670: Be Relentless, Not Reckless
Brought to you by:
Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
What would change if we stopped calling avoidance “kindness” and started treating boundaries as care? In this episode, we unpack what being relentless actually means in pet care—and why it’s different from being reckless. We talk about how indecision creates inconsistency, and how inconsistency can put pets, clients, and our teams at risk. We walk through what relentless businesses do: decide deliberately, hold standards even when it costs short-term comfort, and protect time with real boundaries. We end with concrete action steps to stop tolerating what’s eroding our business and to choose one decision we’ll make on purpose this quarter.
Main topics:
Relentless vs. reckless leadership
Boundaries as safety systems
Honest evaluation of clients
Focus and service simplicity
Profitability that funds rest
Main takeaway: “Kindness, without structure, becomes chaos”
Most of us didn’t start our businesses to be “hard”—we started because we care. But when we avoid hard conversations, blur boundaries, and let inconsistency creep in, the result isn’t compassion—it’s stress, resentment, and risk for pets and our team. Being relentless isn’t being cold; it’s being clear enough to protect what matters. If you’ve been tolerating something you shouldn’t, this is your nudge: boundaries aren’t a convenience—they’re a safety system.
Links:
ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram and Facebook
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Relentless pet care, disciplined decision making, clear boundaries, hard conversations, business insurance, profitability, employee standards, client relationships, time management, business growth, flexibility, honesty, business structure, professionalism, safety concerns.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin,
Meghan 00:01
Being relentless in your pet care business does not mean being unethical, cold or uncaring. It means disciplined decision making, clear boundaries, unwavering, follow through, even when those decisions are uncomfortable. Today, we want to talk about what relentless actually looks like, a dog walking, a pet sitting and what it absolutely does not. 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. Thank you for listening today. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and dog co launch. Whether you've listened to one episode or 600 episodes, we are so glad you are on this journey with us. And if you find value in the podcast and want to give back, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see the ways that you can help, and we appreciate every one of them. So why does being relentless still make pet sitters uncomfortable? It's often because we fall into this industry. We care so deeply about it, and we enter this industry because we care so deeply. Sometimes we can confuse kindness with avoidance. Sometimes we think that if we avoid that hard conversation, or we don't make that hard decision, then it's okay we, you know, because we don't want to disappoint someone with our policy or our procedure, and so because we're not talking to them about it, that's kind of kind to them, but that's not right. We avoid those hard decisions so that we are nice. We don't want to be doing that. We want to have those hard conversations even when we don't want to.
Collin Funkhouser 01:33
And in here, relentless, we're talking about, I mean to me, relentless is about this insistent and continual pursuit of something, right? You can think of the the being relentless in the chasing after something, and you kind of push everything else to the side, and you're so, so narrow, focused on what's ahead of you, whether these are goals, whether these are whatever that is, where you kind of zero in and everything else disappears. And this is uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable because it means that I have to enforce boundaries. I have to enforce a narrow focus in not just my own life, but also in my business and in the interactions around me. It's important to note that when we have a lack of boundaries, it doesn't make us compassionate. We fall into this trap of thinking, well, I'll just let everybody kind of have what they want and do what they want, and I'm not going to have an opinion about how my business operates, because that makes me compassionate, and that's made me nice, and people are going to like me. Unfortunately, what it actually does is it makes us inconsistent and it makes us unsafe in the work that we're doing.
