735: Leading Your Team With Purpose with Jon Eckrich
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What happens when your business is built around a mission instead of just making money? In this episode, Collin sits down with Jon Eckrich of Jon Loves Dogs to discuss how a clear mission influences every decision—from hiring and onboarding to client relationships and long-term growth. Jon shares how his corporate leadership experience shaped his approach to building a professional pet care team without losing sight of compassion. Together they explore company culture, Fear Free principles, training systems, and setting high standards for employees. The conversation is a reminder that a strong mission doesn’t limit your business—it gives every decision a clear direction.
Main topics:
Mission-driven business leadership
Hiring with clear standards
Fear Free training principles
Building intentional company culture
Balancing purpose and profit
Main takeaway: “If the business doesn’t exist, then we can’t achieve our mission.”
Every business owner eventually faces the tension between purpose and profit. Jon reminds us that those two things aren’t enemies—they depend on each other.
A healthy business isn’t the destination; it’s the vehicle that allows us to keep serving pets, clients, and our teams for years to come. When every decision is filtered through a clear mission, even difficult choices become easier to make.
About our guest: Jon Eckrich is the founder of Jon Loves Dogs, a New Jersey-based professional pet sitting and dog walking company built around a mission of enriching the lives of companion animals. After spending more than fifteen years in corporate healthcare recruiting and leadership, he transitioned into professional pet care, combining his leadership experience with Fear Free principles and animal welfare. In addition to running his growing business, Jon consults with pet care companies on hiring, onboarding, leadership, and building healthy workplace cultures.
Links:
Jon Loves Dogs — https://jonlovesdogs.com
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/jonlovesdogsllc
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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 Time to Pet and Pet Sitters International. Staying on mission and having a team that delivers it well is one of the biggest struggles that we have as business owners, especially in this kind of industry and work, with working with the clients and pets and everything involved in that, and so today I'm really excited to be speaking with John from John Loves Dogs, and we're going to get to whether he does or not actually, and the hard-hitting questions coming up coming up later. But but John, I I am really excited and thankful for your time today and to have you on the show. For those who aren't familiar with you, please tell us a little bit more about you know who you are and what you do.
Jon Eckrich 0:48
Absolutely, my my favorite topic myself. Happy happy to talk about that. Thank you so much. Firstly, Collin, for having me on. I'm a huge fan of your show. I think you guys do awesome work. You and Megan. So my name is John Eckrich. I am the owner and operator of the creatively and aptly titled John Loves Dogs. So, a little bit about my background. I have a 15-year history in corporate healthcare recruiting. So, I started as a contingency recruiter, an agency recruiter, very high-pressure gig, lots of pressure to perform, and during the pandemic, I was between recruiting positions, and I took a sabbatical and became a pet groomer. So that was a a big left field turn for me. That was my first instance of working with pets. I eventually went back to recruiting, obviously, as the pandemic settled down. I continued to volunteer in the pet space at St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center. That's a rescue in Madison, New Jersey, and my recruiting career culminated in a senior leadership position. So, I had a lot of responsibility the entire northeastern U.S. from Boston down to D.C. I had 13 direct reports, and while I was in the corporate world, I met my my wife. We moved in together. We began using pet sitters for our own pets. We have a dog and two cats when we would both be in the office. So eventually, I ended up getting laid off. I was very burned out of corporate work, so I went to my wife, who was my then fiance, and I said, "I'm feeling really burned. Like I could use just maybe three months off of work. And she was like, "Okay, like I understand. I support you, but maybe you might want to like jump on one of the gig apps and start walking some dogs. And I was like, "Oh, it's not a bad idea. Like that'd be a good way to keep busy. And now, in hindsight, I realized that she probably was thinking, "Oh my God, he's going to be sitting in his underwear on the couch for three months playing video games. I need to get him the heck out of the house. And you know, credit to her. It was a great idea, and I'll shorten the story here and say that the growth exploded. I spun it off into its own business. John loves dogs. We're now in our third year, and we have a team of around 10 pet sitters and dog walkers. And you know, it's been another crazy, chaotic year for us. We're projected for 115 percent year-over-year growth in revenue, and as a business owner yourself, and the people listening to this, they probably think, "Wow, that's impressive. And also, oh my God, he must be losing his mind, and that's accurate. It's been very chaotic, but it's been infinitely rewarding. I feel like I found my place where I belong, which I never really felt in the corporate world. It always felt like I was just kind of faking it there. So that's what I've been doing. And in addition to that, I also do some consulting for other pet sitting and dog walking business owners, primarily with regards to hiring, team building, team leadership, trying to leverage my previous corporate experience to help people do things like you know build the groundwork in terms of writing employee handbooks, the most basic stuff, all the way up to soup to nuts sourcing for pet sitters and dog walkers if that's what they need as well,
Collin 4:23
man, that's quite the roller coaster over the past few years for you, John.
Jon Eckrich 4:28
Yes, it is. Believe me, I'm I'm feeling it, Collin.
Collin 4:31
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting. You know, you said that phrase of have you felt like you were faking it before? I mean, what about the work now makes you feel like it's more personal for you.
Jon Eckrich 4:43
So, it's it's tough to quantify that because so much of it is just visceral and innate. Like it just the second I started doing the dog walks, I I felt like wow, this is great. It. Effortless. I had, like I mentioned, I had some of that background in pet grooming, so I was familiar with what anxious dogs look like. I knew how to handle them, so I was coming with some of that experience, and I had volunteered as well. So I was already doing dog walks for St. Hubert's, and just doing it for myself and being able to make those business decisions on the back end, in addition to the field work, it all sort of came together. Like all of these disparate threads in my experience came together into this one thing that made me feel very at home, very qualified, and confident to do it. So that's that's, and it's just that experience. Even today, even on the difficult days, I I tell my wife she did end up marrying me because I wasn't sitting on the couch in my underwear, so that was probably a big impact. I tell her I'm like, I there's nothing I will do aside from this. Like this is I have found my my place. Like this is what I'm going to do until I retire in some form.
