708: You Get What You Pay For
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What happens when we tell clients not to choose a pet sitter based solely on price, but then make every business decision based on cost ourselves? In this episode, we explore the disconnect between the advice we give clients and the choices we make as business owners. We discuss the hidden costs of free software, delayed hiring, skipped education, and avoiding professional help. We share the investments that transformed our own business, from software and certifications to coaching and conferences. We also examine the difference between being frugal and being cheap, and why strategic investments often create the biggest returns.
Main topics:
Hidden costs of cheap decisions
Software and systems investments
Outsourcing and hiring support
Education coaching and growth
Frugal versus cheap mindset
Main takeaway: “If you truly believe that your clients get what they pay for, then you have to accept that your business gets what you pay for too.”
We’re quick to explain why professional care costs more than the cheapest option. We talk about training, insurance, reliability, backup plans, and professionalism. But are we holding ourselves to that same standard? Too often we delay hiring help, avoid upgrading software, skip education, or put off investments that could make our businesses stronger because we’re focused only on the price tag.
The real question isn’t “How much does it cost?” It’s “What is it costing me not to do it?” Sometimes the most expensive decision is refusing to invest in the tools, systems, and expertise that could move your business forward.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
Meghan 0:02
Does this sound familiar? A potential client reaches out, they ask about your prices, you tell them, and then suddenly they disappear. They ghost you, or they say, 'Wow, that's expensive, or they say, 'I found someone cheaper, or better yet, they say, 'My neighbor's kid can do it for half that. Why would I pay you?
Collin 0:21
That's my favorite one.
Meghan 0:23
Most professional pet sitters have some version of the same response. That's fine, you get what you pay for. And honestly, there's truth to that. You aren't selling the same thing as the hobby sitter, you're selling your experience, your training, your insurance that you pay for, your systems, your reliability your backups? It's not just you, your professionalism, but do we actually believe that principle when it comes to our own businesses? Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 0:50
I'm Collin.
Meghan 0:51
We are the host of Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today, wherever in the world you are. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, Pet Sitters associates and our fantastic Patreon supporters, who are dog walkers and pet sitters, just like you. They also listen to the podcast wherever in the world they are, and they want to see the podcast continue. So, they've gone to Pet Sitter confessional.com/support and chose the Patreon option. There are two different levels, a Dachshund level and a Great Dane level. You can choose which one works for you, and both go to support the podcast, if you've been in this business for any length of time, you know that the cheapest option is rarely the best option. Cheap usually breaks easily, it doesn't last long, and so, while many of us say that clients shouldn't choose the cheapest sitter, then let's turn it around on ourselves. Well, we often use free software long after we've outgrown it, because we don't want change, or we don't want to pay for the extra features that we actually do need that are integral to our business, or we avoid hiring help because it's expensive, and yeah, it is, but at the end of the day, it does provide that safety net, or we refuse coaching because it's also expensive. It's very costly to get that personalized one on one help, but if we want our business to go to the next level, sometimes it's required, or sometimes we refuse education. I don't know about that certificate. Maybe I'll get it next year once I've saved enough money. The
Collin 2:17
biggest thing that happens here is that we will patch systems together and torture the free option, the easy access options. We will use those and try and wring everything out of those long past where we actually should have done something about it. With right, we, we tell our clients, no, don't make a decision solely based off of price. Yeah, I know my services are costly, but you get what you pay for, so don't focus on the price, focus on the value. And then, what do we do? We make decisions solely on price, solely on the bottom line of how much is it going to cost each month, and that is a big disconnect between what we say and how we actually operate.
Meghan 2:55
Now, yes, it is true. We do have budgets, we have to stay within our means, we don't want to be spending exorbitant amounts of money that we're not actually bringing in, so yes, there is a line here, but cheap actually costs you more than you think. One of the most powerful questions is, what has being cheap cost you? And I'm looking at the mirror here, because I don't like spending money, I am pretty frugal. So, what has it cost me over the years in our business, don't ask yourself, what did the software cost? How much money per month did the coach cost? But instead, ask yourself, what did not buying it cost? Did this project take you a lot longer than you thought it was going to, because you didn't want to outsource and actually pay somebody to do it for you, which would have actually gotten it done a lot faster.
