688: From “Ugh” to “That Was a Good Day”
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How do we keep one hard morning from ruining an entire workday? In this episode, we talk about what happens when the day starts with client messages, employee issues, schedule changes, and mental overload before we’ve even had a chance to catch our breath. We share five practical ways we reset our mindset, focus on the next task, notice small wins, trust our systems, and reconnect with why our work matters. We also discuss how these ideas apply not just to pet sitting visits, but to admin work, team leadership, client onboarding, and business ownership as a whole. This conversation is a reminder that even when we start the day with dread, we can still finish it feeling accomplished, grounded, and grateful.
Main topics:
Turning bad days around
Focusing on next task
Noticing daily micro wins
Building better business systems
Remembering why work matters
Main takeaway: “We don’t have to let one part of the day affect the rest of the day.”
That idea is simple, but it is not always easy to live out in pet care. One difficult client message, a lock issue, a messy visit, or a packed schedule can make it feel like the whole day is already lost. But one hard moment does not have to decide the tone of everything that comes after it. When we pause, reset, and focus on the next right thing, we give ourselves a chance to recover and move forward with purpose. Sometimes the biggest win of the day is not that everything went perfectly, but that we refused to stay stuck in the overwhelm.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet first aid, mental reset, micro wins, systems, client onboarding, employee management, task list, weather impact, positive mindset, gratitude journaling, administrative work, pet care, business owner, scheduling, team motivation.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:00
Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are. I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the hosts of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for listening today and being part of the journey. We would also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates, pet marketing, unleashed, and our Patreon supporters, who are dog walkers and pet sitters just like you, and they love the podcast. They listen every week, and they want to give back some of their hard earned money. They go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, to see the ways that they
Collin Funkhouser 00:31
can help out. Hey, Megan, did you know it is a pet first aid month? I actually did you well. You're looking at the notes with me, but if you are listening to this, and you did not know, April is pet first aid month, and to celebrate, we are partnering with pet first aid for you. It's Arden Moore who teaches this class. Pet first aid for you.com. They are offering 5% off their classes if you use the code prepare all caps. Prepare this month to sign up for a class and take it. They have dog and cat classes. They also offer a cat specific class, which is really, really cool. So excited about that. Go to pet first aid for you.com to learn more about their classes and use that code prepare at checkout for 5% off. But it's
Meghan 01:12
only valid in April, so about three more weeks, and that's pet first aid, the number four in the letter u.com recently, we had a day where everything went wrong, right when we woke up wasn't the best day. We woke up to a slew of messages from clients and employees, a lot of booking requests, and we're thankful for that. And a team member in the field was having issues with a lock the day just started off with, like, a million miles an hour, and we all we wanted to do was crawl back in a hole and just ignore it.
Collin Funkhouser 01:42
Yeah, it really was a morning where we just didn't want to do we didn't want to be bothered with any of it. It felt too much. We weren't in the right mental space for that. And it's important to note that whether you are doing this is for pet sitting, or whether you are doing the admin work nine to five, you're running the business, or you're just trying to get through a packed day, we're pretty sure that you've probably felt like this as well, and this moment where you kind of wake up, you just have this dread, this overarching, just Ugg feeling, where it starts with Ugg. And I've found, and I think we have found, that doing a couple different things helps us make sure that we end the day like it was pretty good. It wasn't that bad.
Meghan 02:24
Yeah, because, just because we start off the day like that doesn't mean that we have to end the day like that. We don't have to let one part of the day affect the rest of the day. And I think that's important. You know, we choose how we react to things. Obviously, we can't control everything, and I think that's a big part of this discussion of there are things we can't control and things we can't things that happen to us that we just have to react to put out fires, sometimes, especially if we have employees or clients that are unhappy or pets that aren't behaving in visits, but to know that just because a day starts out bad doesn't mean it
Collin Funkhouser 02:58
has to end that way. Yeah, there are things that don't change that really never will. Like your schedule? Well, I'd say schedule, your schedule actually can change quite a bit from day to day, depending on your client's needs, their demands, what you have set up for you. But the fact is, is that there's always work to do. There's always things that we have to get done and get on our task list and look at our calendar and make sure that we are planning for and accounting for right the work. It's one of the wonderful things about running a business, is that the work never ends. Now, what that work is, and the proportion of our day that it takes up, there is some there's some variance there. But as the business owner, as the CEO and head Pooh Bah, we have something to do throughout the entire day.
