058- Lessons from Covid-19
Summary:
What are some lessons we can take away from how Covid-19 has impacted our business and us personally? We sit down to discuss some of the lessons we're seeing and experiencing. They'll look different for everyone, so let us know what lessons you're taking away from all of this!
Topics on this episode:
Keeping an emergency fund
Constant communication
Importance of pivoting and being adaptable
You're already more resilient than you know
We know what down time feels like
Move online in new and exciting ways
How vital community is!
Main takeaway? Covid-19 has taught each of us something extremely valuable as business owners, and personally. The key is to make sure we don’t forget that lesson!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
pet sitter, business, pandemic, lesson, clients, people, sitters, moving, resilient, continue, money, pet, forced, services, crucial, budget, feel, happy, pivot, spending
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:17
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode. We thank you so much for joining us today. Hope you've been well. Before we get started. I did want to mention something it's kind of silly. But when you guys interact with us on social media, probably about 95% of the time it's me.
Collin 00:45
This is a true confession right now, isn't it?
Meghan 00:48
Well, I just you know, I want our listeners to know that, like, you aren't super active on social media, you're more than the editing the podcast and doing the interviews and All that and I'm more the social media person, so
Collin 01:03
and you do a really good job.
Meghan 01:04
Well, thank you. So I just wanted everybody to know that it's most likely going to be me that you're talking to.
Collin 01:10
So everybody say hi to Meghan. Okay.
Meghan 01:12
Anyway. So today's topic is about lessons that we have learned from COVID-19, this crazy pandemic that we've been in for the past few months. And I wanted to put a caveat on this and say that the pandemic is not over. And people are starting to get back to work. But this is going to be kind of part of our lives now for at least the foreseeable future for the next couple years, or until they get a vaccine where people feel safe with going out and interacting as kind of we did to the level that we did before, things are going to look different moving forward. And so these are just some of the lessons that we have come up with up to this point up to this point, right, there will be a lot more lessons that will come about
Collin 01:57
as we learn more and grow and things change moving forward.
Meghan 02:00
So the first one I have is keeping an emergency fund pitch. Yeah, and not spending clients prepaid booking money until services have been rendered. If you listen to the first couple episodes of our podcast, we had explained that we started dog sitting and we started pet sitting and because of a Dave Ramsey class that we took, and if you don't know who Dave Ramsey is, he's this money Guru is finance guy who really emphasizes saving, and paying down any debt that you have in a smart and efficient way. And so he emphasizes keeping a six month emergency fund, I think starting off with $1,000 in an emergency fund, and then building your way up to six months,
Collin 02:44
whatever your expenses are per month, and this is both personal and for business.
Meghan 02:49
Right? And so because of this pandemic, it's really forced people to look at their finances and look at their budget and see where they can cut back where they have been spending a little bit too much, and where they need to be saving more. And so, going forward, always having that savings because you don't know when an emergency will happen,
Collin 03:11
right and six months sounds like an awful lot, especially when you sit down to do your budget and look at your books, and then see this big number at the end. And it may seem kind of hard, or almost impossible to ever achieve that. But through doing things like budget, trimming, and looking at costs versus cost and expenses that you have, you can build yourself up to that over time.
Meghan 03:33
And another part of that was not spending the clients money before the services have been rendered. So a lot of sitters would have the clients prepay beforehand and then use that money to pay for expenses like if you had a building or just upkeep for your business, right? But that's not necessarily the wisest choice because as we found out with the first 70 to 96 hours of this pandemic, everything shut down real quick Clients canceled. Very everything. Yeah, everything and very fast. And so some sitters, we're having to kind of pull from extra coffers or
Collin 04:09
borrow money to pay back clients who are asking for a refund. And, yeah, I know everybody's business is structured differently. And there will be periods and seasons where you operate more of the needing to spend prepaid money for current expenditures. But looking ahead, how can we structure our businesses so that we don't have to rely on that kind of spending habits as a business? Right, once you start looking at the budget and budgeting for a set period of time, you can get into more of a rhythm moving forward.
Meghan 04:47
And the same goes for gift cards. I've said this before, but a lot of people were buying gift cards during this time to help their sitters out and so not spending that money right now, because or
Collin 04:57
at least all of it
Meghan 04:58
right or at least all of it. Because, you know, the bookings may cancel again in a few months if people aren't confident,
Collin 05:08
I will say that a lesson that I've taken from this to tack it on to that is having really straightforward, plain laid out and communicated cancellation policies and sticking to them, that if we, if you were operating in an extent to where it was just whatever, and people could cancel, and sure for this time, I'll give you 100% back, or maybe not next time, getting all this nailed down and ironed out. So that all of the expectations are laid bare, when cancellations are happening.