Collin 3:40
Well, it's actually, it's that's a good example, because a lot of us go, "Oh my goodness, I can't imagine paying 60 bucks a month for software, that's so much, quote unquote, so much money. But how much in time, and how many hours does that save from my life in order to spend that? What you know, it could be more than that, right? Scheduling software, it can get quite costly, 200 300 $400 a month, but could my business actually function without it? If the answer is no, then that money is worth every single penny, or maybe it's that virtual assistant that you have that's helping you and your admin for $1,000 a month, a big chunk of change, but without that person, would I have missed something? Would an email have gotten lost? Would the post not have gone out? Would the update not have been messaged to all of my clients? What would I have missed?
Meghan 4:32
I think more so than just talking about price here. What cheap actually cost you is cheap actually costs you a lot of times peace of mind, because yeah, things get missed, things don't get done, things fall through the cracks. So, more than the money, it's the trust in the systems that you have, or the people that you have in place, that it really is costing you.
Collin 4:51
Yeah, what if that, what if that coach that costs has that $5,000 program, or whatever it is, what if they help you avoid a major. Mistake that could have cost you $50,000 I mean, this is the entire point of lawyers. Okay, I'm gonna have to pay a lawyer 350 bucks an hour, $400 an hour, so that I don't get sued and lose $100,000 or have insurance in order to pay. With this, is another big part where people go, I don't want to pay 20 bucks a month for insurance, I can't afford that, or 120 bucks a month for insurance.
Meghan 5:27
Well, you want to know how much a dog bite to a hand costs, that's a lot of money.
Collin 5:30
No, you don't, is the answer to that one. Right, we are often excellent at seeing a return on investment for our clients, or at least being able to pitch the return on investment for them, the lifestyle, the outcome, whatever that is, but we are terrible at seeing a return on investment for ourselves and our business,
Meghan 5:47
and I feel like this could be expanded across the board. It's the $20 a month software that we don't want to purchase, it's also the $8,000 rebrand as well.
Collin 5:57
Right,
Meghan 5:58
so I think we need to get a lot better at seeing what the actual ROI on things is I'm not going to sit there and do a rebrand, so yes, it's very costly, but at the end of the day, they're the professionals, they're going to do it right, or the software, well, it's actually going to give my clients more peace of mind, and I'm not going to have my text messages being bombarded at every hour of the day, I know that it sits over there in the software, I can get to it when I can.
Collin 6:21
Yep, things don't fall through the cracks. Remember, free isn't free. We have to remember that, and it's a lesson that we often learn when it's too late. Free almost always costs us something. And, Megan, you brought up it's not just about time, it's about it is about opportunity costs, it is about peace of mind. Free software often costs you time and frustration in dealing with it because of the limitations that it has, or you have to have a lot of manual work to make something actually progress and stay organized.
Meghan 6:49
This is actually funny. Side note, because my mom wanted me to go to a baseball game where you got a free hat once you got in the gate, and I was explaining to her mom, it's not free because you have to pay for the ticket to get in the gate, and she said, "No, it's a free hat, like, no, you have to pay for it. Sure, it's quote "free, but it's not actually free, because you have to pay. Yeah,
Collin 7:09
and the hotel, and the gas, and all this stuff, right? There are hidden costs to doing this, and that we have to sit down and just have to make sure that we are, we are weighing appropriately, how much is my time worth versus how much is time is saved by paying for that software or that that free advice that we get from people. Well, sometimes clarity is not there because they don't have the context, they don't have the systems, they don't have the processes to accurately tell you what to do in your business. Instead, it can be generic, it can be just fluff, and it can be hard to move through quickly because it's not clear, and so I end up wasting my time trying to parse through that free advice that broad, that generic advice from somebody on Hello Internet or Dr. Google. We end up not having the clarity to move forward quickly and make good decisions
Meghan 8:03
when we are so booked in our business, and it's just us, and we're solo, we may ask a neighbor or a family member to help out in our business, but that free labor is not actually free, because what does that cost? That costs accountability. Well, did my sister, who I sent to go do this pet sit, did she actually give the pill correctly? Well, I don't know, but I guess I have to trust her because she's my family member. Then there's also that consistency. Am I sure that this person did the same job as I would have done, or as well as I would have done when I don't actually have a training manual, or I didn't train them to how I want it done. The price tag isn't always on the invoice. Sometimes it's hidden in the wasted time, in the wasted years, and the wasted peace of mind, and the waste of mental burden and bandwidth that we have. There is this myth out there that we have to be self-reliant in order to get things done, that it all has to ride on my shoulders. A lot of us business owners wear self-reliance like a badge of honor, of I built this myself. I built this from the ground up. I figured it out myself. I don't need help. I've got this. And yes, there is this sense of pride you should have in your own business, in the fact that yes, you did build this from the ground up. But what we're saying here is, when you use it as an excuse for not doing something that you should, that's when it becomes dangerous.
