028 - Streamlining Your Business
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We discuss some business basics everyone should have in place as a pet care professional. We then dive into some of the major areas to focus on when streamlining and making your processes more efficient. From intaking new clients, to paying your bills, there always seems like there are things to improve on. However, at the end of the day, focusing too much on wringing out every last drop of efficiency can actually make you less efficient! So remember that you know the work that has to get done and trust those around you.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Collin 0:15
I'm Collin
Meghan 0:16
and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional, and open and honest discussion about
Unknown Speaker 0:21
life as a pet sitter, brought to you by time to pet.
Meghan 0:26
Hello, and welcome to Episode 28, where today we're going to talk about streamlining your business, staying organized and making it more efficient. So Hello, everybody. It seems like it's been a long time since we've got to talk to you guys. And I've missed you. Collins been doing a lot of interviews, but hopefully you guys have been enjoying those we've had the past few weeks we've had on a pet photographer, we've had Cathy's critter care who has been in business for over 20 years. And then we did a bonus episode with conferences 2020 conferences that are going on this year. And then last week was Kelly Her talk about relationships and fostering relationships while you're traveling. And while your house today there have been some awesome interviews that we've done recently. So we hope you guys check those out. And we've got a lot more coming up for you guys. So today, it's all about streamlining your business. First, we're going to talk about some business basics.
Collin 1:18
Yeah, business basics here. These are just not to go too in depth, but these are big buckets of information that everybody needs to make sure that we have checked off. And the first one is definitely insurance Are you covered for the services that you are offering, where you're offering them though, some really common ones for insurance or Kindle Pro, if you're in Canada, binx is pretty popular there. And then pet SIRs associate, I think one that we're all really familiar with is business insurance of the Carolinas. What's really important here is that you're finding out what works best for your business and is meeting your budget. The reason we pay for insurance is to cover those big Scary bills that are going to come in. So what kind of emergency fund do you have in place? And what kind of insurance Do you need on top of that to cover you, your equipment, your home and any employees that you have under you. Another one that comes up when we're talking about business basics is software. Now software here we're talking about things to save you time make it easier to track, the special booking and payment software. We're all pretty familiar with pet sitter plus scout or time to pet is a really popular one as well. Full disclosure, though, they are a sponsor of our shows in the past, and this one as well. We had a great interview with Mike about taxes. And that's always a big topic. And it's when we're talking about business basics and efficiency, doing a little bit every month saves a ton of time at the end when you go to File, using special tracking software if you need but you don't have to, you can just use an Excel file. That's that's really not that doesn't have to be that complicated if you don't need it to otherwise looking into a good CPA or tax professional to help you along with that. And then finally, as far as business basics go, having a good contract up front, really helps prevent headaches and lays everything out in the open so that both you and more importantly, your clients know what to expect. Remember that the tighter the contract the less back and forth you'll have down the road trying to decide whether you should or shouldn't do something or who was or wasn't at fault, or who should or shouldn't be paying for certain things. That back and forth really eats into your time and really plays heavy on your mind. Day in and day out. We'll have a link to our contract that we use on our website for this show.
Meghan 3:46
Some ways to streamline your business processes. So the processes in your business are just the things that your business does. So the first is how do clients contact you for service? So is there a phone number they call or is it all online? or through a software program? Do you have your phone number or that that contact on your business cards on your website, making sure that people know how to contact you. Also, if you are on social media, making sure that your contact information is clear on there as well. Are you the one that a potential client should be contacting? Or is? Or does your assistant handle that? Should you be getting an assistant? Are you so busy that you need to be handing those off and delegating to someone else? How are payments handled? Now if you're using a software program, this is often handled for you, as in the payments are tracked and handled through a software program or if you're on a big platform like rover or wag payments are handled on there as well. But if not, if you're just using cash or cheque or debit card or a little square payment, you need to iron that out before clients contact you. Also how our new clients entered into your files are your files all digital or Are they still on paper, if they are on paper, it would probably be wise and efficient to transfer them all to digital so that you don't have a bunch of clutter and paper around and you could lose papers or misplace them. And so having everything on a digital file is a good idea.
Collin 5:17
Another thing about this, too, is trying to prevent double entry of information. So if a client is filling out information, and then you're having to manually copy that information into a different file, you're wasting time. So having a contact form on your website, that when they fill out their information there, it gets sucked into a spreadsheet on the backend so that you're not having to reenter all their contact information and all of that stuff, saves a lot of time at the end.
