112- Business Recovery after Covid with Dominic Hodgson
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Summary:
Fellow podcaster, pet business owner, and coach Dominic Hodgson comes on the show today to talk about digging out of Covid. Dom breaks down the two sales machine engines we should all have running and what it means to be specialized.
Topics on this episode:
Impacts of Covid in the UK
Taking business online
Sale engine machine
Digging out
Lessons from Covid?
Main take away? The business owner that survives tough storms is the one that’s good at solving problems.
About our guest:
Dom Hodgson was born in Sunderland , in the North East of England in January 1978. He left school at 16 and began a career as a singer and dance teacher before getting a 'proper job' as sales rep for a tobacco company. 10 years later he fancied a change and launched a dog adventure business called Pack Leader Dog Adventures.
From there he got into dog training which eventually led to his online and offline dog training program and the launch of his Amazon bestselling, highly acclaimed book 'How to Be Your Dogs Superhero'. The year after Dom penned Walk Yourself Wealthy, which shows pet business owners how to turn their passion for pooches intoa profitable business. In 2018 Dom wrote his third book 'Worry Free Walks: How to transform your dangerous, difficult and devilish dog into a problem free pooch that your proud to take to the park.
The latest book 'Worry Free Walks' is the first in a 5 book series that aims to fill the knowledge gap for dog owners who love their dogs dearly, but have no control over them. He lives in Sunderland with his wife Beth, two sons, Alex and Toby, and Barry (the Dogue de Bordeaux) and Sidney (the Cocker Spaniel). In no particular order he loves red wine, ballet, HBO television shows, cheese, baking bread and chillaxing at the park with his dogs and a Jack Reacher book.
Links:
growyourpetbusinessfast.com/33ideas
growyourpetbusinessfast.com/free-copy
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, people, dogs, clients, pet, business owners, groomers, offline marketing, premium, services, marketing, online, engine, communicating, build, thinking, social media, big, pet sitter, walk
SPEAKERS
Collin, Dominic
00:17
I'm Collin. And I'm Meghan. And this is pet sitter confessional,
00:21
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter
Collin 00:24
brought to you by time to pet. The road to recovery after COVID is going to look very different for each and every single one of our businesses. But what are some things that we can all be doing or should be looking to do to make that road as smooth as possible? Today, fellow podcaster pet business owner and coach Dominic Hodgson, joins the show to talk about digging out from COVID. Let's get started.
Dominic 00:51
Yeah, my name is Don Hodgson, I am known as the actor's whiz. And I am been running pet businesses since 2011. Ran four different pet businesses, three of them been really successful one has been a complete disaster, maybe we'll talk about that later on to one of my, my main part of my business now is I am a pet business marketing consultant and coach. So I consult with pet businesses all over the world, help them with their marketing strategies, putting together campaigns help them to grow their businesses, really. And also, I run the pet business in a circle, which is a place where pet business owners can come and learn how to do all of the stuff that's that I've plugged into my own business lady that helped me to be relatively successful with that. You're
Collin 01:42
really busy guy. And so I really appreciate you taking the time out to come and talk to us today. And I think the the impetus for today was really about like about business minded, especially in a time of COVID. And, and so when you are talking with your your coaching clients and other business owners in your area, what are you hearing from them about how they've been impacted,
Dominic 02:03
the initial impact was really quite severe, I think for almost everybody who has been affected by it. And I don't really know anybody who hasn't been affected by it. And the initial shock, and the initial hits to almost everyone's income was quite dramatic, and quite scary. And yeah, and you know, I mean, even just in general, putting business to one side, even, you know, I think everyone went through, even if your sales through COVID, you must have at least went through a couple of weeks where you, you know, you didn't sleep very well, you were worried about your family or whatever. And, you know, business owners are no different. But I think it very much depends upon what kind of pet business you had, as to the extent at which you've been affected, you know, so from my own point of view, we have a dog adventure and a luxury home boarding business side of the business, which my son runs now. And that completely shut down, you know, so that was eight, nine weeks, without any income at all for that. And the knock on effects of that have been that most of the board in that we had booked in for the rest of the has gone to one side as well as a fire engine gone past and once again. It's not an ice cream lorry or an ice cream van isn't what they call it as exciting. But, yes, and then similar with groomers, you know, groomers had a similar situation they have completely shut down. daycare I found was very similar as well. When I was still trainers, obviously they've been the ones who have been quite nimble, quite agile, they've been able to switch online. And certainly if not growing, keep going with that business as well. But tough, tough time for you know, your primary audience, which is obviously pet sitters and walkers and stuff.
Collin 03:53
Yeah, it really has been and you mentioned the dog trainers, the nimble ones, were able to switch to an online format provide videos on YouTube or you know, or private coaching. You can't you can't really dogs it online, they haven't invented that yet, unfortunately, unfortunately,
Dominic 04:09
I'll tell you a little insight. So I had I immediately as soon as lockdown hit, I immediately left into action, I created a product primarily for my pet business in a circle members, which was you know how to take the dog training online. And it was based around the fact that at that time everyone was gravitating towards social media, really, you know, website views were down Google searches were down podcast listeners were down really temporarily. And everyone was moving toward social media, you know, to connect that need to connect with anybody that would help them to you know, feel normal feel like a human being. So I kind of recognized that was going to be a tremendous opportunity for the whole of my client base really so as well as the dog trainers who moved online. We've got them setting up local groups where they could position themselves an expert offer advice and help and tips and stuff. And then you know, to keep themselves top of mind to help them to build an audience to so they were in a good position to mop up the pent up demand, once we came out of COVID Well, we actually managed to do that with some walkers and with some groomers as well. So there, they set up their own communities. And you know, there's a more kind of the walkers who were a bit more into training, you know, so maybe they had some basic doctrine and knowledge. And but also the groomers, you know, how to home groom your dog, all this kind of thing. Yeah, it was a sort of the most, I guess the lesson is, the more skills you have, the more you're able to, to adapt. But yeah, there was, it was certainly an opportunity for everyone to experiment with that.
