refer out to another company or another sitter, because, well, my client may go to them, they like them more, and that's the hesitation that we have. And while yes, of course, that could become a reality, but if you have a genuine connection with another sitter or Walker, they're going to point back to you.
Collin 09:53
Yep, a solo sitter without a backup is just one emergency away from losing everything and having a real catastrophe. Feet on their hands. A real backup means and what we're talking about here is have that person that you can reach out to, whether that is another sitter or a family member, who can step in and take over. But a true backup is someone who knows where to find the client info. They understand the basics of your routines and your expectations, and there's someone who can step in during sickness, injury or that family emergency that you have to go take care of. There's someone who knows how to conduct and who to contact in case of an escalation or when things get worse, they know your policies and procedures, which spoiler means that you have policies and procedures for them to find. But it's that person that you can lean on and contact and say, I'm in a bind. I need to take care of this thing. I need you to step in so that care can continue for my clients while I'm away.
Meghan 10:50
Yeah, a backup doesn't really do any good if they don't know where to find the key, or you have so much institutional knowledge in your head and you don't have anything written down that they don't know even where to go to look for to find the key, because it's in your head,
Collin 11:03
and communicating this to clients also builds trust in you, because your clients will see that you have thought through these procedures, you have thought through the worst case scenarios. So it gives them peace of mind, but it also gives you peace of mind as well, even if they never have to step in and we Well, we obviously never want to have to contact our backup person, but, but even if they never step in, it changes how you operate. It changes how you approach situations. It starts kind of eating away at our proclivities to just try and do it all ourselves, because we know we have some help standing over here ready to step
Meghan 11:40
in. When you are building a resilient business, you have to have 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 at Pet sitllc.com as a listener of pet sitter confessional, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's petsit llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. Building a resilient business may mean hiring employees and having backups for them too. We are huge proponents of the team based system, and we use it in our business. Hiring is great, but hiring without redundancy really puts you right back at risk. The one for one model, one client to one sitter, is potentially a dangerous thing. So we really believe in cross training your teammates, having them do multiple clients, maybe all of them, everybody can do everything. There are multiple people who can serve the same neighborhood or the same client type, or the same clients, people who can share duties during vacations or emergencies. If somebody gets a flat tire, somebody else can sub in. You can just add it to their route. Having a true team based model means you are less vulnerable to those emergencies when they do come up, if somebody is vomiting and sick and calls out, well, okay, I know that I have a backup for them, the systems, not personalities, run the business. I know I have a backup for them because I know that these systems, not the personalities of the people run the business.
Collin 13:18
They've all been trained in the exact same way. So regardless of whether I have Ann or Stan or Dan or whoever steps in, they are going to do the exact same way as everybody else. And it's not, oh well, this only this person can do this one thing. And if one sitter quits, or if they get sick, if they move, the entire business shouldn't collapse. And this is where you as a business start going in, how to become resilient, how to become redundant, in this thing of going I really want to be careful about the key players that I have in my business. I need to make sure that they are strategically placed, but I'm not reliant on the one person who can only do these five clients over here that really puts you at risk if something were to happen, we need to remember that we are building capacity in our businesses. We are not building dependency, because that is what will put you in a bind every single time.
Meghan 14:14
Hiring employees is one of the hardest things that you will do in your business. But even harder is handing off the admin tasks. It's one of the hardest steps, but it really is essential. Most business owners, they hand off walks and the pet care side of things First, it's a natural step. We get out of the field, we focus on the admin. The admin is usually the last thing that we release because we feel it's the most important, the payroll. Wow, yeah, that's a big step of somebody having the actual money to pay people. The administrative side of things often includes scheduling client communication, billing and invoicing, accepting new inquiries, taking phone calls, routing messages, handling emergencies, updating the SOPs, shooting videos and content for social media, or just even internally organizing client in. Info. Having team meetings, the handing off of admin tasks, really takes courage, because this is where the business brain lives. The nucleus of everything that that the business does and breathes and contributes back into the community comes from this admin side. So while, yeah, of course, it's hard to trust those first few employees with your business, your baby, that you've grown from birth, but now you have to do that with the admin side, the whole financial and scheduling enchilada of things. Once you do it, though, you suddenly free up hours of that mental load every week that you were carrying around of okay, I know that Jan is going to answer the phone calls during the day, and I'll take the night, or maybe I just have the entire load taken off. Now, obviously you'll have to have checks and balances and scripts to to give your person, but you create the business then that isn't reliant on you answering every ding of the phone
Collin 15:50
well. And you bring up a good point there. Megan, of this step, while scary, many people think, Well, I have to go all in or nothing. I need to hire that full time manager. I can't do it at all instead going, can one person be trained on some of the systems some of the time?
Meghan 16:07
Well? And that's a lot of what we think about with employees too, right? Of Well, I have to have a full time schedule or they're not going to be happy. Well, no, we are proof putting where we hired somebody with absolutely zero clients in a separate service area guaranteed zero hours for many months until we could get a client, so you don't have to have a set number of hours for an employee to give them dog walks and pet sitting. And it's the same thing here.