Meghan 02:53
But the truth is, letting everybody do what they want, whether it's your employees or your clients, and kind of run over you as the business owner. That's not okay. Again, that lack of boundaries, there has to be some sort of box for in order for people to operate in, so that you can have some sanity in pet care. The indecision really hurts pets when we don't want to make that hard decision of saying, No, I will not visit your cat every other day, or I will not do once a day or twice a day dog visits because you're on vacation for two weeks and your dog really needs three plus visits a day. That can hurt the pets. When we are indecisive about other policies or our prices. It really burns us out as business owners, and it creates that resentment of waking up and going, well, I don't like my business anymore. I don't recognize it. It's not where I thought it was going to be, and I'm not happy with it anymore, and ultimately, that really undermines the trust that we have of Well, I don't trust myself to make the wise choices anymore. I've made too many wrong choices, too many bad decisions, or I've not stuck up for myself as much as I should have, and so I don't trust myself anymore. Or it could be I don't trust my employees anymore because I wasn't able to be a firm foundation for them, and so I kind of just let some policies slide, and now I'm having to backtrack on things. Being relentless isn't necessarily about force. It's not about coming down from on high and banging the gavel and and being a mean person. It's about doing what's right for your business and sticking up for what you believe in and where you want it to go. It's about not backing down from what you already know is right, the policies, the way you operate, the contract you have, the process, the onboarding process, and how you treat your clients, it is all part of this,
Collin 04:40
you mentioned the how you treat your clients. There is also this moral aspect of being relentless, staying in alignment with who you are, what you believe, and then living that out through your business. How do you structure your services? What do your policies actually say? What kind of contracts are being signed? What's the onboard. Process like for your employees, and sticking to that no matter what, you know that not backing down of I have this. It's here for a reason, and I'm going to pursue this. I'm going to keep at this because I believe in it so much
Meghan 05:17
so I said that relentlessness is not about force. It's also not about ignoring safety concerns to keep a client. We notice that a dog is not doing as well as they used to, and the client isn't either noticing or wanting to do anything about it. Well, we need to be relentless for that pet, for the welfare of that animal. Being relentless is also not keeping a problematic client because they're nice. We all have those awesome clients who rave about us or tip really well, but when it comes down to the visit, they may be asking too much that we can't do all of that in a 30 minute visit, or doing things that we're not comfortable with.
Collin 05:56
It's also not about underpaying staff to protect margins and and these may all sound rather disparate here, but the fact is, is that we have to understand, what am I being relentless in the pursuit of what is your goal? What is that thing that you are reaching for? What is that standard that you are trying to uphold? When we undercut our staff, when we underpay them, a lot of things come from them. We typically see increased turnover. We see increased discontent with the job we get. It's harder to find the amazing applicants that we're looking for. And what does this do? This impacts the quality of service, the trust that the clients have with us, and it's just all spirals from there, and it's and this is in the vein of cutting corners. When we cut corners on onboarding procedures, when we cut corners on our professionalism or training or insurance or protocols, when we cut corners we put our business, our clients, our team, at risk, and if relentlessness, if our relentlessness puts people at risk, it's the wrong thing. We're at the pursuit of the wrong thing. Any time that we are chasing a service or a client or a trend or something, just because and we have no grounding, no foundation for it, we are compromising something. We are not living that out any time our version of relentless compromises somebody's safety, or pet safety, or the legality of operating. This is a big one. Do we fully understand the legalities that it takes to run a business, and do we push those aside because we just need to get started. We just need to get going and and we'll just pay the fee on the back end, and we'll just do this even though we know better or for compromising trust, if we are making decisions that compromises trust and Megan, you mentioned this earlier, of compromising trust in myself, compromising trust in my team, or more damaging, is compromising the trust that others have placed in us to show up. It's the one thing we should never take for granted, is the trust it takes to run this business. As soon as we take that and just say, Okay, well, I assume that there's trust there. I can go forward and I can operate. We have compromised that trust, and we have damaged that relationship. When we are being when we're doing this, it can often feel like we're doing the right thing, because we're pushing forward. We're pushing hard. We're trying to get to that goal. We're digging, digging, digging, digging, digging forward in some capacity, but what we're actually doing we're not being relentless. We're being reckless in our business. We're pushing things off to the side that shouldn't be secondary issues, we're pushing primary issues off, and we're saying, Okay, well, I'm going to focus on these things that really we shouldn't be again, this safety aspect, these problematic clients underpaying and cutting corners and and chasing things just for the sake of that. That's the wrong pursuit, and it ends up damaging our business and the trust that people place in us.
