723: Don’t Just Go for “Okay” with Dave Peterson
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What does it take to rebuild a pet care business without losing sight of why it matters? Collin talks with Dave Peterson of Bethesda Dog Walkers about buying into a family business, rebranding, changing operations, and learning to lead through uncomfortable seasons of growth. Dave shares how marketing, client trust, reviews, onboarding, and consistency all work together to create a premium client experience. They also discuss why doing the simple things well can be more powerful than constantly trying to go above and beyond. This conversation is a reminder that long-term businesses are built through service, clarity, and a willingness to do hard things for the right reasons.
Main topics:
Client confidence through clarity
Rebranding after business acquisition
Premium service without desperation
Systems that support growth
Long-term service business mindset
Main takeaway: “Just keep doing the right thing, and the money will happen.”
It’s easy to become distracted by growth, revenue, and the next marketing tactic. But lasting businesses aren’t built on shortcuts—they’re built through thousands of consistent moments of serving clients well. Dave Peterson shares how focusing on people instead of chasing numbers completely changed the way he approaches business. Success isn’t about going viral. It’s about earning trust every single day. That’s the kind of business worth building.
About our guest: Dave Peterson is the owner of Bethesda Dog Walkers, a professional dog walking company serving the Bethesda, Maryland area. After a career that included music, marketing, and creative work, Dave stepped into the pet care industry by taking over the business originally started by his mother and her business partner. Since then, he has focused on rebranding, improving client onboarding, strengthening operations, and building a company rooted in consistency and long-term trust. Dave brings a thoughtful, entrepreneurial perspective to what it means to grow a service business well.
Links:
Bethesda Dog Walkers: https://bethesdadogwalkers.com
Instagram: @bethesdadogwalkers
Dave’s personal Instagram: @davidfeff
Email mentioned: david@bethesdadogwalkers.com
Book mentioned: Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini
Codie Sanchez - https://codiesanchez.com
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Pet Sitter Confessional, its hosts, or sponsors. We interview individuals based on their experience and expertise within the pet care industry. Any statements made outside of this platform, or unrelated to the topic discussed, are solely the responsibility of the guest.
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
Collin 0:02
Welcome to Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at Timed Pet and Pet Sitters International. Would you be able to completely tear down and rebuild the business that you are running right now? Turns out, the only way to do this is to not lose sight of why it all matters, and that's why today we're really excited to have Dave Peterson, owner of Bethesda Dog Walkers, on the show to talk about buying a family business, rebranding, changing the operations, and learning to lead through uncomfortable seasons of massive growth. We discuss why doing the simple things well can be way more powerful than constantly trying to go above and beyond. Ultimately, my conversation with Dave is a reminder that the long-term businesses that we all look to build are built through service and a willingness to do hard things for the right reasons. Let's get started.
Speaker 1 1:05
I really have an odd career, like from that to this. There, there's no through line really, other than the one that I make for it. So sure,
Collin 1:17
yeah, and we've talked about that previously. Of just like you want to have that cool story, right? You want to be able to do kind of be able to look back and be like, "Yeah, I did the thing at the time and kind of just took advantage of it. I think that it's an interesting way of of looking at opportunities in life.
Speaker 1 1:33
It seems to work. I mean, I don't know about work, but it seems to be an unavoidable part of myself, where it's like that seems more fun. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that, but not always more fun. More fulfilling, more education, more whatever. Like it feels like the next pull that I'm supposed to do. And so, you know, this is putting too flowery language on it, but it often feels like that's kind of the next thing I'm being called to. So let's go.
Collin 2:08
Does it always seem so logical in the moment, or does it feel like that next leap? Right. It
Speaker 1 2:13
doesn't always feel logical. It's it's this weird Like kind of sensation that is fear, but it it doesn't feel like a threat exactly. It's you know like this is a bad analogy, but like cliff jumping, you look at the right size jump, and you're like, I know that's going to be fine, and it's probably going to be fun, but I don't love heights. But I just saw eight other people do it. There's a lot of people saying that the you know water is super deep there. We're going to be just fine, and it's like, okay, well then let's jump off this Cliff, so I don't love it while it's happening, and then I'm almost without exception grateful that I did it. So,
Collin 3:11
so how did you find yourself getting into dog walking? Then, what was that transition like?
