002- Getting Started
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
Meghan 0:15
I'm Collin. And I'm Megan.
Collin 0:17
And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. On this episode, we're going to talk about getting started as a pet sitter. Why did we start dog sitting?
Meghan 0:30
We started dog setting mainly as a way to earn extra money to save. We were grad students at the time in 2012. And we honestly we didn't make very much and so I just started Googling ways of how to earn a little bit extra money and dogs and came up. And so of course, over the years, we've learned to, you know, not only it's not only a way to earn extra money, it's a way to cuddle dogs and a way for Are our dog to have a friend and for our kids to help out and learn some responsibility with, you know, giving treats and feeding the dogs when it's time and taking them outside and for a walk. And so they get to learn all of that. You really want to know when you're starting a pet sitting business, you really want to know why you're doing it. Like I just said we had our initial goal was to earn a little bit of extra money. And for a lot of you it's going to be to earn a little bit of extra money but it's also a way to pursue your passion of whether you're a vet tech, and it's a great way to be around pets more if you are, you know, living in an apartment and you're not able to have pets at the moment. Or you just you have a dog yourself and you want to be around more pets,
Collin 1:48
is there anything you're gonna need to purchase or think about?
Meghan 1:51
You may need extra kennels if the dogs require them at nighttime or when you step out of the house. You You may need leashes or Extra bowls or food.
Collin 2:01
And sometimes the owners say that the dog or cat doesn't need to be cannibals. But that turns out to be not true depending on if they have separation anxiety or not.
Meghan 2:12
Or if they two things,
Collin 2:13
two things or if there's aggression. So it's a good way to have it's a good thing to have one on hand as a way of separation. And in case of emergency sometimes,
Meghan 2:21
but most pets will come with their own things. And that's something that you'll need to talk to the owner about at the meet and greet is what they are going to provide. And I think at minimum, the food should be something that they provide.
Collin 2:35
Absolutely, yeah.
Meghan 2:36
Because sitting a dog, you don't want to be giving them new food or transitioning into something that they're not used to because that could lead to diarrhea and dietary upset.
Collin 2:51
It could lead because that could lead to some problems down the road. both ends sometimes.
Meghan 2:58
What strengths Can you bring a pet sitter to your business?
Collin 3:03
Well, first thing you need to think about is what is your experience? Do you have vet tech training? Have you just been doing this awhile? Are you mostly experience with dogs and cats? Or do you have large livestock experience to do because depending on the market, you may have requests to deal with farm animals. Do you have a yard for dogs running? Is your house secure enough to prevent breakouts from some of those escape artists that you may be setting? And also something to consider is what is your current schedule look like? And how flexible is that? A lot of times clients will ask if you're doing drop ins to do two, three, maybe even four visits in a day. That may be hard to fit in if your schedule isn't flexible. But that doesn't mean you can't do that just means you can be selective about who you take on. One of the big questions you're going to have to address first is should you go with a big established platform Like rover, or wag or similar, or try and go it alone, a lot of pet sitters will actually do both of these. You just have to to know what the ins and outs of the non compete clauses are of the platform, and whether they even allow you to take on independent clients outside of them. Some things to think about whenever you're deciding this, maybe what kind of payment methods will you be able to accept if you're an independent pet sitter? Are you going to need a website to advertise? And then everything that goes into that? Something that a lot of people don't think about his insurance as a pet sitter, not just for you, but for the pets that you are taking care of, and others in your house or maybe walking? Are you going to be advertising and getting your name out, as well as what kind of reputation follows you? There are pros and cons to going with a large platform. As soon as some bad apples start gaining some bad press for that platform may not be good to have that name splattered all over your advertising. But going independent, you have to really build up that reputation in your market.
Meghan 5:05
And so that's mainly why we started going with rover calm, is because they took care of essentially everything that you just talked about, right? The the payment methods, it's all booked through the site. They have their own website, they have a rover guarantee, they take care of the advertising, which is why they take out percent of your stays percent of your bookings. And then they have a great reputation brand. So that's really why we started going with them. As you're starting out, you will need to also think about what services you're going to find.
Collin 5:37
So we currently provide all of the services. That doesn't mean all of them are utilized, but we do go ahead and offer them. We do live in a small city so we don't get many requests for dog walks or how setting but when we lived in a larger city, we had tons of those kinds of requests. Just like our example keep in mind that the market is going to dictate what services you're going to be providing most often. So we started off almost exclusively doing dog house sitting, so we stay in the owners home. That was because one we lived in an apartment so we weren't allowed to have dog in our apartment. And second, we didn't get any other kind of request. Now that we've transitioned to owning our home and living in a smaller community, we almost exclusively do daycares and overnights and one we think that's because we actually own a home and too, because the market is dictated that that's the thing people want us to do. And so we have done a few walks and a few drop ins for the clients, but those are not very common at all. And most of the time once people find out that we have a home in a yard, they want us to take care of the dog.
