106- Defining Success
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Summary:
Today is all about what success looks like in our business and personal life. We break down the definition of success and areas in our lives where it applies. We also talk about the danger of comparing ourselves to others and how that wrecks our ability to focus on our business. Natasha is back with a great answer to the question, “How do I start up a business in a new area?”
Topics on this episode:
What success ISN’T
Success and happiness
Areas of success
Success and confidence
Dangers of Comparison
Natasha’s ‘Ask a Pet Biz Coach’
Main take away? Stop comparing yourself to others!
Links:
Check out the Game Changers Summit!
Our Episode on Staying Content (102) and Goals (77)
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, pet, success, territory, goals, people, work, confessional, compare, pet sitters, define, clients, city, talking, sitters, successful, expand, life, dog, care
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
I'm calling and I'm Megan.
00:19
And this is pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 00:21
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 106. Today we are going to be talking about defining success. We would first like to thank our sponsor for this episode, pet sitters associates,
Collin 00:40
we have some exciting things coming up. And one of those is the game changer summit, October 7 through ninth, Megan and I will be talking about podcasting. And you'll see some familiar faces from interviews that we've done on the show talking about things that they're passionate about. And there are a ton of new people to hear from as well. So look for the sign up link in the show notes, or go to S S S summit.com.
Meghan 01:05
Also, if you aren't already, please subscribe and your favorite podcast player. And if you listen on Apple podcasts, please go ahead and write us and leave us a review, we would really appreciate that. Today's episode is all about knowing when we are successful in business. And really what that means. So obviously, this is a very personalized discussion. However, there are some things that we can look into and really think about for ourselves to make sure that we are hitting the goals that we need to whether it's personal or business.
Collin 01:39
And part of this discussion includes thinking about the difference between being content and being apathetic. Now we've talked about being content before on the podcast,
Meghan 01:51
that was Episode 102.
Collin 01:52
I'm glad you remember these things because I don't. But in the context of setting and achieving our goals, being content can mean that we are willing to set aside certain comforts, aspirations or certain things right now for the short term to meet our long term needs. Now this is different from being apathetic, because when we are apathetic in our business or personal life, it means we just don't care. So obviously being in business means that being apathetic is never really an option. We do need to care about our business, we do need to be caring about ourselves, we should always be striving after our passions, and doing what we can to meet our goals. contentment in our business and personal lives means that we are okay with the circumstances as they are right now. But we know that we are working towards something grander that we want in the future.
Meghan 02:46
Okay, so now let's talk about success. We start off in business, and we just start working, maybe we have something planned or have some idea of where we want to end up some goals. But do you know if you got there? How do you know when you are successful? It boils down to how do you define success? First, we want to define what success is not right? Success is not how you compare to someone else. It is not how someone else defines it for you. And it's not being so busy that you don't have time for anything else,
Collin 03:27
which is really key here. Because sometimes we can get that in our mind where we think oh, well, I'm successful because I'm so busy. But are you busy doing the right things? Are you busy doing the things that you actually want to be doing?
Meghan 03:41
And so Merriam Webster defines success as three things. The first is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. The second is the attainment of popularity or profit. And the third is a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity. In the Western world, particularly here in the United States, we typically define success in terms of money, we really tie success to money, if you have a lot of money, you have a lot of success. But success is having the freedom to do what you want to make yourself happy,
Collin 04:17
right? But sometimes, happiness itself can be really hard to measure or define, and which is why laying out clear goals and objectives is really beneficial. And I know, it may seem really silly to boil down happiness to a bullet point. And you can't necessarily always do that i know but getting some little things down on paper of what you want your life to look like, where you want to live or who you want to surround you. Those little things are really great ways to start looking at what happiness means to you
Meghan 04:55
and tying this into our business when you are running your business. How do you know When you are, quote, successful, right? Again, it all comes back to you what you define it as. And there's some different areas that we can be successful in. And they're really in two categories. The first is business and then personal, right. So with business, we just talked about this, but money financial, but it's not just paying your bills, you're not just successful when you're meeting your bills every month, or when you have a little bit leftover, but it's really saving money, investing your money wisely and stock market and making sure that you have 869 month savings fund, as COVID taught us, we need to be investing back in ourselves. And that means investing our money properly.