Collin 05:39
Yeah. You mentioned there keeping yourself Top of Mind, right, like really taking that opportunity to go, how do I make sure people remember me and think of me first, whenever things start to open back up, so maybe, you know, maybe I'm not positioning myself being the busiest person right now. But I can keep myself positionally in the market
Dominic 05:58
at the top, one of the kind of tricks that I teach my guys is you almost have to, you almost have to position yourself as being very busy before you are very busy. Because it really, you know, people want what they can't have. And if you know, so this is exactly what I did. When I first started back in 2011. You know, I was, I was busy, I was driving my van around town, I was making a tremendous force of the one or two dogs that I was walking at the time, you know, as well as making social media stars have my own dogs. When you don't have any dogs to walk, you have to make you have to make do with your own dogs, or your mom's dog or your Auntie's dog. But you know, this idea of just making yourself look busy. is a big part of it. But yeah, you're right, what you said, keeping top of mind, you know, huge part of what I teach is about, you know, constantly communicating and putting a message out there about your service, how it can help people, you know, why it's relevant for your existing clients. And that way, we've have constant communication, you, you kind of you're always priming the pump, you know, so you're always generating interest, you're always bringing new people on board. And obviously, through doing referral schemes and stuff like that, you can make that more of a predictable routine. Yeah, but keeping yourself Top of Mind, that's, that's the name of the game.
Collin 07:22
Yeah. And as you mentioned, there, the communication there is so key of communicating not just your services, but that you're still there, right, you're still you're still available. So what are some ways that we can be communicating effectively to our clients?
Dominic 07:36
You right, there are sort of two, I call them just two engines ready this today, if you have, if you think of your business, your pet business as being a marketing machine, a sales machine, and yeah, we, you know, I love my clients, dogs, I'm not in any way, you know, want to productize the dogs, you know, that's not what I mean. But I mean, if you're, if you're a small business owner, or even a medium sized business owner, then you know, as well as being the walker or the groomer, or the doggy daycare owner. While you're not, you're the marketer of that thing, you know, so you want to you want to think of yourself as having a sales machine. And I like to describe it to my guys as being you have two engines in the sales machine. So one engine is dealing with constantly getting eyes on the business of people who are going to be an ideal client for you. You know, so you have this is done with any social media stuff that you might do. But also, any adverts you might be putting out there any events that you might run locally, any partnerships that you might do with complimentary pet business owners in your town, and any offline marketing materials that you might be putting out there, like a newsletter, or leaflets or postcards, that kind of these kind of things. That's engine number one. So you're always wanting to get new eyes on your business engine number two kicks in as soon as somebody goes from being a prospect interested in your service to being a client. As soon as they pay some money, then engine number two kicks in engine number two is all about onboarding, making the client feel welcome, kind of stimulate referrals, offering them upsells. Cross sells are the kind of things you know. So once you once you have these two engines go in, and it takes a little while, because you have to set up you know, the systems and stuff to get this work in. But that that is once you've got that work in market in the business, it becomes like, it becomes quite an exciting thing, rather than it being a chore. And yeah, and you kind of you see the benefits, you see the results, you know much more often. And when you have you need to have something like that even a very basic version of what I've just described. You need to have something like that within your business to avoid the kind of feast and famine that a lot of pet business owners end up suffering from.
Collin 09:56
Right and be able to, you know, ramp up one of those engines when you need to Right, and it makes sure and be be able to adapt as as necessary. You know, you know, that second engine, if you completely lost clients, because COVID is shut everything down, well, you aren't able to keep them around, right? Like they're not able to come in. So you divert all that rest of that energy and fuel that you've got to that first engine?
Dominic 10:18
Yeah, yeah. And to be honest with you, when when the only time your first engine should be really, you know, all of the fuel, as you put it very well, to be put into that first engine should be when you very first started the business really, is the businesses running, there should be as we as you kind of how we lead onto this question we've asked about communication, you know, so the clients, the clients that you have, should be getting separate communications, they should be getting different kinds of communication, to the people who don't think about it yet, you know, because you should be building and testing new services with your existing clients, to keep them interested, you know, to see what else did, obviously people's on their needs are changing all the time. And also, whereas people, people don't love their dog any less than they did before. COVID hits, you know, before the pandemic, but you know, their needs might have changed, you know, so you need to continually assessing their needs, communicating with them, and seeing where they're at, you know, I mean, people circumstances change all the time. And, you know, look at where you guys are babies tweet maybe six months ago, or a year ago, you know, and then five years before that, you're in a massively different place. Now, even if it's, you know, more kids or, you know, the businesses can, but everyone's like that, you know, your clients are like that, dog owners in your town are like that. And so and people circumstances change, and this is why you need to be top of mind that makes that marketing message that you put out there, like so crucial, you know, so that it, it seems to your, your ideal client.
Collin 11:50
Yeah, yeah. And as you mentioned, there, like, nothing is static, like, everything is dynamic. And we can get in our mindset of like, well, I've always had these clients, I feel like I've had them forever, and what's going to change, right, but if you're not communicating to them differently, if you're not seeing where their needs are, and where their needs change, you will wake up one day and be like, Oh, well, nobody needs me anymore, because my services are based on five years ago, or 10 years ago. So you know, keeping in contact that way, they can tell you what their needs are. And you can adapt to to
12:20
that. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Collin 12:24
So thinking of change and the current state of things, what is the state of the pet care industry in the UK?
