720: What Does Your Company Say About You?
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What if the biggest influence on your business isn’t your marketing, your policies, or even your employees—but you? In this episode, we explore how every business gradually becomes a reflection of its owner’s values, standards, and daily actions. We discuss why professionalism, integrity, education, and accountability must be modeled before they can be expected from a team. We also examine how culture is created through what leaders reward, tolerate, and consistently reinforce. Finally, we challenge you to identify the values you want your business to embody and evaluate whether your systems and leadership truly support them.
Main topics:
Leadership shapes company culture
Professionalism beyond appearances
Teaching values through actions
Integrity under difficult circumstances
Building lasting business culture
Main takeaway: “The question really isn’t what kind of business do I want to build. The question is, what kind of leader would build that business?”
The business you’re building is becoming a reflection of you, whether you realize it or not. Clients don’t just experience your logo or your website. They experience your values through every phone call, every visit, every report, and every interaction your team has with them. If you want your business to become more trustworthy, more professional, or more compassionate, it starts with becoming that kind of leader yourself. The culture of your business isn’t created by what’s written in your handbook, it’s created by what you consistently live out every day.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Meghan 0:01
We've all heard someone say, or maybe you've said, my employees just don't care. Clients don't respect our policies. Nobody communicates anymore. People just don't take ownership and show up, or own up to their mistakes. But eventually, every business starts asking a different question: Is there really an employee problem, or is my business becoming a reflection of me and my loose policies and boundaries? Not necessarily of who I want to be. This business reflecting me, not of what's written in the handbook, but of who I actually am every single day. Because businesses have a funny way of absorbing the character of their leaders. Our business, while we are more than our business, and we are more than a pet sitter or a business owner, our business is a reflection of ourselves. Our business reflects what we celebrate, what we tolerate. It reflects what we ignore and what we consistently do or don't do-the good and the bad. Our business reflects what we demonstrate far more than what we document. Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 1:04
I'm Collin.
Meghan 1:05
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 on this awesome day. Thank you also to our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Dog Co Launch, and our lovely Patreon supporters. Patreon is a funny word, but it just means dog walkers and pet sitters who listen to this podcast and give back to the podcast with some of their hard earned money every month. We've got two levels: a $5 dachshund level and a $15 Great Dane level. If the podcast has inspired you and been valuable to your business, please consider going to pet sitterconfessional.com/support to see how you can become a Patreon member. A lot of us business owners spend a lot of time thinking about our brand. What does it convey to others? What colors should it be? Our logo, our uniforms, what we wear to broadcast who we are and what we do. Our website, our client experience. How do we want them to feel when they encounter our brand or us out in the wild, but more so than our brand, we need to be asking, what do I want clients to learn about me? Even if they've never met me, they don't need to know where I went to high school or what my favorite color is, but they need to know about my values and how we express that as a company and our mission. Every interaction that they have with my company, no matter if it's on the internet, if it's in the wild, if it's just on a phone call, it teaches them something.
Collin 2:26
Yeah, how the phone gets answered teaches them something about what I value and how I value them as a person. How the emails are written, how the spell checking is done, what I start with, what my sign off is, how employees enter someone's home. We have to recognize that ultimately that is a reflection of our values of of me. And at each stage, we're asking the what do I want people to see of me, right? Even like how mistakes are handled. This is a big character exposure, and so to speak, of whether of how anybody who works for you or around you, how do they handle? How do you? How would you want that handled? Then do they handle it in the same way? Because that will how people respond under pressure or in tight situations or when you've messed up speaks volumes about who you are as a person.
