111- Preparing for Uncertainty
This podcast is sponsored by Pet Sitters Associates. Pet Sitter Confessional listeners can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter Confessional discount code Confessional at check-out to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance at petsitllc.com.
Summary:
2020 has been a whirlwind of uncertainty so far, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better soon. What are the things we can do to be better prepared for continued uncertainty in the future? Today, we discuss three areas we all have more control over than we expect, and what that means for putting ourselves on a great path forward. Natasha joins us to talk about what to do after you attend the Game Changers Summit.
Topics on this episode:
Physical Preparedness
Mental Preparedness
Emotional Preparedness
What happens after the Game Changers Summit, with Natasha
Main take away? The more time we spend getting to know ourselves, the better we will be when we have to rely on ourselves in unforeseen scenarios.
Links:
Crisis Hotline: 800-273-8255
Check out the Game Changers Summit!
You can support us directly on Patreon here.
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, & TuneIn
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
emotions, business, pet sitters, pet, prepared, events, control, world, feel, membership, operate, unexpected, client, sitter, listening, feelings, summit, physical, scenarios, staffing
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
I'm Collin. And I'm Meghan.
00:19
And this is pet sitter confessional,
Meghan 00:21
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, everyone. And thank you for joining us today on episode 111. Hello, we hope that you're having a good start to your week so far. And if this is your first time joining us, welcome. We have a whole back catalogue of over 100 episodes that we've been doing for the past over a year now, and some great topical episodes as well as some awesome interviews with other pet care providers. If you aren't already, please subscribe in whatever podcast player you're listening to right now. And if you feel we've earned it, please leave us a review in Apple podcasts. And a big thank you to our sponsor, pet sitters associates, and our Patreon, jack and Jennifer. Thank you guys so much. If you would like to learn more about Patreon and what it is and how you can really support us in the show, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com slash support.
Collin 01:17
So it's a big week for us.
Meghan 01:19
It is we have the pet sitters international conference on Wednesday and Thursday. And the game changers summit on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,
Collin 01:28
there is still time to sign up for the game changers summit, which is free. And so we hope to be able to see you there.
Meghan 01:34
Let's dive into today's topic. So we recently got an email from the person who helps us with our finances. And the email focused on 2020 being a very crazy time a very crazy year with a lot of uncertainty in the financial market and jobs, reports. And then we watched the presidential debate. Here in the US I'm sure you're aware that there's this election coming up. And the news this past week of our President Trump getting COVID. So we're not here to discuss any politics. That is not what we're doing today. But the whole unknown of what on earth this fall and winter are going to look like it really got us thinking about how on earth we're going to prepare for so much uncertainty, particularly here in the US with the election and across the world with COVID. Like, nobody saw this coming in March and April. And nobody knows what the fall and winter are really gonna look like.
Collin 02:35
Right. So that's what today's topic is all about. We want to discuss three basic areas that we can focus on right now, both our personal and in our business lives that we can think about as we move forward towards more uncertain times and more unexpected events.
Meghan 02:50
Now, obviously, no one can ever be 100% prepared for everything 100% of the time, but every little bit does help. So what are some areas that we can focus on, we really have three that we've outlined here today. The first one is physical preparation, and then mental preparation and then emotional.
Collin 03:07
So when we think of physical preparation, this is the tangibles items, the accessories, the places that you need to be thinking about when you are preparing for any number of situations. This is the hardest one to be prepared for. Because it's hard to think about all of the physical things that can go wrong and the physical things you would need to overcome those in the world around you at any given time. And be be prepared for all of these kinds of scenarios. As an example, it's hard enough to have water for you and your friends. Now think of trying to prepare for water for your pets or or that may go over when an earthquake strikes or the fire that breaks out. And that's just talking about emergency preparedness. We're also talking about being physically prepared for uncertain Financial Times. So this is saving money in both a reduction of costs, but also putting money aside in a way in a savings account.
