744: Choose the Hard Work That Serves Your Business
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How do we know whether a hard season in our pet care business calls for patience, a change in direction, or a decision to stop? We share our experiences with hiring challenges, slow growth, and stepping back from a service we worked hard to build. We explore why effort does not guarantee success and why difficulty alone does not mean our business is failing. Along the way, we examine the struggles we create through unclear processes, low prices, and decisions we keep defending. We talk about staying connected to our mission, taking responsibility for difficult conversations, and practicing perseverance that leaves room to learn and adapt.
Main topics:
Distinguishing Difficulty From Business Failure
Practicing Perseverance Without Becoming Stubborn
Recognizing Hardships We Create Ourselves
Facing Responsibilities Only Owners Carry
Deciding When to Change Direction
Main takeaway: The level of difficulty does not dictate success or failure in business and in life.
Have you ever finished a long day of visits, answered the last message, and wondered whether all this effort is actually getting you somewhere? We’ve been there, too. A difficult season can leave us questioning our decisions, our abilities, and whether we’re cut out for business ownership. Sometimes the work needs more time, repetition, and patience. Sometimes we need to fix a process, own a mistake, or admit that a service no longer supports the business we want to build. Our mission helps us evaluate those choices, even when the answer is uncomfortable.
In this episode, we talk honestly about continuing, changing course, and allowing something to end. We can’t promise that every effort will pay off, but we can keep asking what the experience is teaching us and what responsibility we need to take next. What is one hard thing in your business asking you to reconsider?
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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
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Meghan 0:02
We've talked before on the podcast about the unglamorous work of running a business. We've experienced more of that hard work than ever this year, personally, and we've learned that some of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship aren't necessarily problems to solve. Sometimes they are actually realities to accept. We've been thinking about this a lot with the year that we've had, and we've talked a lot about how to make business easier, how to make it more efficient, how to stop doing the things that we don't need to be doing, how to grow, how to solve problems, and how these are all really good conversations to have in your business. Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 0:40
I'm Collin.
Meghan 0:40
We are the hosts of Pet Setter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today, wherever in the world you are. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates, Critter, and our Patreon supporters. We are doing a new thing recently called Buy Me a Coffee, where if you have found an episode particularly valuable and you want to buy us a coffee, you can do so at buymeacoffee.com/petsitterconfessional.
Collin 1:05
With the conversations around how to streamline the business to be more efficient and such, I wonder, and Megan and I have been wondering, if we've gotten so focused on trying to make everything easier that we've actually first gotten something that's really critical to being in business, it's that some things are just hard. Some things are just really, really difficult to do,
Meghan 1:29
and it's not necessarily because it's not in our wheelhouse, although it could be not in our wheelhouse, and that's why it's hard. Or maybe we just are dreading it because it's a big project. But there are some things in our business, that are hard, and that is really up to you to define that term. What's hard for me is not hard for Collin, and vice versa, which is great for us working together in the business.
Collin 1:51
Right, but we often hit that hard point, and we first we assume that we're doing something wrong. We because I I just hit a point that's difficult, so there must be a problem, and it's because we've been the solution for so long to problems in our business. We've been able to overcome them. We've been able to work around them. We've been able to figure out a way through it, and suddenly we reach something that is either taking a really long time or is genuinely difficult for us to understand, and we think I'm doing this wrong, and really, I I think a lot of cases it's that we've just reached the point where most people have quit.
Meghan 2:29
When you come to something hard in your business, or you kind of come to a fork in the road, you do have decisions to make. Do I keep going? Do I quit? Do I change course? Because every difficult thing that you come against does have that decision. What do I do? Is it actually best for me to completely pivot and to stop? That's not saying that I'm quitting. It's saying that I just need to change direction here.
Collin 2:53
But quitting is not a bad option. Some people quit when they reach a hard point that you are going to be reaching, and they had to quit for their own reasons. That's completely legitimate. It's a perfectly fine and acceptable thing to do if you reach a point where you go, you know what? Because what we realize is suddenly the hard work, the the time, the attention, the energy, the sacrifice, it might not be worth it at some point for us. And that is a realization that we all are going to reach at some point in our business or come across. And that's again, I have to say that so emphatically that that is an okay thing to accept and understand. And at some point, the effort's not going to be worth it for me. And that level is different for every single person in the business. You know, if everybody was meant to run and operate their own business, everybody would. Sometimes just starting is the hardest part. Sometimes running that first payroll is. Sometimes it's the tax season. Sometimes it's the first down season, or when the marketing fails. Whatever that is, that hard part is going to happen, and we have to decide: is this is this a hard thing, or are things failing in my business? And that's a really interesting distinction that we as the leaders have to understand the difference between.
