690: How Do I Get My Clients to Trust My New Employee?
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How do we help clients trust our employees when they have only ever trusted us? In this episode, we talk through the real challenges of moving from a solo business to a team-based model and why this transition can feel so personal for both pet sitters and clients. We break down several common employee structures, from fully team-based to primary-and-backup models, and explain how each one shapes client expectations. We also discuss what it takes to set employees up for success through hiring, onboarding, skills training, oversight, and clear communication. Most of all, we share how we can frame team growth not as a downgrade, but as an upgrade in reliability, consistency, and long-term care.
Main topics:
Employee model structure choices
Why clients resist teams
Training employees to standards
Transferring trust to staff
Framing growth as upgrade
Main takeaway: “We’re growing so we can serve you better for the long term.”
That mindset changes everything. Hiring help is not about lowering your standards or stepping away from quality care. It is about building something stronger, more reliable, and more sustainable for both your clients and your team. When growth is done well, clients gain consistency, backup coverage, and the confidence that care will continue even when life happens. Building a trusted team is not a step backward. It is one of the clearest ways to serve more people with excellence.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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690
Sun, Apr 12, 2026 11:08PM • 50:18
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitter confessional, employee models, client trust, training standards, team-based model, shift-based model, one-to-one model, primary and backup, onboarding process, client communication, hiring process, pet first aid, CPR certification, client expectations, business growth.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Michelle K., Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:01
Hi, 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 joining us today. Thank you also to our sponsors, pet sitters, associates, dog CO and our Patreon supporters, who love the podcast have found value in the show over the past 690 episodes, and they want to give back they have gone to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, and chose the Patreon option. We also wanted to let you know that this is April 2026, and you can use the code prepare for 5% off at Pet first aid for you.com to celebrate pet first aid month, that is pet first aid, the number four and the letter u.com for your pet first aid.
Collin Funkhouser 00:41
We think every professional dog walker and pet sitter should be pet first aid and CPR certified, and having this course done regularly and every April is a fantastic reminder to do this, just like changing your clocks back twice a year, and just like replacing the batteries in your smoke detectors, every April is a perfect reminder to go get certified or recertified, and if it's not just you, your team as well, so that you can serve your clients well and everybody is safe, which is what we all want.
Meghan 01:10
We got a question from a listener on Instagram who said, How do I get my clients to trust my employees as I hire them? It's a great question, and one of the biggest hurdles when you move from solo to a team, everybody loves you, right? That's why they hired you. So how do you translate that trust, that confidence, into somebody else? Well, and you said
Collin Funkhouser 01:31
an important word there. And way this question is phrased sets up a couple different things. First off, we're hiring somebody, and we can only actually hire an employee, and so that's what we're going to be talking about and how we're going to talk about through the rest of this episode. We're not talking about independent contractors, because the things we're going to set up don't work for independent contractors. We're only talking about employees here because hiring an employee allows you to train to a standard. You can actually tell them what is acceptable and what is not, and you can hold them to that really importantly. The second one is that you can implement systems with them. This is the this is the scheduling software. This is the hours that they work. This is how they are supposed to do reports. This is all of that. Also having employees creates consistency from one person to the next, because again, see aforementioned. First thing that I mentioned was training to a standard. Everybody's on the same standard. It's not the same whenever you're using an independent contractor. And then the last thing here is that using employees actually builds a brand beyond yourself. It takes your standards through what makes you amazing, and copy and pastes that into other people. Now they might not do it exactly perfectly like you do, but again, you can train them. You can point them in that direction. You can work and coach them to that so with that ground laid, again, we're going to be specifically talking about how to do this and gain that trust of clients when we're using employees,
Meghan 03:04
you have to first consider your employee model. What do you have? What kind of structure do you have? Before you could ask clients to trust your team, you need clarity on how your team operates. How did you set it up? There are a few common models. One is the fully team based model. Everyone can serve every client. Can do everything in your business. Can do meet and greets, can do training other staff. This way of operating allows for a lot of flexibility. When you can have somebody step in and they know exactly what to do and how to do it. That creates redundancy. It creates extra coverage. If somebody gets a flat tire, they know that Macy needs a dog walk or George needs a let out, and they can do that. It also allows for scalability. If Marsha calls out sick, you're not scrambling to find a replacement. You know, you can just shove somebody else in the slot and they'll know exactly what to do well.
Collin Funkhouser 03:54
And that's specifically, again, what we're talking about here. In a fully team based model, any person on your team can step in and do anything at any time. They have all the notes for any client. They don't, they aren't shadowed on brand new clients that come on board. They are able to step into those and do those confidently and well, you know, obviously, except apart from the training time, right? Training and oversight there. But after that, any client that comes on board, they step into, they don't need to be shadowed, and you don't worry about that. That's what we talk about when we say a fully team based, it's interoperable from one person to the next. Now, with this, there are, or can be, some cons, and I think the biggest one is just there tends to be less consistency per client.
