036 - Kitchen Confessions

On this episode, we talk a lot about preparing for what happens next after Covid-19, seeking out local tax and CPA experts to guide you through the confusing world of pandemic relief funds, and how to keep your social media relevant and engaging while you’re sheltering in place. Plus, we give some of our recommendations on what we’re listening to and doing these days.

Topics for this episode:

• Preparing for the future

• Getting local advice

• Don’t stop working on your business

• Now’s a good time to adjust your yearly goals

• Let’s limit our news consumption

• “Lost” business vs business is on hold

• You didn’t do this to yourself, it’s not your fault

• Keeping social media relevant

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

Provided by otter.ai

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, work, clients, pet sitter, support, continue, people, goals, Meghan, mentally, pets, lost, week, happened, routine, lockdowns, feel, Covid, released, united states

SPEAKERS

Meghan, Collin

Meghan  00:17

I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, and thank you for joining us on today's episode, it is Monday and we hope that you are doing well, wherever in the world that you are. We hope that you are safe, and most importantly healthy.

Collin  00:38

Just as a reminder on these shorter episodes, we're trying to capture some of the conversations that Megan and I have typically in our kitchen, Megan brought forward some topics today that she wanted to for us to discuss. And so

Meghan  00:50

I think with our downtime right now, whether you have a little bit or a lot of downtime, it's a good idea to be thinking about what you were going to do when this is all over because right now it might seem kind of do me and gloomy, but this will end and we will be right back to pet sitting and dog walking like we were before.

Collin  01:08

Right? Many of us are just now kind of coming out of the shell shock of how quickly all that happened. And even though there are some continuing lockdowns and further enforcement's of those globally, it looks like most governments at least have a handle or some idea of what's going on. Many are passing stimulus packages and relief packages to go to small business owners, which, thankfully we all get to participate in that even if you're an independent contractor, this is one of the first times that there have been relief bills, at least in the United States that target gig economy and independent contractors to allow support for them. As we have all kind of seen the dust starting to settle into though we are still in survival mode. Many of us as people are continuing to cancel or contend to cancel further out. Megan's right, we do You need to have an eye for when this does and and start preparing in whatever way that looks like for you as a business or personally, to begin to ramp back up, take on new customers, hire new people and have those systems in place so that when this when travel bans and lockdowns do start to get lifted, we are able to take advantage of those and be one of the first groups in line to be open for business.

Meghan  02:24

But I think you brought up a good point with what the governments are trying to do. As far as helping people. It's a good reminder that you need to be there. There's a lot of information out there and a lot of people are trying to help a lot of even a lot of pet care professionals are trying to help one another in this time, but it's a good reminder to look at your local government for for help. And because these, these, these bills that the governments are trying to pass they made not apply to your state, they may not apply to your city, they may not apply to the the business structure that you have in place, whether they apply for people who have employees, but you have independent contractors or whatever the case may be. But it's a good idea to look at what your local government has set up.

Collin  03:21

Now more than ever, it would be a really important time to be developing and reaching out to those CPAs those tax accountants that work where you work, because they are going to be able to read through the legal ease and the verbiage that's in these documents coming down and see how if and when they can apply to you. It's okay to ask for information and help on the internet and from strangers and Facebook groups. But know that no one is a tax professional or CPA unless they are a tax professional or CPA. And they those are the ones that we need to be reaching out to right now, so that we can be in a good position and not think something is going to help us when in actuality it's not.

Meghan  04:09

Right. So going back to having a plan in place now for how to scale back up when this does end, because, again, it will. But in the meantime, don't stop. So even though your business may have slowed down or temporarily stopped, ours has slowed down. We're still doing some daycares here and there but even though your business has slowed down, do not stop working on your business. Because this downturn in this season, like I just said, it will not last forever. It's very important to keep pushing forward and not lose sight of your yearly goals. So we had a goals episode at the beginning of this year. And unfortunately for most of us, our goals for 2020

04:51

are going to be hitting those

Meghan  04:54

are not going to be achievable anymore, but being flexible and adaptable to them. And what you think you can achieve is a sign that you're not going to let this virus take you or your business down. Right?

Collin  05:08

That's a good point in that many of us who are are goal driven or write our goals, we keep them posted somewhere, we have reminders about them. We feel really bad when we don't hit them. We sometimes can feel like that's a huge failure,

Meghan  05:24

especially for the Type A people like me,

05:26

like Megan.