Meghan 03:48
But I think sometimes that's where that can come in from of well, the work never does end. So I'm waking up already dreading my task list. There may not be fires that immediately happen, but I've got 97 things on my list that I have to do today. And I check my calendar the moment I wake up and I go, Okay, this is what we have to do, and we just kind of muddle our way through the day.
Collin Funkhouser 04:13
A big one, especially in our industry, is the weather, right? The weather can be a big factor in that Ugg of if you don't like those hot days, and it's, it's 114 degrees in Arizona right now, you might not be having a good day, and it kind of puts a damper on what you want to do. Or maybe it's the cold, the wet, the rain, whatever that is, the weather can play a big role in how we perceive that the day is going to be depending on what we want, because then we may look, oh my goodness, I've got 25 visits to do today. It's really busy, and it's just raining non stop, and I've got to be out there all day, and I've got to be doing this, and the dogs are going to be messy, and my car is going to be messy, and it's going to the traffic is going to be horrible. It can all kind of unwind. From just that one
Meghan 05:00
thing, but it's not just the weather and it's not just the schedule, it could be the work again. You wake up and you go, there are pets I don't really want to see today. They have been challenging in the past, or I don't really want to work with the reactive dogs today. My brain doesn't want to be that mentally engaged today. I just want to go for some simple dog walks with easy dogs and cuddle with some easy cats and be done with it. Yeah, that
Collin Funkhouser 05:23
day that started off for us with all that chaos and a million miles an hour, we had barely, like opened our eyes, and there were already so many things on our to do list that we weren't anticipating well, and I think it's
Meghan 05:35
a lot, because a lot of that came in either overnight or after we went to bed or really early in the morning. And so we went to bed thinking, Okay, we know exactly how our day is going to be tomorrow, and we know what we have to do on our 50 list checklist. And then we wake up in the morning and there's 30 more things that we have to do, fires we have to put out, and it can be exhausting, right? Yeah, you
Collin Funkhouser 05:57
know, the schedule for that day didn't change. The weather didn't change. That day, it was still going to be the weather that we went to bed with. To bed with. The work was still there and and yet we had this feeling of dread, this Ugg coming up. And honestly, that day though, we finished with happy clients, a booked weekend, and we felt really, really accomplished. So what changed? What changed for us, and what I think changes for a lot of people is the mindset that we bring to that day, the structure that we have in our day as well, and how we actually view that kind of work. And that's a lot about
Meghan 06:31
what we're going to talk about on this episode, before we get into the five ways to turn your day around. There's something we don't talk enough about in this industry, and that's protecting yourself while you're out there doing this work 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, comm as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. When we have that peace of mind, that's actually one of the things that makes a hard day feel a whole lot lighter. The first point in turning your day around is the anticipation versus the reality here. So we dread the whole day, not the next task. We wake up and we say, oh my gosh, I've got 87 things and 30 more were put on my plate overnight. I don't want to do this. But we don't focus on the whole day. We focus on the next task. What do we need to do next? Yes, is it a good idea to have the whole day in mind? Have a whole broad picture of okay, this is all of what I hope to accomplish today, yes, but then you immediately need to focus on the next thing. What do I need to do next? If you check your phone in bed like me, what's the next thing I need to do? Okay, I'm going to get out of bed, I'm going to brush my teeth, drink my glass of water, have something to eat for breakfast, and then start my first task. Well, this
Collin Funkhouser 08:01
is really our brain is catastrophizing the entirety of the day, like you said, Megan, like this is a forest through the trees scenario where our brain goes into panic mode and all we can think about is all of the extra added things and all of the dread and all that stuff that gets pulled up through this where we wake up and we can't we stop being able to see that next step and all we can see is everything that's there, right? 