718: There’s No Easy Button
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What easy button are we hoping will finally solve everything in our business? We examine why more clients, another employee, new software, AI, additional services, or a manager may create new challenges instead of eliminating our existing ones. We discuss how instant gratification and shiny object syndrome can distract us from the consistent, sometimes boring work that builds a dependable pet care company. We also explain why tools, systems, and advice only become valuable when we understand the real problem and possess the discipline to implement the solution. Ultimately, we encourage pet sitters to stop searching for a silver bullet and commit to executing the fundamentals extraordinarily well.
Main topics:
Chasing Business Quick Fixes
Hiring Without Proper Systems
Tools Versus Operational Discipline
Testing New Business Solutions
Consistency Over Shiny Objects
Main takeaway: “Most of us don’t need another strategy. We need about six months more of execution on the one that we said that we would do in the first place.”
It is tempting to believe that new software, another employee, a rebrand, a manager, or an AI tool will finally make business ownership easier. Sometimes those tools genuinely help, but they cannot replace clear systems, thoughtful implementation, and consistent execution. Before moving on to the next exciting solution, consider whether you have given your current strategy enough time and attention to work. The strongest businesses are rarely built through one dramatic breakthrough. They are built by owners and teams who keep showing up, refining their processes, serving clients well, and doing the fundamentals consistently.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Meghan 0:00
If business ownership had an easy button, someone would have found it by now, and we would be the first ones to tell you what it is. What is the easy button that you are currently looking for in your business? Is it one more employee? Is it better software or more clients? Is it AI, better marketing, a virtual assistant or a new website. This episode is all about searching for the easy button and how it doesn't exist. Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 0:27
I'm Collin.
Meghan 0:27
We are the hosts of Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials. We'd also like to send a special thank you to our Patreon supporters, who are dog walkers and pet sitters around the world, just like you, listening. They love the podcast. They found value in it, and they want to give back to keep the show going. If that sounds like you, you can go to pet sitterconfessional.com/support to see how you can help out. In life, there is no easy button. In business, there's no get rich quick scheme. So why do we naturally believe that we're one decision away from everything clicking. This silver bullet, this golden ticket, it it doesn't exist. Unfortunately, it's probably because we shy away from doing hard things in business in life. We don't we don't like it necessarily. We don't like to sit in the the mess of trying to figure something out. Now, there are times where we get excited about that, but in general, we gravitate towards the easy things, the easy wins, because we feel like, ooh, that's success when it's easy and I get it done. The hard things of, oh, I have to sit in this project for a long time, or I have to make this really hard decision that I know is going to make some people unhappy. I don't necessarily want to do that, so I'm just going to put it off or not do it, and I just I wish there was some way to just turn the magic on and make it happen easier.
Collin 1:46
Well, there's also just this sense or need for immediate gratification. How how spoiled are we now when shipping from some place takes more than two days when Amazon can get it to me today in a lot of markets, or at least tomorrow, and you're telling me I have to wait two days or or more, or watching television shows, we have every show immediately at our fingertips, and we can skip commercials. We don't have to delay anything, and so there is this this this this idea that society as a whole has kind of started to train us that you can get immediate results, you can get immediate responses from things, and that when there's a delay, there's a problem. And I think that's for me at least that I see in myself. Of any time that there's a delay in action and response, the longer the distance, the more time in between each one of those things, the more I start to panic and believe that there's an issue that something is wrong or broken.
Meghan 2:46
It is important to have the quick, easy wins, but we also have to be okay with doing the hard things. Every season of business, though, has its own version of the easy button.
Collin 2:57
Yeah, when you're early on in growing your business, you're an early owner. You're just starting out. The constant mindset here is well, the one easy button, the one thing that would solve all my problems, is if I could just get new clients. I just need to grow faster. I just need to have more people who are using my services, and that'll just solve all of my problems. We think this because it's the one thing that we lack early on in business. It's the one thing that we don't have, and so it's the easy "quote unquote" easiest thing that we can think of that will make everything go away. The long drive times, the lack of money, right? The the lack of quote unquote prestige that we may have or want to carry around in our business. We just want to get out there and get busy, and so that's the one thing that we focus on to think that it's going to solve everything around us.