Collin 6:01
Sure. Well, and you have a pretty like part of that. I think comes across in your mission statement, John, and kind of your mission of your company. It's pretty unique, I've got to say. Talk to me about kind of where that came from and developed in your business.
Jon Eckrich 6:18
Yeah, that's and that's something that developed really far before my business ever came about, I think very similar to most pet sitters. I grew up around dogs for as long as I can remember. Like there are pictures of me as a child sitting on the floor, like next to a giant German Shepherd. I mean, that was that was my childhood. My mother adored animals, and my dad had always had dogs growing up, so we never had fewer than three dogs in the house. It was just that was how I was raised, and so I developed that love for animals at a very young age, even beyond you know the genetics from having two animal lover parents, and um, so that was a good baseline. But I I read a book many years ago now, probably up to we were getting up to like maybe 15 years in the past. It was called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. It's a very famous book, and I I won't get too far into it because it has a really broad focus on human civilization. But there's a portion of the book that always stuck with me, and it talks specifically about the companionship relationship of dogs and humans, and how we've basically evolved alongside each other for 15,000 years. You know the big things like dogs helping us hunt, down to the little things like dogs evolved eyebrows because they hung out with us, and that was a way for humans to like interface with what emotions they're feeling-the
Collin 7:46
facial expressions, right? Of looking at one, exactly,
Jon Eckrich 7:49
exactly. So that that I never forgot reading about that, and that always had an impact on me. And you can look at it in a certain lens, and say that we really morphed dogs into what they are from from wolves. We made them what they are, and they're now dependent on our companionship for survival. And that's always really affected me because you look at where we are at now as human beings, and we don't we don't need dogs anymore, you know. We we keep them around because they make us happy, and and we care about that. We have self-driving cars and drones and AI and all this other stuff. But dogs don't have that. They still need us. They still need us to help them to survive. And I've I've done a lot of travel to a lot of different parts of the world, a lot of less fortunate parts of the world, where dogs are considered basically little more than pest animals. Like they're just like big rats. You know, they hang around, they pee on stuff, they eat garbage. And I have a specific story of being in the Philippines, and I was on the beach. It was very early, early in the morning. I was reading, drinking some coffee, and a stray dog came over near me and just like plopped down next to me and sat underneath this palm tree and he was just chilling and it was like I was like I still have videos of it like in my Google account because it was such a cool moment and this hotel staff guy comes up and throws a big rock at the dog and like yells at him to get away and it hits him right in the butt and the dog, and I was like the flash of anger. Like I really try hard to take a step back and not bring my own values to people, you know, in different parts of the world. But like the flash of anger that I, I was like, I wanted to just take the rock and throw it back at the guy, but that really stuck with me. I'm like, they really are like pest animals, and I felt a responsibility just as a human being for that. Like we, you know, they didn't ask dogs didn't ask to be made into what they are. We we did that by keeping them alongside us. So, I think that all this is all very grandiose and high-minded, but this is really the kernel of where the mission comes from. It's, you know, bringing dogs along with us and ensuring not just that they survive and they're, you know, they get a potty break or they get their medication or food when they need it, but that they have an enriched life and they're cared for, and they feel that nurturing and love, and that's really the baseline. Our mission it guides every decision that we make on a daily basis, from what clients to take, the people that I hire, the services that we offer, and that is the bedrock, the foundation of the business, and it's become by extension now the bedrock and foundation of like really my life's mission. I mean that's why I'm doing what I'm doing because I feel that responsibility, and I want us to be part of what helps to elevate our local industry into a better caliber of care for companion animals.
Collin 11:04
Well, it's a it's a different focus on the purpose of why you're there. Of okay, okay, a mission may be okay. The client has a long day at work, and they're they're worried about okay. But if I'm also going okay, well, 15,000 years of companionship and connection, the the the dog needs a focus too, and and so what am I doing to provide for that quality of life for them? And then I get you know, and then educating the client on why this is important and why this is necessary above and beyond your worries for a potty accident or something like that in the home when you get back.
Jon Eckrich 11:43
Yes, exactly, and and it is grandiose. It is high minded, but again, I I feel like that is what drove me into this, and I think about it a lot, like probably more than is healthy. But I I think that's good for us to tether our business into that foundation, and a lot of that also is my experience in the corporate world, where you're watching decisions being made based on like two numbers on a spreadsheet, and the meaning and the mission is lost. And a lot of that was very frustrating to deal with. You know, you have team members, human beings that you're responsible for, and the cuts come down, and it's okay. Well, these three people are the least performing individuals on your team, so we have to let them go. And for me, it's I just spent the last three years talking with these people week in and week out, day in and day out. I know them as human beings. I don't know them as like two performance KPIs on a spreadsheet, so that's a big part of it as well for me is not losing sight of that mission, not worrying about growing our revenue at the expense of doing a good job in the field and making sure that the pets are taken care of and they receive that caliber of service.
Collin 12:58
Have you heard of Tyned Pet Sarita with exclusively cats has this to say.
Sarita Eckhoff 13:02
Oh, absolutely do it! I love it. I think it's absolutely from the get go. If you're just thinking about starting a business, do this. It's it's so inexpensive. It's it's kind of silly not to do it. Organizes everything for you. It's so amazing. I I think there. I think it's it's invaluable. I think especially for a new business owner just kind of sets you off on the right foot and makes you look like a true professional, not like a fly-by-night pet sitter.
Collin 13:26
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give Timed Pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting timedpet.com/confessional. So how do you balance that? Because at the end of the day, there is money in, money out. It is a business, and there are expenses to be paid. So for you, I mean, do do you never really worry about that, or is that just something that you say, okay, that's what I've got to look at second, and let me get this right in the beginning?