Meghan 04:37
And with that, they push back a lot of, oh, I don't want some random people coming into my home. There's a lot more education that needs to be done for the client to really accept this model, because they think you're just hiring Joe Schmo off the street who doesn't have the credentials that you're really looking for.
Collin Funkhouser 04:55
Well, and that consistency comes in Well, Dave may write his report different than six. Sarah and Sarah may pay attention to certain things that that Ashley does or doesn't, and that's where some of the individual comes in. And so the way you kind of talk about those that that actually becomes a superpower of multiple eyes, multiple ears, multiple hands on the pet and around the home.
Meghan 05:16
The second type of employee model is more of a shift based. So this can be morning visits, midday visits, evening visits. These are split across employees. Doing it this way allows for a lot of efficient scheduling. You know exactly when Marcia is working, and if somebody books a dog walk during that slot, you can just give it to her, and you know that she is going to do it because you've already agreed that that's the day and time she's going to be working with this model comes the need for a lot of employees. So with your morning, you only have that morning person. They need a backup for the morning. Then the same with your midday, same with your evenings. Maybe you have weekend and weekday staff so you don't burn people out and they can go enjoy some days off.
Collin Funkhouser 05:59
So this can lead to having multiple people per day. That's just inherent to this. You have your morning person that's going to see the dog or cat, the afternoon person will be different. They're going to see the dog or cat, and then that evening person will be different, and they're going to see the dog and cat. From a client's perspective, again, this is Wow, three people are coming every day. Now, the advantages to this are, again, the efficient scheduling, but also for the morning, you're only going to have the morning people in that slot, so the people who love waking up early and aren't going to be staying out late are going to be there for the late night owls. You can put them in the evening slot and they're going to thrive there. So it is actually a great way to utilize some natural behaviors and habits of your employees and put them into work in your team, so it's actually they're able to operate and be successful there, as opposed to having to fight against their natural tendencies.
Meghan 06:49
When thinking about the type of employee model that you have, you may have more of a choose your own adventure, or a one to one model. So one staff member per client, this can sometimes lead to burnout, because if you have a lot of clients for this person that travel consistently and need a lot of care, your employee is going to be working a lot. So it makes them more fragile, and the system breaks when that person is unavailable, maybe that your employee wants to take time off or go do a vacation or just have a break every now and then, well, then those clients would be out of the care options, so you have to figure out what to do in that scenario. However, it does create that strong relationship when there is one employee per one client, that client typically raves and loves about that employee. Of, Oh, I love seeing Marsha or Charlie loves his walks with Marsha. And that really, that personal relationship really gets going well
Collin Funkhouser 07:42
because they have that consistency of the same person, and that person is able to build that relationship. They know the tendencies, they know, the proclivities they know, the nuances. What this also tends to do is it congregates a lot of institutional knowledge in single people. And this is powerful in that that person is intimately knowledgeable and aware of all of the past history and things that have happened and all of that other and all the context of that client, which makes that relationship really strong. That danger, though, is when that person leaves or is unavailable. It's really difficult at that point to suddenly transfer all of that over to somebody new. And the way this is typically worked out in businesses, or you hire the employee in and then you say, okay, based off of where you live. Here are the six clients who are closest to you, and here's the way you'll be doing those based off your schedule and availability for pet sitting. That's when it goes, Okay, you need to be available when these six people book. And that's just kind of whenever that is. Now, if it's more dog walking, you can set a little bit more of that routine and consistency and route for them, but that is they, that is their only Walker, their primary Walker, and you may have backups, but again, trans translating and transferring that institutional knowledge tends to be a bit more difficult in this kind of model.
Meghan 09:04
The last model we're going to talk about is a primary and a backup. So you've got a main sitter or walker with trained backups. So maybe Marcia is typically the primary Walker, but every now and then she's got doctor's appointments she needs to go to, or other commitments that she has, and so you need to have other people trained on those visits. So this is kind of a mix of things that we've been talking about where there is that trust in one primary person. I love Marcia, but I also trust Gary and Greg when they need to step in, because Marcia needs to go to her doctor's appointments. As you can probably tell, this comes with a lot of strong internal communication that needs to be going on so that everybody's on the same page and they know when they're going to be needed or not.
Collin Funkhouser 09:51
Now the way this tends to be implemented is you have somebody who's trained, and then they start needing breaks, or you start needing to expand. And so what you do is you hire another employee. And then you have that primary person go and introduce that new hire to all of the people on their route and all of the possible people who they're going to be caring for. And so from an operations perspective, this is really heavy in the operations and labor costs for implementing this, because now you've got all of these visits that you're not just paying one person to do, but two people to do, and usually not just one time. You're going to want them to be shadowed and trained multiple times on that client to make a smooth transition. So from a financial perspective, this tends to eat up a lot of those profits in a business. However, again, that trade off of well, we get a little bit more balance of trust and reliability. So some people think that this is worth it for them. And depending on the kind of clients that you have, the kind of clientele, the kind of dogs that you see this is typically we see a lot of this in behaviorally special case, kind of clients where you have to be very careful around them, given their reactivity, or some of their their medications and some of their their their health, aspects of what they're going through, they require that one on one, hands on contact. But also have to have that backup ability for when that primary isn't available.