Meghan 05:40
And so with that, another lesson is communication. And it is the key to maintaining client relationships. We have known in the past that clients expect updates or would like updates pictures, how their dog is doing on the walk or overnight whatever, but we really learned This pandemic, that is the key at the beginning. And even still now there was so much unknown, but many pet sitters sent out emails, and made social media posts with information about how their businesses were responding to the pandemic. And we saw a lot of that and that was awesome. Many sent messages about if their business was going to shut down or not do and also about how pet owners could help them through this time, like I just mentioned, with gift cards, and then now we're seeing sitters, posting and emailing clients about what it looks like on the back end with having to take extra precautions, sanitize everything, social distance, all of that. And you guys have done an excellent job with keeping your clients up to date with the new policies and the new procedures. And so that's going to be crucial moving forward as well. So keep reassuring your clients that you've got this and you will continue to be there for them continue to communicate with them and Let them know what's going on. So that so they can be reassured that it's okay to leave their pet with you.
Collin 07:08
So that lesson being, being in a habit and building good communication skills with your clients, if a lot of times beforehand, most of the time when we were communicating with our clients, it was mostly when the dog was in our care, or updates for schedules changes coming up. This has really taught everybody the importance of keeping people in the loop in real time as changes occur. And doing that in a clear, concise, effective manner. And that hopefully, these kinds of muscles that we're all building with communication we continue to work on after this subsides or goes down to a level that's more manageable, all throughout a lesson being the importance as pet sitters, to be educated on things that aren't necessarily directly related to pet care. This has taught and shown me the importance of just being generally aware of a lot of pain, gentle things, because your clients are going to come to you for questions that aren't in your lane so to speak, Like what? Like, guidelines for social distancing? And how if you're a pet sitter, now, all of a sudden, we've all become hyper aware of how close we can or can't be next to somebody. And I don't really have good examples of how this will translate moving forward. But this has just been the site Geist on everybody's brain. And we are all so much more educated on things that aren't what we do day in and day out. And it's helping our business because we are able to communicate changes to our clients. We are able to take in a lot of information and see okay, how does this affect me, does it not? If it does affect me? How can I Adaptive change to it. And then I tell my clients about that.
Meghan 09:04
Yes. And so we have had to the big word pivot our services during this time. A few weeks back, I had asked our followers on social media about lessons they have learned. And if they could come up with one word that describes what they've learned. And that was pretty cool to see. I'm going to create a word cloud later today for those words that you guys put out there, but my word, I think, is pivot. And we really had to do that during this time, because the services that we offered before were not available anymore, essentially for the majority of the services. And so we had to pivot we had to figure out new and creative ways to continue to make money. And that looked different for everybody. Poop scooping errand services, online stores. You had to pivot your services, you had to pivot your marketing, we talked last week about what some of the changes are going to look like going forward. And one of those was marketing. And so marketing to a different kind of niche than you were before.
Collin 10:13
And part of that pivot was not just pivoting to whole new services, but pivoting how you rendered your current ones. So that was a quick change everybody got on was okay, now I've got to have masks. And now I've got to have gloves. And now I've got a socially distance. And now this is how I do drop offs. And we were all in real time figuring out how to work in these new pieces, and how to make our business work with putting all that puzzle back together with brand new pieces this time. But it was really awesome to see right, how quickly everybody got on board as a pet sitting community and how people continue to be able to give services
Meghan 10:58
and so moving forward Continuing to pivot,
Collin 11:02
many of us who have been in the business for five, 9, or 12 years, whatever, may have felt like we were kind of in this rut and may not have been able to think outside the box.
Meghan 11:15
Well, and a lot of us were burned out
Collin 11:16
a lot of us burnout. This forced us to think outside the box. This forced us to get outside of our comfort zone, because literally nothing was or even still is comfortable for us to operate. And when we're in that space, we're able to do some pretty cool and awesome things as business owners. That's a lesson that I hope that we continue to move forward to is that was something along the same lines as Megan of continuing to be adaptable. And being comfortable with change. We were all forced to change. Now that we've undergone that the next time we can intentionally change and go in a direction that we want to as opposed to being forced to, and that should be very liberating and freeing and exciting for us
Meghan 11:59
because it's your business. So you can do what you want,
Collin 12:02
right? Yeah. If, if you were sitting there thinking, ah, I've just got to keep doing the same thing. I don't know, I've tried everything. Well, I guarantee you didn't try a global pandemic. And now that we've all again, flex that creative, adaptable muscle, we're all better for that. And that should be something we pursue forward.
Meghan 12:28
And it goes to show just how resilient we are as pet sitters, that we were going along doing our thing and this thing, this pandemic wiped out our industry virtually overnight. And we have been so resilient with staying in the game, and fighting this thing and coming back stronger.
Collin 12:52
That's the thing about resiliency is you are already way more resilient than you have ever Unknown or ever will know, a lot of us feel as though we can't do certain things or we don't know how we'd handle certain certain situations. This situation should show to you that you are more resilient than you ever thought possible. That should be comforting to you. Because you're still here. You're still here. As a person. Your business may look really different. But you, you pet sitter are still here. That's resiliency.