Meghan 3:18
Even if we as the owner never walk through the front door. We have representatives that do that for us that speak on behalf of our company. So we need to also make sure that we're all on the same page, representing one mind and one voice. Think about what qualities do you want clients to associate with your company, and try to go deeper than just peace of mind while they're at work or traveling. Right, that is so overused and it kind of doesn't really mean anything anymore. Is it that you want them to feel a deep appreciation for having pets in their life and that their pets can have these awesome experiences,
Collin 3:52
or respect, or love, or gentleness, whatever that is? How would you want somebody to associate? What words would you want associated with your company? And and again, we tend to think, well, that's going to be in my marketing, that's going to be in my advertising, the copy that's on my website. That's what associate is with, and and that is such a small sliver of what we're talking about here, and what people get from your company. It is, as we said, literally every down to how invoices or billing is explained, that will communicate something to your clients or potential clients.
Meghan 4:27
Because if you just say we will respect you, well, what does that mean? You can slap that on a flyer, but how integral is that? How woven into the fabric of your policies are those types of things? It's also good to think about how your employees would answer these questions. Would they answer them the same way? How do they view your branding when they interact with clients? What do the clients say back to them about your company? Does your business actually communicate these qualities that you're wanting?
Collin 4:55
You may hold them in high, lofty esteem or put them on a pedestal, but at the. Of the day, if it's all in your brain, they're completely worthless, and so we do have to think through. When I say a client will be respected, how does that impact how I walk through their door, or how I write their update, or the photos that we take, or how I answer the phone when they call? Because every we have to think through as a business again. This is whether you have a team or whether you are solo. Every client interactions introduces people, introduces potential clients, introduces your clients or your community to you. Again, even when you might not be there, if you do hire an office admin, if you have staff out in the field doing these things, they become a representative of you and your values. So, a, do they know those values, and b, have you set up a system for them to live those and work those out in the day to day of what they do?
Meghan 5:58
Because it's super easy to show up with a smile on and everything's great, and it's a beautiful, sunny, 65 degree day, and and you've got all your tasks done, and you're just here to walk the dog and play with the kitties. But what about when it's a crummy day for you, when you're not feeling your best, when you're kind of sick, but you still have to show up? Same thing with your employees. Does your company have one voice even in the hard times.
Collin 6:20
Well, that's that we're talking about really professionalism. There, we we all say if you're listening to this, I guarantee at some point in your marketing, on your website, on your social media, on phone calls, you have said, "I'm a professional company, and businesses we tend to think of this and we confuse professionalism with just appearance, right? I look snazzy. I've got cool branded shirts, or I've got a wrapped vehicle, or or I've taken professional level photos to market my business, or I've got a a published and a polished website done by a professional that I paid 1000s of dollars for, and and don't get us wrong; those things are really important. Those things matter to communicate a level of expectation to the client to match the backend, but but it has to match that because professionalism isn't just surface; it's deep. It it is it is about showing up when you said you would. I mean, this is something we think about with every client that we take on. We genuinely believe that we what we are saying is I'm not I'm not saying here's a contract. Use me when you need. What we are saying to that person is, "I promise I will be there when you need me,
Meghan 7:27
and our word means something. And
Collin 7:28
and I think like that just changes who we accept and what we say yes to and how we bring them in. It's us saying, as a client of ours, "I promise I will be there for you, and I'm going to return your phone call. Right, that's part of professionalism or communicating delays. Hey, I'm not going to be there at 2o'clock. I'm going to be there at 230. I just wanted to let you know, it takes a couple seconds. But what it does take is us thinking about the person on the other end. I have been involved with so many home service providers over the last year who give that wonderful time window of I will be there between eight a.m. and 9p.m. Congratulations, sit around and wait for me, and I don't get the text when they're on their way. All of a sudden, just get a random knock on the door, and I'm supposed to jump up and behave. I don't want that for our clients. Yes, we give time windows, and they can log in, and they can see generally when we're supposed to be there. But if we're going to be delayed or outside of those, we're going to communicate that to the clients so that they don't worry. Because as a promise of working with us, you won't have to worry. And so, what do we need to do as a professional? I need to communicate so you don't worry. It
Meghan 8:42
also means being prepared, protecting their privacy, especially when they ask for it. Finishing what you started again, having that integrity. Anyone can look professional. Anybody can slap on a flyer professional pet care, but does that actually go deep into your business? Because not everyone behaves professionally, especially when we've made mistakes. Eventually, something goes wrong. We mess up at a client's home. We forget a key. We didn't feed the dog when we were supposed to. We overdosed the medication. We missed an alarm. Something's going to happen. The temptation is to explain. You know, the employee misunderstood, or I tried to set the alarm but it didn't go off, or the client wasn't clear, or the app glitched. Not blame shifting, but ownership. This happened. We understand why it mattered. Here's what we're going to do to fix it. Whenever we go to clients, we're always coming with a solution, not just sorry I messed up. It's now this is the next step. We've wrote it into our policies. We've alerted the team. We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again. Professional businesses don't become trusted just because they're perfect. I mean, in fact, no one's perfect. Even big businesses, professional businesses, all kinds of businesses mess up all the time. We are human; we make mistakes. But professional businesses do become trusted because they're honest. We are honest when we say we're going to be trans. And tell you like it is. That's what we're gonna do.
