067- Pet care and BLM Pt. 1
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Summary:
We share some of our thoughts on recent events and the Black Lives Matter movement. We have a special interview with Natasha O’Banion, owner of Walk with Renzo and Ruby, and Kylie Holliman-Rivera, owner of Fire Hydrant Pet Sitting. They sit down to discuss the BLM movement, what being an ally looks like, and what the pet care industry has to do with it. We end the episode with another “Question with a Pet Business Coach” segment with Natasha!
Topics on this episode:
Pet care and BLM
Conversation between Natasha O’Banion and Kylie Holliman-Rivera
Question with a Pet Business Coach
Main takeaway? Listen and get engaged.
Links:
Natasha O’Banion (Renzo& Ruby) and Kylie Holliman-Rivera (Fire Hydrant Pet Sitting)
Organizations:
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
The Southern Poverty Law Centre
Apps to find Black Businesses:
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
pet, people, community, clients, pet sitter, natasha, business, care, lives, kylie, black, walks, social media, question, pandemic, conversation, care providers, t shirts, pet sitting business, black lives matter
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Kylie, Natasha
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.
Collin 00:28
Well, hello, everybody and welcome back. We have a special episode part one today where Meghan I wanted to discuss some of our feelings and how we are processing the Black Lives Matter movement and possible ways that it relates to us in the pet care industry.
Meghan 00:47
Yeah, so it's been a very heavy week since we last talked with you. There have been lots of riots arrests, and just yesterday Sunday, the Minneapolis city council just said that they would disband the Police and instead launch a different system of safety. So that is pretty big news. And we may see ripple effects and other cities doing that as well. I wanted to read a portion of our email that we sent out last week we sent out an email every Friday kind of recapping the week and the episodes we've put out. And I thought you Colin had done a great job of doing a synopsis of the week, and kind of everything that had gone on. You had said, We condemn the actions of the police officer and grieve deeply for the death of George and the pain his family is left with. We support the healthy actions to learn, lament, and lend help to those who are hurting to bring about long overdue changes to the reception and perception of black Americans in society. We believe the pet care community can be the spearhead of healing. There is unhealthy rhetoric and actions on both sides that must be cut through to find peace and bring the community back together. As pet care providers, we work in communities and connect directly with people across all walks of life, giving us the opportunity to start conversations, learn from others, and start healing. The pet sitter confessional community is a place for all i thought that was beautifully well written, and something that we're going to be talking about the rest of this episode today and tomorrow's episode as well.
Collin 02:23
It's been a lot to process this whole thing. I know that for a lot of us, we were almost at our wits end with the COVID pandemic. And now we are facing some very uncomfortable times right now and moving forward. And I genuinely do believe that we as pet sitters can be part of that change that we can start conversations. We are so embedded in communities we work one on one with people, even though we don't like to admit it. We'd like to say We just work with pets. People trust us, they value our opinions. They look to us in these kind of times to see how we're doing. We just experienced this with COVID as the community coming together to support each other, reaching out to one another to see what they need. I don't want to see that loss. I don't want to see that torn back apart. We we're moving forward in such a wonderful way to become closer together and supporting one another, to let improper and poor and bad rhetoric and actions on both sides of this issue. Terrorists back apart is not moving forward and is not helping anybody.
Meghan 03:42
And so as pet care providers, what can we do during this time? So you may think about providing service to people who are at the riots, or who people who have been arrested. Think about the different avenues of ways that you can help during this time and provide your services
Collin 03:58
one simple yet very profound way to move forward through this is to look at your business's marketing materials. And does it represent the community that you are serving? Melanie Beatty Hanes or the virtual pet printer has put together a wonderful resource of graphics that better display the rich diversity that we all live in. And we'll include a link to that in the show notes so you can go check those out.
Meghan 04:21
So part one of the conversation today is a conversation between Natasha Oh, Banyan, you may remember her from Episode 59. She's also the pet business coach that we have on every Monday. She's pretty awesome. And with Kylie from fire hydrant pet sitting company, they have a good discussion about what this time has looked like and how the pet care industry has been affected by this.
