660: Starting 2026 on the Right Foot
Brought to you by: Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
What if 2026 isn’t about doing more—but about doing what actually lasts? In this episode, we talk about why the end-of-year holiday rush can push pet sitters and dog walkers straight into toxic productivity. We walk through how to name what didn’t work in 2025 (without shame), especially where policies, boundaries, and overcommitment quietly drifted. Then we shift to what did work—life-giving habits, decisions that reduced stress, and systems that keep you steady even when you’re tired. Our goal is simple: a grounded, repeatable, sustainable 2026 built on consistency, not intensity.
Main topics:
Toxic productivity after holidays
Policies, boundaries, and drift
Sustainability over hustle culture
Consistency beats intensity mindset
Systems that reduce fatigue
Main takeaway: “Consistency beats intensity every single time”
If 2025 ended with you tired, stretched thin, and running on fumes, you don’t need a bigger grind—you need a steadier plan. Sustainable growth usually doesn’t come from adding more; it comes from choosing better and trimming what quietly drains you. For 2026, pick one boundary, one system, one habit—and build the year on what you can actually repeat. You don’t need a breakthrough year. You need a repeatable one.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitting, New Year, business pivot, toxic productivity, holiday rush, sustainability, bad habits, policies and procedures, overbooking, consistency, burnout, client management, business growth, self-care, business foundation.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Hey, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are almost in the New Year 2026, and that is what this episode is about. Thank you for listening today. We are so appreciative that you are here. We would also like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters Associates, and our Patreon supporters, who have listened to many episodes and love the podcast. We love that, that you love it, and they support us each month with our hard earned dog walking and pet sitting money. If you have found any value in the podcast, and we hope you have and you would like to keep the show going, you can go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, to see every way you can help out, and we appreciate all of them. So 2026 it is upon us. We are going into this new season, this new year, and it can be a hinge point for a lot of us, not necessarily a reset button, though it can be. If you were super unhappy with how your business did and and what you did in 2025 you can have this as a reset button, but it's more of a, what are you going to do now? Maybe a pivot, maybe a hinge, of I'm going to shift this way in my business. And this time of year, it can feel very strange. It's the end of December. We've gone through this holiday rush, or, you know, January 3, when everything falls off a cliff. Hello, all the pet sitting goes away. It's kind of that time of year where we go, Okay, what's next? Or maybe you love to take your vacation in January and February.
Speaker 1 01:28
But you also have to acknowledge that you're ending this season. You're ending the year tired and exhausted because of the rush, because of the busyness that tends to come with the holiday pet sitting and dog walking during this time. And so I think it's important to note that as we go into a new year, often we get caught up in the now I got to buckle down and hustle. And now I've got to do this, and I've got to do more and more and more and more and more. And there's this, this toxic productivity aspect to it going into the new year. So I really believe that this doesn't need to be about resolution or hustles. It doesn't need to be about grinding more, because we just went through that season of grinding, right?
Meghan 02:09
Well, two very important things here. One, you have to know yourself. Are you a I need to keep going? I don't like rest? Or do you need to have that breather after the busyness when we know best how we operate, we are able to go into the next season more informed. The second thing we need to know is more about the busyness or the business that we were just in, the season that we were just in. Because not everybody had a crazy busy holiday time. Most of us did, but there are some people who completely took the holidays off. So this is going to be person and business dependent. So we may not be speaking to you exactly here, but there is a large population of the pet sitter and dog walker industry who is ready to slow things down a little bit
Collin 02:49
well, and for all of those reasons, January really does begin to feel like a new chapter, whether we want it to or not. It's a new year. Everybody else is celebrating it fresh we just got off that busy season, or maybe we're gearing up for something, but remember that that this what we want to talk about today is not really that it's not about doing more in the new year. It's not about adding more to your plate, figuring out how to grind out more hours or do more with your time. It's about starting the year on the right foot. It's about knowing that you are steady, that you have a good foundation for where you are going and really where you're starting from, is ultimately what we want to do. If you have big plans for next year, you have to know where you're starting. If you if you don't know where you're going, have a good foundation and have a good starting point for wherever you're headed.