Jon Eckrich 13:55
I would say I constantly worry about that. That's I mean, for as long as I do this, that will probably be a worry, and I don't know that I will ever get the perfect fine line between the two. I think the way that I rationalize it to myself is, at a certain point, the business needs to be self-sufficient, and it needs to make enough revenue to survive. Because if it if the business doesn't exist, then we can't achieve our mission. So I'm willing to make sacrifices if necessary to achieve the mission. But at the end of the day, if we're taking a loss each month as a business, we're going to go under, and I'm going to have to do something else that might not be as effective at achieving this mission. You know, like if I go back into recruiting, I'm doing way less to further this mission than if I run my pet sitting business. So that's that's really how I try and come down on that fine line.
Collin 14:58
I love that, John. So. In that there is a mission, and the business is the vehicle through which we accomplish that. And so, what does the business need to do to to do that, right? To to reach the end goal, and with that kind of mindset and perspective, it does help you kind of balance these two seemingly, you know, unbalanceable items, right? Well, we're like, I can't, I can't rectify these two things. Well, I don't have to because I'm, I'm balanced. One's going to be up, one's going to be down, one's good. The other, like, there's, it's just this back and forth. But we keep moving forward. But you also have a team with you. How are you? Like, what's that process like? Bringing somebody in to this kind of mission as a company versus just a congratulations, you can work hourly and I will pay you for that. Welcome to the team. I think
Jon Eckrich 15:51
training is key. Our you know the mission isn't like I mentioned. It's not just to keep people's pets alive. You know they can already do that by dropping them at the kennel. Like take them to the kennel; they'll be well fed. They'll be inside one single safe room the entire time. You know there nothing's nothing's likely to happen at the kennel. So for us to go above and beyond that to provide that real comfort and enrichment, we need to understand that walks aren't just potty breaks. It's not just letting the dog in the backyard for two minutes and then bringing them back inside. It's you know taking a working breed into the backyard for an hour and trying in vain, usually, to exhaust their energy and enrich them with puzzle games or or whatever it might be, or you know, taking the bloodhound to the smelliest spots in the neighborhood to try and let him experience all the rotting garbage that that he wants to. It's knowing these things about dogs and knowing how their minds work and what is enriching to them. So that's a lot of that is in training for the less experienced people that we hire. I think a lot of it as well is about leveraging fear-free training. We are fear-free certified. I am fear-free certified professional pet sitter, and we have a couple of other people. We have, I believe, on the team currently a fear-free certified vet tech, and another one who has shelter training. But that is the baseline for all of our hands-on training with everybody that we hire. Is my own fear-free training. So our training program is created based on those principles, alleviating fear, anxiety, and stress never forcing the pets into an action that they're not consenting to, and I think the baseline starts at body language. It's it's so so important. That's where it all starts. You can't properly engage with a pet unless you can understand the signals that they're giving to you. Consent is important, but even just things that make them happy and things they don't care about, like you need to be able to hone in on those. So that's like day one, hour one of our training is pet body language. But in general, it's incorporating fear-free principles and making sure that our team members understand that and understand what the goals are with each visit,
Collin 18:21
the the goals right of each why why am I here and and when we exactly when we first started hiring, that was something that we completely missed was in making sure that we communicated that to our our team our employees. It was in the beginning we just thought hey here's a dog go do go do stuff, but then we were confused why they made decisions that they did, and why they were doing actions that we didn't agree with. And what we realized is that we just had all this context and information about this dog or about this cat that they didn't. Hey, we are here, and it got down to like now we have got this little note purpose. We are here because client wants, you know, or the dog needs, or this is going on, or this is important. So that helps set the framing of everything else that's done in that visit, so that they know, okay, I'm here. This maybe this is just a snifari because the dog is is older. Okay, great. That I'm going to make decisions differently for that dog in that visit versus the working breed where I need to be out, you know, busting it for an hour, hour and a half in the backyard. I'm going to make different decisions for that, and it really empowers the team to then take that training that we've given them and actually apply it, actually deliver on that versus just a copy and paste kind of format that I tend to think a lot of us, myself included, can fall into of like we'll just do the same thing, and a lot of jobs do as well. They come from the background of okay, how do I do X Y Z? It's the same process every single time. There's no differentiation, and if I do deviate. I get in trouble because I miss my KPIs, and in this world, we're saying literally everything is different. There's congratulations, you know, and now that is the truth. We got to work our way through this, but that's really where you start seeing that connection of of giving the people the why behind the work.
Jon Eckrich 20:20
Yeah, for sure, for sure, and it's so important too. I think part of what you touched on that resonates with me is that it's not just plug and play. Like we have SOPs, we have guidelines to the services that we provide, but this is why we have such detailed notes on each client, you know, like so and so likes this, likes that. How food motivated are they versus not? You know, do they need mental enrichment? Do they are they totally fine with just sitting on the couch next to you for 30 minutes while you rub their belly? It's each one of them is different, and individualizing that by the client, I think, is very impactful in terms of reducing that fear, anxiety, and stress, and leaving where the dog is napping on the couch versus they're following you to the door and being like, "Why are you leaving? You know, like that's such a. We always want to see sleepy dogs when we leave. Like that's a sign of a job well done for for us. I feel like in the pet sitting industry.
Collin 21:24
Well, and and those kind of notes also help the team members coming in. Do you? I question like you have you have team. Do you do a one for one model, or can anybody walk in and do the the visit?
