650: How to Build a Business That Runs When You Can’t (Part 2)
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
In this episode, we continue our conversation on building a resilient business by focusing on shared ownership, redundancy, and smart automation. We talk about how to empower your team to make decisions, centralize knowledge and access, and design systems that don’t fall apart when one person steps away. We also explore the mindset shift from being the hero of every story to building a brand and team that clients can trust, not just a single person. Ultimately, we challenge ourselves and you to design a business that supports your health, family, and future, instead of constantly taking from you.
Main topics:
Culture of shared ownership
Redundancy across people and systems
Centralizing knowledge and access
Smart automation for pet businesses
Designing business around your life
Main takeaway: “Build your business around the life you want, not the life that you are stuck in.”
So many pet sitters and dog walkers feel trapped by the very business they created. The schedule, the emergencies, the hundreds of tiny tasks all add up until you feel like the only thing holding everything together. In this episode, we talk about what it looks like to flip that script—to design your business so it supports your health, your family, and your future. We walk through building shared ownership with your team, adding redundancy so you’re not the only one who knows how to do critical tasks, and using automation to take work off your plate. If you’re tired of feeling like the business is taking from you, this conversation will help you start building one that gives back.
Links:
Get 1 NAPPS/PSI CEU FOR LISTENING TO EPISODES 648 AND 650
Examples pet business CRMs mentioned:
Time To Pet: https://www.timetopet.com
PetBiz CRM: https://www.petbizcrm.com
Automation / tools referenced:
Zapier: https://www.zapier.com
Asana: https://www.asana.com
Google Drive: https://www.google.com/drive
Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Resilient business, shared ownership, employee empowerment, decision-making, redundancy, automation, team culture, feedback, business continuity, client files, technology tools, training modules, work-life balance, business architecture, insurance
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:02
On episode 648, we talked about building a resilient business, one, where it doesn't rely on you. We cover the first four things. They were have a backup, hire, employees, handoff, admin and systematizing your head knowledge. Now, in part two, we're finishing with four more things and a bonus and why this is so important. Hi. I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter, no matter where or when you are joining us and listening to this today, we are appreciative and thankful that you are here. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters Associates, and our supporters on Patreon. Patreon is kind of a weird word, and if you don't know what it means, it means somebody who loves Pet Sitter confessional podcast wants it to keep going and supports us financially. If that sounds like you, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways you can help. It's really
Collin 00:49
crazy to think that we've been doing this podcast for over six years at this point, bringing on experts and insights and industry leaders strategies to support success in running a dog walking and pet sitting business, what started as something for Megan and I could do for fun and try something out and do a little experiment, has gone way farther than we ever expected. Now we're really excited that you can get continuing education credits simply by listening something that we are really excited about to announce and launch with this episode is that, moving forward, select episodes of this podcast will be eligible for CEUs continuing education units for both psi and naps. Always look for us to announce those at the beginning and end of the episodes. Here's how it's going to work. Listen to the episode. Pretty simple. There, then go to the show notes, and there you'll find a link to take a short quiz to check your knowledge and prove that you listened to the episode. Once you take that, you're going to get a certificate, an email sent to your inbox that you can then forward on to the organization that you're a part of, psi or naps, and get your CEUs as part of that. It's not going to be every episode, and we'll be working on adding some back catalogs over time. This means it's more than just listening. It's proof of your dedication to professional development and the future of the pet care industry. We are super excited and thrilled to be part of raising the bar for what it means to be a professional pet sitter and dog walker.
Meghan 02:22
So let's dive right in when looking at building a business that works without you. Number five is build a culture of shared ownership. A business really collapses without the owner. When the team operates like contractors instead of contributors or robots instead of people who truly can give and receive feedback. There's that give and take. When you intentionally build a culture where they're where your employees feel empowered to problem solve, they don't have to come to you with every little thing. Now, of course, we do enjoy when they ask our opinion, and we in tough situations, we do need to make judgment calls, but because we are walking into homes that we never know what's on the other side of the door. They do need to feel like they can make decisions.