Meghan 5:44
So going back to payments for a second, if you are taking payments through either PayPal or a credit card or something that charges a fee. You want to make sure that your client knows that either upfront or it's already included in the charges. Because then if they don't know that there's an extra fee on top, they'll be asking questions. And that's not really an efficient use of your time answering the clients questions about the service charges. So making sure that in the contract, you have something that says this is, this is how much your service will be. And if you do charge of service fee on top making sure that that's clearly stated. So the client knows that. It's also important to think through the things that you do every day, every week, every month or every year, and see if those are as efficient as possible. So what I mean by that is, how many steps does it take to accomplish a certain task and still be 100%? accurate? So for example, with onboarding a client, so think about from the initial contact of the client all the way up to the meet and greet? How many steps does that take? And are there any steps in which you can either eliminate or make more efficient so that you can save time and money like I talked about a few minutes ago as far as payments, paying bills with a check versus online with debit or credit cards. So the checks are thing of the past, basically, not many people use checks anymore. And so there are inefficient in that they don't automatically hit your bank account that day. And some people will bounce checks, and then you'll be stuck with that fee. So having an online system is much more efficient than using checks.
Collin 7:19
Additionally, same thing goes as you the business owner, how are you paying your bills? Do you have things auto drafted to pull from your account with debit or credit cards versus remembering to pay a hit by check and get that mailed in on time? And those? Those are the kind of steps we're talking about here? How many steps does it take to pay any given bill? And more importantly, how likely is it that you or maybe somebody else is going to remember those steps and be able to do them repeatedly and reliably.
Meghan 7:47
And the same thing goes for tracking mileage with a pate with paper and pen versus a phone app. So it's going to be a lot more efficient with the phone app where I can just track your GPS of where you're going every day versus a pen and paper where you might Missing number or forget to write it down one day. So using the phone app like mile IQ or another tracking software is very helpful. This is also important because a big tax write off is your mileage, making sure that it's accurate is very important automate when you can, especially repetitive tasks. That way, you don't have to be doing the same thing over and over again and driving yourself insane. So are you entering the same text over and over again, when a client initially contacts you? Do you have the same message that you send it to everybody or you know, you might change a word here or there, but as it generally the same text, you can streamline that with apps like TextExpander, which make it very easy by using text shortcuts and then you can expand it to a much longer text. This can also be done a little bit with an apple iphone, but it's much better in TextExpander. Also, using automated email responses and auto payments can save a lot of time and hassle as Well,
Collin 9:00
you can gain efficiency and streamlining in your business through investing in that. So spending money in this can come in the form of getting a faster computer or upgrading your internet speed, which means less waiting time or hold time for you to be doing processes that you're doing all the time. We mentioned a little earlier, investing in a better management software to keep you more organized and keep you from second guessing what is or isn't going on, so that you're not having to spend that time going back and looking at files. When we talk about investing. It also means investing in both you and your employees. So spending money and time for training or extra time off so that both you and the people that are working for you are charged and fully educated to be giving a high quality efficient service.
Meghan 9:49
A great way to make sure that your business is being as productive as possible is setting a good work radius, so reducing any unnecessary travel time and making your travel radius as small as possible. So a lot of times when we start off in our pet sitting businesses, we will take everybody will take all every client that comes to us will say yes to everybody. And a lot of times this means that we have expanded our radius quite a bit. So when we had first started out, when we moved to the Dallas area, I would take clients 2030 minutes outside of where we lived, and that was extremely inefficient. But I had, I had wanted to say yes to everybody. Not really understanding traffic and travel time and getting to and from the client, you can say no to people and that you can make your travel radius very small. Some people in New York City even have all of their clients in a three to four block radius, which is pretty awesome. I wish we could do that. But we we live in a small town where there's not a lot of people in a three to four block radius, but where you have big cities with lots of skyscrapers and a three to four block radius, you can accommodate a lot of those clients. So if you still have a large work radius, and you're either okay with that, or that's just the way it has to be because you live in such a rural area, make sure that you're applying for your prices reflect that. So either charge per mile or increase your service charge or you can do both. But make sure that you're being compensated for your time and for your gas and your wear and tear on your car.