Meghan 04:06
But at the very foundation of this, it's knowing your numbers, how much in expenses you have going out every month and how much income you have coming in. If you don't know that, then you don't know what your minimum viable cash flow is. You don't know what services are going to be need to be cut or increased or changed or whatever for your business. It's also about knowing any staffing needs. That if you have staff that's important. And then any service areas as well. Not just will those change, but also how will they change when that time comes and when the need happens. It's about preparing clients for those upcoming changes and really communicating with them. Well, we talked about this all the time. This service is a customer service, a service based industry where customers service and client relations are huge communication is number one with them,
Collin 05:05
right? So you're planning out the scenarios for your business, if your business stays the same, how's your business going to operate? What happens if things get a lot worse, or a lot better, have a plan of response for each of those and be ready to communicate that response to your clients.
Meghan 05:24
As we've said, You aren't going to be able to nail the exact situation on the head. Example, one COVID. No one foresaw COVID coming. But working now, especially having gone through all of that, and not that we're over it. But in the midst of it still, it really has taught us to have more cash on hand, and asking people to pay ahead of time buying gift cards, raising prices, being more stringent with our deadlines and cancellations and saying no a lot more. It's really forced us to reevaluate our service areas if we were happy with them, and even our services. If you weren't happy dog walking, then cut out dog walking. It also had us evaluate the number of staff we had on hand, if it was too much, if it was too little.
Collin 06:11
All of those things, all those examples that you just gave Megan are tangible things that we experienced in the world, the things we can touch, we feel we interact with, as we've talked about, it's not just knowing what we have right now. It's knowing how those things need to or should change, as certain plans unfold as things take place in the world around us. You know, you talk about staff, what's the layoff rate or furlough rate as things deteriorate? What's your hiring rate, and staffing up as opportunities increase as we move forward. So this is part of planning out those staffing procedures, those hiring procedures ahead of time, so that when things begin to change, we're able to take advantage of those.
Meghan 06:52
And even if you're a solo solopreneur, you can look at what you did in March and April, and may, how you handled that really stressful time, and see if you liked that process. And if you didn't seen what you can change about it, because there may likely be shutdowns again, in the winter, if this really progresses again, learn from it, and say, what policies or procedures should I have had on hand? How should I have been budgeting? If you were running razor thin margins back in January, it was a real tough slog getting through COVID and March and April. And may, most of us discover that the services that we offered weren't as profitable as we originally thought, or we didn't enjoy them. Yeah. So we just cut them out.
Collin 07:44
Right. So it's learning, as you said, learning from these past experiences to prepare for the next unexpected event, we have shed a lot of preconceived notions, ideas, ways of operating through going through COVID. And as you mentioned, still going through COVID, this process of connecting with the physical world around us and being prepared for changes. So think about the world that you operate in. If you operate a facility, you may be thinking about changing facility size, base changing facility location, if you didn't like the way that one worked, or if you just didn't need all of that space. Maybe you previously owned a building, but are now just wanting to lease it. So it's more flexible, and you don't have those liabilities placed on you. Because of these things that you've personally experienced. That That kind of thing is changing your physical world to make it better for you to be able to adapt and respond. And not just those two things, but thrive in the changing environment.
Meghan 08:43
The pandemic really kind of brought about a sense of fear in a lot of us. But you can't operate out of a sense of fear of the unexpected, because then you never never take advantage of any opportunities that could come your way. So for example, I've got say, I've got $10,000 on hand, I could invest that in better equipment, but I'm not because what happens if the economy blows up again tomorrow? Or what if the government shuts down? Well, you have to do some serious risk assessment there at that point and think, okay, given what I know now, what is the safest bet I can make, and still grow and operate my business the way I want to?
Collin 09:26
Yeah, having a mindset of fear and anxiety is not good. It's not good, that's unhealthy to live with for ourselves and doesn't help our business flourish and take advantage of those opportunities. You won't have a happy business, when you're operating out of a sense of fear, you'll have a safe, stagnant business, operating out of fear leads to rash, quick and sometimes even short sighted decisions because we're so focused on the here and now that as you mentioned, we're not thinking about opportunities as they come along. When we're talking about planning for the uncertain times. We are not saying operate out of a sense of fear, we are saying operate out of sense of cautious. Being prepared is not being fearful. It's remaining calm, cautious and confident as you move forward. It's not just that you have a plan in place, it's that you've practiced the good plan that you implemented when you need to, and you're communicating things as they come up.