Meghan 03:39
Your plan for the coming year may not be perfect. It may not be optimized just yet or ever, but it does have to be aligned, and that's what we're going to talk about. So first admit what did not work in 2025 think about all the big projects you did, or everything you accomplished, or everything you tried to do, what did not work out. Did you try this partnership and it kind of fizzled out. Did you try a series of events and you weren't able to really get those off the ground because you didn't push hard enough in marketing, or the reception just wasn't there from clients and potential clients? Or maybe there were some habits that you had that ultimately turned toxic. Say you had a goal for this year of responding to every social media comment, and that turned into you checking your phone and refreshing every hour of the day in order to make sure that you never missed a comment.
Speaker 1 04:27
Yeah, it's important as as you're going through this, this can there's a lot of emotions that are going to come up through this, especially the bad habits admitting, Hey, I've kind of gone wayward with this, or this has gotten out of control. You have to remind yourself that there is no shame, that there's no judgment, while you are doing this, this is you doing an inventory of the stuff that didn't work, and when, if we miss this step, if we skip this because it's uncomfortable, we're never going to know what to work on. You're never going to have the ability to. Look and say, Hey, I'm just doing this, even though I don't like it, but I just always have to do it. You find that self where you look years down the road, you're still doing these bad things, these still bad habits. You're still doing things that aren't working because we were too afraid to admit it in a moment. So this is really powerful to stop and just you have to acknowledge that, where did I drift this year? Where did I set some firm boundaries in the beginning that have now gone wayward? Maybe what felt heavy, what kind of emotional things were burdensome to me? Did I take things on that I should not have? Were there things I tried to do that were so out of my wheelhouse that I just couldn't get them off the ground, or maybe just what quietly broke down. What were those things that just start to slip through the cracks, that that you didn't hold to, or that clients started to do, or that your employees started to do, or things that just started to go away, that never no one acknowledged you didn't have time to in the moment, now's the time to go back and look at those to make sure that we capture those.
Meghan 05:59
The big one there is policies and procedures. Did you actually stick to those this year with your clients? Or did you stick with 97% of them? And there was this one that was and I went loose on that one with some clients. Yeah, there's also the overbooking. Did you over commit for the holidays because you couldn't say no to fluffy, she is just so cute. Or you couldn't, yeah, she is. You couldn't say no to this particular client because they've been with you for eight years, or you couldn't say no to the person who's outside of your service area, because you just you really enjoy their their visits. So you may have said yes too often where you should have said no. There are all these little areas where we start to make exceptions, but we need to look at those and say, Okay, we need to rein these back in. Or maybe we just need to change the policy entirely, because we're making all of these exceptions, and because we're making all these exceptions, we want to actually change the policy to go with the exceptions.
Speaker 1 06:49
Well, in a lot of times, I know Megan and I will find ourselves where we'll get through these seasons where we're opening up Google Docs to read to write a brand new policy and procedure, like every day, and this kind of living reactively, instead of intentionally, is a trap that you fall into where you just go, well, I'll just write something new. I'll just throw it into I'll let everybody know. I'll send out another email with this brand new thing that I've made, instead of those build up over time. And so right now is a wonderful time to look back and what have you added this year? What did you do reactively that has changed how you operate or your procedures, and what needs to be trimmed back. What is more foundational to here Is there things that we need to do more education on? A big one? We're all small business owners and entrepreneurs here you may start have been ignoring exhaustion just because you felt well, this is just what I have to do. I just need to do this for this time, and then, oh, I've got to continue to do this. I've got to continue to do this, because that's just how it is. And you've we, can you convince yourself, over the year that I just always have to be exhausted and tired and not get sleep, because that's the life that I need to lead.
Meghan 07:56
Yeah, there is that social media post where it's I quit my nine to five so I could work 24/7, sometimes. That's how it feels in this business, especially during the holidays and the summer and the busy times. But you can't change what you won't name. So give the bad habits, give the excuses, give the things that didn't work, a name. What can I call this so I know what lesson to learn and how I can learn from this and not have it happen again.