Jon Eckrich 21:36
We have anyone can walk in and do the visit. We have a whole grading system. It's funny. I was listening to some of your recent shows about leadership style, and I I heard Megan talking about the operator, and I was like, "Yep, that's me. I'm the operator. But we we we want everyone to be able to serve each pet, but we understand that some of the more anxious pets will not do well with a new person walking in semi regularly. So we have a very strict process grading system where we assign a grade to a dog. It's very complex. I won't get into it here, but essentially, what it dictates is whether or not a new pet sitter needs a familiar face as an an introducer to that dog, and we found that that works very well for us. And we have some dogs where I'm sure you and all of your listeners know the type, where you walk in and you could be there to burn the house down, and the dog is like, "Awesome! Where do we pour the gas? I'll help you do it. Let's go. You're my best friend. Yeah, and then you know you have some where it's going to take like four or five happy visits where you're walking in with no walks and no goals just to get that dog used to you as a pet sitter. So we try and grade appropriately, and we found that that's a good bridge in between having an assigned sitter for each dog and having the flexibility of being able to have whoever has that open availability assigned to the visit for that day.
Collin 23:07
I I think that is fantastic, and and the you know kind of where I was going with this was those detailed notes, that kind of information sets the sitter up for success when they're in the visit because when they're lost, they're confused, they don't know where things are, they don't know what the expectations are. That cascades down into that pet, that dog in front of you is now more stressed because I'm stressed, and that feedback loop that happens. The number of times where early on it was like, oh gosh, like we like we just have to step outside and reset right now. Like we really got off the rails there, so let's come back in. And it was simple things like people getting frustrated because they didn't know where feeding items were, or the leash wasn't what we expected, or like all this stuff. It's like I I can actually control that aspect by having that written down and put somewhere, and that just that power that I can give to the my my team to us as a business, is like that goes such a long way to that trust ultimately at the end of the end of the leash.
Jon Eckrich 24:08
Yeah, for sure. And you touched on a couple things there that are really important. I think when I work with some of my some of my consulting clients, one of the first things I stress to them is the importance of setting expectations, and that's on usually for my consulting clients. It's when they're going into the team model, when they're hiring people, when they're hiring new employees. But it's important for the clients as well. It's it's just all around setting those expectations is is super important, and another thing that you mentioned that resonates as well is, and and this goes into some of our day one training as well. Is dogs are just impeccable vibe catchers. Like you, you, I feel like you don't understand how much they catch onto your vibes until you work with them. That would. Something I learned in pet grooming. I remember my first couple of weeks of training. I I worked with a more senior groomer, and she kept saying to me over and over, "She's like, you're too anxious. Like the dogs are coming in, they're catching on to that anxiety. And I was like, "The heck are you talking about? Like they're dogs. They don't catch on to my anxiety. And then like a few months later, I'm like, "All right, I got to take a few deep breaths because Fido is going to come in here, just you know, all out of sorts unless I approach him as the buddy that I am to him. So, just a couple of things there that I thought were were interesting.
Collin 25:32
No, it's it really is, and and you know that it's the connection back to the mission there of if I believe you know, okay, we've we have this time, no, there's 15,000 years where we were designed, we were you know made to read off one another. I can't just throw that out the window and and say, okay, well, this isn't important anymore. If I that has to come front and center into how I interact, what I do, like you said, like everything then has to flow from that to be consistent, and and you mentioned expectations. I was curious. You know, you went from hiring for healthcare to now you're hiring for your own business for dog walkers and pet sitters. What's that like? I'm always curious because we we've worked to refine our process a lot, and something that I still feel like is a struggle for Megan and I to make sure we're landing well is like that day one you mentioned like day one, not just like what am I doing because that's where I feel like I fall a lot of like let me just get the outline of the steps of what day one looks like, but ultimately more fundamental is what are the expectations for my new hire Day one versus day 50. How do you set that kind of pace for the team that you're building?
Jon Eckrich 26:49
So this comes from I feel like this is universal recruiting and hiring standard. It is to me at least. But the very first thing that I demand from everyone day one, and this is not just day one of employment. It's literally the very first message that I send someone on Indeed or text message or whatever is responsiveness. Like the very first message, that communication style is very important to me. So, if someone applies, even if I'm in the field, I will pull the car over and take a moment to reply to them if they look good and say, you know, my typical canned, "Hey, your experience here looks good. Are you free for a chat at this date or time or this date or time? Let me know. If they leave me on red for, you know, like a day, instant screen out, instant screen out because this is not important for them. I don't care what their background is; they could be an animal whisperer, a vet, whatever it is. Responsiveness is is king, and to me, that signifies a baseline level of commitment and passion and competence for everything else. So that is minute one for me. But as far as you know, employment, they get through the hiring process. We actually this was a relatively recent change. I we used to just do everything in person, just with a shadow in the field for the first few days, and I realized that some of the expectation setting was just trying to drink from a fire hose from them. Like they're nervous about being on time, nervous about handling the dogs, being with me or one of the other field leaders. So we're telling them about availability management. You know how to change their schedule when they get paid, and that would just fall by the wayside. They wouldn't remember, or it was just too much information. So this earlier this year, we separated that, and we do a full-on two-hour virtual orientation with all of our new hires now, and we've ripped all of that policy and procedure out of the in-person shadowing initial field training, and we put it into the orientation. And so far, it's worked very, very well. It's cleared up a lot of friction that we've seen with how we manage availability and you know time off and all these other things. How to write a visit report, how to communicate so that we can really laser focus on pet body. I mean, pet. It's always back to pet body language. Like I want to see. We we almost never nowadays hire someone who has no pet experience. Like we're looking at groomers, vet techs, trainers, even people that one of my best employees, her name's Alyssa. She's a field a field leader for us. She does an awesome job, and she was a volunteer. She was a a dog foster mom, and I realized I want people who have some kind of experience with pet body language beyond just oh, I have two dogs and I love them, and they mean the. To me, so I would like to work with dogs on the weekends or whatever it is. Yep. So that's really what we're focusing on day one when we get into field training, and we have already relayed all of our expectations regarding how employment is going to work with the business. Now we're going to see where you're at with judging dog body language. You know, if a dog perks up their ears and looks across the street right away, instinctually, I'm like, "What are you looking at? What's over? Oh, it's a bunny. Okay, in the bushes, got it. Is the new hire? Did they pick up on that? Did they look too, or are they just continuing, you know, blithely on their way? Yeah. And another really important one is how to approach an anxious dog that you're meeting for the first time? Like that is really the superpower for pet sitting, at least as I see it currently.