Collin 03:05
Yeah, team members have to feel trusted in those moments. And the way you you build this is by encouraging them in the small moments. And this is why I love getting to shadow people on visits, because it's not really at that time for me to say, here's how you do this XYZ exactly in this manner. What we've really fallen into is this more of, Hey, I saw what you did with the leash right there. You did amazing with that. Or, you know, when you wrote this in your update. I know this was a really boring visit, but you made the right choice when you did XYZ. You point out the moments where they had agency and they did good, right? They made the right choices, it can be hard to build the autonomous people when we continue to insert ourselves in everything that we do. And this is a process that I've had to learn of when training people on writing updates, it's really easy for me to say, Oh, and you should definitely say something like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, instead telling the person, I want you to write the full update and then tell me what it was, and we're going to discuss it this way. They get to fully express themselves, feel that out, work through those and then I can come along and we can have that full conversation to build that decision making process and their confidence in that
Meghan 04:23
now, of course, we have to talk about this culture of shared ownership does not mean that they are the ones making the true business decisions, like if you have a business partner, that's one thing, but with employees who are doing field work, they aren't ultimately the ones Deciding what prices you should charge and exactly which clients you need to be going after. That's your job as the owner. You may even bring your managers in with some of these decisions, but you are the forecaster of your business here, yeah, but
Collin 04:51
you still have to help them understand the why behind what happens right? The why behind the standards, the why behind things when they understand. Understand why they do things and the people that it impacts that really helps people take ownership of their work.
Meghan 05:07
And this is something that we've struggled with because we think, Oh, well, just because the boss says it, okay, well, then I must do it. That. That is how we sometimes can feel as the employer of like, well, just go do the work that I told you to do. Why do I have to explain every single thing that we do, but it is true that when people understand the why behind it, they they are more likely to do the thing because they connect with it more. It's as
Collin 05:31
simple as, hey, if we didn't show up today for this dog walk, this client could not be in a different state to see their parent who's in the hospital, or they're they're doing this big thing, so it's helping connect people to the humanity of what you do, too, is also important in this process. And then all through this, when you openly ask for feedback, for improvements, you see people start to see where they can give input, where they actually have a voice, and important here, you do need to inform them of how you're going to take that under advisement. We have certainly heard from from people in the past who said, Hey, I didn't like my old job, because it didn't seem like no matter what you did, they never changed anything, or they didn't listen to people. But they had the feedback box, right? They had the comment box, and you could put stuff in there, but nothing changed. So being able to tell people, Hey, we are open to feedback. We might not always use it, but at least it helps us know if we're heading in the right direction or not. And that's enough for a lot of people, they really see, okay, I can go to these people, I can go to Collin and Megan and tell them these things. And that makes me feel part of something bigger, part of this actual business, because when you do these things, when they feel empowered, they're making decisions. They know the why. They can give feedback, you build a team that sees the business as ours and not the owners. And I'll never forget the first time we had an employee who said something like, man, the business like, like they were talking about how we are so much busier than we were before, and when they use that inclusive language, I was like, oh, oh, man, they really see themselves part of this. It was, I really appreciated giving that video. It was an unintentional feedback, but it was something that we could tap into and go, Okay, how do we make sure everybody feels like this? Because when that shift happens, the business naturally becomes less reliant on you. People start seeing gaps and filling them naturally, because they're part of it. It's our thing to do now. Oh, this needs covered. Let me do that. Oh, I have an idea for how to market. Oh, I see an opportunity. Let me take it. All of that happens outside of you, needing to push or pull or direct, or you step in to do those,
Meghan 07:45
or even just congratulating each other. Of you did an awesome day's work, great job, or you took out the trash today you remembered, like, awesome. Yay. Go team.
Collin 07:55
Yeah, the team is self encouraging. It becomes a self sustaining business when you have a healthy culture, because you aren't the one having to force things to happen, everybody's involved, meaning that if you forget to encourage somebody that day, somebody else is going to be there. If you forget to do something, or if you don't have the energy, or if you need to step away, somebody else is naturally going to be filling that because they see that void, and they see that need.