12 visits may feel impossible. It feels like one our brain lumps that up into one impossible task. Okay, it's not the next one visit that I have to do, it's the next 12 visits that I have to do, or the next two networking events that I have to prepare for and get ready for the next five hires that I have to onboard and get them trained or or the route planning on the busy holiday that's coming up. All of that just gets lumped on with our brain because we that your brain is really good at bulk is bringing all of the catastrophes together. You're it's hard. It takes intentionality and focus to separate it out, to actually take it in one at a time, and have to sit down and really slow down that process to make sure that we can go, Okay, I have visits today. What's my first one? Then what's my second one? Then what's the networking event? Then what's that phone call, then what's that hiring? Then what's all that stuff? You have to be able to sit down and actually plan that out, because otherwise we do just sit there in anticipation of that. We know the burden of one thing, of one visit, of one phone call, of one networking event, and then that anxiety and that anticipation starts lumping everything in at the same time, instead of the reality of, well, I'm not doing 12 simultaneous visits. I just have to do this one, and then I'm going to drive, and then I have a next one, or however that is, and whatever this is on your schedule,
Meghan 09:55
this whole concept just isn't in pet care. This is any kind of work that you do looking at your. Entire day at once. Sometimes makes it feel impossible, depending on how much you have to do. But no one actually works like that. You just do the next thing again. Yes, there is planning. You do need to make sure that you eat your meals and you get some exercise and you take some time for yourself, but when you take your day incrementally at a time, it makes it a lot more manageable. We operate two different service areas two hours apart. And so one day, we had things going on in both of our service areas that required both of us to be there. And so we were trying to figure out, how are we going to do this? Where, where do we need to be? When do we need to leave? Who's doing, what, when? Basically, yeah, if you just looked
Collin Funkhouser 10:39
at that day, it was okay. We've had two networking events for us. All of a sudden it was Oh. And the travel time between these is two hours, and we have to set up and we have to tear down. And each visit, each networking thing is, you know, one or a couple hours that we have to prepare for, and therefore different, you know, things that were going on, and what's the purpose of each one of them? And the entire day was so overwhelming just thinking about the back and forth, the driving, the time spent talking to people, and everything that we had to have on hand, made sure that we remember it, and all that. But what we had to do was actually just go, Okay, what do I need for the first one? And focus on that and just give that way. Because also what we could do there is we could make sure that we were only focused on that first thing, because when we get too caught up in the entirety and the anticipation of all the things that we're doing that day, it means that we are not giving each one our full and undivided attention and our energy for that
Meghan 11:36
well, and also making sure that we had all of our supplies and everything we need, all the flyers and the poop bags and everything we needed. When we broke it down, bit by bit, we were able to process it a lot better and think through things and make sure that we didn't miss anything, because we didn't want to get to the end of the day and go, Ah, right. I should have brought the flyers
Collin Funkhouser 11:53
well, and there was no point in worrying about the second networking event until the first one was done and over. Now, yes, we did have to make sure we have everything with us. However, it's going well, if I'm just worrying about the second event while I'm at the first one, then this is going to be a waste, and I'm not going to get out of this when I need to. I'm not going to make good connections, and this wouldn't have been worth it in the end. So save the worry, save the stress for the second one, when that thing arrives. And a great way to think about this is really, you know, kind of close off your schedule, close off your calendar, close off your next thing after you've identified that next step. Kind of black out everything else after that so that you can just see that first thing that you have to do. And it's a way of really compartmentalizing the day because I know my eyes stray and they look down on the calendar. They look at the to do list, and keeps getting longer and longer. Imagine if you just held up your hands and blocked out everything below that first list, that first line item, or that first thing on your calendar, and everything else was just unknown to you. And then as soon as you finish that first one, you slid your hand a little bit further down so you could see the next thing. This helps us stay focused. And the reality of our work is you can only ever do one thing at a time, so worrying about the following thing doesn't do you any good,
Meghan 13:13
or at least one thing really well, jack of all trades. Master of None. When we multitask, we are not giving our full attention to everything, which is why, when we look to turn our day around, we look at that first visit that really sets the tone. This is the first interaction that really shapes our day. If you come into that first visit and you feel rushed and panic and overwhelmed and you didn't take that breath before you stepped out of the car, that's very likely going to carry that momentum forward. You're going to continue feeling rushed and overwhelmed if you don't stop take a breath. Remember why you're doing this. Be calm about this. Yeah, I remember