Meghan 10:24
The second aspect of being prepared for uncertain times is the mental aspect. Now, we are not just talking about the mindset of growth versus fixed. It's not just taking advantage of opportunities. It's about how am I going to be able to handle the unexpected part of this is, as you plan through your physical needs, and the physical world of what may or may not happen, you need to allow yourself to experience the anxiety, or the exhilaration of those events ahead of time, basically, trying to cut down on the amount of real time world processing of emotions and things as they're going on. So you are able to remain calm in the moment. Sure, the event will not be as exactly as you had planned. But you've had time to think about it ahead of time, you've been able to pre process it.
Collin 11:17
Yeah, think about how emergency responders are able to remain calm in the face of such anxiety inducing, scary, terrifying events. They rehearse an awful lot and force themselves to think about those events. And not just think about them in the abstract, but they think about and they process, the steps that they're going to walk through. When that event happens. It's all of this pre planning that goes into place for each and every single one of those kinds of events. As we are preparing for the physical world to change. We are preparing mentally for it too, when we write out those processes, and we force ourselves to feel and experience those emotions as we're working through that. So it's taking the time to think and feel our way through those experiences. It's recognizing the facts of what happened Think back to to March, April, May. Business slammed to a halt ground to zero. That's the fact. What were the emotions behind that as the world was collapsing. How did you handle it? How did we handle that? emotionally? What What was going through your mind? And what can we do next time to prepare for that before we continue 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 are listening to the pet sitter conventional podcast. Or maybe 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.com. 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 insurance. Once again at pet sit llc.com.
Meghan 13:21
It's a great idea to recognize that we were really sad, angry, scared, so that the next time an unexpected event happens. Or the next time the government locks down. In a few months, you can draw on those emotions. And logically say this event, I'm going to be scared going into this because I was scared the last time this event will be terrifying. And that's okay because I know how I'm going to process this. When you remember the last time you said I was really scared and I cried every day, because I didn't know what the next second was going to look like. Take those emotions, recognize them, put them on someplace whether that's on a piece of paper, writing them down or just a mental location. So that the next time when something comes up, you know what feelings you should expect. You weren't surprised you weren't caught off guard and you aren't unprepared for those feelings by what's going on around you. You won't know the exact roadmap of what's going to happen. But you can say I know what the other end is going to look like. Because you are pulling from past events. Another big aspect is recognizing the things that you can control and the things you can't control. So in the face of uncertainty, you can control how you feel and how you deal with it. You can't control the actions of others. You can't control how anyone else is going to deal with it. For example, with COVID we can't control what the government is going to do next. We they you know they say wear masks, so we can't control what others do. We can only control what we do. And whether you're booked for the holidays, or you're not booked. Whether your governor says, you know, come December, we're closing down again, in preparation for the second wave, you can't control that. You can control how you operate your business, your feelings and your emotion.
Collin 15:19
Yeah, it's get it gets to the low sigh of control. Where is the center of control in your world? Where do you perceive control to exist. And that itself is a mindset. If you perceive that what happens in your life is always external, things are always happening to you, you'll always just be caught up in the winds and feel like things just to happen. And you don't have a say, of one thing or another. But recognizing that we have personal agency, over our actions, our thoughts and our emotions, that gives you power back into the situation, when COVID happened. And as we keep saying is still happening. Inside Out here, we keep using COVID. Because it's a really good example of being caught off guard and being caught unprepared. The example we could take this to, you know, more more small scale stuff hears when your car breaks down on the road, it could be when the snowstorm is four or five inches more than they expected it would be maybe when you're short staffed one day unexpectedly. Those are all unexpected events. So it's it's knowing that when things do happen out in the world, those are outside of your control those events happen, we recognize that when our businesses were stripped away from us because of COVID. And all these external forces were going on that we had no control over, it left us with ourselves and our emotions, it left a lot of us to recognize and realize that the control that I thought I had was actually not there. But I do have an awful lot of more control and agency than I expected or ever realized. In some areas, when we're talking about mentally and emotionally to we can control our mental and emotional state and not let outside factors are things that influence that.