Meghan 08:20
We've already talked about having backups in your business, but the sixth part of building a business that works without you is building that redundancy into every critical area that you can because backups matter, but redundancy ultimately is deeper. So think of redundancy across all these areas, like people cross train your team. We talked about this as well, not a one for one model, but everybody can do everything. Then there's the information side of things, of centralizing your client files and training and SOPs. How are you going to do that? What is the best way, the most efficient way, and the way that everybody can get access to it? Similarly, there's the technology aspect. It's use tools that don't require one person's login, even if it's yours, have a company login that everybody has access to.
Collin 09:06
Yeah, this is something that we've worked on in our business of if we have a company, if we have a need to log into a system, a software or a service in some capacity, making sure that it's not Megan's or my email, that it's the business's email. This means that if at any point we need to step away, don't want to handle that thing anymore, we hand over, though the business login credentials, and whoever that is can step in and take it over without giving access to Megan's and my personal, personal emails. And you talked about the centralizing the information. I think an important aspect of that too is when you're putting things in the same place, from a from a backup perspective, literally backing up the information into a hard drive, a thumb drive, using a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive or or whatever that is, making sure that your information isn't beholden or just in sitting in. One computer, that one glass of water could completely destroy everything that you have or know about your clients and how your business is supposed to operate.
Meghan 10:08
Also don't forget that on your Google Business Listing, you need to have three admins, not just one. In case your Google listing gets taken down, you want to have multiple admins. You aren't left in the lurch and potentially suspended because Google is almost everything. And then you talk about organizing and being efficient. If you have to hand off something to somebody else with your emails or with anything that you do, if you're using a tool like Asana or your notes app or a Google Doc, make sure that business and personal are separated out, because if you do have to hand that over, or you choose to hand that over to somebody else. They probably don't want to know that you pay for Netflix every month or whatever other subscriptions or junk emails that are in there,
Collin 10:50
or if you're writing it down on a to do list, I mean, this is something that you and I go through a lot. Megan of I'll say, Oh, I really need to remember to do XYZ. And I'll start typing it on my phone. And you'll say, will I be able to see that? Can I see where that is? And it's a reminder of, right, if I forget to do this, you still have to know that it's on the table, that it still needs to get done. So we have a shared Reminders app, or a shared Google Doc, or working in a sauna that everybody has access to, so that both people are knowing I need to put this in this specific space that is shared with other people, not my own personal notes app or not this one I'm not writing down in one notebook that if this goes up in flames, no one will be any of the wiser, and that information will be lost. Because again, if you have to step away, if you want to step away, if you if something happens, somebody else needs to know about these things and get them and make sure they still get done.
Meghan 11:46
And that includes those tasks of nothing should exist that only one person knows again, that institutional knowledge that you have to get out of your brain so that other people know it, or another person knows it, that also comes into play with decision making, build a decision tree out so that your team can act without you. If something happens, here's what you need to do, and it doesn't mean that one person has to enact everything. You probably will be say, okay, Marge does this task, and Eric does this task, and you can outline it so that not one person is totally overwhelmed. Or maybe you do want to do that of one person, and then the tree just trickles down from there or up, I guess, as a tree is but,
Collin 12:25
well, you also see the same thing in formalizing a sales process, right? Maybe if you don't want to be taking phone calls anymore, well, how do you close the sale, or carry that conversation from start to finish with potential clients writing down your steps. Okay, okay, you don't want to do the full week package, but I can also offer you this. Oh, and we can do this thing. And here's what I say at each step along, as people say no, or maybe, or I'm thinking about it. That's a really great one to start outlining to pass off to somebody else. And then you can train to that.