Collin Funkhouser 13:49
training a few employees, and they you get the sense of when you're standing next to somebody who's kind of panicking about time, they get fidgety, they get nervous, they start rushing through and fumbling over the tasks, and they skip steps, and they try and cut corners to make up time. And I remember training somebody, and we did what, five or six visits in a row, and at the end, we were over on time. And I asked them, How did that go for you? And they said, I didn't feel like I could ever catch up. And so what happened was, is that with each subsequent visit, they felt like they had to do go more and more quickly. They had to do go faster and faster and faster because they kept on falling further and further behind. Instead, what we look to do is okay, that first visit, you are nervous. You're anxious about how the day is going to go. You have a lot on your plate. You pull into that driveway, you're going to turn off your car, you're going to put your hands in your lap, and you're going to take 10 really big breaths, nice big slow breaths, so you can leave everything else behind. And sometimes you may have to take 20 or 30 breaths to make sure that you're in a good place. And then what I've had to a lot of people, Hey, you have to trust that you have enough. Of time for this. You have enough time to accomplish everything that you need to trust that watch the timer, follow the checklists, and you are going to be okay.
Meghan 15:12
Well, and sometimes this can heighten anxiety, but also remembering in the moment when you're kind of freaking out like that's when mess ups occur. That's when you rush and miss things, or you don't things, don't do things as good as you should. So it is vital that in that moment you breathe, yeah, and this is,
Collin Funkhouser 15:28
you know, we're talking about visits here, but maybe you're not doing visits. You're doing more administrative or more managing, or just more CEO kind of stuff. This could be your first meeting of the day, your first email that you sent, just your first task in general, how we start the day shapes everything that follows. If I sit down and shoot off that email and I type as fast as I want to, or maybe I do voice to text, because I'm doing it while I'm making my coffee and I'm trying to rush and do a couple things together, and that email sends off, and there's typos, and I didn't spell the person's name right, and I forgot that it was Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Well, I'm going to try to be trying to dig myself out of that for the rest of the day, apologizing and sending more emails, and I've made more admin work for me. Or that meeting that you rush into because you're meeting with your daily manager, and now all of a sudden, you didn't prepare, or you you're rushed or thinking about other things. You're more preoccupied that meeting is going to take longer. It's going to be more confusing to work through, and it's not going to be as productive as you really need it to to make sure that you get your tasks done. Ultimately, it's time wasted, and that snowballs and compounds into everything else that we do. And a big part that we can do to set ourselves up for success with this is just to add buffer time throughout our day and our schedule, right? If we schedule ourselves on the absolute razor's edge of what's possible with Drive times or meetings or mental recovery, we'll never we're never going to meet that. I don't know if you've had this kind of day, I certainly have where I tend to always think that the day is going to go just as perfectly as possible. Everything is going to be on time, and there's gonna be no overages, and I'm gonna have no fires that come up that I have to put out. Why do I plan like that? If I know that the reality is, is that will never happen, and yet, I continue to pack my schedule with no buffer time, like everything's gonna go perfectly when we have buffer time. Now I can actually breathe, and I'm not panicked. I'm not feeling dread or anxiety when I need to go five minutes over on something or when that call with that higher takes a little bit longer. I'm not trying to rush. And now my day has just so much more breathing room where I can actually mentally recover and take breaks when I need to, instead of going and rushing from thing to thing to thing. So going from Ugg to Hey, that wasn't so bad is really the process of giving yourself recovery time in the day. Yeah, I feel like
Meghan 17:55
Collin you and I treat our schedules a lot differently and our calendars a lot differently. I typically put put in things on the calendar that have to get done that day. So I just put them in at 6am or 8pm just randomly in there, because I know it needs to get done. And then when it's done, I'll actually delete it, unless it's something super important that I have to remember in the future that I did on this specific day. But you treat more the calendar more as like gospel of I put something in at 7am it needs to get done at 7am yeah.