Meghan 09:06
Every relentless business owner needs the proper business insurance, and that's where our friends at pet sitters associates come in. As a pet sitter. You know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at petsit llc.com as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. So we want to talk about relentlessness versus reckless, but let's define relentlessness. So what does this mean? Being incessant, pushing through oppressively. Constant, consistent, persistent, continuing. All of these are synonyms, but unused. Building an unstoppable force or a person that refuses to give up. Does that sound like you? Does that sound like what you do in your business? Do you fight for your business? I'm not saying go out and and steal other people's yard signs or go tag their their vans that are wrapped with their pets and dog walking business, but we are saying that when you need to make the hard decision, you actually make the hard decision. You don't wait on it, you don't sit on it. Yeah, you do need time to think that's true. You don't want to make rash decisions, but you are able to confidently pursue it and say, Okay, this is the direction I need to go in, whether it's positive or negative. This is where we're going.
Collin 10:41
Yeah, this distinction matters because we're talking about the behavior of the business, and we drive that, we form that, we guide that. So we have this reckless business model and this relentless business model, and they can actually get confusing, really. I mean, Megan just went through a lot of stuff about relentlessness, but a relentless business will do things like decide deliberately. Of this is going to take time. I'm going to put effort and forethought and energy behind my decision. I'm not just going to willy nilly wave my hands and come up with something, because you have to be able to repeat your decisions consistently. A relentless business will have policies and procedures. Will have guiding principles and documents around how you function, how you make decisions, and what's a good decision versus a bad decision
Meghan 11:33
well, and a lot of times we talk about the mission here. What is your mission? And when you have something that you're deciding upon, an advertising opportunity or a new service area, or whatever it is, does that line up with your mission? And does it get you closer or further away? That's pretty that's the easiest test that you can do. What is your mission? And then, does this get you closer or not?
Collin Funkhouser 11:55
Yeah, I know one for us is just when it comes to hiring somebody being consistent about deciding whether to hire somebody or not based off of their merits and qualifications and what we're looking for that's incredibly difficult, because when you're tired, when you're exhausted, when you're hurried, when you're frustrated, when everything is going on, those decisions tend to be different than the decisions you make for hiring during the good seasons, when you're got plenty of staff and everything's going well and but that's a reckless business. Being relentless means that we have to hold the line even when it costs us for short term comfort. And again, I'll point out to hiring for this, we hold the line of our standards, even when it costs us the short term comfort of having full, full full coverage for our routes or for our schedule.
Meghan 12:49
This means waiting for the right hire, even if you're desperate, not just hiring somebody because they're breathing, but holding out for the right hire. Let's talk about some characteristics of a reckless business so they react emotionally, impulsively. They are not proactive, thinking about things that get them closer to their mission, but reactively. Of, oh, no, an employee just quit, and they had 97% of my business, and now I need to go figure out what I'm going to do. It's kind of like that bright, shiny object syndrome of, oh, this new marketing idea, yes, I will say yes to radio ads, or I will say yes to this new magazine that's in an area that I want to grow in. And those may not be necessarily bad things, but they're just impulsive. Of not checking your numbers, not checking the data behind it, of going, Is this actually a good decision, not sitting down and talking with that person? Of, okay, how much does this cost, and, and talking about the actual agreement that you're about
Collin 13:43
to get into, well, and we often will justify this with saying, Well, I'm trusting my gut. I've got to go with my gut on this. I'm trusting my gut instinct on this. And, and we really have to take a step back and go, well, but does my gut have the information that it needs in order to make a good decision? Like, yeah, there's a lot of times where we as business owners, I mean, Megan, I we do it all the time. Well, I just have to go with my gut on this one or this hire or this decision to sponsor this or to take this client on. It would just, I'm not sure what it is, but that's developed through experience and through understanding and through reflection and careful consideration in times past, so that when we get to that point, we can do that, and so when we just kind of hand wave it and say, Well, it's, I'm just trusting my gut, or actually a lot more likely is I'm I'm justifying this because it was urgent. I had to make a quick decision. I had to make a decision really fast, and I did my best, and I was, it was it was time crunched? Well, that means that we weren't giving ourselves the time and space, we weren't asking the good questions. We were putting ourselves in a bad situation, and we were reckless in that moment, instead of pushing out the time, digging in for more information. And relentlessness here is all about rigorous discipline applied over time. It's a long term view of our business and the decisions we want to make and how we want to be structured and the outcomes that we want. And that word rigorous, this is hard work. This is intense work. This is prolonged work in holding to our standards and holding to what we actually want in our business.
