052- Kitchen Confessions
Check out ProTrainings.com. Enter the code CPR-petsitterconfessional for 10% off ANY course.
Summary:
On today’s Kitchen Confession, we discuss a recent meet and greet with a new client, how recent CDC guidelines are throwing a wrench in reopening plans, and how no matter what you have chosen to do with your time and your business, there is no judgement.
Topics on this episode:
We did a new (socially distant) meet and greet
Judgement free zone
Main take away? New CDC guidelines are going to really change the pet sitting world for a while longer. Whatever decision you need to make, please know we’re cheering you on!
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
guidelines, people, dog, client, megan, daycare, pets, reopen, felt, business, greet, meet, episode, pet sitter, rates, decided, decisions, boarding, staying, run
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Collin 00:17
I'm calling
Meghan 00:18
and I'm Megan. And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, and welcome to another episode of pet sitter confessional.
Collin 00:33
I hope you guys have been doing well.
Meghan 00:36
And hopefully you guys had a good weekend.
Collin 00:39
COVID is on everybody's mind these days and our friends over at pro trainings, I've actually put together a special online training course that deals just with Coronavirus and how it spreads and how to keep you and other safe at home and in the workplace. So head on over to pro trainings calm and check out all of their online courses. They have a ton and when you Ready to checkout enter the code CPR, dash, pet sitter confessional for 10% off any of their courses. I wanted
Meghan 01:08
to start off this episode saying that I saw a post recently about somebody who asked if people are going to be raising their rates or not after this time is over, and I kind of wanted to have a discussion about that. We have decided not to raise rates,
Collin 01:24
we decided that for several different reasons for us. I think one of the biggest ones is that right now, the US did not seem like an appropriate time to raise rates because of the precarious situation that many people are in financially, possibly. Many people are either working from home or are being paid to, to not come into work. So many people still have revenue streams. But we don't want to get into that discussion with people as far as what that new rate looks like and have to have that conversation of somebody being laid off or not having income at that time. It's just predictable for our clients is that if we can remain steady if we can remain constant in our services, that in the long run helps everybody so that we're not having to overcomplicate communication with people or get messages confused or wires crossed or anything like that.
Meghan 02:20
And I think we came to the conclusion that it's really all about your motive, if you are going to raise rates, simply because you want to kind of recoup your revenue over the past couple months. And so not wanting to take advantage of people just because you have been out of work the past several weeks.
Collin 02:40
Yeah, we saw a couple people commenting and discussions going on about why people were raising their rates. And one of the things like it was kind of two things either a, they have been wanting to raise rates for a while anyway. And so they thought now's a good time as ever with things up in the And things changing and including a little bit of almost hazard pay for some of the difficult jobs that they were going to be taking on. And then the person people who were commenting about they were needing to or wanting to raise rates to recoup lost revenue. And I know for me that sad, a little sour as far as motives go, because with that mindset, it's really placing a lot of undue burden on your clients to support you and placing all of that on them and not how you run your business.
Meghan 03:33
And they may be happy to support you a those rates. Yeah, a lot of people were buying gift cards during this time and continuing to pay dog walkers even when they weren't utilizing services. And really checking motives there on which you decide to do
Collin 03:47
because your clients are going to be able to see that how you view your clients is going to be how you treat them, if you view them as valuable as an asset and as a privilege to take care of. You're going to treat them differently than if you just view them as an income stream or an income source, versus being able to serve them.
Meghan 04:08
And so we actually had an interesting experience. On Thursday, we had a new client contact us for the first time. Actually, since all of this started. About two months ago,
Collin 04:22
it was really weird. Having somebody reach out that we had this brand new client, it was a very kind of surreal experience, to have somebody reach out and ask, Hey, I want to do a meet and greet. Because I may need your services in the future. And I think Mike and I were a little bit in shock first, trying to remember how you run the meet and greet and how you do all that stuff. So
Meghan 04:44
right and so I think we, we really had to think about well, okay, so this is our first meet and greet our first new client of this What are we doing differently now that the pandemic is here and we're having to socialize this stance and all of that
Collin 05:01
we ran through a lot of different scenarios. One of the first things I think that came up was whether we were going to try and do this virtually. We know we discussed that in a recent episode. And we decided for this one, we wanted to try to do it in person and just see how it went. We needed to throw something at the wall and see what stuck.
Meghan 05:20
But we knew that we didn't want have this person come into our house,
Collin 05:24
right? So, okay, we're not gonna do it virtually. We're not doing it in our home. Let's do it. Outside, though we did it in the front of our house, they could still see our house, see our yard, we could be six feet away
Meghan 05:36
all of that and it wasn't touching any of our things,
Collin 05:38
right. And we also discussed how we were going to interact. So we had to decide if both of us were going to be there with our kids, which what we typically do during meet and greets, so that we can see how all the interactions are going to take place and get all the questions out there. Or if just one of us was going to be there to limit possible exposure to the rest of the family. Have you ever met the person decontaminate afterwards, really, we decided that we were going to try and do it out all as a family to be all outside. Megan was going to be the only one interacting with the dog. I was going to be asking questions and minding the kids. And we were going to be staying six feet apart,
Meghan 06:18
obviously, no shaking hands, which is what we typically do at the start,
Collin 06:22
which, which was weird, being in that kind of very formal setting, and not being able to greet them and not being able to really interact with the dog and,
Meghan 06:31
and even the owner had mentioned, you know, we, you know, we used to be doing the elbow bumps before that became no longer
Collin 06:37
right thing, not even doing that anymore. And we did communicate to the client that what are the steps that we were going to do? Let us know when you're here, we'll meet you outside, blah, blah. And we did make the caveat of, we're doing this because of COVID-19.
