045- Hoopla Adventures
Summary:
How is house sitting being impacted? What does the future look like for that industry? On this episode we are grateful to have the wonderful Jennifer Flett and Henry Lecky, from Hoopla Adventures on. Because they are working and traveling abroad as full-time pet sitters, teachers and writers, we wanted them to come on and share their experience with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Topics in this episode:
Where are you currently?
Where were you when Covid-19 first started popping up?
Tell us about what it was like getting out?
How has your travel schedule been impacted?
What's it been like going through this together?
How do you see this changing how your operate moving forward?
How will this change the house sitting world?
How have you been spending your time?
Main takeaway? It’s a confusing time, but there is a community out there and people looking after one another.
About our guests:
Jennifer Flett (self-confessed travel-holic): I’m a qualified journalist and a true Leither from Edinburgh who has had a colourful and somewhat varied career from PR, support work, copywriting, bartender, street market seller. I’ve managed restaurants in Edinburgh and in the French Alps. A foodie who loves the outdoors and exploring, especially if it involves food and/or wine..! All of my money goes on travelling and experiences, coffee, music/gigs and jazzy shirts.
Henry Lecky (self-confessed ‘beardy weirdy’): A full-blown nerd from England, namely just outside Brighton but have lived all over the South and Scotland! I studied astrophysics and became an accountant for several years. Have also worked in hospitality and in a garage fixing up cars. I’m a firm believer in try everything once which is why I’m a convert to seasonal work. My one aim at the moment is to travel, see the world & have no regrets.
Essentially we’re a couple of mad yins on a big adventure! We understand that not everybody has the funds or means to travel freely. The nomadic lifestyle can seem hard to achieve, so as we muddle through trying out different jobs we’ll hopefully show you the way to do it without being rich in a sustainable way.
Their blog about the effects on the house sitting world.
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Check out our Covid-19 resources
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, travel, week, norway, italy, bit, months, uk, thinking, starting, planned, lockdown, animals, work, sitters, henry, set, website, friends, couple
SPEAKERS
Collin, Jennifer Flett, Henry Lecky
00:17
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is
00:20
pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Collin 00:30
Well, hello, and welcome back on this episode, we are so grateful to have the wonderful Jennifer flat and Henry lucky from hoopla adventures on because they're working and traveling abroad as full time pet sitters, teachers and writers we wanted them on to share their experience about the recent COVID-19 pandemic. So thank you both for coming on. And we hope that you are both doing very well.
Henry Lecky 00:53
Yes, yeah. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Jennifer Flett 00:56
Yeah, I think we're in okay. Yeah, we
Henry Lecky 01:00
I look better than a lot of people are I think, maybe?
01:04
Yeah. And we are. Yeah, we're good. And what's the word? Hold on.
01:12
Hold on to hope. Okay.
Collin 01:14
For those who might not be familiar with you guys, or fall along with on your Instagram and your blog, which I encourage everybody to do, because it's so much fun seeing all the cool pictures and everything that you guys are up to, um, tell us a little bit about your background and your history and how you got into being full time. House sitters.
Jennifer Flett 01:31
And so we didn't know about house sitting at all, I think until maybe a couple of years ago. And we met a couple in real life but also, we sort of met online first, through Instagram, the magic of Instagram, and they did it full time. They had a website that had lots of good advice, and we met them in real life. We just happened to cross at
02:01
They're broken buddy.
02:05
And yeah, they were amazing for us. So that was they were like our first proper insight into how to host it full time. And, and we'd read about it online and things and sort of played around with the idea but we hadn't really committed to it at the time we were living in a different country full time as teachers. And but we felt a little bit stuck like we wanted to travel and we wanted
02:35
a
Henry Lecky 02:37
also meet people and gain new skills and live in different countries and, like, our future plans are to have a sort of small Holden with lots of animals hopefully, and, and things like that. Yeah, we've done a slow transition into into the house setting because Jen says we were living in another country. We're actually in Slovakia where we were teaching. And this was after spending some time in Italy Oh pairing and working in ski season and problems and things like that. So we sort of been on the road for quite a while. And been in Slovakia for about a year. And then we met these guys broken body and they put us onto it. And that is a great way to be a bit freer with your travels. Just be able to bounce country to country. And my contract with the school was coming up so we just went let's have a look at it. Let's give it a pumped.