Meghan 15:31
Being reckless in your business means making decisions without care, without thought, without a lot of action behind them, and a continuation of that is not thinking about the actions further down the road, the implications of what you're doing. Okay, I say yes to the radio ad. Well, the implication then is I'm going to have people call me that are 100 miles away outside of my service area, because that's how far the radio ad reaches. Well, that was probably not good ad spent. Then I could have made a more informed decision and asked more questions on the front end, so I wouldn't have to pay on the back end, not only monetarily, but with my time and spend as well. When we think about what relentlessness actually looks like in pet care, the first thing is that we need to be honest with ourselves, first, and then our business and everything that flows out from that. But we need to have relentless honesty. So that's admitting when a service is unprofitable, you are really excited to get pet taxi off the ground, but even though you tried a lot of marketing, a lot of advertising, getting the word out, going to networking events, talking about the service, there isn't really a market for that. And so it's hard to admit it when you're wrong or when something doesn't work out that you try, but that honesty is that first step, that honesty also looks like acknowledging a client that causes more stress than their revenue. Hello. We all have these clients that they may begin. They may be the nicest people in the world. They may tip really well, but the revenue is not good enough, not high enough because of the stress that they put you under. They're two helicopter parents. They ask too much, whatever it is, and it wears you out more than the money that comes in. Admitting that to ourselves is really hard. Some of these clients have been with us for coming up on a decade or more, and it's not fun to say I under I understand that you're asking this, and I've been here for you, but now it is time to for me to move on.
Collin 17:33
This relentless honesty is also about accepting that being busy is not the same thing as running a healthy business. We work so hard in the beginning to actually get clients in the door and fill our schedule, that this little toxic mindset suddenly develops. And actually it's not suddenly, just over the years, it develops in that when I'm busy, I'm running a good business, and the busier I am, the better things are. And instead, what actually tends to happen is we become busy, and we're just filled with a bunch of cruft and stuff in our business that isn't actually making us the money that we need to be, or fulfilling us or actually serving clients well, and we're just having these full, jam packed days that that is actually not beneficial to anybody.
Meghan 18:22
A lot of times we tie our success to how busy we are. Oh, I did 20 visits today, or I did 30 visits today. That was my busiest day ever. Look at me. I'm a successful pet sitter and dog walker. Well, no, you're probably a burned out pet sitter and dog walker. You have to know your limits. You have to be honest with yourself. Ask yourself the hard questions, the deep questions, the ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones that you would rather have music in the background or TV in the background, because you don't actually want to sit in silence with that question, because it hurts too much. Do I like my business? Is this the business I want to be running? Is it getting closer to my mission that I started eight years ago or six months ago? Am I truly still finding joy in the areas of my business that I used to or has that changed? We do change as people over time. We enjoy some things more than others, but this relentless nature means that I'm constantly pursuing and persisting after the things that I deserve, and it
Collin 19:18
can be hard to step back from this, especially we are so in the weeds and the nitty gritty details of our business and the operations and how things are going. So a question to really spend some time reflecting on is if this business, if your business, had to support someone else and not you, what would need to change? Really sit with that and start digging through every aspect. If this business was designed to support someone else, not you, how would it need to change? And not only do we have to have this relentless honesty with ourself, but this entire process takes relentless focus. We tend to dilute ourselves by offering every. Any service under the sun because one person asked for it one time, and we try to offer it consistently across the board,
Meghan 20:07
or because other pet sitters and dog walkers in your area offer it, and so well, you have to too, because if it works for them, it must work for you. That's not true,
Collin 20:16
which tends to lead to us saying yes to every request, because I'm for everybody, because I'm trying to build a business, because I believe that being busy is being wonder is good. I say yes to every request that comes in, because, for whatever reason that is. And then we start to because we're offering every service, we're saying yes to everybody. We then get in our head of, okay, well, I have to get some systems in place. I have to make sure that I have these things outlined, and so I build systems for these edge cases. I have extreme policies and procedures, and I've outlined things to the nth degree for something that will happen once every five years. And we spend time doing that, and we get so distracted and bogged down. I know a big thing that we talk about here on the podcast is, have policies, have SOPs, have things standardized. But what is worth standardizing? We have to ask ourselves that question is standardizing the one thing that's going to happen once a decade, is that worth it to you and your business, to have and to focus and be concerned with when