Speaker 1 3:18
Well, so my mother and her business partner started this company in 2009. They were both recently divorced, and for several summers in a row, I would come home from college and do pet sitting, do dog walking. You know, obviously, we-I guess I shouldn't say obviously-we did grow up with dogs. I had a Labrador and a Great Pyrenees, and loved dogs, but just never even considered that to be a path. Even when my mom did it, it was unusual because my dad is like the much more knowledgeable. He used to go to the Westminster dog show and all this stuff. Like he, he was the one of the two of them. I was like, mom starting the dog walking company. That's weird, but she did it, and you know, it was always just sort of like fun that when we would come home for Christmas vacation or whatever, that she was able to set us up with pet sitting jobs and stuff. She's like, we can pay for your trip. You come, you'll stay at this house instead of at that house, and they'll pay you to walk the dog four times a day and feed it and whatever. And it's like, okay, you know. So that was sort of like the first exposure to any of that, but again, that was always just like that's what mom's doing. So cool. I lived in Utah and then I moved to California for a while, and was doing things that had nothing to do with pet care. And then she came out and was visiting us. We had two babies at the time, and this is post COVID. So you know, she and her business partner Nancy are still kind of holding things together with sticks and glue. Like they barely got it all back together, and they were like, "So I think we're gonna try to sell it, and we're excited about it, and we're we're done. And I just started pulling at the thread, and I was like, "That's awesome! Like, what are you gonna try to get for it? Which honestly was the first sort of like, "Wait a minute, that seems like maybe something to pursue. Let's talk about more of the numbers and what do your operations look like. And you know, throughout the course of dozens of conversations, stuff started to surface where it was like, you guys don't do this, you guys don't do that, and it wasn't like different service opportunities. It was like that's a layup for customer onboarding. That's that's a layup
Speaker 1 6:10
for branding. Like there's all this low hanging fruit. I think I could maybe add some value to this. And at the time, I was listening to a ton of Cody Sanchez, who I don't know if you are familiar with her, but her whole shtick is-I can't remember how she says it-something about Main Street, but I think she's the one that has sort of coined the phrase and the popularity of buying boring businesses like service businesses, laundromats, you know, landscapers, whatever, like unglamorous, sweaty work that is never going to have like a multi-billion-dollar valuation or some crazy thing, but it just like Works and part of her whole thing was talking about the silver tsunami and baby boomers retiring and leaving behind these excellent, solid service businesses that have been around for decades. And it was like, hey, I recognize this thing that I'm living from the podcasts that I'm listening to. It's like I think this is happening in real time, and you know, again, back to kind of what I was saying earlier was like, you know, there starts to be like a a shine around an opportunity where it's like I think I could do that, and I think I might be decent at it. So, and also at the time, I was working in marketing, and ChatGPT had just released a version that was like it was the first time where people were really talking about what it could do, and as we may have discussed, like I was doing email marketing,
Collin 8:02
yeah,
Speaker 1 8:02
and so ChatGPT to me was like I don't know how long I could do email marketing, but my days have got to be numbered. Yeah, like this, it doesn't get bored. It doesn't get tired of copywriting. It it can crank out. The one that I remember doing was I was writing for a solar company, and the idea was to write about topics related to home maintenance and things like that. And so it was like, or like 20 ways to burst boost your curb appeal on your house, and like you're just supposed to slot solar in there a couple of times, along with like you know paint the shutters and blah blah blah. So that's mind numbing work, and I just threw it in Chat GPT, and it spit out an email, which now everybody's experienced. But at the time, as a copywriter, it was like, oh no, like that's that's better than anything I was going to write because I didn't want to write it and it took five seconds, so I was doing that, kind of feeling like the window was closing. There, my mom was retiring. I was listening to this stuff, and you know, it was just a confluence of enough things where it's like, let's take a stab at it.
Collin 9:25
Yeah. Well, it's interesting to that you kind of saw that alignment of this quote-unquote boring business, and I love that. And that's not said in a demeaning way. I think it's really important.
Speaker 1 9:36
It's not meant to be. That's her term for like service businesses.
Collin 9:40
Yes. Yeah. It's this like they they kind of exist a little bit in the background. They're not like you said these flashy hyperscaler big things that are going to be out there, but they're really solid. They're really when done well, they're right there. They're rocks. They're serving people well. They're essential to people's lives, which means that there's this some level of. And predictability to them, and I think I think oftentimes, at least when you're kind of in the thick of it, it can feel anything but predictable or boring or whatever. And yet, there is this kind of foundation of built into the expectations of people and the quality of life that they're looking to lead with their pets, given how pets are viewed, it does make the industry and the other businesses that we're growing and building look more okay. That becomes more essential to the way people live. That just becomes an expectation, and so as a business, it makes it that quote unquote boring aspect.
Speaker 1 10:37
Yeah, and to piggyback on what you said, I I had tried a couple of times to start like software companies, or I was doing a newsletter for a while that was about cheap flights, right? Like I've really I've meandered around my career, but trying to do something that was software always found. I always found it very confusing. Even though tech founders and people like that talk about like market testing and things, I could never figure out how to do it on a budget of zero. It was like I don't have five grand that I can just throw at this and lose and feel like, okay, well, we learned a lot. It's like that's not useful to me. I need it to work, and so with with tech stuff or marketing things, there's often like product market fit, and one of my favorite parts of this service business and probably any service business is that there's none of that. It's just it's a thing that has to happen. So someone is going to do it. Someone else is going to pay for it. Granted, you know, there's places where maybe it works better and maybe it doesn't work quite as well, like you know, you're gonna have a hard time doing like tree removal in the desert, right? But you can, right? Yeah, for trees there, it's just not gonna be as big as if you do it in Seattle. So anyway, yeah, I feel very lucky to have gotten into it, even though I think it does fall under Cody's definition of boring.
Collin 12:30
Well, so you're coming in, you have a little bit of exposure to the business. What was it like making it your own?
Speaker 1 12:36
Sucked. It was really hard.
Collin 12:42
Okay, next question.