Meghan 11:18
Whichever model you have, though, it is important to know it, because it shapes the expectations of your clients. They are going to want to know who's coming in my door. Is it going to be a set of people? Is it going to be one person? Part of that open communication with your clients starts with what structure you have in your business. It determines your hiring strategy. Okay, well, do I need only a morning person or a weekend person? Do I need somebody who's pretty much available all the time? Because I have a one for one model, and I have a lot of clients that book seven days a week, whichever one you choose really determines your client facing promise we will always be there, or Marsha will always be your dog walker. Or we have Gary as your primary, but we always will be there no matter what, because we have these backups.
Collin Funkhouser 12:09
Yeah, again, what is your how you market this, how your structure will determine how you market, what you talk about, because if you you are, if your promise is, we are always available. Well, you better have a fully team based model instead of a one for one, because that's a lot harder to pull off, or at least have the primary plus the backups, if that's going to be your promise, but if your promise is consistency and long term relationships, well now that's more of a one for one kind of model that you are able to promise and deliver that to the clients. And so when we talk about setting expectations appropriately, the language that we use outwardly will set up the expectations of the clients for how they're going to experience our business. Because if we talk about always being available, well we may have always been available as a solo because this is our business. We're passionate about this. We're ready to go. We've got to do this, put food on the table, but as we add an employee, well, they might want to take Sundays off. And now we're not always available anymore for Marsha, who needs us on Sundays for those and now we've broken that promise. So really thinking through not just okay, I need to scale and bring on employees, but how am I going to utilize them? What structure, what model? And there are hybrids of these. You can certainly have a fully team based and more of a shift based, where you do need to have those backups, and everybody's interoperable and swappable or or however that's put together, but know that so that everything matches across the board,
Meghan 13:41
and there's no one that's right or wrong right. It's really what you want to hire for, what works best for your company, and what you want your promise to be to your
Collin Funkhouser 13:50
clients well, and how they need to be served. Again, getting back to what kind of clients are you serving? What kind of dogs are you serving? What kind of cats are you serving? What kind of specialty knowledge, expertise and skills do you have? But also then do your team need to have in order to execute on them that will drive your model? And you have to be hyper aware of that as you bring your own expectations to those employees and how they're going to execute and be doing those visits.
Meghan 14:18
It's important through this entire process to think about why clients may struggle with this, from going from you, just you, to now a suite of people, or maybe just somebody else, clients, oftentimes are not being difficult. They have built that relationship with you, that trust, that confidence with you over months, years, and now you're saying, Oh, well, I love that. You love me, and I love you too, but I now need you to love Marsha, because she's the one coming on board.
Collin Funkhouser 14:49
Well. So again, in that kind in that context, their response to maybe being a little unsure, it's perfectly reasonable. It's actually to be expected to have somebody be a. A little bit hesitant here, because for the longest time, like you said, Megan, it was us. We were the brand, right? They hired a person, not your company. That's a very different mindset for a client and what they are bringing, what they're wanting in their life. Did they hire a person or a company? And when we don't have a lot of boundaries set up, they have a person in their pocket. They're not working with a company, it's a person. And we can start to develop a little bit of that if we have things like office hours where we don't respond to messages at past certain times or before certain times, or we have some cancelation procedures and some booking procedures and some things set up into place that can start to get your clients down that road, so that when you do bring on that person, it's not a shock to them, because they are working with a company, because their company acts in a certain way. But in that beginning, that transition is hard to go from person to company.