Meghan 4:02
It's difficult to give concrete examples talking about this because it's and again it's going to be different for everybody in your own business. What you think is hard, somebody else may not. But it all comes back to your mission. Does the the hard thing, does the difficult thing that you're facing right now get you closer or further away from your mission and what you want for your company.
Collin 4:22
We went through a season a couple years ago where we had a very hard time hiring people and getting them to stick around. We've we've since refined a lot of stuff in our processes, and it's not perfect, but it is better than what we had. And there was a period of time where I think for about two months I lived in our office just nonstop. Lived out of our office so that I could be covering visits, last minute training, getting things staffed back up to the point where we could step away. That was a really difficult season. That was the hardest part of running the business that I know I personally have had to go through in the the six a.m.s, the 10 p.m.s for two months running a. Stepping in to cover so much of the business when we had a lot of turnover, and we had to decide like, hey, is this is this a sign that we need to stop? Is this a failing business at this point? And what we came to was the the foundations, the fundamentals of the business were actually really strong. Everything was pointing to when we get people in this, this will be okay. And notice the language that I use there. We had that mindset of when we get people in this, not if we can get this filled, but when we get people here, then the business will be on really good foundations. And it did happen, but we had to go. Everything else about the business is okay. There's nothing. We're getting clients. Everything's running really well, and satisfaction is through the roof from the people who are from our clients. We just have to get the right people on the bus with us.
Meghan 5:48
This definitely is a mindset conversation as well. There's a lot here where, you know, sometimes we have a negative mindset where we actually everything is going to be okay. We just have to do hard work for a little bit longer, but then on the back end, we do get to reap those rewards, like we were experiencing a few years ago. When we hit something hard, we have to say, okay, why is this hard? What about this is hard? Is this because I don't like it? I need to give it to somebody else. Is it because I am not interested in this work? Is it because I am the only one that's able to do this? We need to ask the hard questions in the hard situation, and then we can diagnose it better and figure out kind of what the roadblock
Collin 6:26
is. There's also this romanticized version of entrepreneurship where I've got to bust it out, I've got to grit, I've got to just put my head down to the grindstone and work hard, and then I will be successful. Of when you put in the hard work, that predictably and always leads to success,
Meghan 6:44
and of course that's not always true. But you have to define success first. What do I want to get to in anything, in any decision, any project, or any goal you want to hit? What does this look like? If you have a goal of doubling your revenue next year, well, yes, inherently that is going to take the hard work. That is going to take a lot of sacrifices,
Collin 7:03
but it's also setting the appropriate timeline of just because I did a whole lot of work for a week doesn't mean I'm going to get an immediate reward the next day. I mean, we I see this all the time. Hey, I just went out and did a bunch of flyers. I networked with all the vets and I talked to all the groomers and I went to all the boarders and I went all the stuff and I was posting on social media, and I've got a website, and I just blog three times, and I didn't get any clients. There are going to be times, there are going to be, and clients is just the example, right? Of of there are going to be times and seasons where you will work for months at a time and not know whether it's going to pay off.
Meghan 7:39
But you do have to keep that end goal in mind and double checking yourself on the path, going: Am I still on the path? Am I still on the mission on the goal to get where I want to be, or am I starting to sway? Because if it is a long project that's going to take many months or maybe a year, there could be scope creep. There could be times where there are asks of you that maybe outside of this project, and so you have to say no, not right now.
Collin 8:01
That's a really good point, Megan. Because on the long grinds of the hard work, oftentimes the project that we're working on by the end of it is in is very different than what we started on because we kept adding things to it and made it more complex because we didn't think it was working because we lost sight of where we were headed, and so we end up months into it doing 100 more things than what we should have been doing, all because we didn't, you know, I don't know, trust the process or whatever, or really stick to those other metrics that you're supposed to be tracking.