Collin Funkhouser 18:24
And that's, you know, it's just a way of your mental model for how your day and your time are supposed to be put together. And so if you have the capacity to kind of load up the day with just all of these little events of this is my to do list, great if you can do that, and then you naturally have the the discipline to spread those out throughout the day. The problem is is I lack that kind of discipline. And if I have open space and nothing on my calendar, it's going to be filled with absolutely nothing. And it's hard for me to pull tasks out of thin air and actually initiate them unless they're on the calendar.
Meghan 18:55
When we go from uh, to having an awesome day when we end it, we want to talk about micro wins. These are small wins that have a reward system with them. So if you go to that first visit and you were kind of feeling, uh, you did take a breath, but you still needed a little bit more positive momentum to go in, going in toward the rest of the day, you go into that first visit and you see an excited dog, that tail wagging, that happy face, and you start off the day with an awesome walk. That's a micro win. You can use that to propel you into better things throughout the day, or maybe a nervous cat comes out and says, Hi.
Collin Funkhouser 19:30
This is always my favorite win. This will always be the best thing that happens to me at any day is when the cat that you haven't seen in three days comes out and sniffs you and then darts away. It makes my day every time.
Meghan 19:41
But it doesn't just have to be visits. Maybe it's a client reaches out and says thank you, or an employee gets you a special gift, or just says you're a really great boss. Thank you for taking the time to invest in me. It could be you finally got that thing checked off your list that you were really working hard on or really not excited about, but you finally. Did it. These are things that can really turn our day around, that can have us be motivated again to keep going and keep doing what we love. But honestly, most of the things that we do have these moments we just ignore them. Maybe it's a problem solved or a good interaction, something that went right, if you don't notice them, the day feels like nothing happened. And that's what can happen when we just go through the day feeling Ugh, just over and over and over again, is we miss the subtle positive changes that we could have used to our advantage, to make us happier well.
Collin Funkhouser 20:30
And sometimes we may think, I think, a big limiting belief around this. And the reason we don't do this enough is that we think that the perfection that these, these micro wins, are just expected, that these are just exactly how it should go. So don't, don't congratulate me on doing my job. Don't congratulate me on making sure that I spell checked my message before I sent it, or don't congratulate me on preparing for the meeting or or asking good questions during the interview. That's just what I'm supposed to do. And so we do let these slip. We do let these slide. We don't give them any attention. I know one for Megan and I at least myself. I'll Collin, this is when a micro win is when we can get the schedule to route plan, and it just all clicks into place like it's magic. And I know it's almost 15 years now of experience and expertise, putting together a schedule and a route planning. But when that schedule comes together and it's just like, oh my gosh, like, this is beautiful. These drive times are amazing, and we're hitting all the time blocks and everything like, just comes in together, I can tend to think, Well, yeah, that's what it should be. So why would I pat myself on the back? But the reality is is that's kind of hard work to do, especially consistently and every single day, and making sure that it gets done and on chaotic times and all that stuff. But that's a wonderful win to sit there and go, Man, that route, that looks amazing, and I'm really proud of myself that I did that.
