687: Tackling the Scaling Wall in Pet Care with Pixelum
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What happens when the hardest part of running a pet care business isn’t the pets—it’s the scheduling, routing, and operational chaos behind the scenes? In this episode, Collin talks with the Pixelum team (Austin, Ian, and Joe) about why pet service businesses hit a “scaling wall,” and how automated scheduling can remove mental fatigue and reduce missed opportunities. They unpack where AI helps (pattern recognition and workflows) and where it can be too risky (high-variance decisions like visit fulfillment). The conversation also explores tool fatigue, the hidden cost of switching between apps, and why great software should “take away” instead of “add.” Finally, they connect systemization and data visibility to business continuity—making your company transferable, sustainable, and less dependent on you.
Main topics:
Automated scheduling and routing
AI use cases and limits
Tool fatigue and switching costs
Data foundations and business intelligence
Scaling, continuity, and transferability
Main takeaway: “Good software solutions take away versus add.” — Ian Leibovici
That’s the standard every pet care owner should measure new tools against. If the software adds more clicks, more dashboards, and more mental overhead, it’s not solving the problem—it’s relocating it. The goal isn’t to become a better schedule-juggler; the goal is to spend more time doing the work only humans can do: caring well, building trust, and leading your team. The right tech should reduce tool switching, lower fatigue, and give you time back. If it doesn’t remove burden, it’s probably not the right fit.
About our guests:
Pixelum is a technology and operations-focused team working with service businesses to reduce operational overhead and improve systemization. In this episode, Austin Hanley (operator and point of contact), Ian Leibovici (Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder), and Joe (CEO and co-founder) share how they approach complex scheduling, routing, and process challenges in the pet care industry. They built Calio Pro to help pet service companies optimize schedules while keeping existing workflows intact. Their work emphasizes practical automation, stronger data foundations, and reducing tool fatigue for owners and teams.
Joe Ganobsik, CEO and co-founder of Pixelum, has been building software and recruiting and leading technology teams for over a decade at some of the top startups in Silicon Valley. Joe has also founded several companies and consulting agencies, working across all facets of the business. He enjoys problem solving and driving growth via innovation. Joe loves to play golf in his free time. He lives in Chicago with his fiancée and two adorable Shih-poos, Guinness and Killarney.
Ian Leibovici, Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of Pixelum, is a strategic innovator with an entrepreneurial mindset. He has built and implemented solutions to many complex challenges across a variety of industries and is a seasoned experience designer and technical solutions architect. He has deep skills in research and testing with a focus on finding the best path to success. Ian loves to race cars and goes overlanding. He lives just north of Philly with his partner and lovable cats Minky, Mishka, Doppi, Squibbles and Susie.
Austin Hanley, Business Development team lead at Pixelum, brings over a decade of sales and customer service experience in the financial publishing and hospitality industries. His background has shaped his interpersonal skills and strategic thinking, and he is passionate about helping small business owners solve problems through thoughtful, relationship-driven solutions. Austin loves playing ice hockey in an adult league in Maryland. He lives in Baltimore with his family and their sweet magnificent Great Dane Cobalt, and two dreamy cats Cleo & Seneca.
Links:
Pixelum: https://www.pixelum.io
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austin@pixelum.io
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet care industry, technology influence, automated scheduling, routing system, pet service business, operational complexity, AI integration, business efficiency, customer journey, communication bottlenecks, hiring challenges, systematization, custom software, business continuity, operational overhead.
SPEAKERS
Collin Funkhouser, Joe, Ian, Austin
Collin Funkhouser 00:00
Collin, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at tying to pet and pet sitters. International technology continues to influence the pet care industry and the world at large and as business owners, how do we know what are good decisions to make? How can it be helpful? How can it hurt our business? And really, what's the future of this interaction in our business, and how can it better serve our clients? And today, I'm really excited to be speaking with the pixelum team about their product, about the system, and about the future of technology in the industry. Guys, it's a real big pleasure to have you on please tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Austin 00:49
Awesome. Thanks so much, Collin, thanks so much for having us. I got Ian. We have Ian, our chief innovation officer, and Joe, our CEO. Ian's also co founder with Joe and yeah, why pixel? Collin, first and foremost, we love animals. We love working with people who dedicate their careers to helping animals, helping pets and pet owners. Our team at pixel also has a ton of entrepreneurial experience starting companies and growing them. Not only that, they've they have the fortune 500 background as well, but our our we have a highly skilled team of developers who aren't typically accessible in this industry as well, and also with Ian and a few of our other operators consulting experience, we really dig into the challenges companies in this industry are facing that will make the biggest impact to approach first. So yeah, those are just a few things that come to mind. And yeah, like to pass off to Ian,
Ian 01:52
sir, thanks. I mean, I mean, the chief innovation officer has also mentioned, and, you know, I'm very passionate about this space, because I've been learning about the complexities of it. You know, we got the good fortune of going to dog co this past year, which was really enlightening for us. And this all kind of started off almost by accident, with one of my family members, husbands, who owns a pet service company. And over the years, we've talked about it, and I had no clue, you know, just how complex it really was. And as someone who likes to build innovative technology, you know, it's a good challenge to find complex industries. You know, it makes the job more enjoyable. I can't count how many times I've worked at a fortune 500 company doing like an E commerce system or order management system or some sort of, you know, business operational platform. And you know, the challenges just in this space are so unique because they combine so many different aspects to, you know, humans, to the pets, to the owners themselves. You know, there's just a lot involved.