Dominic 12:32
Um, I think it's pretty good. I think it's in a pretty good. I mean, I'm, you know, usually pretty optimistic about things, I think. I think there's been a big setback this year, you know, and I think a lot of people have realized that they have some kind of big holes in their business, and their business plan. And with me included, you know, I mean, if you if, if anyone sitting to this, if you came through lockdown, and you, you have, you don't feel like there's anything better that you could be doing to promote your business or add services, so you're not so dependent upon just delivering one thing, then, you know, you're doing better than I am, because there was certainly, you know, whilst whilst that side of the business did shut down the other side of it, the coaching side that obviously grew, and has grown over the last six months further, pet business, the pet industry has been pretty sort of resilient, pretty recession proof, really, for a number of decades, really. And like I said, People aren't loving their dogs any less than they were before locked down. Most people, you know, there's going to be the occasional story that we see on the news of a, you know, a bag of puppies being left on the side of the road or something. And that's incredibly sad. But for the most part, people aren't going to give up their dogs because their circumstances have changed. What it does mean is, so it means that you have to. And I think this is where a lot of pet business owners really did struggle was the guys who are not so much my guys in the pet business circle, because they're, they're practicing the stuff that I teach all the time. So they they're constantly communicating. They're creating newsletters, they have offline marketing materials, and they aren't completely dependent upon social media, you know, which, when you do offline marketing, you create deeper bonds with your clients because they know more about you. And they think more of you as well, you know, they value the service more. So what happened over here was a lot of guys who, who didn't have who were weren't charging Very good, very high prices, really, they were charging low prices, and they didn't have any great communication with their clients. Well, they've been dropped. A lot of these guys were dropped severely when the when the COVID first hit, and they haven't the clients haven't taken the backup, you know, whereas the guys who more premium now the clients were more invested in the service and there was more of a connection between the business owner and the client. It wasn't just based around this dog walk that I delivered All this pet sitter service that I deliver was based around more things than that these a lot of these guys were paired throughout lockdown by some of their clients, you know, very generously supported throughout that time. And then there, these guys are almost back up to full capacity again now. Wow, that's, that's
Collin 15:16
crazy. That's really good to hear, right? I mean, you talk about the importance of the communication there, you're really big on the offline marketing, because because it does, it's, it's this tangible thing. And I like I kind of think of it as it's this sticky thing, right? It sticks around for a long time, as opposed to a social media post that just blips and it's gone. It allows you to stay more on top of mind because it's sitting on the counter, right? Or it's sitting on the fridge, or it's sitting those those kind of places, too.
Dominic 15:42
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's a, I've been practicing and preaching, you know, the use of offline marketing for the last four or five years really. And since I wrote my first book in 2015. Yeah, it's, you know, once upon a time when I was when I first started in 2011, if you could take a half decent picture with your phone, and you could, you know, write a witty comment. Or, if you could write a bit of a comment on a Facebook or a social media post that hit a couple of pain points, you could you could get eyes on the business. And you could get, you know, people inquiring, and you could get clients from it. Now, you two degrees still can do that. Now, it was much more difficult, you know, it's much more difficult. Social media is much more noisy place. It does have its place in the marketing mix. But it is just one element of the marketing mix. And I think far too many business owners, they don't have any offline. By offline. We mean, anything not online, really. And also, they don't. But yeah, I mean, but but you know, you get people. If I say, well, you don't want to be too dependent upon your offline market on your online marketing. And so you might say, well, I actually am on Facebook, and Twitter and Instagram, and I write blogs, and I, I am on Pinterest, and and what do you think? Well, actually, that that's still all online marketing, you know, there's still all online channels, you know, and not everybody is on there. That's the other thing. A lot of your clients, the ones that you should really be wanting to be serving, you know, like, people with, you know, business owners, successful people, affluent people in your town who love their dogs, but they're incredibly busy. So they can't provide anything that their dogs need. You know what most of these people that aren't on social media, you know, they aren't like messing around in Facebook groups. Like I see a lot of pet business owners do, you know, a lot of the time. And again, I'm not totally dissing that because I use social media to build my email list and stuff as well. But again, it's just like one part of the mix.
Collin 17:46
Right? Well, and as you said, like you are you can target different people with these different forms of communication. So these two engines that you're running, you know, maybe the biggest broadcast that you have is the social media so that you can just capture as many people but the ones that you do have, that's where you send your newsletters. That's where you send your you can spend some of this offline marketing and offline communication to make it sticky. Make them tangible, and really focus on as you said, the people you actually want to have.
Dominic 18:12
Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And, and they will, they will show themselves, you know, if you give them a pathway to find out more about your business, either by signing up for a free guide, or signing up for a tip sheet, signing up for just your email list, even if you provide an you know, content consistently, they're gonna find you, you know, they're gonna find you, and they're going to put the hand up and say, Yes, I'm interested, I want to find out more. And then if you offer them the opportunity to sign up to your newsletter, then they're going to put the hand up again and say, yeah, I'm interested in that. And then bingo, you've got them, then you know, because I think that's the I think the, the big thing that that I've been practicing in my business and my pbsa members have, when they when they do this, and then they realize how well it works. Like they never go back to the way they were doing it before. So almost everybody is building an email list in my world, you know, they're communicating via email. And that's because that's where you do most of your selling. You know, it's much easier to sell your services via an email. And the reason for that is because the email is it, I mean, providing you do it in a, you know, a storytelling where and you are, you know, entertaining and educational. You're not just saying, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. People get really sick of that quite quickly, you know, if you meant to 10 and then you're building a relationship. It's like a little, it's like a private conversation, almost, you know, that you're having with someone with email. Whereas if you're trying to talk to them on social media, even in the messenger format, well then there's other messages coming in. And then on Facebook, there's notifications, you know, this person's going out for a run this person's getting married. You're and Janice has just bought a new hat and all these things are happening, all of them tapping on Facebook, which makes it a very difficult place to get people's attention and to keep it whilst you, you know, communicate how your services can can be a benefit to them.
Collin 20:08
Yeah, when you were competing with ant Genesis hat, no matter how wonderful of a hat, it is, right, you know, you're not an equal footing, right?
Dominic 20:18
You know, just building on that, obviously, one of the big things that I hear from Tech business owners is they struggle to stand out from the competition, you know, all the time is really hard to stand up. Because there's so much competition. But yeah, you're right, you know, when you compete with them Janice's hat as well, you, you're making life infinitely harder for yourself, right?
Collin 20:37
I did want to touch on, a lot of our listeners are based here in the US. And so I wonder if you could give us some context about the differences in the pet care industry, in the UK versus the US just to help us a little understand a little bit about, you know, where, where you guys are coming from and, and how we can all relate. I
Dominic 20:56
don't think there are that many differences, really, I have about probably about 10% of my member base is based in, in the US or Canada or Australia as well. So I am familiar with some of the practices and to me, they don't they don't come there's no insurmountable problems, you know, that insurmountable differences between the different nations, you know, in the Western world anywhere. I think maybe from a, I think from a promotional point of view, with almost is almost like this for everything they'll call in, you know, like when we like if you guys, you know, when you guys have something and then it comes over here a little bit later, you know, a bit like a bit like a movie release or something that happens with trends and stuff as well. And, and you guys have had a lot more dog walkers daycares and stuff, you know, for they've been more prevalent, I think, for a longer time, and certainly they're more widespread. And I think there's Yeah, I think that I don't think there's a huge amount of difference between the actual work and practices.