Meghan 8:32
Well, and unfortunately, then we've made the hard project even harder,
Collin 8:36
yeah,
Meghan 8:37
sometimes unnecessarily because we've added when we shouldn't have.
Collin 8:41
I know one of the things that we've been talking about just with us is the the process of hiring and staffing and building a team. That is certainly something that requires way more patience than I think we ever anticipated, especially in the beginning. I think we understand it a little bit more now, but in the okay, I need to hire. Initially, there was the okay. I'll get somebody in and they can start tomorrow. Now, and then when it doesn't happen, when suddenly I've got a job out there, job ad out there, and it's sitting there, and I'm getting applicants or I'm not getting applicants, and it's just taking forever, we can start to feel resentful because I had expected for it to take a lot faster or go a lot faster than it actually is right now.
Meghan 9:26
But again, with the hiring or whatever it is in your business, the hard roadblock that you've kind of hit, these aren't necessarily signs of failure. You have to say, okay, well, if we need to keep going, how do we maybe change course a little bit, or how do we stick with it? With the hiring, we definitely have had to learn through repetition rather than through instructions. We've had to refine the process over and over and over again, and learn learn those hard lessons. And we thought we had our process down to get them to see what this job is about, but it ended up not working out, and we've had to refine that process over and over again.
Collin 9:59
In the middle of it, that's not fun. That okay, I've got to do this again. Great. Okay, now I got to do it again and again and again and again. And the goal is to have a hire at the end of the day. The goal is to have a nice hiring funnel and pipeline and process to work through, but that doesn't come up overnight, and it constantly needs to be refined.
Meghan 10:18
And the exhausting process of being an entrepreneur, is that the work always continues? It's always there. It never ends. And so there can be this brick wall that we run into sometimes. Of, oh man, I have to get up tomorrow and do that exact same thing again, or I have to make better this SOP for the 85th time. What is happening? Because you know the employee didn't get it, or you know, it just needs to be more refined. So there is always more work to be done. While that is basically the definition of being an entrepreneur, it can be exhausting.
Collin 10:52
Well, and there again goes to your definition of success because it's okay. Well, then once I get through this, then I'll be successful, or then I'll have the perfect hiring. And the answer is no. The answer, and yet we still continue to pursue it. I love that word, refine. Of I need to refine this, and that will never stop, because at the end my process gets 1% better, sometimes half a percent better, but I'm going to be better the next time. I think that's really the shift that we have to be thinking about, especially in these hard and these tough seasons. Of I don't know if success is guaranteed out of this, but I do know that by the end of this, at least I am going to be better for it.
Meghan 11:32
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Collin 13:15
You're not getting the new clients that you want, or maybe that hire that you've just brought on and spent weeks training and really pouring yourself into, they quit for whatever reason, and all of a sudden I have a schedule that's full. I have a business that operationally is kind of falling apart, and a bank account that doesn't reflect how much that I'm actually working and putting into this business. And guess what? Like Megan said earlier, tomorrow you get to get up and you get to do it all over again. You get to get up and you get to run the business again and again. And that that is the part where we have to have grit as a business owner and entrepreneur. Again, it's not just about grit enough and it will be successful, or grit enough, and that's the key. It's this is the part of running the business where grit is required, and not stopping and doing the hard thing of getting up again and trying again and doing it one more time.
Meghan 14:14
Because you know that your business is awesome, and your employees are awesome, and you get to impact your community and serve a lot of people by doing the hard things,
Collin 14:24
and and it's not glamorous. This is not the super dramatic moments. This is what we would consider the ordinary, everyday responsibility of running a business, of showing up and doing the work.
Meghan 14:39
We're not saying there aren't times for rest or trying to deep think about problems and having to step away for a little bit, but there is this middle of the business or middle of a hard project where you do kind of just have to have your head down, blinders on, and and power through.
Collin 14:55
Yeah, when we expanded into our other service area, it was a I don't know if this is going. To work, and again, whether we're in the middle or whatever, there I don't know, but I do know in the beginning it was very much, "Hey, this is exciting. We've got this opportunity. Let's try this. And then when we were six months, nine months in, and you know didn't have a completely full schedule, you have those moments of going, "Well, now what? Was this a mistake? Was this worth it? Or do we continue to push on and try and see this through.
