090- Knowing Your Worth
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Summary:
We share responses from last week’s episode and discuss knowing your worth. We take a holistic approach to understanding that you are valuable and your business provides a value to your clients. Natasha O’Banion answers the question, “How do you know when to delegate and actually stick to it?”
Topics on this episode:
Follow up from Industry Standards episode
Three components of knowing your worth
Setting boundaries
Saying “NO”
Yes, price accordingly
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Knowing your worth is much more than just setting your prices. It’s about a holistic endeavor to see your own value and know you ARE worth it.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, business, pet, prices, people, boundaries, raising, services, work, dog, feel, delegating, emails, pet sitter, sitter, include, hiring, talked, life, Meghan
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Meghan
This episode is brought to you by pet sitters associate. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode. I can't believe it's Episode 90. We are almost to that three digit mark. That's really scary. and exciting
Collin
and very exciting. Yeah.
Meghan
We thank you so much for joining us today. We have a whole back catalogue 89 episodes of topical interviews and episodes. So we hope that you go back and listen to some of that we have amazing guests on and we've talked about COVID the past few months and how things are really changing with that?
Collin
Yeah impacts to the industry and how people have been adjusting across the board and and in across the globe to.
Meghan
So we wanted to do a little bit of a recap from last week.
Collin
Yeah. Last week, we talked about setting industry standards. And we aren't necessarily calling for any particular standards to be set. I think our call to action is actually that everybody's voice should and needs to be heard when these discussions come up, because they will come up. And whether we're prepared for it or not. Bringing everybody's voice to the table will help make these discussions will help make these decision processes just be so much more robust and help benefit more people in the end. And we actually did get some feedback from people that we wanted to discuss here. Before we dive into today's main topic.
Meghan
Keegan from my pa partners called and said, You asked for our thoughts about regulations in the pet industry, and my biggest thought about it is that there aren't any at all. And that includes when it comes to things like pet food and pet One of the leading problems in our industry is that there is no non for profit regulatory body. The few groups who do exist, they have some kind of pole in terms of what pet nutrition looks like, what ethical training looks like, they have all a financial stake in promoting their ideas. Money is being made through the promotion of ideas. And when money is the root driving force behind what good pet care looks like, at the end of the day, good pet care will always be what makes someone money. That's one of the big reasons why I am involved in working towards unionizing workers so that we can unite and build a system of standards. That's based on what we know is right and ethical as opposed to what we need to do in order to make it right. As long as animals are something that we make money off of as opposed to something that we do because it's the right thing to do. There's always going to be a risk of putting money for ethics.
Collin
Keegan brings up some good points here as far as having a decentralized agency or group of people that are looking across the board across multiple interest groups, to see what really would make everything better. And again, this gets at the heart of what Megan and I would like to see happen, people for and against people from all walks of life, lifting up their voices to have themselves be heard, so that when these regulations do start being discussed, or when they are needed, we all understand where the industry as a whole is coming from.
Meghan
And also Beth, from finicky cat sitting said we need to be sure we are not jumping too quickly into regulations or licensure. With the advent of the app services, it is clear some minimum standards are required. those standards should protect the consumer pet and business owner, like most professional sitters, we look to constantly improve our skills and understanding of the pets we care for. The question is, what's the minimum any person should have?
Collin
Yep. And that is at the heart of this entire discussion. It's not only making sure that everybody's voices are heard, but also, what on earth doesn't minimum look like? How does that get decided? Who gets to work on deciding that and how is that applied equally across the board, and Megan, I don't have any The answers for that.
Meghan
And obviously this is going to be an ongoing discussion.
Collin
Yeah, that so that discussion about minimums is really where I think all of us are trying to understand where we fall. And as we bring more voices to be heard about these standards, and have them listened to and discussed, that way we can, as a whole industry decide what that minimum is, and may and I obviously don't have those answers, and I don't think any one person does. That's why it's so important to have everybody at the table so that we can decide how to apply these, how to begin working on them. We really appreciate getting this kind of feedback. And that's what we enjoy seeing. We enjoy seeing this discussion and being able to follow up and report back to you all what we're hearing and how this discussion is going. So if you have other things you want to have heard or listened to do you want to leave us a voicemail so we can play it back on air, we'd love to be able to do that.
