029 - Dan's Dog Walking and Pet Sitting
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Dan, owner of Dan’s Dog Walking and Pet Sitting, joins us this week to talk about how he got started, when he hired his first employee, and what makes a good culture in business. Dan shares how he struggled in hiring and what he looks for in potential employees. He also discusses how he strives to set his business and employees apart from others.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Collin 0:15
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 0:20
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter, brought to you
Collin 0:23
by time to pet. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode. This week we've got Dan, owner of Dan's Dog Walking and Pet Sitting on, we have a great discussion focused primarily on employees, hiring and retaining amazing ones, as well as what it's like to build a culture to sustain them and keep them going day in and day out. Dan also talks about the importance of protecting you and your business making sure you're both insured and bonded. Dan's a really great guy with a lot of information and passion to share. Can't wait for you guys to listen to this interview. Let's dive right in.
Dan 1:01
Thank you so much for having me Collin. I'm excited to be here. My name is Dan reitman. I am the CEO and founder of damn dog walking and how long have you been in business? On November 1? Actually, it was a whopping 10 years before I started the company
Collin 1:17
still blows my mind. Wow, that's that's that's quite a long time. Do you own any pets currently,
Dan 1:25
Georgia, so you're no longer living at home? Because I'm 32 and finally moved out of my parents house. Our family dog was my dog, Caleb. If you've seen any of our content, or if you want to go check it out. There's tons of content with him. We actually had a really cute basically like a dog on couple series that we did on Instagram for a while for my other dog got sick, called Kyle and Caleb roommates, and it's pretty adorable and people definitely got a kick out of this. So, definitely check that out Kyle Killebrew, man,
Collin 2:03
that's super cute. So you've you've kind of had a passion for animals for a long time. Where did that start?
Dan 2:10
Oh, I gotta say it's been probably my whole life. My dad when I was an infant, I'm sure against the advice of my mother I know used to put our puppy in the grave with me. My first dog Sasha, so I'm sure he got yelled at for that charity would get yelled at again If my mom knew that this was being broadcast. But now my whole life I've been always loved animals. When I was little, you name it. I'm pretty sure I had as a pet. lizards, fish, frogs, dog, no cat, but I've had basically everything else college. I almost lost my housing because of the pests that we had. Yeah, we had a three and a half foot long Savannah monitor. His name is We had a scorpion. We had a Pac Man Frog. Then I when I was living at home I had to chinchillas that I thought were both female. I found out a few months later one was males when I'm probably, in fact a bunch of them. But yeah, just been an animal lover my whole life and something that I you know, I've always been incredibly passionate about never planned on turning it into a business. I always call this business a happy accident. You know what happened after I figured out it could be a business that was obviously a lot of work and a lot of planning. But when I first started, it was definitely it really, truly did come from I enjoy working with animals and let's see where this could go.
Collin 3:44
Sure. Do you spend some time working at an animal hospital? How did that shape the way you worked with animals?
Dan 3:55
It honestly, I don't think I would be in that position. I'm in if it wasn't for Dr. Hendrickson and has an animal hospital giving me my first job there. This all started on a pretty impulsive whim. My car was packed. I was supposed to go back for my junior year of college. I was going to Loyola down in Baltimore. And I basically told my parents, I'm not going back. And they're like, all right, fine, get a job. So that next day I brought my dog in to the animal hospital who have been going through I think my family's been going to infant the open 20 or 30 years ago, and at the time, I was very interested in going to med school. I came in I asked to do any volunteer position open. interested in going to med school he's like no, but we do have a full time job as an actor. We can train you and we have that available. I was like yeah, I'd love to I interviewed with him and absolutely fell in love with it. You know, working in a small hospital, you get to do a lot more than you would working in like a larger Scale Animal Hospital. So I was incredibly hands on. And I had some very good teachers, there was a vet tech, Nikki, who worked there. I'm very good friends with Bill. She She taught me a lot Dr. Henderson taught me a lot. But just having that hands on experience working with animals in a medical setting beyond just the physical care of them, be able to kind of, you know, know how to recognize low in a dog or knowing how to recognize things like heatstroke or what to do if a dog blood sugar drop there, all these kinds of things that people in our industry unless they seek that information out, don't necessarily have that data set coming into whenever they start their business. So I you know, to wrap it up, I don't think I would be in the position I'm in with this company if I hadn't worked there.
Collin 5:47
Yeah, no, that's that's it sounds like it's really foundational to how you began to think about working with them. I want to touch on that a little bit because I find that as pet sitters and pet care professionals, we find ourselves This kind of interesting interface, we're not medically trained. But we do spend a lot of time interacting with animals. And so we kind of find ourselves as this interim position between an owner and the the medical field and the animals. Did you find yourself doing a lot of that when you were pet sitting actively?