Meghan 21:21
we are hyper focused on that mission where we want to go, being persistent. Sometimes that means saying no to live in sits or overnights that break your schedule. If you are tired of sleeping on other people's mattresses, stop doing it. Then it's your business. Having that focus could also mean dropping low margin services if it's super costly again, those overnights, when you have employees, it is very costly to offer them. So you may go to almost overnights or just cut them out entirely, focus on the services that give you the most bang for your buck. And that may mean designing policies around these majority not for the one off exception that happens again once every 10 years, when you are in focus, when you are aligned with your business, it's you know. Focus is not about doing more. It's about refusing distraction. I'm not going to go after the shiny object syndrome, because I know what I want. I am persistent. I am relentless with it. I am going after it well.
Collin 22:17
And that also means we have to be relentless with our time, and this is especially difficult running a pet sitting and dog walking business, because we often have very unstructured days. We may wake up in the morning and not know exactly what we're going to be doing at one o'clock in the afternoon, or we might not be able to plan well for a week or two weeks out, because we just don't know. We're bouncing back and forth between walks and dog walks, and admins and networking and and putting out all the fires along the way that that comes up from constant rescheduling. I mean, how many of you are listening to this right now, having gotten gotten messages the morning of with people saying, Oh, actually, I do need that visit or Never mind, I'm going to go ahead and cancel and and you are sitting working through how that impacts your day. And now the time that we thought that we were going to have to plan and work and focus is now dedicated more to the admin side of reworking the schedule to make sure, make sure everything else is is lined out.
Meghan 23:11
There are things that we can do, like cancelation policies and and credits instead of refunds. There are things that we can do to help alleviate some of that. But right, we can't ever get time back. It's our most valuable asset. So when we have these unstructured days, when we have this constant rescheduling or this emotional labor from difficult clients that we really need to cleave off and say bye to Hello, we can then find it easier to enforce the booking cutoffs or limiting the same day requests or create those non negotiable admin times of I'm going to turn my phone on, do not disturb and nothing in the world could possibly touch me, because this is my time in front of my computer. Being relentless with your time is not easy, though, because everybody is always pulling you in so many different directions, not not just your business with your employees or your clients, but your personal life as well, and so we have to reframe this of time. Boundaries are a safety system, not a convenience. We have to protect our time. We have to be meeting with ourselves just like we would with anybody else, and keep those appointments so that you can stay sane.
Collin 24:17
Relentless in business also means being relentless about the right people. This applies to your employees, the networks that you run in, and who you're associated with, and then also as your clients. This means that we have to be relentless in our communications to them, the standards that we hold and are on. And getting back to the honesty of well, is, are these people actually a good fit for me? Are they healthy for me to be around with employees? This is addressing underperformance early, not waiting to see if they're going to kick it into gear by the third year that they're with you, if you can see something within three weeks. We need to talk about that. We need to have that conversation. Should or letting that team member go if they ignore protocols. I mean, how many times are we going to say, well, in the future, please make sure that you always lock the door. In the future, please make sure you always lock the door. We have to be relentless in the pursuit of those standards and holding people accountable to that, and this does mean okay, networking and going to these places, there are people, there are businesses, there are things that maybe we don't want to be associated with, that are not good for us, that don't hold or believe in the same things that we do. Then we need to be forward in that and admit it to ourselves that this is not okay. I need to go find another group to network with and be in, or my clients, okay, we've talked about it, but ending that client relationship that creates risk or disrespects boundaries to you or makes you uneasy, or your team uncomfortable and going, this is not okay to be around in me because I'm not in a good head space. This does not feel safe, whatever that is, however that manifests itself, we have to admit that keeping the wrong people around us is unfair to everyone else around us. It impacts everybody. One bad relationship impacts every single person that is around you and that you interact with.