Meghan 06:55
Right, that typically you would see the inside of our house. You would see, you know, where the dog would be sleeping and staying, but because of COVID You know, it was a little weird during the meet and greet. But that's just the way it's gonna have to be for a while.
Collin 07:12
And afterwards, when Megan, I got back inside, debriefed about that, and I think both of us came to the conclusion that like, Oh, we really didn't like that.
Meghan 07:21
Yeah, no, well, I mean, the dog would be staying here for daycare, we'll be staying here for daycare and, and so I, you know, I want the owner to feel as comfortable as possible. And to me, if, like, if I were an owner, I would want to see you know, the inside of the house, you know, the couches, the food bowls, like, you know, that those kind of things to make sure that my dog was going to be taken care of, we didn't
Collin 07:43
walk away from from it, feeling like we were able to provide a lot of that. So I think some follow up pictures, possibly videos of the space are going to be in order to send along so that she can view those and not that we're hoping she critiques where the dog is going to be, but at least that'll put her at ease that she has at least seen it and knows what's going on. Yeah, that's a big component of doing what we do is we want people to feel like their dogs are at home part of a family, and really being taken care of. And it was hard to communicate that or get that feeling across in the setting that we had,
Meghan 08:22
right. And so we do boarding and daycare a lot. We don't do very many drop ins or house sets or dog walks, that's just not it's not really needed or wanted in our area. And so we know that every situation is different. Some of you may not do boarding or daycare at all. And so you don't have that situation of coming over to the client's house. And you may not even you may meet at a park all the time, that's your normal but our normal is having the person come into our home, seen where the dog stays. And so it was just it was a new kind of normal for us and
Collin 08:57
and on that new normal That term has icky feeling sometimes. Because who knows what normal was before. This is just new at this point, and we're really trying to see how we fit in that space and how we can make it work best for us. Not necessarily hoping is a normal, it's just what things currently are right now.
Meghan 09:24
And so with that, today is Monday May 4 and the state of Missouri which we are in has started phase one of their reopen plan and I know several other states are as well. I know that Europe has continued their lockdown. It seems about half of the businesses are able to reopen and operate again and about half aren't. So if you are in the boat of not still not being able to operate or not wanting to operate at this point in time. Hang in there. Your time is coming. It will get better
Collin 09:58
and if you are in the camp, Have you have the ability to reopen? Let us know how that looks for you. I know Megan and I are still trying to figure out that, how that's going to work. We're given a lot of guidelines. And so we're very curious to see how everyone else is going to be approaching that. And in meeting all of the guidelines and expectations, there's a lot to consider that really changes the look of this industry.
Meghan 10:25
Yes. And so the CDC just came out with a new guideline, I believe it was on Thursday that dogs should be basically kept away from people and kept away from other dogs,
Collin 10:37
right. They said, treat them as if they were a member of your, as a as a human member of your own home, where if you wouldn't become if you wouldn't go within six feet of somebody else, keep your dog away from them as well and maybe keep them away from other dogs.
Meghan 10:53
Right. And so we actually had our one. We had our one daycare client that was really holding on she sent me that article and was like maybe we need to reconsider. Rethink rethink daycare if you're going to be having a bunch of other dogs in your home and I was very it was an it was an emotional moment for sure. I it kind of felt like I kind of felt like all the emotions that I felt six weeks ago when all of this had started of like frustration, anger, sadness, like we were going to be losing our last last client it felt like and so we know that some of you out there have completely lost all of your clients and I am so sorry for that. I it's it's not fun for any of us. This is really a continuing to be a painful time.