Collin 11:29
Have you heard about time to pet Claire from acting critter sitters has this to say
Unknown Speaker 11:33
time to pet is honestly revolutionized how we do business. My sitters can work much more independently because they have ongoing access to customer and pet information without relying on me. I save hours upon hours of administrative time on billing, processing payments and generating paychecks.
Collin 11:50
If you are looking for a new pet sitting software for your business, give time to pet a try. As a listener of pet sitter confessional you'll get 50% off your first three months when you sign up at time to pet.com, slash confessional.
We've touched on these next few topics a little bit already, but to bring them back up and highlight them, hiring people can help make you more efficient as a business. This includes both in the pet care, but I think and more often looked side of this is the administrative side who should be filing the paperwork? Is it you? Or can you hire somebody to do that? answering phones, doing the scheduling, doing the calls? Does that have to be you or Can someone else do that job then Megan talked about raising your prices, make sure that your prices are set right so that you're not working too much for too little pay. And that's a common pitfall that we as pet care providers fall into. We provide care we love doing this. And so often we do that through undervaluing of our time and letting people take advantage of us. When you think about setting your prices, make sure that you know how much you need to charge to earn a living. And make sure that you are being competitive and all of those things in that, but continually look at your prices, and make sure that you're getting the most out of the service in the price that you're charging. And what we're talking about services, you can gain time and money back through changing your services as you provide. As I mentioned, making sure that the work that you're doing every day is worth your time, our walks where the money's at where you are, or maybe the walks are too far spread out, like where we live, we're trying to go from walk to walk, we'd have to drive in spend 20 minutes in a car just to get from client to client. That's not worth it. That's not efficient, and so wouldn't be worth it to us. And then while you're thinking about changing your services, maybe it might be worth it to expand your services where it makes sense. So if you're doing a lot of house sitting with clients, maybe add bathing services. So that was They're taking care of their dog, you can give them a bath as well as an added on service. They don't have to be big flashy things, but continually to try and add value while at the same time. Not cutting into your time in the day is really where you're going to see the best bang for your buck.
Meghan 14:17
Another topic to think about when streamlining your business is marketing, so spending less time with boots on the ground is a good way to make your business more efficient. It is always good to go to community events like a bark in the park or visit local vets offices with your business cards. That is a good way to gain more clients. However, a lot of business now is online through marketing and social media. So spending some time each day using your social media whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter next door. These are great ways to easily get your name out there without having to spend a lot of time going to places also partnering with like minded services and area. So a pet photographer or a pooper scooper, you can give them your business cards. And when a pet photographer is taking pictures of the dogs, they can tell the client, hey, if you ever need a dog sitter here is the person that I refer to she does great work and she can hand out your business card. Also, budgeting Your time is huge when making your business efficient. So we've been talking about this, but setting aside time for email, and social media management. So this can really consume a lot of your time responding to client potential clients, and making sure that you've got great photos up on your social media and using all the hashtags. So you want to streamline this so that when you're with a client, you are really with them. When you're taking a dog on a walk, you're not being distracted by trying to get too many pictures or post to social media. You really want to start thinking about all the other aspects of your business that you have to deal with.
Collin 15:49
So scheduling your day of I know I'm going to spend an hour on social media in the morning in our social media in the afternoon and then an hour at night or however you too. Do you want to set it up? And again, whether that's you personally who are doing that, or you have somebody else on your team that can manage part of that as well. And as Megan mentioned, the email contact, how often are you going to be checking your email and budgeting time for that throughout the day in between walks and in between services, so that you can always be present with your client?
Meghan 16:20
We've talked about saving time and money, but how do you know if you're saving money. So the most costly and the most commonly used business purchases and expenses in your business, you want to make sure that you're always comparing so you're getting the best price. This goes with software insurance, basically everything that we've talked about also budgeting so that you aren't spending too much money on frivolous things. We talked about in our Getting Started episode that Dave Ramsey really was the catalyst for us getting into pet sitting. And so he has a great resource as far as budgeting and getting your money on track and getting out of debt. So we really recommend him be telling
Collin 16:55
your money where to go instead of trying to figure out where it went
Meghan 16:59
and tracking Spending as well. So budget before the month starts and track it as the month progresses, review each week so that you know where your money goes. I think he says make sure that you're at make sure that every dollar has a name.
Collin 17:12
And this can be really hard. For some people, some people are not budgeters. I know between Megan and I, she is much more of the budget minded person loves seeing spreadsheets and loves seeing things worked out that's much more difficult for me. So she and I both have to work on that together so that we can see that progress.