Collin 05:43
Right. Another aspect of your business that you can look for to see if you're successful is stability. So you may want one of your goals is to have a stable business. So this is consistent income. This is predictable, clients coming in every month, this is stability in expenses as well. Now, obviously, this gets thrown in way out of whack when we have things like global pandemics, or economic downturns. But striving for stability and consistency in a business is one goal that you could have
Meghan 06:15
success is having the freedom to do what you want in your business, not having somebody else tell you what success means. And then having longevity as well. Being able to stay in the game, in your business, in your personal goals in life for the long haul.
Collin 06:34
Some may say that success in business could be how long you are in business. So being able to stay in the game for the long haul. So longevity, you may define success as being able to stay in business for 2030 years, maybe it's being able to pass it down to your children or pass it on to somebody else in your family. That may be success for you knowing that you set up something that's going to last for years and years.
Meghan 07:00
And the second part of knowing success, having success is in your personal life. So really your work life relationship, everybody talks about having a work life balance. And we don't really think there is such a such thing as a balance, no balance, because there something's always going to give something's always going to be more important at that moment than something else. So how busy are your days? Are you able to breathe? Are you able to invest time in yourself? Even if it's just five minutes of self care a day? Are you if that's something that you want? Are you able to do that? Are you able to achieve success in your work life? relationship?
Collin 07:42
Right, exactly. And now what you do in your business, to give you that balance is there's a lot of different options you could hire, you could scale back, you could move into new markets, you could raise prices, all of those things that you would do in your business are going to affect what happens in your personal life. So if you have these goals for your personal life, looking at how it's connected back to your business, and sitting down in ironing that out and writing all of those different goals, objectives, is really going to help point you in a good direction on that.
Meghan 08:12
And this ties into mindset. Changing from a fixed to a growth mindset and really understanding why we are the way we are as as a person, why are you introverted? Why are you extroverted? Why do you prefer dogs over cats or vice versa? Success is believing in yourself that you can achieve these things. If you want to have all the Petcare certifications out there. And that's something that you want to achieve. Believing that you can do that. Mm hmm.
Collin 08:43
Yeah, well on that part of success is also learning something new. Every day. We talk about constantly learning, growing and changing as individuals, stretching ourselves and continuing to gain knowledge and animal behavior, training and handling those kind of things. Those those things that help feed into us to not just make us better individuals, but better business owners and better pet care providers.
Meghan 09:09
Before we move on, we went in to give a shout out to our sponsor pet sitters associates, would you like to read this this week?
Collin 09:16
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, pet sitters associates has provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, which you do because you're listening to this podcast, 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 in 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 petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional checkout to get $10 off To check out the benefits of membership and insurance, once again at pet sit llc.com how to do great.
Meghan 10:09
Success is also having peace of mind that you did your best and gave it 110%. There were many pet care businesses that have since closed their doors because of the pandemic. And no one could have foreseen the pandemic. So it's not their fault. But knowing that they gave their business, everything they had, they laid it all on the line should really bring them comfort.
Collin 10:33
You know, when you say that part of this is getting into confidence in ourselves, confidence in ourselves that we made the right decisions that we're doing the right thing that with that comes planning, learning, educating ourselves, partnering with good people around us to come along and speak into our lives and coaches in our businesses. But at the end of the day being to put our head on the pillow and have confidence in everything that we did. No self doubt creeps in there, we start questioning things, we start doing the what if game, which is really dangerous. But you as a business owner, you have to be able to be confident in the decisions that you're making, and rest at peace at the end of the day knowing you did all that you could.
Meghan 11:17
And once you know that you should feel inside successful. Yes, yeah, there is nothing more that you could have done. Mm hmm. Setting goals for yourself. And your business gives you something to measure against. We talked about reassessing our goals for 2020 and Episode 77. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that one. And if you so if you don't have something to measure against, you will always be unsatisfied, right? Some of the angst comes from the fact that we don't know where to start. And we question all of our goals.
Collin 11:49
It's not just that we don't know where to start, it's we don't know where we're going on this crazy life that is running a pet care business. So you start to get wayward, and you start to get lost along the way. And this is when we can start to look around us.