Speaker 1 12:44
No, no, I, I can elaborate. So, they were, they used to be called a different name, and they were paying a licensing fee to a parent company. It wasn't like a true franchise model. It was just like we'll pay you X per month to use the name, and you'll keep us on the website, and you'll keep the website up to date and optimized. And this is no shot at my mom or at Nancy, but they didn't have time to pay attention to that or think about it at all, and so when I got here, nor did they really know what questions to ask or how to poke at that stuff. It was just like out of their wheelhouse. But I got here, and it was like, hey, so and so, you know, we're number nine on Google. Would it be okay if I made X, Y, or Z changes, and it was like, no, can't do that. I said, okay, well, could we try this thing? Could we try this thing? Could we whatever? And really, the whole operation was hamstrung, at least to me. Right? Like, I'm I'm very entrepreneurial. I I don't love the word no. I don't love the concept either. Where it's like, don't say that you can't. Like that maybe it's not practical enough to be worth it. But run the thought experiment and just see. Right? You don't even have to go all the way with it, either, but like have the conversation at least. So, I got here. I couldn't really do anything with it for the first three months, and then I took full ownership at that point and started coaching with Michelle Klein, and one of the big things that came out of that was, you know, that our payroll was at 103% which was, you know, more than we were making, right, by 3% So. And I was paying myself a little bit at the time, but fortunately, have a very forgiving wife. Who, when I told her, was like, "Hey, I think we're going to have to stop paying me for a bit, she was like, "Huh? Okay. Well, let's try to get back to that, right? It's like, "Yes,
Collin 15:20
that's the goal is to make money. Right, so we're all clear on this. That's what we'd like
Speaker 1 15:25
to do. So, anyway, I stopped paying myself and didn't start again for like a year and a half. But I stopped paying myself. I had to change everybody from they weren't w2 employees, but they were operating as contractors. Like the culture of the company was such that we would get a client, and they would say, you know, do you have someone who can walk my dog? And they would say, we got to go check, and they would ask all the staff, and they'd find a pairing and whatever, which I found very frustrating. I was like, "What do you mean, no? Like, don't you work here? Don't you want to do this? So, I switched everybody over to hourly. I lost Almost everyone, and you know the clients fell away. Fortunately, in pretty direct proportion, so that was kind of nice-a little bit of a silver lining where it was like, all right, we have fewer walkers, but we also have fewer walks. So it it felt like the plane. You know, I wasn't stuck trying to figure out how to walk 40 dogs or something. It was like,
Collin 16:50
yeah, like
Speaker 1 16:51
okay, this whole thing is just slowing down, and I hate it. And then in the second half of that year, after I made that switch. I was in all sorts of beef with the owner of that parent company that I was talking about, and just couldn't make inroads on anything. And so it was like, okay, well, I guess I'm going to rebrand because I have to be able to move the needle on this, and the the mantra that I had for like this whole chunk of time was I didn't move here to have it go okay. It's like there's going to be hard stuff that you have to do, like switching everybody to hourly. That if you want it to go better than okay. You're going to need to suck it up and do some really hard things. I hate firing people. I hated people losing all their job satisfaction in the way that they liked doing it. They were mourning the loss of the previous owners and hating the new guy. Like I've been at companies where that happens and it sucks. I see it differently now. I see those people differently now, where it's like, oh, you were just trying to like keep the plane from crashing. Got it. But so we rebranded, and you know, fortunately, it started to just work pretty well. I I don't say that to say that like I didn't push as hard as I could. Once I had the rebrand, it was like okay, well I'm putting our name in as many places as they will let me put it. Like I'm printing flyers. I'm getting T-shirts. I'm wrapping the car. I'm running ads. You know, trying to figure that out. I'm doing events. I'm like everything was on the table. Yard signs. You name it, and it started to turn around, and I think the other thing that we had going for us in that January, fortunately, the parent company also hadn't made a Google reviews a high priority, so we had some goodwill left over, where I was able in January to you know kind of pester people a little bit, and I think get to 20 or 25 reviews in the in the month, which quickly put us on the radar. You know, if you're looking at the Google Map pack or whatever, all of a sudden maybe we were number three, and it was like, okay, you know, I like that better than being number nine. And meet and greets started to come in, and so on and so on. But yeah, the the transition was really hard. It was really hard on me.
Collin 19:57
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Susan M. 20:01
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Collin 20:19
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give Time to Pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting timepet.com/confessional. Well, you know, you you had that statement. I didn't hear. I didn't move here for it to go okay. I mean, there's another alternate universe where you just kind of slotted right right in and ran it like it had run since 2009. Like, why? Why wasn't that an option for you?
Speaker 1 20:46
Because I have two kids, and I'm very ambitious. And you know, there are the the other guy that runs another branch of the previous company, who I'm just going to keep not using their name, but you know he did that. He like found his way in. He bought out the previous owner with seller financing over a very long time horizon. You know, like five years or something, and you know, has just sort of kept it like that, which I always chalked up to like that's awesome because he's 28 or nine. I'm now I'm 41, which is not old, but it's like I want to be doing what I'm doing at this point. Like I want whatever I'm doing, I want it to be working because, like again, I have two little kids. My wife is a full time parent and does an amazing job with them, and it's like, yeah, I just want to be the guy. So I'm, I was also excited by the challenge of it, right? It's like, I can't say that that wasn't part to like, I wonder how big we could take this. I wonder how fast we could take it that big, like all that stuff keeps me up at night in a positive way. Like it, I'm happy to be in that headspace. Where if that's stressful to somebody else, I don't recommend doing it. But for me, it's like, yeah, love that. Those are my favorite conversations. Those are my favorite thought experiments. Like, I wonder if we could do it like five times faster. Just go. And usually you can't, but you can move the needle a little bit.