Meghan 15:22
So think about in your own business if there have been seasons where you're doing the work without seeing a lot of progress. You know, it's it's good to remind yourself if you are in something hard right now. It's good to remind yourself of the hard things that you've already been through in your business. Maybe it was a hire quitting on day one, or the IRS saying that you didn't pay your taxes for last year, even though you definitely did, and yeah, that's happened to us. Or it could be a client who's said something nasty about you online, but you made it through that. That's also the mindset that we have to have when we hit a difficult spot in our business. Going, I have made it through these other hard things, and this is great, especially if you journal, because you'll be able to look back and go, yeah, that was really hard, and I'm in a hard spot right now. But I got through that, and I know I'm going to get through this.
Collin 16:08
There's a lot of the responsibilities that we pick up and we take on in running our business. I know one for us has been we've been committed to a weekly newsletter to our clients every week for the past, I think, six years now. That was something that we went. Okay, this is important to us. We want to be talking to our clients. We want to be communicating with them and sharing with them about the business, reminding them about things and all this stuff. That is one that even after all these years of doing it, it's it's you. We can sometimes just stare at that, going, "It's got to go out on Friday, and and Tuesday comes around, and Wednesday comes around, and Thursday rolls around. It's Friday morning. It's like I've got to get this out, this because I know it's important. And this is what it's. It's hard some weeks. It's hard a lot of weeks to get this out there.
Meghan 16:53
And sometimes we do miss the deadline of self-imposed deadline of Friday, and we send it out on Saturday, and then we get a ton of client inquiries or client responses from that email, and we go, ah, right. This is the reminder of why this should actually be on Friday, so that we can handle these types of things during our office hours and not handle them on Saturday when we're trying to take our family time.
Collin 17:14
And also a reminder that it's just important. Okay, right. This is why we do this because it's good for our business and our clients actually enjoy this,
Meghan 17:21
but we also know in the back of our minds that if we miss a week, the world isn't going to end. Nothing's going to fall apart. The business isn't going to die, and the clients leave. Like it, it is going to be okay. This is just a personal goal that we have for ourselves,
Collin 17:36
and that's why I think really what the definition of grit is. It's it's not I'm never going to quit this. It's a I'm committed to doing this, even when there are setbacks, even whenever I I'm discouraged, and even whenever there's uncertainty to as to whether this is actually beneficial. It's I'm going to see this through because I deem that it's important that it get done.
Meghan 17:58
Having grit isn't about how excited you are when you start, because yeah, we're excited about a lot of projects. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing the projects in the first place. But it is about who you become when the excitement is gone. Do you just quit? You bail? You say no, thanks. I'm good. I'm out. Do you keep going when it's hard? Because you see not necessarily light at the end of the tunnel, but you see something bigger, something broader-the the goal that you are trying to achieve.
Collin 18:27
At the beginning of the episode, I said that sometimes whenever things get hard, we immediately internalize it and think that we're doing something wrong. Now, sometimes we really are doing something wrong. We we have to be we have to face that very very upfront here and going. Not every hardship is a necessary part of entrepreneurship. It's not things shouldn't always be the hardest thing that we've ever done.
Meghan 18:52
A very good example of this is if you get really frustrated with your employees asking you the same questions over and over and over again. Okay, well, a simple answer for that is just create the SOPs or create a dashboard where they can go and ask their questions because of the documents that you've already created. Well, okay, if you don't do that, well, then you are unnecessarily making your life harder and continuing to have the hard things because you're not doing the right thing.
Collin 19:18
Sometimes I'm owners in this industry are exhausted because their prices are too low, or sometimes they've got a high turnover because of their well, they're just not good managers. It's actually not good to be working there. You've made a bad place for people to come and work. Sometimes your financial stress comes because you have taken on too many obligations that you that your business just can't support. These are all things that now we have control over that have made our lives harder. I'm priced too low, so I'm working all the time. I'm not a good manager. So I have people turn over all the time in my business, and hiring is a constant struggle. Or I'm in financial stress in business or personally because I can't control the budget. Those, in a very real sense, are self-imposed hardships, and we are running a business on hard mode for no reason other than our own fault.