03:39
Yeah. We kept Henry kept saying oh, we should get a van and we should get a dog and I was like, I'm not sure if you take animals traveling with us but maybe we can look after them as we travel and buy as I say like our future funds or something. have like some kind of like sustainable smallholding. And yeah, we just love animals. So it seemed like the perfect combination of travel animals and meeting new people.
Collin 04:12
I love hearing that and how you guys just kind of, you know, sounds like he just dove into it and it really been enjoying it ever since. So where are you currently? Well, we got the
Henry Lecky 04:22
great fun of I'm quite lucky. My brother's got his own base, just outside Didcot in the middle of the UK. It's not, it's a little bit north of London, but that's sort of region. So we're just kind of staying with him at the moment. we sort of had to go quick rush back to the UK. And my dad put us up for a week and then then we came over to my brothers and then sort of then locked down came in and we've been stuck here pretty much since
05:00
in a bad way.
Collin 05:03
No. So you said you had to make a quick dash back to the UK Where were you? Whenever lockdowns and kind of stay at home orders started to come into play?
05:13
Well, it kind of happened a bit slowly. So we went over to Germany and I think we're in Germany for about five weeks or so. And so we had planned to be away for the entire year. And so we left that number, which is my home city, and, and had planned to be away pretty much all here. And then in Germany, obviously the and they were starting to get worried because the rates in Germany were really increasing quite quickly. And then everything happened, Italy's we're watching as Italy flared up, as we're traveling further north. We've got to Denmark for a couple of days, and then made our way into Norway, where We had our CIT and so we were in Norway. And the guidelines when we got there was if you had just arrived, you had to self quarantine for two weeks. And luckily, our hosts it was two weeks. So we were and so we thought we could just wait it out in Norway, and then maybe three days later, and they announced they were going to shut all of their airports. And we had a flight booked to Belgium for the next set. And and basically, we weren't going to make it was going to be canceled. So we had to make a sort of snap decision there. Because if we decided to stay at Norway, potentially we could have been stuck there for a month for longer and and the set was only two weeks. So
Henry Lecky 06:59
yeah. Yeah, to be fair, Norway is not exactly the cheapest places to suddenly find yourself stuck trying to them find accommodation.
07:09
And we did have maybe a contact contact or two in Oslo, and which could have helped. But again, you don't want to resort to that if you can't leave. So we formed family and they were like, you know, just come back over here. It's fine. And, and fortunately, the planes and so basically they said the flights were going to stop, and the airports were going to shut entirely and like, the next day, basically. So there was a huge panic for flights and we were booking the flights and watching the prices just climb and climb and climb and like it was getting to, like four or 500 pounds.
07:55
Yeah, to get there.
07:56
So it's not that far, you know, it's only two Word light or turn off our lights. And fortunately, they made another announcement to say, Oh, you know, so in the first the first mean that we didn't quite mean won't actually close till the end. Or, you know, it's gonna stay open for people trying to get back and trying to leave. So fortunately, we found a cheaper a much, much cheaper like
Henry Lecky 08:31
400 pound the person down to about 50 pounds per person. Yeah, it is
Collin 08:35
much cheaper. Nice.
Jennifer Flett 08:37
It was like the next day as well. Oh my gosh. So
08:43
we were and maybe one of the only things I've been thankful to Ryan. And so and we got that to London and then refund and Sam dad, we went to his bed and and because they don't live Too far from London. So we decided to come back here.
Collin 09:05
So as you guys were in Norway and then in now in London, I'm curious about what maybe the general attitudes of the public is like, over there. I think a lot of our listeners know what it's like in the in the US, but what has been the general response and attitude of people around you?
09:23
I think it was much different to Norway. When we first arrived in Norway. It was already pretty much on lockdown. And, and when we got back to London, there was still horrible people are in the street and we're still you know, it was like, it was really strange. All the shops are open and everyone was just walking around, like, completely normal. The only difference was all the toilet always gone from the supermarket. So and but I think we stayed in your deck for a week. Yeah. And so we didn't go anywhere for the week and then we went to a supermarket and The shelves were empty. And then I think it was only a few days after that they announced the block down. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 10:08
Yeah, the bits went a bit. Crazy briefly. But certainly, since because we left Edinburgh, what was it started February, just as it was starting to become the big news story. We, we've really seen everyone's attitudes changed quite substantially because when we left Edinburgh, it was still very much Oh, this is not going to be an issue. This is sort of it's a small issue, but it's not something we should worry about. Now to the we're seeing basically everywhere go, oh my god, panic, panic, panic, this is a big issue. So being able to see this change country to country like it's kind of followed us like we're in Germany, and it was getting worse. Then we went to Denmark we saw it getting more of an issue there. We went to Norway and we saw it getting more of an issue then we came back to the UK ones exactly the same thing. Yeah. sort of been the same thing again and again before us. Yeah.