Collin  05:29

But for those people and all of us in general, just as small business owners, when we don't hit goals, we feel that that hurts deeply and can seem like it's a bad thing. No, that you didn't do this to yourself, the position that we are all in is from a global pandemic. And so we need to be giving ourselves grace need to be giving ourselves some love and some space to deal with that we'll deal with those feelings of hurt and anxiety and frustration that we're not Going to be able to reach the goal that we thought we were going to whether that was monetarily or whether that was client lies or whatever that was new services. Now is not the time to be beating ourselves up for not reaching those, it is really a time to acknowledge what's happened. acknowledge that it really stinks. But there's still progress to be made still things to be worked on marketing, all sorts of things that you can be doing revamping, we've we've covered that and that those conversations continue to happen. As Megan mentioned, just because it's basically an ice age out there as far as business goes, doesn't mean that there's not work to be done or things to focus on to keep you moving forward and keep you working towards those goals that you want to be meeting.

Meghan  06:45

Right. So in that same vein, I also wanted to bring up that reading the news online and watching it on TV can be very disheartening right now, especially in the United States, where we're just seeing this exponential curve like we are we are we keep going up?

Collin  07:02

Yeah, as we're recording this, and this will remain true is the United States just became the most was just released that they had the highest prevalence of Cova 19 cases, which is not a good number to be focusing on, especially if you have anxieties or concerns about that. Oh, the news is really not the place to go to for comfort.

Meghan  07:25

Right. So setting I was gonna mention so setting a limit on your social media each day will really help you to not burn out of the Cova 19 madness. I think I talked about last week I was kind of over this and I'm still kind of there. It's just I mean, it's all basically all consuming but it doesn't have to be you don't have to let it consume you.

Collin  07:44

Right. And our last interview with Kelly Hayes rate on Friday, she touched on that of there's a lot of things we can be doing right now. We can become news junkies, news zombies, we're all we do is just take in all this negative all these bad news constantly, constantly. We can actually do something positive, whether that's personally or for our business, there are things to be done,

Meghan  08:06

right. So put the phone down, I would recommend like an hour before bed, there's also that study on blue light, that you're not supposed to get blue light right before bed, messes up your circadian rhythm. And to set a time limit on that. And when you start to feel your blood pressure rising, and because you're, you're anxious about what's going to potentially happen with cobit, and everything going on in the world and your business and everything, just turn it off. That's all you have to do. Don't look at it anymore. Come back to it another day or another time. You don't need that stress in your life. And so coming back around to goals, so looking at your goal sheet and figuring out what needs to be changed while continuing to have attainable goals.

Collin  08:45

Yeah, really good time to reassess where you are. Like I said, we have allowed the dust to settle around us and we are all feeling immense pain and frustration through that. It's okay to reassess your goals at this point. As Megan mentioned, look at them, open them up and say, Okay, I said I wanted to get five new clients every month. Is that still attainable reasonably right now? If not, that's okay. Readjust and start planning for something a little bit different. We said it a few times. And we'll continue to say it, things will look differently on the back end of this both business wise business structure and personally. And beginning now, as I think this, this whole topic is wrapped around is, now is the time to be thinking for the future and how we want that to look personally and business wise.

Meghan  09:39

Right. One other point that I wanted to bring up and kind of going to get on my soapbox here for a second, but we have all lost revenue during this time, whether it's dollar whether it's $100,000. We have all lost money. That's a fact. So I would push back on using the word lost when referring to clients. So put a positive spin on it. They will We'll come back. This isn't forever changing your mindset from I lost X number of clients to my business because it's been put on hold for now changing your mindset from I lost X number of clients to my business has been put on hold for now, temporarily there was somebody in a group had talked about I think it was pet sitter SEO that had said, Google My Business, you should not be marking yourself as temporarily closed because you won't show up in search results then so you on Google My Business you want to remain open because you are and you are not closed down. So have a positive mindset about this. So yes, it's semantics to say I lost X number of clients versus I, you know, put my business on hold. But your mental health is so important right now, because this is

10:53

just,

Meghan  10:54

I mean, I don't know the statistic but this is probably the biggest hit to the pet care industry. that has ever happened.

Collin  11:01

What's the biggest hit to any industry that's ever happened in modern history? There have been hits before. But as the recent I mean, just economically United States, which again, is where we look at for a lot of data, but globally, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed. The unemployment rates released last week were well over 3 million jobless claims, many of which were previously pet sitters, but it's hitting everybody really hard. And what Meghan touched on there is this mindset of when you say I lost 20 clients this week, No, you didn't lose anybody. 20 people were unable to use your services because of government regulations. lockdowns, shelter in place orders,

Meghan  11:51

right it is nothing you did.