Collin 22:55
Well, at least what you can start to do is go. If I were to go five times faster, what would start to break along the way, and I think those are some of the most powerful conversations we can have with ourselves or others. You know, I see our listeners will can't see the whiteboard behind you right now. I'm sure you've charted out all sorts of things on that, thinking about ideas and and that kind of stuff. That helps because, but that starts with having a good understanding, a fundamental understanding of how our business actually operates, so that we can know as I apply pressure to this, and in this case, this pressure is intense growth because you didn't just like have a base and then grow. You had a base, you lost a bunch, and then you came roaring back from that. So you had like a very intense period of growth, but to know that, okay, if I try and do this faster, what will break? And then, can I control that? Can I not control that? Can I put systems around that? Is that another hire? Is that another software? Or or do or will that always be a limiting factor that I just have to at least acknowledge? Yeah. So so that I'm not frustrated by that whenever I kind of hit that ceiling for a period,
Speaker 1 24:03
I'll tell you that I think knowing some of that stuff is coming is very helpful to me. I don't know if it is to everybody else or if they find it discouraging, but when I talk to somebody that's been there before and they're like, "Hey, buckle up! The next six months are going to suck, it's like, okay, I'm actually glad to know that because then when I'm in the midst of it, it's like, oh, this is what the person said. Is that this was really gonna suck, and that if you just stick with it, like you'll come out the other side, and you know, very fortunately, that's been true. I. I at the time that I had to make all those changes, I remember saying to Michelle many times, like it it's like resetting a bone, right? Like it's gonna hurt a lot to do it, but I do need to be able to use my arm, so. Like you're gonna have to just bite down hard on the bit and reset the bone, and you know it's gonna be sore for a little while, and then you'll have full use of your arm again. And it's like, okay, well then let's do it. Let's reset the stupid bone.
Collin 25:16
Well, with with that kind of growth comes a lot of chaos, right? I think that's a war that people may may throw around, and I'm sure you feel like that a lot of in a lot of cases. Like, how do you, or maybe like a better question, maybe like what kind of systems do you have to help control that to the extent that it can be? Because you've mentioned you have a wife, you have two kids at home, you're running this business. That whirlwind never stops, though. So, how do you help keep that under control?
Speaker 1 25:47
It doesn't stop, and I don't. You know, again, back to your earlier point of like, what's a bug and what's a feature? Like that-that is part and parcel, right? Like every day, there's going to be somebody that is dissatisfied with something, whether it's a staff member or a client. Like something's going to go wrong, and you just got to roll with it. So, as far as systems, I I've been lucky to have a couple of people that are kind of bought in on the the rah rah like march to Dave's drum thing.
Collin 26:33
Yeah,
Speaker 1 26:34
and every once in a while, I do get like good and worked up about the business, where it's like, and I mean it. It's very sincere. It's like I just want us to be really great at this one little thing. Like I just want us to be great at that, and I don't think that's too big to ask. Like how hard could it be to get this many people to do an effective job of showing up on time, walking dogs, and leaving nice notes-like that's a pretty low bar-and yet we often don't clear it, right? Like, or I mean, I think industry wide, people struggle to like have consistency, right?
Collin 27:16
Right.
Speaker 1 27:16
But I have some good like people that do training on our team. That's a huge deficiency of mine. Like I like growing a lot, and I like putting numbers on the board and all that stuff. When it comes to like remembering all the details that we need to train people on. I take people out into the field, and I usually I'm like, I do it like this, and I do it like this, and I do it like this. You got it right, like okay, because I like to improvise, and I like to, you know, I like to solve problems when I encounter a house where the key doesn't work, or the dog is in a bad mood, or whatever. Like somehow that lights my brain up, and it's like, oh, I'm going to figure this out. But I also respect and acknowledge that that is not how other people feel about those situations. So they need to be well trained, and because I spotted that as a deficiency early, it was one of the first things I started delegating. It's like it's important. I will acknowledge that it's very important. I am climbing uphill to try and be good at it, where this person and this person seem to love doing it already, so I'm going to just try and steer them because every time they train somebody, it seems to go better than when I do it. So, training. I have somebody that helps a lot out on the scheduling now, and he has been for, I guess, close to a year. Like he's he's really quite good. He's going to be the the GM essentially. So yeah, those and then the piece that I like the best, or the systems that I like building the best are all around sales and marketing. Like, how can we make this easier? And this is going to sound rude. It's not meant to because really, the at the heart of it, I want to, I want people to just be happy with what they're buying, and I want them to really understand everything that's entailed. So, my my thought is always like, how can I download the information into your head the best that saves us both the most time? So. I don't know if I'm excellent at that or not, but you know, I try to just remove as much friction as possible from onboarding because you know, you think of another service business, and maybe these are not flattering comparisons. They're not meant to. They're not meant to be disparaging at all, but like I always think, if I call a plumber and I tell them something is going on in my house, and they say, "Cool, we could be there three days from now. By the way, we charge you when we get there. Also, I'm going to need you to read this stuff and sign these things before I even take a look at it. It's like, okay, well, I'm probably just gonna call another plumber because you seem hard to work with.
Collin 30:47
Well, or it's just there's a level of urgency there. You said that phrase like I want people to be happy with what we're buying. Like coming from somebody whose basement was had, I walked downstairs one day and there was four inches of water in there. Having an extensive and thorough onboarding process from my plumber was shockingly, Dave, not my number one priority. Yeah, it was. It was. It was. It was. Can you have been here yesterday to fix this? And why are you not here right now? And and and at that point, it was. I love that framing of I want them to be happy with it. I think many times though we tend to think I have to convince them to use me. I have to convince people to use my services. How do? But this is a slightly different reframe of that for how you're talking about talking to people.