11:17
Exactly. It was like yeah, it was following us around. The thing was we're actually supposed to be in Italy right now.
Henry Lecky 11:26
We spent like the last three months ever since it really kicked off in entity guy watching it get worse go kind of a little bit selfishly, but I sort of hoping that it because sort of starts to become less of an issue there. But, unfortunately, so we're just looking at it and just seeing how bad it's got. It's just, yeah, sort of, with I
11:50
think the word is unprecedented that you're on the news all the time zones, but the general attitudes of people and there's been like a real sort of togetherness in the UK like every first day we go and clap for like the MP workers, people working and sort of in frontline services.
12:12
And there's been a lot of
12:15
activity online to keep people mentally.
Henry Lecky 12:19
Well, yeah, I think I think one of the silver linings is it seems to have brought out the sort of togetherness community spirit.
12:27
Yeah. Yeah. And people are very serious about it as well. So everyone does is most people seem to be taking advantage.
Henry Lecky 12:35
Yeah, it's quite interesting going to the supermarket and seeing people queuing around the car. Everyone keeping at least two meters apart, and you've got this huge, huge the whole length of the car. Favorite thing to
12:51
love a queue.
12:52
Yeah. love a good cue, right.
12:54
Thank you for everything. Yeah.
Collin 12:58
You touched on it a little bit. have kind of that you weren't able to be in Italy right now, how far out has your travel schedule been impacted? And what does that look like you guys, as you look towards the future as far as your travel
13:10
is pretty much everything
13:14
is pretty much demolished.
Henry Lecky 13:18
Great plan that she loves planning ever. She said earlier, she she literally burned this entire year out back in about October time and everything planned and organized. And we certainly were supposed to be in Belgium for a bit that went because we had to come back here, Italy now in a few weeks, couple of weeks time so we're supposed to be going to the Czech Republic. That's we're still not quite sure about that. But that's probably not on its head and then I think we have Bulgaria for three months over the summer, which is also completely up in the air at the moment, we really don't know what's going to happen about that yet.
14:11
And then the only other fit we had in Greece for a month at the end of the year, which, maybe Okay, yeah, depends what the guy who's doing it he's actually the only one who has not been in touch so maybe he's thinking I'm still quite far away and with everyone else would be in touch and chatted, obviously, they don't know what they're doing. So yeah, nobody knows.
14:37
Wait and see situation. And
Henry Lecky 14:40
everyone stood in that position of not really knowing what's going on one day to the next and just waiting to see what the next announcements going to be.
Collin 14:52
Yeah, that's a really hard place to be in of just just waiting and that you know, because you're going to wait on for you guys to find out information, but also the homeowners and everybody is waiting on their piece of information or the government to release new guidelines and, and those obviously aren't going to match up across countries. So that that makes that whole process a lot more complicated for you all. And with all that turmoil, what's it been like going through this together? As some of as changes have taken place?
15:25
Um,
15:27
stressful. There you go, I think.
15:34
I think yeah, it was Ellie, we don't, we used to work together. And a fair bit like a few years, couple years back, and like we used to manage and together, manage bars and manage manage the hotel together. And so we are used to dealing with very stressful things together.
Henry Lecky 15:57
We used to be stuck with each other 24 assefa where we are, sort of, we're very used to living to the, under each other's heels, pretty much so it's not like, we're used to having our own space and, and going, Oh my God, we need space, we need space and we can't get space because we're stuck in a house. We are, we are used to that we have have our own things that we go off and do. Then we'll watch what I call trashy TV. And I'll go from what she could watch what she calls sort of nerdy TV. I mean, we have our own things that we can do while still being together. Yeah,
16:43
we still kind of then we have a lot. We're lucky where we are. And as we can each have a room to work in. And so we pretty much just work a normal schedule for the day in our individual room. And then Get together at the end of the day and have dinner and chat and watch TV. Yeah. And so is normal.