Meghan 16:03
It's also understandable why clients feel this way, because there's no relationship with this person yet they don't know Marcia, they don't know John, they don't know Gary. There's this fear of the unknown of how is my dog gonna do with this new person? I don't know I don't know their credentials or your hiring process at all. So did you just pick them up off the street? You know that trust is relational. You have to build that trust over time. It's not necessarily logical, because you could come at it and say, Hey, I did this extensive hiring process, and here's Marcia. I'm going to train her, and she's going to start on Tuesday, ready, set go, and the person's gonna go, Whoa, I don't I don't like this. It's changed. It's hard, it's uncomfortable. I don't know. Thank you. I just want you can't you can't you just make an exception for me. Well, and think
Collin Funkhouser 16:52
about what their process was like for finding you. They may have reached out to 2345, different dog walkers and pet sitters, they may have done several different meet and greets to get to know that person, ask different questions, and they trusted you. Out of all of them, they felt comfortable with you during that relationship building process, and that trust was really foundational there when we bring somebody in, well, the client didn't have any agency or control over that new person entering their home, right? So there's this fear of risk that that person has actually, because it's their home, their pet, it's their routine, and they don't, they didn't get to choose that new person that's coming in and they're they then have to place their full faith and trust in in you, right? That's a trust transfer problem at the end of the day. That's not marketing. You can't market your way out of that. That's a that's a trust that has to be transferred from you, inherently to that next person. And have I done the work ahead of time to to so that and recognize that this is a very vulnerable thing for my clients to be doing well, and
Meghan 18:02
there's also that fear of inconsistency, right? Well, my dog loves you. I don't know if my dog is going to love this new person. So is this new person going to be as consistent as you? Are they going to operate the exact same? Are they still going to show up at 10am when I need them, and wash the bowl the same way, and clip the dog the same way, and make sure to scoop all the sides of the litter box just like you've done. And put the emojis in the report, because I love those. Or write it from the dog's perspective because I just think that's so cute. Or do the photo shoot on the big holidays and make them wear funny glasses and funny hats, like I love that so much. Are you going to make sure that they do it the same way? Yeah, and
Collin Funkhouser 18:42
this one is especially insidious in that you have a lot more experience doing pet sitting, dog walking full stop than your employees that you're bringing on. You have a lot more knowledge, a lot more into better intuition in circumstances and know what to look for and how to think through problems. And clients love that. They love the little things that you catch and that you that you bring to their attention. They love how you find issues and you solve them without having to reach out. They love how you naturally Intuit what that client is going to need, and the little light and the thing like this, and you need help, though, and you bring that person on, and that client is immediately going to think, are they going to be
Meghan 19:30
like you well? And it's that institutional knowledge that you were talking about a minute ago, of, is that going to transfer to the new person? So you no pressure, but you have to kind of have your ducks in a row of, well, I know everything about this dog, and I need to write it down, because you new person need to also learn all of the things that I know about this dog, and it's a lot, but that is a way to maintain that consistency. We're going to talk more about setting your employees up for. Success after a word from our friends at pet sitters associates. As a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at petsit llc.com as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's petsit llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. Part of setting up your employees for success means that you have done something to earn the trust of your client on behalf of the employee. How have you gone about earning that trust? Well, have you vetted the person that you're hiring? Have you done a background check? Have you done multiple, multi stage interview process, beyond just Do you like dogs more? I love dogs. Everybody loves dogs. Every everybody loves animals. I love animals more than people, right? That's what everybody says. Have you done more steps than just that? In Depth, questions, a background check. How are they communicating? What's their communication style, their communication ability? Because that is going to make or break this business. We are not brick and mortars. We don't get to see the person on the daily basis, we have to be communicating via text, via phone call in real time with your employees. How are
Collin Funkhouser 21:29
they with that? This vetting process, you can think of it also as Have you assessed the ability of this person? Have you assessed their fit for the kind of work that's required. Have you done your due diligence in this process? That goes a long way to earning the trust of clients and potential clients when they know you put in a lot of work to be very selective for the people walking in their door. Because here's the thing, your clients are also really selective about who they let in their door. You need to be equally, if not more, so selective. So when you tell them, yeah, I had, I mean, some things we talked to our clients about sometimes is, yeah, we had 300 people apply to our job. Post, I hired one person out of that. That's how selective we are. That is how protective I am of you and your pet and your home. That earns a lot of trust.
Meghan 22:33
Well, in brass tax, it's our reputation, right?
Collin Funkhouser 22:36
Yeah, yeah, it is your reputation. You. You owe it to yourself to be that selective, because yes, it is your reputation. It's your name on the line. If something bad happens, you are the one who allowed that
Meghan 22:50
because of your hire. They're not going to come after Marsha, they're going to come after your company and your name, yep.
Collin Funkhouser 22:57
And you can also build this trust by having a really good onboarding process into your company, not just into the processes, but also into the culture. Right? Do your clients know how you train your staff to know what your standard actually means? Do they what does that actually mean, and how is that executed? How do you communicate as a company, and what do you value? What are your values as a company? And do your team know that? Do your employees have that internalized? And here's the other reason, it's not just so that your clients know to trust them. It also helps your your employees during decision making processes, so that they will act. They will decide. They will choose like you, because you've set those values before them, and they'll know when I make this choice, when I have to make this judgment call, if it doesn't align with my company's four or five core values, I shouldn't choose that. That actually frees you up a lot to stop answering all those little, tiny, little bitty questions that come up all the time, and your clients now have an amazing experience, because these people are acting like you. They're making the same decisions like you, which is what they want. They want your standard to be perpetuated by everybody, and you can actually make that happen. So do your clients understand this process of onboarding, and are you actually onboarding into the culture of your company?