Meghan 26:21
There is a phrase for that. It's one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.
Collin 26:24
Hey, look, there you go. It's already somebody already figured that out.
Meghan 26:29
This whole thing also encompasses flexibility and letting go of our old mindsets, reframing our mind. There are, you know, outdated stories of, I have to do this myself. You know, nobody can do this as good as me, which is not true, because you can train employees, but that's what we think of I have to do this myself, or clients will leave if I raise prices. A lot of these are myths. You know, this is just how pet care is. I'm not able to change the old guard. This is just how it is. I have to Job share, because that's what my clients want. But no Out with the old, in with the new, we can have pricing structures that are modern, updated that chart. We charge our worth. If you haven't raised your prices in a year or two, you need to do that or changing service models. Client expectations have drastically changed over the past few years. Has your business kept up with that?
Collin 27:22
Or if it's a one for one, business model is making it extremely difficult for you to operate, but you think that that's just what we have to do, because that's what's been done all the time. Well, a fully team based model is also wonderful, and can solve a lot of problems. But anytime we feel like, well, this is just how it is, and this is just what I have to do, I can't change anything. We have limited ourselves, and we are no longer flexible in our business.
Meghan 27:47
When we have this loyalty to old decisions, it's not integrity, it's inertia. We're just going with the wind. We're going in the direction that we think we should be going, but we're not really confident or persistent in our pursuit.
Collin 28:01
On episode 666, we talked about being busy but broke, and that's what this next point is all about. It's about being relentless with our profitability. Profit is not greed. Profit is oxygen to your business. It needs it. And in Episode 666, we broke down how oftentimes we confuse busyness with actually making money, and where those shortfalls come in. But this includes in our business of I have to price to support training and coverage if I have employees. Okay, am I priced to pay them while still making a profit for me? But do I price so that I can train them to my standards that I'm upholding. That's a different question. But as I'm relentless in my standards, and I'm pursuing that, and I'm unwavering from those, so too must I be relentless in making sure that I maintain profitability so I can maintain my standards. If I cut out that profitability now I can't train which means that I have to sacrifice my standards, and you see this trickle down effect, and it impacts everything in our business. It also means that we have to work on cutting services that rely on guilt to sell. If I find myself pinning down these pain points and the person is almost about to cry, or I'm putting them in a really difficult moral situation. We that is that is now a reckless business model of selling my services. Instead, I need to be focusing on the positives, focus on the benefits, focus on the outcomes that the client gets to enjoy, both for them and their pet,
Meghan 29:42
whether you have a team of employees or not, you do need to be building in margins in your business and your services that allow you to rest and reinvest. If you are running yourself ragged every day and cannot take a day off because you don't have enough money, you are not allowing yourself to rest, you have to look. At the price of your services, your monthly budget, your numbers, and you need to raise your price accordingly, because if you aren't taking a breath every now and then, you're not going to be good to anyone. You also won't have money to reinvest back into your business. You want to sponsor your kids ball game through your business or the new opportunity that has come on your plate. Well, the only way to do that is to be saving and putting some of that margin from your services back into your business.
Collin Funkhouser 30:28
I really like how you linked profit to rest. I don't think we often do that or put that in the context of our business. We often think, well, profits just to spend money on more things. Profits just the money that's left over after I've budgeted and saved. But really, what does that allow you to do?