Meghan
Our phone number is 636-364-8260 And now on to today's topic, which is knowing your worth Knowing your worth is a common phrase that we hear a lot in business and particularly in the service industry. We don't want our clients taking advantage of us. And we want people to recognize the great service that we provide.
Collin
Usually this conversation focuses on prices and that people don't feel like they are either making enough or don't feel like they can charge what they would really like to. But I think it really has a lot more components than just prices.
Meghan
Yeah, there's really three basic things. The first one is boundaries. The second one is knowing when to say no. And the third one is raising your rates within the first topic of boundaries. Everyone needs them. If you are breathing, you need to have boundaries. That could be check everybody that could be setting business hours, or not giving your clients your personal phone number and instead setting up a Google Voice number, which is really easy to do and it's free. It could also mean not turning on your phone while you're on vacation, which can be really really hard. speaking from personal experience, studying business hours means that When an email comes through, or a phone call comes through, you don't need to respond if it's outside of those business hours,
Collin
which is, as Megan said, it's really hard. We all want to respond immediately. Because we like providing service. We don't like setting, having things set off on the side where we're not attending to them setting business hours, and is really one of the first most powerful things we can do to make sure that our boundaries are healthy, and that we are able to operate our own lives and not be consumed by our business.
Meghan
So why do you need them to stay sane, most importantly, to stay grounded in this business? Because burnout is rampant in this business. And it's the number one reason why pet care providers get out of the business because they're just they can't handle it anymore.
Collin
And I think it's one of the number one topics that pet sitters and pet care providers discuss on a normal day is how tired they are how fed up they are how they really need a break. Maybe you don't feel like you can take multiple days off at a time. But one first really healthy step is to set up those business hours, those hours of operation where you're going to respond to things and you're going to be active.
Meghan
And obviously this topic is couched in us being at very different stages right now, all across the world and providing different services because of COVID. So take what we're saying with a grain of salt in terms of burnout, because not all of us are experiencing that right now.
Collin
What business hours help do is help remind you on a daily basis that you're separate from your business. You are not your business and your business is not you and that allows yourself when you do that, to step back and take a break when you need it.
Meghan
You can take a break, obviously, the past four or five months has shown us that many of us need more breaks because we've Some of us have really enjoyed the kind of extra time that we've had to devote to other things, whether it's business or personal,
Collin
right. It was an honor Really unwanted break. But it's a break nonetheless, that we got. And I really do hope that we've been able to see the plus side in that and just how valuable and How refreshing it has been,
Meghan
you may have boundaries outlined on your website or in your contract. But let's say a client contacts you for a last minute request, you can then point to what you have outlined in your contract and say, I do not accommodate last minute bookings because either you know, I require a meet and greet or whatever, but it's in your contract where you can just point to it and say, here it is, I have this is my policy.
Collin
And part of these boundaries is maybe you're not wholly comfortable, not looking are not listening to anything at all. When you're off business hours, you can still look at things as they come in and decide what needs to happen to them when you're off business hours. So that if you get a last minute request, after you have quote unquote, technically closed, you can still be able to address that because that may be an emergency or maybe something that has to be addressed immediately. It's just part of making that mental conscious decision, does this need to be addressed now does it not need and move on and
Meghan
it's respectful of your client as well, because then they know and have expectations for and how you run your business and how it's managed.
Collin
It's consistency. They know when to expect responses, they know when to not expect these kind of responses from you.
Meghan
So think about what boundaries are best for you, or your business and how you want to implement those. If you're setting up a new rule, or new policy that the client should know, send out a mass email or leave a little note at their home. Regarding the new rule, you may include an expiration date or not, but you really don't owe your clients anything as far as an explanation of why you are instituting this policy, because Business is business and they don't necessarily need to know anything about your personal life.