Meghan 3:43
When we are so busy in our business, we're running around like a chicken with our head cut off, and we're going from here to there, 1014, 16 hours a day through holidays, not taking vacations. The easy button here is to say, "Oh well, I just need to hire somebody. Well, that's not necessarily going to be an easy fix if you are you have a 40 mile radius after you're driving, or you are serving clients that you really shouldn't be, or taking on people that are are not ultimately a good fit for your business,
Collin 4:12
or if you're doing a lot of overnights and your or your prices aren't appropriate, and that's the thing about easy buttons. I mean, okay, so wait, there was uh, anyone remember the Staples commercial? Right, the boop that was easy because they could just solve it for you immediately, and that's the wish, that's the desire of oh, I need paper. Boom, hit the easy button at Staples, and I get paper. Whatever that is. What what we're talking about here is that there are very real issues, barriers, concerns, hurdles that we have to overcome to do these things. That that thought of okay, well, I need to hire. The one word that gets thrown in there a lot of oh well, you just need to hire, quote unquote just, just. Oh my goodness, the amount of work that I need to do to do this. Not saying that it is impossible, but it is saying that we have. To think through a lot of things, and if I am not organized, if I don't have processes, if I don't have an idea of what good or what success actually looks like, bringing somebody into that and then saying, "Perform, do the thing, they're going to turn to you and go, "Do what thing and how?
Meghan 5:19
Well, and I feel like that's why a lot of people say, "Oh well, I tried hiring and I'm never going to do it again because they couldn't do it how I do it, or they didn't show up, or whatever, whatever. I mean, our very first hire-oh,
Collin 5:31
yeah, here we go-quit, quit
Meghan 5:34
the same day. It was
Collin 5:36
great because
Meghan 5:37
because we did not set the expectation of this is actually a serious job, and we expect you to show up and take care of people's homes and pets. And we're not just going to let you fly by night, do whatever you want, come and go as you please. We're going to hold you to these standards. And so, when we had our first meeting with her, and we had already hired her, and we sat down the 50-page employee handbook in front of her, she got real spooked, and she said, "No, this this is not for me. I didn't realize how serious you were actually going to take this.
Collin 6:06
Her her actual words were, "You should have told me about this for in the beginning or earlier,
Meghan 6:12
and that was a gut punch for sure. Oh my goodness! A big learning lesson of just because you hire, it's not going to be very easy. You have to set the expectations beforehand.
Collin 6:23
Well, then you move into having a larger company. You've hired people. If you're sitting there, you've got lots of employees underneath you. You may be thinking, "Oh, what I need now is to hire managers, and the manager will take care of all the chaos, and the manager will take care of all the fires, and the manager will do. But again, this is even more of a compounding impact to our business because previously it was me talking to my employees about what's going on. Now it's me talking to managers, talking to the employees about what's going on. If the managers don't know the standards or the expectations to hold people to, or where they should stop in their authority versus where they can continue-that's the line that gets really blurry with managers. What are you actually allowed to do? Or if I'm a manager, what can I do in this situation? What powers have you given me to handle the situation? And that leads to a lot of frustration to managers who step into roles that are very loosely defined,
Meghan 7:24
when we think that hiring managers or team leads or any of that is the easy button, we also have to think: Well, now I'm not just training people in the field, right? I'm managing the managers, and so while we may in our heads think it's easy, they can control the chaos. Well, now I have to. The buck ultimately still stops with me. So now I have to manage people in a different way. Instead of holding them to the standard of did you scoop the litter box correctly, it's now did you schedule correctly or did you send the client the right message and use the right branding and framing and and wording to them.
Collin 7:57
Yeah, I may be really good at teaching how to hold a leash, but am I good at teaching people how to resolve conflict and to communicate well and to train and hold to standards? I might not be the best at that, and so me bringing somebody in, I have to be really careful because if they start looking to me for guidance or to me for help, I I'm going to quickly mess up the situation. And so typically, what we see here is when we start getting into these higher level positions in the business, you start looking for people who have skill sets outside of your own, who are maybe outside of the company that you can bring in, so that you can rely on them and their true expertise in these situations, because it is so different, because it is so outside of what we typically find ourselves wanting to do or good at, now this is it's different for every business owner, and that's where this gets tricky. We're talking about just very generic, easy buttons that we see a lot of people reaching for. You might not have reached for these at these individual stages, but you've reached for them at some point, or at least some other easy button around you.