Collin 9:19
Yeah, imagine, just imagine if your client said, 'No, I don't need a pet sitter. I'll just.. I'll figure this out on my own. I'll have my neighbor do it. I'll just figure this.. I'll just take care of this. We would immediately see the red flags. We would immediately see the risks. We would immediately have 23 things that we could tell them where that's going to go wrong and why that's not going to work out for them, and the outcomes that they're not going to get, and yet we do the exact same thing. At some point, growth requires outside expertise, that is, oh, that hurts. At some point, growth requires outside expertise for me, and we said this a lot. Maybe it's the CPA that's going to help you. Unlock some tax planning for you and your business to better control costs. Maybe it's that lawyer who's going to have that good handbook, or that HR department that can help you design a good handbook and manual and policies and procedures to actually protect you from cancelations and all sorts of labor laws, or the marketing expert that can finally get you in front of the people that you desperately want to be walking the dogs and caring for their cats. You, we can't be all of this. I can't be my own business coach, because if I could be my own business coach, I wouldn't need a business coach, but I do. So, what do I do with this, right? I can't be all of these things at the same time, and be an expert in every single one of them, and so knowing I have reached my ceiling, I'm done, I'm capped out, I can study, I can learn, I can grow, but that myth that Megan talked, that myth you talked about, of okay, well, I have that initial instinct to go, I'll just bootstrap it, I'll just take care of us, all pushed through the ceiling. Should I do that, or should I go get help? Should I invest that money in somebody who can actually help me without me having to become a lawyer? Because I'll tell you what, I don't want to go through the bar, I don't want to study and go to the go to school and do all that stuff. I'm not interested, I don't have that kind of time. I'd rather run a business and take care of people and their pets, so maybe that expert can come in and help me.
Meghan 11:22
Something you should not skimp out on is insurance. As pet professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why Pet Sitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Whether you're out walking dogs, pet sitting, or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote at Petsud llc.com As a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. In our own dog walking and pet sitting business, there are certainly investments that we have felt need to be made. They felt expensive at the time, but they really changed everything. The first one was when we switched to time to pet, that, that is, wow, it's a total everybody says this, it is a total game changer, and everybody's right. It
Collin 12:11
talked, it felt like going from darkness into light, and finally seeing what the possibilities were, and that it took a lot of manual things off of our plate and saved us a lot of time.
Meghan 12:21
Also, our fear-free certification - it's not cheap, but they have a specific one for pet sitters, and we felt it was important to say, "Hey, clients, we know what we're talking about when we say we're a fear-free company. We can now point to it. We can use specific language in our marketing, in our email newsletters, when we go to visits and do updates on our team meetings, all of these things are cohesive amongst our business.
Collin 12:44
Then there's conferences, and these cost in several different ways. The first one, it's just the opportunity cost of being able to take on more visits during the time that we're away, the stress of being gone and having our team here taking care of things, and just the cost of attending the flights, the hotels, the admittance. However, the benefit from those is not just the education that we get, but the community and the connections that we make, and the discussions in the hallways, which are always, I feel, like way more impactful than each individual session that we attended.
Meghan 13:14
We also invest in professional organizations. We're members of Pet Sitters International and the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters. If you have not heard of those, we'll have links in the show notes, but they are both excellent organizations. We've also invested in our payroll software. We use Gusto, and we absolutely love it. It has saved so much time. They actually also have an HR option that we've used a few times when we've been in some
Collin 13:38
interesting situations, but what it helps is streamline a lot of our hiring processes and give us better systems for that tracking and accounting of time and staying up to date with proper labor laws and codes. That is an aspect where I didn't want to have to manually enter hours or manually doing all this stuff, so having a way for our employees to do that from their phone directly into the system, we can cross reference and check, run payroll, do all that stuff. It made us, I personally feel like it made us feel like a bigger company than we actually are, because we had a solution to this problem.
Meghan 14:14
Over the years, we've also invested in coaching groups. We were part of Janie's Pet Biz University and Michelle's Dog Coat Launch. There are a lot of great options out there. You just have to choose which one works for you.
Collin 14:24
And not every single one of these was an easy decision for us. They all cost various amounts of money or ongoing subscription-based services, and so there was a lot of deliberation pulling the trigger on all of those. However, at the end of the day, we can look back and go, that was actually a major turning point in our business. I think every single one of these buckets of investment has helped us either run a better business from the knowledge, connections, and networking that we've had, or the tools and systems that have come around our business.