Meghan 21:57
Or if you are managing employees and you know that you need to check in, but you don't really enjoy that aspect of it, because you're always afraid that they're going to quit, but you got through a meeting a check in, and the employee didn't quit. That's a win. It's important to name one micro win per visit or per task. It's really going to help you. Pet Sitting just makes this really obvious, but this is really about how we experience our days at work,
Collin Funkhouser 22:21
meaning that we have to focus on these things. This is us creating the experience. I love how you said that this is how we experience our work. Well, you have a choice. You have agency in this of are you, is your day going to be amazing, or is your day going to be ugh by focusing on one micro win per visit, and that could just be, man, I scrubbed all those bowls and they look fantastic. Well, yeah, is that part of my job to make sure that they are clean and hygienic? Yes, but she did it really well, so pat yourself on the back for that. That's a huge micro in for you. Or you you nailed the visit length, or you wrote the really good update, you took a really good photo, find one of those things, or you did a really good email, or you did a really good onboarding, or whatever that is. Find those wins
Meghan 23:03
when we know we have so much to get done in the day. It is important to have systems in place, because that is going to really reduce your mental load. Good days require good systems, all systems, it doesn't matter what it is, managing employees, scheduling a route, dealing with Client Onboarding, actually doing the visits. Each one of these requires a different system, but they are all equally important. If there's missing information in the client profile, things are not going to go well. If you had a bad route, maybe you lost time because you could have should have gone here and there, or the employee should have been here five minutes ago, but you didn't calculate that correctly. It increases that stress. We want to reduce that as much as possible.
Collin Funkhouser 23:46
I recently onboard a new employee, and one of the things that she talked about was how much she loved the detail that we had and how we were supposed to get into a client's home. She really liked the descriptions of the doors and the finicky nature of some of them and little proclivities that we need to do to make things open or shut. Well, she and she said this, she said, I was stressed about the doors until I saw the detail here. Because when we can provide clear systems, or when we make clear systems for ourselves, we have mental clarity. It helps us move through the chaos, because what's the next step? We talked about that? Find that next step? Well, when I have an amazing system, the first the step is obvious, because it's already there. The policies and procedures are there. What's the New Client Onboarding like? Well, I can tell you what the next step is, because I made the system and I'm following it, and whether I'm having a good day or a bad day, it doesn't matter, because I have a system that I'm following.
Meghan 24:47
But you also have to test your systems and make sure that they're good and that they withstand not only the busyness that you have, they're able to scale, but also that they're just inherently good. Because if you have a bad system, that's going to make your good work feel. Hard because then it's not actually going to be good work. It's going to be well, I didn't have all the information, or I wasn't given all the tools, or I couldn't produce something that was good enough because I needed to do more homework. Good systems make hard work feel more manageable, and that's why it's so important to have them
Collin Funkhouser 25:17
when you have that chaos in your day, when you have a system to shovel and shove everything into now you're just working the system. Now you're just working those steps. And this is something that Megan and I worked through when we were trying to figure out our new Client Onboarding procedure of, at what point do we give them certain information, at what point do we move them into the software? At what point do we do a phone call or a follow up or these things? And in the beginning, we didn't really have a system for our new clients. Everything just kind of tried to happen all at the same time. And what ended up happening was there was a lot of duplicative information and an immense amount of overwhelm for the client, because they were just getting everything shoveled on them, and we would call them or text them or email them or go through the software, and there was no rhyme or reason for what we were doing, and clients kind of came in and were confused and unsure of what was going on. And so when we were actually able to take that and go, Okay, how do I actually make this pleasant for them? But more importantly, how do I make sure that when I'm having a bad day, or when I'm trying to onboard five clients instead of one client, everybody gets the same experience, and I can do it repeatedly, and that's really the power here. If I'm sick, if I'm not feeling well, if I have a busy day, doesn't matter. I work the system to bring on the new client, and it's the same every single time
Meghan 26:39
for us, a big system that we had to improve was our hiring. So when we first started hiring, we Collin and I weren't sure of who was doing what task we were kind of just every day be like, did you get to this person? Did you get to this person? And now we have specific tasks assigned to us. We know that I'm the one that creates the ads. I'm the one that sends them the questions, and then at some point, I shuffle them off to Collin, and he does the interviews we have tasks lined out, and a good system to know who does what when. So a challenge
Collin Funkhouser 27:11
for you this week is to fix one reoccurring I'm going to call him a chaos point right this week for you, find one thing that you continually run into and it drives you insane or adds a little bit of chaos and frustration to your day or your week. And fix it, the take. And here's the problem with a lot of these things, we think, well, it's going to take me longer to set up the system to fix the thing, so why wouldn't I just do the thing? And I won't have a system. The issue here is that the thing will keep coming back around.