Meghan 17:09
And that leads us right into our third stage of being prepared for uncertain events is the emotional side. Things don't make you feel certain ways you allow them to make you feel certain ways. And the person who cut you off on the highway didn't make you mad, you let the person who cut you off make you mad. The person who contacted me an hour before the meet and greet and said, Well, I actually don't want to meet, I allow them to make me frustrated. And that did happen.
17:42
Three,
Collin 17:43
three days ago, very recently, we're still processing that.
Meghan 17:47
So with that phrase, it gives you control back over your emotions, you consciously stop the outside world from influencing you, because you recognize it doesn't have power over you and agency over you or your mental state or your emotions.
Collin 18:03
Very importantly here, this is not a discussion about mental illness or emotional health like depression or chronic anxiety. There is this is not a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of discussion that we're having here. Because there are real needs for help support, medications, those kind of things. And if you feel like you need those, reach out and get those and don't feel like you are alone because you are absolutely not. What this discussion is focusing on here is that you do have more control more agency, I love that word that you said they're more agency than you realize that you have control over these emotions, because they are your own. But if you feel like you need help, and support, we'll have resources in the show notes. And on our website to get that. And please seek those out. If you feel like you need those.
Meghan 18:58
As we are thinking about the unexpected, or the crazy times in practice these kind of statements, I let that person get me angry. Take Back the control of the little things in your life right now. So that when the big things do happen, it's not quite as hard. It's the same thing that we tell our kids, our three and five year old all the time every day when they are fighting or when one sibling isn't being kind to each other. You know, he's trying to make you mad right now, don't let him You don't have to let the action have the unintended consequence of the person doing it to you. The reason why the client is yelling and screaming at you right now is probably to elicit a reaction from you and to get you all riled up.
Collin 19:41
When we talk about controlling our emotions here. We're not saying never feel anything again and be like
Meghan 19:48
Spock, I don't think many people will get that reference.
Collin 19:51
If you get that reference, send us an email feedback at petsitter confessional.com and let us know right? We're not saying never feel an emotion again. What we are doing is we are being able to acknowledge that those emotions are there, and not being led by your emotions. Again, we're taking our agency back and centering it back on ourselves, putting that low sigh of control on our self and giving ourselves agency, as the world around us changes,
Meghan 20:19
your emotions should be felt they should be acknowledged. But that doesn't mean that they have to control you, especially for complex emotions. Those really tend to sideline us, as we don't know exactly how to address them. Those really big emotions, like we go through, you know, our toddlers, they just have such big emotions, they don't really know how to control them, or we come alongside them, we try to calm them down. We say your, your feelings are real, but they don't have to dictate how you respond and react to others. our emotions are a part of us. So dismissing them is dismissing a part of ourselves. Being introspective, and spending time with our emotions really helps us the next time we feel them. We know how we respond emotionally, and how that in turn impacts our bodies.
Collin 21:12
Yeah, we can't discount this kind of connection between our emotions and how our body reacts. I don't know if this has ever happened to you. But if you've had to suddenly slam on your brakes, because you're about to get hit or you are about to hit somebody else. And after the fact you've been more worked up more uncomfortable and shocked by your elevated heart rate, the shaking hands the the pulse, than the actual missing of the event that that tends to be what shakes us up is our physical reaction, our and which is a response of this fight or flight. Because we almost hit somebody, we get more shaken up by how we feel, then by actually running into somebody that can disturb us. And so it's reminding ourselves of what these feelings are so that they're not foreign to us, so that when we do feel them when we do spend this time being introspective, we know what to expect and can think our way through we as I said earlier, part of being prepared is being able to be calm, and direct and confident in our responses. When we act out from our emotions. We aren't f acting from a confident place. When we lead with confidence, we are acknowledging the emotions, and then sometimes acting and responding in opposition to them, because your emotions are going to tell you to do one thing. But you may have to do the opposite. It's all about getting to know yourself, the more time you get to know yourself, the better you will be, the better we will all be when we have to rely on ourselves in unforeseen scenarios and situations as they come up.