Collin 22:02
Yeah, well, yeah, that's, that's one that's good to know. Right? It helps us all understand that when we say we're all in this together, like literally, like, we're all experiencing the same things. And it just it helps, you know, as we share advice, and we share experiences, it translates from from one area to another very easily.
Dominic 22:21
Yeah. And again, there might be some, you know, subtle differences. So we have a private discussion group, in a pepper semicircle, and occasionally, you know, wanting American members will say, Well, you know, why are you doing that, you know, what, what does that mean, what, why are you doing this? And, by the same token, when they post something, and I'll be thinking, Well, why, you know, why are you guys doing it that way? I put that in the big scheme of things that quite small differences, you know, right.
Collin 22:47
Yeah. No, that's, that's good. And so kind of in that context, as far as you know, we're all the same. As we look across previous slowdowns and market crashes in years past, I was curious if you could help us understand what makes COVID so different, or makes it a little more challenging than once in the past?
Dominic 23:09
I think it's the uncertainty element of us, in many ways, is the biggest challenge. Because over here, we went into lockdown late, but we went into lockdown pretty hard. And then we've gradually been coming out of it. And we've had a number of sort of, on a city by city basis, local lockdowns, not many to go through the a handful, you know, since then. But for the most part now, I would say things are getting back to normal, you're not Yes, there's a lot of work to do still. But as far as I can see, from the pet industry point of view, we're back at the races, you know, and certainly groomers had a massive backlog on most dogs that they needed to catch up on, you know, and, and similar to myself, and similar to yourself, I guess, originally, you know, we we lost some previous bookings that we've had for people going away and stuff like that. So that so then there's still kind of an uncertainty element of it. And also over here, they're worried about the winter, you know, and how bad is the winter going to be with relation to COVID? Is it going to cause a second spike, so everybody is a little bit on edge, a little bit nervous about that. Now, from the point of view of other recessions, I've only really had a business to last start my business. Midway through the last recession. And in the last recession, there was there was literally like less money in the system, you know, that everything was very, there was a lot of liquidity. At first, and whereas this time that there is I think, you know, there's been a lot of government assistance for businesses and for employees. So I think there's an uncertainty element. I don't know how you guys feel, obviously, I know you've had the countries, some parts of the country are open, and then some, close it and all locked down. Is that right?
Collin 25:11
Yeah, it's really it's really patchy. And it's really heavily dependent on on where you are I know, we're where we are here in Missouri, where it's a little more lacks, you know, but that still doesn't translate into confidence of our clients. Right. So we we get a lot of last minute we it seems like since the beginning of the year, the number of last minute bookings and we're talking bookings a day before or the day have have just spiked. And and we've really attributed that to people just unsure of their travel plans and waiting last, like last minute to make that final call. And so there's, there's uncertainty on the client side, because they don't know if they're going places if they need us. And then there's uncertainty on our side, where we're going, or they're going to need us. They told me they told us we were going to travel, but we don't know. And then there are other parts of the country where it's pretty much you know, the people there are a lot more competent. Maybe that's because they haven't been as locked down as long or as hard. So it is it is really patchy.
Dominic 26:07
Yeah, absolutely. And similar, similar here, although not as locked down over here. I think I think there is there is a fear factor. And I think there's a fear factor hanging over from clients. Again, this is where the communication comes back in, you know, and if you're constantly communicating with your clients, to remind them that you're open for business, to show them that you are, have adapted to the new, new, the new restrictions, social distancing, or cleanliness, routines, whatever it might be, that you have had to implement in your business, to keep it going and to reassure the client as well, you know, this is all what I mean. But there's a lot of people listen to this now. But like, not everybody is going to be doing this, you know, if you, if you are the guy who send it out, or the gal who send it out, you know, a postcard once a month to your clients to tell them about a special offer that you've got gone, or you're sending out a quarterly newsletter, or you send out an email a couple of times a week to let them know what's happened in the business, this fantastic thing that you've done all of the time, you're just you're just Top of Mind Top of Mind, and people are reassured by that they are reassured by the communication, you know, so and therefore they are much gonna be much more likely to continue to use your service, or to start using you again, if they've stopped. Yeah. And the other, the other sort of take that to the extreme is, that makes it a tremendous opportunity now, for you to not be timid, not be fearful, you know, for you to really put yourself out there. And whilst all of the other pet businesses in your town are, you know, hibernating. And you know, they're going to emerge from their cave, scratching them scratching their bones blinking into the sunset, you know, thinking a reservoir of all my clients gone, you know, and so this is why you need to be, you need to be out there now doing something to get eyes on your business, when clients are unsure. And there's uncertainty, we can do our small part of helping them be more sure about us at least right, that's the that's the corner of the world that we can control. We can let them know I'm still here, I've taken these trainings, this is what I'm working on. This is what I'm looking forward to and the rest of the year. That's what we know we can control and do our small part
Collin 28:16
to help them be more confident to use us. Right. That's it's this it is this integral relationship that you have with your clients.
Dominic 28:23
Yeah, I mean, don't don't underplay that either. And it's not for them. It's not a small part, you know, it's not a I mean, yeah, in the big scheme of, you know, how many people have COVID how many people are dying every deal over the world? You know, your dog walking business might be a small part of it, but for them, it didn't you know, for them. Again, this comes down to position in how you've communicated with them, how you how you've positioned yourself in their eyes, you know, everybody should be positioned themselves as being the trusted expert, the trusted pet advisor, you know, and then they're going to, like you said, they're going to much more rapidly come back to use your services if they have a left at all.
Collin 29:09
Have you heard about time to pet Claire from acting critter sitters has this to say
29:13
time to pet has honestly revolutionized how we do business. My sitters can work much more independently because they have ongoing access to customer and pet information without relying on me. I save hours upon hours of administrative time on billing, processing payments and generating paychecks.
