046 - Kitchen Confessions
Summary:
On this weeks Kitchen Confessions, we share some tips on working from home if you’ve never had to do it before and what it’s like running a business with your significant other.
Topics on this episode:
What does it mean to work from home right now?
What it’s like working together
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, megan, home, tasks, running, hats, set, dedicated, organized, podcast, situation, day, talk, work, applications, strengths, productive, writing, apply
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
00:17
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional,
00:21
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Meghan 00:29
Hello, and thank you for joining us on another episode of kitchen confessions.
Collin 00:34
Happy Monday, everybody.
Meghan 00:36
Today is 420. And it is also Earth week.
Collin 00:39
Big things happening this week.
Meghan 00:43
So we appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen in on our conversation.
Collin 00:49
We hope you all had a wonderful weekend. And on self care Sunday, we're able to do something for yourself. Maybe that you hadn't been able to do before or maybe hadn't had the time for Or maybe just something completely new that you were able to enjoy. That wasn't a part of your business or anything going out in the big scary world, but just that you were able to invest in yourself.
Meghan 01:11
And also hopefully you were able to help somebody else too, because right now there are certainly a lot of people that need our help.
Collin 01:16
Now I know it's been a little while since we've had a kitchen confession weave last week was pretty busy for us with our with several episodes. And as a quick note, one of the episodes that came out was with Mike from Jetro and Associates about taxes and or about the COVID financial assistance coming out from the small business loans. By the time we had released that, a lot of that information actually ended up being pretty dated mostly because the SBA loans ran out of money. And so several things that he had mentioned in there as far as there being time and how to put together an application and packet. Some of that information is still applies, but we are going to be bringing Mike back on to talk about what we can I'll be doing as we wait for those things, and how we can make sure to pull the trigger whenever those are whenever that opportunity does come back.
Meghan 02:07
And it just goes to show how fast everything is moving these days.
Collin 02:11
And I know that those programs had a lot tied up in them. And that there is hope that there will be funding put back into them so that they can continue to provide loans and assistance to small businesses that need it, because it really seems like the ones that were able to get it or the majority of those tend to be the larger small businesses that maybe had dedicated people that could work on those applications and get them in first thing. So I know we've been seeing on some Facebook groups and hearing from other pet business owners that they've received them and that's awesome. We've also seen people reporting that they've had their loan applications in but denied because there's no money left. how that looks going forward, is still going to be seen but like I said, we're wanting to have Mike back onto when we talk about Through a few those steps for us, many of us are in the situation where we are still trying to do work for our business, whether that is on the computer getting digitally organized, or whether that is calling customers or working on mailing things or whatever that looks like for you, you may still be trying to accomplish work and do things from your home when you used to have an office. I know that doesn't apply to everybody, but many of us are in that situation where we used to have someplace to go a dedicated place to do our work and run our business. And now we don't have that.
03:38
What does it look like to actually work from home for you?
Collin 03:44
What does it actually look like to work from home? I have a few pieces of advice that I would like to give for those of you who are working through that mess. And the first one is to have a dedicated place in your home. Whether that is a small corner in a room, whether that is a specific desk, at a dining room table, or if that is an office that you set up in a spare bedroom, but have a place where you know that when you sit down there, that is where work is going to happen. If you are able to work wherever, whenever wonderful, good for you. I know I am not like that. I need some structure in my life. And so one of the ways that I do that is by having a dedicated desk for doing our business work. I would also recommend setting your daily schedule. That's something that we talked about very early on as far as how to survive being in your home and with not a whole lot going on. But if you are continuing to try and run your business and do some work from home, have a set schedule of when you going to quote unquote clock in and when you're going to clock out.
Meghan 04:54
Yeah, it's very easy. Since we're home a lot now to just not have that schedule and to just go get a snack from the fridge or watch a TV show here and there
Collin 05:08
or to have or to look up and have your entire day just bled through with work where you never actually stopped. You just found yourself working the entire day. I can be guilty of that. I think something else to consider and that goes along with that is, this is hard this is really hard for this is to still get dressed in the morning to still get into some sort of different outfit than your sleep clothes. This psychologically puts you in a different mindset and allows you to start engaging in a different way with the world around you with the tasks that you have at hand.