Collin 10:03
Well, many of us think of that in the case of I'm gonna be transparent about the behavior of the dog or how the cat did or here are the photos of what I walked into or here's what I did. That is one level of transparency. The other level, the harder level of transparency, genuinely is hey, I don't. Again, we're in people's homes. They don't know what we do or what we don't do unless they have a camera, and most people have cameras. But if I come to a client and I say, "I wanted you to know that whenever I went to open the back gate, it completely fell off the hinges, and I pushed too hard on that, I am really sorry. I've already contacted a contractor to come out, and they're going to be here tomorrow to get that fixed. In the meantime, I've got this put up and and and locked in there so that we can't get out. Right? What you don't have to tell the client that, but we choose to because that's what builds trust. That's what ownership actually looks like
Meghan 11:01
well, and it provides context as well. It's not just I broke your gate. Sorry, I'm going to move on now. It's building that trust over time. It's showing up even when we don't want to, even when it's the hard thing. It's showing up even when it's raining or it's really hot. It's arriving prepared. What do we need to do this job and to do it well? Also, most importantly, to be mentally present. If you are not in the moment in the visit, if you are somewhere far off, you're probably going to mess stuff up. Obviously, this goes for our employees as well. Having check-ins with them on a regular basis, making sure that they're okay. There's obviously there's things that we can't control, what happens in their life or what they choose to do outside of work, but we can make this a welcoming environment in our company.
Collin 11:45
And it's not just the the physically being there or the mentally ready, but it's also emotionally. Where am I today? Am I steady or am I all over the place? Am I freaking out at the lows and freaking out at the highs? And I'm just kind of a basket case all of the time, that models to the employee what's allowable and what is okay. It models to the to the employee what they can do and what they can get away with, because we have to. I mean, for us, it could mean showing up means showing up, kind of knowing context, being aware of things, not just shrugging off and going. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. If we find, if I find myself saying I don't know all of the time, what are my what are my team what is my team going to do? They're going to say I don't know. Well, and
Meghan 12:30
they're going to make assumptions, and sometimes those assumptions are going to lead to bad things. Yeah,
Collin 12:34
and so I have to show up, and I have to have hard conversations too. Have hard conversations with my team. Have hard conversations with my clients. That's me modeling. Here I am, and we're not going to avoid this. We are going to talk about this. It's not comfortable for anyone about the you not meeting your KPIs, or about the behavior of this dog, or about you missing a bill, or you being late. Nobody wants to talk about this, but this is part of what accountability means and showing up means is that I'm going to show up in the good times and in the bad times too.