Collin 30:45
If that profit exists, that could be money you could put towards paying somebody to take things off of your plate, that could allow you to sleep in, take a nap, fully offload the stress of a day because somebody else is handling it or has their finger on the pulse of your business that you aren't having to maintain. That only happens when there's money in the business to do that. A business that can't breathe, can't care well, and neither can you. A business must have profit to survive, and when we are relentless in preserving that profitability, we will have a successful business, and we will have that rest that we also want.
Meghan 31:32
And now a word from our friend Michelle Klein and dog co launch, what
Speaker 2 31:37
does it take to scale your pet care business? My name is Michelle Klein. I'm the founder of dog co launch where pet care companies come to grow and scale, and I want to send you a case study of how one of my clients took his monthly revenue in just one year from $17,000 to over $73,000 and yes, that is monthly revenue, not annual. To get this case study and to learn more about dog CO and what we do and how we help companies go to dog CO, launch.com forward slash case study.
Meghan 32:12
We have used this word so much in this episode, but relentlessness really is an act of care. It protects pets through consistency. We are looking after their welfare. We're not just going to come in throw food on the floor and leave. We are here for them. We're also here to protect our staff through clarity. We want them to succeed. Obviously, we want a good reputation and good name in the community, but we want our employees to be the best pet sitters and dog walkers that they can be, and that means being kind to them, being clear to them, having the expectations fully lined out, caring for them and caring for ourselves. If we aren't okay, mentally, emotionally, personally, then the business isn't going to be either. The business is an outflow of us. It is not us, but the things that we do and the things that we say do affect the business. So this relentlessness does protect us from burnout. We are able to more clearly make decisions because we are no we know what we're going after,
Collin 33:12
and it will build a business that lasts when we have I mean, if you just think about any building that's still around after 100 years, it has a solid and strong and true foundation that it was built on. The builders of that building had a relentless pursuit of perfection and excellence in that foundation, such that those buildings still stand. That's what this gives us. We focus on the things that are worthwhile, which gives us the time and space to focus on the important things time and time again, that consistency, that long view. And I'm able to do that because I'm focused whenever again, if you think that tunnel vision, I'm relentless, I'm focused. I'm going in one direction, which means all those distractions that Megan talked about earlier, they all go away. Which means I have more brain space. I've got a better ability to deeply focus and with extreme intention move forward on this, whatever I'm focusing on. And I can, you know, a dog after a bone here, I can just go, go, go, go, uphold, uphold, and really push that forward, which, and I can do that for longer periods of time, because I don't have any everything else on my plate, and all these, all the other nonsense that can come up. And why are we doing this? We started off this episode by talking about how we everybody gets into this, in this in this industry, because people care. They care about pets, they care about helping other people. Kindness without structure, becomes chaos. The care that we have that we want for our clients and their pets, if we are not relentless in forming a structure and. Boundaries around that. It just becomes chaos. We lose the consistency, we lose the professionalism, we lose the clarity we our days become may ha mayhem and chaos, and we're putting out fires all the time. Our business won't last because we can't last. That's what relentlessness after the right things gives us,
Meghan 35:22
if this episode hasn't given you enough to chew on, here are some action items for you. The first one is, identify one thing that you are tolerating that you shouldn't is that a client? Is that an employee? We have been there you it's hard to admit, but maybe it's an employee, a client, somebody else in your life, and then write down one boundary you need to enforce with that person. Is it cutting them out? Is it saying it is time I'm going to step out of this relationship? Or is it something more simple of I need you to do this in order for our relationship to succeed. I need you to start doing this. And then thirdly, decide one thing that you will stop doing this quarter, this first quarter of 2026, what are you going to stop doing? How are you going to streamline your life so that you can make more consistent, persistent, relentless decisions? Because if you don't decide, your business will decide for you. Again, the business is an outflow from us, but if you aren't strong and persistent with your clients, they're going to take your business in another direction, and then in two years, you're not going to be able to uphold your SOPs anymore, because nobody abides by them. Being relentless is not about being harsh again. It's not coming down from on high and banging the gavel. It's about being clear enough to protect what matters. If you've enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with a friend. We appreciate you listening today. Thank you also to pet sitters, associates and dog co launch. We will talk with you next time bye. You