Speaker 1 31:38
It must be. I you know I I do most of the meet and greets still, and I noticed when I was going and training somebody else on one of them that her default was just what you're describing, and I think it's a very natural thing to do, is to try and sell right to tell people why you're the best, why they should whatever, and as soon as we started to get busy, you know, the I think a lot of just natural confidence flowed into the conversation, where it's pretty hard to replace that feeling of like I could take or leave this, like I. I, I would like to. I really would. But like, here's how we work. And if you, if that's not a great fit, that's fine. There's a lot of other people that will be happy to walk your dog. But, um, I try also to kind of tee everything up so that when I get to that house for the meet and greet, that there are very few questions left. Right, it's just meeting me and deciding whether or not I feel like a trustworthy person, and then giving me some basic information. But like, what I want is for people to go to our website and feel like, wow, they have great pictures and the staff looks really friendly and holy smokes, they have 125 star reviews. That's a lot. That I don't see anybody else with that many, right? Like, if they're looking over all those details, then when I get there, I feel like all I have to say is like, so what are we doing? Like, I made this point on a call earlier today, but like, people are not in the habit of just calling up random service businesses to see how much it would cost to grind a stump or to interior decorate your house. Right, they're not doing that for fun. They go on Google. They're trying to fix a problem that they have. They picked yours. You were the first person to answer, like, and then they're inviting you over to their house, like they're they're pretty bought in by the time you're getting there.
Collin 34:06
Yeah, and and then
Speaker 1 34:08
I usually just go on like a little fact finding mission, like cool. Well, what do you need from us? And they're like, two walks a week. It's like awesome. Get your credit card in, and we'll start tomorrow. And they're like, really? It's like, yeah, we don't have to make this a lot more complicated than that. Like,
Collin 34:26
yeah, and and then you know, there's there's that sense though, as the business owner or whoever you put in there, that sense of desperation. You talked about, hey, there's there's nothing that replaces the confidence of success and being able to sit there and go, I could take this or leave this. When we do when we have that that sense of desperation. Then comes in the let me just go down the the fact check of why I'm better than everybody else. And what I've what I've found is whenever I start doing that because we've always like oh we're a premium service right we're a premium business we you know we we we're very high end with how we handle things and the moment I. Breaking out the gotcha check boxes of whatever, whatever, whatever our qualifications, I immediately I've realized I've immediately slotted myself back down into commoditization where they're only comparing me based off of prices and features, and I'm going. I wait a minute. I didn't. I don't want to be there. I want feelings. I want you to compare me based off of how I'm making you feel and the problem that I'm solving, and and yet we have that default to just no. Here's the checklist of why I'm better and why you should choose me versus everybody else.
Speaker 1 35:31
Yeah, it's tough to hold all that in your heart while you're having conversations because you want to brag, right? Yeah, we're really good at this and we really care a lot. We're actually very eager to earn your business, yeah. But you know, people are for whatever reason kind of wired to run away from that. Where if you come in and it's, they can usually tell how good you are at it based on the questions that you're asking. Yeah, and if you can beat them to the question that they had next, like if you could just guide the whole conversation, all of a sudden it just feels like you're talking to a pro, right? Like if you went to a doctor and they just kept talking about how they went to Stanford Medical the whole time, it's like Cool weirdo! Like what? Like we're here to talk about me. Yeah,
Collin 36:27
and that's that that that focus of to to like why am I here? I'm here to actually serve you. So let me do a lot more listening and guiding than than talking right now, and that does put that person in a lot more of a a comfort level of they're not being sold to or pitched to or or or whatever. They they actually get to talk about their problem. Basically,
Speaker 1 36:52
they also I think I this is the first time I've really consciously had this thought, but I think at meet and greets I used to reference other houses a lot more, where it's like, oh yeah, this house that happens, at that house that happens, because I wanted them to clock that like we had a lot of clients, right? I I wanted them to know that we've seen this before, and I don't do that as much now because the questions that I ask are questions that you can only get by having walked 1000s of dogs. Where it's like, I I just know what I'm gonna run into most of the time. So like, and it's always funny to me because, again, I have two little kids, so I think about this a lot. How funny it would be to go to a kindergarten teacher or a first grade teacher or whatever, and say, "Now I want you to know, like my daughter's pretty special, and they're like, "To you, your daughter is pretty special. To me, your daughter is a young person with certain sets of behaviors. I got to tell you, I've seen 99% of them before. She has her own interests and she has things that she likes, and that's really great. But I'm professionally trained to work with little kids. Like, I got it. So when I go into houses and people are like, I don't know if you're gonna be able to walk Juno, it's like, oh yeah, like you think this is the one, this golden, you think this golden retriever is like the really tricky one with the worst anxiety and the no, my one weakness, I've for a while it was too glib, and I think it turned some people off. I didn't know I did it maybe three or four times, but at meet and greets, I would say when people would do that, I would say like, do they like treats? And invariably, the answer is yes. And I'm like, oh well, then we're probably gonna be fine, right? Like, because are we allowed to give them treats? Well, yeah. It's like okay. That we usually make friends pretty fast.