Meghan 13:07
Well, because being a business owner in the pet sitting space, loving animals isn't enough. A lot of us got into this because we love dogs and cats and parrots and fish and everything else. But but at the end of the day, that's not enough because being a business owner, especially when you have a lot of systems in place, a lot of procedures, employees, admins. When there is a lot of structure in your business, you have to do a lot of things. So much admin time. Good intentions don't replace competence. You have to be educated, and that's not just how do I take care of a rabbit. That's multi facets within the business owner world, pet sitters make real decisions, whether it's medication or behavior or health observations that we need to go to the client with. An emergency response when you find a lethargic animal on the floor when you walk in, what do you do? One way to reflect your values is by having insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, and that's why Petsitters Associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections, and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why Petsitters Associates is the perfect fit for you, and get a free quote at PetSitLLC.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking Membership Petsitter Confessional and using the discount code Confessional at checkout. That's Petsitllc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. Then there's client education as well, not only about your policies and procedures, but how to be amazing pet owners to their dogs or cats or fish or whatever. Employees need more than common sense. Common sense, unfortunately, is not that common these days. We have seen the gamut with employees, but they do need training. They need to know, yes, how to take care of the animal and your company policies for handling certain situations.
Collin 14:55
They should never have to guess what happens next. Now we can't go through all of the. Possibilities and all the scenarios of what could, might potentially, maybe happen. Well, we can give guiding principles. They can know how to walk through a decision tree of: Does this impact health? Does this impact the client? Does this cost us money? Am I in danger? Big, broad questions that they can ask in every situation to then apply a process. Know when to contact for help. Know when to reach out, so that they're never left guessing. One of the biggest fears that we have is that a member of our team will be in the field guessing and lost on what to do. So they have to be educated, which means we have to be educated. We have to continually learn and stay in the student mindset, in the learning mindset, if we ever start to think that we have arrived and we know everything, our business is completely lost. But many times we stop learning because we get busy, because the business is growing and scaling, and my attention is drawn elsewhere. And
Meghan 15:59
so the books do stay on the shelf. We may buy them, and they look very nice on the shelf, but we don't actually read them. Our kids just participated in the summer reading program at the library, and they got medals because they read for all of the weeks that they were supposed to read. And the medals on them say, "Readers are leaders, and that is so true. You have to be reading, even if it's you don't sit there physically with a book. You need to have an audio book going because other people's wisdom for how they run their businesses or what they do in these types of situations is so critical. There are things that are specific to our niche of dog walking and head sitting, but broader business concepts are applicable across the board.
Collin 16:35
And your team is going to notice this again. What is my business mirroring of me? If I am not modeling further achievement, further advancement, further learning and understanding, why will the people in my team do that? Why should they try to continue to grow? We think that learning should become a part of the company's identity. We should be looking at listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos, going to conferences, reading, asking and talking to veterinarians, and having trainers that we can reach out to, so that we are bringing in new information. Because here's what happens when we, when I as the leader, when we as the owners, when when we stop bringing in new information, we become the know-it-alls, which means that we stop asking questions. And what's a big thing we always want our team to do? Ask questions. Ask questions. You don't know everything, and that's okay. And I don't know everything. I need to ask questions, and so I have to model that and say, hey, because what that that also means is it means that we have to be comfortable enough around the people that we work with to be to be humble enough to ask for help, and that level of humility that's that doesn't come from policies and procedures. It comes from people looking and going ah that's what they mean when they mean come to me with questions because they went to the vet. They came actually to the team and asked for questions.
Meghan 18:04
I feel like sometimes there's this mindset, and you know we've just talked about a little bit of do more, do more, be more, learn more, grow more, scale more, more, more, more. And at times it can feel suffocating. But in those moments, I have to remind myself: well, I don't want a stagnant business. I don't want a stale business. I do want to keep growing because there's always people that are moving to the area. There's always people that don't know about me. You know, my current clients are at some point going to move on, whether they move away or their pets die or they just don't need me anymore. They found a different solution, and so I do need to keep innovating in my business.
Collin 18:39
And that means questioning old systems just because you've had something around all the time, and for since you founded, to ask: Does this still need to be here? If I were building this again from scratch, would I build it the way that it currently exists? We want people who care in our business, and that creates passion. But education creates excellence. Education takes that passion and focuses and funnels it into excellence, which is what we want on our team.