Joe 03:02
Yep, yeah, and I'm Joe. I'm the CEO, and, you know, just to echo what Austin and Ian have been saying, I've really enjoyed getting to work with some of our clients and also meet so many great people in this industry and solve their problems. I think this industry has a ton of really, really unique, really incredible challenges. We're, you know, we're problem solvers over here at pixel. And, you know, just the scheduling and the logistics and the operational complexity of a pet service business is, you know, it succeeded what I expected, you know, when we got started in this industry, and you know, also met a ton of incredible people. You know, I really look forward to working with our pet service clients every day. And you know, happy to be solving the challenges we are for them now and hopefully solve, you know, more and different challenges in the future.
Collin Funkhouser 04:05
Oh, I'm warmed to hear that we have a complex and hard to solve industry because it makes all of our frustrations feel valid, feel validated. I know that's for sure. But to hear that, you know, that focus of human pets and owners, and you've kind of talked about this little like, why this is important to you, but technically speaking, what does pixel have actually do, and how is this going about solving these problems?
Joe 04:32
So our lead solution here is kaleopro, which is an automated scheduling and routing system. I actually think there are a lot of parallels to the warehouse industry that, you know, give a good analogy for how it works, right? When you have a blank slate, whether that's, you know, a brand new pet service business or a small pet service business, it's similar to a empty warehouse, right? Easy to find places to put things. Easy. To, you know, like, identify, hey, this should probably go here, right as that warehouse gets more full, as your business hopefully grows and you take on more clients, it becomes harder and harder to even see where, where the gaps are, and you know, where things could even go, right? You know, I've spoken to so many pet service owners. We actually, we started building a chat bot for pub scouts, Ian's cousins, company, and through that process, they're like, Okay, what do you want this to do? They're just like, take away all the questions that don't relate to scheduling and routing. Okay, tell us a little bit more about that. And we realized that was, you know, kind of the hard, the hardest problem that they had to solve. So, yeah, our current solution is, is designed to identify those gaps to ensure that the right provider is matched to the right service, and they will be able to fulfill it at the right time. Yeah, we and really having a system that like a software system, that can view and analyze the entire layout of the business, of this, of your schedules, of your capacity, it's really the only way that you can truly optimize and solve that problem, in my opinion. So that's our core solution right now. Is calio Pro. And we've also started exploring some different solutions as well. We've built some rewards programs, you know, some different scheduling and process management tools, and we're doing all of this on top of the existing industry software, such as Time to pet precise pet gear, etc. So, but really, we're open and we would love to solve a variety of challenges, as I mentioned. So we're, we're a custom software operation, like, you know, we're not just selling Kaleo Pro, we're just solving one specific challenge. So, yeah, we can really do a wide variety of things.
Collin Funkhouser 07:18
Now, what I'm curious about is, was this? Is this a problem that could only have been solved now, as in, you know this, you know this in the last year, or given some of the latest technologies and things like that, or is this just not enough effort you think has been placed behind solving these issues?
Ian 07:37
That's an interesting question. Because technologically, I mean, you know, AI is running rampant now, right? And that's kind of what everyone's talking about yet. You know, in our instance, here at calio Pro, we're not really utilizing AI as heavily as some might think. It is a component of it, and so it does help, you know, the especially the agentic side, given that you know, a lot of the software that's out there doesn't have, you know, support for direct connections with the data side of the system. So in some ways, yes, but the ability to handle all the variables and business rules really could have been done for quite a while. I think one of the challenges we're seeing as to why hasn't probably been solved before, probably mostly revolves around it's just an intricate issue. And you know, given that we're a little bit more of an innovative, innovation leaning company, you know, that's that's right for alley, where we're like, well, that's really a wild problem. Can we solve it? You know, it's almost like, give us your hardest challenge, and we'll see if there's a way we can, you know, build a build a solution to it. And I don't know if it's just been that there's a lot of folks who are like, well, that's hard, I don't know. Versus, you know, for us, it was what we heard about, like, this is a hard challenge. Why don't we just explore it first, you know? And we had a little leeway because, you know, it's my cousin's husband's company that we started, you know, trying to figure this out with. And, you know, we weren't really under pressure to deliver something. We said, well, let's take a look and see what we can do. And that really resulted in, like us spending three, four weeks just kind of wrapping our heads around it, diagramming, you know, what could this look like? A lot of discussions with myself, Joe and our other engineers on just what were the possibilities. And then we eventually came to the conclusion, yes, I think this actually is something we could solve. And built a model and started to test it. And here we are.
Collin Funkhouser 09:59
Has, has the. Increase in Compute and compute power helped with at least the speed at which you're able to run these computations, to solve these more in like real time, instead of needing to wait. So it's not as it doesn't break the workflow of people.