Meghan 12:05
So for example, if you started your pet care business this year, and we do know, some pet sitters who have launched their business during the last 12 months of COVID.
Collin 12:13
And good on you, yes, awesome, right. So you
Meghan 12:17
may not have goals just yet for how many clients are good for you for the rest of the year, or how much profit you want to make. But that's kind of when you start to compare yourself. And what kind of started out as a fact finding mission turns really into, you know, self sabotage, because the only numbers that you have in your head, are the ones that other people have told you to have,
Collin 12:40
right? And this is really dangerous. There's that saying comparison is the thief of joy or something like that, when we start to look around and let you know, getting back to our goals. And in the path that we're trying to find here. When we don't set out a goal for ourselves, we start to wonder is 20 a lot? Verse 22 minutes to few is 100. A lot? Is 100. Too few. And we start to look, as you said, Megan, we start to look at other pet care providers around us. And then that's where you go, oh, man, well, they've got 1000. I'm not I must not be doing very much at all this is this is not good. What am I doing wrong in my business.
Meghan 13:19
And we're the same can go for employees. If you look at a big business, we've interviewed several of them. If you look at some of those big pet care businesses, and you go they have 35 employees, or they have 15 employees, and you just have one or two or maybe none,
Collin 13:34
you may end up again, starting to question about what's wrong with your business. It's this comparison trap that we find ourselves in, we start wondering, what if, what if, what if, and start becoming dissatisfied with the way our business is? So be really careful when we start looking at other businesses, especially ones in your area. Remember, we don't know their inner workings or whether the owner is actually happy running that particular business. All we know is what we see from the outside. Now, we should always be learning from others. So ask questions, get to know those business owners before making those kind of assumptions.
Meghan 14:14
And if there was ever a time to want to compare your pet care business to someone else's, it's now Right. Yeah, the pandemic really messed everything up in the pet care world. Some businesses are booming, while others are sinking. Some people have had to pivot their services while others are holding steady. It all depends on your geographic location and how your city and state responded.
Collin 14:36
And that's really hard when you start to want to know is my business doing? Okay, so you may ask, how is everybody else doing? Well, depending on where they are, as you mentioned, geographically, they're going to give you different responses. Some states closed down a lot. So many of those businesses are not nearly back to even 50%. Yet, other states hardly close down at all so they are back to 100 or more percent of their previous booking
Meghan 14:59
and in ours Our confessionals Group A couple weeks ago, I had asked what percent people were back to capacity. And there were like 27, people had answered 80 to 100%. And I think 22 people answered zero to 20%. Yeah, so the two extremes there have, it's really split. I mean, of the people that answered our poll, it was really split of I'm, you know, back to full time, or I am really struggling.
Collin 15:27
And again, not understanding the full context of where those people are, what they've been through how their business was set up, what's going on in their county, if you lose that context, you start feeling bad about yourself, if you look at those people going, man, they're back to 80%. I'm barely at 3%, back to where I thought I'd be. Those those kind of comparisons are very dangerous and not helpful for you. Because you end up comparing yourself to somebody that you shouldn't be comparing yourself to in the first place.
Meghan 15:57
Right? So you could say, Sally is back to full capacity. I'm barely hanging on with just a couple of clients. But what good is that going to do? What does that really accomplish? And the answer is nothing. Sure, it makes it seem like you're justifying your business. But complaining has never done anyone any good. And it doesn't change the facts. It's truly just a waste of time. And I'm preaching to the choir here because I complain an awful lot. Collin will tell you, fine, but I you know, the time you spend comparing yourself to someone is time that you can be spending to better yourself or your business doing some self care, just looking inward, and on the things that make you happy.
Collin 16:39
Yeah, the real trap here is that there is no end to the possible number of comparisons, you could come up with an infinite number of things to compare to or against. So in the vein of what we're talking about here of in the context of success, this trap of being of comparing yourself to others, that won't go away, no matter how quote unquote successful you are comparing, can't be overcome by attaining any amount or number of success, there will always be something or someone else to focus on.