Meghan 22:48
We hope that this discussion and some of these tips have been helpful to you when we're going to be going into the fall and winter and not knowing what is going to happen with our businesses with ourselves. In the US, it might be a little crazy. So hopefully some of this stuff you can take and use and apply to your own life.
Collin 23:07
And as if you ever feel like you need someone to listen to or talk to because you're in an uncertain scenario, and you don't know where to turn, please know that you have listening ear with Megan or myself at any time. You're not alone. If you're feeling unprepared or unsure about the future. We are all in that in that place. So you're not alone. There are people around you to talk to So reach out to them and including us too. We're here for you.
Meghan 23:34
Usually at this time Natasha banyon comes on to answer a pet business coach question.
Collin 23:40
But today she's going to talk about what to do after the free game changer summit,
Natasha 23:45
we realized that a lot of the feedback we've gotten is that people want a little bit more. So if you aren't able to attend for instance, or it's too much information for three days, then you have the option of purchasing an all access pass that gives you all the recordings at your disposal. And you also join our membership. Our membership we invite you to come in it is a hot seat membership. So every single month, we are going to have a new topic. Didn't want to talk about earner summit. So we'll have finance we'll have accounting, we'll have scale. We'll have branding. We'll have web design, leadership, all the different topics we've talked about in our summit. We're gonna break them down the month to month membership group. This is also my favorite is it time to have accountability. I really really really love co working with people. So I know that I'm doing my projects. Someone's holding me responsible. But I also have a member group the community. A lot of us know what it feels like to be really lonely. You know, we walk dogs take care of cats and chickens. They're not necessarily talking back to us. A lot of times they give out information in Facebook groups and ask questions. But the free Facebook group does not know our business they do not know for in the suburbs. They do not know for in the city. They don't know if I've been in business for one year. 10 years they don't know my brand. So in a Facebook membership, it allows you to really kind in on the community and we get to know you personally no more kind of guessing, with advice, like no, we know Collins business, we can actually give real information now, because we know the structure. So that's one of my favorites. But the main thing is having takeaways It is similar to a mastermind to be in a mastermind group before it is where you get full information. It's also where you get access to all these experts, and mentors and influence and where they can help you grow your business. People ask me, What was my secret tip? to run my business the way I do? It has been to not think and do it myself. I have given up that life. I know. Fine, who knows? who's done it. Tell me everything you know, and I'm gonna save myself time and agony. So that's what We have provided after the summit. It is life after really excited about that.
Collin 25:57
Yeah, those three big words, accountability, community, and access is the things that you get with that you're getting this wonderful workgroup of people that are going to learn about who you are, grow with you, and be able to provide business specific and personally adapted information and recommendations to you. And you're all going to grow over time.
Natasha 26:18
Yeah, I can't wait. We have a lot of stuff coming in the pipeline. Also, hopefully, when COVID is over, we can meet in person and do some in person events, vacation together. Know where people if I go to Vegas, I know that my pet sitters are in Vegas, and if I go you know because no Aki I know who's over there. So we're really excited to like, really change the game, you know, and there's some It was called game changers for a reason. So we're looking to change the game in 2021 are really trying to get more personal, and our industry, it's too spread out too broad. And we're so tight knit and we really want to just emphasize that now.
Meghan 27:00
We thank you so much for listening to this week's episode and Episode 111. We put out multiple episodes every week. So we hope you join us for the next one. If you would like to connect with us on social media, you can we are on Facebook and Instagram and everywhere at pet sitter confessional. Or if you would like to give us a call and leave us a voicemail to talk about how your business is doing and how you are going to prepare for the uncertain times. You can call us at 636-364-8260 Thank you to our sponsor, pet sitters associates for making the show possible. We thank you so much for taking your most valuable asset, your time and listening to us today. We'd really appreciate it and we thank you again, for listening. Thank you