Meghan 13:33
Also, we now know what it feels like to have nothing to do. So before the pandemic, a lot of us were burned out. Our schedule was jam packed, we over committed ourselves. We said yes to everything. We did not take time for ourselves. So remember this time when you when we start to feel burned out again. Remember methods you used To make yourself happy during this time, whether that was Netflix, whether that was sitting and watching the sunset, whether that was exercising, whatever you did during this time to make you happy
Collin 14:13
and joyful
Meghan 14:14
and joyful, make a list of those things right now of what made your heart happy and what fills your tank during this time. Keep that note handy for when you feel overcommitted again, because it will happen. There will come a time whether it's six months down the road, two years down the road, whatever, that you feel burned out, again, that you feel you have stretched yourself too thin. Take out that list, whether it's on a pen and paper or on your phone and look at it and think about it. Remember that there were things that made you happy and do those things.
Collin 14:49
Yeah, I really like the idea of making a post it note and making about 40 copies of it and scattering it throughout your entire life. Having a couple in your car in your wallet. it in your billfold on your mirror, in your phone case, at your desk on your computer screen, having that list everywhere as a reminder of 2020. So by this time next year, when we've had bookings back to back to back to back to back back to back to back. Again, you have these tools now in your tool belt in your toolbox that maybe you never thought were possible to have. Because, as you mentioned, Megan it was remind yourself of that, that's, that's really the lesson to take away from this is to be reminded of what we're going of how you got through this. And part of that, for me is a lesson that I'm going to take away from this is what I really value and find important in life as a business owner and for our family is I don't think or I hope in five years. I will not be complaining about having to stop at a red light or That Starbucks got my drink wrong, or any of those things that I hope that I am, I have a list of things that I am thankful for and that I can keep things in perspective of just what life looks like, and just how thankful I am for the little things that are still here,
Meghan 16:17
and how thankful we are for our community, our pet sitter community, our local community. And a lesson that we were taught during this time is we need to support our community more. And that's not just other pet sitters. It's other small businesses in our local area, because ultimately, it's a win win. If we support them, they will likely support us and not to view it as a selfish act as they aren't obligated to respond or repost, repost our content or anything, but being a kind human and helping others. And there were a lot of sitters that did this on their social media reposting different restaurant menus or the way that other Pet boutiques or having sales or things like that what
Collin 17:03
businesses were still open and how to support them during this time? Yeah, yeah. And I think for me an aspect of the community, is that just a, it exists. There is a community around you. None of us exist in a vacuum. None of us are by ourselves, though it felt like it a lot of times,
Meghan 17:22
especially those first couple weeks,
Collin 17:24
right. Yeah. And that this has been a lesson, I hope for all of us that there is a broader community out there locally, nationally, globally. That is behind you is backing you and it will do things necessary to help support you and to to encourage you through thick and thin.
Meghan 17:48
Earlier I talked about pivoting your services and your marketing and your business. Another aspect of that was moving online. And so a lesson going forward is trying to utilize The digital space that we call the internet's as much imagery as much as possible. So if you don't have a website, get one, if you don't have an Instagram or Facebook page, make one. It's, it's, I think it's really going to be crucial moving forward. Because yes, word of mouth is huge for many of us, especially if we're a one woman shop or a one man shop, it's, it's crucial. But because of this pandemic, the world sped up about 10 years, in terms of digital awareness and content. People are working from home more than ever, and I really think that's going to continue, it's going to change the space of everything, basically. And so making sure you have an online presence as in as many places as possible is really going to be crucial.
Collin 18:52
And part of that, too is is having multiple and varied avenues and outlets for communication and connection with others. Write that the more places you are, the more places people can find you. And the more places you can connect with people who are like you or or in similar situations, it's not just about marketing here, it's about connecting with people mentioned, you mentioned that world's sped up about 10 years, I can just say from, from our experience, when we started just this podcast at the end of 2019. When we would bring people on to be interviewed, I had to go through three or four paragraphs to describe what zoom was, and how to use it, and the ins and outs of it. Now, when somebody comes on, I just have to say we use zoom period, and they understand what that and they understand. And so as a society, which we did, we took a huge lurch forward, and that's good, but more people are aware. And as as pet sitters and as business owners, there are new opportunities and new ways to connect with other people. And more people with that,
Meghan 20:04
with everything going on the world will likely never be the same again. And for the weather that's for better or worse, figure out what lessons you have learned from all of this, and how those lessons can help you move forward and upward in your business. So not only in your business, but also personally as well what lessons you have learned. And we would love to hear from you about what you've learned during this time, what lessons you're going to take from this and what lessons you've utilized in your business to help you continue to grow and prosper in your pet business. You can leave us a voicemail at 636-364-8260 or you can find us on virtually any social media platform, and we would love to hear from you. Thank you guys so much for listening today. Bye
