093- One Year Podcast Anniversary
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Summary:
Today's episode is our 1 year celebration! We dive into listener questions, from our background to some podcasting basics. Thank you so much for all of your support. We appreciate you going on this journey with us! Natasha also joins us to answer the question, "Do we really need insurance?"
Topics on this episode:
ONE YEAR!
What we did before pet sitting?
Our self care?
How we prepare for next few years?
Advise for new pet sitters and dog walkers?
Advertising advise?
Most memorable interview?
One thing we didn’t expect to get out of the podcast?
Someone we really want to interview?
Some tips on getting started in podcasting.
How has our business been this year?
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Thank you so much for listening. You are truly amazing!
Links:
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, megan, question, clients, pet sitters, podcast, pet, dog, services, episode, people, insurance, stories, interview, audio files, traveling, advertising, microphones, voicemail, year
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Alicia, Heidi, Natasha
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. This episode is brought to you by pet sitters associates.
Meghan
Hello, everyone. Welcome to a very exciting episode today.
Very exciting indeed.
Meghan
It is our one year anniversary of starting this podcast
Collin
Who would have thought? No, not us, not us.
Meghan
So we are so glad that you have joined us today. If this is your first time, welcome. We really appreciate you taking the time. We have a whole back catalogue of tons of interviews and episodes from the past year. That we've really enjoyed producing and making for you guys.
Collin
Yeah, there's a lot there. If you ever have any questions about a topic, maybe we've covered it before, just ask and we can always point you to that or add it to the show list because there's always so much more to cover. So this episode, we wanted to take a step back from doing topical discussions about life as a pet sitter, and answer some of your questions that you have for us.
Meghan
So first up, we have a couple voicemails that you guys left us we do have a phone number, it's 636-364-8260. Feel free to give us a call anytime and leave us voicemail.
Collin
Our first voicemail comes from Heidi
Heidi
Hey Megan in Collin, this is Heidi with Heidi and hope pet services. I just wanted to wish you a happy one year podcast anniversary and with you Congratulations. I don't think you guys realize how much you have helped us in the pet industry and all of the pets that are out there. So thank you so much for having your podcast. One thing I've always wanted to know his your guys's story and what you guys did before you got into pet sitting in a Dog Boarding, and how you decided to do this full time. Again, Happy anniversary. Thank you for everything. Bye.
Meghan
Thank you so much, Heidi, we really appreciate you leaving us a voicemail. We also appreciate you taking your time in Episode 73. If you haven't listened to Heidi's episode, it's really great. It's full of a lot of encouragement and wisdom from her story and her experience.
Collin
So a little bit about our backstory. I don't know how far back we need to start with this. But Megan and I met as undergraduates at Missouri State University, and we got married and went to Texas to start graduate school. We were both in the sciences. And it was while we were at graduate school at Texas Tech when we started to that's it.
Meghan
Yeah, so back at Missouri State. We had a Actually officially met the first time when I was working in a lab sardine detritus from a nearby river. And I was working in getting paid. And Colin had come in to do some volunteer work for one hour. The volunteer work I mean, I appreciate it like his, you know, it's very noble of doing volunteer work. And
Megan thought I was quite a slacker, actually.
Meghan
Well, I was just like one hour, like really, like, just one time an hour anyway. But anyway, so from there, we had just kept in communication. And we both went down to Gulf Coast research lab down in near Biloxi, Mississippi, and spent the summer there taking marine biology classes because originally, both of us wanted to be marine biologists and still think it's a really awesome profession. And so we're both science nerds at heart and went on to once we got married, we went to Texas Tech and got our masters and then started dog sitting on a whim from I just seen an ad on Craigslist and I thought oh this would be an awesome way to make a little bit of money but get to you know play with dogs and obviously not having had a ton of experience both of us we both went our teenage years we you know we're we were the neighborhood kid down the street trying to get experience obviously now being nine years into it we know the full scale of what this job is and what it means and it's not just something that you know, just anybody can do it's an actual business and so we now take this very seriously and really have come to love this profession and everything that it stands for.
Collin
Yeah all aspects of it to of respecting it yes and the level of care given to pets but also the respecting how it what it means to run an operate. business which I don't think Megan and I ever really saw ourselves doing, or really envisioned ourselves as running our own business. That's not really something that nine years ago, we would have envisioned. So it's really cool to see how much it's changed, not just us, but our relationship to
Meghan
our next voicemail comes from Alicia. Oh, bondo.