Dan 6:23
Well, especially when I first started, definitely, because a lot of my first clients that I got were referrals from the animal hospital I was working at, I mean, it really started with, you know, doing this dog walking thing, or I'm doing this testing thing. And they knew me from the hospital. And I was like, Yeah, I could, you know, do insulin, I could take care of senior path. Yeah. And so in the beginning, for sure. I mean, now we've got a pretty large team, so they handle most of that day to day stuff. Anything that's super unique. Like we had a tortoise who had sort of polyps, and they had to we were to predict her About a month and a half. So I was like over doing that. Yeah, it was really cool. I had only done it like once or twice in the past. And that's one thing I definitely missed the medical aspects. Working in the hospital. Bed school is still in the back of my mind. I have a few more things I'm trying to do with this business and a few other things that I'm working on before I take the leap. But I think my passion is definitely in that field as well as the business aspect.
Collin 7:28
So once you started, how did you decide on a business name? How did you decide to call you?
Dan 7:36
I mean, let's be honest, not not many hours of
you know, time and research.
Naming my company, Dan, dog walking and pet sitting. Yeah. I honestly I couldn't even tell you if I put any thought into it at all. Sure. I lucked out because the name of the business made us Much better optimized from an SEO standpoint. So having dog walking and sitting in the company's title actually ended up working tremendously to our advantage in terms of showing up in search rankings and things like that. And also, people didn't have to ask what we did with Dan. Dan owns the company. Yeah. A lot of transparency with what we do. Sure.
Collin 8:25
Yeah. And I know because people just starting out, kind of trying to come up with a name can be really daunting. And it's not easy. It's Yeah. So it's, it's nice to hear that you're just went, well, this is who I am. And this is what I do. So that's what we're going to call it.
Dan 8:41
Yeah, there. There was definitely, when I say I knew very little from a business standpoint, when I was 21, maybe 22. When I first started, I thought I knew what I was doing. I definitely was like a toddler running in the dark but was yet maybe a company's not easy I've had a couple of other businesses while I've been building dance dog walking and I remember I had a tech company in the restaurant space and me and my partner's then week combing through like thousands and thousands of names and it was
frustrating processes ever.
This is going to define us this is going to be a name that people use. So I definitely my heart goes out to those who actually put in thought to naming their
it's not an easy process.
Collin 9:38
Yeah, for Yeah, absolutely. So So what kind of services does your business provide to clients?
Dan 9:46
So you got dog walking and pet setting obviously so we have multiple visit opt ins that we do and 30 and 50 minutes dog walk. We obviously do cat business cats today we do medical visit the post office There's any moon treatment that needs to be done. Insulin, any sort of injections, medication pills, stuff like that. We offer pet back the services they're driving dogs to the best of the groomer. We also do in home overnight setting where we will stay at the client's house with the dog. We do regular hourly parenting or we just hang out with them. And then we do pooper scooper services as well. Oh,
Collin 10:26
well that sounds like it's pretty diverse. Did all those come up at one time or how were those added as the business grew?
Dan 10:35
Well, I wasn't that funny how is added the pooper scooper one with a ended about a year ago. I was at a client's house talking to them. And she asked me like Do you know anybody that does Uber services and I back my head was like, Well, I have a bucket at home and I'm sure I could find something. But we do this we offer that ended up being our first movie super quiet. But yeah, the dog walking in happening. It definitely evolves over time. I think when I started, I only did 30 minutes business, maybe an hour, I honestly don't remember. But I remember a couple of, you know, year two and realizing, you know, not everybody can afford to spend X amount of dollars per week, but I wanted to have an option to be able to cover Everyone needs. That's why I started offering the 10 minute one. Yeah, it kind of evolves over time, based on the need that I also tried to use data to kind of make decisions about the business. So looking at like, you know, which what requests are we getting services for that we don't offer? What are we getting that, you know, we can double down on what could we kind of continue to expand and really make decisions based on the needs of the market? I think one thing that I did in the beginning was I did a replenishment service, where you know, if somebody was away on vacation, we would go to the grocery store, get milk, eggs, cheese, whatever they needed, they leave us a list and so they come home and have a fridge. Wow. I mean, when I, when I first started, I really did everything like Yeah, I was picking up clients. And I was, you know, helping them with stuff around the house. I was, you know, I realized that it wasn't just about taking care of the dog, it was about building a relationship at the end of the day, because when you're hiring someone to take care of your dog, it's not, you know, you're not getting an Uber driver. It's not somebody coming to paint your house. It's not somebody, you know, doing electrical work, or anything like that. It's These are people who are taking care of your baby. They're taking care of your past and they're part of your family and for me, and I think it's worked so far, building those relationships with people so they know the company and they know who they're working with, was always important to me from the jump.
Collin 12:49
Yeah, it is a very intimate kind of business relationship that you have with somebody and those relationships are the lifeblood of your business. And and meeting people's needs. And I really like hearing how there was some thought into what services you would offer, but you were adaptive and kind of reactive to what you were hearing the needs of and doing the best you could to meet those over time. Obviously, to certain extent, not trying to I'm sure there have been some weird requests that you just completely put off. But,
Dan 13:23
but we try to meet those weird requests as best we can. Sure, yeah.
Collin 13:29
So, you you've, you've had some little bit of background in education in business and entrepreneurship. What kind of things did you learn there that you find yourself using every day running this business?
