055- Kitchen Confessions
Summary:
On today’s podcast, we go through some of the changes happening to the pet care industry and how we can stay ahead of them. How can we use this time to make changes to both client and our own behaviors? What are some opportunities in marketing and what about the industry outlook?
Topics on this episode:
Changing behaviors
Changing Marketing
Changing outlook
Main take away? With change comes opportunity. No one knows where this will all land, but we can be hopeful and work towards positive changes.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitters, clients, pet, dog, market, bookings, expectation, talk, behaviors, conferences, megan, people, change, pandemic, sell, vacation, moving, work, online, services
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
00:17
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 00:21
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hey, guys, thank you for joining us on another episode, we really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to listen to us
00:37
when we hope you all are doing really well.
Meghan 00:39
And hopefully you are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel through this pandemic. We know that some people are starting to open back up. And that's great. So just know that the end is in sight.
Collin 00:50
And that end, as we've said many times is going to look different and so for everyone, for everybody and for every client, and so something that I wanted to bring up today was Since we do talk about how not just the process will look different, but so too will the end result. I wanted to have a discussion today around change, and what change can look like and change in a few different areas. And I was doing some thinking the other day, after Megan, I had had a big conversation. And one of the things that I hope will change is that through this pandemic, there will be a change in behaviors of not just clients but also ourselves. And that's twofold.
Meghan 01:35
What do you mean by that?
Collin 01:36
I hope that we can use this time to work on changing behaviors of clients. So that last minute Louise and bookings kind of become a thing of the past, where it's no longer an expectation that those things can happen. But the expectation is those things can not happen on the clients part.
Meghan 01:54
Yeah, because a lot of times clients I mean, even with us, they'll call us the night before ask For, like repeat clients, they'll ask us to watch their dog The next day, or we've even gotten requests at 7am for a daycare drop off at 8am.
Collin 02:14
Yes. And so using this time to start communicating the expectation that that's not okay. Because with a lot of the new CDC guidelines being put into place, we will have to watch capacities and watch how frequently and how much we are booked on any given day. And so encouraging and really pushing clients to book out as far in advance as humanly possible.
Meghan 02:39
Yeah, or if you're doing drop in checks and needing to sanitize things, and that takes a little bit longer than it used to. So you may not have the time allotted now to just drop and do an extra 30 minute drop in for a client.
Collin 02:52
Well, and then the second half of this change in behavior is for ourselves. I know that Megan and I can be bad about this. Taking a same day booking booked at 7am for 8am. And using this time to remind ourselves that it's okay to say no to those kind of requests. I hope that this elicits a change of behavior for pet sitters as well, in bolstering our resolve to say no to last minute requests, when Previously, we may have let them slide or may have been okay. It's not okay right now. And I hope that that kind of thing continues on in the future. Yes, I understand that. There'll be a need to be flexible, but not allowing those last minute clients to just overwhelm your life.
Meghan 03:41
Yeah, I think that's a good point. There's going to be a lot of different change that goes on things aren't going to look the same going forward.
Collin 03:50
Yeah, so I guess my two points are those kind of changes that I mentioned, were really about communication and boundaries and expectations for both yourself and the client. No, that's something that we've talked about before.
Meghan 04:03
Yeah. And even even on this podcast, we talked about respecting, you know, knowing your worth, and making sure that the client respects you and you respect them as far as time, but that that is going to look different now. And you're going to likely and we are likely going to be a little more strict with things and having to say no, a lot more because because life just looks different right now. And it will for a while.
Collin 04:31
Right it and I think the thing there is, is that we probably should have been saying no, a lot more before all of this happened. Now, this whole thing has forced us to say no more. And I hope that that gets ingrained. And that that two letter word doesn't sound more like a four letter word to us and to other people, right. That's right. That's what I'm going where I'm going with that.
Meghan 04:58
So yes, a lot of things going to change now, for the better, hopefully. And I think one of those is also marketing. And your you've been changing your services, what you've been providing, and so also who you're marketing to, is also going to be shifting.
Collin 05:16
And part of that, to me is also looking at the broader market of big events that aren't really happening, or aren't gonna happen for a long time.