Jon Eckrich 30:49
Because I mean, like you mentioned about doing the resets, it's you can really get behind the eight ball if you're approaching a new dog who's anxious in the wrong way, and you can really get ahead of some hard work if you do it the right way, and you're patient, and you're focused. You're building that trust with them, so that is super important. But that's essentially how we structure our onboarding process, and and we've seen a lot of success in just changing that up and kind of having that two-step onboarding and and training and orientation process.
Collin 31:24
Yeah, that was a big shift for us too. We used to do the same thing, and I found myself trying to both educate on the body language, the hair, what the eyes are doing, while also responding to questions about how you learn time. And you're like, what? Yeah, exactly. What? No, no, no. Oh man, I missed it, and I was
Jon Eckrich 31:43
like, "No, this is important. This is important. You got to watch this. And
Collin 31:46
you know, and they're like, "Yeah, but how do I request time off? And you're like, "Oh, yeah. And I would just, I would end days of training, and I'd come home, and I would just tell Megan, like, "I don't know how much stuck. I don't know how much they got. I just don't. And so, front, not front loading, but putting all that and saying this is the focus time for the HR time, right? Like you said, the orientation. This is just, and I had jobs where you had an orientation and you had that time where you just had to watch the videos. And at first, I you know I was always like, oh, like I don't know why they do this. This is so boring. And now being an employer with employees and a busy business, it's like I get it. I get it. You come around. Okay, now I can make them maybe more engaging and a little bit more interesting than right the other ones. But at the same time, like it had it serves a purpose, so I can separate these out. And I'm always reminded, like when I used to teach human anatomy, you would have to teach the name of something and its location, and if you tried to teach both at the same time, the people, the students would come away remembering one of them. Which one depended on the person, but if you taught the name first and then the location, man, it stuck a lot easier, and it really helped. And so that's where we're like, I have to. These are two completely separate pieces of information: how you handle time off, how we clock time, how we write a visit report-that's over here. And then now I'm in. I have the time. I have the time to notice because that was the other thing, John. When I was training and trying to talk through all the HR policies while I'm walking down the street with a dog, I couldn't give the employee feedback on their reaction on how they handle situations, because it's like, oh, cool, but I have to keep going. Now we can. It's like it doesn't feel quite so just like frenetic and insane for those first several times.
Jon Eckrich 33:31
Totally agree with that, and I think Collin, you mentioned something important too that I wanted to touch on, which is meeting people where they're at with regards to how they learn, like I, I am a do. I have to do something and mess it up with my own hands to learn. But we hire all different kinds. Like some people will be like, "Give me the book of written SOPs, and I will read all of those before my first day. So we have all of our SOPs for each of our service types, from pet sitting, dog walking, cat care, all of that stuff. We also have them for you know how to request time off when people get promoted, what those hourly thresholds are. So we want to provide that for the self starters who want to read about it and internalize it that way. It's also good for if someone does trip up and there is some friction, I can just kind of throw the book here. You go read this stuff, but and then obviously we have the in-person field training, which we talked about, and we also just have a YouTube channel of private videos that are literally just me holding my phone when I first started doing this and decided to hire. Going, here's how you walk a dog. These are the things to look out for. Here are our standards. You know, here's how to do an overnight. Keep the client's home clean. Be safe. Know where the nearest vet is. Emergency contacts. Yada yada. So we wanna. I wanna throw all of those at people, and most of them will not do two of the three, but all of the. Do at least one. So I want them. I want to meet them where they learn best because that's best for me as a leader and for us as a business for them to get on more quickly and so that I don't have to constantly be in their ear, you know, in Google Chat saying, "Hey, you missed this. Remember to do that next time. I want to be in their ear, saying, "This is an amazing photo of Fido. Like, this is such a great selfie. Like, I'm so glad that you took that. That's great. That's why what I want my comms to be. I don't want it to just be constant nitpicking about things that aren't going well. I want to hit them with like 567, good things to every. Hey, I noticed this visit was 29 minutes and 47 seconds instead of 30 minutes. Just a reminder: 30 minutes means 30 minutes, you know.
Collin 35:47
And now, a word from our friends at Pet Sitters International.
Speaker 1 35:50
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Collin 36:18
That does add pressure to us as the employer, right? I have information, and I know there's comes a lot of frustration with people who build teams. It's like it's all there in the manual, but that question of like, is it accessible? Are they actually going to read it? Can you make it better for them? And that when when we start, when Megan and I start to change our mind around our manual of like what quote unquote a manual is, hey, guess what? Like John's talking to me here, manuals can be videos because you can video yourself doing things, and now that's in a different format. It can be graphics. It can be so many aspects of this, and because now, like as an employer, nobody has an excuse. Like it's in so many formats. It's in so it's so accessible. Pick the one that works best for you, but also it helped us frame, change, look at what we do in different ways, and now it's just it's such a great, I think, resource that when you can get that as a business, and it takes time to build, and it takes time, you know, kind of intention, but that also sets the framework for the the I feel like the the culture of the business, John, and I was really curious about this because with your background, like how much thought to culture did you have when you were in the corporate setting when you were hiring versus what you do now in your own business?