Collin 04:44
I do want to say that some of us might not feel all that comfortable having these kinds of conversations or listening to these discussions. But now more than ever, listening is so important that in those times where we want to immediately react or respond, we need to even more. So listen and learn. That is not an easy thing to do. And I know it's not my first reaction, I usually like to respond to things quickly or get a word in or, or carry on the conversation in some way. And so I know I am really taking this time to just sit and listen so that others can be heard. Because right now, people aren't feeling like they are heard or have not been heard. So as pet sitters in the pet care community, I would encourage you to listen to those around you on both sides on all the sides of this issue, and just listen for a few moments to they know that you care, and that you are actually trying to take in and process what is going on.
Meghan 05:48
And so let's listen in to their conversation.
Natasha 05:51
All right, welcome. Today we have Nitasha Mannion, from walk with friends on Ruby Peck here, and we also have the amazing Kylie Kylie want to introduce yourself.
Kylie 06:00
Yes, I'm Kylee Holland Rivera with the honor of firefighter pet sitting on a California.
Natasha 06:05
Yeah, and we are here today because we got a lot of questions from you all on. Basically the whole light of what's going on right now with the movement with the Black Lives Matter, pet care providers, pet sitters, what can we do? How can we make a difference and how we can support you. So if we could be come on and kind of give feedback, and just a little bit of insight of kind
06:25
of,
Natasha 06:26
you know where we are and kind of guide you through right now. I feel like if you agree Kylie with the whole Black Lives Matter and how people can you know, kind of jump in. I always say the main thing is, don't say all eyes matter.
Kylie 06:40
Oh, gosh, now it's
Natasha 06:44
just like kick the don'ts out really quick. So the whole all lives matter and I don't see color. I would say those will be your first nose. Yeah, they seem innocent, but they are not. All lives matter kind of means that I get to pick and choose the part of you that You know, that I want to decide right? So saying we obviously know like all lives matter of course we want to equally be part of the all lives but until Black Lives start being put on a different platform that all lives is the reason why we say Black Lives Matter What's your thoughts on that Kylie
Kylie 07:18
you know it's bold Black Lives Matter movement it's just so many people like you said they all come back with all lives matter and it's like it's not about that or not saying anti white or anti corporate anti anything. It's just that blacks have been so you know, pushed to the side of us everything that it's just like, right now we have to take care of this
07:39
little moment,
Kylie 07:40
right? Not little but this thing right now, before we can move on tasks to get taken care of. And it's great to see all the light that's getting shed on it and how it's like we're almost on two weeks and search woods that and people are still going to momentum so on with one placement,
Natasha 07:54
which is awesome, because what I see right now is a lot of unity. You know, that's something that we didn't necessarily have like an 1960s so right now 2020 although this year has been like a blowout, you know, to say the least,
Kylie 08:07
I do everything Jumanji levels like, every month
Natasha 08:12
oh my gosh, my girlfriend sent me like this poem that said like basically 2020 is the year that we're cleansing everything out so although it may seem that everything is getting blown up this could be the year of unity this could be the year of cleaning out you know, diseases and the airflow and you know, restarting so I would say for me if it takes all of this to kind of get back clarity going into the next year then I'm all for it. So that's kind of what we wanted to sit down and do this video. Let's go into the topic of I don't see color. Can you talk about when you hear I don't see color and what that kind of means to our community. It's a little cringy
Kylie 08:50
because obviously we do see color it's a big point of it, you know, it's just it kind of hurts almost a little bit. It's just like you know, we are black and we don't want you to disappear. Miss that at all. That is part of who we are and what like what we are. But it's just like, just be respectful towards all cultures don't totally dismiss them.