Meghan 9:01
In our businesses, sometimes we hit a stagnant point, whether that's revenue or we think we've tapped the market and reached as many people as possible. And so we think the easy button is, oh, I'll just go in and add another service. And we've talked about this a lot on the podcast: doing add-ons, doing enrichment, doing things to separate yourself from other people. But is that truly going to make a difference for you? Yes, it may be easy to be there an extra 1015, minutes while you do a nail trim, but you have to think through the implications of doing that.
Collin 9:31
Or it could be an entire service line entirely. Of I, I pick up poop in backyards all the time. I'm going to add poop scooping as a service line to my business, or I'm going to add litter box deep cleans to my business for a new service line, whatever that is. But the question remains: Is that in my expertise? More importantly, if you have team, if you have a team, do they want to do this? Are do are they skilled, trained? Do they know? That you potentially hired them to be scooping poop in people's backyards in the middle of summer, maybe maybe not, or do you understand the full operations of what that means to implement and run that what is usually an completely separate business or you know the new service lines unless they're closely related? They can from the inside we understand. Okay, this is actually an entirely separate business with different operational needs, different overhead and admin requirements. Oh, I'm running two businesses now, and I've accidentally overstretched and overcommitted myself and my team, and I don't have a whole lot of synergy between these.
Meghan 10:36
Or if I want to add on nail trims, but my team isn't supported for that just yet. I need to give them some extra training and maybe supply them with the tools to do that at their visits. The easy buttons that we think of in our minds can really be endless because you know the grass is always greener on the other side, right? If I just add something, or if I just take something away, or if I just hire one more person, everything will be fine. Or if I just take more days off, you know the object really changes, but the mindset stays the same. Oh, this next thing I do is going to make it easier, and sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's not because we haven't thought through all of the implications or asked the right questions in order to get to that easy step. Morgan Weber, who's a pet sitter in Sioux Falls, always says, "New level, new devil. I think that applies here because we think I'm going to get to the next level by doing this easy thing, or I it's going to be much easier on the other side when I do this easy thing. Well, not necessarily true because you're going to have a whole new set of problems when you go to that next stage, and problems not necessarily being a bad thing, just new challenges to encounter and to face and to work through. So, in your own business, think about a time when you thought something was going to solve everything. That you thought it was just going to be super easy. You hit the button, and it's going to be done. Then think about: Did it actually happen that way? Was it actually easy?
Collin 11:55
We see this all the time in around us, and especially in this industry. When you go to conferences, you hear people who will talk and say things about, "Oh, I implemented this one thing in my business, and it changed everything. Or, "I did this one kind of ad and I saw a massive increase or massive change. Or Facebook is also replete with these kind of comments of, "Well, if you could only do this this 123 thing. Just again, just hire, just make make ads, just put out road signs, just do whatever, just join the chamber. All of these things are thrown out there, and and this all comes from a spot of it. It worked for somebody, and and that's good, but saying that it is the one thing that will work for everybody is where it gets very dangerous.
Meghan 12:46
Well, and I feel like that's kind of a negative mindset of saying, "Well, then why try anything at all if nothing is going to work? Because it worked for that one person, but that's not to say that it's going to work for anybody else ever.
Collin 12:55
I think the difference there is what are my expectations based off of the recommendations of somebody else. I think is really good, and we give a lot of advice on this podcast. We talk to a lot of people who give amazing advice. But what is my mindset before I implement it? If if I hear somebody say a recommendation, and my mind immediately goes to this is it, this will fix everything. This is the one thing that I've been looking for, and then I can finally get to where I need to go. We need to dial that back a little bit and make sure that we're resetting some proper expectations. And go, it may have worked for that person. I want to try that, but I also want to make sure that I know how it applies to me in my business, and what I can expect, and what success actually looks like for me in this.
Meghan 13:34
Yeah, because if somebody tried road signs and they got a 4x multiple on their revenue the very next month, you may only get a half x revenue or whatever. You know, it every market's different, every business is different. How you implement it, your clients are going to be different. And so, just because somebody has success doesn't necessarily mean that you will. But that also doesn't mean that you shouldn't try something new. It is good to try and experiment and and work through things with your business and learn those lessons so that you can know it more intimately. Of okay, well, this didn't work this time, but maybe in a year the market will be different, and I can try it again, or I can try it in a different way in the future.