Meghan 17:14
Yeah, even if you're JLo, or Beyonce,
Collin 17:17
or the Pope, right. There's somebody always to compare yourself to I
Meghan 17:21
don't know, if the Pope has anyone to compare himself,
Collin 17:23
I don't know, I'm not the Pope,
Meghan 17:25
maybe a past Pope. There you go. Anyway.
Collin 17:28
That's the danger here. So this is where some of the discussion about being content in the now while working towards the future comes in to get ourselves out of that comparison trap, and allow us to focus on our business and run it the way we want to
Meghan 17:45
compare yourself also puts the focus on the other person, but the only person that you can change is you. If your business is slow, and you want it to be busier, change up your services, change up your marketing, there are clients out there, there are tons of dogs. And as the same goes, if there's a will, there's a way. So focus on your own success, whatever that means to you. Each person is unique. So whatever goals and objectives you have set for your pet care business, that's fine. If you are happy, having 40 clients and making $30,000 a year, great. If you want more, go for more. Stop allowing other people to tell you how you should run your business
Collin 18:32
and stop allowing them stealing your happiness in your definition of success. define success for you, and work hard to get that
Meghan 18:43
because what's better, doing the best or doing your best. You always want to be doing your best
Collin 18:51
because who's to say what is the best thing to be doing? Again, we keep hammering this point. And I just I hope you're hearing this is the best or what success looks like, is solely dependent on you and how you define it. And anytime someone comes along and says you're not successful, or anytime you come along and start comparing yourself to somebody who you think is more successful, you're stealing that from you, your joy is being stolen from you. So this gets back to what we were saying earlier, knowing that as a business owner, being able to rest our heads at night, laying our head down knowing we did the best we possibly could. And having confidence in that confidence in ourselves is what allows us to do that. When we are fully educated when we know and trust the staff that we have around us or we trust the people in our lives. That's when we're able to lay down at night and be at peace and feel that joy and feel that happiness that we did the best that we could. Obviously there are things that we can always be working on and improving. We mentioned them in our business and our personal life but in the here in the now what we're doing Today, always putting it up on the table so that we never have second thoughts or regrets come tomorrow.
Natasha 20:06
Having good people around you is very important. accountability is best for self improvement. So seek out a buddy to do the things that you want to be doing to help you achieve your business goals, your self care goals or your life goals. If you have been thinking about moving or starting up a pet care business in a new location, Natasha can help you out on this week's pet business coach segment. This question makes me so excited. I love if you guys know me, I love going to new cities and states and locations because I think I'm a travel bug anyways. But every city has a different jam. Like every city has a different vibe has a different culture has a different heartbeat, I would say. And I love to feel the pulse of new environments. So it's very easy to do. The only reason you're not expanding into another state or another city is because you just didn't do it. Those lifts Simple as that. It's not because you can't, it's just because you're not. So I would obviously say expand to the closest city near you. So for instance, I'm in Washington, DC, Maryland was a neighboring state, Virginia was a neighboring state. And I just said, You know what, I want to go to Virginia. So we just won in Virginia, looked at my team and I said Who wants to go over there. They're like, I'll do it. I said, Listen, I'm not going to be like patois. It's gonna be so low, we're gonna build it up first. They're like, it's cool. I'll go back to doing solo dogs. And I made sure I paid them a great hourly rate to make sure it made sense for them. And I were in in Virginia, and I did the same thing. gremio and I said, Alright, guys, I want to go into some of the cities in Maryland, they're like, I'll do it. Okay, go on in, they build those territories up. They market in those territories for you as well. They repurpose those territories as well. They bring the pulse the heartbeat. So now it's like, if I'm talking to you calm, like Colin, how's Marilyn? Do it? And you're like, it's great. I got all these plans. I got all these ideas. We're we're working. Okay, great. Megan, how's Virginia doing? You have your team that helps you expand, build. And if you are automating correctly, and you are running off of your cell phone, you can actually expand and scale pretty easily without an issue, you're literally doing the same exact thing. You're building a territory. But just in a new environment. I tried to get walkers and pet sitters so much to look at their market research and find the pulse of their city. Because so many people make the mistake of opening up territories in their own neighborhood because they live there, where you live is probably not the best area to run a business. Like it's just not, you can do it. You can have 20 clients or whichever. And if you're comfortable, and