Collin 17:09
Many people are finding themselves in situation where they're not used to being around somebody else. 24 seven. So do you have any advice for people who find themselves in that situation and are getting ready to enter being driven crazy.
Henry Lecky 17:22
Find those things that you can go off and do on your own. Don't Don't be afraid to like, go off into another room or just put something on with your headphones on or something and just take time for yourself. Even if you're sat next to the person. You can be in your own little world and just have that bit of space. Because it can get very difficult
17:51
but also take time to be together. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 17:55
I want to see time together late I
17:57
have a date night and we felt retreat in Italy, because we can't be there. So we're thinking, This week, we might have like, a night where we recreate Italy with wine and food and music and
18:13
the atmosphere of Italy.
18:17
And yeah, just sweet things like that. I think keep saying
Henry Lecky 18:23
no, just saying just things to keep things exciting and almost sort of distracting you from the monotony of Foursquare walls.
18:33
Yeah. And keep in touch with family and friends as well. I'm always on zoom calls or something or Yeah. Hey, sorry with friends, like we do pop quizzes with friends as well.
Henry Lecky 18:44
You've really got into Netflix party with your family. Yeah, we do that.
Collin 18:51
There are things out there that we can still do together even though we are physically apart and that's I don't think about what this would have looked like even 10 years ago, 20 years ago without the ubiquity of the internet or a lot of those things, it would be a very different feeling right now. So I'm very thankful that we do have that available to us.
19:16
I mean, I'm looking at spending my 30th probably under lockdown it's in a few
19:22
weeks time
19:24
so it's not exactly what I had planned or envisaged
Henry Lecky 19:30
at some big trip to America or something like that, because that's all gone completely in smile now.
19:38
It will be a bit my friends have suggested that we have a party via phone.
Henry Lecky 19:46
I don't know what the latest on that was the last time I heard there was a suggestive a dragon I
19:54
just get dressed up and doing karaoke.
Henry Lecky 19:56
Yeah.
Collin 19:58
You've written about Recently how you think this is going to change the house sitting world. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about that, and where you see those big changes taking place?
Henry Lecky 20:10
Well, I think it's a, it's something that could could go one of a few ways. Firstly, to the, it's gonna have a big economic impact around the world. So I think a lot of people may not go on the big holidays abroad, especially for long periods of time. So obviously, there'll be a lack of sex and facilities to go and do both. I think some sitters will be scared out of traveling. So I think you can find to the number of sets and the number of cities reducing, so whether that means maybe more sitters per set of buying or whether it's the other way around It's difficult to say, but it's I don't
21:06
know. No, I was gonna say I think that. Yeah, definitely there's no way that the world will not be changed. There's, you know, it just will economy, the world economy will be affected. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 21:20
I'm sure I think travel overall might be affected.
21:25
We were told that it would get back to normal at some point. But yeah, I think in terms of being realistic, we really have to think about and what we'll do
Henry Lecky 21:38
now. Yeah. So certainly short term over the next sort of two to five years, I think. I think it's gonna have a significant impact.
21:47
Yeah. Or just even like, initially, like for the first six months for the next year, the next year, we'll probably have to think maybe we'll have to peel off some plans or maybe me think because our initial plan was to go to America. counted on next year. And so we'll, we'll see how that goes. But we hadn't envisaged a year of traveling unit. Yeah. So
Henry Lecky 22:10
trying to finish taking off the European countries.
22:15
Which there's a lot. Yeah, yeah. So do we push that back? And what do we do in the meantime? And we are lucky to work online. And as we work as teachers, I also work as a writer. And so we have a couple of incomes that we can do remotely. So and, and obviously, that's great for full time posted in lifestyle, but if we have to think about settling down that will affect
22:51
what we do.
Collin 22:52
Yeah, right. Yeah. How incomes kind of based around being able to travel and live cheaply, sort of rent free. kind of a thing. If I have to reassess that idea, then everything has to be reassessed a bit curious how how this would change how you guys operate moving forward. And it sounds like there's a little bit of tentative. Well, we may hold back on some of these these travel plans and looking into different income and revenue streams for you guys.