Dan 13:45
It's kind of it's kind of a tough answer. Um, when I was finishing up my degree, I was very focused on the tech company that I had at the time. So it was a lot of skills I learned pertaining to it. building a business from a digital standpoint. So having the right systems in place, the right CRM system, the right you know, analytics and learning how to use data to make decisions for your company. That definitely played a huge role. Also having you know, I wrote tons and tons of business plan. My very first business that I wrote was actually for Dan dog walking and destiny. When I when I first started, I took an intro marketing class and an intro business class, and I wrote my first business plan for the company and I wrote our first marketing plan I actually recently found it on one of my own computers and it was after I came up with the tagline you know, quality pet care for caring professionals and it was cool because it kind of applied structure to everything I've kind of always known, but like didn't know how it all works. But I think overall, it was part getting the confidence that like I kind of knew what I was doing because You know, I've always, I've always never felt like I said, I went into school pre med, I was planning on potentially becoming a psychiatrist. That's what my dad does. And I just remember in school, even in high school, like never feeling like, I don't really know what trajectory I'm on like everyone else, like, I'm gonna go into finance, or I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna do that. And I've always been entrepreneurial, but realized, like, I would buy and sell. I would go with my mom to Costco and buy candy, and then I would sell it retail price on it, but Oh, yeah, I mean, I paid my way through college by I used to buy and sell textbooks and concert tickets. Really? Yeah, I had an inventory of like three or 4000 textbooks, my mom, oh my gosh. So it's that entrepreneurial component. And then you kind of merge that with formal education and creating structure in a business. I still say guy thought I knew everything at that time. too, so I don't know, it took me a little bit more time to really put a lot of things into place. But I think that, you know, it depends on the person. You know, entrepreneurship, I think is something that's kind of innate, it's this fire inside you, I don't have the best work life balance is something I've been working on and forced a little bit to work on by my lovely girlfriend. Oh, God. It's definitely one of the things that if you don't know what to do, and you are somebody who wants that formal training, great, you know, having the structure and laying out the roadmap of how you need to do that getting it from ideation to reality. I think it's something that is incredibly valuable. But I also think it's okay that people take their own path as well. I mean, I dropped out of college, I went back to college, I got kicked out of college again, and it was one of those things where it was kicked out because I didn't I wouldn't go to class. It was too hard. Right they'll be a super boring reason I was sitting like in my dorm watching every battle eating Oreos. I'm sure they were good Oreos. They were delicious Oreos. But nonetheless, yeah, I think people feel that they need to go on a specific path to get to a certain place. And I think the first time I got into an entrepreneurship class, it was kind of like this merry band of misfits and I was like, all right, I think I I belong here because nobody seems like they belong here. jumbled up mishmash of people. Yeah, I think that's a big part of entrepreneurship is figuring it out on your own and kind of having that blind confidence to be like, yeah, you know what we can we can do this. Right. I hope though. Yeah. And, and I liked that, that you said like you,
Collin 17:50
yes, you had this formalized training, but what you really got out of it was a sense of confidence and kind of belonging in that area. And you know, as you mention, People don't have to go down the formal education road to find out. They don't have to get that confidence. There's a lot of other resources, surrounding yourself with with a good group of people. And that can have good positive input and seeking out other resources. To learn the things that you don't know, find out where your strong suits are strength, find out where your weaknesses are, slowly build that confidence that this is something I can do, because a lot of times, young people who are passionate about pets, they don't start a business to run a business, they start a business kind of backwards because they just want to take care of pets. So it's not something that a lot of people have a lot of education or knowledge about to begin with. So seeking out those resources to build your confidence over time to let you can do this and there are there are things that can help you.
Dan 18:49
Oh, for sure. And I think, you know, for anyone out there who's just starting a business or thinking about starting it, I think it's very important for people to know and if you are just starting and you're thinking about starting and you feel like you have no idea what you're doing. That is perfectly normal. And there are days and I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. And I've been there. for 10 years, I built and sold another company, I ran a non profit, like I've done a bunch of stuff. And I'm 1015 years into this whole entrepreneurship thing. And, you know, you're always going to have days where you're not sure if you're doing the right thing and you're questioning yourself, but that's part of the whole process. And you know, learn to go with your gut, learn to work with people on things that are your weaknesses, but like, definitely knowing it's okay to not know what you're doing and to be scared and not be super confident in what you're doing. You'll figure it out if you like, the biggest thing is the passion. If you are passionate about what you are doing, that will get you through everything else. I'm sure there's some great Steve Jobs quotes about passion and excitement about what you do, but I definitely don't have it.