Ian 10:15
So we're not using a super powerful engine to run it. If that makes sense, it's, it's pretty standard tech in in many regards. And Joe can speak a little bit more to that,
Joe 10:30
yeah, it's, you know, really, the thing that we identified is, you know, there are only so many permutations of a schedule that can exist, right? And if you calculate all those possibilities, you know, when you factor in all the various constraints that a pet service company deals with on a daily basis, like, do you know, first of all, like, who's available at a given time? Are they, you know, able to work with this animal, you know, because there are the do they have an allergy? Do they have, you know, have they worked with that client in the past? You know, that's the other thing. We've seen so many different business models, and we want to support all of them. We don't want you to have to change your process in order to use calio Pro. And so really, you know, if you, let's say you have a staff of 10 walkers and 100 appointments, the theoretical number of combinations is in the hundreds of 1000s, right? But really, the ones that makes sense, you know, based on time, geography, availability and all that, you're probably left with, you know, probably five or 10 realistic, optimized schedules, right? So really, the work and the, you know, the effort that we put in is to set up our algorithms and our systems to mirror and identify all these possible combinations and permutations, and then we're really only comparing, like I said, maybe five to 10 routes a day. This isn't we don't go out and figure out the, you know, like the calculus level, 100,000 combinations. Of routes, we focus on the ones that actually make sense for how you do business. And what your goals are, you know, are you trying to stack as many appointments on as few providers as possible to have other people that can float? Are you trying to balance evenly? Do you care more about geography versus just, you know, fitting in as many services as possible. These are the constraints and the, you know, the algorithm optimizations that we do with all of our clients. Well, I
Collin Funkhouser 12:52
was disappointed to hear about the calculus, because that was my next question. We were going to turn to break out the blank pieces of paper just solve this real quick. No, you've kind of walked through a few different of the constraints on that what you guys also talked with just a lot of pet businesses and service industry, what are some of the more common bottlenecks that you see in our industry? I mean,
Ian 13:18
it's interesting, right? Because what has been really something we talk a lot about is how different every company is. And you know, if you look at a lot of other industries, the variance in the way that they're run isn't usually as great. I think it's, it's a it's kind of a cool thing to see, because these are really unique companies. People really put a lot of their own selves into their business, which I think makes them a very unique type of operation. And it really kind of depends on how they want to run it. You know, some people really feel strongly about the team model. Some people really want to cater, you know, very highly to their their their clients. Some want to just run on what you would consider like a templated model, where there's always a set time, and it changes the bottlenecks because of the way that they operate. And, you know, the there are some common threads, though, if you look at the you know, customer journey of someone who's using a pet service for, you know, whether it's sitting, you know, they have a cat or walking or training, you know there, there typically is like a set customer journey for it. And then when you look at a customer journey, you know, I would say that the bottlenecks really kind of start because of the overwhelming amount of communication that's needed in many cases, you know, just from booking an appointment to understanding the pet that they're going to take care of, making sure that they have everything, you know, down. That the customer, the pet parent, needs, you know, and it's just a lot of communication and then follow up as well. And, you know, it takes, it takes hiring the right person to, you know, a lot of folks that work in this industry, we're learning, you know, they have really specialized set of needs as to why they want to do this job. And we were talking to a company yesterday that I had never heard this before, but they apparently had some folks on their staff that had been there for 20 years, you know. And so their biggest focus really was in, how do we build the right environment to have our staff members be successful? But I've also, you know, been really interested in just operations of these companies, because everyone does it slightly differently. Joe's actually going to one today that is quite interesting. You know that that's based in Chicago, where he lives. You know that that, I would say, is a little bit more untraditional compared to the 90% majority of folks that we work with. And so you know, when you have that much variability, it's more about finding bottleneck for that company specifically. But I do think communication, the whole operational layer of handling, the administration of the scheduling, the routing, the hiring, the training, the billing, even, you know, all have bottlenecks in them
Collin Funkhouser 16:30
well, and I think that's just so important from like the business owner's perspective, of that my bottlenecks may only be very specific to me, and that the solutions my needs are my own, and not this, you know, industry level, wide break or something that just is broken and can't be fixed at that. And so that's encouraging. It should be encouraging to us to go, Okay, I have a model for my own reasons. I love that. You pointed that out. Ian of these, this is how I need to run my business, or how I want to run my business, there are constraints and bottlenecks that come along with that, that I kind of have to accept with it. Now, how do I loosen those, or make sure make those as easy as possible? And what solutions do I have to overcome those?
Ian 17:15
It's interesting, right? Because, you know, we run a software business, for lack of a better way to put it, you know, or a consulting agency, software company, then there's a playbook on how to run these businesses where, you know, there's, you know, 52 million small to mid size businesses, I believe, in the United States. So if you start one of these things, you're guaranteed to find someone who needs your services. So you can be essentially, can take the playbook and run it right. And I don't really feel like there's quite the same playbook in the pet service space. It's, it's, seems like a lot of folks start almost as solopreneurs and grow and build into what it becomes. And, you know, I really admire, like, what Michelle's doing with dog CO or she's trying to help build some standardization. I think that's a really cool attempt to help put some real paver stones, if you will, into the industry.
Collin Funkhouser 18:08
Have you heard of time to pet? Chris Ann from raining cats and dogs, has this to say?
Speaker 1 18:13
Becoming a time to pet client has been a game changer for us. We can give our pet services clients real time, cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing. Time to pet is responsive to my request for new features and modifications to existing ones. If you're looking
Collin Funkhouser 18:38
for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting tying to pet.com/confessional Yeah, we talked about being accidental business owners, where you start taking care of your neighbor's pets, and then you wake up 10 years later and you're like, oh, I have Oh, whoops, what do I do? Like, it's very real. Like, that story is throughout the entire industry. And as as we talked about those small businesses that you mentioned, Ian, I know, I know that you guys like you mentioned that, you know, AI is a portion of what you do, and then you have these algorithms and these models that you're putting together for for how to, you know, handle these constraints. But as like AI is is big. So I did want to ask you, especially from your perspective and the level that you all are working at, how should we be thinking about adopting AI, right? And how should we be thinking about applying that in in our own businesses?