Collin 39:08
Yeah. Just,
Speaker 1 39:09
just like you'll make friends with my daughter really fast if you bring her a lollipop. Like,
Collin 39:14
I'm not above bribery. Is what that works. Yeah, it works. You you said that you do a lot of prep work before you show up, though. What does that include?
Speaker 1 39:25
So, what I meant by that is I like for people to to have the data ahead of time, so so that when I get there, they aren't having to ask, you know, how many walkers are on the staff, or how many, how long is your service window, or you know those things where it's like I don't know. And admittedly, some of them like caused my adrenaline to spike a little bit, particularly pricing. Right, because I too wanted to price premium, but I hated saying it out loud.
Collin 40:05
Yep.
Speaker 1 40:05
So I was like, what if I could put it in something where they have to know that before I even get there?
Collin 40:14
Yeah. And
Speaker 1 40:15
if they book the meet and greet anyway, then we're good, right?
Collin 40:19
Yeah.
Speaker 1 40:19
I still have to say the price all the time, and I'm less awkward about it than I used to be. But you know, I think it really came about from there was a meet and greet that I went to that took like an hour and a half, and admittedly, I was having a ball. She was like this kooky old lady who just wanted to talk about her sons and her grandsons and whatever, and it was like, I love this. This is such a waste of time, but I, I really am having a nice time. I can't ever do this again. Like these, these don't have to take this long because there are really like five to 10 questions that always come up. They're the same every time, and so at that point was like, I'm just going to make a video on Loom, right? I'll record it on my laptop. I'll put a little script up. I'll answer the frequently asked questions, and then I'll send that to them before I even go to the house, And so they book their meet and greet, and this is the way that our onboarding is now. They book their meet and greet. They get a text with this video as well as an email that's like, "By the way, I made this video for you because these questions tend to come up a lot, and I thought it might save us some time. And it's like in two minutes, they get the digest. Not everybody watches it, but most or a strong handful do. And yeah, I mean, I used to book an hour for meet and greets. I do 30 minutes now, and I'm usually out in like 15. It's like, yeah. How are we getting in? How are we going? Here's how many staff. This is who works in the neighborhood. You guys keep the leash somewhere. They use a weird harness. Like, what are the questions, right?
Collin 42:14
Yeah. And
Speaker 1 42:14
again, those questions that like you just wouldn't think of if you hadn't walked a bunch of dogs, it's like, oh yeah, one of those harnesses. I've seen those. Okay, so do you guys do the front or the back pull? And they're like, we do the front pull. It's like, cool. I know about that because I do this a lot. Yeah. So anyway,
Collin 42:38
and now a word from our friends at Pet Sitters International.
Speaker 2 42:41
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Collin 43:08
But I like that because we keep coming back to that of, and I think there's this. Okay, am I am I marketing? Am I selling? Am I having a conversation? Am I onboarding a client? Where does that really? Where does that line start and stop? But you know through through that process for you.
Speaker 1 43:24
Like at what point do I stop selling and consider them onboarded? Yeah, yeah,
Collin 43:31
yeah. Because you know I hear this onboarding process of it, and and here's some frequently asked questions, and here's this, and that may sound like onboarding, but to in a sense, it's also a little bit of of marketing going on to that person because they haven't you know booked services yet, and it's to me it's a reminder that you can make each step educational and helpful and more powerful for them to be trusting you and your and your business at at every stage.
Speaker 1 43:58
Yeah, the the more information you give people the more they're gonna feel confident in their decision when they make it. I think, or feel very unconfident, like, like I, you know, we have to do this because somebody's gotta walk the dog. But boy, that's expensive, or you know, whatever. And then they don't stick around long. But. Um, I it it's it's a little bit of. Have you read the book Persuasion by Robert Cialdini or Chaldini? I don't know how you pronounce it. It
Collin 44:32
is on my reading list. I've I've had it recommended a few times, so I should probably get around to it.
Speaker 1 44:37
It's good, and it's not totally this. Like there's he makes different points in the book, but that's kind of what I'm attempting to do online. It's like, okay, I want someone to see that many reviews. Sorry, let me put it a different way. If you go to a restaurant and there's a line out the door, regardless of whether or not it's good, you. We'll assume that it's better than one without a line out the door. Online and with a service business, it's very hard to recreate that. Like, how do you make it look like you're super in demand? Well, it's like, well, we're going to need a lot of reviews, and we're going to need a lot of pictures with us in a lot of different scenarios, so that it looks like we're Super busy, and you know, not that I want to. I don't know, like it's not to intimidate people, but they should a little bit be able to reconcile what they are seeing with what it's going to cost, and if it's like, oh well, yeah, of course Bethesda Dog Walkers charges a bunch. They're obviously slammed, and it's like, yeah, we are slammed, and but we would still like to work with you, and we'll figure out how to staff up and get it done, but yeah, I just want all that context before the conversation, so that when I say our rates, they're like, "Yeah, we figured it'd be something like that. It's like, "Cool. Well, then you kind of made the decision before I got here anyway. Let's move forward,
Collin 46:22
making sure that that brand voice, but also the consistency and experience, is the same across. Like I love that analogy of when you're driving by, you see that really busy store, that really busy restaurant. There's some perceptions and some biases and some preconceived notions that we start to develop about that place and about what we should experience when I'm standing in line eventually, because I just got to check it out. I should, right? I shouldn't be surprised by a couple things. And trying to that is a big struggle that I know we have that a lot of businesses have of how do I make myself appear X Y Z when when when really it tends to be that I always look to Disney, though. Of like, how do you tell people about the Disney experience until you experience the Disney experience? Right. Well, I feel like they do a pretty good job about setting some expectations about what that experience is before you get walking through the turnstiles.