Meghan 27:43
Yeah, it's a huge time suck. So yes, it's going to take you more time on the front end, but it's going to save you a ton of time on the back end of not having to do it week after week or day after day. You don't need to reinvent the wheel when you already have and while we're talking about systems that make your life easier, there is one outside of your day to day visits that can make a huge difference, and that's how people actually find your business. So here's a quick question, when someone searches for a dog walker in your city, does your business show up? If not, or maybe you're lower in the search results than you want to be, that's where SEO comes in. Pet marketing unleashed has an incredible SEO course made just for pet pros. There's no tech jargon, just simple step by step guidance to help you get found on Google. Michaela makes SEO simple and totally doable, even if you've never touched it before. Because, as she says, it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Learn more at Pet marketing unleashed.com and use the code PSC 15 to save 15% on the SEO unleashed course, because the less you're stressed about where your next client is coming from, the more you can actually focus on the work itself. And that was what is so important. We talk all the time on this podcast about steering the ship in the right direction, making sure that you're still aligned with your mission, remembering why the work matters. Purpose reframes your day. When you wake up and you say, Ugh, I've got so many things on my list. Remember why you're doing this? And it's probably different for everybody. Why are you doing this? Are you doing it for more family time, for more puppy cuddles and Kitty kisses, or saving money for the vacation that you've been planning for five years? Or is it that you truly want to serve more pet parents in your community? Pet Care can feel very routine to us, especially if you've been doing this for years and years and years. You go in, you do the visit, you leave, you go to the next visit. You do it, you leave. Next visit, you do it, you leave. But we have to remember that the work that we do really is meaningful to others. It really does give them that term that we all use, that peace of mind. People can take their trips. They can have long days at work. They can just enjoy themselves, doing their hobbies or whatever they want to do because you are there helping them.
Collin Funkhouser 29:42
Yeah, every visit matters. I know it's a big thing for me. Whenever I'm tired or the day is not starting off well, of I know there's a lot to do in that particular visit, but just taking a first, you know, the first couple minutes of that visit, and really centering on that pet and understanding that if I weren't here, you. You wouldn't get what you need, and your owner wouldn't be able to do what they need to do right now, whatever that is and and really think of it, understanding, why am I here in this home right now? Why am I walking this dog on the sidewalk right now? It's because somebody needed you to do that. Somebody had a need, a desire, an emergency, whatever that was, and they needed help, and they are, they called you, they reached out to you for that, and now you are here. And that does add some gravity to our work. It makes it extremely serious and extremely important, but it should also make it really humbling, and what an honor that what we get to do, what we get to do is be there with that pet while their owner can't, so that their owner can do what they
Meghan 30:48
need to do. It's also something important to impress upon your team as well. When they've had a tough streak of visits lately, or they've walked into a mess of diarrhea, or a cat knocked over a potted plant, and they just can't even it's important to remind them of the your mission as well. We as the business owners aren't the only ones that can feel this way. Our employees feel this too. We need to remind them why we're doing what we're doing, and it's so important
Collin Funkhouser 31:15
for us to stay connected to this why and why the work is important when we move out of doing the dog walks in, the pet sitting visits, and we're doing more administrative and managerial type positions, and even even more so important, if we have admins or other managers or daily team leads who are doing services for us and for our team and for our clients, is Connecting them, always say, because you sent this email, somebody is being helped. This is across the board for what we do, even if it's not obvious, there's always a person on the other side of what we're doing and reminding ourselves of that I am in a service industry, and I'm here to serve people with excellence through providing high quality care for their pets. I know one of the most meaningful things that we've ever had a client say to us. We had a client who we were serving, and her significant other was in another city, and he was not doing well, and he was dying, and she had a late night. We at the time, we did not know this, all we got was a request for visits at 5am for that day, and we didn't hear from her for the next three days, but we were serving her dogs, and then she got back from her trip, and we didn't we had no idea what had happened, but what? What the backstory to that was she woke up and she got bad news about her significant other started driving, realized that she needed care for her dogs, and booked us, and then had complete and total trust and faith in us that we would take care of everything until she could get back. And it was only later where she thanked us for that so that she could have that time with her significant other, stress free and no worries, and she didn't even give it a second thought that was so impactful to us, to know that that's the level that we can provide when done well and executed with excellence every single time. That's the kind of trust and meaningful impact we can make to people's lives by just quote, unquote, showing up and letting the dogs out. That's huge.