Unknown Speaker 19:57
Well, we'll use that you will use your quote that will We'll do that one that'll be great. Yeah stumbly ramble
Collin 20:05
no and I hope the people listening to this really do take that to heart is that not a no nobody has it all together nobody has it all figured out. Everybody is learning at every stage of the process of
Dan 20:20
running and growing your business. Yeah, absolutely i mean i am I actually the more I'm learning the more I'm realizing oh my god I have so much more to learn it's at a point now where I'm definitely like exciting like I am you know, I have a director of video production who makes incredible funny amazing content for us. I have a you know somebody who is on my HR team who that was not a huge strength of mine. I've been a very bullheaded, do it myself this work, work work kind of person and bring in somebody who you know knows how to deal with all kinds of people and knows how to manage people and create those structures like Bringing the people surrounding yourself with the people who have the strength that you lack is the smartest thing you can do in business. You know, find people that you trust, find people that share your values in terms of what your businesses but it's definitely okay to not know what you're doing.
Collin 21:18
So you can't you're starting to talk about it a little bit there, that you have a really great team. tell God Yeah. Tell us about your team that that's working for you and that you have surrounded yourself with.
Dan 21:30
Honestly, my team is everything. I would have nothing without them. I have some employees who've been with me my longest employees in your seven years. Yeah, she actually recently just put in her two weeks notice he got a great promotion at Studio she worked at, but I am incredibly lucky to have a team of people who are not only passionate about caring for animals, they care about what we do, and that's something that unfortunately, I don't You could teach people, you know, like, you could teach people all the different skills and stuff like that about a job. But unless they're passionate about caring for and working with animals, it's never going to be a good fit. And I have a team who is dedicated to our clients dedicated to the past, dedicated to the company, and really do go above and beyond constantly. And if any of you are listening, you are a wonderful, I love you. Thank you so much for all of your hard work always. But that is if you want to be successful, hire a good team, invest in your team. Like, I think it's important that, you know, Richard Branson quote is, you know, you treat your customers like gold and you treat your employees better than your customers. If you treat your employees well, and you've got a happy and 10 games, they are going to do a good job and if they do a good job, the clients are going to be happy. The clients are going to be happy. They're going to refer more business. You and it's this beautiful feedback cycle. And one of the things we've actually really focused on in the past two years from a company standpoint, and I never ever thought about this was culture and creating a culture for your business, like what is it that you are about as a company? What are the values of your company, and one of the most important things to me is positivity. You know, there at the end of the day, you can look at things any way you want. But that's exactly it. You can look at it any way you want to try to come into any situation rather than looking at No, this is happening or Oh no, this grab it, look at it as an opportunity to learn look it as an opportunity to get better. And at the end of the day, whatever it is, it's not the end of the world. And there's always, you know, ways to get around stuff and really try to create a sense of community which is not always easy with, you know, in our industry in terms of your dog walking and pet sitting you're not seeing your email. Right so we try to do company barbecues. We actually just on Sunday had Our holiday party we went and did a couple of papers with the theme which was a lot of fun. Yeah, actually a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I was actually pretty blown away was pretty cool. But doing staff events getting staff involved for the longest time actually anybody ending up in some sort of a management role my company they were internal promotions and I only in the last year started hiring externally just because the volume of our business has grown so much where we needed those people who had more management experience, but my director of video production Morrow is he's been with me for five years he started off walking dog I think his first day of work He told me to get edit videos I was like great let's go to BestBuy went to BestBuy bought a GoPro and a bunch of equipment and making amazing content for me ever since. actually worked on a whole bunch of other really cool projects together. Wow. So but yet invest in your people. Invest in your team. Show them that you Air. You know, it's not just about the clients, it's about your team because unless you are a solar fellow person, you are not going to succeed without a quality team behind you. And anybody who forgets that chances are they're not going to succeed. And you know, I think it's something that a lot of people forget at times, but important to always remember to take care of the people that work hard for you.
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Collin 25:58
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Yeah, and and that's just, you know should be the norm in businesses but unfortunately a lot of people don't do that they the employees sometimes can get taken advantage of because the focus is on only pleasing the customer and the clients and the the team members just kind of get pushed away or viewed as as tools to to an end a means to an end instead of the lifeblood of the company. You live and die by the team that you're surrounded with. And without them you know you don't you as you said you don't get clients.
Dan 26:53
Yeah, Buzz Aldrin didn't get to the moon by himself, right.
Collin 26:58
So you running your business by yourself for a little while, and then it took, then you reached a point where you needed to hire your first employee. Was that was that? Was that easy for you? Or was that did you kind of struggle with that for a little bit?
Dan 27:12
Oh, it was immensely difficult for a number of reasons. One was I got incredibly sick over, it was a Christmas holiday. And I had a ton of clients out of town. I was working 19 hours a day, by myself. I had, unfortunately a death in the family and I was just incredibly run down. And I think it got to the point where I ended up either growing up or getting a real nasty headache and then a bloody nose and being unable to drive just because I've been working almost 20 hours a day for about 10 days straight and got to the point where I had to have I think my brother come pick me up and just drive me to each client's house and I would go and stumble and take care of the dog and the next day I was like, all right. I have to hire But it was hard you know I think I don't think I hired my first employee till I was maybe a year or two I actually can't remember off the top of my head and either a year two years in and I think I might have hired a friend I can't even remember who was at the top of my head but it was I had no experience hiring people who manage people yeah, I barely had any job experience other than working at the animal hospital The only other job they had held a been like, catering dominoes and I was a camp counselor for years. Okay. But it was one of the things that was tough about it when you build these relationships with the clients, but also their pets. And if you are an animal lunatic like I am, you know, you get to know their little quirks and their little things that you have to do and all you know they like to go left not right on the street. They like this there. But you it's hard because it's like You know, you get attached to them and you wonder, like, are they going to do all the things that I do? Are they going to take care of them the way I do, and I didn't realize it at the time. But that was signaling to me the incredible importance of having the right protocols and trainings put into place. But it was, it was tough. It was definitely hard. You know, it was trusting somebody with my business with my name. With our clients, and their pets. It was it was tough. It was definitely not an easy, first thing, but, you know, fast forward 10 years later, we're still doing it. We've got 45 now. So it's definitely we've come a little a little ways from there.