Jon Eckrich 37:38
I guess it depends on the corporation. When I was in the corporate world, it was. That's a really good question because I didn't feel a strong sense of culture with my most recent opportunities. I think earlier in my career, when I worked with smaller businesses, we did have more of a defined culture, but that was mostly organic. I don't think there was much intention behind that. With our culture now, I think I've definitely become more deliberate about crafting it as time has passed, specifically with regards to our mission and how we impart that, and and our standards, I think what I always was very deliberate about trying to push was our level of professionalism, and a lot of that comes from my own usage of of pet sitters, I have a very famous story that I tell. I tell it probably more often than I should, but I tell it to almost all of our new clients because I want to show them that I understand what it's like to use a bad pet sitter and how stressful it can be. When my my wife and I at the time, she was my fiance. We were going on vacation. We were going on a cruise. We were taking a ship out of the docks in Manhattan in New York City, and we had a pet sitter that we were going to have come in for our dog and two cats. And I got no confirmation from this pet sitter and did not hear a word from them until the ship was literally leaving the port. It was to the point where my wife was she called her sister and said, "Hey, we haven't heard from our pet sitter. We have no idea if they're going to show up. Would you mind just coming to live out of our house for like a week if we need you to, and her sister was like, "Okay, yeah, like if you need it. And then finally, the pet sitter replied, and so like those things really stick with me. I I I want us to be. I suppose the way that I could put it is, I want to take the good things from the corporate world. And incorporate them into our pet sitting business. And this is going to sound like such a cliche, but I don't want us to lose that scrappy, mission-minded focus. But I do want us to add a layer of polish to where we are fanatically responsive to our clients. You know, we have we have boundaries set up. We have office hours to when we respond to those clients, but we never ghost anybody. And if it's if we have someone on an admin shift and a client sends a message, that message gets replied to within minutes rather than hours. So that's that's something that is is really important to me, and I think that goes back to building those expectations on conversation one when people apply for a job and they see me replying right away and setting something up and I've had people in process before who they've had some time lag in their replies and I've come out and said to them, like, listen, we sat down. We had a good discussion. We're onboarding you right now. I think your background makes you a good fit. Your personality makes it seem like you're a good fit for us. But this form of responsiveness is not a fit for our business. Like, we need to see that this is important to you and that you want to be on board, and so I think that's where a lot of that culture gets built of that professionalism and and class, and we want to try and elevate the rest of our local industry with that as well. We don't want to be the pet sitters who are flaky and late. You know, we want to be in this for the long haul? We want to be with Fido for all 13 years of his life. We don't want to walk Fido a couple times a week for four months until we go back to our old gig, you know. And the whole business is built that way. And I think the culture reflects that-that legitimacy and professionalism and incorporating the mission into that, I think all of that comes together, and it's all intertwined.
Collin 42:04
And it and it starts on day one. I love how you keep keep talking about before day one, right? Of of this is part of the process, part of our culture. That that that that I I am going to be responsive. I'm going to be professional about this. I know. We get a lot of responses from potential hires who will say things like, "Oh, I was kind of shocked by how like put together everything is. Your clients say that a lot. Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Oh
Jon Eckrich 42:32
wow, this is like a real business. Yeah,
Collin 42:36
and when we talk about like that, is such an aspect of culture in the business of of yeah, just as I can set you up for success later when you're in a visit with a dog who may be anxious that you haven't done before, so too do we set everybody up for success by having structure and policies in place that help support that culture. If I want an outcome, I have to have stuff built around it. It can't live or rely on just a single person. That that was a realization that Meg and I have really like gotten to probably took way too long for us to get to of of we thought we would be the ones that were like the culture generators and the ones that were the purveyors and the pushers of all this stuff and no it was well part of the culture is I can actually build a policy to support a culture that I want to see of responsiveness, of professionalism, of whatever that endpoint is for you, and it's not being used as like a oh well, this is a rule that we must follow. It's a this is the example. This is the example that we are going to set, and that's okay. And we get to do that. And now I've externalized it. Other people can pick that up, carry that torch, and carry that forward. And now my culture is kind of self-perpetuating because each team member is connecting to it in different ways. But they wouldn't have anything to connect to if I didn't have anything written down or any example to point to. If it was always just like, oh, just follow me, John. I get tired sometimes, and there are times I don't want people to follow me.
Jon Eckrich 44:04
I I hear you. I mean, that's 110% It's it's funny how that ends up working out because a lot of times I think it's by necessity that you know we're just so you hit the nail on the head, Collin. We're so overloaded that we're like I can't be the standard bearer today or this week. I I can't. I need to you know just go sit at my computer and listen to music and like look at the drywall for two hours. So it it starts by necessity because you just only have so much to give, but it becomes intensely rewarding, which I don't know if everyone understands how amazing it is to set this culture, promote people within it, and then watch them carry that standard forward in ways that you didn't expect or didn't train them to. Like you see that mission resonate with them, and they start acting independently. In terms very similar to the way that you would to try and achieve that goal, and that's for me. That's what's so rewarding, and that was that was I saw a little bit of that in the corporate world. I loved watching my people grow, and I see it even more now that it's with something I created rather than something that it was simply my job to promote. It's it's very rewarding. I I love it. I can't get enough of it.
Collin 45:27
We have to remember, like people want a standard. They they they want to be held to a high standard. And whenever I brought that belief into how I work with our team, people want to be held to a high standard. Okay, I will hold you to a high standard. And more often than not, they they meet it and they rise above it. But if I am, you know, if I don't hold that, if I don't hold people to that, if I don't have that expectation. Speaking of expectations, we have high standards. We have high standards. I've had people leave my job because we they thought we had too high of standards of things, and it's like you know what? I'll take it. That's okay with me. If you think I'm holding ourselves to too high of a standard? You didn't need to be here in the first place, and I'm glad you recognize that because we were walking there, you know, to this point. So that gives people that guiding point of like that's where I'm headed, and people are going to be on that, and you can coach them and encourage them and and work them into that, and then leaving them the agency to recognize when that's not a good fit, and that's okay. That's part of the process.