Collin 14:11
I think maybe it's just me having a natural inclination to be pessimistic or more guarded around people who are trying to sell solutions. You see this a lot in the software world, or especially now with AI, right? AI was supposed to change and solve all of our problems and be the be all, end all, and great, you know, so you know, savior to us in our business, and and it and it and it hasn't, right? But that's because when you hear people who are you know consultants or vendors around at conferences or software people, right? They're trying to sell you a solution to something that they believe that they can do, and and that's good. But we go into it with full open eyes and open mind around that, and try and understand what are the limitations around this. And if I do move forward within this, do I understand how it's going to impact? In my business, and I guess really what I'm saying is, is I I don't don't want to make sure I want to make sure I don't get my hopes up too much about things, and just understand that it's still going to be work. You know, we we try out different softwares all the time for how they work in our business with with marketing or organization and notes and all this kind of things, and man, that is so addictive to me to go. This is it. We found the one that will solve everything, and then the more we dig, the more we test, the more we try. All of a sudden, it builds up of like, oh, well, this is broken and this isn't working, and this is doing the thing that we thought it would be. And all of a sudden, I'm putting in all this back end work, and this was supposed to be an easy thing. I was just supposed to get this done, and it would set it and forget it. Why am I spending two hours a day fixing these things? Well, you know, that's that's where we have to recalibrate those expectations anytime we take on something new. Again, we should aggressively try new things in our business aggressively, but we shouldn't be disappointed when they don't work out.
Meghan 16:00
Yeah, it's kind of that we need to have a level head about things. We do have sometimes this shiny object syndrome of, oh wow, that that really worked for that person, or I know that this thing is going to solve all my problems, but it may only solve half of your problems. You have to recalibrate, like you said, you have to make sure that your mindset is right for these things.
Collin 16:19
And part of that recalibration is understanding: is what I'm trying to implement related to my problem. If if if if I am not getting enough sleep because I'm super worried about the visits getting done and and people remembering to show up, did I buy the right thing to solve that problem? Right. Remember, software solves software problems. Marketing solves marketing problems. Coaching solves coaching problems. We have to make sure that we are matching up my problem to the anticipated solution that I'm seeking.
Meghan 16:58
You also have to make sure it's realistic as well. Sometimes it doesn't line up, and all the work depends on me to get it done.
Collin 17:05
Yeah, none of the things that we just said-software, coaching, tools, vendors, Facebook groups, whatever-none of that solves my discipline of actually implementing it. Because here's the next thing: of oh man, I'm really struggling with this, or this is a problem for me. I'm going to buy the book. I'm going to buy the course. I'm going to go out and do the thing. But I just bought it. I didn't actually implement it. I didn't actually follow the instructions. I didn't actually use it how it was intended.
Meghan 17:31
Yeah, the easy button can be buying the book, but the hard thing is actually reading the book and then doing what it says. Yeah, just because the book sits on your shelf doesn't mean that it's going to change your business.
Collin 17:42
Absolutely, it does depend on me to actually implement here. And the more tools that I add to my business, the more disciplined I have to be in their utilization. The more I have to be hyper focused in what I use them for and how they are deployed to solve my problems in my business, tools don't replace my discipline. They don't replace the discipline of my managers or the discipline of our dog walkers and pet sitters. They still all have to be disciplined. I can give them tools to help with better software, better actual tools like leashes and jackets and that kind of stuff. Right? That's the easiest thing. Okay, they're getting wet. They need a rain jacket. Ta-da! They're frustrated in the field, and they don't like like they're being valued. What's the solution to that? The easy button is let me buy you something. I'll buy you something and make it make you feel better. But is that actually going to solve them not feeling like they are being recognized for their hard work. Maybe I have to spend some more one-on-one time with them, and actually verbally tell them that I appreciate you and you are so needed here. Thank you for all the hard work that you do. That's actually what we should be doing. Yet our first instinct is pizza party right? Let's everyone gets pizza! Hooray! Pizza's nice, but is that actually solving the problems in front of us?