Alicia
Hi, this is Alicia opondo with pitter patter parenting in Chicago. And first, I wanted to congratulate you on your one year anniversary of the podcast. I have really enjoyed listening to it and participating on one of the shows. And I'm looking forward to your Ask me anything episode on Monday. The question I have is kind of a personal nature. But you guys are married, working together in the business with children with lots of different business ventures going and I'm just Wondering what you guys do to keep yourself sane? What is your self care strategy? Have a great weekend.
Meghan
Thank you Alicia for leaving us that voicemail and if you have if you have not checked out her episode, it is Episode 78 she talks all about keeping kids safe around dogs.
That's a really good topic
Meghan
and thank you for your question. First I want to know how Collin you would answer this.
Collin
Yeah, this is a good one because Megan my operates so differently.
Meghan
We are complete opposites.
Collin
So yes, we have been married running pet sitting business for nine years of that. Basically, for years now we've had kids in it, and we're always doing something. I would say that how I keep my sanity is this is gonna sound weird, but focusing on on little things that I have control over. That kind of ground. Me too. to what's going on day to day, instead of getting lost in the chaos of the scheduling, and getting lost in everything on the to do list, really focusing down on action items that I can do within the next five minutes, 10 minutes, especially when I get really overwhelmed. Whether that's, I can clean the floor, I can do email, those little things I know help me stay on track. Maybe I'm gonna be missing the point of this question.
Meghan
No, I think you're right on track and I would answer it the complete opposite way for myself. Not surprising, like, Hey, I my personality, I might I'm a type A personality. I I basically I thrive in chaos. And I love it. I my brain is always active. I basically have a very hard time shutting my brain off, but I'm okay with that. That and I, I, I will. I don't know if I would say I'd like that about myself. But that that's just how I operate. I feel as though I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing everything that we have going on. Because it is a lot. We do have kids, we do have jobs we do. Uh, we're pet sitters, we are podcasters we are married, just trying to function you know, as the two of us most days is hard, but I feel like we do a great job of knowing when to take time for ourselves. Whether that's watching a little bit of TV or sitting outside in the sun. I love doing that. Just right. I love being outside. And that really helps to bring me down when I need those moments. And also you call it you really helped to center me when I do start to go a little crazy
Collin
which doesn't happen very often. I was gonna add to that. On the being outside thing, I think since moving to Missouri, we've done a lot better job as a family, taking time out to go a weekend, go somewhere, whether that's a creek, whether that's my dad's house, in the middle of the woods, and just taking small moments to go live basically, differently than the chaos that we normally have. And we try and do that every now and then. But we know we have that time to separate and recollect ourselves and just enjoy those moments outside of the chaos. That is typically our lives.
Meghan
But I love the chaos, so let's not change it. No.
Collin
Don't worry, the chaos will still be there.
Meghan
I love having so many projects going on it it really fulfills me.
Collin
I think that is a form of self care for you of when you're able to invest your brain and energy into multiple projects at the same time. Really, Megan really does thrive in that. Thank you. So, and I don't I do I have to keep up with her
Meghan
well, which is why we have separate roles within, you know, every aspect, particularly this podcasting. So you do the interviews, you handle the emails, I handle social media, and all of that. So,
Collin
yeah, and so part of that self care is just recognizing where my strengths and and Megan's begin, so that I am not overexerting myself, so that neither one of us is approaching that burnout point because we're not trying to do too much outside of where our strengths lie at any given time.
Meghan
Our next question comes from Auntie M's pet care. And she had an episode which was Episode 40 per question is How are you preparing your business for the next couple years with COVID-19 in mind,
Collin
so for us, I think there is two aspects to this, we went and we have been looking at our prices that we have for every service, and really doing a heart assessment as to whether that that price really was what we should have been charging all along. And when we looked at those, we realized, no, no, right, we have been undercharging. And chronically, it seems. So we have recently done a price increase. Now with that we have been refining the services that we do offer, really focusing in on a very specific market, really focusing after people are really, really honing in on exactly who our clients are and the clients that we want, so that we can maintain better connections with them, and know exactly who we are marketing to that are going to fit what we want for our business. I would
Meghan
also say that we are in the next few years, we're looking into moving again, and that's going to look very good. Because we have no idea even what next month is going to look like, as far as the pandemic, but we're just kind of taking, take it like you just said, taking a look at our business and kind of detailing it finally so that when that move does come, we can have processes in place of how we want to move forward. And what we're going to do with our clients here,
Collin
and part of that discussion is what role we're going to have in the business in our next location. So whether we hire in a location ahead of time and start growing the business partially remotely and then move to the area and have a more hands on approach. There's a lot of things up in the air, but really looking at diversity, not just of income streams for the business, but number of services and broad locations.