Collin 29:30
If you are looking for a new pet sitting software for your business, give time to pet a try. As a listener of pet sitter confessional, you'll get 50% off your first three months when you sign up at time to pet.com slash confessional. I do want to continue this conversation about recovery right because that's that's where this is going here. And at the top of the show, you mentioned that you had a business that wasn't as successful as the Other ones. So what kind of things? Did you learn from that? And can we be applying to as we recover as we dig ourselves out of this?
Dominic 30:08
Yeah, so go back to time a little bit further, actually, because I'll give it a little bit better context. So I started my business in 2011. My dog adventure business, actually, the dog adventures, and I worked for a sales rep as a sales rep for 10 years before that, and then I left that job didn't really want to do it for another 30. So I left that job. And, and you want to work outside. And I knew I wanted to work with dogs. No, I didn't, actually I didn't, I really had all I knew was I just wanted to work outside. At the time, I was helping out the maloca rescue, walking dogs, and that kind of got the germ of an idea of these dogs could be given my exercise. I knew there was a lot of pedigree dogs around and people aren't giving them pedigree jobs, you know, they aren't giving them any kind of outlet for their, for their breed instincts. And so yeah, so through a period of research, and then pack leader dog adventures was born. Now, I that was quite unique business at the time, because I mean, now almost everybody's doing adventures, and heightens, and back then it was fairly unique. You know, it was pretty sort of groundbreaking, really. And I don't I don't live in it. I live in a northeast town and northeast of England. It's a very working class, you know, traditionally built upon the shipyards and the mining industry. And yeah, a bit sort of a bit rough, you know, a bit rough.
31:35
Not like, like, just,
31:38
you made it rough, rough, I guess.
Dominic 31:41
But, yeah, so what I'm saying is, this wasn't like a, you know, cosmopolitan, Beverly Hills or Notting Hill. And however, I still managed to make a really, really good success of this business, because it was different. Because it was premium, you know, I wanted to be premium all the time. And so I had a lot of success with my business for the first two or three years. And then it grew. And I took on a staff member, and then we grew some more. And I didn't really want to go further sideways with more staff or franchising it at the time anyway. And so I thought, what else can we do? So I thought, well, we'll do an online store, we'll build an online store. And we will be the the dog adventure company, you know, we will be the the guys who use all of the gear every day. And so we will be out, you know, taking videos with us with the dogs with backpacks on and ruffwear, frisbees and all of it and everything. And it was it was a I mean, looking back now, it wasn't probably the most original idea. We thought it was at the time, but anyway, sunk a ton of money into that, and also brought in some marketing experts in inverted commas to help me to build the store, and to do the pay per click and everything that went along with that, and basically chartered a shedload of money at it for about two years. And it didn't really do anything at all, I didn't do enough anywhere for me. And it wasn't a lack of passion. It wasn't a lack of energy or enthusiasm on my part, or even finance, you know, because I was earning good money and plowed it all into this venture, which there wasn't really a marketing strategy behind it. And so I also when, after about two years of doing that, I realized that I actually hated that business model I hated, I hated getting deliveries, packaging them up, and then sending them off to people. I probably should have thought about this before I did the online store. I appreciate that as well. And I'll say it before you then you don't have to, you know, send you don't have to get very many complaints from people who said, you know, all we've ordered the wrong size ruffwear boots, for you to think Oh, God, you know, this is like, this is not what I signed up for. Yeah. And yeah, and so I had to kind of put a pin in that idea. And two things came from it. One was that I realized it wasn't a business model, for me wasn't something that I really wanted to enjoy doing. I wasn't a behind the scenes person like that. I wanted to put myself in front and center and use my personality in the marketing. And the other thing was the marketing sort of tactics that are used. Well, they weren't mine, they were the marketing agency that I used. They didn't work either. And also we plow tons of money into like I said, pay per click adverts for things. And we're looking back with hindsight now what we weren't building a list calling, you know, we weren't building a list of people who were interested in this stuff to build a relationship with them to make it easier for us to sell more stuff, you know. And so that was the big sort of market and epiphany that I had really where I thought, you know what, whatever I do next, I need to really get myself up to scratch with marketing. So I went on a big marketing, education and learned how to do all these things that I that I do my own business, and then I teach now you No, like premium pricing position in user lead generation market in offline communications, all this kind of thing. Yeah. And so that was, that was an expensive lesson, but it was a necessary lesson of it.
Collin 35:13
Yeah. Well, and a reminder to us all of that these things happen, right? Like, you can go with the best intentions, the best idea, the passion, and then you start finding these little things of like, you know, what, actually, I don't, I don't like shipping things around. I don't like dealing with returns, Like who? Who would like that? Wow. But sometimes you don't know until you get into it and not going. And what I think is so key there is that you didn't go well, that's it, I'm done with this entire thing, right? That's nothing will ever work on everything. And he went, Okay, what can I learn to make this, you know, to move on from this? What can I dig into what kind of skills can I be bringing back on, so that I can make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. And as as we are all still recovering and digging ourselves out, it's a good reminder that there are, you know, there are skills that we can, can bring from this, there are lessons we can we can bring from this as well to make us better in the future.
Dominic 36:09
And sometimes you don't know that you don't like something until you do it. And I think I did well cut my losses when I did at the time. And yeah, I think I think just picking up on something that you said that just there now, this is something that out. So whenever anybody comes to me now with an idea, you know, and my guys have lots of ideas for lots of things all the time, you know, and, and often they're great ideas, and we say okay, that's how can we plug this into the business, they exist in business. But sometimes people come to you with an idea and you just look at it from the point of view of with the experience that I've had with the store and then everything since then of like, okay, who's who's gonna buy this, you know, who's going to buy this, who's going to be interested in it? And how you're going to get eyes on it, you know? And, you know, and where's it going to lead to? And not because you really want some kind of business that has some kind of continuity or recurring revenue in it, you know, that's Yeah, so that's, I always say to, I always say to my guys, like, if I was going to do a business site that again, like an online business, it would be some kind of recurring subscription type thing, you know, because then you're least you are building it with a recurring revenue in mind, you know, and, and our business lends itself very well to recurring revenue, you know, through dog walkers and pet sitters, you know, this is like, we should be groomers as well. They're the same daycare owners you know, I always say, you know, unless you unless you if you're a dog walker, all you have to do is not lose the dog. And if you grew up if it was not set fire to the dog, if you do those two things, you shouldn't really lose the client.