Jon Eckrich 46:26
Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of that too is a skill to learn, knowing where to go hands off specifically and let them take the banner and run with it. And that's something that I'm still trying to perfect. I don't want to crush out their individuality and force them and railroad them into doing it the way that I do it. So I'm still trying to find that line with each person that I hire to give them enough guidance so they don't feel lost, but to not restrict their natural creativity. And everyone is different. I think that's probably always going to be a challenge for me as a leader. Yeah,
Collin 47:04
because you're always learning. There's always a new person who's who has a different take, a different perspective. But that's where the beauty comes in of going. I have to maintain. I have to stay flexible. Then I can't just sit here and go. Here are the three kind of people that I like to work with. And if you're not one of these? Goodbye. It's like no, like we we have to be okay to to flex here and myself learn from other people as they come in. I mean, one of the big thing for me, John, of I like to talk. Right, I love engagement with people. You and me, Bob. So bad. And man, when I would be I'd be going through and hiring people, and if they sat there and they just kind of were like, yes, that's tough. They're tough. I'm sitting here. I'm like, oh my gosh, they hate this. They don't like this at all. And I talk about it with Megan, and you know, she she'd look at it and go, oh no, this person's fantastic. See, you know what they're doing, and I think we should move this person on. And recognizing, I don't have to jive that way with everybody. I need to find new ways to connect and new ways to to work with other people outside of my comfort zone. We've had amazing people who have probably said seven words to me over the course of every point, and they're great.
Jon Eckrich 48:13
Right, right, and it's it's funny too because it it comes up. You know, when I was hiring recruiters, everybody is outgoing. You you don't find yourself in a recruiting role without liking to talk. So thankfully, I had some experience hiring engineers before that, so I was used to what it was like to get a tough nut to crack. But Collin, isn't it wonderful when you hire someone who you don't perfectly connect with? You know the chemistry isn't perfect, and then you hire them, and you find out they're really good at something that you are not good at, and in fact don't like doing. I mean, that's the first time you do that. It's like, wait a second, you like doing like referral development because I don't want to do that. I want to go like hang out with dogs and you know tinker with my processes and get more efficient on the business side. I don't want to have to go drive to vets and chat them up and bring them donuts. And I don't. That's not. I don't want to spend a day doing that. Oh, you like one of my pet sitters likes doing that. That's amazing. How would you like to do some field marketing for us? That's great. And you know, if you only hire, I find that if you only hire people that you perfectly interface with who are just like you. You just get too homogenous. It's it stifles a little bit of your creativity, and it really makes your business one dimensional to where you're really good at like one thing, but other things you kind of lack. And I think it it really does take a village of different people with different backgrounds and different strengths and weaknesses to to shore up, you know, for me specifically, some of my own weaknesses as as a leader and as a pet sitter and as a dog walker and someone in this business.
Collin 49:50
I think people may hear that and they may think there's a. I think there's a road when you go down that thinking of well, then I can't have opinions. I can't be opinionated about. Things because then I'm exclusionary to certain mindsets, but I gotta say, John, like just landing on your homepage, it's pretty opinionated. Like right from the get go, you've got these like full. It's this you know this graphic someone with full sleeve tattoos. I'm assuming you, right? There we go. Listeners can't do, but like boom, full on tattoos holding an adorable-looking dog, like it-it just is immediately striking. And so you've-you kind of you are walking this like I'm fluid and flexible in how I do these things, but I also have opinions and a strong view of myself. How do you do that?
Jon Eckrich 50:36
I think the the foundation again. I mean, you've heard me say this multiple times, but it comes from the mission, and I think God, that's a good question. If I could teach it, I'd probably be making much more money than I am now. But I think it's really just planting your flag into the ground and finding out what matters to you, and remaining consistent to that. There's, you know, there's a saying that if you chase the dollar, it's going to run away from you, and I saw that just constantly in the corporate world, always chasing revenue. And so we want to be mission minded, and I I have a decision making. I guess it's a pyramid, or I wouldn't say algorithm, but I have a three-pronged decision-making process that I go through whenever something is challenging me, and I don't know what decision to make for the business. So number one is: is it best for the pets that we're serving? That's always number one. So a good example is mom and dad get stuck in the city having dinner. Fido's home alone, and he needs you know an insulin shot. I'm not available. No one's available except for one pet sitter, and they worked earlier today. And it's our policy not to ask people ever to work split shifts. I will ask that person if they're okay with working a split shift because it helps this animal stay safe and and medicated. So that's always number one. Number two is the well being of my workers. I always, always, always try and consider that because I don't want it to. You know, everyone's had a bad boss who doesn't care about what you're doing and just cares about the bottom line or whatever makes them look good in front of their boss or whatever it is, and I try really hard not to be that boss. I always want to have guardrails in place that promote the well-being of my employees. So that's number two, and number three is the human clients. What are they asking for? Can we can we achieve that for them without compromising the well-being of their pets or my workers? So if a if a client comes to me, this this actually came to a head a couple of months ago because we we have some clients who will it's crazy that this has happened more than once, but they will say Fido really loves getting up with me at 430 in the morning and going for his morning walk, so we need someone to come at 430 in the morning. And finally, I just said what ended up happening was it was always me that would do it because I would never ask my workers to get up that early and go do it. So finally, I said, you know, we're not going to disallow this, but we're going to charge a surcharge for early morning hours, and that surcharge will pass. It's a labor pass through directly to the sitter that takes a shift. And if no sitter wants to take it, then we don't do it. So that's this kind of decision-making matrix that I try and stick to to keep myself tethered. You know, if if a big potential client comes in, they're like, "Hey, we want three walks a day, seven days a week. I don't want to look at that and be like, "Oh man, that's a lot of revenue. That's going to make the books look great for this quarter. I want to say, "Okay, what does their dog actually need? We'll go through our onboarding process because it's created specifically to suss that out, and then I want to say, "Do we have the staff that can do that healthily without putting people into split shifts? So I I try and apply that to every decision that we make, and that's something that's also a part of our new employee orientation. I go through that with them. I say, this is how we make decisions in this business. So here's the most important thing to us. It's our mission to help the well-being of pets, but it's also very important to me that our workers feel like this is sustainable and rewarding, and it delivers to them what they're looking for out of this position, whatever it may be.