Meghan 19:04
Which means we have to teach our team, whether it's admin, whether it's field, whatever it is. Teaching isn't just about information. Training people isn't just about slapping a book in front of them and going here, read this. It's repetition over and over again. How do you scoop a litter box? How do you hold a leash? How do you, as an admin, how do you schedule? It's also coaching, which is hard in those moments of you've messed up and now we need to talk about it. But it's that trainability aspect. We have to teach them and coach them and train them through the hard times. It's explaining why as well. Why do we do things the way we do? I told you to do this. Why didn't you do it well. I didn't know it was important. Okay, here's why it's important, and it can be tough sometimes. I just want you, as the employer, just follow my directions. Why do you need to know why all the time? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Collin 19:53
Why do you need to know all the why? But the important part is it gives people. It does give them context to understand the broader process of this. of. And and I again like why why do we always photograph locked doors? Well, it provides peace of mind. Also, sometimes we forget that we lock the door, and so I want to have a picture of it there. Or why do we avoid physical notes from the clients? Or why do we document medications? And what does that process look like? What have we learned from it? So taking those and going, I have this here because of this, and tying it into that lesson.
Meghan 20:24
People are far more likely to follow standards that they actually understand, that they that they think matter to the company at large, to the clients. When they can serve people better, they care about it. We feel it's also important for your business to reflect the integrity that you have. Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. That's the easy definition. But the harder question is, what happens when doing the right thing costs you something? What do you do then? Do you double down and say, "Yes, I said I would do this, so I'm going to do this, or do you turn and say, "No, it's too hard. I don't want to do it.
Collin 20:58
Because integrity doesn't get tested when everything is easy and there are no problems. It gets tested when something is going to cost you 1000s of dollars to correct. Maybe it's that that profitable client treats your employees terribly, and so you get rid of the client. Or a great employee violates your standard. Someone who has been there day in and day out, but does but goes against your policies and procedures, and you have to fire them.
Meghan 21:23
Yeah, not every dollar is good revenue. There are some clients that are straight not worth the money that they give you, even if it's a lot of money. Sometimes the most profitable client isn't your best client. Integrity is easy to advertise, but it is really expensive to practice, especially when those things cost you quite a bit of money. Sometimes we have to say no, and that's okay. It protects our business, it protects us, our employees, our reputation, and ultimately our future. No, I will not serve you 75 miles away because that's not sustainable for my business. Sometimes integrity looks expensive today because it's saving you from something far more expensive tomorrow.
Collin 22:00
Something that we have noticed as we have added employees to our team is that our values get filtered out and through them through our training process and our procedures and our policies and what we uphold and what we don't uphold, and so the team is actually magnifying us. Right when we were so low, the client experiences us, experienced me, experienced Megan directly. But when we have that team, all of a sudden the clients experience my leadership. They experience my coaching, my mentorship. They experience my organization, my policies, my procedures. There will come a time where most of your clients may never ever meet you, depending on how you decide to set up your newbie client meet and greets and so on and so forth. But they will absolutely have an opinion about you through your team.
Meghan 22:54
We ultimately can't control what opinion they have of us, but of course we want it to be in a good light and positive. Them forming an opinion kind of outside of you without ever having met you is really terrifying and also incredibly freeing because it means you have an opportunity to introduce yourself to hundreds or 1000s of people that you've never met before. That's an awesome thing to be able to serve more people and to help more people in your community. The thing is, your team doesn't need to become you in order for them to see this. You don't need clones. You know some employees are outgoing and others are not. You know others are quiet. Some love dogs. Others adore cats more. They have different personalities and that's okay. That can show through in their reports and sometimes interacting with clients. But overall, you need to have the same voice, the same mission that you're all working towards.