Meghan 05:27
And that's a whole nother discussion on conferences and pet care conferences and are are they going to be happening? And if so, what does that look like with a large room with tons of people in it like, you know,
Collin 05:40
and so from the client side, if the clients, they're not going to weekend long sporting events, they're not going on week long vacations or to conferences of their own of you. We relied on those kind of bookings. We we were kind of built in beta into the whole expectation was that people would always be traveling, always be vacationing always be doing these things. That's not really going to happen anymore. Or if it does, to a lesser extent,
Meghan 06:10
probably at least through the summer and into the fall, if this COVID re emerges with the flu, this coming fall and winter,
Collin 06:18
I know that there are a lot of conferences already being canceled for June. They're just not having those. So it's going to be whoever the comfort level takes, and what they what they want to do. So because of that, as pet sitters, shifting, how we sell ourselves to people, most of us have the mindset of our of all of our fliers say, when you take a vacation, we're here we're here for you. We're Yes, we're here for you, we're here for you. If nobody's taking a vacation, that marketing statement isn't valid anymore, or at least relevant, relevant, right? So marketing to the little events, like what transitions and people's lives. People are still gonna have babies, that'd be a great time for them to drop your their dog off to your house for a couple days while people get settled. Or let's say they're getting new furniture delivered, and they don't want the dog around the house getting stressed out, bring them over, take them for a walk, you know, do a daycare, that kind of thing or painting or, you know, they have to attend a funeral for a day. And usually they would have just left the dog in the house and kind of stretched it a little bit. We as pet sitter, start speaking, those kind of events, and bringing those up in conversations and reminding people Hey, I can be there for you to
Meghan 07:38
write. This actually takes me back. It was 2013 I think we were going over to a client and they had gone over to Europe for a few weeks, but they were going to be selling their house as well. And so I was the one in charge of going over and taking the dog on a walk while the house was being shown and I understand that, you know, maybe a lot of clients won't be selling their houses now because of COVID and everything, but it's just another small thing that you can do like even had to sit in the car one time with a dog. Well, it was really hot outside and the dog was just done with, with being walked, but you know, I had to take care of the dog while they show the house,
Collin 08:21
but a great example of these kind of little life events are still going to be occurring, right? And we as pet sitters can still provide care and service in those where maybe we didn't before we weren't as active there are two however, that looks targeting
Meghan 08:38
those events and figuring out the kind of the niche within the niche that you can provide service for.
Collin 08:46
Right. Right. I think that's that's going to be really key to moving forward is finding those kinds of things and broadening your your market base of Okay, your services, no longer really For people who only take week long vacations, you can also include people who are showing their home or whatever. include that. In your conversations. Yeah,
Meghan 09:12
well, there's also a lot of talk right now of making sure that you are online, bringing your services online as much as possible. And whether that means you start providing clothing items with your logo on them to sell. So you open your own online shop, or getting connected with an online store that sells pet products or pet treats and funneling some of your clients that way. is being really creative during this time, and making sure that it's online as much as possible.
Collin 09:47
Well, and that reminds me as a lot is, as you said, most of us are shifting some part of our business part of our business online. One of those that we've discussed openly is been meet and greets. And trying to move those online into a zoom or FaceTime or whatever. I did want to bring up that if you are not familiar with zoom, or FaceTime, or how to run a meet and greet digitally and virtually, Megan, I would love to help you out. We'd love to play test or practice client for you, and help run through a lot of troubleshooting ideas or options or things that can come up during zoom calls, and what some of those questions can look like for you. So if that interests you, please do reach out and let us know and we'd love to get something set up for you. And then my final topic as far as change goes, is big picture here is changing the outlook and the perspective that we have moving forward in the industry. Because two things Well, a couple things are true here. I don't know Megan, if you've seen that the adoption and fostering rates have skyrocketed. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, no, that's really, really neat. We saw tons of news articles about people just cleaning out shelters and bringing them in dirt before the pandemic started doing lockdown. So there is a huge customer base there, that when people start going back to work, are going to need some sort of service, whether that's poop scooping, or daily walks or drop ins or whatever. The other thing that's true, is that not all pet businesses, and I really, this really hurts me and pains me to say, but not every pet business that is currently in operation is going to be here at the end of this.