Meghan 33:28
When we really want to turn around our day from having an uh at the start of the day to ending the day on wins, we really need to talk about that mental reset that we do, because that is really where we live in our minds, we can turn anything into bad. We can also turn anything into good. And so you may wake up on the wrong side of the bed, but you don't have to stay there. You don't have to let the things that happen to you affect you, and take your emotions on a roller coaster. You can look at them from a new perspective, a positive perspective, because, yes, this job we get to do, we get to be our own bosses. We get to live the life that we want. And a
Collin Funkhouser 34:08
big part of this is recognizing that the work that we have is work that we once had hoped for and longed for to be this busy doing. Right? That's a big thing for me, is knowing, oh my gosh, my day is so busy. Oh my goodness. I have so many emails. Oh my goodness. I have to make so many phone calls. Oh my goodness, I have to, and I have to think back to when we first went full time into this many years ago at this point, saying, wow, wouldn't it be great if all I did was call potential clients and talk to them about how we can serve our dogs and they're their dogs. Wouldn't that be? That would be so amazing. And now I get to do that. I'm doing that now, and how grateful and thankful I am for that, that we can serve people with excellence. That's what we get to do. And that kind of reset of going, Okay, this work that's set before me is hard. This work that's set before me is not easy. See, but I get to do it. I get to help people, and this is what I'm here
Meghan 35:05
for, and I think that's a lot of the reason why people start their days off with the journaling, right? They write down the things that they're thankful for. I know a lot of people do this at nighttime as well, of what they were grateful for that happened that day. But you can also do this in the morning to set yourself up that yes, you have a busy day of task list, but you can write down three things you're grateful for when you do that, you start off and you remember those things throughout the day. I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful that I get to do this. I'm grateful that I have a car to drive me from visit to visit. I'm grateful that I have a working computer that I can send emails and I can strategically plan partnerships.
Collin Funkhouser 35:41
So when we start off the day feeling Ugg and we are dreading and loathe for what's coming up ahead in the work, we have those five shifts that we've talked about. If we have to focus on the next thing, just the one next thing, the very next thing that you have to do, then making sure we do that first thing. Well, once we've identified what it is, doing it well, whether that's a visit, that's an email that's that networking, that's phone call, whatever that is. Do it really, really well so that you can snowball into success. The third thing is noticing those micro wins that you nailed, that you pulled off really well, regardless, again, of whether that was, quote, unquote, just your job or not, when you do something, well, give yourself a pat on the back. Fourth is having systems and then trusting them so that regardless of how your day is and what things are going on, you can work through those systems, and that can actually help cut out a lot of the chaos and give you clarity on what you have to do. And that fifth one, like we just talked about, was remembering why the work matters. Remember why you are here doing this work. Have it on your phone screen. Have it on a visor in your car. Have it on the mirror. Make sure your team has this in places. To remind them this sometimes on a daily time, or every time you have a meeting, remind them why that work matters, why the things that they are doing. Because whether you are doing the actual pet care or not, the feeling that you start with. Doesn't have to determine how you end the day with. We have agency and control, and with a little bit of intentionality and a little bit of planning and some systems in place, we can get there. We hope that today and moving forward, that you can end every day by saying that that was a pretty good day.
Meghan 37:22
We appreciate you listening to this. We hope it's helpful, and if it was, please share it with a another dog walker or pet sitter friend. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and pet marketing unleashed, and we will talk with you next time bye. You. You.