Collin 37:45
That needs to be on a T shirt no dogs day since the last dog set on fire zero or like Oh, no anyway. But in the I think the one of the reasons that this you know, your back your story there is so relevant to today is many dog walkers, groomers, people, you know, as you mentioned, like tried to shift online and many of them started to offer products online. And and it is a whole nother ballgame. There's a whole nother side of this dealing with physical goods dealing with returns dealing with all that. And so, if that's on your mind, like you need to be thinking of that you need to already be preparing yourself for these things that in our normal job of walking and not setting dogs on fire we don't have to deal with and so it is it is it is an opportunity, but it does have these other this baggage that we have to be thinking of as well.
Dominic 38:37
Yeah, totally. And you kind of have to think of what what what's the endgame here, you know, what is the essence gonna lead me to? And it's a natural. I've seen I've seen it time and time again since then, where people start adding on to their their services, like oh, now we're selling treats. No more now. We're selling Rawhide. So now we're selling unborn. So you know, I know. And it's that the margin is often very small, you know, especially once you've packaged it up and invested the time that you're going to invest into sorting it out, you know, and he went and delivered it to the client and all this kind of thing. You forget about that. And they're often they're often just like one time purchases, you know, so people only really going to need like one dog brush or, you know, one of these to antler borns. You know, all the stuff you can always get them to buy more often like treats, but it's still it's like relatively small margin. And I mean, if you have it depends on the business model as well. You know, if you're, if you're a big deer Care Center, then and you have people coming and going all the time and you maybe have a grooming room as well, like, Yeah, absolutely. You've got the footfall You know, that's not gonna be too difficult for you to increase the average transaction value by a few dollars or a few pounds or several even you know, by getting people to Buy some additional stuff. Yeah, I don't think people, especially smaller pet business owners, they don't think enough about what what is the end game here for this thing? You know what I'm what I'm thinking about starting, you know, realistically how many of these things Am I going to sell? And therefore, how much money am I going to be able to make?
Collin 40:17
Yeah, and that's not to discount that it is not an opportunity or something that you should pursue. There's just all these other things that are not necessarily I was gonna say tangential, but there's very not tangential to this. They're very much what that what running that style of business is, and it's just a part of it. So that's just a word of caution, word of advice to go at all. We also thinking of this, and I love how you said that of what's the end game? What's the endgame? What do we actually want out of this other than just the here and now I'm trying to generate revenue? What's the What does this have legs to go somewhere?
Dominic 40:47
Absolutely. And I don't want to sound like I'm Pooh poohing on people's ideas about doing this kind of thing. But obviously, I've done it myself, you know, I have done that. And if it didn't not work because of a lack of enthusiasm or dollars that I threw at it. Right? It was it was, it was just it is it's a difficult model, you know, and I mean, anything where you can be Amazon is dangerous now, you know, so, yeah, you gotta, you gotta think long and hard about you got to make sure there's a good story in there, you got to have some kind of recurring revenue thing, really, I think what my what it taught me was what I learned from that, and the subsequent months following, when I closed the store, was the idea of selling information, you know, so if I can now if I can sell information, but information, I can package up in so many different ways, you know, and I can, you know, PDFs, books, videos, courses, webinars, seminars, online, offline events, to, you know, I can produce a newsletter, and I can send it to 10 people, or I can send it to 100. People, you know, it's like a,
Collin 41:51
yeah, information is something and I think people underestimated how much how much information experience that they have. That's a, that's a good thing. They're like, we do underestimate how much we actually know, it's just a lot of us never have taken the time to put pen to paper and write it out or do something with that. So that can be a really simple, easy exercise that you do have just go Okay, what what do I know about taking care of a dog? Well, it's actually a lot, I guarantee you, it's a lot more than just immediately comes to mind. But it takes a little bit of a process to start putting that down on on paper.
Dominic 42:23
Absolutely, yeah. But I mean, you know, that you excellent point you just made that you know, you you have all this experience, and you have all these systems in your head that you use, and you know, what works in your own business. And all it really does take is putting it down on paper, and systemize it a little bit better with it, well, then it becomes an asset. Right? Once it's down, well, then it's an asset. And you can do a lot with that, you know, you can like I said, you can turn it into some kind of training material to help someone else do what you do. You could use it to potentially scale and systemize and scale and franchise, your business. You know that way, if that's where you wanted to go? I sort of alluded to it on the call that you did on my podcast, you know about their community and stuff that you guys have like setting up and stuff now. And you guys have an excellent model to me that could be you know, systemized, and, and rolled out to people who want to do what you do, you know, and, yeah, it's not exclusive to you. There's hundreds of business owners out there.
Collin 43:29
Yeah, that's it. Again, that's remember, we all have something that we know that we find joy in that we have passion behind, that we can help share with others and do something with and that is, that should be really encouraging, especially in times where we don't feel like we have a lot of control over other things, or our main business is down considerably or is trying to recover, like, looking into yourself is one of the best places to start and going, what do I know, what do I know? Well, what can I do, and then grow from there, start from there, start putting things down and see where it goes.