Meghan 20:20
Or even my admin doesn't schedule the way that I do, and the route plan the way that I I would. So I need to take that back over, or I need to stop delegating certain tasks because other people aren't as good as I am about it. But also, I really don't have time in the day to be doing these things. That's why I delegated them in the first place. But these people aren't as good as me, so I'm just going to take it back on,
Collin 20:43
and that's a real trap of we get in that hard spot. So what do we do? I just need to work harder. I just need to do more. I need to take this back on because ultimately acknowledging that it was my mistake in the first place would just be more painful.
Meghan 21:00
Yeah, I don't want to have that hard conversation with myself about how I messed up and this is my fault. And sometimes, yeah, Megan, me personally, I do feel like a lot of this is my fault. Of oh, well, I just could have had an SOP and the employee wouldn't have messed up that way, or I should have communicated better to my admin and then they would have known to actually do the thing, and I just assumed that they would take care of it. So yeah, there is also this trap of saying, "Well, I'm no good. Why am I even here? I'll just shut down the business because it is all my fault.
Collin 21:32
And to that, we have to say again, what could I do to be that 1% better? What could I do to make the business operate 1% better tomorrow, and for me to be 1% better, I don't know if it's guaranteed for success. I don't know if that's going to make things pan out, but I want things to be better, and I need to be working in that direction. That we just we do not want to start treating every single struggle as something that I just need to endure. I just need to grin and bear it. I just need to hold on tight. Instead, I need to understand why it's hard. And yes, part of being a leader is admitting when you've made it harder than necessary, because now it can be easy. And when we talk, we go through that process of what needs to be hard, what needs to be easy in my business. I want things to be easier in my business. I need to make sure that I am placed on the table just as much on the actual work itself and the decisions being made. Does the policy need to be changed? Does the SOP need to be changed? Are we operating in a way that is more difficult than it needs to be just because I I think I want to do that that way? All of that needs to be opened up, and then we have to be ready and willing to accept that when it comes.
Meghan 22:43
There can also be times where we defend a bad decision that we've made just because we've invested so much time in it or so much money in it that sunk cost fallacy. Well, then we need to explore other ways to get back on track and stop defending ourselves. We need to own it and move on.
Collin 23:00
I often see that in the well. I haven't taken a break from my business in X number of years. I and it's pitched as this perseverance of well, I'm enduring the hardship of running a dog walking and pet sitting business because in order to run a dog walking a pet sitting business, obviously it means that you can never take a break. It's this assumption that many people have inherited or brought into the industry as a self-imposed thing that they think is necessary. Well, obviously, everyone does this. This is just the hard part of being a pet sitter and dog walker. That is pride disguising itself as just perseverance. That is a moment of well, I am better than, and I am more than, and so therefore I am pushing through. A
Meghan 23:50
lot of times when we hit something hard, we have to sit with well, what is harder for us right now in this moment? Is it continuing through this difficulty? Is that the hard part, or is it really admitting that we needed to change, we really tried in our other service area to make dog walking a thing, and it just everything was just screaming at us of like this is not gonna this is not where you're gonna live, and that's that okay. We had to really sit with that of making that change, making that pivot instead of trying to continue, and boy, we tried for a long time to just make it work. But continuing to do the difficult thing when we already had for two years, well, the signs were saying no, this needs to end, and we need to move on.
Collin 24:34
It would have just heaped more difficulty upon more difficulty, and put painted us more into a corner than we were okay with, or that would have helped the business survive. And so, backing off and going, the difficult thing is actually making a decision to stop this. The difficult thing is not just grinning, grin, keep doing it more, just do it more, do more work, get less sleep, work harder every day. That actually. Wasn't the difficult decision? That would have been the easier decision. Instead, saying nope, we need to pull back. We need to change. We need to do this, not because the first one was a bad decision, but because we had learned a lot and we were getting those signals. We were never guaranteed success by a lot of the hard work that we were putting in, and I think that was the other hard part, Megan, for us was we had put in so much work, we had put in so much hard work and thought and dedication to that, and it wasn't panning out the way we wanted it to. And so it it not in a you know it's almost this oh is that work wasted? Did we waste the work that we just spent over a year on, or do we say well now I know what not to do, and that's not a direction we can head. So now I need to move on. and And how do we actually accept that and let that go?