Collin 08:20
Well, and it's important to note here is, as you're doing this, that not everything that you stopped doing needed to do or drifted from was a failure, right? Maybe, maybe what you started 2025 with was unsustainable for how you operate and how your business operations were at the moment, and you set this big, ambitious goal that you weren't able to sustain because you'd have the support system around you, and so being able to acknowledge that say, Hey, I didn't get this why? Maybe I was too ambitious, or maybe I kind of had my stomach was bigger than my eyes, or my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Whatever that phrase is, I don't know. And and I reached too far and going, okay, that's fine, but look at all the progress I made. Now, how can I set myself up for success or to continue that moving forward?
Meghan 09:08
It's important to note the distinction here, though, of sustainability is not weakness, it's wisdom. It's knowing yourself. It's knowing how you work. It's knowing how your business functions. It's knowing how your clients Act and what their demands are going to be and what your market is like. Sometimes things and projects are slower than we anticipate them to be, or they need to be slower, because growing fast, going 100 miles an hour is going to burn us out faster.
Speaker 1 09:34
I love that you mentioned that sometimes things need to go slower too often we believe that the only way through is as fast and strong as possible, instead of setting a pace that we can sustain if it takes longer, if things come up, if our life changes, if something happens to a family member or to you with your health, when we don't build in that resiliency and that capacity. We end up looking back and saying I failed at this didn't work out, because instead of going, I had more capacity to do this, but I chose not to, so that when I had slow days, when I had bad days, when things didn't go right, and I didn't and I was unable to work on something for weeks at a time, I still have that expectation that I'm going to get there and then you can go faster. You can go slower as you need. But again, raining that that that kind of instinct, that that that desire to just go pedal to the metal all out all the time is really the best way to burn out and have an unsustainable business for you when you're sitting down
Meghan 10:41
with a pen and paper, thinking about all the things that didn't work, think about the things that did work. Identify what you would keep, what things are sustainable that you kept going throughout the year. Don't think about the bad habits. Now. Think about the good habits. Did you have IT stack certain things in your business, certain admin tasks or in your personal life? Maybe a workout with brushing your teeth or whatever it was, but think about what felt life giving this year, what routines really helped set you up for success, what decisions reduced stress? Did you finally cut out that service that you needed, or that time limit or that service area, or did you finally let that employee go that was creating a toxic work environment in your company. Were you able to create a consistent schedule instead of that flexible chaos that had you totally scatterbrained? Did you finally raise prices after hemming and hawing on it for so long and recognizing that, yeah, I am going to lose some clients, but I'm also going to get more clients that are in line with my business. Did you block off admin time and stick to it? Were you able to create a business that lined up better with your mission and vision and values
Speaker 1 11:50
all through this? I think what sustainability actually is, it's replacement, not addition to. Sustainability doesn't usually come from adding more, and matter of fact, it never comes from adding more. It comes from choosing better, from making
Collin 12:06
better choices for what you're spending your time on, and really understanding what worked and what didn't, and then doing more of the things that did work. And when we talk about did work here, it's not, oh well, what worked for my marketing, what worked for my you know, hiring and what worked for my client, acquisition and blah, blah, this is what worked for you personally. That first question that you asked Megan, what was life giving this year? Really sit with that for a very long time. What did What decisions did you do? What did you change this year that made your personal
Speaker 1 12:39
life better, that at the end of it, you felt more whole and complete afterwards. Too often, we make decisions based off of the business bottom line and the business dollar and what, what's the market capacity and how I'm going to optimize this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we have to be better in the habit of making decisions that make our life personally better, and sometimes that means, like you said, we're going to lose some clients, but it may mean that we're working with fewer but better fitting clients that can be extremely life giving, that people who want to cheer you on and see you succeed, don't throw away everything. Don't throw everything out just because you're tired. And I cannot tell you how many times I have personally felt that this year of it's exhausting, you approach burnout and you just want to burn it all down. That's not what you want to do. You want to keep what supported you keep, what fed you keep what encouraged you and gave you life, whether it was also what not just you, but what was important to your family, what did you do that encouraged and supported your health, that made you a better person, and do more of that and adapt and change your business around you, and that, I think Oftentimes, can come across as being selfish and going well, I don't want to do that, because I just need to run my business. Well, it's your business. You can be and should be selfish with your business to make sure that it is supporting you and lifting you up instead of tearing you down.