Meghan 19:08
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Collin 20:47
Yeah, going. Oh man, I'm not getting the bookings that I want, or I'm losing a bunch of clients. Maybe I should put an AI chatbot on my website, and that'll solve everything. Or, or, or okay, I'm not growing as much as I want to, or the clients aren't feeling connected, or the team isn't feeling connected, I know what I'll do. I'll spend 10 grand to make a logo for my business, and I'll rebrand. That's the solution. Instead, am I actually holding people accountable? Am I actually delivering the service that I say I'm going to do on my fancy website? Am I actually doing these things and serving people-that's the hard part. But that's like you said-that's the discipline. The discipline is in execution at an amazing level. Every time that we show up, more so and above and beyond websites. It is so easy to judge businesses based off of their website and their online presence, and go, "Oh, well, this website doesn't look like it's been updated since the '90s, and it probably hasn't. But oh my goodness, when you have a problem, their customer service is off the charts. No wonder everybody goes here because they're served well and they're treated well. Yeah, I don't care about what the website looks like. I want to be treated nicely. I want you to walk my dog. I want you to do the thing that I want you to do, and this business does that. While this other business, who's got all the fanciest, flashiest things,
Meghan 22:10
but they don't show up reliably. They cancel. They don't do the things they say they're going to do. You know these fundamentals of showing up and doing the job and having integrity and doing what we say we're going to do when we do it, these are kind of boring things, really, because they are work. They do require a lot of us and a lot of work, but they are the things that make us stand out consistently year after year.
Collin 22:35
And they're hard to be committed to. Those those hard things of hey, you know what you need to do? Just show up, or just follow the training. That's what you need to do, and and being held accountable. That it's hard to be committed to those because you do it every single day. Every day it gets monotonous, but that new logo. Oh my goodness, that took months and months, and it was a big flashy thing, and we had a big rollout, and everyone was really excited. I brought balloons. Do you remember the balloons? Let's do that again. I liked it. Those big things, those those easy things that we reach for, we like them because they're different than what we're doing, and and so we want we we ignore the stuff that I need to do every day.
Meghan 23:18
It's again kind of that shiny object syndrome. It attracts us. Ooh, this thing over here. I can I can work on this because I'm attracted to it because I want to do it because I find it easy to do. I can pick out colors for a logo all day long. But going and shadowing five visits for an employee and and training them well, I I've kind of I've gotten tired of that over the years. In this age of instant gratification and AI, tools seem to be really attractive, and they seem to be like an easy grab. Ooh, I get this tool, and I can amplify my business. I can three exit in no time flat. You know, examples like time to pet or AI, any kind of automation. Maybe getting a company vehicle is an easy button for you, or some sort of scheduling software, or a phone system, you know, a well-run company does become more efficient, and that's good. That's what we want. Conversely, a poor-run company really becomes more efficient at making mistakes.
Collin 24:15
If you don't know how to use the tool, the tool is completely useless to you. Just having a hammer doesn't mean doesn't mean you know how to build a deck. Just because you bought company vehicles doesn't mean you have the policies in place to use them well,
Meghan 24:28
or even the insurance,
Collin 24:30
or to be efficient in the route planning. It can actually amplify your inefficiencies by having company vehicles when you don't have your drive times laid down, and now all the costs and stuff go up, or your phone systems. You get a big fancy phone system, and you have multiple lines, and you have multiple people on it. But I don't have the policies for actually. Hey, who's supposed to answer the phone at certain times?
Meghan 24:51
Or what are you supposed to say to a potential client when they call? Do I have those scripts lined out?
Collin 24:56
Yeah, the automations is the perfect one in order. For automation to work, you already have to have a system in place that you're doing manually, because you have to know what you want to have happen next. You need to have the other tools in place to point from one to the next for make those handoffs work. You can't just kind of magically bippity boppity boo your way through that and go well. Okay, now it's it's automated. What's automated? Why is it automated? What is that helping? If you don't have those systems in place and you try to automate, you're just going to be really efficient, like you mentioned. You said at making a lot of mistakes.
Meghan 25:30
Well, and I think also the easy button with these automations is okay. I set up. I have an account. I've pushed the start button and go. Well, sometimes you need to check the checker, right? You need to manage the manager. You need to check your automation system to make sure it's working right. One of the very first things that we did when we set up our lead magnet on our website was filled it out ourselves and make sure that that email actually went to us to make sure that that worked because for a time it didn't.