Meghan 05:45
Well and also with that people recommend not having your workspace in your bedroom or the same place where you sleep because it does mess with your mind and because you need to have a separation between now this is where I sleep. This is where I work. They are not the same,
Collin 06:02
right. And that's really hard it right now when we are all home and we don't have a lot of space around us to maintain that difference between your bedroom, the tape bedrooms are only for two things and work is not one of them. I will say that I mentioned getting dressed helps you focus on tasks. Now on tasks that involves staying organized and writing down what you have to do that day. We are used to being in an environment where when we were at work, having business around us constantly and so we kind of just got in the habit of organizing and writing things down as we needed that that's not really a must a muscle that we are flexing very much these days. So I encourage you to still sit down in the morning, write out tasks or write things down as they come in. because on one hand, our brains are fantastic at being creative. On the other hand, our brains are terrible at remembering things. I always say I'm not writing it. Down to remember it now I'm writing it down to remember it later because that's whenever I need it. And if especially for tasks that can also help motivate you as you check them off to keep checking them off. Megan is a very big checklist person,
07:15
yes, type a right here.
Collin 07:18
So I know those kinds of things help her. And they helped me as well. I'm not as type A, but having those empty boxes really helps motivate me throughout the day. I just wanted to throw that out there, that topic of a few tips of how to actually work from home as we are all still kind of trying to find a new normal and all of this and hopefully, these kind of behaviors and these kind of tools that we are all working on right now and developing will be beneficial moving forward, so that maybe you don't have to go in as often when the time comes to open everything back up. Or you can be more productive when you do need to be at home in the future. Now know a lot of those steps don't apply to everybody. Again, like I said, many of us, many of us were already working out of our homes and many of us were already working on the go and didn't have a dedicated place to go or do work in. But hopefully now we can spend some time working on some good behaviors and some good processes that we can get into place so that we can be more productive at home and more productive on the go.
Meghan 08:29
So since we are all stuck in our homes right now, and working from home, you may be having others around you that might get on your nerves.
Collin 08:41
I feel like I'm being talked to right now.
Meghan 08:47
So I wanted to bring up the topic of working while there are other people around and kind of working together. So I wanted to talk about that about if you have a family or a significant other Do you have to manage your work time, but also your family time, and I think you brought up a good point of having a dedicated space, so that you can, you know, close the door or draw a blind or whatever you have set up and say, This is my work time, please,
09:19
back off.
Collin 09:21
And not everybody's gonna have that there gonna be a lot of interaction. I mean, I even know that when we're here working at home now, I know we've got kids and they're running in and out. So I know those distractions and those kind of interactions are still going to be there. But when you are working with somebody, and I'm just going to use negative nine as an example here, we are both working together on the same task to run our pet sitting business. And this podcast and this podcast and as such, we both are trying to do a lot of the same things. And that doesn't always work out. And I know very early on in our marriage. We Had to recognize that we had very different strengths and very different weaknesses. And thankfully, there's a lot of overlap there.
Meghan 10:09
And my weaknesses are your strengths and your strengths are my weaknesses,
Collin 10:13
that is a difficult thing to work through having to admit your weaknesses and having to acknowledge somebody strengths that where they are better and there is I'm not gonna say better I'm gonna say where they are stronger than you are. Making this very organized very Megan is very task oriented. Megan is very detail oriented in all of her work. I am not I tend to be a very just, that's close enough. That's good enough kind of person. And so Megan really challenges me to do those things to really check my spelling to check posts before they go out.
Meghan 10:50
And so you Collin are an extrovert and I am not. So in social situations, or just in general, whether it's online Or in public, you kind of pull me into those situations and helped me to engage better with people, especially with this podcast. Like, I never would have done this on my own. And so we are, you know, working as a team, and it's not all butterflies and roses all the time, but, but we
Collin 11:20
make it work. Yeah, you set it. We're a team, we both have the same goal. And so regardless of what happens throughout the day, I trust that Megan has our business and this podcast in the best interests for that at her heart, in her motives and when she's working and when she's asking for things to be done with that. I have to trust I have to know that and so when you are working with somebody when you're working with somebody else, especially if their significant other trust that they have your best interests at heart, your business, best interest at heart, and and that has something you have to just have on the table. all times and no as a foundation regardless of what happens. That's, that's key. Now that can be broken. And getting that back is not easy and takes a lot of time. Also, I want to say that it took Megan i a long time and very early on, we did have to seek some help and working through a lot of our differences and expectations just for our marriage. And I'm so thankful that we went through that because now that we are running a business and married, we have two different hats. We are spouses, and we are co business owners, and those titles mix an awful lot. Yeah, right. And we have to know when it's time to take off the business hat and be a spouse.