23:23
Yeah, I say. And, I mean, we're hoping that the Bulgaria St. may go ahead. Yeah. The lady in question was going to a second home. So whether she decides and to do that or not, I don't know. But, and so I think it will, it probably depends on that set, because it was four months long. And because I don't see many set one up, or as many said or not. It might be that if that doesn't happen, we might just need to get short term lead somewhere.
Henry Lecky 24:00
Yeah, I think we've kind of got in the back of our minds, not that we've sort of actually sat down and actively burned it. But we've kind of got a Best and Worst case scenario in our heads at the moment. And it's just gonna be sort of seeing which way it goes, does it swing towards the best or towards the worst? And once we get an idea of which way it's going to go, then we can start planning accordingly. But so much is unknown at the moment, like we don't even we were looking at a set in the UK. Was it a stop or was it to the other day that someone contacted us about and we're like, realistically, because it's everything the government saying at the moment is essential travel only. Like, we could theoretically just get on a train and go there, but we don't know if we're going to be stopped and told that our travel is not essential. So he We're not sure if we can even sort of travel to another part of the UK, let alone the ideas of traveling anywhere else at the moment.
25:09
So the immediate the news that we have right now is that we'll probably be in lockdown for another four weeks at least. So we kindly and unreasonable I think was a happy delay Oh, stay during lockdown. So and then we can assess what we do and but we have been in touch and with people that we've sat for before. And so there's one in Germany and they've actually booked a holiday at the end of me and asked if we can come again at the end of May if we're not doing our other set.
25:48
So I mean, it's a possibility, I don't know.
25:52
planes will be running, or I don't know.
25:56
If we're allowed to go then I'd like to go
26:01
Same with our sit in Italy is actually a lady that we sit for. And occasionally, and she works a couple of hours from her home, but she lives in a different place. She lives in the city, and that's our country home that we look after.
26:18
So for her, she's always away and always needing sitters, like literally every month, she needs to set her so.
26:25
So she is also somebody that would have us
26:30
back again so and and we've had these conversations with people who are willing, said they'll try and help us and stuff like that just being nice.
Henry Lecky 26:40
Yeah, we're very lucky we've got from the sense that we've done we've got some good connections. We've had a lot of invites to go back. Some of them sort of even work out their travel bans around when we're available. We've also got a lot of contacts Things like Instagram, and that that might we can go and crash with people for a few days. So we've got we've got quite a good network out there. Our main issue at the moment is just the travel situation like, Can we travel, where can we travel, etc.
27:19
Basically, constantly reading the British government's website travel as
27:25
much is like, and what do they say today about this country? And in
Henry Lecky 27:28
Yes, and not just those countries, but also sort of trying to trying to look at the countries that we've got connections in and seeing what their restrictions are so that the people that we know that do sets are they then able to travel because if they're not going to be able to travel, they're not going to have space for us to come?
27:49
Certainly right now, it would be irresponsible to be moving around, because it's just about to hit the peak. I've got my best friend's like work in hospital. Hospitals are nurses. And so they tell me you know what's going on? And it's not pretty and, and it really is quite serious. So it would be quite as less alternative right now. Yeah. And so yeah, we just have to wait and see
Collin 28:19
you've got so many things going on there. You've got the ethically morally responsibly should I be out and about then you have the legal thing on top of that of going am I even allowed to even if I wanted to, and that whole, the whole mess just sounds like you know, is just compiling on one another. curious how you processed hearing an extension of four weeks for the lockdown in the shelter in place. We're getting into that same stage here in the United States where people are talking about if possible extensions. So what was that like hearing that four week extension and how did you process hearing that?
28:55
Well, well, the motion say they're not officially said yeah, but thank you. I have unofficially said it is, and it's been hinted that it will last for weeks and but they are due to make their proper announcement at the end of
Henry Lecky 29:12
so and they've been saying for about a week, because we've just had Easter. They've been saying for the past week Look, I we know the fact that the the initial lockdown phase is coming to an end. But don't go out Easter weekend thinking Oh, it doesn't matter because the lockdown is going to end because realistically, it's probably not going away. We're just not. We're still like, deciding where and we'll make the announcement later. So don't be silly. I'm, I'm sort of taking the slightly approach of I'm looking at sort of what's happened in Italy, what's happened in China and sort of saying that Lock downs have gone on for months. So I'm when they said an initial three weeks I was like, Yeah, but it's not going to be that I've been working the whole time the fact that it's going to be probably two months at the bare minimum before we can really start thinking about traveling again. So for me, it's not much of a surprise. I just because I've been paid for it the whole way.