Meghan 25:47
Yeah, it's very emotional when you have to step back from something or when you have to change course. That basically my effort alone could not make this thing succeed. I essentially failed at this thing, and that doesn't feel good. At the same time, we always need to have that mission in mind. If it's not on mission, if it's continuing to be hard, and we're straying from the mission, we need to be done with it.
Collin 26:07
You can never work. You can never outwork a bad decision. You'll never work hard enough to make a bad decision into a good one. It will just mean that the lesson is more expensive and costly at the end of the day. And the sooner that we can admit, you know what, that was a bad decision in the first place. The better off that we're going to be in the end.
Meghan 26:26
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Collin 28:25
Yeah, we can't avoid any of these. None of these things in our business are we able to just turn a blind eye to and think that it's going to be okay. When we talk about the hard work of business, doing the actual hard things in business, it is. It is having that conversation with the employee who's just not getting it. The easy part is to go. Well, I'm sure they'll just get it eventually. I'll just keep correcting their reports. I'll just keep covering for them. We'll just do more training with them. This is where grit comes in. This is where the character of you it shines in these moments. Did you have the hard conversation? Did you go to the client and own up that you had a mistake? Did you do these things, or did you not? Because ultimately, when we don't do them, that's when things fail. That's actually the sign of a business failing: is when the leader of the business shirks and avoids the duties that only they can do because they're afraid of the consequences. And as we grow and scale our business, the difficulties actually change because our responsibilities change. When it's us in the field, we directly own that work every single day that we're doing it. The more employees that we have under us that are out in the field, suddenly we are the one that is going to be held responsible for more and more in the moment decisions made by more and more people. The real world implications for all of those little decisions really do add up quickly, and suddenly we are faced with making more and more hard decisions.
Meghan 30:00
When you've had to face difficult responsibilities, how has that changed you as a leader? Has that made you shrink back more, or stand your ground and say, "Yes, I understand these things are hard, but I can persevere through this"
Collin 30:12
Because you are going to find those moments where you know exactly what needs to happen. You can plan it out, and AI can tell you, "Hey, this is what needs to do, and yet we still are going to shirk from that. Could be firing that employee, firing the client, raising the price, whatever that is. You're going to have those moments where the the the decision is clear. The question is whether I have the courage to actually do it and follow through.
Meghan 30:35
And really, being a leader means also, do you enjoy a challenge? Right, because we are going to be not only challenged by other people, but challenging ourselves as well by learning new things and having these hard conversations, delivering not so great news, being the one responsible at the end of the day, kind of holding the bag, going, "Yes, this is my reputation on the line, and this employee did this thing, and we've made our processes better, and we're going to learn from this and move on.
Collin 31:00
Do I enjoy the challenge, or do I recognize that there are people who depend on me, and so therefore I have to do the hard work? Because in our line of work, you have clients who depend on you because their pets are in their home and they need things done with them. If you have employees, you also have people who depend on you because they they're expecting better expectations of treatment, reliable pay, you know, consistency, whatever, whatever, whatever. Those are the responsibilities that don't change. They're always going to be there every day, whether you've got a good day going on or a bad day. We
Meghan 31:33
talk about hard decisions, hard work. Sometimes the the point and the the hardest part of being a business owner is not actually doing the work. It's the responsibility that comes with being the owner of it. Again, you are holding the bag. It's your reputation in the community. When we persevere as business owners, as leaders, this doesn't mean that we are stubborn at all costs. Quitting isn't always failure. We said that earlier. But being a business owner who closes an unprofitable service isn't necessarily giving up. That decision comes from being wise and knowing well the only reason I can still pay my people is because I am closing off this service that doesn't make me money anymore. The 20-minute dog walk or 15-minute dog walk actually costs me money to provide the service because of the drive time that's taking to get there, or the poop scoop. I started off offering really low dollar poop scoops, and I haven't raised these people's prices. And I I don't want to actually offer this anymore. I don't want to keep doing this and losing money. So I'm just going to cut the service entirely. That's being wise.