Meghan
But before we get to our next question, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. pet sitters associates is here to help for over 20 years of pet sitters associates has provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet industry, or you 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 and running your business. Learn why pet sitters associates is the 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 pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com. Our next question comes from Suzy pet services. She says Happy anniversary. What would be the advice for new pet sitters or dog walking businesses? That question is pretty tough right now, if we had answered this at the beginning of the year, the answer would likely be a lot different than it is right now. Because There is a pandemic going on. And virtually every day is different from the next. It is difficult to start a business right now, I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's really difficult. And it's if you offer and depending on the services that you offer, if you offer boarding and daycare, so they come to you, it's going to likely be a lot easier to get clients than if you're a dog walking business, marketing your services right now for a dog walking business is really difficult because people are working from home more than ever, and a lot of companies are transitioning their workers home, some of them even for good. And so you're having to really work harder now to be like, No, your your dog really does need a mid day walk. Or you really need your dog out when you have zoom conference calls because you know, he or she barks.
Collin
Yeah, I would say that that's just across the board. I will say that a huge positive that you have is that you don't have the backlog of cruft and old ways of operating that people have had in place for the past 510 20 years. You're coming into this business fresh with fresh eyes, fresh ideas, and in the middle of an interesting time, of increased opportunities, and increased awareness of the industry.
Meghan
Right. So think about what people have been doing for the past four or five months they have been staying home and getting some of them getting new dogs. So getting puppies so you if you are entering this business for the first time, you may want to niche down and specialize in puppies, or you may want to get some dog training experience under you and offer those services to dogs that have separation anxiety, or the new puppies that are coming about.
Collin
Yeah, you're able to from day one offer online classes offer online services offer new things new, a new diverse set of services that somebody was starting five years ago, even one year ago wasn't even thinking about offering. And the cool thing there is, is that the clients are more aware of not just the services, but the need for those services to. So when you were starting today, you have those services, you can immediately be meeting these needs in new ways. So I think yes, it is difficult. It's difficult for everybody, but there are also some very neat opportunities moving forward.
Meghan
And that leads us right into our next question from scallywags pet about advertising. She said, Ah, help. And I think we could all use a little help in this area because it is difficult right now to get clients during this pandemic.
Collin
Yeah, and just wrapping our brains around what advertising even means, these days. Does it mean flyers mean handouts? Does it mean business cards? Does it mean word of mouth? Does it mean social media? Does it mean local Facebook pages? Yes. And all of that does mean advertising. And the key there is, before you can even start advertising, you have to identify who your ideal clients are. Who would you like more of? And I think that's probably a step that gets missed many times when we start talking about advertising, because we don't even know who we're supposed to target. dog owners, dog owners is what most of us think, do you want every single dog owner to be your client? No, no, no, the answer should be no. In case you were wondering, you spending some time to think about look at your existing clientele, and go, if I could have my five best clients and make more of them, how would I do that? What would that even look like? And then start talking about, okay, if I know that, how would I target a Facebook ad? How would I Do social media engagement on Instagram? How would I make a flyer? How could I incentivize word of mouth propagation, whether that's through discounts, whether that's through referral referral codes, then you can go down those paths.
Meghan
Our next few questions come from paws and claws pack who we are excited to have on the podcast in a couple months. She said do you have a most memorable interview?
Oh no.
Collin
I this is gonna be really hard. I have to say. Because I have truly every time I have gotten off the interview with somebody texted Megan run downstairs in gone. That was awesome. That was this is going to be a great one. I am consistently learning from people when I'm on the call and have loved every single one of them. I will say But if you plan to be down, maybe the most influential interview, for me at least, was the very first one, Alex and death from Episode Six way back in Episode Six, they were the very first ones to get in contact with us about doing an interview. And Megan, I hadn't even thought about doing it interviews at that point we had wasn't even on our radar. And Alex and Beth reached out and said, Hey, we'd like to talk to you about what we do. They are nomadic housesitters. And I thought, okay, that'd be really cool. And we brought them on, and that just completely changed what I thought the podcast could be and how we structured it. So I have to say that that first one really just changed this whole thing.
Meghan
What's one thing you didn't expect to get out of doing this podcast? The community? Yeah, really. It? It has been so supportive. You guys have been wonderful. Well coming on and sharing your story, whether it's providing feedback on our social medias to other pet sitters who are asking questions. It's been so great.
Collin
I 100% agree that it's the been the community. That has been the most encouraging and surprising aspect of this. When we started this a year ago, as we have said multiple times, we had no idea where exactly this was going to go or exactly how this was going to turn out.
Meghan
I think we had the first 13 episodes planned out.