Natasha 09:09
Absolutely. We had our girlfriend and our black and brown pet care group. And she was saying she comes from the Latino side. And she was telling us her story, you know, coming to America and living the American dream and come with very little in her pocket and being proud. And relearning this language. And it was like, we were like, almost in tears hearing this story. And it was so powerful, but that's what made her a strong Latina. And so we were to take that away for her and say, Hey, I don't I don't see the Latin part of you or I don't see that struggle. It's like, Whoa,
Kylie 09:39
that's kind of easy to see. It's part of what got me here
Natasha 09:44
today. Yeah, that's my story. You can kind of pick and choose. Mm hmm. Always explain it to someone you know, like, I'm a mother. I'm a business owner. I'm a traveler. I'm a wife, you know, you have all these titles. And if someone wants to say like, hey, Well, great. Let's talk about you being a mom or let's talk about about you being a business owner, but let's not talk about like that black part is kind of just saying, hey, I want to pick and choose the party that I want to talk about. And we love our skin. It's like Americans we love. So someone's like, well, you live in Russia. Now, we don't need to really, you know, you've been here for 30 years, you're not really American anymore. It's like, No, I'm very much American, even though I make your country that change. And so I know
Kylie 10:25
about our skin, we're very proud of it. It's gorgeous. And, you know, it's not supposed to be dismissed at all.
Natasha 10:34
Totally. Out of those two out of the way, I think that'll kind of help a lot of people. I think people just don't realize, you know, they say they think like, I don't see color, that means like you're equal to me, but I think I think it's good that we kind of touched on that so people know that is that's not the case. You know, when you are kind of touching this subject with your friends, you might want to leave that part out. And just just to be nice, and we all want to be nice. So let's kind of go into like the action steps we hear a lot. What can we do? How can we keep the conversation going? How can we open the conversation? And just when you're talking with your friends, let's see if we, you know, one of our white friends were saying, hey, what can I do? What advice would you give them on kind of how to approach everything?
Kylie 11:19
Well, thankfully, with social media nowadays, everyone is sharing a little bit of everything. So somebody is always posting links. So you know, there's ways where you can help bail out people's bonds, pay their bonds, pay towards George Floyd's family, Briana Taylor's family, anyone and you can support them with that, or you can support with the bail bonds or you can call your local city government to help them take action on and hopefully reducing police brutality out here. One of the big things is defunding the police. And it's just like, we need to make sure that our the budget the city's budget is going in the right direction. And you can take steps by calling your city doing whatever you exactly,
Natasha 11:57
I would say also very quick story that happened to me in the past. care community is we tried to collect, you know, black business owners, we try to get a list together. We got reached out by tour. Yeah. For a mystic reached out to me and she said, Hey, I want to get a list together. And I said, that is a phenomenal idea. And then after that, I was like, I don't even know these businesses myself. Get a list. Let's put them all together and let's find them. So I reached out to a lot of our pet care groups to kind of get that done. And unfortunately, we got a lot of pushback. You know, there was blood, sweat and tears. But the best part of that story, even though there was a lot of negativity, a lot of people did not want us to create that list, which is very sad and take care of history. The beauty of that is there were so many allies, so many people that was like, hold my beer, like that's not gonna happen. Hmm. I would say like if you see someone doing something racist or doing something that wouldn't make you feel comfortable, don't be silent. Of course, stand up. Say something, you can obviously do it in a graceful way. But the more the longer we walk on eggshells, the longer that we try to say, Hey, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Can it just be over? the black community kind of says, well, let's just stop killing us. Let's just keep making us. You know, let's make us feel equal. Let's stop, let's put us all on the same platform and all races have the ability to do that.
Kylie 13:25
It's the unity of it all all these different cultures, backgrounds, all coming together to help support this cause because it's, it's a bigger, it's bigger than us, you know, and it does it takes on everyone, all those allies to speak up.
Natasha 13:38
Oh, yeah. And if you've been just watching just social media right now. It's beautiful. Like I love it. I watch marches just in my lifetime and my parents have documentation from their lifetime. And there's all walks of life going on right now. So many races in my DC area. You know the way community they are showing up The game and it is an amazing to watch. And it's happening all over the world right now
Kylie 14:04
all over like in Berlin and I know in the Middle East and then I saw another stage come out I think it was like France or somewhere. It's just crazy how growing and spreading.