Collin 11:48
Well and part of that was for where we are the reopening phases we're getting ready to start. A lot of businesses are coming back online today monday or whenever you guys are listening to this Whether they're back online, we're very excited about that about seeing business start to pick back up. And then to have this guideline come in, right and like, clip us at the knees. of Okay, let's start bringing more dogs in, let's start, you know, we'll still have these social distancing guidelines for people and, and all that. And now we have to figure out how to, and even if we can operate under these new guidelines, and genuinely still in the midst of trying to figure that out how that looks for us, because people are aware of those guidelines and they are going to ask questions, and they are going to start thinking about is this appropriate for me or is it not? And so this took that rebound curve of business and really flattened it out a little bit, and really pushed it out. Several more months,
Meghan 12:51
as far as boarding and daycare, and pack walks, go we don't do pack walks, but the congregation of dogs Part of this is really what's going to take a hit. So if you're doing solo walks, or if you're just doing drop ins one household at a time, or you're just housesitting or one client at a time, this really isn't going to affect you necessarily. But it's for those who offer a daycare and boarding,
Collin 13:15
right, where you're mixing dogs from different families in the same area. And now, there are similar guidelines to them as there are people from different families. And that just really changes the whole look. I mentioned this just few months ago, of the industry moving forward. We now and you know, there are a lot of creative people out there, there are a lot of amazing thinkers and tinkerers that are going to work on solving these problems. So I have full confidence in that and full confidence in you guys for working through this. It was just another blow and I think of another example of this is a lot of restaurants that are finally thankful to be opened but they have to do that under some very constrained, very difficult metrics where it's even questionable whether they'll be profitable under these new guidelines of keeping minimum capacity and maintain the social distances. And I didn't think that was going to come over to the dog side. And so when it did it really just kind of put a pit in my stomach thinking about that. And now, okay, that really sucks. We can, we can figure something out and still operate at a at a minimum capacity and keep moving forward.
Meghan 14:34
There's just a lot of talk about these guidelines, whether they are kind of overreaching or are legitimate in their concerns for pets being around each other.
Collin 14:44
Because we all want to make sure that the dogs that are on care and the people that are our clients are safe, and well and we respect that and do everything within our power to do that. We have these guidelines now that are coming along and saying okay, this is a way To help maintain the health of people and pets, and we, in our hearts want to meet these, it's hard to balance that with a business though.
Meghan 15:10
And so this kind of all started about because a pug had come down with COVID. He was in an infected household, and he started coming down with a little bit of cough. And so they took him in, got him tested and he was positive. He has since made a full recovery. His name is Winston. And he is doing just fine now, but they have. I mean, a couple months ago, they had those Tigers at the zoo that were tested and found positive along with the lions, and then two cats. And now this pug Winston. I mean, it's definitely interesting of the millions and millions of pets that are in America and, of course all over the world that only a handful have really come down with anything. And they all you know there may be more positive cases out there, but the They're not showing any symptoms. I think that the ones that have shown symptoms have been the ones to get tested and, and to test positive for it. This is a judgment free zone, this pandemic and everything associated with the pet care industry right now is completely unprecedented. This time is unknown for everybody. And so we don't judge you whatever decisions that you've made during this time, whether it be to stay open, or to be closed, whether to take care of essential workers, pets or not to whether you've even applied for aid or not, we there is no judgment here. Whatever decision you've made you have made with yourself in mind with your business in mind, and you know, you best and you know your business best. So we've all had to make some very tough decisions over the past two months, decisions that we never thought that we would make with our own selves with our families with our businesses. And so whatever decisions you've made, that is okay,
Collin 17:09
it seems like many people these days are taking it upon themselves to speak out against other people's actions about whether they are doing something properly, or whether the decision that they decided to go with is the right or wrong one. And I agree wholeheartedly with Megan here and I want to make sure that you understand that and you hear that in that when you share stories or whenever you talk about your business it is in a safe place. And that you don't have to second guess whether it's appropriate to share something or not, or what kind of feedback you are going to get like. Megan and I are here to come alongside you cheer you on and to cheer you on. Like we want nothing more than to see every single one of you guys succeed
Meghan 17:58
and come out of this stronger
Collin 17:59
out Absolutely, that at the end of this, everybody is in a much better space, whether that's in their business, whether that's physically or emotionally, wherever that you come out better and Okay, there's still so much. I feel like we keep saying this free episode, but there's still so much that we don't know. And we're all making this up as we go along. I mean, that's something we've said almost from the very beginning. And this is yet another example of something else we all have to deal with. And these recommendations obviously, differ globally. And, you know, on that note, I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our listeners. Megan and I are insanely humbled and, and grateful for our United States bass listeners, our UK listeners, Australia, Australia. I'm just blown away by this. So thank you guys, for Listening and giving feedback and letting us know how you are doing, because it looks different across the globe. And it looks different from town to town even. And it's
Meghan 19:11
really cool to see and hear how other people are handling this. There are so many different types of pet care businesses. And so we really hope that you guys are enjoying these kitchen confession episodes, and also the interview episodes as well where you get to hear stories and experiences from other sitters around the world.
Collin 19:30
I know Megan, I learned so much from those two. So we are working on a couple different episodes coming out shortly. One of them is about lessons that we are all taking away from that. We would love to hear about lessons that you have learned from this. So you can email us you can call us with the voicemail that I still don't know
Meghan 19:55
636-364-8260 and our email his pet sitter confessional@gmail.com I do know that one,
Collin 20:03
and you can go to pet sitter confessional.com to see all those forms of contact, but we'd love to know your lessons, and then shoot us a voicemail. And let us know how you're doing. So we can include that on an upcoming episode as well. Because as Megan said, it looks different for everybody. And there's so many fascinating ways people are working and solving problems, being creative and being creative and coming together as a community that we want to be able to share those and share those stories and your experiences.
Meghan 20:33
Thank you for listening today. Bye