30:28
And for me, like I say, like my friends and nurses and my mom has lots of really works in health care and M has lots of friends that work in healthcare, and they've all pretty much been saying that the peak has not yet hit and as they expected it to hit this week and it hasn't and and it keeps increasing. And so for me, I kind of known from speaking to people that adore think this is getting much better. And certainly if you read the news reports every day, and it's not getting much better, and but
31:08
yeah, the forecast the forecast for the UK often very good moment.
31:13
So I think there's been forecast to say that by the summer they expect maybe 60 to 66,000 people to die in the UK. And so, and yeah, I think we're still way off, I think, a little social distance and has been helping, certainly. But yeah, there's a lot of issues at play here. So yeah, not totally unexpected, I would say.
31:46
But, yeah.
Henry Lecky 31:47
So I'd say to anyone in America like, I don't start thinking that. Like, I like if I if I was sensible in America, I'd say like, maybe the restrict should be removed just in time for Fourth of July kind of situation like that's what I would be banning, or I wouldn't think anything, too, too much sooner than that, if I was honest,
32:12
there's been announcements by airlines this week in the UK to say that they're not going to be putting on regular regular flight timetable until June 17. So I think that's a good
Collin 32:24
idea. That gives you an idea why I say Fourth of July is sort of a good time frame for you guys. Yeah, that helps put it into perspective as just as far as the continuing impact and ripple effect throughout everything and just how long it's gonna take to bring things back online and slowly turn everything back on. Again,
Henry Lecky 32:45
that's assuming that they sort of do a quick reduction in the restrictions. A lot of places they're saying, even in the UK, it's going to be a very slow, very gradual easing of the lockdowns. So they might Start to ease it sort of reading the news sort of essay in the UK could take one to two years before we're back to normal.
Collin 33:09
Yeah, it's gonna be a long road ahead. And so thinking of that, what kind of advice or maybe some recommended resources you would give to somebody who is actually interested in getting into house sitting right now?
33:23
That's a difficult one.
33:27
Uh,
Henry Lecky 33:30
well, I would say, if you're, if you're like us, you're stuck in a house. Not much to do. Go out there, do research, read blogs like sort of ours and other house sitters, and get a feel for what it's like. Because it's not a lifestyle for everyone. Like, we sort of do it. We made the choice. We accept everything. It comes with it, like the insecurity of not having anywhere to live, which is what's really affecting us. But take this time to do your research and think is this something for me? Is this is this really how I how I want to live my life over the next however long
34:24
and certainly like don't do for the wrong reasons, but I think some people are not saying there's some people that maybe like just think about the travel aspect
34:34
you know, do the lovable animals yeah
Henry Lecky 34:39
serious commitment to go and look off to someone else's house and their and their, their family members essentially because what pets are to be you can't you can't be very blunt about the whole situation. You have to take it very, very seriously. So yeah,
35:01
And obviously use your podcasts.
35:06
And host it in magazine was really good for us when we first started. So it was a CV source as well.
35:14
Loads of helpful advice in there.
35:18
And, again, get in. And also what took a while for us if you're just starting out to get references from Yeah, chase people up for references, but we had our landlord and her
35:33
former employer and stuff like that,
Henry Lecky 35:35
actually, that's important. If you have any friends or family that you can maybe do a bit of pet sitting for, get some experience that way. But also then when you do sign up to the services, they can give you a reference about it. So having that sort of string in your bio is also helpful.
36:00
Yeah, that was our very first confirmed set was my mom's friend who had a cat. And she was going away for a few months traveling. And that was back at home. So it was kind of at home that was the rest of her sets of basically all been international city. And that was a good, good start starting point. And actually, that was the best piece of advice that we took before restarting it was to like, find something local and maybe do it occasionally or volunteer with like a dog or cat shelter or something. So other things that we've done as well before we start, though.
Henry Lecky 36:41
Also, don't be sort of like, make sure that you are, you know what animals you're comfortable looking after. Because one of the first sets that we actually did was our Italy set, where we had to look after our Packers. What? Our packets?