Collin
But part of that communication is and why we encourage that is because you want to be kind and respectful to them. So if you can communicate it in a way do find necessary, do that. If you don't feel like you need to, that's fine too. It's your business Treat it as such.
Meghan
And so there are two types of boundaries. The first one is for you, this can be only accessing social media one hour a day, it can be practicing yoga, or working out five days a week or whatever you choose, or hiring an office assistant because you are so overwhelmed with the day to day operations that you just can't handle it.
Collin
Right, I think we should not discount that one. As much as most people do. When we typically think of hiring, a lot of us immediately jump to the field staff people doing the walks to people doing the drop ins, but that back end support as we've talked about on some recent episodes, including with the pet gal, most recently that back end support really helps alleviate a lot of the stress and of the headache end of the time consumption on a day to day basis of operations. And then I would also add to this a boundary to set for yourself is you need to decide whether you are okay or not okay friends On your personal social media accounts, we've had these requests come in. And we have decided to allow a few people to follow us that we regularly care for their pets. That's mostly because of the relationships that we're building with them and the scale at which we operate. If we were to increase the number of clients that we're taking in or dealing with on a regular basis, that would have to stop because we wouldn't be able to accommodate all of them. And we'd like keeping our personal side personal and having that boundary, pretty clearly defined.
Meghan
And the second type of boundary is for your business. Maybe you choose not to work weekends or holidays. Again, the work does not own you, you own the work. Be consistent, is the most respectful way for you as a person and also to your client. And it's really hard not to respond to that email at 11pm at night, but once you have set those rules, those boundaries stick by them.
Collin
So remember, here we're talking about these emails that come in, in after our business hours have quote unquote clothes for most of us, if you respond to it, you're actually training your clients to expect you to be available and that that is a kind of behavior. That's okay.
Meghan
Respond at times that you want to be responded to and will be available to respond every day or every time they contact you. Before we get into the rest of the episode of knowing your worth, we wanted to give a quick shout out to pet sitter associates as pet care professionals that your clients trust you to care for your furry family members, pet sitter associates is here to help. For over 20 years they have provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry or just want to make your passion for pets into a profession. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is a perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet sit LLC comm you can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional To get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com.
Collin
So the second component of knowing your worth is knowing when to say no.
Meghan
And full disclosure here, I am really bad at this. I just want all the dogs and all the cat dropins. So I really need to listen to that voice in my head, which is calling
Collin
Hello voice in your head
Meghan
a little more. You cannot nor should you want to sit every single dog in your area
Collin
as much as you may want to
Meghan
write it's really not feasible or healthy. So say no to a client could mean when you don't feel safe. It could be a dog that is untrained or a client's house is really messy and you don't feel comfortable or safe going over there. trusting your gut is really important when you don't want to take on that client. Just Say No
Collin
Yeah, it you can come up with a number of reasons of when you should say no and Megan, you touched on some really good ones there when you don't feel safe, when it's not a good place to be. When you're busy, or maybe you just you're done for the week and you don't want to take any more on that time. Those are all okay and should be reasons for you to say no. And we give you complete absolution to say no, as many times as you need to, to make sure that you are okay.
Meghan
Also saying no to yourself, when you are starting to feel burned out,
Collin
saying no to those emails that come in saying no to adding more things to your plate, whether that's for your business or whether that's outside of your business.
Meghan
Because again, it's not healthy for you or your business to say yes, all the time,
Collin
right? We all need breaks. We all need downtime, and saying no is the most powerful thing that we can do that we can take control of to give us that time back.
Meghan
Also saying no when it doesn't fall in line with the priorities and the goals that you have set for your business.
Collin
This is really good.