Collin 16:32
And maybe this admin position that you have is kind of an off and on thing as you need it, as you need to step away, as you need to go on vacation, as you need to go to conferences is you need to have that time to yourself or on set days the week and set time blocks. That's what you get to decide and create for yourself. But the benefit here is not again. I We're not trying to create something where, okay, I don't have to do anything anymore. Well, I am trying to create something where, if I need to step away for whatever reason, I have someone I can tap on the shoulder, and they can turn and start operating the business and continue it running while we're not there. To
Meghan 17:07
have that resilient business, you need to systemize the in your head knowledge. Again, what I was talking about of it's with the key knowledge of where to get the key is all in your head. Get it out. Most pet centers don't realize how much of their business lives only in their brain. And we are guilty of this as well. We are trying to currently revamp our SOPs and our training of what else do we need to get on paper or on video so that it is no longer in our head. There are so much client information, client quirks and safety protocols and judgment calls that we make that sitters don't know or we don't write down when it comes up, and so we forget about it if, like this client wanted this wanted this, or we made we did this because of this. There's also the scheduling logic. This one's huge of route planning of, okay, you've got 50 visits in a day and four sitters, or five sitters, where are they going when based off of their schedule and the time block that they're available? It's just it's so much, there's also messaging to clients and how we phrase things or say things, and how we resolve a crisis. All of these things are wrapped up in your head, and they need to be outlined on paper as much as possible.
Collin 18:12
Well, that how we phrase things is a very interesting thing, because we often talk about how the brand is us and how we are our secret sauce to the brand, and that includes our brand voice and how we write the social media posts and the ad copy that goes on our websites or on our newsletters that we send out or even in our updates to our clients, and how we phrase that and how we like to have that put together when we can standardize that. And what all that means is I write down a formula to reproduce it. It helps it all move along. I mean, if you had to step away tomorrow, could someone send payroll? If you were running payroll, could they solve a client emergency? Would they know the five steps that you have to do that? Or maybe you got a new client inquiry tomorrow? Could somebody follow the intake process exactly the way you do, sending exactly the same kind of messaging in the exactly the same way. All this is systematizing really just is the process of documenting your standard responses. This is what Megan and I started to do very early on, of hey, everybody always has the same questions, so let me just write it one time, and then I'm going to put it in a document and paste it, or our process through hiring is the same, no matter how what happens. So I have all of our same saved responses. We know exactly what step and in what order things go in and how they're supposed to be moved through, or creating templates for your emails or or the messages, the text, the updates that you send. Of this, it is a three step you would do X, Y and Z, maybe even building these micro SOPs for small but frequent tasks of things that you always do. Maybe you're, you're updating who left you a review, and you're doing that on a weekly basis. Or you're, you're updating your new client inquiries in your spreadsheet, or your financials, whatever that. It is that you're making these things so it's a step by step process, or even recording screen shares while you work. This is a fantastic way to build these, especially with AI you can use loom to do this, where it will record your screen while you do the steps that you're wanting to do. Maybe you run payroll and you just have loom running in the background. It's going to record everything that you're doing. At the end, you're going to have a video and a transcript that you can take that transcript, throw it into chat GPT, and then generate your SOP off of that, based off of what you were saying and how things were operating while you were running. It creates these step by step workflows for you behind the scenes and how you operate, so that when you need to, people can step in, you can train them on it, and you can operate your
Meghan 20:45
business. This all can be incredibly overwhelming, though, because these are, it's the bones of your business, the how your business works, how it's structured. And this is a not an overnight process. This is a years long process of fine tuning and just getting something on paper, though, even just a first few sentences of, this is the plan, or this is what I do, is, you know, a blank page is so intimidating, but once you get just even three sentences on there of something that you are working through, it can really illuminate the next time you come back to it, if you need to step away for a day and then revisit it, That's okay, too. This is, you know, the SOPs and all this stuff. They're living documents. We're constantly updating and changing things to make the business better and to allow us to step away even more. Right?
Collin 21:32
We think of it as trying to capture the Collin isms in our in our business, of the things that I say a lot and how I word and how I think about these or the Megan mindset of the route planning and the scheduling and these, these logic steps that she works through. We need to get these written down so that our business becomes scalable and teachable, because now we can point to, hey, how do we schedule? Here's the Megan mindset and the logical steps that she goes through learn these, step 1234, all the way out to infinity. You can teach that to people. It does feel like that sometimes, yes, but you can teach that once it's written down, you can point it back to people, and you can say, Here's your job now. Your job is to follow this. And that is the foundation of a business that isn't dependent on our brains running 24/7,
Meghan 22:24
so we've talked about the first four ways to build a resilient business. If you are solo, have a backup hire employees have backups for them too. That team, system then handing off admin, which is one of the hardest steps, but crucial, so that you can do the fourth step of systematizing the in your head, knowledge, getting it out of your head, telling other people, writing it down. We have so much more to say about this and another four steps for building a resilient business. On next week's episode, we would love to hear your thoughts on these, how you have implemented these in your business, or if you are still nervous to do so, and it's okay, if you are, you can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com, or look us up on Facebook and Instagram. At Pet Sitter confessional, we appreciate you taking your time today. Thank you so much for listening. We also want to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates. We will talk with you next time bye. You