Collin 32:36
Yeah, or you think of somebody who doesn't expand. It's not that they're lacking ambition, or maybe someone who leaves their business. They sell their business after giving it serious, you know, just years and years of effort. They're not lacking grit. I truly believe that there's a difference between remaining faithful to a goal and becoming attached to a particular way of achieving it. I can remain faithful to a goal and not be okay with the way to achieve that. To me, I can change the the method there. There's also a danger in in using the possibility of changing direction at all as an excuse to abandon things when they become uncomfortable. And we have to sit with both of these things, I have to recognize that yes, there is wisdom in not expanding. There is wisdom in not offering that service anymore, in cutting that out, while also saying, "Am I going to use that as an excuse to just never do the hard things and always pivot away when things get difficult?
Meghan 33:36
That perseverance is really going to teach you something not only about yourself but also about the evolution of your business, when you have that perseverance to keep going, that is going to serve you well. It served us well in the beginning when we were hiring, and those first couple people didn't work out. But we had that goal in mind, that end goal of we want more family time, we want to have more freedom in our business, and to be able to do more of what we wanted when we wanted, and the only way to do that and to serve our community and to serve more people is to have employees.
Collin 34:09
And the difference there again between stubbornness and perseverance. Perseverance is willing to continue the work and change and adapt as you go. Stubbornness is well, I'm walking this way and I'm not going to change anything about what I'm doing. I'm just going to try the same thing and the same method and the same purpose one more time. That's stubbornness. That will burn people out. That is a bad way of operating your business.
Meghan 34:31
Now there is also on the on the other side of that. There is well, yard signs did not work for me six years ago, but maybe they will now. There is something to be said for trying something again and you not being stubborn about it. It's just well, maybe the market has shifted, clients have shifted. Maybe the there's new information that you've learned that now maybe the thing will actually work when it didn't several years ago.
Collin 34:54
And the difference there is just being aware of what's going on and taking that notes, taking those information. Learning from that experience and doing it again, because sometimes courage means continuing, and sometimes courage means changing, and sometimes courage means admitting that something needs to end and being okay with that.
Meghan 35:14
Again, I started the episode off with this: of well, there are really three paths here. When you hit something hard, you can continue what you're doing. You can quit, or you can change course. And every hard thing you come up against, that is what you need to be talking to yourself about.
Collin 35:29
I know that you may be listening to this in between visits. You may be finishing a report. It may be late at night, early in the morning. I also know that you just may be worrying about whether your business is going to make it okay in the end of of all of this, we we all go through those periods where we're exhausted, where we are discouraged, where there we're just we're questioning whether we ourselves are cut out for this this job that that we took on, this level of entrepreneurship and doing this thing, and and it would be really easy right now to say keep working and everything will turn out okay,
Meghan 36:05
but that's not always the case. It's
Collin 36:07
not. It's not, and it's the entire point of this episode. The point is, is that just because what you're doing is hard, it doesn't mean that you will succeed or that you will fail. The level of difficulty does not dictate success or failure in business and in life.
Meghan 36:27
There are difficult things worth doing. There are sacrifices that are worth making. There are responsibilities that are worth accepting. On the other side, there are difficult things that aren't worth doing anymore, and sacrifices that no, I I'm not going to miss another Christmas, and there are responsibilities that are not worth accepting anymore. But there are also times when we need the humility to acknowledge our mistakes, to own it. We're the ones holding the bag, and that comes with great success and great accolades and all the cookies in the world. And it also comes with some of the hard things. Sometimes we have to be ready to face both as entrepreneurs. Maybe you're in a really hard season of business right now, whether you're tired and frustrated, wondering whether all of this is actually worth it or not. And we can't say whether or not it is for you and where you're at right now in your business. We also can't promise that if you just keep working, everything's going to fall into place. We're not going to sit over here and say it's all going to be butterflies and puppy cuddles and kitty kisses. But the difficulty that you face isn't necessarily a sign that you've failed. Maybe you're in the midst of learning something that you need to learn in order to make your business better. Sometimes you've made a mistake and you need the courage to acknowledge it. There's also times when we're just simply at the hard part of our business. We don't enjoy the struggle that we're in right now, but we also don't want to ignore what it's telling us either. We need to learn the lesson and not to run from it. We're not always going to be comfortable in this business. We're not always going to be excited either. It's definitely not always going to feel rewarding. But part of being a business owner is learning to face everything with courage and humility and perseverance. We hope this episode has been helpful to you. If it has, please feel free to share it with a dog walker or pet sitter friend. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Critter, and we will talk with you next time.
Collin 38:16
Bye.
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