Dominic 43:59
Yeah, and everybody's niche. Everybody's has the ability to occupy a slightly different nation or so I do my thing where I do group adventures, and I've created a great business model for people who want to, you know, charge more than people do for solo walks to charge that bar group walks into scale, and, you know, do two walks in and lots of money, you have a model that is based around, you know, the family and the whole, you know, taking the kids to the meet and greet and all this kind of things. But again, for a family who wants to do that, like me, they're not gonna look at me and say, Oh, well, they would look at you and say, well, I've got more fits what I want to do, you know, so yeah,
Collin 44:35
yeah, absolutely. And that's, that is a good. Again, just a wonderful reminder of we all have things we can contribute. And we our expertise is our learning experience. And that that as you know, as you're saying here, like that has value that has inherent value when we start putting it to work for us and whether that's sharing with other business owners or trying to see how that translates into clients or that kind of thing to get them to pay for that kind of experience to ask We look towards the future, I was wondering if you had some steps or some tips for us to start digging out and start on the road to recovery as businesses or on a personal level to,
Dominic 45:11
it's great to be a part of some kind of community where people are already doing the kind of things that you want to do. You know, that has been the case for me, where I've been involved with lots of coaching groups and various masterminds, and some of them cost 50 pounds a month, and some of them cost 1000 pounds a month, you know, and I've took some value from all of them, and been in an environment like that has been incredibly helpful to me over the years, to help me push through these various kind of barriers and stuff. And also, you need to be like growth, you do need to have a growth mindset. And not everybody does, you know, and a learning mindset as well and a willingness to, to try new things, you know, and to understand that if you want to take your business to a bigger or a better place, you're gonna have to do slightly different things to what you did before, you know, you're gonna have to take some of the things that you did that have got you to where you are now and to do them, you're gonna have to do more of them, there's going to be some things that you're going to have to do less of, there are going to be some new things you're going to have to do, you know, as well. So there's like a continuous upskilling, you know, of the market in knowledge required to kick your business on. So definitely having like a growth mindset and wanting to kick on, that would be like the one of the first things really from a sort of practical nuts and bolts point of view, I talked about you guys have read, walk yourself wealthy, you know, I talk about the five keys to a successful business. And then and just to touch upon a couple of those, you know, one is to be premium, you know, you should always be striving, in my opinion anywhere, certainly my experience all this out. And with my coaching clients, you should always be striving to be and be seen as being the premium provider in your town, you know, as the benefits are massive, you know, you generally attract the best clients, you work less hours in the business, you create, you make more money, you know, to spend on your family or your dogs or to invest in your education or your business like I have. And just to touch on what we said before, you know, the only reason I was able to comfortably launch an online store actually launched two online stores, because the first one I did it with a business partner, and then we fell out and so I had to start all over again. But the only reason I was able to do that was because I was and cash flow, you know, really good cash flow in the business. And so had this money to was able to invest in new things. So being premium is key, it'll be been free premium. And if you're on premium right now, like you need to figure out right, what do I need to do to be premium, and then end it in about going on more dog training courses, or COVID training courses so that that ain't gonna necessarily make them more premium, you know, that more marketing stuff that you plug in, the better and being specialized as well really as the other one, you're not being niched, if you can niche down with your services, either with the type of dogs that you look after, or with the type of service that you offer, or the type of client who you serve, you know, that those two things are tied together? Really, you know, because if you, if you if you premium, then you're seen as being more specialized, and people expect to pay more for a specialist.
Collin 48:30
Yeah. And that, yeah, that idea of well, they just expect, right, but it's just that's just what you do for a better service or a better market or you just pay more for it because that's what you do. And part of being premium he's mentioned of, it's not necessarily what you're doing day to day operations, because you're already doing a great job. We just you it's messaging it right. It's part of the marketing to differentiate yourself in that that's one of that first steps to get the clients that you want. And then that idea of specializing in niching down sometimes that happens organically, sometimes you look up and you go I'm only taking care of bird dogs today. That's huh. Wonder what I can lean into about that or, you know, maybe that's where your market is and you just become that you just become the hound person or you know, other other times you can go ahead a little more tactfully but that is that is something that you know, it just has a lot of value to doing and thinking about.
Dominic 49:20
It does. Yeah, it gives it gives you man it gives you market a lot more focus, you know, so if you are you know if your door if your thing is datsuns you guys went to Jackson's way we've got we've got dogs and Coby he's 12. That's right, that's right, I remember or if your thing is mastiffs, or if your thing is squashy festival dog breeds or bird dogs like you said, you know that's that that makes your marketing so much easier. You're not because you're already a semi expert in this you know you're already you already know more about that than you do about anything else so you can more confidently talk about your niche, your expertise because you If you're already in it, you know, easier to be known, it's easier to be found. So it's easier for other daxi owners to find you, you know, because birds of a feather flock together and like there's little communities online and offline as well, you know, and people are much more likely to refer you, if they know you are. Especially this one particular thing, and this applies to trainers and groomers and stuff, too. You know, it's a, it's a no, it's one of these. Well, pricing and niching specializing, these are two things that people resist, like, there's no tomorrow. Yeah. But they are the, they're the things that make the biggest difference to the business, you know, and just sort of taking a tie it in with what we said before, about, and thinking about COVID and stuff as well, you know, so if you think about, okay, so my business has been adversely affected by COVID. And if something like COVID was to happen again, then what would I do? You know, and like I said, one thing you could do is a similar thing to what I've done, which is to leverage your expertise. And to sell a package of your knowledge and sell it a different way was much easier to do that. If it's if it's niche, you know, if it's niche knowledge about a particular breeds because with, you know, with the World Wide Web and stuff, it's so easy now to connect with Datsun owners or Bulldog fanatics or bird dog freaks. anywhere in the world, you know, and so yeah, it's difficult to do, but once you do it, it's a game changer.
Collin 51:31
It is there's a lot of there's a lot of value there. And we've all experienced the owners who are diehards for a particular breed or type of dog, or they've had a shared experience with dogs. So whether that's dogs that, you know, one of the things that I know, we actually find ourselves doing a lot of is dogs that need insulin shots, we've just gained a lot of experience through that. So that's something that we mentioned, you know, that that we can that we can offer. Looking back at those experiences that you have, if you'd have no way if you don't know where to start, like, you can just look back at your own experiences and go well, what have I done a lot of? And did I like that? If I did, okay, let's, let's dig into that a little bit more and start telling people that I can do that. I'm good at that.
Dominic 52:11
Yeah, that's, that's exactly the process that I tell people to go down when they're looking for what to niche down to, you know, so look at your existing client base? Where are where are you heavy in one particular dog or type of clients that you're that you're helping? What do you love? You know, what do you love doing was your passion, because obviously, if you're going to niche down, you're gonna, you're gonna want to learn more about that subject, you might as well do something that you're interested in. And then finally, I mentioned that there's a market for a generally and also, the example I've given a book is, you know, don't call yourself the king of Afghan hounds. If there's only like two Afghans in your entire city, you know, the prices are gonna have to be weird premium, right?
52:47
Yes, super extra Deluxe.
Collin 52:53
Thinking about personal side of things. In your mind, what kind of business owner weathers tough storms the best?