Collin 25:55
That was one of the very first automations that we set up on our website. Was you put in your email to get our lead magnet, and then it automatically gets an auto reply from us. Ah, the magic of technology! But you're right. If you just throw that on there, and then hey, wait, they put in the email. Where's the email getting stored? Am I saving that in two locations in case one goes away? Have I tested that? Have I gone and looked? Am I checking periodically to see what emails are getting dropped in there, and that this automation is still working. That's actually one of the things that's genuinely helped our business is our lead magnet. However, it was just the first thing; it was just capturing emails, and to have an expectation of well, great, my marketing's done. No, that's just a baby step into that. I now have to take those emails and put them into a funnel and develop the content and copy and photos to send to them in multiple multiple emails over time. That now actually becomes the work. But just having the easy button of lead magnet that people said that would work, okay. But what are you doing with that? That's not the end of the story.
Meghan 26:59
And again, just because somebody else does something in their business doesn't mean that it's going to work for you or that you have it set up exactly how they did. As you continue to grow in your business and scale, if that's what you choose to do, the growth and the scaling doesn't remove problems. Your business is different; new challenges arise. It doesn't necessarily get easier because you have more of a team, more payroll, more problems, more fires to put out. The growth changes your problems; it doesn't necessarily remove them. But again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't chase the hard things. We do need the hard things to challenge us. This episode is also brought to you by Pet Perennials. If you've been in the pet care industry long enough, you know that the way you show up during the hard moments is what clients remember the most. Pet Perennials helps pet businesses do exactly that. They create beautiful sympathy and milestone gifts for pet parents, and their gift perks program makes it easy to send those gifts directly to your clients. No inventory, no packing boxes, no running to the post office. You choose the gift. Pet Perennials takes care of the rest. We love that they send a handwritten card and gift wrap at no additional cost. It's a thoughtful way to support grieving clients while also building the kind of long-term loyalty that great pet businesses like yours are built on. Learn more and open a free gift purse account at petperennials.com.
Collin 28:12
Well, there is a cost to chasing easy in our business. If we are constantly doing things like changing our software because we're onto the newest, latest, greatest thing-the cost switching of not just us relearning an entirely new system and how it operates in the ins and outs and intricacies, but also our clients and our team, if we have them, and what are they comfortable with? Do they understand how to do things? If I'm constantly yo-yoing my pricing, it becomes less predictable, and people don't know when to buy or not to buy with me because it may be different the next day and so everybody just holds out and it gets confusing and you tell one person one price and the next person another price and you can't keep it straight in your head either. If I'm constantly changing up my branding, people aren't going to know who I who they're for, right? Do they align with me? Do they not? Do they see themselves in me or do they not? Do I even know how I talk about myself when I'm marketing my business? Because I keep changing my tagline, I keep changing my client avatar, I keep changing these things. Because again, I think that that's the thing that's going to make my business grow is the next rebrand, or it's the new AI tools. I will tell you that if you have used ChatGPT or Claude from the very beginning, you have probably reaped a lot of benefits from not switching back and forth or chasing the next thing because they've gotten very good over time, and their memory of you has gotten really, really good. Meaning you can pull a lot of information at this point to help you answer questions and know more about yourself. However, just dropping one at the hat, there's a cost to now the learning aspect. That's what I think a lot of too, because I'm a I'm a tools guy. I like I like adding tools and things about solving problems, but if I am trying to use an AI tool to work on videos or to work on copy, all of a sudden I have to learn. Well, how do I actually prompt this one to do that? And I have to change my language, and I have to change my style, and I have to change this and change that. I spend so much time learning what to actually do that I'm wasting more time than I would have had I just stuck with the same thing previously. And again, it's not saying don't learn new things, don't try new things, but recognize when you are chasing easy versus genuinely trying to solve a new problem that you have in your life and in your business.
Meghan 30:28
There's also the problem we face of just saying we don't have enough time in the day. And yeah, of course, I think every one of us would like 800 hours in a day to do all the things we want to do, but we also have this thought of because there's not enough time. Well, I just need the easy thing. I need the easy script. Can I just send? Can you send me your contract? Can I just copy your policies? I'll adapt them to my own. Or can you just send me what you use for your website or how you talk to clients about this problem? Because I don't have enough time to work through it myself. Now there is something to be said for not reinventing the wheel. On the other hand, we shouldn't just be copying people's things or initiatives or projects just because we say we're not going to make time for that.