Speaker 1 47:16
For sure. You also said something that I want to speak to? I don't remember where in the conversation we were talking about this, but I think part of it too is that while yes, I do want the appearance of being large and premium and all the fancy things, I also want to actually be that. Yeah, yeah,
Collin 47:42
true.
Speaker 1 47:44
Like, I want to be that good. I want our team to be so unimpeachably good at what we do that when I tell you the price, it's like, and it's worth it. Like that. So, I don't know if we execute that, you know, as well as possible. That's a little bit of like a perfectionist kind of thing. I probably am harder on myself than I need to be, but that's sort of like the pulse behind all of that. Where it's like, I am going to charge you a lot, but it's because I want to hire really great people. It's because I want to deliver a really consistent experience. I want to pay the people that I hire really well. I want you to be happy with what you're getting. Like, I'm trying to have the virtuous circle instead of like, I mean, we could do it for 10 bucks, and like, I'm gonna find whoever I find, and they'll be able to walk your dog, and it's like I just don't want that. Like that's that's not fun to me. To belabor the analogy about the restaurant, it's always the best when you wait in line for the food, and then you get it, and you're like, oh, duh. Like I would go back in line right again. Like this is this is so freaking good, and the opposite sucks. Where it's like, why was there a line? Why did we wait for two hours for this slice of pizza that is fine? It's like it's it's barely better than other pizza.
Collin 49:22
Yeah, did they just reheat some DiGiornos from the grocery store? It's that right. It's that it's that duh experience versus the ugh experience that I feel like there are times where, as a client, they can come in and we want them to make have that oh obvious obviously this is what the hype was about because of what's happening right now, and many times when we don't have things matched up, where you've got this great onboarding, you've got the great marketing, the flashy brand, all this stuff, but then the actual execution of the service, we haven't nailed that. Well, then there's the oh, well, what happened here, right? Like oh, like what? There's that letdown. And then you get that leads to client churn. So then I've got to increase my marketing, and I'm just burning through all of this stuff, and it impacts the entire operations of the business.
Speaker 1 50:10
What I think is the good news there, and again, I maybe am trying to hold myself too high of a mental standard on all of this, but I do occasionally pop back into reality and realize that really what people want us to do is care a lot about their pets, right? Keep them safe, keep them happy, and do the things on time that you were supposed to do, and communicate that clearly.
Speaker 3 50:42
Yeah,
Speaker 1 50:42
like Alex Hormozzi. I don't remember exactly how he says this, but he talks about how above and beyond is usually not necessary. Like just doing what is expected of you really well is like pretty uncommon, so if you can get that done and you can get it done for hundreds of people, and you can sustain that over a period of years, you're gonna build a moat where it's like, yeah, look, look, we're not pretending that we're gonna do a million bells and whistles things. What we are is incredibly solid at the service that you're requesting. Like, we'll be there every time, whatever.
Collin 51:31
I think there's that tendency to come from us that what we're doing is not sufficient or enough. We sure right, and that I think that's where that drive to always do above and beyond and do amazing, spectacular things. Of oh, this isn't worth it. I don't feel the worth of my of my service as it is. So I have to keep adding and I have to keep doing and going above and beyond so that they get what they paid for. Instead, I I love that Dave of reframing that to go. Actually, the client's expectations, if you look at this, are probably way lower than what we come in expecting. Not all the time, right? Not all the time, but there's
Speaker 1 52:09
there's a handful.
Collin 52:10
I think that it's true that there's just like at the end of the day, they just want their problems solved and for you to do it consistently, like just pretty much, yeah.
Speaker 1 52:22
It's right. There's a bell curve. There, there are some people that don't pay any attention to what you do ever, ever, and they they pay for the service anyway, and you still try to do right by them. And then there's people at the other end of the spectrum who like, if you forget to take off your shoes when you come into the house, or if you don't put on the harness and the collar, or whatever. Right? They have like a set of rules that if you don't follow, they're very particular. Yeah, and you try to do right by them too. But most people kind of land in the middle, where it's like, "Hey, we're at work. Our dog is bored. We feel bad about that. You have people that work at your company that love dogs, right? And it's like,
Collin 53:06
right?
Speaker 1 53:07
Yes, that is what we have. And they're like, great. Could you send one of those dog-loving people to my house to make my dog have some fun in the middle of the day and make sure they don't go to the bathroom in the dining room? And it's like, yeah, we could do that. We'll charge you this for it, and we'll be remarkably consistent about what we deliver to you. And they're like, "That'll be a load off, right? Like, that'll be nice. And then, yeah, there's there's people that are hard to please, and there's some people that are impossible to please. It's like the very far end of that continuum, it's like, buddy, there's nothing I could offer you that would scratch this itch. Like, I don't know what you're looking for because I've never seen it in another pet care company, and I know quite a few at this point. Like, that's good luck, you know.
Collin 53:58
And then we take that and apply that one bad experience to everybody across the board, and and right and that so oh if I can't meet this then everything's a waste and so that's my standard that I have to meet.
Speaker 1 54:11
I will say this is this truly is not intended to be a humble brag. You should do it at whatever point you're at in your business, we are currently sitting around 100 events a day, which I only care about because it's a really, really clean way to benchmark how many negative experiences we have as a percentage.