37:07
Sorry, I'm sorry, and B,
Henry Lecky 37:09
and B. Yeah. And the one that we're supposed to be doing in the Czech Republic soon involves sheep and goats and ducks. So, you really need to also work out and be comfortable with what animals you feel you can look after. Like, if you don't think that you can look off the sheep don't apply for places that require she, you. You don't want to turn off and they go. Okay, so this is the horse and this is what you do with it. And you're like, Oh my god, I can't cope. Yeah, but I don't like horses what he was pet tarantula. And you go, I'm afraid of spiders. That's right.
38:03
We do look for the weirdest.
38:08
It sounds like it. I'm starting to pick up a pattern taking,
38:14
like a challenge,
38:16
because we want to learn a lot. Yeah, we want to learn about having a full audit. So we tend to try and choose leases that are like, the more.
Henry Lecky 38:25
Yeah, and I also have a history of weird animal pets. Yeah. I over the years, I've kept snakes and bearded dragons, tarantulas and rats and yeah.
Collin 38:39
So using this time that to to do all that in depth research and start looking into references and start thinking about who you said, I love like, let's just golden of what would what would you like to take care of, but I think more importantly, what would you not like to take care of like, what's the absolute cutoff of acceptability for you? And spinning this time really thinking about those so that when opportunities come up, you don't have to deliberate them. You can just say yes or no and you already know going into that. And
39:13
so what we're
39:15
okay.
Henry Lecky 39:19
I also have no clue what to do with horse, like, but like, it doesn't, I can kind of deal with one horse. But if it's if it's like a small stable and there's like six horses I know I can't count
39:37
been some unpredictable
39:45
and like, I don't know what we're
39:50
cut off for me. Sure,
39:54
I'm not sure maybe a tarantula. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 40:00
I think I think as long as it's not something we've looked after before, I think as long as the homeowners really take time to carefully walk us through what needs to be done, to look after them and kind of give us that information that training. I think we're pretty much game or anything that anyone could possibly have. I think I think sort of maybe something like a Bengal tiger or something might might be a bit of a challenge. But I'm not. I'm not I'm not sure there's something I'm I'm too crazy. Like, I'd say yes. Pretty much.
40:47
I mean, we looked after 11 cat. Yeah.
Collin 40:52
You're literally herding cats.
Henry Lecky 40:56
Never has that expression ever been saved. At as when we were at the mountain dinner at four of them on medication oh and trying to trying to separate make sure the and because they were on different medication as well so you have focused on medication seven cats not on medication. You're trying to make the ones on medication make sure that they get the right mix. Oh my word it was chaos.
41:24
actually love
41:29
feeding
Henry Lecky 41:32
it took us about an hour to eat. Oh wow.
41:36
There's not much they
41:41
may spend this time looking up. How to maybe we should look after certain.
41:47
Yeah, yeah.
Collin 41:49
Well on on the on that I know you had mentioned kind of how you are spending this time personally but during this downtime, how have you been spending on your business? What kind of things you've been doing. And working on so that you have a better foundation in the future.
42:06
So we I've been trying to invest in our own website and every day, basically home there and sort of going over all the old blog post an update in them and do an SEO if anyone runs the website, you know, SEO is
42:25
important.
42:27
Important thing and it's a bit of a pain to get your head around. And I've signed up to this and Skillshare to try and get my head around to fiddly bits and bits I don't understand. And I do have a brother that work and he studies web design and things so and he is supposedly helping me
42:54
brothers do
42:59
boys Me
43:01
and Me, we've also been keeping in contact with previous people and getting little updates on how they're doing and maintaining those relationships, and quite important as well. And, and we have still been applying just on the off chance. And I, as we said, is actually the 11 cats. The 11 cats have asked us back in me, so very nice. And so yeah. Thinking about Yeah, and if things don't pan out, and yes, that's what we've been doing and enry has been working crazy hours. So, we're both self employed. And VLANs Henry works A couple of different schools online. He's been
44:04
well, it's been getting more and more lessons. Yeah. And if you're weak
Henry Lecky 44:11
to the point where sometimes it's difficult to get a day off sort of thing. Instead of being badgered to make sure that I take sufficient time off I don't work myself into the ground.