Meghan 14:16
Through all of this, we have to keep in mind that consistency beats intensity every single time we've talked about this so much on the podcast, consistency excellent at not only every visit, but at every execution within your business. It's difficult. It's not an easy thing. Because it doesn't really matter how hard you work out and how much iron you pump in January and February, if you're going to quit in March and then not do anything the rest of the year. Well, that fitness, that consistency, is really only going to build your muscles. You're only going to get stronger when you do it for a long time. Same thing here in your business, whatever it is the business that lasts, aren't the ones that that sprint or have a lot of spirit, rah, rah. They're the ones that show up steadily time after time. Them not taking on too much, not over committing or over promising. But again, that sustainability aspect of knowing exactly what they can take on in the amount that they can take it on and set reasonable goals for getting it done well.
Speaker 1 15:13
And oftentimes, if you do take that rah rah spirit, you finish December with lots of energy and optimism because you were busy, even if you weren't as busy as you expected, you may have finished busier than you were, you know, in your slow months. And now we go, we flying into January. We've got these high hopes, these big dreams, and then by February, things start to fade, things start to slip, already, right? How? How soon do they fall off the cliff? Then it's because that's the slow time and and we set, sometimes we set too fast of a pace. Sometimes we do just try and bolt off sprinting, even though we didn't give ourselves the restorative rest that we actually needed. And so we're running on fumes, and we're blasting off into the new year, and by February we're on our face, and then we can't get recovered, because all of a sudden it's it's summertime, and things are back to being busy and insane, and then it's the end of the year, and we finally wake up in January trying to do it all again.
Meghan 16:11
Well, that intensity really is attractive, but it can be dangerous. We want to go, go, go. We want to just light the fire over and over again under us. But that's what leads to burnout. That's what leads to that compassion fatigue, that that we can't get out from because we are just going at 110%
Speaker 1 16:26
Well, it's seductive because it's what you think everybody else is doing, and it's what you see all the influencers and everybody on the business tick tock telling you to go and be insane and crush it and all of that stuff. Additionally, it is sexy, because you're doing a lot of stuff, you feel like you're being productive. You feel like you're making progress. When you realize it's not seductive and it's not attractive, to go, Well, I'm just going to do 5% more tomorrow and then 5% more the next day, and then 5% more the next and try and move just a little bit forward, and it be because, well, that's boring. It's literally taking too long and and my attention span needs to go off and do something else, and then we get waylaid. So that is that trap that you fall into, because we keep trying to give ourselves these bursts, these boosts, these boosts, these boosts, and we don't actually make any progress because we have to start from so far behind each time before we can make it up.