Ian 19:36
So it's interesting for me, because I've been working with AI for, I can't believe it was 14 years which, you know, it seems like it's just become a really big thing in the past, like three, four years. I blame chat GBT for that, you know. And it's interesting, because the way that AI has functioned hasn't changed all that much since. It's, you know what? It originally started to appear in the the software systemization world, it's got a lot faster and there's a lot more utility now with it, which is great, but AI works really well when you have a standard process that's repeatable. That's really the best use case. So when you sit there and think, what are things that I do over and over and over again, well maybe there's an opportunity for AI to actually be of value, but you can get into more complex things with agents, where you can actually assign workflows. The problem is the variance that AI can have. So, you know, it's doing something that's pretty standard. It's usually okay. It's once you start adding complexity, it starts to get more difficult. So, you know, in developing software, and Joe can speak to this a lot better than I can, because he's, you know, developer, but you do a lot of testing. You do? You know, once you've been at it, doing development work for a long time, you get very proficient at decoding. It's almost like, Oh, I know what to do and what to write, you know, the script. But then the true value of actually developing a good platform is in the continuous testing and development of the outcome you're looking to achieve. And that is where I think it's difficult with AI, because you're going to need some time to see how does this work. And then so that translates to business owners where, you know, if you're experimenting with it, don't expect it just to be potentially a quick fix. If you're paying someone to do it, you know, make sure that they have some understanding and knowledge about your challenge, or else you're gonna pay a lot of money, you know. And if you're developing something completely custom, it is just going to take time, and there's going to be expense associated with it. So it's, it's, it's a valuable tool that's out there, for sure. But I wanted to kind of hand it over to Joe, to, you know,
Joe 22:00
give his thoughts, yeah, you know, the thing I always tell people about, you know, working with us is our goal is to understand your business. You know, as deeply as we can, right, like we need to be understanding the job and the process as well as the person that does it every day in order to create effective solutions, right? So, you know, if you're the person doing that process, and you're experimenting with AI, then you know, like, I would say, Yeah, try to try to start with just creating a training manual for yourself by hand, and then feed that into an AI system, right? You know, AI is very good at it's essentially elaborate pattern recognition. That is what it is. It is very elaborate, very fancy pattern recognition. That is all it is. It's learned how to speak and talk and interact with humans the same way as human a human would by imitating humans. It's all patterns. It's just very large. So I think that's a very good thing to keep in mind when working with AI, is it will excel at pattern recognition, but you have to provide it the right context, the right guidelines, and you have to teach it to do something to a sufficient level, as you know, with the with the same understanding as the person that's doing it, otherwise, the variance just gets far too out of hand. And that's really why for us, we don't, you know, we don't heavily leverage AI in our routing and scheduling solutions. We build actual systems and models, you know, because those, those you know, won't make the executive decision that you know, this appointment doesn't matter you, you know, and you end up committing the cardinal sin of accidentally missing a visit or something like that. So, yeah, you know, just, I think that's a really good mental model to keep with, with AI usage
Collin Funkhouser 24:07
and how you're not applying it to the scheduling that, because, as you mentioned earlier, like, that's a very it's almost a deterministic kind of outcome that you need of there's only one and maybe two ways that I need this to work and go together. And as Ian had mentioned, the level of variance and the variance that can come from using AI, if you're not careful on how it's trained, that's too big of a risk. And so you pixel is applying the AI as the agent. Is that right? And the kind of that first step. So what's that role in in your software?
Joe 24:42
So the one thing it is really useful at is comparing and analyzing the discrepancies between various businesses. As Ian mentioned, you know, we've, we've seen all sorts of different operating models. Some are very general. Some are very specific. You know, some. Businesses, it really is like, you know, 90% set in stone, and the automation only helps with the mapping, the visualization, capacity planning, etc. So comparing like what we've done today to what your needs might be is really where AI is most useful to us. You know, how do we need to adjust our models and our algorithms? And, you know, how does this pertain to other problems we get asked, you know, we're being asked to solve problems outside of scheduling and routing now in the pet service industry. But you know that that really is the core of, you know, just the administrative side of a pet service business, right? Sure you have your standard functions such as invoicing, client, communications, all that. But, you know, putting together the schedule and making sure that, you know you have the providers providing the right service to the right person. That's the core of it. So that's where AI has been really interesting and helpful for us, just getting a high level overview and seeing what are the commonalities, what are the patterns? You know, AI is really good at pattern recognition. What are the patterns that this business has, and how are they similar to the patterns and the workflows of another business.
Collin Funkhouser 26:24
Now this industry is also very well known for being extremely hands on, being very, very relational. So from from your perspective, and as you're building, I mean, you're actively building a software, and you're approaching these problems from an automated technological perspective. How? How do these two things mesh of this kind of hands on, heavy trust, emotion, and then the technology side, as we bring it into our business?
Joe 26:55
I think that's why I like starting with the I like that we started with the scheduling and routing problem, because most people that get into a pet service business, they do it because they want to be hands on with the animals. They want to be providing the best customer service. And that really is where humans are far better at, you know, providing, providing those things, right? They didn't get into this industry. Most of them, I don't know. Maybe there's a few of you out there that just really like putting together complicated schedules and figuring out what's the best way to run a group walk for the most part. No, that's where a computer system can really come into play, right? I mentioned the warehouse analogy earlier. You know, nowadays, elaborate, advanced warehouses. They have a laser scanner that is constantly scanning the warehouse and telling you exactly where the box you have should go, you know, and measures all your constraints, such as, does this need to be refrigerated? How quickly is it going to need to go out the door, etc? That's really what we're building for the pet service industry, something that it will follow all your rules. It'll make sure that you know your schedule is done. It's perfect. You're not going to miss a visit. You have, you know, we have conflict resolution too, where we're calling out saying, like, hey, look, you have 13 appointments and they, you know, based on traffic data and all these other things you're you're not going to be able to hit this one. You should assign this to somebody else and all those things. So, you know, sorry for the little tangent there. Back to the original question. Yeah, I think that's, you know, like, I think we're solving the piece that people aren't as good at, right? Because, you know, it's easy for a computer to look at all these systems, and especially with the current software in the industry right now, in order to do what we're doing, you have to be, you know, going through a bunch of notes and tags and, you know, referencing the client file and all that, if you just have high level bird's eye, you know, awareness of what's going on, and that's programmed that gives you more time to to spend, meeting, meeting with clients, taking care of pets and doing the things that will grow your business and your business's reputation.