Meghan 12:57
Ultimately, the question to constantly ask is, if the person who normally does this disappeared for three days, would we function? Would we be able to operate as a business and continue to serve our clients, and when we are the business owner? It can be overwhelming to think about these things, especially if we don't have structures in place or a scaffolding of our business, but you do need to start somewhere,
Collin 13:19
right? Well, maybe you do have employees, and one of them has just kind of naturally progressed, and they're doing some of these things for you. And you think, well, that's great, you know, Darren or Sally, they've got that covered. So I'm good, I'm just going to go over here. But if their life changes, if they need to move on to something else, if they need to disappear, they'd go away. Who do you know what they were doing and how it was operating? Could you easily pass that off to somebody who maybe isn't as passionate about it, but still wants to get the work done? This is where redundancy turns chaos into calm, and when we have calm, our business is actually going to flourish, if you think about this from an ecosystem perspective, which Megan, I have this background in the sciences and broader ecology, of the ecosystems that are stable, flourish and have the most diversity, because they have the ability to cycle through different processes, and you have the ability for things to come and go and to really hone in on these set processes, and that's what we look for in our business. We look to make sure that we turn this chaos into calm where we can really flourish and we're not having these constant upheavals that just destroy everything, and we feel like we're having to rebuild every six
Meghan 14:37
months when we talk about resiliency and redundancy in our business, we cannot forget that automation is a good thing. So try to automate anything that doesn't need a human. There is a tendency to put people into processes that don't necessarily require people. So consider how much you are automating in your business, and what you can automate even further if you use a software like. Time to pet this. A lot of this is going to be done for you, and it's beautiful. So think about if you automate scheduling confirmations or payment reminders, onboarding emails, or if you send out a client newsletter or an email on a monthly or quarterly basis. Is that able to be automated in some fashion? Or can you batch those to make it more efficient? Take a look at your client follow up sequences. What do those look like? Are there different pathways for clients that book or just ghost you and don't ever respond? Take a look at your holiday reminders and new sitter training modules. Automation really is here to help you, save time, save brain space, and to get things off of your plate. It's not all a bad thing. It can be used for good.
Collin 15:42
Yeah, the new center training modules was one of the first things that we realized needed to be automated in our business. We I found that I was saying the exact same thing to every new employee every time they came on board, almost verbatim. And when you're going through an intense hiring process, or you get a lot of turnover, all of a sudden this becomes really burdensome, and I was the bottleneck. I was the one who was sitting down with them or talking to them in the client driveway or over the phone or in Slack, giving all of these same messages over and over and over again. So what we finally decided to do was, well, let's capture all of those things. Let's bring all of those in house. Let's create some training modules, some videos that we can use. And now when a new hire comes on with one hit of a button, all of a sudden they're in the training system going through all of the hours and hours of training and videos and everything. It's me saying all of those things that I would have said to them in person, but now it's all there, and now my time is freed up to think about things, to move on to the next item in the business, to keep moving, or maybe I'm sleeping while they're being trained, maybe I'm sick, maybe we're out hiking with our family. All of these things can now go on in the background to what we actually want to be doing and living our life with
Meghan 17:02
there are so many tools that can help you with this, not just your software, if you have it, like pet biz, CRM and Zapier and find other ways to have your website work for you. What are the automations inside your website? Is there a banner at the top of your homepage that you can automatically change out every 60 days or 120 days, look into these things, ultimately, all of these points about trying to get you out of the business and free up more of your time or delegate to other people if you have to step away in an emergency, it really means to stop making yourself the hero of every story. And if you are a solo that is incredibly hard, because this is your business, your baby. It's very likely that your face is out there on flyers or social media posts or your website. It really is one of the hardest but most transformational shifts that you can make in your business. When clients think, Oh, I only trust Megan or Collin knows my dog better than anyone, or I only want the owner. I only want the best. I can't possibly trust anyone else but the owner. Your business really does become a fragile House of Cards. It relies on you, and if something happens, you are not set up for success or resiliency.