Collin
Yeah. And that was it. We had 13 and Megan, I looked at each other and went who Okay, then what are we talking about? But the people have been such a huge blessing and encouragement to us every single time. We get to interact with you. We get to hear your stories get to celebrate your successes, as you especially during COVID as people started pivoting, offering new services, being able to reopen and just see the excitement in the industry and he Hear that in people's voices has been I know it's changed me. I know it as
Meghan
Natalie durack asked her the next question, and you can find her episode, which is episode number 57. She said, Is there a particular person or company you really want to bring on the show? I've said this before, but who do I want to interview? Everyone? Oh, so I just want to hear everyone's stories. But if I had to pick someone, I think I would say, Hannah Brannigan from drinking from the toilet podcast. She has an awesome Dog Training podcast. And we reached out to her last year. She said she was really busy, and I get that. So we just I would love to have her on. And we'll hopefully we'll reach out again soon and maybe connect with her.
Collin
Right? Yeah, I'm looking forward to trying to bring on some more people as far as people, the leaders of national and international organizations and getting their backstory. So hearing about this their history and petsitting why they're so passionate about it and how they transitioned into being leaders. For the industry. I'm really interested in trying to tell those stories to help encourage more people to start getting involved at that level too, because that's really where we're going to start seeing some good things happen. And industry wide.
Meghan
Gina McGrath had said, Can you share the technical aspects of your podcast? How did you get started? What equipment do you use? What platform did you use? Any advice for beginning podcasters? And thanks for sharing your podcast with us.
Collin
How much time do you have?
Meghan
This is definitely your area that the tech part of this
Collin
I will I will try and keep this short. So I will say that getting involved in podcasting doesn't have to cost a lot of money no matter what anybody tells you, and he is the gatekeepers of podcasting. So Megan and I bought, you can get a pen and paper. We bought two microphones and two stands. The microphones are ATR 2100s. They're actually been replaced But with a newer version, they just painted to black. That's the only difference. This is an amazing microphone. It's really robust. It really cuts out room noise. And really, I think I like the way it sounds and it's insanely inexpensive. When you look at microphones across the board, you really don't need to go much more than that, especially if you're just starting out and you are trying to figure out what exactly you want to do. And the reason I like these is because you can plug them directly into your computer with a USB you don't need to have a fancy XLR interface. So again, it's really cutting down those barriers to entry. The next thing I'd recommend is a good pop filter. Those are very inexpensive as well for like $3 on Amazon, and a shock mount really important especially if you're going to have it on your desk. We do all of our mixing in GarageBand because it came with our Mac we host the audio files on Squarespace so if you go to pets or confessional calm That is a Squarespace site, it hosts the audio files there you need someplace to store them once you've recorded and edited. And then we disperse it to iTunes, Spotify, anywhere you're currently listening to this. And that platform pulls the audio file on and downloads and downloads it to your phone. So that's basically the three steps you need something to record with something to edit, and then something to store and disperse the audio file. And I'd be happy to talk more about that and more explicit details. I guess, for you if you have any more questions about that. And if any of you are thinking about starting a podcast, especially a local podcast, you should, you really should. And the big reason is that most of us have blogs for our business because it drives SEO. Google is now starting to catalog and transcribe podcast audio files, making them searchable from the web. So having one for a local community actually is a great Way to build community build connections and have people pay for sponsorships on your podcast at a local level. Again, Megan, I would be happy to talk with about how to get one started up and some more in depth specifics and walk you through that process.
Meghan
Our last question comes from Britt from Britt's petsitting. She said how is business going since COVID? What are you doing to drum up some clients? I feel like my biz has been in a little rut due to COVID less clients traveling for pleasure and work wondering if it will pick up once the holidays head.
That is the
Meghan
million dollar question
that I wish any you know, if if you have a crystal ball hiding in your basement, please break it out and start looking to the future and let us know what you see.
Meghan
For us, yeah, I mean, March March didn't hit us too bad. We are we live in a rural part of Missouri. And so march was bad for a lot of people but it didn't really hit us until April so April and May were really, really bad for us. Then in June, it started picking up and the past two months. have been really crazy.
Collin
Yeah, it really has been which is in stark contrast to many parts of the country in parts of the globe to that haven't come out of full lockdown yet or maybe people in your area just aren't comfortable. Traveling. That's really the big thing is even once the lockdowns open back up, How comfortable are people in your area, going to want to travel. And it
Meghan
also depends on your services. If you were strictly dog walking in the middle of the day, and people are now home, that is definitely going to hurt your business. We do boarding and daycare primarily. And so our clients weren't traveling very much when it was really severe during April in May. But then once the summer hit and they could start traveling locally again and down to the lake and that sort of quick trips during the weekend. We started to see business pick back up again.