Collin Funkhouser 29:24
A big part of that too, Joe is I know that pet, pet industry, the pet industry, talk about contesting businesses like we're facing this weird bottleneck as an industry as a whole, of like our pricing power as a business and our profits and our ability to pay with rising costs and all this stuff versus how much people in our markets are going to want to pay for our services like this. It seems like there's this weird cap that we're approaching, and we're getting constrained. And so when we talk about, hey, I need more money in my business. I need to raise my prices. That's getting harder and harder to do. So then we have to look elsewhere. Of going, where am I being inefficient? And I as a business, need to start asking myself efficiencies in that, whether that's the time it takes to put in the route or just the route itself, and how all these things come together to start being able to run a more financially stable business.
Ian 30:21
Yeah, it's, it's actually a really good point that you're bringing up and story, because, like, I spent a lot of my time in the Fortune 500 world trying to figure out how to reduce operational costs by maximizing efficiency, looking at teams processes, you know, and looking really for Where are their patterns, right and what's happening, and how do we develop the right tech to reduce that? Because even at the large scale, like enterprise companies, I mean, most of the revenue that they make will get eaten up by, you know, things that impact their margins. And, you know, in competitive markets, you don't have a lot of opportunity to change pricing all that much, you know. So how do you stay competitive and then also, at the same time, become more revenue efficient, if you will? And it's a big challenge. And I think, you know, one of the things that we're really, you know, captivated by is, you know, the fact that folks work so hard to get these companies to these size that we're seeing. They have a bunch of loyal customers and people that really appreciate what they do. But there's just so much in the way of, like, building to a larger scale and also just becoming what I would say, you could say, call sustainable, you know, where it's not a burden to continue to run to the business. And so I think that's what we're fascinated by, is trying to figure out, how can we help folks there? You know, for me, it's like the puzzle I love putting together. So I got into that on the corporate side of the fence, you know. And, you know, I just want to champion people who work really hard, you know, give them their time back and help them, you know, grow and succeed their businesses. And technology is a great way to do that, but it has to be the right technology. It has to be, you know. And we're seeing a huge shift right now the market. It's 2026 weird to think about the world of software as a service solutions, you know, exponentially grew from, I would call it 2014 until about 2024 so I had a good 10 year run where there was a boom in the market, and a lot of folks are trying to realize, you know, sometimes investing these tools doesn't actually help me get as far as I like to get, you know, and that's happening a lot of other industries, right? And more people are turning to thinking, well, how? Especially with AI, this is one of the cool things that AI is giving power back to the people with this. Like, can I build my own solution? Can I find ways to actually utilize a technology to help me to become more efficient and effective with my business without, you know, needing to try to configure a system that may or may not actually help me? You know, it's a very interesting time and place right now.
Collin Funkhouser 33:19
I was got to listen to a speaker a couple days ago who worked with one of the second or third largest grocer in the United States. And he was talking about how, you know, a grocer's margins are one to 3% and he was like, one, two and and so when he was talking about, he's like, do you think we counted the steps from one aisle to the next. When, when shelving? Do you think we measured how long lights were on in the back versus the front? Do you think we paid it was, it was just a completely different way that I had never thought about the business of like, Oh, it's just about relations and fun, and you need to just make sure that everybody loves and trusts you, and he comes in, he's like, I would never, I would basically, you know, they had, they had stats on on people leaving lights on overnight, and the cost that that did to their bottom line, and this that level of, and I'm not saying like, everybody needs to be thinking about that, but I think it is important to recognize that as we are an industry that is where Most of our money goes to labor. We are so labor heavy, and everything that we do, if we're not paying attention to these little things, it gets out of hand way too fast. And then all of a sudden, we're our businesses can't do the things that we want to do. We can't reinvest. We get stuck, and we get locked in, and then our business just kind of stagnates or dies and and it's being trying to be proactive in this and finding those efficiencies that are that are really important.
Ian 34:49
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people start businesses, I'm just going to speak generally, you know, because they want to own something, and they want to have some sort of level of freedom, right at some point. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's challenging, right? If you can't find that freedom, that where you're an integral part to it. And, you know, one of the I do a little coaching here and there where, you know, I help folks that are entrepreneurs, and one of the biggest things I say to them is, you know, figure out, you know, what are your turnkey systems? You know, what can you remove yourself from the business? And my business coach wrote a great book called buy back your time. And that's like his whole foundation is, you know, finding ways to buy back your time as the owner of the business or founder of the business, because really, like, you should be doing the things that you love to do, because you created this entity. It's an interesting, you know, concept, right? Because I think folks, they're interested in, especially, we've noticed, like folks that run these companies, they love animals. They love what they're doing. Like you said, maybe they got to do it because they're watching their neighbor's dogs, the next thing they know that they've got a staff of 10 folks we're seeing doing the same thing. And, you know, they might be sitting there thinking, when do I get, you know, a little bit of a break? Or, you know, is there, is there an agent strategy for me? I built this thing? And, you know, those are, I think, are good questions to ask. And, you know, we like to postulate around that.