Meghan
Like if the client doesn't match your company's values. Are they unkind to you? Do they berate you do they have a dog That you suggested really needs to be trained and they just don't want to write,
Collin
look back at your company's core values that you've written out that you have there in black and white. And part of the assessing whether you take on a client or not is comparing the client to those values. Do they treat your staff? Well? Do they take care of have you do they? Do they listen to you and you give advice? Are they open to correction? All of these things come into play. And and can be a deciding factor and whether you say yes or no to somebody,
Meghan
and it really it comes all down to priorities. So if your goal is to scale your business, so you can only work one hour a week, which would be pretty cool. Get rid of anything that doesn't align with that. And yeah, that includes clients. If keeping the needy client that demands constant attention or an immediate response means that you don't take a break, then say no to that client. Keep your goals in mind, have priorities for your business and money. Number that saying no is a good thing.
Collin
It's part of being in business, we say yes, sometimes to get the things we want. We also say no sometimes to get the things that we want.
Meghan
Yeah, it really allows you to say yes to what you want and be doing the things that make you happy. The third component of knowing your worth is raising prices, which not a lot of people are comfortable talking about, or really wanting to do.
Collin
Right. And there's, as we discussed several times, it's there's never it never feels like there's the good time to do this never feels like it's the best or most opportune time to raise prices. And that's just part of being the kind of people that most pet care professionals are. As we care for pets. We love to care for them. We feel like we could quote unquote, do it for free. So it's especially hard, so it never feels like a good time. So let's talk about when you might want to raise your prices, but honestly, really anytime work and yes, that does include Right now, during a pandemic, in actuality, we should always be thinking about raising our prices so that you can pull the trigger quickly, too many times we delay, we delay, we delay, we delay. And we find ourselves in this corner where we've so undercharged for so long, that we don't want to make this big jump, because it's scary. We're afraid of losing clients, we're afraid of isolating certain people. And so we never make that move. Being able to quickly decide when the time is right will allow you to do that effortlessly.
Meghan
So starting small is really important. Not everyone, and most people wouldn't be comfortable with doing a 50 or 60% increase
Collin
that's terrifying just to hear that.
Meghan
So to combat that and do a 10% gradual increase over time for all of your clients unless you want to grandfather some of them in
Collin
this again, we're trying to do small steps, not just for the clients sake, but also for your sake. That's the biggest hang up as many clients would be just fine paying you double your rates because be real. They love you. They love the work that you do. And they genuinely want to make sure you're taken care of most clients want that most clients would be okay. But it's in our heads where this hang up comes up. Because we're afraid of people saying no to us. We're afraid of losing clients, these small increments these small steps, help get over that hurdle.
Meghan
Make sure though, that you are communicating the entire process to your clients. Because really, the only wrong way to raise your prices is a huge change overnight without any communication at all. That's not kind and you just said this, but we always fear losing clients, when that may happen. One or two may go away. But you have to remember that those are probably the low end clients that don't really truly value the service that you provide or respect to
Collin
you. Right that that's where this thing comes into is whether they respect you and see the value of the services that you offer. You know, your value you Know the awesome service that you provide. And that's were meeting and raising prices to accommodate that to reach that level, we have a hard time balancing that just being honest, like that is a hard thing that many of us struggle with is seeing the value of work that we provide, and then matching our rates accordingly.
Meghan
So know that the clients who stay see and trust, you know, you provide an excellent service, and they're going to keep coming back. raising prices can sometimes be viewed as a way of getting, quote, better clients, but people who pay more still may have the same or even different expectations than those who are willing to pay less.
Collin
Right. So I think we hear that a lot of get better clients by raising your prices. Well, people are people and just because somebody is willing to pay twice as much doesn't mean they're a better person or not, or whether they are going to read stories back to your time or not.
Meghan
Which goes back to the same No,
Collin
exactly. So you're still gonna have to say no, even as you raise your prices, and that's okay. That's part of the Healthy, that's part of operating in a great way.
Meghan
Because then in theory, if you raise your prices, you are working less hours for more money. And so marketing your services accordingly so that people can see the value that you provide. There are many different reasons to raise prices. Some of them could include when you've hired someone, and you need to meet the new overhead that you have. Also, when you haven't raised your prices in a long time, I know a lot of people were planning on a June 1 raising of prices. But because of COVID and the pandemic, they chose to put that off until January, or just kind of a wait and see thing. It could also include when you're trying to work less, but have the same or more income. And then when you need to charge accordingly for services.