Collin
Yeah, and Beth talked about that. On a recent interview the president of pet sitters international about how pet sitters and dog walker specifically were hardest hit among the pet care industry because for those very reasons that you You just mentioned Megan was people not going to work and traveling those two big things. And so looking ahead to the fall and into the winter, who knows, who knows, unfortunately, just how things are going to pan out. And so taking the time right now to really reassess the services that you're offering, your service radius, the prices, your branding, your clientele will all be good steps to put you in a good position for you know, really whatever happens and saving cutting expenses. All of those techniques and practices are so important right now, because we don't know what the future holds. So I wish we could say there was a clear answer, and that as soon as the holidays hit, everyone's going to be traveling again. But it's so hard to tell.
Meghan
So we wanted to thank you all for submitting your questions. And if you have any more for us, please let us know we would be happy to answer them. There is a lot to celebrate with our one year episode. And with that We got our first Patreon supporter, whose name is Jennifer Perez. Thank you so much, Jennifer. And if you don't know what Patreon is,
Collin
Patreon is a way of supporting us financially. So if you have found value in our episodes and our interviews and the content that we're producing, and feel like you would like to support us financially, now we have a way to do that. It's called Patreon and there'll be a link for that in the show notes and on our website as well for you to go out and check and see what that is. There are a couple different levels. And Megan, I want to tell you that we are going to continue producing this podcast for as long as we can, at
Meghan
least the next 50 years at least.
Collin
And, and that that is our that is our our heartfelt commitment to doing this is to telling everybody's story possible. And by supporting us financially that helps make that easier for us and makes us able to do do more with the podcast.
Meghan
Each Monday we have pet business coach Natasha Oh banyon Come on and answer a question. So here's today's question,
Collin
walk through why we should even have insurance. And does anyone actually use it?
Natasha
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Your insurance is yours. And I will tell you all my insurance stories. First of all, you have to have insurance because that's what makes you reputable. You are not a reputable business if you are not insured if you don't have license if you're not funded, so where's my backing? How about you go into a car dealership and buy a vehicle and you say, Okay, good. We'll have a good one. And there's no warranty. There's no protection, there's no human error. And so this job is very human error. Anything can happen, you know, to stories where I use my insurance. I was only in business for maybe a year I think I just get a year I was on vacation. And one of my dog walkers came to house the owner put the harness and leash on and she realized the owner put it on incorrectly. I always talk about this to owners will start doing stuff that gets you off your group get you off your game and if you don't check it stay on your protocol that happens. So she realized the owner put the harness on incorrectly It was like an easy Walker they flipped it from the chest park to the back, you know, that friendly back thing. And she went into the lobby of the apartment to readjust the harness before going outside. Well, someone opened the door, the dog bolted out of the front lobby and got hit by a car. I'm in Puerto Rico hanging out with my family. Next thing you know, they're calling me saying hey, this is what's going on. I'm like, Okay, great. Send the client to the nearest that follow our process procedure. I have full coverage insurance, take my credit card from the business, pay the bill. And make sure the client is fully taken care of. So before this client even left, any you know that our emergency room, All bills, everything was handled. All I did was simply forward that quote From the vet to my insurance, and I was reimbursed this same week. Now I could have waited and said you know what? Put all the bills in our insurance gonna reimburse us we're gonna get we're gonna pay the bills within the same week anyway having that like the reimbursement is like I didn't lose anything I put the cart out the insurance reimburse me same week no like it was it was literally bada bing bada boom, I was like ah, but can you imagine paying you know a $6,000 that bill by yourself? Can you imagine paying a 10,000 net bill by yourself? Do you have that in your budget right now? Do you have that in your bank account? Can you imagine not getting that money back? So having your insurance is definitely worth it. I had another Walker who was walking a big dog and a small dog. Well, obviously that's not my policy anymore. But the big dog and tripping over and landed on the small dog broke the dog's femur. Guess what, how to use insurance again. Same situation. We were able to take care of clients were bills. We were able to take care. I've sent her a stroller, we paid all her vet bills and guess what we got fully reimbursed. So do not run a business. without insurance you're going to need it things happen that you don't even think about. And when they do you want to have protection for yourself and protection for your clients.
Meghan
You can hear more from Natasha in her episode, which is Episode 59. And if you would like her to be your personal pet business coach, you can go to start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her coaching. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our one year episode today. And we hope to have many more anniversaries to come. Thank you guys so much for supporting us and we will talk to you again soon. Thank you