Joe 36:28
Yeah, I think the, you know, like we've seen so many times in this, you know, this industry in particular, the the owner is often the, you know, if not the only, the primary holder, you know, organizer of schedules. They also frequently are the first person to jump in when a visit. You know, provider can't make their visit. You know, something comes up. And, you know, when we're comparing that to, like the grocery industry, I think most people in this industry have a hard time even finding the time to start thinking about these problems, right? You know, if your day looks like, Hey, I'm gonna make all the schedules and, oh, somebody called out and let me remake all the schedules, and then I've got to go take these three appointments. Yeah, you know, you're not really, like, you're so in the weeds that it's, it's got to be really hard to even analyze things like, Okay, how, you know, how much am I making on this service? Like, am I charging enough to cover my costs? You know, what if I were to make a better route that, you know, involves less travel time, and I can fit an extra appointment in, what does that do for my business? Right? You know, these are the problems that we want to help people start to review and take a look at. Because, you know, like it's chaos out there. We know that
Collin Funkhouser 38:01
Joe, I know we're talking about like solving problems, and one of the things that this is, though, is it is adding something new to my plate and my business. It's this adding of another tool, adding this other system. Now, what are, what are challenges that maybe you see your clients face when now adding something new to the business.
Ian 38:23
I mean, I've always had this mindset of really good software solutions, take away versus add. I started my career in more the user experience world and behavioral science aspect of software, looking at how people use things. And, you know, I think that principle kind of applies here, with what we're trying to do for folks is we don't really want to create another thing that they have to use and learn how to use and, you know, bog themselves down with additional time, you know, which is why we take that approach. We take where we actually spend a good amount of time going through phases of implementation, where we're learning about all the aspects of the business, applying their business rules, setting up and configuring it so that when it does launch for them, it's just something that's completely taken off their plate. So there's, there's some time investment up front, but in the long run, you know, year over year, they are essentially free of having to handle this complex task over and over, you know. So it's, it's interesting because, like, the lot of a lot of systems out there, like, meant to be used by humans, like, very directly, you know, I got, I used to live in a product called JIRA back in my corporate times, where we managed all of our work that we were doing on different projects, and I was in that thing, you know, five hours a day, you know, and I was doing all these little manual things. And then one day, one company I worked for. I said, Can I just like, automate some of this stuff that I do because I, you know, don't really need to be spending this much time. And started trying to think in ways I could, like, have the system, you know, work around me. And that was kind of the old theory of software was, you know, let's build something that enables folks, but they still have to utilize. And now, with a lot of the way the technology is going, we're actually able to build technology that removes the person from needing to be hands on with it, as much as older systems.
Joe 40:33
Yeah, our goal is for people to not have to think about using anything we build, and also for their customers and their staff to not notice the difference. You know, of course, if we identify like things that should be changed, we'll recommend them. But that's really how caleopro is set up. You know, you go in, you take a look at the schedule, you put together, you press a button, goes back into time to pet or whatever you're you're using, and you know, you just you have to think about less, and you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes just confirming and making everything, making sure everything looks good. This is not a platform we want people to live in
Collin Funkhouser 41:22
and now a word from our friends at pet sitters International.
Speaker 2 41:25
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Collin Funkhouser 41:52
I know for us, like, there, there's that worry of that tool fatigue, of how many things are on my plate. No, Ian, you spoke to that of like, okay, this is something that I'm in charge of managing like I own the status. I have to look at this, and generally I've got more buttons to click. And we think about that with our team of how many apps do they have to download? How many things do they have to be in? How many things they have to be looking at? What how many not just steps in the process, but kind of tool switching from one thing to the next of this take? Because every one of those switching steps takes burden, takes mental fatigue, takes now, okay, wait, wait, where's the like, I just think of things like, where's the UI, right? Okay, I'm in a new app. Where's everything laid out? How is it that that switching cost, that's in real time, that impacts me and my ability to do work?
Ian 42:36
Yeah, I worked in the BPO world business process optimization, where we would look at teams, right? And we'd say, okay, these people are having to jump between these, like three or four or five, sometimes six tools in a day. And we would actually study the mental fatigue of folks having to do that. And the goal of the work we were doing was to figure out, how do we reduce that, you know, how do we take them out of these, utilizing so many systems? And, I mean, that's just one of our philosophies here, is like, how do we remove, you know, like, when we go into a company, you know, one of our clients, it's not a pets care space, they actually work in. They do medical device repair, and they were using paper, they were using Google Calendar, they were using Google Maps, they were all over the place with all these tools that are using QuickBooks. And we're like, hey, you know, I think most of your days getting bogged down by just the fact that you're you're jumping all over the place to do your job. Why was it? We've made one operational platform for you where you just look at that, and that's where you go. And you also can specify to us what is the user interface that you need as well. And we spent, I guess it was, about three months articulating the design of the system with them. And you know, once we launched and got this thing running, it's, it's all their design, really, that we just help facilitate. And it's tremendously just cut down that, you know, fatigue that you get from jumping from system to system. And I think that's the way more things are going to go, especially in the smaller or mid market. So it was something that I think was reserved for, you know, large billion dollar companies for a long time, but now, because technology is getting cheaper, more accessible, it's actually coming down into, you know, these other markets.
Collin Funkhouser 44:33
Yeah, I just need a big red button in the lower right hand corner that just says, scream into the void. It doesn't do anything. It just, you just hit. It makes feel a little bit better some days,
Collin Funkhouser 44:48
Austin, were you gonna sorry you jumped on there? I'm sorry. I know the Oh, make me feel better.
Joe 44:59
Did you. Put everybody calls out, make my schedule.
Collin Funkhouser 45:07
I mean, all of this, though is, I think that there is this, there's this short term thinking that it can be as a business owner of I need my problem solved now, pain now, issues now, lack of sleep now. There's also, though, this long term view in in business that I really believe in the last five years, a lot of people in the pet care space have opened up to to the possibility of of this transference of my business, whether that it's sold or it's taken up, or I pass it over to somebody like, how do you see technology and automation helping business owners make this exit, make this transference of their business? Yeah.