Jon Eckrich 54:35
So that's that's how I try and remain tethered, and sometimes it can be tough. You can get lost in the sauce where you're dealing with three different things, and you don't know the right decision to make. So a lot of times, I will have to actually step back and like consciously think of that three prong matrix and say, does it satisfy all three of these? Am I pleasing the client just because I? Want to keep the revenue at the cost of the dog? You know, are they saying, "Oh no, Fido can stay in his crate for seven hours. It's fine. He only needs one potty break. Well, no. I'm sorry. We have a policy minimum that we will not leave a dog in a crate for more than four hours. So that's how your visit cadence has to be structured. Just little things like that, and I try and craft that so that it can be boiled down to the most minute situation, so that it applies to everything. Obviously, that's not reality. Sometimes new things come up, and it sends me for a spin where I really have to think about it. But for the most part, it's worked. And I think what's important is it's more important to try and commit to that mission and say something important that might not be for everybody than to boil yourself down to this easily digestible mass for every single client that's going to come to you, like we have a really specific niche of clientele that we want to serve. We want to be doing weekly repeating walks. You know, I could go into this. Could be a whole other podcast about overnights and how we deal with those. But you know, we to sum it up because I know I'm getting a little rambly now. We want to identify the clientele that we work with best, that we're most successful at working with, and who we can reasonably assume that we are going to be the best option in the market for, and that's how we try and orient ourselves with everything from marketing to our onboarding process to the services that we offer, and even just the image and the brand that we put out there, we want to find like-minded clients that we enjoy talking to and get along with and can serve well.
Collin 56:54
Be opinionated about the mission is what I'm hearing there, John. Now the details of what happens and who's on board and what we work through to get to there, that's where I need to stay fluid. That's where I've got to be able to adapt and change as I learn and get more information. But that mission, when we keep that our north star, when that is everything to that we do, that that allows us to have that opinion and to be opinionated about ourselves and what we do, because now it's like, hey, that all of this-that's the whole point. Without this, none of this matters. And so I'm building this. It's gonna. It may look different in a year or six months, depending on what we need to do and who's on board and what we're doing and how that's shaped. But everything is evolving and changing to get over there, and that's the kind of thing where I then, as the owner, as the leader, like we are now, like gosh, we're we're we're going, we're running with it, and we get to get people on board with us, and that that just gets to be so fun, and and and and what we get to build, how it works out, and all for where we're headed. That's that's just that's the whole thing.
Jon Eckrich 57:58
Yeah, I I totally agree, and that's the beauty of it too. It can change. It can change with the market. It can change with what pets need and what clients are looking for and what our workers need, the benefits that they need, and the way that we treat them. And I think it's it's again that riding that thin line of balance between remaining committed to your mission and why you started doing this and allowing yourself to evolve and change and incorporate new mindsets with the people that you're hiring in the market as it changes to help you get to that endpoint that you want to get to in achieving your mission.
Collin 58:34
Who's the white dog in the photo on your homepage?
Jon Eckrich 58:37
So it's not. It initially was based on a specific client. It was my first client ever. His name is Sprocket, and he's a little Bichon, and you can very clearly see it's not a Bichon freeze. But it just the image was massaged into what it is now, and it's just almost unidentifiable from the first one.
Jon Eckrich 58:57
But that's good. Maybe I should look into that. Might be a little note that I take-it's another thing I suggest to my consulting clients-is always just have a notepad or a notes app because I'll be driving, I'll be like, "Oh, time to update the image to look like Sprocket again, and get back to that.
Collin 59:14
John, I think we can thoroughly say that you do love dogs, and we love having you on the podcast, sharing about your mission and how you align everything around it, everything from the services to the team, and how you've changed as well, and have you encouraged us to do the same? I've really enjoyed this time, and for those who want to get connected, follow along and pick your brain. How best can they do that?
Jon Eckrich 59:39
So we are spending a lot of our time sharing memes over on Instagram, and that's at John Loves Dogs LLC. So it's John without an H. It's J O N L O V E S D O G S L L C. So that's our main social media account. We're on Facebook as well, but we're not on that one as much. And you know our website. If you want to see the actual image that Collin is talking about, it's johnlovesdogs.com again, J-O-N-N no H.
Collin 1:00:07
Awesome. Well, I will have the links to the website and the Instagram under the show notes and on our website so people can get connected. John, again, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Jon Eckrich 1:00:20
Thank you, Collin. It's a pleasure to talk with you.
Collin 1:00:22
My favorite part of my conversation with John is when he said that if the business doesn't exist, then we can't achieve our mission. Oftentimes, as business owners, we think that profit and growth have to stand in opposition to one another and our intention between the two, but John here is reminding us that these are not enemies. They actually depend on one another. A healthy business isn't just a destination that we try and get to and grow to. A healthy, profitable business is the vehicle. It's the only way that allows us to continue to show up and serve pets and to help people and to have a team and community for years to come. That's that's the whole point. It's not just growth for growth's sake. It's not just profit for profit's sake. It's to fulfill and to continue the mission. As the business owner, it is our responsibility to filter every single decision for the business through our mission, because when we do that, even the difficult choices become easier to make. It's easier to make the cut to a service or service area when the mission is front and center. It's easier to not hire when the mission is front and center. It's easier to go the extra mile in the training and the onboarding when the mission is front and center. Those get easier as we get clearer. That is what helps our business run and be healthy, so that we can show up again tomorrow. We want to thank our sponsors today, Time to Pet and Pet Setters International, for making this show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a fantastic rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