Collin 18:14
And oftentimes the clients don't even have these thoughts. It's us imposing those thoughts on the client, we struggle with that thought of, well, I couldn't possibly send anybody into Baxter, because Baxter and I, we've we've known each other for two years, and and we have such a great working relationship, and, and, and, and so when we look at this, it's really not communicating to the clients This transformation about what's going on. It's about our internal narrative. It's about our internal dialog and our perspective. This is something that we still fight in our own business of, oh man, maybe Collin needs to go do this because XYZ, or we should really step in right now, because they probably our team probably doesn't know. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, we have to stop ourselves and think our team is amazing, right? We know everybody follows clear standards. Everybody's gone through the same training, everybody's held accountable for this. Everybody has the same oversight. Everyone is trained to our level, and honestly, they're doing a whole lot better than we're doing, and they're really excelling at this and that our people, our team, is caring for people by our business, not just one person, meaning that ultimately everything's going to be cared for and even better than if it was just a single person. And you can take this to the admin side as well. It's the man. It's not just me writing the newsletter, it's other people contributing. It's better because of that. And this trickles down to everything that we do in our business.
Meghan 19:53
It is true that more sets of eyes on documents or processes or systems really do make it better because. You only have your version of your business and what you have grown, but somebody else coming in may say, Ooh, I actually know how we can make this better, and we need to not take that as an offensive affront. Of, well, I know, I know that I've been here longer than you have, so why are you trying to tell me what to do? No, we need to be open with that feedback. Of going, Yeah, we say this to our employees of we will burn it all down and rebuild it from the ground up, if we need to. We want to make sure that this thing is the most efficient that we can
Collin 20:30
Yeah, and the best for them and their working environment. And it really is taking a step back and eating a big heaping piece of humble pie and going, I don't know the best things here. I'm not the best at this, and I want people around me. Whether I'm solo and I'm looking for backups, or I'm looking for help with taxes, or I'm doing all this other stuff, or if I'm building a team and I'm looking for help in the field or admin, or everything in between, and marketing and all that stuff, I can't be the one who comes in and saves the day. I need to have a team around me that helps me with that. Need to have an ability to have other people involved in this.
Meghan 21:08
When you are the one that comes in and saves the day, because you know the right answers, because it's all in your head and all the institutional knowledge from day one, it really is exhausting, and that's what leads to the compassion fatigue and the burnout, and we just can't go on because we're just we dread our business and dread showing up every day because it relies only on us, and that's hopefully what we've been talking about, is ways to help you alleviate some of that stress, that pressure of everything, hundreds of clients, processes, systems, answering phone calls, doing the emails, onboarding, the clients, doing the meet and greet, doing everything does not have to rely on you. This is really how the business becomes the brand, not just the founder. When people start seeing faces other than yours pop up on their social media, but it's still under the company name they're going to recognize. This is a team they have their ducks in a row and know what they're doing. A business built around a team identity keeps the business running even when you can't, even when you have to step away for whatever reason, something you should never go without is 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 petsit llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. So over episode 648 and 650 we talked about the eight steps to building a business that doesn't rely on you. But we do have a bonus one. It is designing your business around your life, not the other way around. This is crucial. This is where the real transformation happens. We often think about, okay, I'll just take one more client. It's not a big deal. Or I'll work the holidays, or I'll just pencil in my vacation, and if nobody books, let's just cross our fingers and hope nobody books, then I'll be able to take that vacation, or I'll cover that visit myself. It's not a big deal. We often build our businesses reactively, instead of proactively, a business that runs for you requires this proactive architecture, this structure, the scaffolding that really is going to allow you to step back.
Collin 23:31
Building proactively means that you choose your ideal schedule. You don't let it be dictated for you. It means that you are choosing the kind of work that you want to be doing, and it's the kind of work here. It's not just, oh, I want to be in the field or doing admin. It's well, what kind of admin work, what kind of field work do you want to be doing? And then saying, if I want to be doing this, what does the business have to look like around me? What kind of team do I need to have? What kind of marketing goes along with it? What kind of services will go along with it? What's my service area look like? All of that feeds into your design structure. You also have to define your nope list, the things that you absolutely positively will never, ever do and are completely off the table. This allows you to know where that hard line is in your personal life and in your business, so that when opportunities come up, you can look at, oh, is this an opportunity, or does this fall on the note list, and go from there.