you're, you're doing fine, there, that's great. But most likely where you live is not where you want to go. You want to find like where the finance districts are people are going to work where the children are not I have two children, I know you do not want the teenagers. So don't go into the teenager friendly neighborhoods where they're walking their own dog, you don't want to be there, those are not those are not things on the checklist, go to places where you know, people are going to be in and out of the city going to work traveling back home, they can't get to their dog in time, they want to go to the happy hour, they want to have a social life when they get off. Those are the areas where you want to be is that's where they need a partner, you are the partner. And so that's basically it. Go in there, start a territory up, put a staff member in there, go to another one, go to another city, pull the territory up at a walker go to another one. It's really as simple as that. Let's think about like old school, right? There's a really good book that I love. It's such an old book, but it's always a classic. It's called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I'm sure many of you have seen it, heard about it, read it. But it is such a great book just for base breaking down the mentality. If you have the poor dad mentality where you got to be there, you have to be the one doing it. You know, you, you you, you're going to be working like a dog, you're going dead burnout, you're never going to have a day off and you're going to be in the rat race. That is the poor dad mentality. The rich dad mentality is the one I scaled, the one that said you know what, I am smarter together. I'm smarter by putting infrastructure together, and therefore I don't have to be there. Like we talked about before. Social media is a marketing Avenue ad campaigns and marketing Avenue email campaigns is a marketing Avenue. Cold Calling is a marketing Avenue. Right? There's so in more and more and more and more. There's so many things you can do right from your computer at home or coffee shop on your cell phone where you do not need to be there. A lot of the strategies I do is I put an ad out in the city that I want to go to. A lot of my strategies I teach is happening before I even did it. Though I want to go to Austin. I live in Houston, Texas right now. I want to expand into Austin, Texas is a super cool city. It's awesome. The people there friendly, it's great. It's where I want my company to go. Next, I will go on Craigslist and put an ad out right now my happy tail is not living in Austin right now. I got no staff over there, I got nothing over there. But I will put an ad out in Austin and say I'm looking for a dog walker, I want to see how many hits I get on the ad. I want to see what kind of staff are coming through on the ad, I want to see what they're looking for on pay rate, what's going on. So potentially, I can use the money from my other territories to finance that territory. I am not going over there to service that territory now. But now I haven't had I have people who live there who say this is great. I say, you know what, I have a company, I'm expanding it. I would love to be in your city, I would love you to help me be the person to do it. They're like, yes, I'm like, we're gonna get you one or two walks. And then we're going to expand and get you a full territory. How does that sound like cool, I can do one or two walks right now. You'd be surprised people who will take one or two walks right now they will do it. Let them do that. Then you say Great, well, you know what calm we have a whole territory now we have 10 how you feel now like I love it. I'm doing tennis, it will cool. Let me go ahead and get you a backup person, just in case you want to take a day off just in case you want to go enjoy yourself. You should not take all the work on yourself. putting that out again, get them back at Walker now you got two people in that territory that are helping each other out supporting each other marketing with each other. Now you got a whole territory that just started to build and you don't even have to be over there.
26:33
Right?
Natasha 26:35
You just got to know how to work your marketing work your plan work your sales strategy. I'm the go to person for sales strategy that just makes my heart and my soul tick and plans. This is me. So of course start scale sale, good eye website, we will work a whole strategy out for you to get you on the map.
Meghan 26:58
If you would like Natasha to be your personal pet business coach, you can go to her website, start scale sale calm and get 15% off her coaching with the code p sc 20. And thank you to pet sitters associates and our awesome patrons for making this show possible.
Collin 27:14
Thank you so much for listening and taking the time out of your busy schedule to tune in this week. We wish you all the best and we'd love to hear how you define success and what successes you've been meeting this year.
Meghan 27:27
You can let us know at feedback at pet sitter confessional comm we have a phone number that you can call 636-364-8260 or we are on basically every social media platform at pet sitter confessional. And again, thank you for taking the time to listen to Episode 106. We have a whole back catalogue over 100 episodes. So please feel please feel free to go back and listen to any of those. We hope they're helpful to you. We wanted to end this episode with a quote from Maya Angelou success is liking yourself liking what you do and liking how you do it.