Collin  11:53

This was not your fault. And that is a really dangerous mindset to be in right now. Because a, we're a small business owner. So we like providing care and we provide care. And that's what we do be. We had the rug pulled out from underneath us and we were cut off at the knees within about 72 hours. It seems like it just, we were not able to see this coming at all. In three, it wasn't your fault. And we really need to let that sink in. This wasn't our fault now there

Meghan  12:27

and there's nothing you could have done to prevent it. Right. So you should not feel guilty about this

Collin  12:32

when the government agencies says nobody is going anywhere. You can't do anything about that. And it's okay to say that to yourself of this is something I don't have control over. But there are still things that I can do.

Meghan  12:50

Right. I think in some way all of us are working through the 12 steps of grief at this point. You know, we started off with anger and It's just worked its way through. But it's it's hit us all. But we need to be positive through this because like I keep saying and like everybody keeps saying this will and this is not, this is not the new normal at all

Collin  13:12

right? being okay with those feelings. And facing them head on right now is where all of us need to be working towards. And it's really hard and it's really ugly. And it's not a lot of fun. I mean, it sucks to try and sit by yourself or with a friend and talk through these emotions. But it's healthy, and it does need to happen so that we are all stronger on the back end of this. We also had a question come up about social media during these times,

Meghan  13:46

right? So somebody had asked if we have any ideas on how to keep our social media or their social media relevant for 14 plus days, they were on a two week lockdown, and they wanted to know because they're not able to take pictures of pets every day and Put them on social media, their Facebook and Instagram,

Collin  14:02

now would be a really good time to help spread information, positive and correct information about Cova 19 to your clients, reassuring them that you will still be in business on the back end of this and engaging with them when they are posting pictures of their dogs or their pets. Or maybe if they have questions, being one of the first ones or being continuing to be a resource of educational opportunities and linking articles as a way to stay engaged with your current clients. But also let others know that you can provide things even whenever you're not caring for pets.

Meghan  14:42

also participating in weekly topic days I think is good. So if you haven't been doing this, maybe start so I think there's one for just about every day of the week. There's mud crush Monday, tongue out Tuesday, whisker Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, flashback Friday, Saturday, Saturday, and I I don't know if there's one for Sunday, but I'm sure you can make one. Also thanking clients and maybe tagging some of your repeat clients, maybe some of your favorite clients that really give you a lot of repeat business kind of acknowledging them, obviously acknowledging all of your clients, but acknowledging kind of the ones that bring in the most business for you.

Collin  15:21

So how do you stay relevant by investing in your clients right now? They still need support, they still need help. And you can be there you can share those memories of your favorites of them and engage with them. Right right now,

Meghan  15:38

also a heartfelt post about how you specifically are handling this and then asking your followers and clients how they are doing so make it make it a very personal post. Your clients probably want to know how you are handling this time and and how you are doing mentally and physically and

Collin  15:56

we just had a client today reach out to us and asked if We were okay. And then she was really sweet. She did a drive by of our house with her dogs hanging out the window. So they got very excited, really excited to see us. So that was just, that was really sweet because it showed a that she was concerned about how we were doing. And we were able to chat with her from the socially distance appropriate space, and still connect and engage with one another and see how everybody was doing.

Meghan  16:26

Right. And then of course, memes are always great. So the Cova 19 memes are basically through the roof right now. I just posted one today and so they, they people like them. Also a lot of people have been posting ways to support small businesses during this time, and ways that clients can continue to support their businesses, whether it's gift cards, liking or sharing your content

Collin  16:49

doesn't have to be monetary to support a small business, right, as is probably very evident to a lot of people. But, you know, people may ask how can I continue to support you right now and whether that's a gift Or that's just sharing your content or giving recommendations to people for whenever this all does lead up, so that your name is in front of more people whenever the opportunity arises.

Meghan  17:09

Right. And lastly, I think one of the best ways is thanking healthcare workers because they are the real heroes and all of this right now they are taking care of the sick Cova 19 patients, and hopefully, you are able to take care of some of their pets. So you're really helping them out right now as well.

Collin  17:26

One of the things I wanted to bring up today was how everybody is handling being isolated in their home. And the question I have is, do you have a routine in place? And just the immense importance of this, I was just talking with somebody recently, who two weeks into their quarantine and isolation has just now started to develop a routine and they were surprised at the difference that it made in their day. When they previously were waking up before the routine. They felt like there were too many opportunities or too many options. For them, and so they just went through the day of Well, I don't know what to read, I don't know what to watch. I don't know what I'm going to do next and they didn't get anything done.