Meghan 17:25
But when we do talk about batching here, whether it's batching content, blogs, email newsletters, any kind of marketing messaging or business planning or admin tasks, the batching is good. So we're not necessarily talking about that here, because that can be done in spurts and not have you burn out, but it's this, these big projects that you take on, or these big initiatives, and you're like, Okay, I need to just keep going. I'm going to do 47 events in this month of January, and I'm just going to hit the ground running, and we're going to go, go, go. Well, the gym membership world has continually proven year after year that slow and steady really is the key to continuing that fitness routine, rather than going for an hour every single day or multiple hours every single day in January and February and then realizing, Oh, well, I actually didn't get anything done those months because I was so focused on
Collin 18:16
the gym well, and that intensity versus consistency, the consistency over time, will protect your body, because you're able to get sleep, you're going to have time to eat, you're going to have time to rest, you're going to have time to recover. It's also going to help protect your relationships, because you suddenly have predictability to whatever extent that you can in your schedule. You're not going to be going from high to low mood swings. You're going to have time for other people, they're going to know what's going on, and then your business reputation, because when you as a person are inconsistent with how you operate, Megan and I were just talking about this in managing employees and in managing and overseeing clients when we have bad days, that translates into how we interact with other people, when we are rushed And when we are busy and when we are slammed with things to do. That translates in how I take phone calls from potential clients, when your business reputation, when you believe, when you think, my business reputation, is out there, and it must be consistent every time somebody interacts with it, thinks about touches, talks to or interacts in whatever way capacity it has to be the same interaction that changes how you regulate yourself and regulates
Meghan 19:24
your time. So when we think about this consistency, we want to think about pricing, consistent pricing versus the constant discounts, or the potentially the constant promotions, you know, regular communication versus crisis updates of, oh my gosh, I'm totally full for this weekend. Sorry, guys. I can't take on any more bookings versus okay, I've got seven more spots left. I've got five more spots left,
Speaker 1 19:46
looking three months down the line to help plan and keep people in the loop about those things.
Meghan 19:50
Yeah, I'm going to be taking off between March 4 and eighth. So please plan your care accordingly for 2026 you don't necessarily need a breakthrough year. Of course, you. Can set big goals and have big dreams and aspirations for what this coming year is going to be, but you don't necessarily need to break all the revenues and have a Guinness Book of World Records for number of walks in a day. Kind of year. You just need a repeatable year, a sustainable year, one that's going to keep you going again when we talk about this long termevity of pet sitting and dog walking businesses. We're going to be here for 10, 2050, years, maybe, and we the only way we can do that is to keep having repeatable years where we are able to set goals that we can actually keep. So think about the promises that you make. Maybe this year is going to be fewer promises that you make, but you're going to keep all of them. Well, we're not necessarily going to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Here. We want to make fewer promises and be able to actually keep those.
Collin 20:49
Yep, this is letting your yes be yes and your no be No. Fundamentally, is what that is. Yes, I will be there. Yes, I will be at the event. Yes, I will be there and be able to actually execute and follow through on that maybe this year is you setting in systems that can run even when you're tired, some automations using AI to generate more things for you, having more systems set up through Zapier and email send outs and automated onboarding stuff that you're exhausted, you don't have to retype you. They're just done for you, as opposed to you trying to keep your eyelids open one more second. Maybe it's saying no before resentment builds. That's a big one. That's a big one where often we can make decisions based because we're so resentful for how things are going, we're so angry about how things are going and taking place, that we just start saying no out of spite at that point, and that never leads to good things. Instead starting to pump the brakes way earlier, while you're still at 80% capacity, mentally, physically, emotionally and business wise, pumping at 80 so that you can slow the train down before you go crashing through the brakes,
Meghan 22:00
something that should never crash is your 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 at Pet sitllc.com as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's pet sitllc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care when you think about how you want this coming year to go, it's also important to revisit your original vision for your business, and not only that, but be honest about where you are. If you're in year two and you thought you would have 1000 clients by now, maybe that wasn't necessarily realistic. So you need to re envision that. You need to revisit it and try to make it into something that is more realistic. Think all the way back to the beginning. Why did you start this business? What did you want your days to look like? Do they look like that right now, or are they completely off the mark? What did you not want in your business? We don't often think about what we did not want. We think about what we do want. I wanted more freedom. I wanted to be able to work when I wanted. I wanted to be able to say yes and no as to when it fit into my life. But we don't think about what did I not want? I didn't want to be doing taxes? Okay? Well, maybe that's something that we delegate, we offload to somebody else. I didn't want to be doing bookkeeping or running numbers or doing data spreadsheets and tracking all of this stuff, or could be the flip side. I didn't want to actually be doing the pet care side of this. There are some of us out there like that who enjoy the admin, the route planning, the admin, the taxes, the meetings with employees and hiring. So think about what that is for you. What do you not want to be doing?