Meghan 14:57
Yeah, we also forgot to talk about Canva, we. Love Canva, because it keeps our brand in there, and anytime we need to make posts or flyers or anything, we just can slap our logo and everything else we need in there, and it's really easy and super fast,
Collin 15:09
and we pay for the version, we pay for the pro version because of that, to have all of those abilities and all of those helping tools for our business that I can go, this makes it a lot more accessible to me to do right on my phone, which speeds it up and makes it so that we don't have to be going through long processes and saves us so much time.
Meghan 15:29
Think about the investments that you have made in your own business and how many times hopefully they have paid for themselves over and over again. The irony here is that we often fight before we make these investments, but then on the back end we go, ah, I can breathe a little bit easier. This is so nice not to be able to do this anymore, or this is automated, or I love that somebody else is taking care of this.
Collin 15:50
I am getting what I paid for, right? But there is a difference between being frugal and being cheap. It's really important distinction here. There's being frugal is wise. It is making sure that you are using your money in an appropriate manner.
Meghan 16:06
Thank you for calling me wise.
Collin 16:07
Actually, being cheap, though, is limiting because it asks, being cheap says, how little can I use, or I'm not willing to spend above this. Frugal asks, what's the best value that I can get cheap asks, what's the lowest price? Yeah, Megan, you are frugal. One of the things that we do a lot in just our relationship and over the years is I can identify a need or something that is important to the family or to the business. Megan will go out and she will find the one that is the best fit and get the best value for us to solve that problem. These are completely different ways of looking at money and problem solving. Good business owners should absolutely compare options. I love a good spreadsheet. I love looking at I can. I have a problem. What are the four different ways that I can get it solved at different price points? When we had contractors looking at helping us out with our flooring options and our new carpet, we did the same thing: give me a good, better, or best, and what each of them gets me, so I can compare them. And then, yes, you need to negotiate. You need to figure out if you can get it cheaper. That's just being prudent. That's being wise. We shouldn't just be paying too much money just to say we did, right? That's also a weird flex. Oh, I overpaid for this by a lot of money.
Meghan 17:32
However, at the same time, we do need to be investing in things that are important to our business, and ultimately our peace of mind. If something is going to help you along, do something faster, give you more time back to do what you want. You need, here's your permission to go buy the thing, buy
Collin 17:49
the thing, and here's the example. Okay, would you rather use the really cheap slip lead that comes home from the veterinary office? Would you rather use that as your daily working tool with your dogs.
Meghan 18:02
No, it's horrible.
Collin 18:03
Or would you rather go out and find one that's actually either handmade or custom made for you, one that is built with better quality materials.
Meghan 18:14
We love rescue rope leads and tiny horse.
Collin 18:16
Yeah, because they're quality. Are they more expensive than the free thing that I can get from the vet office, absolutely, but if I'm using it every day, if I'm going to be putting this through the ringer, and it, and I have to depend on this for the success of my business, and yes, a leash is that I can't have a leash failing at all the time, I need to go ahead and upgrade and buy that, so that I have a better experience. Don't automatically choose the cheapest option. Look at the ROI that you can do. You can evaluate this, and again, don't just include the lost money that is leaving your wallet. Include the time that it gets back, include the peace of mind, include the better experience, user experience for these things, and avoid, and make sure you're avoiding that waste. Don't just spend extra money to spend it, like you said, Megan. You have to be wise, buy the right things, buy the important things, but actually do them, buy, buy them.
Meghan 19:10
So, the next time a client tells you you're too expensive, and your response is, well, you get what you pay for, then ask yourself, do I believe that about my business too? Am I investing in the things I should be investing in, or do I tend to go for the cheap option, and I need to reframe my mindset. Every year, there are business owners who stay stuck because they're trying to save money. Of course, nobody really wants to be spending lots of money, but the business owners who grow are willing to invest in the money, in the coaching, in the software, in the tools needed to run the business and scale it to however high you want to go. The goal isn't to spend recklessly, it's to recognize that sometimes the most expensive decision isn't buying the software or hiring the help or joining the coaching group. The most expensive. Sense of option is refusing to do it, because again, the costs on the back end, it costs you so much more than if you just would have bought the thing in the first place. If you truly believe that your clients get what they pay for, then you have to accept that your business gets what you pay for too. We hope this episode has been helpful to you. If it has, feel free to share it with a dog walker or pet sitter friend, thank you for listening. We appreciate you being here. We'd also like to thank our sponsor, Pet Sitters Associates. We will talk with you next time. Bye
Collin 20:27
bye.