Natasha 14:16
And the thing is is like we don't want to keep the new cycle of Black Lives Matter. We want to stop the new cycle of Black Lives Matter. People say like I don't I'm sick of it. I'm sick of talking about it. We are too We are sick and tired of it.
Kylie 14:30
decades.
14:32
Oh my honor, we can just kill this off. Yeah, the better we're all gonna be so
Kylie 14:38
is our grandkids everyone could just be safer and just hopefully be more at Unity.
Natasha 14:44
One of the teachers that I know she sent me this link and she says things that I'm starting to think about now as a white mom. And she says how many other black books do my kids read? Who are their friends who are in their community? You know, almost like being really intentional divers. City, you and I are very blessed to be raised in a very diverse background. And so we kind of have that that leg out to kind of talk about the power of diversity. You know, we understand white culture, we understand black culture, we understand Asian culture, we understand the LBGT cutie community as well, just getting the education and making sure that you're aware is half the battle folks out there by black
Kylie 15:27
authors to help educate you. And there's so many resources that it's so easy to just go on your phone or computer or whatever, to just access those things.
Natasha 15:38
So right now, let's kind of talk about the pet care community. I got a lot of questions on how do I handle my black walkers or how can I make sure they feel safe going into homes houses, you know, they're not getting called the police not getting called on them or, you know, they're not seeing someone going in. It looks suspicious. So what are some advice you would give to kind of keep that The you know, your your employees or your staff safe?
Kylie 16:03
Yeah so I always make sure like during our consultations with our clients that we always make sure to let their neighbors know if there's anyone we need to be concerned about. And I just always like have them Park we have car stickers on our car so people can see very clearly Hey, we're the pet sitter dog walker we're here for Okay, we try to make wear reflective clear gear so everyone can see us we just try to take as many precautions as we can and making sure we're communicating
Natasha 16:28
as often as possible. Absolutely. And also I know some people are controversial on having the car stickers on so if you don't want to have the car stickers on your car, I would say me sure at least you do identify as you know your your shirt sort of holiday you know Comcast or Verizon What do you see the truck outside and if you don't see the check outside as Kaylee was saying, I'm Kylie was saying excuse me, then you obviously can see that we have the clothes on. Yeah. So keep your identification on yourself. But then also you can go a step further. Just as Kelly was saying, as well as tell the neighbors that live next to you, so maybe to to the left to to the right, and then also across the street, because those are the ones who are looking out the window.
Kylie 17:10
coldest facts, those are just you have to make sure everyone is very familiar with your presence and that you're the client, even they're taking their steps and letting people know like, hey, someone's coming inside my house. Exactly.
Natasha 17:25
And it's just like, you don't want your neighbors to be unsure. So you want to minimize any confusion as possible. I'm going out of town, I hired a pet sitting company. This is you know, the company they are, they're going to be coming in and out of house thing. And then they know it's like, okay, we're all on the same page. There's no weirdness going on. I mean, that's if the best way to keep them safe. Yeah. What would you do if you had a client that requested not to have like a black walker or such.
Kylie 17:55
Thankfully, we've not had that happen. But it's just I probably want to take the client. Unfortunately, if they had that big of a problem with that, I don't want to support that. Because it's like, I do care about the black community. And it's like, what are they saying with me even just because I've mixed, I still am black. And it's just like, I probably went for another
Natasha 18:15
client. I was asked that question as well. She said she had a client that just wasn't comfortable having, you know, like an African American pet care provider coming to her home. And I told her just to stick to the script as you would stick to it for anybody else. You know, it doesn't have to be race specific. You can just say, Hey, listen, we don't discriminate. Same thing, like when you go to like a corporate company, we don't discriminate is not part of our mission statement. So unfortunately, we wouldn't be the best pet care provider for you. Yep. And then that's it. Again, it's not to there's nothing to do with race at that point. It's just your mission and
Kylie 18:52
you can get in so much trouble for discriminating and it's like we are a business regardless of what field and we have to be professional with. Absolutely.