Speaker 1 23:48
That's such a good one, because it could be, I did not want to be up till 11 o'clock at night, answering messages and emails and route planning and things like that. I actually didn't want to be managing people, but I thought that was my next step. So I did that because people told me to do and I'm realizing that I'm not happy in this. And what would it look like if I went back to be solo in my business, and realizing that as we go into a new year, think of it as a what do I need to do to end 2026 in a better place than I did 2025 that's all we're asking. That's all this process actually is.
Meghan 24:24
And we're not even assuming that you ended this year bad. No, you could have been amazing. You could have hit all of your goals, blasted, the revenue hired. A bunch of people are doing phenomenal at the end of this year, and awesome for you. That is amazing. But we always want to be improving. We always want to be taking the lessons that we've learned, because lessons can come from good things too. We want to be taking the lessons into the new year and how we can improve, both personally and as a business.
Speaker 1 24:47
So when you go through this process of going, Why did I start? What did I want? What did I not want? I love that also the question of what, why did what did I want? What are my days to look like? That's a question that we think about a lot. Because many times, Megan, you mentioned the question. Statement of freedom. Oh, I want to be free. Well, are you actually free in your days? Do you have that freedom that you originally wanted? And so as you're asking yourselves these questions, you have to ask then, have I drifted from this vision? Have things changed? And then the really important second follow up question to that is, was this intentional or accidental? Over the years, did your personal life change where that original vision couldn't be fulfilled because you had to have a business that supported other things, so you had to change, or you needed the money, or your market wasn't fitting what you wanted to do, so you had to intentionally change. Or was this accidental, and it kind of just happened to you, and we're looking up and realizing that things have changed many years on. Drifting, though, isn't always bad. Sometimes it means that you're following market forces, you're following client demands, client needs, and you are just pursuing this as a good entrepreneur and business owner will do. You're listening and you're reacting and you're following but drifting without noticing. That's where the danger comes in, and that's
Meghan 26:07
why it's so important to do a year end review of, okay, where, what did we do this year? Where did we go? Where are we at? What do we want to do differently next year? And one of the only ways to do that is to pull out old notes and journals and Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets and whatever you have, however you work, wherever your goals are outlined, pull those out and review them, and if you don't have any, or if it's all up in your head and you can't remember what goals you set for last year, well now's the perfect time to start writing stuff down and asking yourself, Is this business serving my Life, or is it consuming my life? Because alignment matters more than growth. You can scale. You can become a trillion dollar business, but if you aren't aligned with what your mission is and what you actually tell your clients and your messaging and your promises to clients, it doesn't matter how big you grow, the clients are going to be confused and they're going to be misled
Speaker 1 27:00
well, and you start to resent your business more and more every day of well, this isn't the business that I want to be running, but I feel like I have to run it in order to earn money. At that point, that's no different than a nine to five job that you hate, except this one's 24/7
Collin 27:17
Yeah, you and then you go, well, then what do I do? Well, this is what this is, again, starting off on the right foot. Do you have a direction that you're leading a strong foundation to start from, and that means also understanding what to avoid moving forward. We know what we don't want to do. We know what we want to continue. But where are some pitfalls that we need to be on the lookout for as we move forward so they're just on our radar. I think the first one is just understanding that that you need to avoid building your year on burnout. And this means avoid going into the year, avoid working the year at a capacity that you cannot sustain over promising and trying to under deliver, that you are setting a pace, that you are scheduling things for yourself, that you are setting ambitious, things that you know in your heart that you can't do, but you're just saying, well, I'll just get four hours less sleep each night. I'll just get, you know, I'll just sleep for three hours, and I'll get to it build on sustainability. I think another thing is to just avoid saying yes out of guilt, just absolve yourself of that as a business owner, because that will lead you to so many traps and so much drifting in your business.