Meghan 24:28
Sometimes this means no longer doing field visits, if you are just not excited to hang out with puppies and kitties all day, and your strengths truly are in the admin side of things, that's totally fine, and vice versa, if you only want to hire for admin and somebody to run your stinking payroll, because that is just not your forte. Go right ahead and do that and go play with puppies and kitties all day.
Collin 24:49
Build your business around the life you want, not the life that you are stuck in. And that's where we find ourselves in our business. We go, Well, this is just where I am. This is just where I have to be. I. Guess I'll just do more of this.
Meghan 25:02
I am not excited about this 70% of work that I have to do today, which includes everything, all the admin, all the visits, everything, but I have to show up because it's my business. That's not a life that we want. You're right, that word stuck. We never want to feel that in some seasons. We do feel stuck, but we want to try to get ourselves out as quickly as we can.
Collin 25:23
And at that moment that business is taking from you, and that's where a lot of animosity we can feel, we can feel angry about this, when we feel like the business is just sucking the life out of us, is because it's just demanding so much of me. Oh, man, my business. I've just got to, I've just got to, I've just got to when we reverse the script here, and we go, what's the perfect life for me? And then what would my business look like if I if that holds true, I keep my vision for my life, and then my business molds around me. Instead of me giving my entire life to my business, the business is then giving me something, it's giving me the opportunity to live a certain way, do certain things and have a life, versus taking it all.
Meghan 26:08
I feel like that's an entire episode in and of itself, because that is truly the opposite of what a lot of us do, or a lot of us think of like, well, this just kind of, we started doing this as a side gig, and it just kind of blew up, and now we're kind of stuck here. 200 300 1000 clients later, looking at this beast going, well, I can't stop it, because clients are always traveling. So what do I do?
Collin 26:31
Yeah, well, that's just where you start to go. Does my if we really wanted to have a good night's sleep, what would we want our business to look like if we really wanted to have time to exercise, what would we want our business to look like, or to go to church or to have a religious life, or to go pray or like to be with family, to have a future? What would your business need to look like to give you that? And the wonderful thing is, is that, yeah, we can feel stuck, but ultimately we aren't. We're the ones who started this crazy train on the tracks. We can divert it. We can switch it up. We can do something different. It may take time. It may need to be planned, not just shut everything down immediately and go 90 degrees in another direction. But you can start putting in these small things, but it starts with the mindset of, I need to design this for me
Meghan 27:27
and how I want to be, yeah, something that supports your health, your family, your future. There are a lot of personal benefits of doing a business that runs for you. When you build that resiliency into your business, you personally gain more rest, more clarity, more time with family, less burnout, more creativity, better decision making, the ability to think long term, not just in the here and now of day to day, visit to visit. Kind of thinking the business becomes stronger. You become stronger. Your team becomes stronger. Your clients benefit, your family benefits. You benefit. This is the shift that changes everything. So here are some questions to think about. What's one thing in your business only you know how to do. How integral is that to the business? Can you delegate that? Do you even want to delegate that? What would break if you took three days off? What task can you document or hand off this month? Where are you the bottleneck in your business? And without even realizing it, think about that. What doesn't get done without you? What kind of life do you want your business to support? As I mentioned in Episode 648, you don't have to overhaul everything overnight. This can all feel very overwhelming, but this is a slow, intentional shift. You're not building a bigger business necessarily. You're building a healthier one. How can this sustain for the long term? So again, that question of what part of your business would fall apart if you didn't show up tomorrow? If you want to share with us your answer, you can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com, or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at pet sitter.
Speaker 1 29:04
Confessional, don't forget that if you're a psi or naps member looking for more. CEUs, listen to episode 648, and this one, and then go to the show notes to click the link to get those registered to your account. If you have questions about that, shoot us an email.
Meghan 29:18
Thank you so much for taking your time, your most valuable asset in listening to this today, we appreciate you. We'd also like to thank pet sitters, associates and our Patreon supporters, and we will talk with you next time bye.