44:30
Yeah, who tried to at least take a couple of days off a week. And chill I really, I guess we kind of work in all day when you're just self employed, you end up working all day or longer hours.
Henry Lecky 44:42
And especially if you start start with nothing to do, you know, you're like, well, I work online. I can I choose my hours. Why don't I work an extra couple of hours a day or why don't I work six or seven days a week rather than five days a week, and suddenly you're into that routine and you're like, I haven't had a day off in three weeks.
45:08
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then, and for me as well, like, unfortunately, a lot of my rate rating is about travel. So some of that is being put on hold for at least a month until people start traveling again for me. So it's kind of a kind of been tie in with. I am teaching more now to make up for the writer I'm not doing and so I'm hoping that gets back to normal at some point, but
Henry Lecky 45:40
you've done a couple of articles about, like, traveling whilst not traveling.
45:50
It's travel but not right. Yeah, yeah. Um, and, yeah, so it's just kind of
Henry Lecky 45:57
Yeah, basically our entire lives. Pretty much on hold at this point. So it's just like
46:03
that it's good to invest in like our website and say that I want it to be a bit more about and sustainable. Travel and post it and as well so we are we've been planning a fair few articles about that. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 46:22
One we just published recently but yeah, bash, bash some water as well.
46:29
And yeah so it's been a good time to sort of invest in that
46:37
as a future.
Henry Lecky 46:40
You, you keep on having new ideas about how to have of the website so every six months or so the website kind of undergoes a redesign anyone, anyone I've seen like resolved flow to logon off you'll see that it keeps on
46:59
happening. So I wanted to be more like this Yeah.
Henry Lecky 47:03
Suddenly things layout will change. colors will change articles will change as well. I have trouble keeping up sometimes to what we're currently covering
47:15
that's what screen light is like.
47:21
So it's been a good time to do that. Yeah actually given me time to work on
Henry Lecky 47:26
hopefully nail down and actually do what you want to do with the thing.
47:33
Now Anyway, you know,
Henry Lecky 47:35
yeah, yeah. For the next like, six weeks or something. Good run.
Collin 47:42
Well, I want to thank you too, so much for coming on today and sharing your story and how you think this is going to change the house sitting world and even the you know, the the advice that you had for people who are looking into getting into this, I really appreciate that and both Megan and I are glad that you guys are on healthy and well and are doing okay. If people are interested and falling on with your work and want to see the latest design of your website this week. Well, how can they check you guys out and follow you along?
48:14
I'll let you do the bug.
Jennifer Flett 48:17
We are Hoopla adventures. And it's hoopla adventures.com is the website that has not changed I can say and it will not change and and same as our Instagram is
Henry Lecky 48:34
underscore adventures. Now just for anyone who can't understand Scottish accent so that's who la adventures who play adventures
Jennifer Flett 48:51
which came about because
Henry Lecky 48:54
I really have no clue you picked up she asked me for ideas and every idea right suggests as you went we're going to do this. Yes, yeah. Okay. Okay.
49:07
Because we when we first started, we worked in festivals together. Yeah, like music festivals. We joke that we were running away with the circus. And I quit like this day and it's a little hoopla
Collin 49:20
blah. Oh, I love that
49:22
painting. We are nonsense.
49:30
You can get this website and Instagram, mostly and Pinterest as well. Also, yeah, Facebook. Yes.
Collin 49:43
Facebook well Jennifer and Henry again thank you for coming on. And once these these travel bans and restrictions get lifted, I hope to see you guys over here in the states and we'll definitely need to try and meet up and get another recording and and talk to you guys then as things start to look brighter. Yeah.
Henry Lecky 50:02
I love that idea. There's an excuse to go to the states have overheard one.
Collin 50:07
Right? We need to do a live in person recording.
50:10
Yeah.
Henry Lecky 50:14
Yeah, appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thanks very much for having us again. Yeah. Thank you much love to your family. Oh, yeah, you guys stay safe and stay healthy. Appreciate it. Thank you Same to you guys. Thank you Take care
Collin 50:28
talking with Jennifer and Henry really helped put into perspective exactly the toll that this taking around the globe but I love their view on this that this is a time to be working and investing in their business, changing up their website to make it something that they've always wanted and continuing to look towards the future and continuing to make plans to move forward. Megan and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back on Monday with a fresh kitchen confessions.