Meghan 28:27
We also want to avoid clients who drain more than they pay. We have thought a lot about this this year, these clients that are continually coming to us and having more asks, and I only have so much time because I have other clients to go to, but they're continuing to pile on more asks or more complicated visits and visits that, frankly, are a little out of our wheelhouse, that we probably shouldn't have said yes to, but here we are because we didn't want to turn the client away, or
Speaker 1 28:50
it's the clients that only use us once a year and every time it's this big process and procedures to get everything up to date and understand all the changes and work through everything, and even go through the meet and greet, even though they only need us for a weekend every year, and it's just draining to work with them. We also want to make sure that we're avoiding ignoring our body warning signs. Don't try and push through. Don't say, I'll get to it later. I'll sleep later. I'll see the doctor about this. I'll I'll eat healthier when I have time, I'll get that rest, I'll take those medications that I need. I'll do these things later. Your body is is telling you things that is experiencing and it has got, there's warning lights on the dashboard, and when we ignore those for too long, the engine is going to explode.
Meghan 29:36
Or when we say, Oh, that's not that big of a deal. It's just a little pain, but it's actually something more systemic in our body, and we're going at 120% so we're not actually fully listening and able to take that rest. So the symptoms actually get worse, but we're not in tune enough, or we're not resting enough to know we're not taking that breath enough to know when we actually need to pump the brakes and be done.
Collin 29:57
Too many business owners, especially. In dog walking and pet sitting, push off and stop listening and don't take care of their body, their mind and their spirit, because they'll save it for another day. And I just need to be very forthright in that that is setting yourself and your business up for failure if you couldn't. And it's not just about, oh, if I break a foot I can't walk dogs, it's well, if you couldn't answer the phones for two weeks, what would happen if you couldn't run payroll for a month because you were in the hospital? What would happen if you needed to go do XYZ for whatever reason for an extended period of time? How would your business operate? What would your clients do? And if you have a team, how would they know what to do? These are very real, practical questions that if we don't plan for they will leave us scrambling when
Meghan 30:48
we look at other businesses and what they're doing online. On Instagram, it looks very flashy. It looks very impressive. We get a little jealous, so we want to avoid comparing our behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel. Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, whatever. They're all made so that people put out their best selves. Nobody puts out their their crying baby out there for the world to see. They all take the beautiful picture of the the sunset and their baby, or in the water or it's all it's all kind of for show. Nobody wants to put their life out there when it's completely falling apart and completely chaotic and total trash. So when we put our best selves out there, it is going to lead to this jealousy, this comparison game that, oh, I'm not doing enough of my business. Or I saw that they did 150 visits in a day, and I'm only at 99 well, I need to get to them because I want to be just like them, or I'm trying to copy them or emulate them. But you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. You don't know the tough days that they had, the the employee that they just had to fire because they got accused of stealing something, or really any of the bad crap that goes on behind the scenes. You know, new level, new devil. Just because somebody's more successful doesn't mean they have any less problems than you
Speaker 1 31:59
have, and just because something is common in our industry doesn't mean it's healthy. I think we really need to sit with that, that just because we see other people doing things doesn't mean it's healthy for you. And to stop playing that comparison game, to stop thinking the well, I just have to game
Meghan 32:19
well, because also you don't know what they did. They had to sacrifice to get to that point. Did they have to not see any of their family for a year and a half and they had to close themselves off in a closet in order to get to seven figures? Well, that's not healthy. I don't think we I don't want that for myself, and you probably don't either.
Speaker 1 32:36
Did they blow out their knees doing too many walks and adventure hikes? Did they go through multiple panic attacks that ended up in the ER, did they have a heart attack trying to put this together through the stress and anxiety, what you commit to needs to be based on a, what you want and B, realistically, what you're capable of, because sustainability actually looks like predictable schedules. And I don't mean this in you know exactly who and what you're walking next Friday at three, but you know what you where you'll be spending your time. You know what you have time for and what you don't. That's what a predictable schedule actually is, that you know what you can add and what you subtract without worrying about anything else that
Meghan 33:20
starts with having some clear boundaries. No, I'm not going to answer the phone at nine o'clock for a potential client that calls. No, I'm not going to commit to this eighth event in February because I'm already traveling during that time and I've got a lot of other stuff going on.