Dominic 53:01
Well, I mean, it is tough. Don't get me wrong, you know, it's it is. But running a business is tough, you know, so we asked him, yeah, I mean, it is all the time, you know, business is about solving problems, you know, so you first have a problem of, well, I don't have enough clients, you know, and then you might have a problem of when I have clients, but I'm not enough money, you know, and then you might have a problem or for now, I'm too busy. So you know, now I need staff and, and then they business is just about how you adapt to solving problems. If you're not in the solving problems game, you shouldn't get a business, you know, and you shouldn't start a business. And if you've got a business, and you are not in the market in problem solving game, then you're going to really struggle as well. Because that is where you touched upon it before you know that the thing that you do the walking the dogs, the grooming, you know, we're assuming that you're going to be pretty good at that already, you probably wouldn't be listened to exit a confessional if you didn't, you know, you didn't know how to do what you do. Your problem is that you don't know how to get better clients, you know, or make them come back more often, or get them to spend more money. And when you only fix those problems with with a bit more advanced market knowledge, you know, and yeah, just push yourself outside your comfort zone. So if the moment you're only doing social media stuff, you know, then maybe he's looking at how can I build an email list as well, you know, how can I create a guide to help you to build an email list? If you're only doing if you're only doing emails, you know, well, how can I do some offline stuff as well? How can I create a kick ass piece of marketing material that is going to make my clients super proud to be a member of like our family? You know, we start thinking about things like that. It isn't that difficult to hopefully put your passion onto paper and then, you know, this is something that is like you said, something you can use over and over again, you know, with clients and prospects all the time, right?
Collin 54:57
Yeah, and if you don't feel like you've ever solved problem, you're just doing business like this experience through COVID. I guarantee you you've solved at least one of your clients problems that they've had I guarantee it and, and room and so now going, Okay, if one person's had that problem, probably more people have had that problem. How do I tell them that? I'm a problem solver like I can I can help solve that problem for you?
Dominic 55:21
Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's what it that's what it is. Yeah. But when people only ever, people only ever buy anything to solve a problem, and also, whether it's your dog, walk in daycare, grooming board and train service, or whatever it is, people need a problem solved, you know, their dog is at home, chew in the house, or they have an emergency strip trip that they need to make, and they need somebody to look after their dog. You know, people buy things to solve problems. So start thinking about your services as the solution to people's problems. That's how you should be kind of framing it when you're promoting yourself.
Collin 55:52
Absolutely. Damn, I have really appreciated this conversation. It's been very enlightening, to think about our services in new ways and to remember our engines that we should be running at all times for our businesses, and so much more. But I know, we only very, really very covered the surface of this. There's a whole lot more so if people I should mention that you have a podcast. So please, definitely let us know where people can go listen to that. Get connected with you and find out more about all that you've got going on.
Dominic 56:22
Yeah, absolutely. So I have the poodle to pit bull pet business podcast, which is a podcast or pet business owners, daycares, walkers, groomers trainers met a number of different guests on we had Colin and Megan on just last month, which fabulous, but there's about 130 episodes. I'm just slightly ahead of you at the moment. Colin, who knows? Who knows for how long.
Collin 56:48
We're bracing.
Dominic 56:49
I'm just doing one a week. So you're gonna you will overtake me eventually. Yeah, but if people want to find out more about me, there's kind of two things you can do really, one is to go to grow your pet business fast.com forward slash 33 ideas. That's three, three ideas. And you can get on my email list. That way you get 33 tips and hints to help you to grow your pet business. I know you guys are on my email list as well. And I know you guys have also read walk yourself wealthy. So I've got another special offer to the listeners, any listeners at any time, they can go and get actually a free copy of my paper and ink walk yourself wealthy book. You can go to grow your pet as fast.com forward slash free dash copy. And you'll get a copy of walk yourself wealthy. I think it's it's actually like a fiver five English pounds to cover the cost of the post and packaging and stuff. But we'll send that out anywhere in the world. Beth will package it up. And well, he will send you a little board a CD and stuff as well. And yeah, I don't know, what do you think I was not the best way for them to maybe find out more about what I do.
Collin 57:56
Yeah, yeah. Read the book, listen to the podcast and check out your website. And I do have to say as far as website titles go, I love your website, grow your pet business fast. That's it's really simple, easy to remember to.
Dominic 58:11
Yeah, yeah. You know, sometimes, sometimes your business will grow really fast. Yeah. But as long as it grows, you know, strongly and steadily. That's what you're after. You know, it's, it's really easy to grow a business fast, you just charge really low prices, you have clients coming out areas in no time, but you'll, you know, you'll you'll quickly get sick of that routine. So growing a business strongly, you know, with more premium prices, you attract better clients. Um, you guys have seen this too, haven't you? You know, it's, it just makes it a whole better experience for the business owner.
Collin 58:45
It really does. Yeah, if you want to grow quickly, say you'll do it for free. Right? Like, that's one of the extreme end of the spectrum, say I will do whatever you want for free. Do you want to grow that way? Would you be doing that for 30 years? No, nobody would do that for 30 years. So there's, there's there's a on that spectrum, right is where you need to find what you're comfortable with as a business owner.
Dominic 59:05
Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome. I've really enjoyed chatting to you. Once again. I feel like we're really close pals. Now. I know. It's been a couple of weeks. I haven't spoke to my father this often.
59:23
Okay, you know,
59:23
I don't let that
Collin 59:27
but yeah, it's been a real pleasure and hope to have you back on again soon to dive deeper and cover some more more topics. So it's been a been a real joy. Thank you so much dumb. You're very welcome. Take okay yourself. I really appreciate it Dom's mentioning of how we need to be surrounding ourselves with like minded people. When we don't have a good support team, we can have a hard time seeing a path forward or seeing how we would ever be successful. Getting plugged into a community whether that's local or out on the Internet of like minded people who are also trying to be as successful as they can. solving those problems and facing fear in the face and overcoming all of those obstacles is a great way to learn and be supported for yourself and then invest that back into people around you as well. We'd love to hear how you're doing. So check out our website petsitter confessional.com, you can contact us through there or send us an email feedback at pet sitter confessional.com as well. We want to know how you're doing, how things are going and how we can be of any help or any assistance. We do want to thank our sponsor time to pet for making this week show possible and over to time to pet.com forward slash confessional to check out that discount. We hope you have a wonderful week and we'll be back again soon. Thank you so much for listening, sharing episodes in just being awesome.