Collin
Right. Make sure you are charging according to the certifications that you have the training the years of experience that you have, and maybe you offer some high end boutique kind of services for your area. Charge accordingly. Don't feel like you have to meet them. median or just barely, you know, $1 over the the next highest person in line charge what you think your services are worth, and people will let you know whether that's working or not
Meghan
back when we started pet care in 2012. We charged $20 a night for an overnight stay at somebody else's house,
regardless of how many dogs they had, or any of the other things that they wanted done at their house.
Meghan
So yes, that was nine years ago. But that is still a really cheap price for staying overnight in someone else's house,
Collin
right, considering what somebody would pay, especially if they have multiple dogs to drop them off at a Kindle for a week. Right? So there, that price really didn't match the service that we were offering. We charge that because we were just starting out and we were trying to get as many clients and build a base as much as we could.
Meghan
Well and we were also very green and I didn't really understand what it meant to charge and knowing your worth.
Collin
Absolutely. And that's something that everybody learns along the
Meghan
As the years have gone on, and we have provided different services, we have increased our price. And we haven't seen any resistance. I even raised our price a couple of weeks ago and haven't gotten any pushback from repeat clients.
Collin
But it's always scary. I mean, I remember having that discussion with Megan of whether it was time or not. And then we pushed a few buttons and sat back with gritted teeth going, Oh, no, here we go. People are gonna start complaining, we're
Meghan
gonna lose them all.
Collin
lose them all. There we go, is we're done. I know. And if you're on the fence, if you think you're if you don't think it's time or that you can make that jump, know that you can just try know that you can experiment with prices for different services and make sure your marketing and communicating accordingly and make that jump.
Meghan
I think you'll be surprised at how many clients don't even notice, because no one has even commented you've increased your price by X amount of dollars. No one's even commented.
Which, always shocked by like, well, you booked the same number of stays as you did a week ago. And the price is now 20 $30 more, I would notice that they value our service, the value of the service. And
Meghan
I'm appreciative that they don't. I'm appreciative that they don't notice because I don't want to have that conversation
truthfully. And that goes back to the hard conversations that we have. And then we just do we discuss in a couple episodes a few back of that's another one after you raise your prices, when you when or if you get confronted by that or when somebody pushes back, listening to them, hearing them out. And then being able to point to the services you offer. Being able to point to your procedures, your policies that you have in place, the trainings you have in place. I mean, you don't have to feel like you have to sell yourself to somebody and just defend and defend and justify to the nth degree. Because here, here's where that powerful dirty two letter word comes in. You can always say No, thank you. If you've been with us for a while now. You know that on Mondays we talked to Natasha O'Banion, who is a pet business coach. She has got a wealth of information.
Meghan
And here is her question this week,
Collin
how do we go about delegating portions of our business? And on that what areas should be delegated?