Meghan 6:50
Now if you live in a bigger city like New York, San Francisco, Miami, a lot of times there will be a lot of requests for dog walks and that's because people live in apartments and they don't have yard Sorry, they need someone to take out find out at 12 o'clock every day while they're at work
Collin 7:05
right. Up until this point, we've been talking the nuts and bolts of getting started. But there are some aspects where you can be a little bit more creative and think outside the box. And that really can be expressed when it comes to trying to come up with your name. Let's be honest, pet sitting is hard work. from running around doing multiple walks and drop ins to the dogs inside your home. It can take up a lot of time and energy, time and energy that you don't have to always eat. The most healthy or gain has solved that from protein powders, vegan bars, and smoothies and a myriad of other products. They've got your back covered right now. If you visit or gain.com and use the promo code ambassador to five for you'll get 30% off your order, plus free shipping. Again, that's our game calm and use the promo code ambassador to five for To get 30% off, plus free shipping.
Meghan 8:06
So we came up with our name originally in 2012. It was dog sitting with a woman's touch. And that Collin came up with that name and
it might not have been the best name.
Collin 8:20
I had some weird requests
Meghan 8:22
yet, but that what we started off with and that was mostly because I, I was a primary person taking care of the dog. This was kind of my idea, my kind of venture for us to do and so I was the primary one that was walking the dogs and doing the dog sitting at first. Then a couple years later, Collin came on and started helping a lot more. Once we started getting busier and having a lot more clients right now we have moved to a generic, more generic kind of name of just City and then loving etc. So you can come up with whatever name you want. But it definitely needs to reflect your love and care that you're going to provide to these animals and
Collin 9:12
and your personality to make sure that can be expressed there. And a good way to start thinking about that is to look at who else is providing services in the area, okay, names they have and how you can differentiate, differentiate yourself from them.
Meghan 9:27
But ultimately, when choosing a name, you need to know your market, you need to know the centers around you. And so that really helps when it comes to pricing.
Collin 9:38
Right. kind of the big, overarching thing we've had come up throughout this entire discussion has been the market around you in the market that you're in. And that really hits home when you start trying to think about what you're going to charge for your services. As a new sitter, especially one if you don't have a whole lot of experience, like like we did when we started, we really started our prices off way low. We looked at what the Kindles in the area were charging, and we looked at what the other centers in the area were charging. And we undercut them by quite a bit, mostly because we had never done this before. So we didn't even know if anyone would would take us up on wanting to hire us. And as we built clientele and got reviews and more referrals slowly started to increase our pricing.
Meghan 10:22
For new clients, we had kept the price for our existing clients the same,
Collin 10:27
right? Because we wanted to grandfather them in and as a way of saying thank you for sticking with us as we kept on getting more and more business. Another thing you can think about is adjusting your prices depending on how busy you are or especially holidays. Another aspect of pricing is not just the house it or the daycare or the drop in or the walk, you can think about adding other services to what you provide as a way of distinguishing yourself from other cities and other care in the area. If you have a particular knack for grooming your Dog, maybe you could offer that as a service and charge for that. Also consider that many people will have more than just one dog or more than just one pet. And so you'll have to think about what you're going to charge for each additional pet and service that you're going to do there. Some sitters will charge if the dog requires medication, or even if you want to offer giving a bath to you can charge for that.
Meghan 11:24
If you do daycare, and boarding, as far as price, you probably don't want to put them at the same price. Because typically, daycares are anywhere from eight to 12 hours versus a boarding or even a house it that is typically 24 hours. And so you want to adjust your prices accordingly there because somebody is not going to want to pay the same price for more air.
Collin 11:50
Right? Right, making sure you kind of have a tiered approach to the level of care. So a walk should definitely be charged much lower than ours. Sit,
Meghan 12:00
right. And also if you want, if you don't want to do how sitting as much as boarding, if you would rather all the dogs come to you versus you going to the dogs, then you will want to maybe charge a little bit more for housesitting than you would for boarding.
Collin 12:15
But that's up to you, you can also just decide you don't even offer that. So it's completely off the table, or you make it so expensive that only people who really want you to do that will pay for it. And then finally, one of the things to think about in your market is whether you need a license to do pet sitting, this is particularly important if you are going to be sitting in your home. So there will be codes that the city should have on file, that you will be able to look up and see what the restrictions are for number of dogs in one household and then whether they will even allow you to apply for something that will allow you to become more of a kennel quote unquote, even though that's not what we really are. So that's something you definitely have to check with your local city ordinances
Meghan 13:00
Thank you for listening to this episode all about starting out your pet sitting business.
Collin 13:04
Join us next time for when we cover what it means to go through a meet and greet and why it's really important and often overlooked by most sitters. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, send feedback to feedback at pet sitter confessional.com look forward to hearing from you
Keywords: charge, dog, pets, started, requests, market, rover, walks, care, sitters, kennel, services, provide, clients, platform, independent, price, city, advertising