Collin 29:40
Yeah. Did you ever consider at any point going to independent contractors over employees? I didn't, I didn't.
Dan 29:49
I thought about it for a second and then I didn't like the idea of a lot of other things having to be on them in terms of having their own insurance and having you They're right. things in place like, are they going to follow my protocols? Are they going to do things? Usually independent contractors? Yeah, they work with multiple businesses and they do this or that and not to knock that at all. I mean, from a tax perspective, you got independent contractors as employees in for you. But I'll say just the money, I'm payroll taxes and all that stuff, but um, I like the idea of creating a team and having employees who are part of the business, and they weren't just kind of come and go as they please, that they were part of something. Yes. When we first started, we were, I think it was before Facebook pages even existed. So we were creating like, we created like an account with the company's name on it. We were going out and putting fliers out at every on every part. Every train station, we were putting door hangers out we were, we were working together and Yeah, it was. It was awesome. It was a lot of fun. I got to hire friends. I got hire people that, you know, need work that loved animals, and it was a lot of learning but a lot of cool stuff, but it kind of looking back those are nice memories to have like starting the company versus, you know, just outsourcing everything. It was nice to have that little team of people.
Collin 31:17
Right, it makes everybody just a little bit more invested in the outcome. And and and as you mentioned earlier, your your focus on having creating a culture and supporting everybody and having that real team around you is a little bit more difficult with an independent contractor versus an employee.
Dan 31:37
Yeah, I definitely think I mean, I know it definitely has its advantages. If you want to keep your overhead low, which I envy sometimes. But yeah, I think whatever works, depending on what state you're in, and all that stuff stays their own, but we have better employees from the jump,
Collin 31:56
mom. So with 45 employees, how does The organization and management of them work, I'm sure that can be kind of chaotic.
Dan 32:05
We've kind of worked out the case. We've got two full time managers on during the week. And then we have a team of field managers who, basically their main job is to go out and check the staff. But also check in with them. So again, like anybody else is doing this, you're not always seeing your co workers, you're not really seeing your staff. And I realized that to increase our employee retention, there needs to be more communication between them and the company doesn't it shouldn't just be via whatever messaging platform you use. So right, field managers that go out and make sure it's also quality assurance. So they're doing that my management team is in the office fielding calls from staff and clients, booking consultation meetings, and things like that. And then we've got a weekend management team. And then we have our head of HR who is amazing. Shout out to Deb and We've got our Director of video production social media.
Unknown Speaker 33:05
And I liked that idea of
Collin 33:06
the the field managers there because making a much more direct connection with the the sitters and the pet care professionals out there and in the office and the in the higher ups there. So that they, it's easier to communicate problems or it's easier to, as you mentioned, quality control levels of care and catch those things early. so that there can be more training or there can be a little bit more communication about systems that need worked out. But just as instead of having a huge gulf between people in office and people out in the field, letting that connection be a little bit more tight.
Dan 33:41
Oh yeah, I got I've noticed a huge increase in just a positive level of communication between the field man and the staff. It also, I mean, it's great because in the past when we didn't have field managers, if somebody called out sick, myself and my management team, we're running out to cover those Log, because that's also it's an added layer of, you know, a service guarantee, right with, you know, rover and wag if you don't have enough people on that platform in your area and the person taking care of your dog bells, you don't have coverage, whereas we've got the team and there's backup people for that team. Then we have our field managers, then we have our managers and then there's me I mean, I have many a time gone out in the middle of the night, take care of the last minute because no Something happened like that. We always want to make sure that we have full coverage for whenever is needed. We're regarding our clients and their best,
Collin 34:38
right. So kind of in that same vein 2012 was a pretty ground shaking year in the pet care industry because rover decided rolled out nationwide. How have you managed to set your yourself and your business apart from that kind of service being better
Dan 35:00
An email Seriously? Yeah, yeah, putting putting a real focus on quality of services and our customer service. Right. So ensuring that every single employee is trained on a standard protocol that has been developed over 10 years. Every employee goes through a series of field trainings with our team members. They are then project to make sure that they're are doing their job. We do quarterly performance reviews with them. They are constantly communicating with our management team. We put a lot of emphasis on positive interaction with our company. I don't ever want someone to walk away from us feeling not great. I want them to walk away being like holy crap, that was a dog walking company. That's crazy. Yeah, and that's because that's important to me. I mean, like, if you look at anyone who's kind of pumped up on this stuff, Zappos. They are. They want The ways that they became incredibly successful was having like the best customer service. And that stuck out to me because it was like, all right, it's the website, you buy shoes. It was purchased by Amazon for a whole truckload of money. But the emphasis on customer service and making sure that the client is always happy. I mean, I've done things where if an employee made a mistake, and the client was upset about something, I think I ended up refunding full weekend services, which was an $800. And I couldn't afford to give that back at the time, but I did. But because I did that, and the client was so upset, they ended up continuing to use this for seven more years and spending significantly more than that, and really putting an emphasis on the value of the relationship and not looking at a customer like they're just another dollar sign without looking at your staff. Like it's just another dollar sign. I mean, it definitely got me a little worried at first. I say the Only major only direct impact probably had on us as been removing the quality candidates from the applicant pool in terms of that. Sure. I'm excited for what we've got coming in the next couple years what we're working on and what's happening in the industry.