Collin 23:42
The same values, different, like you said, different personalities aren't a problem, but different values are, and that's where we we tend to get frustrated. That's when our clients experience different outcomes from the kind of care that we're trying to provide. We don't want to build identical people. What we want to do is build our shared convictions of when you are on our team. This is what it means to work for us. This is how we process. This is what outcomes we want. This is how we make those happen. This is culture. Culture isn't everyone acting the exact same little little worker bees out there doing all the same copy paste stuff. It's everyone making the same kind of decisions, which is can be extremely frustrating. How do I make sure that everybody knows what kind of decision to make? You give them that decision tree. You give them the values. Hey, would the decision that you're about to make match up in align with our values? Then, if not, we need to make a different decision here.
Meghan 24:43
When you have systems, those inform what you actually value. When you have a mission, you work towards that through your systems and processes. So, if you if professionalism really matters to you, okay, think about did you train it in your people? What does that look like? If education matters and. Going to conferences matter well. What does that require? Money. So, did you budget for it? If integrity is super important to you, do you reward honesty even in the hard times, even when you mess up or your employee messes up? Our businesses don't become excellent by accident. I mean, you know that you work very hard as the business owner to steer the ship, to move the mission forward to serve more people, we become excellent because of what our leadership does repeatedly and what we repeatedly enforce. It's not always easy. It's not always fun, but it is the charge at which our businesses continue to propel forward.
Collin 25:36
Megan, you mentioned earlier for integrity about what gets rewarded, and and your employees, your business will become what gets rewarded. If if speed gets rewarded, if you are always talking about getting things done as quickly as possible, people will rush. If revenue gets rewarded, people will oversell and push too hard. If avoiding conflict gets rewarded and we hide it, well, then problems are just going to stay hidden because that's what gets reward. That's the good thing. That's what the boss does. If honesty gets rewarded, employees will admit mistakes. They'll come to you. We have to recognize that every every every one of our businesses has built-in incentives that we both recognize and that we don't. And sometimes it's the ones that we don't recognize because they are blind spots to us because it's how we always operate and we've had nobody to reflect back to it to us. But everything has an incentive with it, and and we have to understand that incentive will drive the outcome.
Meghan 26:35
Well, and standards too. What we hold ourselves to, what we hold our employees to, or what we don't hold them to? Oh, it's okay. Just like you know, just like we deal with clients, it's okay this time, Marcy. You don't have to pay. I understand you're in a tight spot. Well, we kind of do the same thing with employees sometimes. It's okay. I understand this was a last minute emergency that you had to call out. Okay, well, let's just make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again because it put us in a really big spot. So just like a parent teaches a child how to act and behave, we are kind of the parents to our employees, in as much as they learn from us. What we do, they are going to emulate. So if we admit our mistakes, then they'll admit the mistakes. Hopefully, if they are also people of integrity that have we have hired well and and trained through that process, the culture of our businesses is really created every day by the team watching our leadership, and again, that is scary and terrifying, but also hopefully good because we are beacons of the excellent standard that we hold ourselves to.
Collin 27:31
Your team will rarely rise above the standards that they consistently see if you are not cutting corners, if you are not rushing, if you are not gossiping, if you are like you said, admitting your mistakes, they will do all of that as well. They will see, oh, this isn't just black and white words that were handed to me in this, or a video that was mumbled through on a script. This is actually lived out, and this person is doing that, and that's okay. That's what when they say don't be late, they've just shown me what that means and how this is supposed to work out.