Meghan 11:40
And we do know of some that have already closed down.
Collin 11:42
And they've closed for various reasons. Some people were on the fence already. And this was the final push that they they were looking for a way out. They're looking for a way to to shut it down. Other people were had to close kicking and screaming and there's the last thing that they were wanted to do. So we now have a situation where moving forward, we have more dogs and pets out there, but potentially fewer operating businesses
12:15
in certain markets. And so
Collin 12:20
while I do think it is true that pet sitting in the pet industry will look really different because not many people are going into work, that travel schedules are going to look different. There has been this elevated need at least perceived need right now that will hopefully open up and allow for more opportunities where we might not have seen those in the past.
Meghan 12:44
And that's all the more reason to emphasize with your clients that they need to be if they are still working from home. They need to be working on separation anxiety right now, like Kara talked about in Episode 48 about just stepping out of the house or 500 minutes, or 15 minutes and just being in your car, and allowing the dog to not be with you, for just a few moments is really important. And that's something that you as a pet sitter are going to have to likely deal with. When you start offering services, again,
Collin 13:16
well into people who were bringing in and adopting all of these pets Do they really know the situation that they're in with the with the pet that they brought in, because the dog went from the kennel, from the from the pound into their home, and they've never left? So they don't really know a lot of those behaviors of what that dog is going to look like in new situations and new scenarios. And the last thing we as pet sitters want to see are a flood of animals back into shelters. After all this starts to open up because they think oh, my dogs just freaking out. I've never seen the behaviors before I don't understand what's going on. So we as pet sitters can try, again when we start talking about different ways to market of that's an area we can start trying to fulfill right now. And another niche that we can market to Are you a new pet owner with an adopted pet, and getting ready to go back to work? You know what I bet that describes a lot more people right now. So that may sound really obscure statement. But that fits a ton of people these days I bet and isn't needed market to start working towards so part of this is trying to balance out the will there be less need for pet sitters in the future? Will there be more need for pet sitters in the future? And
Meghan 14:42
right because as the pandemic has shown us, some companies probably aren't going to go back to a brick and mortar store, especially tech companies that can do everything from the comfort of their home. Right. And so they have these, they have dogs that might need to be walked But maybe the people don't want their dog locked anymore.
Collin 15:03
So there's just so many factors clouding up that crystal ball of more people staying home. But more people adopting pets in which industries go back to quote unquote, normal, whatever that is, plus the added curveball of many pets and companies going out of business in certain markets. So I don't think that's all going to average out and workload will just be the same for everybody. And so that's a really important need to be reaching out to, if you know of sitters that are closing, and they don't want to be trying to partner with them, utilize their skill sets and allow them to strengthen you, if you're as you try and fight in and bring them on board so that you can be better for it,
Meghan 15:47
right? Because we always say community over competition, nobody asked to be in this position. Nobody wanted to be in this position. And that goes for all pet care providers. And so we're all trying to figure this out. out and kind of crawl our way through this. So if you can help other pet care professionals during this time, that will not only speak volumes for you and your business, but that's kind of just the kind human thing to do is helping people right now,
Collin 16:15
not letting everything else drown out someone else's humanity.
Meghan 16:20
And these are just three ways that the pet care business is going to change moving forward, there are so many others
Collin 16:28
and the unknown ones too,
Meghan 16:30
right. And so just keeping in mind that behaviors for you and your clients are going to change how you market is going to change. And then also the climate of Are there going to be the supply versus demand going forward. If you can think of any other ways that the pet care industry is going to change moving forward, we would love to get your feedback. You can reach us on Instagram or Facebook at pet sitter confessional Also you can email us at feedback at pet sitter confessional calm, or we even have a phone number. Don't know it. 636-364-8260 I do that? Sure you did. We have a couple wonderful interviews coming up for you guys this week. If you would like us to talk about anything specific or if you would like to us to interview a specific person, you can let us know and we'd be happy to bring them on or share that topic. Absolutely. Thank you. Bye.