Unknown Speaker 37:18
Okay, well, that's really great. So when you're
Unknown Speaker 37:22
and I like this idea of,
Collin 37:24
you know, you're you're investing in your employees by giving them this training, giving them this protocol and giving them the support that they need. So what what makes a good employee in your eyes?
Dan 37:37
Above all else, they have to love animals.
One of the biggest things for me if I'm in an interview, when if they're why their first few questions about money, in my mind the interviews over because if you're there, interviewing for a job, of course, you're there to make money. All that information is available on the website. I want to know that you're here because you Want to work with animals, the people that are so excited to be around them that are excited to just spend their days in the bathroom for me. You got to be willing to have conversations about your work, you need to be open to constructive feedback. But you also need to be somebody who can give feedback. One of the things that I tell every single person that I hire when I train them is I know what we're good at. I need you to tell us where we're screwing up. Whether it's from an employee standpoint, from a business standpoint, I want to know your ideas and a lot of things that we've done, and changes that we've made have been ideas that have come from employees, actually, my manager, Alex tonight, had a great idea to help streamline some scheduling things. So we're going to be implementing that this week. video ideas, it's, I think at the end of the day, you need compassionate people who are able to communicate in a professional way. And are, you know, excited to be a part of something bigger than it just being a job? Right?
Collin 39:08
Right. So thinking back to the 10 years ago, yeah, you're just starting out. Do you remember your very first client?
Dan 39:16
I do. I do. I do. Her name was Bonnie.
And Hang on. I had a dog Angie and Molly, for the dog's name. I remember going to the meeting. I was in my scrubs because I'm in the animal hospital. I remember being at the door with my notebook. And thinking I have no idea what I'm doing tonight. I'm
Unknown Speaker 39:41
gonna go
Dan 39:43
and a way great. You know her. Her dogs are featured on my first website and her dogs are amazing, incredibly, incredibly sweet dog. The quiet was a wonderful person. But yeah, I think we remember being Outside that door being like, I have no idea how this goes. Well,
Unknown Speaker 40:06
yeah, that that very first one. The nerves are really kicking in and especially Yeah, if
Dan 40:12
not nervous. I think it was just like, what the hell am I doing?
Unknown Speaker 40:17
How did I end up here? what it was going to happen? Yeah.
Dan 40:21
I didn't I don't know what I'm doing. I like all right, I guess I know how to take care of a dog. Like I didn't I think I didn't have a pitch I had. I used to think I could make eye contact with a person. And I knew how to take care of animals. Okay, I was
Unknown Speaker 40:37
figure it out. Yeah.
Collin 40:41
So, besides your first client, do you have a most memorable or maybe most influential client over the years that's really impacted you?
Dan 40:50
That is honestly there's so many Sure. We have some clients that we've got very involved in their lives. I had a client probably Three or four years ago who unfortunately, passed away. Very sweet woman. She was older. She's 95. tough as nails, though, you know, she still did yoga every day she was on her exercise bike. And she unfortunately was diagnosed with a brain tumor out of nowhere. And she ended up having to go to the hospital. I think I stayed at the house for like three weeks to that I just didn't feel comfortable charging her. But it was just important to me that we were there for her. Again, like, this isn't just about business. For me. I think it's about being a good person and being a positive member in a community. And she she only had she had like a nephew who lived over in England and she had neighbors who are wonderful. It's a great error. But yeah, she stands out my mind gives us a very sweet, sweet, caring person and then there's Just honestly so many amazing
Collin 42:03
a correct answer could also be all of them. I will accept that one that's fine.
Dan 42:06
Like I can go through, like so many stories about clients. Yeah. But yeah there I've gotten to meet actually one of the most impactful one there was somebody who I met at the gym and he had a an older dog. He was a little menten. And he had just had his son was born. He was maybe eight months old and was constantly on the ground and the dog was having accidents house and they had a very nice garage, finished garage with, you know, nice floor and everything. No, he was he they would keep him in the garage just because he was having accidents, but it was calling. That client ended up becoming one of my closest friends and one of my most trusted business partners in the tech company. Yeah, we're actually going out for his his birthday next next week. Or I'm incredibly close the family of watches kids grow up. him and his wife have been you know, wonderful friends for the past we've known each other six years now. Seven years
yeah that that one had a big impact
it's funny cuz his his name, I never changed his name and my phone is Bill, Brian with old dog and garage.