Meghan 24:22
Onboarding is great, but we also want to talk about the training, the training of the skills. So we have the phrase hire the heart, train the skills, and that's exactly what we mean here. So leash handling. How do you go about doing that? What's the proper way to hold a leash? Defensive dog handling on a dog walk. You've been walking dogs for years, you know exactly how to do it. When a dog sees another dog or a squirrel and wants to chase after it, you know what to do, but that institutional knowledge needs to be transferred to somebody else now. So how do you communicate that verbally and in written form? How you go about doing a dog walk, entering homes? Is there a specific way that you do this to prevent pets from escaping everybody thinks they have Grade A knowledge because they have their own pets at home and they know how they behave. But I'm not just talking about your pets at home. I'm now talking and training you on hundreds of dogs and cats who they have all sorts of behaviors who you've never encountered before. So how are you going to train the employee to those behaviors and then writing reports that is the critical piece of communication between us and the client. What does that look like? What can they say? What can't they say? What do they need to include? What should they never talk about? Because that is a management issue,
Collin Funkhouser 25:41
and the list of skills can go on and on here, but ultimately this is you putting down in an SOP. And it's not just putting it in an SOP, because then you have to teach people this. And teaching people the skills is a skill in and of itself.
Meghan 25:58
Yeah, it's one thing to know it in your head. It's one thing to do it yourself, but then to have to transfer it to somebody else. Oh, well, I you know you can think. I never thought that I do this thing this way, but now that I see you doing it the wrong way, I definitely know that we should be doing it my way,
Collin Funkhouser 26:17
and to do it well and to do it without showing all the time, allowing them to learn and giving them some rope to go out and do this on their own in a safe and protected manner, right? It's not just what we're talking about here. It's not just having the skills written down. It's then you have the then done the work of training those skills and passing that on to other people. Because once you have them written down once you have things trained, the next step in this process of building trust on behalf of your team for your clients, is now you have to have oversight and accountability. How are you doing that? And this is pretty difficult in our industry, because this one person out there for hours at a time around nobody else in the company at all. So how are you building in oversight and accountability through you can just do ride alongs and shadowing, coming in behind people to check their work, or riding along with them and doing visits with them, and not just during the initial training period, but checking in quarterly on things. Are you reviewing their reports? Are you actually reading what they wrote in their sentence structure? Are you critiquing the kind of videos and photos that they're sending and making sure that what they wrote and said they did is actually what was supposed to be done at the visit and having good feedback loops? Are you checking in? Do your team, do your employees know to come to you and that you're not always going to be there to hark, hark on them and harp on them and and give them bad things, but encourage them and coach them in doing this on a regular basis, because ultimately, in all of this, you have to have clear consequences of if they Don't do certain things, ultimately, what's the point in having a really good sop on leash handling and how to enter a home if you're never going to hold somebody accountable for that? I mean, it's a waste, you might as well, here's the thing, you might as well not write it down if you're never going to write somebody up if they don't
Meghan 28:19
do it. And we're not saying this is easy. No, we hate it every single time. It never gets easier. We never enjoy it. But it is part of the job.
Collin Funkhouser 28:28
Yep, it is. It is you. That's your standard you wrote down. It's in black and white. It's in your should be it's in your handbook. Now, when somebody doesn't do it, are we ready to follow up and hold them accountable to them.
Meghan 28:41
Setting your employees up for success also means writing down that client specific knowledge, getting it out of your head and onto paper or out of your other employee's head onto paper because they're getting ready to leave your company to go do something else. Are all of the client notes updated? This can definitely be a full time job. Admin nightmare, admin overhead, significant issue, but it is super important to the foundation of your business. When you go to hire employees of where is the knowledge? Are the notes updated? Do they understand this particular pet and the quirks or the nuances of it. Do they know what success looks like for this client? We have a lot of clients that have extremely specific requests, and if they're not followed, we are read the riot act. We our clients are very particular. So how do your employees know that Gary likes his lights on, but Brad doesn't, and all of the particulars of where the trash cans go and the mail is put, and if pets have specific food bowls and the requests can go on and on, but if your systems are tight, your confidence will show, and the clients will feel that
Collin Funkhouser 29:57
there is a reality check that. Need to take though. The fact is, is that some things just we just have to say them at this point. Otherwise, it's not being honest. Importantly, not every client will be okay with the team. That's just a fact of the matter here. Some clients only want one person. Some clients are only ever going to want you.