Meghan  18:08

That's a good idea to have a plan that plan out your day. And

Collin  18:14

absolutely, yeah, plan and then stick to a routine. We all used to have routines of what we used to do in the mornings, and then what we knew where we were driving to next and what we needed to have to stay organized and who we were supposed to be contacting. And now we don't have that anymore, really, at

Meghan  18:29

least to the same extent,

Collin  18:31

at least to some extent. How do we translate that into whenever we either don't have any business or we're required to stay home, still get dressed in the morning, like feeling like you're going to do something to brush your teeth still brush your teeth, right? If you haven't been working out, maybe add in a 30 minute workout somewhere in the day and know what you're going to be doing throughout the day and plan it out. That doesn't sound very exciting whenever you can't go anywhere, but trust me, it really does help you have just a Little bit control over your time. There are so few things during this crisis that we have actual control over. It is very mentally relaxing, to know that you can control something in that it's your time, and you can tell it what it's going to do and what you're going to be doing with it.

Meghan  19:22

Right well and even if you're a Type B person who kind of just likes to fly by the seat of their pants, still do this because it's mentally official, them yeah, mentally beneficial for you. But then maybe do that six days a week and then when the other day, the seventh day, you just watch Netflix all day, or whatever, like you don't have any goals for that day. So you don't have to be type a person. You know, check things off your list every

Collin  19:48

15 minute kind of organization. It's okay to have days where you do nothing but we're all you do is watch Netflix and binge on Oreos. That sounds like a Great Day, but don't make that every day for your mental health, for your physical health and for your overall well being, and for your business and for your business health, having some sort of structure and routine that it's predictable for you and for others around you, is I can't say it enough. I really can't say how important that is for you as a person right now.

Meghan  20:24

So do you have any recommendations for people while they're stuck inside their home? During this time?

Collin  20:31

Well, I have recommendations as far as things were listening to or things we're doing or things we're interested in right now. And I do have one. Those of you who grew up in the 90s probably remember Reading Rainbow. Yes, yes. And you may be wondering, whatever happened, whatever happened to LeVar Burton, well, he's still around. He's still alive, obviously, but he has his own podcast where He reads stories LeVar Burton reads, they're more adults. I don't think they're all kids. They're definitely not. But they're short stories. And some of them continue into one or two episodes, but they're generally 30, around 30 minutes. And I will tell you as far as a nostalgia trip, they are wonderful if you thought or if you didn't think you missed his voice. Let me tell you the first couple episodes. You You will you remember him? And I don't have a specific episode for you to listen to because they're all great. And they're just something if you're not big into reading being read to is very relaxing. So maybe Did you have anything you wanted to recommend?

Meghan  21:41

Yeah, um, you talked about it earlier, but to continue if well, to start or continue to work out during this time. So as pet sitters and dog walkers, we are used to getting out our energy not only with the dogs that we take care of either daycare or boarding or whatever you do, but we're used to get Not our energy for ourselves as well remaining active during this time so that when all this is over, and it will be so that you aren't huffing and puffing, while you walk dogs down the road

Collin  22:10

and mentally to physical exercise has shown to support and enhance mental health as well. Right. So when you're feeling stressed, you're feeling anxious, you're feeling uneasy about everything going around, do a 20 minute workout, have some push ups crunches and some dips using a chair. There's a lot of different things out there. If you have a local gym that is now closed down, you may look into see if they're doing some online classes now. Ours does, yeah, the one near us. And they're free to everybody to see if there's some way that you can support them during this time as well because a lot of them are providing free content for local people.

Meghan  22:48

And of course, YouTube, there's hours and hours and hours

Collin  22:51

of their workout videos. But again, try and find somebody local that's that's providing those as well.

Meghan  22:56

Right. That's a good point. So we really appreciate you taking the time today to listen to us.

Collin  23:03

Yeah. And coming up on Wednesday we have an amazing interview with Colleen polearm. She has a podcast called unleashed at work in home and she permission is to support pet sitters to be emotionally and mentally healthy and resilient. I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed my conversation with Colleen. And she has a couple Facebook groups and other support out there. We're releasing that episode. And the main focus of that is burnout and resiliency as a pet sitter and we couldn't be more happy to be releasing it during this time.

Meghan  23:38

So if you would like to let us know how you are doing because we want to know how you are doing. We have set up a phone number that you can call and leave us a voicemail.

Collin  23:48

It's 636-364-8260 and like Megan said, you can call and leave a voicemail. We want to hear how you're doing. Want to hear you Your story and, and lessons that you are learning during this time.

Meghan  24:04

You can follow us on Instagram at pet sitter confessional on Facebook at pet sitter confessional. And we hope that you join us next time. Thank you.

Collin  24:13

Thank you