Meghan 17:33
And if you don't like numbers, if you're somebody who has no interest in doing a budget, maybe seek out help, maybe that is an area where you can hand off to somebody else.
Collin 17:42
What would happen if a power surge killed the hard drive of your computer, or weather event or fire destroyed your files or the building where you had everything stored. Having backups for photos, data, clients information is very essential for running an operating a business these days. So whether it's having an extra hard drive that's external to the computer that you have, and you just periodically drag files over, that's okay, or having an online backup like backblaze to ensure that there's a continuous backup every hour or even more frequent than that of your files, so that in the horrible incident where everything gets lost, not everything is lost. In all of this talk, we have been discussing goals and objectives to how you know if you're successful in being more efficient part of this is in setting measurable goals, which is pretty easy when we are discussing this from a business aspect. Saving Time, how much time does it take you to enter new clients, how much money is saved, driving around and on your monthly budget. You can even budget out how much time is spent behind a computer, or the number of new clients processed per hour. You can do this through time tracking, which may have lots of people glazing over right now. time tracking is very powerful and can tell you where you're actually spending your time in where you may want to cut or save or maybe even invest more. And it can take around a month to really see how you're spending your time on a reliable basis. Do you develop categories of how you want to track your time and just when you are doing certain tasks, you write that down on a piece of paper and beside your desk, or have a phone app to do it so you can track on the go. And then at the end of each week, you can see how many hours did I actually spend doing budget, how many, how many hours that I actually spend filing paperwork, it can be pretty mind opening to see where you're spending your time and how much money that is or isn't costing you.
Meghan 19:46
If you don't have processes already in place, start planning them out. Now. If you've ever thought about what your business actually does within a day, start writing it out and know when to delegate if you are overwhelmed and your business You need to either hire somebody, or you need to bring on an assistant that is good to know so that you can maintain your sanity because it is so easy to get burned out and overworked in this business.
Collin 20:10
And the assistant does not have to be a physical assistant in your location. virtual assistants are very common and actually growing in popularity these days. So if you need somebody to just enter data into an Excel spreadsheet, you may be able to do that hiring remotely have someone do that for you, so that you are not having to manage someone on location all the time.
Meghan 20:32
Or if you are trying to develop your website or you want to update your website. There are a lot of people online who can do that for you without you having to take the time to learn the website and all of that. I think that regardless of if you're inefficient or efficient, dwelling on it too much is inefficient. So if there are things that you think could be better and that could change, knowing those and having a plan going forward is a good thing. Don't dwell on it. too much, because that is not good for your business and slows you down.
Collin 21:04
I think what Megan is trying to get at here is that you can spend all of your day trying to figure out the most efficient way to do things. You can spend weeks and weeks trying to figure out the best software or the best processes to get into place. But ultimately, that is not getting the work done. You know what work needs to be done, and you have a good team around you. And you need to trust that and trust who you have hired, and trust yourself to get the work done at the end of the day.
Meghan 21:29
It can also be useful to ask your clients for feedback as well, if they think there are ways for your business to run smoother, or things on their end to go faster.
Collin 21:40
Obviously, that can be pretty scary to open yourself up to that kind of feedback. So reach out to maybe a handful of trusted customers and clients that you really know and that you appreciate it that you would appreciate getting feedback from, instead of opening it up to absolutely everybody to get who knows what kind of feedback.
Meghan 21:59
We hope that this Episode all about streamlining your business and making it more efficient has been really helpful to you. If you think of anything else that we could have added or have any feedback, you can let us know at feedback at pet sitter confessional calm. Next week we're going to have Dan's pet care on is an awesome resource that has a huge following on social media and they have sat hundreds and hundreds of pets so we can't wait for you guys to hear that awesome interview. We want to give a huge thank you to our sponsor time to pet if you guys want to follow us on social media, we are on Facebook at pet sitter confessional and on Instagram at pet sitter confessional. We are also on Tick Tock so you can join us on there as well. That's apparently the new craze. So we have joined and we also have a community on Facebook sitter confessionals. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to listen to us and we hope you join us next week. Thank you Thanks
Keywords: clients, business, pets, spending, efficient, payments, people, service, checks, track, confessional, files, budget, money, sitter, day, social media, insurance