Meghan 30:21
And this can hurt when you go to hire your first employee and half your clients say, no, no, no, I really did want you. That's why I hired you. Don't you understand? It's you who I want. Yeah, that doesn't feel good, because it's like, well, I'm getting burned out, or I really need help. I cannot accommodate you because I don't have enough room in my schedule. And so don't you just understand client that in order to do this, I have to hire an employee. There's this tension that we have well, and it's
Collin Funkhouser 30:50
not just with the clients we have. Additionally, some pets truly do require consistency of person that some pets just really require that, whether that's behaviorally or their medications, whatever, that is true for a spur, I think a very small subset of pets out there, but it is true for that. So here we are. We're faced with the fact, it is a fact not everybody's gonna be okay with the team. Some people only want you, and some pets require that consistency. We have that. Additionally, we have the fact that you cannot shadow forever. When Megan and I were first hiring, boy, this was hard to know when to stop. When do I stop tagging along with this employee and making sure they really, really, really, really get it. And, oh, this is a new client, so I'm really, really going to train you on this, and I got to make sure you know this client, and you got to prove this to me. And we kept shadowing and shadowing and shadowing, it becomes untenable. We have other stuff to do. We had own visits to do. We had a business to run. You personally. Cannot introduce every single visit, every single time,
Meghan 31:57
well and to every employee as well, right? Because Gary may come on board, but two weeks later, decide that it's not for him and you have, you need to hire somebody else now,
Collin Funkhouser 32:07
yep, or maybe you, you're you, maybe you're so booked that you've got three visits happening at the same time. How are you going to introduce those three? How is that going to happen? You can't or maybe you didn't do it one time and you did the other. This model will break your schedule and your profitability to its core, it will bring it to its knees. So between these facts, there is a ceiling to what you can accommodate, and so we have to make some hard choices here. We have to make some hard decisions about our business, maybe when we start bringing on employees, it means that I have to limit certain kind of clients. It may mean that if I'm bringing on employees, if that's really the best thing for me, I may have to say no to my clients if they only want me. I may just have to it may also mean that I have to say no to maybe some of those behaviorally or medically needy pets that I had been used to and that I'm perfectly comfortable doing I can do Sure I'll do a sub q with my with my eyes closed in the dark and upside down, ooh. Can I guarantee that every person on my team is capable of doing that to my level? I don't know. So maybe I can't take on those clients and have to refer those out. That really becomes our first screening process in our gut check as we bring on that team,
Meghan 33:32
saying no, can really be hard for a lot of us, but sometimes we're in the position where we don't really have another choice of we actually have other commitments during night times, and so in order for this to happen, we have to hire somebody at night. And so not that our backs against the wall, but, you know, we just, we have, we are forced to say no to some clients and set those boundaries, those
Collin Funkhouser 33:54
boundaries of No, you don't get to pick and choose who comes over. We've certainly gotten that. We have an A meet us section on our website. And people will call us sometimes and go, Okay, I would like so and so and so and so to do them, to come over and do my pets, and we have to go, that's not how any of this works. Like, let me explain to you what it means to work with my company. That's a boundary setting exercise, and reminding people how that is and why we do that, even to existing clients. Sometimes, whenever they're scheduling right, it's like, okay, it might not be that person, because their schedule and availability we're still working on that you may have to say, and you come to a point where you have to be honest with yourself, and it hurts. But if this is really, again, if this is really the direction that you need to go, you are going to have to say the phrase, we may not be the best fit anymore. And here are some referrals for you. And that's, again, that's that's kind of part of scaling here and understanding where our limitations are. And then accepting those and moving on.
Meghan 35:04
Because, just as we were solo and we were not for everybody, because you can't serve a client that lives 100 miles away from you and also one who lives 50 miles in the other direction, right? So you were saying no to people before, it's just now in a different capacity, of you want the same person, I'm not able to accommodate that anymore.
Collin Funkhouser 35:27
And now a word for Michelle at dog Co.