Natasha
Who I love this question, delegate everything. And I say this one more time, delegate everything. There is nothing in your business that you are doing yourself that someone else cannot do. Even when I someone pitched me an idea to start a daycare center with them, and they wanted to do it because we always did boarding like in our house, and we really really love the house environment like couches and carpet, just like we want the dog to feel at home at all times. But I'm like, What if I travel, like who's gonna be watching this dog in my house? They're like, well, we can get some employees and we can let them stay in the house. But we can have like two rooms upstairs and they can have like, you know, their cozy area almost like Airbnb. So it's like you have this house. That's like your daycare center. But you still have like two rooms upstairs. It's like Airbnb for your staff. to still make it like a house vibe. So I say that to say like, everything you're trying to do, it has to be scalable from your own home environment. So if you're thinking about delegating, make sure that you put it together in your mind that you can put it on paper for anyone to copy, repeat and be you. So I've talked about this before going through your emails going through your text messages, anything you've ever said, I mean, even if someone's like this podcast, or someone says, Hey, Natasha, how do I go about delegating? I should have something written out that if I was not able to do this podcast anymore, someone could easily take my spot and talk about all my process procedures and everything I've ever discussed in life and do this podcast for me, they should be able to sit in my seat. So if you're doing meet and greets someone else can do a meet and greet. If you're doing phone calls, someone else could do a phone call. If you're doing dog walk, someone else can do a job. You just have to train your process. Get it all out of your brain. Put it all out. down on paper video and train it to someone, especially I've always say don't waste a good man labor. Like you had to go through the whole hiring process, you had to put them on your payroll. You had to vet them, you had to interview them, you've trained them on your style. Don't let that go to waste. Make sure these people can grow with you. These are your babies, a florist and they love the same way you love, right? You know each other. So really utilize them and stop doing things yourself. Doing things yourself. For me, I take so much pride in being able to train someone else and then when they say oh my God, I've learned so much from you. I'd like just this internship I've done with you or this time I've been an employee with you has been so valuable. I just feel so much pride that I've helped someone else better themselves. Think of all the other jobs you've ever had in your life where you were like, Okay, this is totally a dead end job. You know, no one likes that feeling. I'm definitely not going to grow here. There's definitely no where to go from here. Nobody wants that feeling. But imagine being on the other side of that saying like, no, this company has so much growth, they're showing me how to do things are making me better, they're making me feel great about myself, I feel like I'm giving so much value to them. I really feel like I'm needed. I'm appreciated, okay, so much more out of your team by giving them those feelings back. And if you're putting a cap on their ceiling, they're going to start to lose that motivation and that excitement that you really need from them. And I've talked about this in a hiring packet before always ask the candidates, what is it that they really enjoy doing? You know, what is it that they feel they can bring to this company? And when you have that question, that question is for a purpose. You just don't have all these like corporate questions. You're just talking about just to talk about every question on your hiring packet is for a reason. And so they say you know what, I'm really good at talking to people and getting in front of people. I really enjoy that for my life. Yes, they're gonna be doing our events can't wait. Like, you know what, I really like To be the person where people who would call and ask questions perfect, put them on the phone because someone calls, you know, they're going to be that guy or that girl. Same thing on your email. Now, that's someone that I want answering my emails, so I'm going to forward emails to them, because they like doing this stuff. And then you have people who are like, you know what, I personally just really enjoy doing the dogs. I want to pack walks, I want to have as much time with the dogs as possible. I'm like, great. Do you think I can come over and do a video recording with you and just get some footage of how much you love this? Because now that's like refurbish content for my social media. A lot of people don't want to get on video, like, create trying to get your team to do a video is like so hard. But for people who love it, you got to get as much content out of them as you can. They've actually just told you, you know, and it's that's the thing about communication, like they've told you what they love. They told you what they hated. So obviously don't give them a task that, you know, they've already told you in the beginning that they weren't going to be great at you. You're gonna be resentful, they're gonna be resentful, it's not you're not going to get the best but where they do shine so much so much or you can really motivate people inspire people that really that's what life is about.
Meghan
You can reach out to Natasha if you would like for her to be your personal pet business coach. She has a website, start scale sale.com and you can enter the code p sc 20. at checkout for 15% off any of her coaching,
Collin
we'd love to hear your thoughts on raising prices and how you have battled with or maybe how you have thought about your worth over time, especially in business. What kind of things have you put into place What have you learned from raising prices or changing services, please let us know and you can do that by emailing us at feedback at petsitter confessional comm or and we would love it if you would leave us a voicemail.
Meghan
Our phone number is 6363648 six zero. If you are on social media, we are basically everywhere at pet sitter confessional and we would love to connect with you.
Collin
We'd like to thank our friends at pet sitter associates for making this week's show possible.
Meghan
Thank you so much for taking the time today, which is your most valuable asset and listening to us talk. We really appreciate it.
Collin
Thank you so much.