Natasha 19:02
So I think we touched on a lot of like the main, the main meat and potatoes of kind of being an ally, obviously being nice. treat everybody the way you want to be treated. Do your research, follow online. Don't be silent if you you know if you see something happening. Also your neighbors are following you on social media, they do see if you are posting something they do see if you're reposting something. I don't really I don't expect anyone to understand what our community is going through word for word to give a statement. Yeah, but I would almost mostly say you know, if you don't know what to say, or you don't know what to do, you can even raise something as small and say, Listen, I'm never going to understand what you feel in its entirety. But I'm learning. And that's really all we can wish for and ask for I'm learning. I'm keeping an open mind. I'm making sure that we're not doing a cycle in my community, in every home. That kind of takes that approach is minimizing the next Yep. Did you have another point you said you wanted to discuss?
Kylie 20:04
Yes, just like how the month is Pride Month. And you know, and they all this is, you know, Black Lives Matter movement, the pride movement, the me to movement, all of it is all it all circles around each other. It's all about treating everybody equally regardless of who you're into what you look like anything and, you know, it's just a matter of respecting and loving and bringing everyone together regardless of who they are, what they are or whatever.
Natasha 20:32
I couldn't have said it any better. Thank you so much for sitting here with me and having this conversation and bringing this out to our pet care community and everybody alike. This has been a great conversation. If you have questions follow up. You want to get to know us better. We are open arms to talk healthy and to make sure all walks of life are being heard. So you can find me on any of my social media Renzo de Ruby That's my Instagram is the quickest you can DM me and Kylie, how can we find you?
Kylie 21:05
Um, you can find us up at fire hydrant pet sitting on Facebook and Instagram. All right,
Natasha 21:10
you guys, well stay safe love, and we'll see you next time.
Collin 21:15
Again, I do want to point out, these conversations are hard. They are not easy. We as pet care providers, care for pets, we also care for people. And I really hope that we can all take this time to listen to these words being spoken, listen to these words being said and and take it to heart and not immediately respond and think how best that we can help because ultimately, that's what we all want to do. We just so desperately want to help people. Natasha and Kylie mentioned a lot of resources and those will be in the show notes and on our website. So please do check those out. Click through to those. start listening, start learning and start learning how we can help others around us help their voices be heard. As Megan mentioned, Natasha is the pet business coach that we like to have on on our Monday episodes and today is Monday. So we have another segment with her addressing the question about how do we continue to bring in new clients even though not many people are wanting to travel.
22:21
This is Natasha Mannion, pet business coach with start scale sale.
Natasha 22:27
On today's question we have that most people are not wanting to travel much right now. So how can I still get more clients isn't a great question. Right now, this is been a huge wake up call for the tech care industry for myself. I remember when I first started, I'm like, What can I do? It's recession proof. Right? We knew that there was a recession, we knew something could happen to shake our money out with recession. But nowhere do we know about pandemics. I mean, we did but we really didn't see it coming in our lifetime. So now that we've seen that a pandemic can happen And literally the business you worked on for the past 10 years will be taken from under you in 72 hours. We want to make sure that we are diversifying our business. The main thing I saw with this whole COVID pandemic is that it really showed the split line between wealth. If you have if you were one of those companies that saved up, you know, six to eight months of income, you weren't worried about what's
23:25
happening right.