Michelle K. 35:29
What does it take to scale your pet care business? My name is Michelle Klein. I'm the founder of dog CO, launch where pet care companies come to grow and scale. And I want to send you a case study of how one of my clients took his monthly revenue in just one year from $17,000 to over $73,000 and yes, that is monthly revenue, not annual. To get this case study and to learn more about dog CO and what we do and how we help companies go to dog CO, launch.com forward slash case study. We've talked
Meghan 36:02
about employee models. We've talked about why clients may struggle with this. We've talked about setting our employees up for success. Now we need to talk about how to make that transition. This is where most people go wrong, because they present it as a problem. They may say, I'm sorry, I'm not available, but I've just hired this new person, Tom, and he's great, and Barney's gonna love him, I just know it, and he'll be there on Tuesday at 10. Thank you. Well, that's not the way that we want to present this, because it's not a problem, it's an upgrade. Frame everything as a benefit. So reliability, no more missed visits. I'm not always available. I have other commitments, I have other clients, but now you get the added benefit of extra eyes and ears because I've trained Greg and
Collin Funkhouser 36:52
Tom Well, you may even need to point back to a specific situation where you were late to a visit because something came up, or you had to cancel visits because something came up. Now you can say, hey, guess what? We are always available. And that's the really important aspect here. We are always available. I if I get a flat tower tire. Now Tom can come and do this, because he's my backup for you. So Baxter still gets his walk. Isn't that great, but that's such an upgrade, and what a peace of mind that the client has now, because now they don't have to worry about somebody getting over or not we are going to be over there. It's kind of how
Meghan 37:30
when we talked about thinking of your business as not just you or not just your business. You are a company. You are more than just a pet sitter and dog walker. So also this way. Now when we think I'm a company, it is us, it is we. We use this inclusive language of it's more than just me. Now, not no longer saying I or me, or I'll be right there, or I'll be there on Tuesday, we will be there. We are consistent. We are reliable. You can count on us. We have this consistency of a trained team, not random individuals. These employees went through an extensive hiring process, multi stage. We really vetted them, background check, 10 hours of training online, another 10 in the field, et cetera, et cetera. These are not just random people
Collin Funkhouser 38:21
off the street. You can brag about that, and part of bragging is, yes, marketing and talking to people what you do, but it's also getting that people to trust you. And why do they should they trust you and your company? Well, look at all the stuff that we do on the back end, and that's how you have consistency. Additionally, one of the benefits that your clients have now is just longevity. You can say we're not going anywhere if I get sick, your dog can still get walked. If I need to take a break and go to the hospital, if I need to travel, if I need to do this, if whatever happens to me, we're going to be here. We're going to be around and that should be that now you have confidence to go and live your life and do the things that you want to do, knowing that we'll be here for you,
Meghan 39:04
because it's not just Megan's dog walking anymore. It's Tuscaloosa dog walking or Tuscaloosa pet sitting now it's it's the company as a whole who is now going to be there for you as a bulwark, as a stopgap of whatever you need. We are here when you are talking to your clients about this, we can sometimes feel like we need to justify this. When we talk about pricing, this is kind of the same thing of I have to raise $2 and because gas is going up, and because of inflation and because the world is terrible, I now have to increase my prices. Well, no, you don't have to justify that. And you also don't have to justify why you hire. You don't have to. You don't have to say, Well, I've been in the hospital recently and I really needed some extra help. You don't have to give your life story in order to say, here's what we're doing now. I really appreciate and have loved being on this journey with you the past few years. Here's the new direction that we're heading in. Practically what this looks like is first to stop being available. Old, because if clients have a choice between you or the new person, it doesn't matter how great or not they think the new person is, they're going to choose you every single
Collin Funkhouser 40:09
time, right? If, oh, hey, well, I could do your walk because I'm open, but also Jamie's working that same day,
Meghan 40:17
they're going to choose you. I just
Collin Funkhouser 40:18
have you, right? No, the option is absolutely, I'll get your walk book. We'll be happy to take care of it done. That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all you have to say. You have communicated now that your company will take care of that walk and to help do some of these introductions, though, because we need to get that trust and the knowledge of the people who are coming into the home. Build out a team page. We build out a team page on our website so clients can see faces, they can read bios. They can understand more who is coming into their home. Now, they might not be able to know exactly for which visit, for which person at what time of day that person is, but they have some familiarity. They see those names. They see the smiling faces. They read the bios and the stories and the backgrounds about that. This helps bridge a relational gap that just exists again. They have a relationship with you. They don't know your team from Adam. And now you can say, hey, here's some information in a cool photo with them with a dog. Oh, wow. Look, they don't seem half bad. Look, they're smiling. Okay, this sounds good, and they all. We can start that process by just having that team page there for people to go and see.
Meghan 41:27
We also need to think about proactive communication. So maybe this is a bespoke call or bespoke message to the client that you know is going to struggle with this. You know that there's probably a handful of clients who are going to just say, Nope, I am not going on this journey with you. And thank you. I will find another person who can be consistently reliable for me again, a different company or a different person. You're just not going to convince them, but maybe if you get them on a call, you could hear them out, hear their concerns, hear their grievances or their questions, and address their concerns directly.