12:51
I think you're a lot better at that than I am.
Collin 12:54
It's well it's but it's not it's not easy, right? It's not and I don't think that's just a personality thing. I think that's a practice thing. And that's just a comfortability thing. There's a lot that goes into that. And what makes it even more difficult is when you are together and running a business, you have to still treat each other like you're in a business. But no, it felt you feel free to disagree with things, feel free to point out things. And then take off those hats and immediately pick up and put on those spousal hats and leave all that business stuff out the door. Because business doesn't shouldn't impact the relationship. Which, you know, we mix a lot. We mix a lot, we try to set limits on that kind of thing, but some days you just can't. I know our situation is unique, where we are married and running the business in this podcast together. But if you have want to go into business with your friend, maybe or bring them on for help.
Meghan 13:55
Yeah. antium talked about that in Episode 40. A couple weeks ago,
Collin 13:58
she did discuss that. The importance of communicating clear, defined expectations and revisiting those often throughout,
Meghan 14:08
right, one more point that I wanted to bring up is that with all this COVID-19 stuff going on, and when countries and states start opening back up again, people are going to want to go on vacation. And there is kind of been this mentality of like that basically, people will want to go on vacation a lot and it will kind of open the floodgates for everybody, but I'm not quite sure that that is what's going to happen. Obviously, you need to be prepared for that if that's the case, but honestly, I think that people are going to be a little timid and a little nervous to go on vacations again, they might travel within your state or within your, your area that you're in. But I think, you know, domestic travel within the United States and especially international travel is going to take a while to recover. So we are all very excited and ready, very ready for it to get back to normal and how it was. But I think it's going to be a slow progression back to where we were before.
Collin 15:17
If you had a lot of clients that if the foundation of your business was tied to people traveling for leisure,
Meghan 15:28
right, if you did a lot of boarding or house setting like daycares are fine, for the most part
Collin 15:34
should probably pick back up quickly as people are allowed to go back into work, right.
15:38
But, yeah,
Collin 15:40
having a having a cautiously optimistic view of the future of just how steep that recovery slope is gonna be. On the back end,
15:49
right. It was
Meghan 15:51
going into this was a very steep decline, but I think it's going to be a slow, uphill progression coming out of it or it may not And let's hope for the not but just being prepared for both scenarios, whichever way it comes about,
Collin 16:05
and as we look to be prepared for how to operate our businesses and tools and things that we can be learning about, one of the things that I know Mike and I are really interested in has this year was to attend some conferences. And well, the start to the year has been a little difficult to do that. But there's one still going on in September.
Meghan 16:29
Yeah, the International boarding and pet Services Association is having a conference at the end of September, in Orlando, Florida, which I'm very excited to go to Florida.
Collin 16:41
Yeah, Megan, I have been talking about possibly trying to go to that this year, to both attend the sessions and the talks, and walk through the Expo Center there. And also do some recordings and some podcasts and live interviews there and to discuss about how to apply apply that to our businesses. And just what that experiences is like.
Meghan 17:04
So if you are thinking about going or you are already registered, please let us know. You can call us on our voicemail. It's 636-364-8260.
Collin 17:15
I'm so glad you have that memorized.
Meghan 17:18
Or you can send us a DM on Instagram or Facebook. So that's all we have for this episode of kitchen confessions. On Wednesday, we are going to talk more about organization with Savannah, the savvy sitter and on Friday, we are going to be talking about dog training with an interview.
Collin 17:35
Yeah, we're bringing on Carla from the doggy spot and we wanted to bring her on to discuss what are some skills what are some certifications or some kind of trainings that we can be looking to right now in this downtime to add to our resume and possibly add services or just become better and more equipped, moving forward