Collin 33:39
It means time off that actually happens, where you can block off a date and you can actually disappear for a while, not frantically sit on your phone, triaging and taking care of things and not being present. It also means that you have clients who respect your policies. How often do those creep in? How often do you have people who question Who begrudgingly move through and stay on and complain year after year
Meghan 34:04
because they they're desperate and they don't have anybody else to help them. Sustainability also looks like systems that reduce that decision fatigue that we all have of policies and procedures. Okay, I've written this down now I know how to implement it, or now I know how to train somebody else to do it, or I have this script written out for any time a client asks me this question, and I can just take it off my plate, copy and paste, and we're done.
Speaker 1 34:26
That is so overlooked when we talk about systems, because the decision fatigue that comes from, what do I do in XYZ situation? How do I say XYZ in the situation? What does it mean to look like to do this? And what if something comes up? How do I handle it when it's all written down, you just go by the playbook, or you have team members that go by the playbook, and all of a sudden now you're just following the script, and you can change it and adapt to it as necessary and all those things. But when you have those moments, when you go through those busy seasons, and whenever you need to have just a little bit less on your plate, having it written down and scripted out is one of the best. Life saving things that you can have
Meghan 35:01
for you that consistency with integrity looks like setting one small boundary at a time, these small, grounded steps of one habit, one adjustment, one tweak, here or there. You know, sustainable businesses are built quietly, not dramatically. It's not flashy, it's not showy. It's that consistency. When we talk about being on social media. It's that consistency over time that are going to get you in front of new clients.
Collin 35:25
And they are built. They don't happen accidentally. There is intentionality and purpose and focus behind every single business who builds sustainably. It's dramatic to take off like a wildfire and expand and burn everything down, including yourself over six months. That is definitely dramatic, and can happen accidentally. But to be able to sustainably grow or just sustain and maintain your business, takes that planning and takes focused effort.
Meghan 35:56
So as we are on the precipice of a new year 2026, we want to go into it try not necessarily to fix everything that was wrong in January that is not going to be probably a sustainable way. You need to figure out what you need to do over the entire year, or at least the first few months, to redirect or pivot, or to make sure that you are now on the right track. You don't necessarily need a total overhaul, though, if you are ending services in 2025 and you are making a major shift, then that is going to happen. But you don't need to put so much pressure on yourself to get everything done, to sprint out of the gate and to just go for it, because you only have 12 months to do it.
Collin 36:37
Well, that's a good point. Is when you when you identify these things that didn't work there is that, there is that desire to now go get everything fixed immediately, so that you have a better year that focusing on one at a time, putting out a plan to take it, which may take months to implement, especially if you're, you're changing hiring practices. If you're, if you're moving from independent contractors to employees, and you need to change that. That's not going to all happen in 30 days. You're going to need to set up and plan and account and do all of that stuff. Remember, you don't need to do these things. You don't need that overhaul. You don't need to get everything done. You just need to start the year by paying attention. Ultimately, that's what it means to start off on the right foot by having your eyes open, your head on a swivel your ears, alert to you and your business, and start paying attention to how things are going.
Meghan 37:29
So there is a little bit of navel gazing here that you need to do. Write down again for this year, what worked, what didn't, what you want to change, what you want to fix, what you want to do in the future. And then after you're done navel gazing, look up, check your direction, take the next right step, whatever that is. And it doesn't have to be an elephant size step. It could mean a bird step, just a little one, but always reminding yourself that you do hard things. You are doing the hard, meaningful work that it takes to run this business. We are caring for people. We are caring for pets. Most of all, we are caring for ourselves, and you are working to stay in this industry. So here's to a grounded, sustainable, steady, 2026 we are excited. We can't wait. Let's start it on the right foot. Thank you for listening today, taking your most valuable asset, your time. We appreciate you. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters, associates and we will talk with you next year. Bye. You.