Collin Funkhouser 42:07
Yeah, here's how that may go. If you call up, you say, hey, Kathy, I just want to call and let you know that I'm really excited and wanted to get your feedback too, about letting you know that we're going to be hiring an employee to come and be doing some of the dog walks. If Kathy says, Well, I don't know about having people strangers in my home. And you know, I've had used you for two years, and I just think this is going to be really hard because Baxter is going to have to meet new people. And here's what you say, Well, I understand that, and actually, because of those concerns, that's why I vetted the people coming in. You know, I had 300 people apply for this job, and I only picked one after a multi stage interview process, because I wanted the best for you and for Baxter. And once I brought them on, boy, can I talk to you about the training, they'll probably say it was too much, but I just couldn't think it was enough, given how much I value you. I mean, I had them do this and this and this, and their pet first aid and CPR trained, and we're doing all this stuff together, and I can be there to shadow on that first visit to make sure that that goes well, but that way we can get off on a good fit, because I want to do that for you, and that's why I've put all this together. Talk about benefits for them. Man, you may have just made an immediate connection. That person feels seen, they feel heard, and they they feel like you've taken them into account and you predicted what their concerns were before they even got there. Use that opportunity when you hear have those concerns to say, yeah, I get that. That's why I and insert what you did and how exclusive you were for hiring and everything that you put into place, yeah, making
Meghan 43:43
sure that they understand the intense hiring, onboarding and training that you do for each employee, that you're not just throwing them to the wolves and good luck Chuck it's no I spent time, I invested my own time into them so that they can be the best. They can replicate me as
Collin Funkhouser 43:58
best as they could. And this is a part where we personally as our team, has grown and expanded, and we've encountered more and more new clients. This is where we spend a lot of time talking about what we do, how we do it, how we keep this team consistent, how we keep people on the same page, how we communicate what the expectations are to operate as a team. Because honestly, most clients have no idea of how that could even possibly work, and sometimes, just knowing that you've got a process and you've thought about it, that's enough to put them at ease. You may
Meghan 44:32
even suggest doing trial visits, let the client experience the new team member before a big trip. You know that trust really grows through exposure, not necessarily for explanation. With some clients, you know you could get them on the phone and try your best to explain and put them at ease, but they may still be uneasy, and so trial visits with me and Gary both there at the visits, and then just Gary and see how. The dog does, or see how the cat does, and hopefully, then, with that new exposure of Gary, write in the reports, even though you're there, the client can then see, oh, well, this isn't so bad. It's generally the same kind of care well.
Collin Funkhouser 45:13
And part of this whole process, what you're trying to do is just normalize this transition again. You're not coming at panicked or freaked out or worried yourself, you're not coming at that. This is major and a huge upheaval and a big, massive ordeal. No, you're just, hey, we're growing so we can serve you better for the long term. This is just what we're doing. This is what normal. This is normal. This is normal. This is the new normal. And when you're doing that, you're excited about it. Now I know, especially when you're hiring for that first time, the first couple times, is really nerve wracking. It can be you can be really anxious about how people are going to do and how they're going to perform and and you're putting a lot on the line for this. But if you're not excited, your clients won't be either. If they don't hear the joy that you have for this, the excitement, the energy that you bring, they're not going to be bringing it on themselves
Meghan 46:05
either, especially if you start apologizing because you're not available. But Gary is well, then that's they're going to client is going to perceive that as substandard care of well, why are you apologizing? I wanted you to begin with so you just do the visit like you have been doing for two years, right?
Collin Funkhouser 46:21
Exactly. Don't apologize again. Normalize it. Offer those trial visits. Get excited and be excited about this from a genuine point. And of course,
Meghan 46:30
none of us want to lose clients, right? But again, just as you were saying no to people when you were solo, same here is just a different perspective. And we don't want to make clients mad. We don't want to lose them. We don't want clients to be frustrated at this new process that they have to go through at the same time, if this is truly where you need to steer your ship for the business, you cannot be thwarted. You have to do what's best for you, and if that means you need to take nights and weekends off, or you need to elevate yourself out of the company, to do, to just do admin and no longer do field visits. That's where you need to go. Don't let one or two clients steal your joy from going in the direction you need to go.
Collin Funkhouser 47:11
I think this shift from me to a team is it's difficult no matter what industry you are in, but I think it's especially difficult to make in the pet care industry, dog walking and pet sitting, and that's because of that intimate relationship that we have, that that long term trust, that foundation that we have with our clients and they have with us, it that is a one for one model right off The bat, and we have to take that and carefully hand it off and delicately go through that process and procedure and and yes, some of that is on the client and getting them to accept it. A good chunk of that is on us and us being comfortable and okay with that, and recognizing that this is good and healthy. What we've talked about through this episode has been how to ease that transition, recognizing those limitations that just that reality check of sometimes this is just not going to work, and we have to be okay with that. But for those that it is okay after I've had to decline and offer referrals. For those others, how can I communicate? Set up my team up for success, that they can go and kill this and rock this out of the world. But when we make this, it's the biggest difference between having something and having something bigger than ourselves, right? It's this. I can serve more of my community with the Excellence in my standards that should be exciting for us. That again, if that's the direction that you are going, I would, I would challenge you to find joy and excitement in that aspect. If you want more out of your business, well, you serve people with excellence. Now you have the opportunity to train and equip people on your team, your employees, to go and serve more people with excellence and impact their lives and more lives impacted. That that is truly exciting and that that kind of optimism, that looking forward, that viewpoint that you have, that you bring through all of this, is really just what we get to do, and it's really exciting. And those Collin your clients, they're going to see that that helps bring them that they see that they're part of something bigger your team. As you bring them on, they know they're part of something bigger, and the whole thing snowballs and goes from there.
Meghan 49:49
We really appreciate you listening to this episode, and hopefully it was valuable to you. If it was, please share it with a dog walker or pet sitter friend. We would like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and dog Collin. We will talk with you next time bye. You.