Natasha 23:26
Now I'll ride the wave. I'll take a break. You know, I needed anyways, so let's just hang out and see where this happened. This frantic situation didn't happen so much. But for the businesses that didn't have, you know, the eight months savings, those were the businesses that were going, you know, in different directions, trying to figure out what's our next move. So now that we've seen as much as we can to prepare our business and to prepare a business for Business Health, I would say this is the point where I can say if I lose all my pet sitting clients What do I have neck? So nobody else wants to travel? Does that take me out of business? Good question. If I lose all my pet sitting Hi, and do I have any dogs to off? Good question. Health care providers, nurses, these are still clients that need service. If I don't have any pet sitting clients, if I don't have any dog walker, everybody's working from home now because this is a big thing people are talking about. Okay, now that we've seen that a lot of companies are successfully working from home, will they actually require a dog walker in the future? Where is this industry going to go in the next 10 years? So then you can say, Hey, what do I have to sell? We all know that Amazon is doing very well right now. So that's kind of a streamlined for us. That company is doing quite well. People are still shopping, they're still buying things online. Probably more than ever, because now they're getting ads in their feeds and they're getting targeted. So hey, why not buy something? I have nothing else. Do you want to say hey, maybe I can have a pet sitting business, a dog walking business, and maybe I can sell food or accessories or any brand niches online? How can I diversify my income that if one cuts off, the other will still pick up. It's kind of an old school saying I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket. The way I live my life all the way around, because if one thing gets caked up, I know I have something else in my back pocket to piggyback on
Kylie 25:29
so I
Natasha 25:31
would recommend if you are a new pet sitting space, focus on dog walking. A couple of my clients had their branding their name was you know, Susie's pet sitting business. So if I look online for a dog walker and I see only pet sitting or it's very specific with pet sitter, that might deter me. So make sure you are showing that you are pet care. I do pet sitting, I do dog walking, and I also do accessories you want to be Sure all of that highlighted on your front page of your website, and then also your social media branding should start reflecting all the different avenues that you sell. Your story should show your accessories that you're selling. It should show your dog walks that you're doing. Hey, did you know that Susie's pet care now does midday dog walks? Did you know that we now do grooming? Did you know that we now offer online training? So those are different ways to kind of show and make sure you don't hide? I know a lot of us will put some stuff on our website and say, okay, it's on my website now. But that's not enough. That's where you use your media as an outlet to kind of highlight that. Let me show you some clients that I've been training in the pandemic so far. Let me show you some things that I've been doing. So that's a great opportunity to start showing what you've been doing behind the scenes, or even what you're starting to work on. I had someone reach out to me a couple days ago and said, Hey, I want to start selling t shirt. Should I buy the T shirts right now and then, you know, start seeing what happens. I'm like, no Hell no don't do. She's like, all right, well, I'm just kind of testing I said, Great. Get your designs, get the things that you wanted to say cuz she's like, do you think this is cheesy? Do you think this food is saying on a T shirt? And I said, Ask your client, get that print out. We all know when we're making t shirts, they give us the mock print out first. Put that on your social media, Steve advice, say hey, we're taking pre sales pre orders. And if the advice then go ahead and order those t shirts. You see how that works. It's a win win. You don't spend any money right now. But you get to test your products before you actually launch them that answer that question, make sure you are diversifying it. Make sure you can handle it. Make sure your business is prepared to scale because if you start doing you know shirt orders or or you know accessories makes you or someone that's going to ship that kind of stuff out makes you have someone that wants to do midday dog walks, make sure you have someone that wants to be pet sitting so this is the time to actually write out your full marketing plan for the next 10 years.
Meghan 28:09
We really appreciate you listening to this episode. Part two is coming out tomorrow and it's going to be a conversation specifically with Natasha about the pet care industry focusing on how we can help and what we can do. During this time. I also wanted to mention something that we're doing on social media this week, every day this week, we are posing a new question about some of your favorite things. And so hopefully you guys have seen some of those already and have been able to contribute. We will be compiling those into a resource guide that will we will be coming out with shortly. If you would like to hear more from Natasha or for her to be your personal business coach. You can go to her website and sign up, use the code PSC 20 for 15% off any of her coaching. If you would like to get in touch with us, you can do so at Pet Sitter confessional.com or we are on social media at pet sitter confessional. And like I mentioned earlier we have an email list that we've started recently and you can get on that as well at our website pet sitter, confessional calm