Collin 31:11
There, that aspect of in order for this to be done well, I actually do need to spend time working on it.
Meghan 31:18
Well, because you have your own secret sauce, you have your way of doing things that nobody else does. So you may put yard signs out just like Joe down the street does. But how? What's the implementation of that on the back end? Somebody scans that QR code again. The customer service, the customer experience. What does that look like for you?
Collin 31:36
Have you thought about what you're actually going to say when you put out the yard sign and people actually call you? Are you? Have you thought about that or your policies? If we're copying and pasting policies or having AI generate the policies, did I actually even go back and read them, or did I just throw them up on my website and then somebody calls me on it and says, "Hey, your policy says this, and you go, "Ah, what? Oh no, oops, let me change that.
Meghan 31:59
Because we think that things are easy sometimes, and they very well may be. But we do need to think about the implications of what we're doing because those are the things on the back end that usually aren't easy. It's easy to press the purchase button on something. It's easy to press the start button or whatever you're going to do or the buy button. But then on the back end, how are you going? How is this going to change your business structure?
Collin 32:20
Most of us don't need another strategy. We need about six months more of execution on the one that we said that we would do in the first place. Why is that important? It's because when I spend time actually executing on that that that policy or whatever, or six months using that tool, or six months with that new hire, I'm actually going to work out the issues that I had in the first place. It's going to enlighten you to where the problems actually lie, and help you understand what the solution needs to be. Maybe you got it. Maybe you nailed it and won. I hope you did. Maybe though, I need to iterate here, and I need to go back and forth. I need to actually do some repetition in this process to know what I actually need, so that I can get to the solution. Because that's what we want. We want my problem solved. Am I going to? But what would happen if you dedicated six months to just solving your biggest problem right now?
Meghan 33:19
And your very first instinct to that answer, maybe ah, I don't have that kind of time. I need a quick fix because this problem happened and it's a pretty big one, and I need to solve it yesterday.
Collin 33:29
But is your business going to be around in 10 years? What kind of solutions will you have to make it last that long? I know problems are immediate, and we can have immediate solutions, but I can't just then walk away from it and go, "Well, that that solves it. I'll never have to address that again. It's going. Let's work on this little by little. So it is. It's actually something that I want, and it's actually something that's going to last.
Meghan 33:56
Because I think we do get tripped up in our mind sometimes of not actually doing the step by step process of okay, there's a problem, and I'll fix it right now. But you're not actually thinking down the road when the client asks you the same question four weeks from now, or the employee has the same issue of the unlocked door. When the easiest thing in the moment, the first time it happens, is to document it or make a new policy. You know, we think, oh, I don't have time to make a new policy. I'll just fix this problem and I'll solve it again next time. Well, the easy button right now is to take 40-five seconds and to update the notes or to write down the script so you don't have to retype it all the next time.
Collin 34:34
Well, or or you completely flip flop and you jump from solution to solution. I mean, think of two different companies. Okay, company A is always just chasing the next greatest thing. Here's a great example I see all the time. Team communication is really bad in my business, and people aren't on the same page. So I'm going to start a text thread, and we're going to text. Well, that doesn't seem to be working. So I'm going to jump into Slack, and then I'm going to jump into Pumble, and then I'm going to jump into WhatsApp, and then I'm. Actually, make a private Facebook group for everybody in my company, and then I'm going to get on my CRM and have a company have a company group over there, and then I'm going to, and then I'm going to, and then I'm going to, instead of actually just focusing on what needs to happen. Okay, that's company A. Company B just relentlessly executes; they relentlessly hone and refine on the problem. We're going to address. Okay, we're going to use Slack for this, and they're going to say what kind of channels can we make? What kind of required communication needs to be happened? What kind of photos need to be done? What what kind of this? What kind of that? What kind of that? Maybe it's just that company A is constantly chasing the next greatest marketing trend, while company B just relentlessly responds quickly to inquiries. That's what they focus on, or they train really, really well with their people, or they have SOPs and get this-they're constantly following them. Company A is just rewriting, throwing them back into chat, and say this didn't work. Make me a new one, and but company B is going. Let's live in this for a little bit, and let's stick. Let's actually hold people accountable to the SOPs and talk to them about how they can get better. Versus, let's just change it every time there's a problem. Which company is going to win in five years? And when I will say still be around and the owner have sanity. Which one? Which one of those would be better? Your operational discipline beats operational drama. We said it earlier. If operational discipline beats emotion and beats excitement, I don't have to be excited about something to to work on it, and to show up every day.