Collin 54:35
Yeah, it's like easy math. We love easy, right? If
Speaker 1 54:38
there are two a day, then there are 98 that went great or totally sufficient, met the client standards. It's 2% It's like, yeah, that sucks. We got to fix that. Like we're always shooting for 100, but you know how bad was that 2% Okay, we got like. We got a 98% right? It's still an A plus as a company. Like, we didn't get extra credit. I'm sorry, but you know, it's a that's a score I would be very happy with.
Collin 55:15
Yeah, Dave, I am curious. You talked a bit about why you got into the business, what does it mean to you now?
Speaker 1 55:25
I really love it a lot. Like it's really fun. What does it mean to me now? I've never done something before that I thought had the potential to last for a long time. I don't know another way to say that. I I think what I've always shot for historically, because I used to do music and marketing and everything that I had attempted previously. The goal was basically to go viral, right? It's like we'll sell a really cheap widget, like a song, for $1 or a you know the cost of a stream, but then you need to get 18 million units on that to even make it worth it, and it's like okay, so that's been my mentality before, and I'll give you one little last analogy because it's an experience that happened moving out here. So I had a like an '05 Toyota Sequoia. It was pretty beat up, and we had very little money to move out here, and so the way that we did it was we rented a U-Haul. I don't even know what they call them. It's a dolly, I guess. We I towed my wife's car from Utah to Maryland with as much stuff as we could cram into both of the vehicles, and I went 55 the whole way across the country, and it was a real slog. But before I left, was like, "Well, I know one of my shocks is broken on this thing, so I'm going to take it to this car shop. And I took it to this shop because the last four times that I had gone there, I'd gone in. I'd gone to the front desk, and I'd said, "Hey, there's this thing going on with my car. And they'd say, "Oh, let's go out and take a look at it. I turned the car on. They'd hear the sound, and four times they said, "You know what that is? You're you're actually just low on this. You could run to AutoZone. It's two minutes that way, and they'll give you $1. Like you get a little thing for eight bucks, and we'll fix it. It's like, okay, great, thanks. And they did it to me four times, and they do it a lot, and they had more five star reviews than any other mechanic by far. And when I brought my car in there to get it tuned up before the trip. I went in and I said, "You guys have turned me down a bunch of times, and I'm going to insist that you deal with whatever's on the car because I'm really want to spend my money with you because I really believe that you are going to do a great job. And they thanked me. They brought it in. It didn't end up costing a ton. That's not the point of the story. But what happened is when I went to go pick it back up, they were all on lunch break, and there was one guy that I happened to get his attention. He was in the garage, and you know he let me in, and I said, "Where is everybody? It's like the middle of the day, and he said, "Oh yeah, once a month we get all the mechanics together, and we like talk about customer service, and we have like a little whatever. And it was such perfect timing for what I was about to come and do. Where it was like, "You do that here, and that shop has been around for like 30 or 40 years, and they are obsessed with just being permanent. Like we, if we always play the long game and we always do right by people, we're gonna be here for freaking ever, and it's a very different mentality than going viral. It's like nope, you're you're making a lot of deposits into the goodwill account. You're trying to do the right thing. You're issuing refunds. You're playing it straight with everybody. There's no sleight of hand. Just keep doing the right thing and giving people what they're looking for, and invariably it comes back around. Right, like you'll have people that screw you over for sure. Life is tough and full of sucky people, but net net comes out a lot better, and I think you feel much. So I've never been this happy doing anything else. I like this the most,
Collin 1:00:07
Dave. I really want to thank you for coming on the show today for sharing about your journey, but also encouraging us to be working on the hard things for the right reasons for the long term. For those who want to get connected with you, follow along with all the cool stuff that you're doing. How best can they do that?
Speaker 1 1:00:24
Yeah, I mean, I'm not great at Instagram. I got to tell you, Bethesda Bethesda Dog Walkers is the Instagram. My personal Instagram is David F E F F. Honestly, just being on Facebook in any of the Facebook groups. I'm fairly active on there. I'm also real responsive over email, David Bethesda dogwalkers.com. Yeah, I I mostly like doing this. I like hanging out and just kicking it. I'm not much good at posting. It's another one of my things.
Collin 1:00:57
Well, they all have ways for people to get connected with you, so they can they can start picking your brain and hang out and start learning. I have I have just really really appreciated your time and this conversation today. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1 1:01:12
You're the man. Thank you for having me.
Collin 1:01:14
I didn't move here to have it go okay. I think that really captures so much of what it means to lead a growing and scaling business. Sometimes we inherit systems that no longer fit. Whether that's because we eventually changed our mind, or somebody else built something, or we're just following the lead of what somebody told us to do, and now we have to make hard decisions. Or maybe we just realize that the entire business needs a massive reset to go where we need it to go. I've learned that building meaningful things requires every single time it requires you to choose the harder path right now, so that we can serve the clients and the team members better later. And we have to ask ourselves: Are we willing to do that now, to pull the cord now, to shut it down now, to reset now, to do the hard thing now, so that I can actually get to where I need to go. Sometimes it's not about just making small, little, tiny changes one at a time and testing and testing and trial and error. Sometimes we have to admit that the entire thing needs to go, and that is where strong leaders show themselves. We want to thank today's sponsors, Time to Pet and Pet Sitters International, for making the show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