We always get I always get a good chuckle out of that one. That's awesome. CRM
Collin 43:40
that really speaks to that it is these relationships, it's the relationships with the clients, but those grow over time and you they never leave you the same person afterwards. And you're
Unknown Speaker 43:51
definitely not and it's so it's not just about
Collin 43:56
the business at that point. It's investing in the relationship. These relationships investing in the people investing in the pets, because there's a long term payout for that, that that that comes out at the end.
Dan 44:07
Yeah, actually now that I think about it, it was because of him. I ended up in Korea a couple years ago. Well, we launched our business in South Korea, okay. And it was this all started him and he was my, my co founder with the, with the business. And it ended we ended up launching in South Korea and I'm thinking like, if, if I never started this business, I never want to launch the business in Korea.
Collin 44:33
Yes, that that is pretty impactful for sure. So what do you wish you would have known when you started this? Oh my god. Besides everything besides.
Dan 44:49
One, shut up and stop being so arrogant. I came in too I think all business stuff and a little bit of false bravado and Ego which I think ego is healthy to degree. I mean, I did named my company down dog walking company. But it's okay to not know what you're doing. Yeah. Because I remember feeling really bad about myself because I didn't, you know, I was watching all my friends who are into, you know, career trajectories and at first being like, what am I doing? Like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I have no idea and that and always have good insurance, no matter what. You got good insurance. A good accountant and a good lawyer are always good to be able to have you know, accountants and lawyers of the things you don't realize how much you want a good one until you need one.
Unknown Speaker 45:45
And
Dan 45:47
being more open minded to learning things I for years was just gobbling up information but in terms of listening to people I was told to offer arrogant, funny, our head of HR. She was a client of mine when I just started. And at our summer barbecue, she met my girlfriend for the first time and students, you know, be saying this real place of caring. But she was like Dan was such an arrogant expletive when I first I didn't even want to work with the phone and
she planned tasks. I don't know what I would do without her now, sir. Well,
Unknown Speaker 46:28
good. You growing that's good. But yeah, you're learning right? Yeah. Yeah.
Collin 46:33
So you, you mentioned that there about the importance of insurance. Why Why should a pet care professional be insured and bonded?
Dan 46:45
Well, protect yourself. Obviously, make sure you are incorporated LLC or whatever legal structure that you decide on. But at the end of the day, this is your livelihood. You are not working for another company and if something happens, and You get your company gets sued. You need to be able to make sure that you can cover those expenses whether animal gets hurt or the workman's comp issue. You always again, like lawyers and accountants, you don't realize how badly you need it. Yeah, it's, it's it. Yeah, it's kind of a non negotiable. That sure. If you're listening to this right now and you do not have insurance, go get insurance.
Unknown Speaker 47:27
Yes.
Collin 47:28
It's one of those things that is easy to overlook, because you may look at the expense and go, gosh, that's so expensive on a month to month basis.
Dan 47:36
How can I possibly back them when you need it?
Collin 47:39
Yeah, yeah, it's the when you Yeah. When you don't have it and all of a sudden, you're you have this massive bill facing you that you wish those few months of payment, you know, it can really pay off in the long run. Sure.
Dan 47:50
Yeah. It's definitely make sure you invest in good insurance good accounting software, and know the finances of your company. Make sure you're saving for taxes. I think my first couple years in business was like, oh, oh, forget about make sure you're setting money aside for taxes, make sure you're planning. Again, if you're a business owner, solo, Walker, anything planning for your future, if you put away 50 bucks a month for your retirement, and you're doing this at a young age, great, but you always want to make sure you're saving and putting some money aside. You want money for an emergency fund and also stay on top of your credit. Building your credit while you're building a business is amazing. If you have a lot of expenses depending on like we do a lot of marketing and a lot of other things. So I've used my credit card a lot over the years, and you get some nice little rewards with it. I mean, I'm going on a lovely vacation in Costa Rica that I'm paying for exclusively Bitcoin
which was very exciting for not
Go on a nice trip.
Yeah, I mean, talk to as many people as you can consume as much information from people who are smarter than you read books, listen to audio, a, you know, books on tape, audible podcast, like my first three years I was walking dog like 12 hours a day, I was probably churning through five books a week. My audible has a couple of hundred books in it. Well, like any book that was written by about any sort of successful entrepreneur, business person, anything that pertained to what I was doing. I was consuming day and night. It was all I did was focused on my business.
Collin 49:46
Yeah, it's investing in your businesses not just putting money back into it. It's learning. It's connecting with people making connections.