Meghan 36:46
Now, of course, it does help when I'm I'm emotionally invested. I want to see this thing come through, and I have an interest in it. Yeah, that does make it kind of easier to do the project and to see it through. At the same time, again, these fundamentals are boring. We we do have to do them every single day and show up and and do the work, but that should negate the fact that they need to get done. I don't know. That seems like a dumb.
Collin 37:08
It's really tempting when having conversations with other business owners to ask them, "Hey, how are you growing your business? And secretly, in my heart, I'm really hoping they're going to tell me something that I haven't heard. They're going to tell me a thing that they've tried that nobody's done in the history of ever, and I will tell you this: the number of times that happens is zero. There
Meghan 37:29
is nothing new under the sun.
Collin 37:30
The companies that I know I admire most-they're not doing secret, brand new, off the wall, crazy, insane things. They're they're doing things that are just extraordinarily consistent.
Meghan 37:47
Well, and they're putting in the work, right? Right. They didn't get from $0 to a million dollars overnight or within a year. It took them a long time of consistently putting in the work. We talk about that with social media. Of well, how do you grow your following. Well, you can do it the easy way of doing a follow for follow, and you get 2000 people from all over the world, and some people in Bangladesh following you, and you don't want that. Or you can consistently put in the work and do the posts and do the reels, and it's hard. It's it's not. It's sometimes not fun. Just like going and working out every day, not super fun, but the discipline-if you have it, it pays off.
Collin 38:25
Yeah. Oh my goodness! You have 305-star reviews. How in the world did you do that? Oh, I don't know. Well, we have an intensive training program and a five-step hiring process for our employees, and then they go through the training program, and then we follow up with them, and then we shadow them, and then we do this, and then we do this oversight, and then we do these promises, and this is how we serve, and this is the operational stuff that we do, and this is the so
Meghan 38:51
that we can show up for our clients consistently, day in and day out, year after year, and they love us, and they see our hard work, and they enjoy the updates, and then they write us the review. Yeah,
Collin 39:01
it's it's oh well. In order for me to tell you this, I have to go all the way back to the foundations of my business and what I'm built on. Oh, okay. So I just have to change everything, right? Like that. That's the point where you go. Okay, this is a holistic thing. Everything is integrated. My how I answer the phone is going to impact how I hold a leash, how I say hi to somebody is going to impact how I scoop the litter. How all of that stuff, if and and and what I focus on in my business too, will be what I focus on sometimes to my detriment. If all I'm focusing on is intense growth and just getting people and bodies in the door, what is that actually going to do to the core promise that I'm making to that person? I'm taking my eyes off of what my business is actually all about, and ultimately, I'm going to be dissatisfied in the business that I'm running now and that I own. And the clients aren't going to be happy with their service because I'm not invested in high quality service. I'm invested in getting. Lots of walks today. I didn't say. Notice how I didn't say high quality walks. I just wanted lots of walks. The easy part is the high flashy stuff. The hard part, as we've talked about this entire time, is just I need to be there. I need to remember why my business exists.
Meghan 40:20
Think about the easy button for your own business. What what's the easy button that you're waiting on? the The golden ticket, the silver bullet. If that never arrives, what's going to happen? What's going to be the implication? How are you going to feel about that? If it never arrives, what would you improve tomorrow? What can you start working on? What can you consistently show up and be doing? We can have all of these lofty goals and these high aspirations, and and these are good things to want to achieve and to go after. It helps keep us motivated in our businesses. But if we don't have the systems to back them up, or if we just always try to take the easy way out, we are going to fail. There is no again. There is no get rich quick scheme. The easy button isn't isn't out there. It may have worked for somebody else, but that doesn't mean that you're going to 5x your revenue the next month. Every day you choose consistency over that novelty, over that shiny object syndrome. You are building a business that's harder to shake and easier to trust. We hope that 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'd also like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials. We hope you have a great day.
Collin 41:35
Bye.