Ian 45:52
I mean, there's a great book called The E myth that I just want to recommend any of your listeners to go read. But the whole concept in that book is building scalable, repeatable systems, the turnkey concept, you know, like think McDonald's, you know, how do I have things where, if I put a person in this place, can I teach them how to do something rather simply and quickly? And do I have the right let's call it systems, tools, whatever you want use here as something that they can be enabled by. So it's really kind of looking at your business from like almost a bird's eye view and thinking, Okay, where are there the hard decisions that really require someone with specialized knowledge and understanding to do, versus where things that are repeatable that we could scale. So I think exiting a company is like the ultimate dream, right? Like you build them, you want to sell it, you want to retire, hopefully someday, and you know, it's just, it's hard to do that when you're caught up in the mix of everything, or you have key people, you know, and being a key person of influence in your business is important, right? But extracting yourself from the relevance of actually running it is how you get there. So I mean, you know that's that's where technology becomes a great use case, right? And figuring out what are the right systems for my business to operate without me, you know, and taking a good look at that. And like I said, it's interesting in this space, because everyone is very different, you know, and how they operate. So it almost becomes a unique thing. And you know, I had spent some time just doing some consulting as well, where they go look at companies, and they'd say, Okay, well, because I had the experience of doing that BPO work, you know, helping companies think, Okay, where can we reduce churn? Where can we automate? Where can we standardize? And most of the reason for it was because the business owners, you know, wanted to get out one day, and they wanted a system where they said, Okay, person who is interested by my company. Here's the thing. You just need these key people in these seats, and you're good to go. Joe, I don't know if you have anything else you want to add to that.
Joe 48:16
I mean, I think you really touched on the big point of continuity for a business, right? Which is, do we have the systems in place? Are they and how transferable are they? You know, like, if somebody were to step in and take over Funky Bunch, for example, would you know? Like, what would they need to know? You know, what decisions would they need to be making on a daily basis? And the less decisions you're actually making, you know, I think that's a very good measure of just how systematized and organized you are, because that's really what you know. Whether you're you want to pass the business on to a friend, a child, you know, or sell it. That's what they're going to be looking at as well. Is what would it take for me to jump into the seat and, you know, become the owner of this business? And how much work would that take, and how much would I have to learn? You know, the more turnkey that is, the easier that's going to become, and the more attractive it's going to be.
Collin Funkhouser 49:24
There's the mindset that we have of, okay, well, I need to not be doing the visits. Okay, great. I'm quote, unquote, out of my business. But then we sit in the admins backstage, you know, all the behind the scenes work, the operations management, that's a whole other level that we then go, oh, what would it really mean for me if I didn't touch any of that, right? And we're keep moving up and up a little bit. And I came across this quote. I came across this quote a little while ago. Of you mentioned that the continuity, the consistency, it was compassion without consistency isn't care, it's. Negligence dressed as kindness. And when I thought about this at the micro level of how we hold the leash, how we scoop the litter, and then the macro level of how operationally the visits are scheduled, how the notes are put in, how communication is handled, how my business projects itself, it really became this massive, like, problem set of, how do we make sure we're consistent across the board, regardless of whether I'm happy, whether I got enough sleep, whether the team members are doing well, like, how do we make sure we ensure all of that, so that when, if I'm not here, if something happens, if we need to sell or pass on to somebody like that goes on. Because if we really care about serving people and our clients, well, we need to care about that kind of thing.
Ian 50:53
Yeah, no. I mean, it's funny, because I think about it all the time with our company, like, like, how can this run without me, you know. And I kind of encourage a lot of folks around the business kind of think, How can this work without me here? And not that you want to obviously remove yourself. I'm having a good time. This is fun, you know. I love when we do. I like working with everyone, so I don't really want to remove myself in a business. But objectively, what I'm always trying to figure out is like, how could I just make it run better? You know, where I potentially going to cause friction, and can I remove that friction? And, you know, I think each one of us, you know, pixel is, you know, pretty dedicated to, you know, solving all the problems and challenges for our clients. And we do also try to think, Well, how do we also make a better environment for our business, a better place to work? And a lot of that really comes down to, you know that not necessarily having to be a constraint against it.
Austin 51:58
I was also just going to piggyback off of what you all said, like, I think just recognizing that it is possible to systematize like complex processes is, like, really important for business owners to remember and like recognize in any industry. But like, we speak with a lot of business owners that are like, all these, all these complex decisions, rules, constraints for different clients, like all that unfortunately lives in my head. So that's why, and you know, until, until I train somebody else on that like, you know, I'm not going to be able to sell the business or transfer it, but like all those, there are ways of systematizing or standardizing, like even the most complex processes. And that's also where our our process of meeting with the clients, you know, many different times, and the different sessions you know, really help with with that?
Joe 53:03
Yeah, we always like to tell people that, you know, like going through the onboarding and setup process for calio Pro with us. It's similar to hiring a new a new admin who's going to do scheduling for you. Except for this one, they're always going to follow your rules. They're not going to tell you, like, Hey, you're you're wrong, and you only have to train them once, you know, unless you want to change something, then you just tell them what, tell us what the change is, or enter that in yourself, and the system runs as planned.
Collin Funkhouser 53:33
I think that's a really good point of a lot of times we can think of, well, I'm the secret sauce, and I can't be replaced, and it's too hard to solve. So I really appreciate that. Of that mindset of this is hand off a bowl, right? I can push this to something else. This doesn't have to be me anymore, and what we then have to do on our end, like that may take a little bit of I know sometimes people put their identity and their skills and their tasks and they think, Well, I'm important and needed in my business, because I'm the only one who can do XYZ. So on the back end, we also then have to grapple with, Oh, I'm not needed for that anymore. What's my purpose? And what am I supposed to do with my business?