Dan 49:54
Yeah, I definitely. And I've learned recently, I still don't really agree with this with the whole work life balance thing. But it is important to make sure you take care of yourself. This part I do believe in the balance, not so much. But honestly, meditation. Therapy if you feel you need it, you can afford it. Exercise is walking is not exclusively your only form of exercise. I make sure to hit the gym every morning as often as I can because I let it go for a couple years. I was like, I had to go walk some dogs recently. I was like, Oh, these hills are not as hard to get steeper. Yeah, yeah, you know, make sure you're taking care of yourself. Because if you are the owner of your business, your employees need you alive and healthy. So what do you wish people knew about the life of a pet sitter? from a client standpoint, understanding that we have a finite amount of people available with a finite amount of hours in the day? Yeah.
That's definitely one
dog walker.
One thing I know my employees always appreciated, but currently people don't treat us like we're not exist. I mean, I'm lucky enough where our clientele are incredibly respectful and wonderful towards my staff like the holiday season. So I've been blown away by some of the tips my staff has been getting. I think it's, it's nice to build relationships with the people who are coming into your home and taking care of your animal or job they're pretty awesome we get paid to hang out with Adam. If you're envious you should be kind of a great job and you know there are days when I want to rip my hair out because this is insanity the thing that we've created here but I it's allowed me to have a pretty cool life so far and it's allowed me a tremendous amount of freedom that I probably wouldn't have had if I had done other career path is definitely a cool place to be involved in. Yes.
Collin 52:00
So what is keeping you busy these days? It sounds like you're doing quite a lot
Dan 52:05
if we have a huge plan for the next couple of years so right now we're in the process of building out a massive platform to automate a lot of things that we're doing. But I am looking to scale this business up in a large way. I think that there is a tremendous opportunity in the market. I don't know if you saw the news about SoftBank pulling out on this dock back the wag but now he's indicator that their model while great at scale, from a business standpoint, with horrendous standpoint of care, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of wonderful people on these platforms on both rover wag and dog vacation, you know, owned by wag, I mean Grover now, but there's also a lot of people in there who you know, it might not be Be ill intent, but they're there to make money. And that's that's not where they should be if you get a job where you're working in whatever but you shouldn't be taking care of living things and it's it's upsetting to see that they put profits that were living thing exactly what happened with wag and I think there's an opportunity in this market for a company to step up and really scale nationwide and provide services at a level of service that have a local business but with the accountability and reliability of a company that's got a whole bunch of people were there to want to take care of your dog doing that.
Got a whole bunch of video production going on right now.
We have been doing a we started a small video series called dog walkers try and then insert whenever it is our first video was dog walkers tried dog trees. This was quite entertaining. We are shooting after we wrap up this dog walkers dry dog beer, which I didn't even know existed.
Collin 54:10
No, I had no idea.
Dan 54:15
Working on working on really streamlining the operations of my business, making sure that I've got the right infrastructure, because the most important thing when you're scaling a business is making sure that you are not compromising quality. And that's one thing that is been incredibly important to me from day one is to recognize that we're taking care of living things we don't ever want to compromise quality of service, Jesper quantity, that's something that is at the core value of my company is quality of services over everything else.
Collin 54:47
But what a great summary of everything we've been talking about here, its quality, its relationships. Dan, I know a lot of people are going to have a lot of questions and want probably want to talk more about trends. operating a business and being an entrepreneur, how can people get in touch with you and follow along with the work you guys are doing?
Dan 55:07
So if you want to follow me personally to follow my Instagram, which is Daniel Reitman, I have my own personal website which is Daniel right men.com da n, ie l r e i Ei t ma n, if you want to follow my company, which is honestly significantly more adorable and entertaining and the contest, mine is just pictures of sunset dance Petcare, you can go to our website dance, I care. com follow us on Instagram, tick tock. We've got our YouTube channel, Twitter, Facebook, but if you have any questions for me directly, you can message me on my personal Instagram, or just look us up dance at Kara damn dog walking and pet sitting and that'd be happy to field any questions from anybody. Awesome. Well, Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. It's really great to hear your insight into all of this. A lot of exciting things coming down the line. So again, thank you so much. Thank you, Collin so much for having me on. And I really appreciate the time. And, again, if anyone has any questions, I'm here to help.
Collin 56:09
I hope you were as inspired by Dan, as I was, especially when it comes to understanding that nobody has it all figured out. And we're all trying to learn about this process as we go. In the day in and day out drudgery of the monotony of the tasks and the hectic chaos that we all deal with, that can get lost in the shuffle, that no one else out there has the exact answer that we're all looking for. But the bright spot, the highlight of that, is that there are resources that you can reach out to people to talk to people to bounce off ideas of, and resources to learn and dive deep to figure out what's going to work best for you and your business. Dan had a lot to say about setting positive culture in your company and setting yourself apart as a business from people in your area. I hope you reach out to him with further questions and ideas. We'd like to thank time to pet for sponsoring us for this week. If you have comments, questions, concerns or would like your story told, please send an email to feedback at pet sort of confessional.com run Facebook and Instagram at pet sitter confessional and Twitter, PS confessional. If you haven't joined our Facebook group, I really encourage you to do that. It's a great group of active engaged members. Were asking questions and trying to figure this all out as we go with friends next week as professional pet sitters week and I'll talk to you guys then
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