Meghan 28:04
When they disappoint you, how are you going to respond? Do you ignore it? Do you brush it under the rug? Do you try to coach them through it? Do you fire them? Do you pretend like it didn't happen? Oh, don't look at the man behind the curtain. You know, every response teaches them what is acceptable and what's not. What's the standard? The correction isn't just for one employee; it's for all of them. They all get to learn because they're all watching you. No pressure, but they're all watching. If you're serious about growing your pet care business, don't miss the 2026 Dog Home Business Summit happening October 2nd through 4th in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Spend a weekend learning from world-class business leaders, including keynote speaker Donald Miller, plus practical sessions from pet care professionals who have actually built and scaled successful companies. Whether you're a solo operator or leading a growing team, you'll leave with strategies you can put to work immediately. Grab your ticket today by visiting dogcoesummit.com. That's dogcosummit.com. We'll see you in Winston Salem. One
Collin 28:56
of the overwhelming things that has probably come up throughout this entire conversation that we've been having is this. All depends on me. This all depends on me. This is all me, me, me, me, me. Focused. So we have to ask ourselves: If I disappeared for six months, or 10 days, or maybe 24 hours, would the company still reflect my values? Would it still reflect me? Would clients still experience that professionalism, or the integrity, or the honesty, would they would would employees still choose to follow those things, or would everything kind of slowly drift if I'm not there being the bulwark against it? What we have to do, and what we get to do, is build and foster a place for our values to be cultivated and then brought and taught out by other people. Leadership isn't being needed everywhere, and the greatest businesses of all times, the ones who have really made landmark changes to society and the globe, weren't just because of one single person at the helm. It was because some. Had a vision, and they had a team around them to help them execute it. Leadership is building something that continues to reflect our character, whether we're there or whether we aren't, and that takes having a team, and that takes having people who see that and want to be part of that and perpetuate that as well. A
Meghan 30:19
team doesn't just mean having dog walkers and pet sitters do the work for you. A team could mean having people around you who you go for insight into how you operate, and they can be a third party and say this is this sounds like a good policy, or you probably should say no to this client. Somebody who can give insight and advice into your world.
Collin 30:39
It also means when you if you pick and you expand your team and you're scaling, having admin people that get on board with those values, having team trainers, having team leads, having managers that all see what you're trying to build and can share in that in that desire to see them continuing, and so that when if you were the one training every new employee that comes through the door, they're going to see how infectious what what you want to do and your passion. Pick team trainers that have the same passion for what you do, and they get why you're doing it, so that they can help perpetuate. They can transfer that on to the next people, and then the next people, and then the next people. So it stops becoming all dependent on you. And if you don't talk to everybody, and if you don't greet the clients, and if you don't do the marketing, and if you don't do the outward calls, all of this just falls dead, and it doesn't get perpetuated. The best companies are the ones who can cultivate an area where those values are actually lived out by every single person on the team.
Meghan 31:36
So you, as a leader, have to do the hard work of asking yourself the hard questions because nobody else is going to. You are the one steering the ship. You are the helm. Let's go. So choose three words that you want people to experience every single time they interact with your company. And it's again, it's not peace of mind. Please don't choose that one. It could be honest or thoughtful or educated. Then when you have those three words, ask yourself what behavior proves this. What in my business makes these three words a landmark, a cornerstone of my business? What are the policies that we have that point to these words? What would living these values, these three words, cost you? Not just monetarily, but would it mean losing some clients, or maybe losing some employees because they have different values than you, and you're not all on the same page. Also, ask yourself what you've been tolerating. What conversation have you been avoiding? Values don't become culture when they're written; they become it when they're expensive, when they actually hold you to your word, when they survive the cost of living them. Our business is always going to mirror its leader, us. Not perfectly or instantly, but eventually, it's going to get there. Again, terrifying and exciting. It's
Collin 32:53
encouraging because as you grow, your business grows. As as you become more honest, the business will become more trustworthy to the clients as you pursue excellence. Your team will pursue excellence as you follow and live out the values. Those three words that you've just picked out, so too will your business, will your team reflect the changes because you are changing. So the question really isn't what kind of business do I want to build? We think that the question is more like, what kind of leader would build that business and
Meghan 33:30
become that person slowly over time. It's not going to happen overnight, but when you do this, your business will begin to look exactly like you. Thank you for coming on this journey and listening to this today. We hope it was valuable to you. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Dog Co Launch. We will talk with you next time.
Collin 33:46
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