Ian 54:12
Now, I always say, do the thing that you're best at, yeah, you know, what are you really good at doing? Right? And that's, that's your place in the business, you know. And you know, it's interesting, you know, succession planning, you know, as a term that comes up in the corporate environment a lot. And, you know, when I got my first, like, big role, I thought it was really wild that my boss, at the time said, well, plan, plan, how you are no longer needed. And you know, that really stuck with me for a long time. It's been about 12 years now that I heard that statement, and that's kind of, you know, and I asked them why, you know? They said, Well, I want you, if you're going to continue to work in this company, doing the thing that you're really good at doing.
Collin Funkhouser 55:00
It's the one instance where planned obsolescence is actually Okay, right? We want to make us not relevant or needed there. But I know that there's a lot going on. There's a lot moving on in this space. What are you all excited about, or trends that you're seeing that you think small business owners need to be aware of and paying attention to?
Ian 55:20
I mean, definitely we thought on a touch on earlier, which is, AI, I mean, I encourage everyone to experiment with it, you know, in the context of their business and where they think it can help. There's a ton of information out there on YouTube, there's, you know, blogs, articles, all kinds of stuff, right? Podcasts, to learn about how to utilize AI and, you know, folks, and feel free to come chat us up as well if they want to talk about it. But just trying to figure out, you know, what is out there that's available constantly is a very valuable exercise, because I think the trend we're going to see more of is actually pet service companies getting larger and larger. You know, it's, it's definitely a growing industry. Since post covid, right? The number of folks owning pets has skyrocketed. The number of businesses you know that are in this space is growing. And, you know, we've been really surprised at some of the scales on the folks that we've talked with, you know, and most of the times they're, they're, they are struggling through the operational challenges. But, you know, with lots and lots of people trying to solve the same problems and talking to each other. And, you know, folks like us out there that are trying to help on the technology side. You know, there's going to be more and more breakthroughs where we're going to see, you know, larger and larger scale companies, which is really exciting to me. This is a highly valuable service that everyone this space provides. I have five cats myself, and I don't just trust them to anyone. So like, you know, knowing that there's good, reputable companies out there, actually, someone should go to my area and start a pet service company. We need one desperately. You know, it is a nice feeling, right? You want a company you can trust, and in highly dense, you know, metro areas or urban areas, you know, people need this, you know, so there's a ton of potential. And I think looking at other business practices, maybe looking at other similar verticals in the field service space are a good idea for folks to do, you know, because I think there's a lot going on in those spaces that are attributable to helping companies in this space. But I think the one trend that we're just kind of constantly seeing, probably day in and day out, is, you know, people wanting to reduce their operational overhead make it easier to manage, and also the struggle of people and hiring. So people management and hiring, you know, is another big trend we're seeing where people are coming up with some unique solutions on their own and also seeking ways to find support.
Joe 58:27
Yeah, I think the other thing that you know, just like technology and AI have really enabled, is for companies like ours to provide services to you know, like companies in the pet service industry are typically smaller, right? Yeah, I think some of the larger players are 2, $3 million a year, and that's nowhere near the scale that you used to be have to hit in order to have a custom tailored system, right? But, you know, through AI and Gen, yeah, just general technology advancements that make things cheaper and more affordable, and we've been very thoughtful about how we've put together all of our solutions as well, and that makes it affordable and accessible to, you know, to have a system that's tailored to you? Yeah, you're no longer forced to buy something off the shelf, and, you know, because that's the only thing that you can afford, like custom solutions. You used to be in the 50, you know, 60, $70,000 range, just to start out. And we can do our work for a fraction of the price. So I think that's something that you know people should really explore how, you know, how has AI and technology changed so that you you can build a system that's tailored to you and compete? With, you know, some of the larger, larger players, I
Collin Funkhouser 1:00:04
want to thank you all for coming on the show today, Austin, Ian and Joe. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I've really appreciated the thoughtfulness of the around this conversation of not just solution, solution, solution, but intentionality behind it, and the reasons that we can make our business run and be better. This is a really big topic, though, and there may be a lot of questions generated from this, and, you know, bouncing ideas off and possibilities. So if listeners are interested in getting in touch looking into this work, how best can people get in touch with you and follow along? Yes?
Austin 1:00:37
Collin, yeah, thank you so much for having us again. Yeah, it's been, it's been awesome. And for your insights as well, yeah, just reach out to me, austin@pixelum.io Austin spelled a, U, S, T, I m the capital of Texas, and then add and P as in, pet, i, x, e, l, u, do, M, as in, mary.io. Yep. And yeah, that's been absolute pleasure, excited for you know where things are going.
Collin Funkhouser 1:01:06
Yeah, absolutely this has been a lot of fun again. Thank you all for coming on the show today. You Collin, that was fun. Thank you. My biggest takeaway from my conversation with the team at pixelum is the importance of software in our business, and that good software, as Ian said, good software solutions take away versus add. They take away friction. They take away headaches. They take away frustrations. What they should add is time back to our day and seamless integration and experience for our clients, however, nothing will replace the touch of a person in our business. As we interact with our clients, they are looking more than ever for a human on the other end, AI is the buzzword and the hot topic right now, but whether it's an AI agent or an automatic reply to a message on Facebook or Instagram, your clients are looking to connect with a person, and that is going to be a major differentiating factor for the industry. Moving forward, those who can take technology as a whole and leverage that so that they can spend more time doing the human things in their business. The right tool that we use that should reduce and lower our fatigue and switching costs, and it should give us time back if what we want to add to our business, if what we want to do, if it doesn't remove burden, it's probably not the right fit for us, and that's a distinction that we all have to understand in our business, and a decision that we have to make for how we want to run it and serve our clients. We want to thank today's sponsors, timed pet and our friends at Pet centers international for making this show possible. We also really want to thank you so much for listening. You.
