113- The Gig Conversation
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Summary:
An article was written recently about a survey of 100 pet owners who used Rover. The result? The owners thought the Rover sitter had all the same qualifications as an independent pet care provider. On the podcast, we discuss the implications of this and what we can do. Natasha O’Banion is BACK to answer the question, “What do I do if someone wants to sell me their business?
Topics on this episode:
Some caveats
Summary of the article
What does this say about the average pet owner?
What can we do as business owners?
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion.
Main take away?
Be YOU and remember that we can continue to improve the industry through education of our potential clients and digging into better systems for our businesses.
Links:
Check out Start. Scale. Sail. and use PSC20 for 15% off.
It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month! Donate today.
The article that started this…
Episode 87 on Industry Standards
Our interview with the founder of PawsInn
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
rover, pet, pet sitters, business, clients, people, sitters, article, seo, independent, care, trust, pet owners, services, dog walker, sell, confessional, apps, insurance, important
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
I'm calling and I'm Megan. And this is pet sitter confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, thank you so much for joining us today on another episode. Hello. This is Episode 113. We have a whole back catalogue of episodes. If you haven't gone back and listened to some of those, please do so we have awesome interviews with other pet care providers and some great topical episodes as well where it's just Collin and I talking about a specific topic in the pet care industry. We wanted to give a thank you to our patrons jack and Jennifer for supporting this episode. To learn more about how to support our podcast and to become a patron. You can go to pet sitter confessional comm slash support to learn more. We also wanted to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode.
Collin 01:14
In case you didn't know this month is actually Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now on a very personal note here, my mom would have been 61 this year, but I can't believe it's been this long. 19 years ago, she died from breast cancer after a 10 year long battle. I do know and understand the times are really tough right now. But if you think about it and have some spare money, head on over to National Breast cancer.org and donate what you can. Together we can come together. And not only imagine a world with more birthdays, but we can help make it a reality.
Meghan 01:47
Today's episode is titled the gig conversation. And here's some backstory regarding this episode. We have been really wanting to have this conversation for a very long time, a long time basically, since we started this podcast, there are very strong feelings on both sides of the aisle here. And we know that this conversation is necessary, but it's going to round some people up. So whether you agree or disagree with the gig apps, we hope that you ride along with us on this conversation. And as always, if you have any sort of feedback, or additional comments, email us at feedback at petsitter confessional comm
Collin 02:24
so the impetus for this episode came after we read an article written by Josh SHERMER of dog walker University, wherein he interviewed 100 current pet owners on why they use rover. And he talks about three big areas that mainly focused around the discussions he had with them. The first one was insurance. He was amazed that many rover pet parents did not trust that independent pet professionals were actually insured and they 100% believed rover.com for dog walkers and sitters were. They also consistently stated that they liked the rover platform. They liked how it felt that it was easy having everything in one place. And the final thing that he touched on was the fact that there was this overall sentiment that rover pet parents believe that the independent pet professionals really were this wild west, while rover was viewed to be more consistent, and they actually trusted the rover platform itself. And his real big one liner takeaway from this article was that he found that pet parents thought that independent pet professionals were uninsured don't have a software app and are not as well trained as rover dog walkers and sitters this unsurprisingly,
Meghan 03:41
sparked a lot of discussion among the Facebook group that I was posted in as well as between Collin and I. We've been having this conversation for a very long time and felt that now is really the time to bring it to the podcast.
Collin 03:55
Now with all that said, we do want to do a huge preface to this and say that the article did not detail several things, we would like to see a lot more information and background information on exactly how he collected and who he collected it from. So some of the or all of the specifics regarding the demographic and geographic location of the survey participants was just not there. It was also written in tandem with a service that he's launching that comes out to connect pet owners with pet businesses.
Meghan 04:26
So there was definitely a bias and a motive behind the article.
Collin 04:32
We also know nanny walkers and pet sitters who are exclusively undercover and some of the best in our industry. They're people we wouldn't trust Coby to. They choose to be on rover because they're consistently traveling or moving. They also choose because maybe they started out on rover and have built a really successful business for themselves. And they just don't feel like wreck making that switch. We also recognize that many businesses choose to have a listing on rover or wax As a funnel for more potential clients, which, during COVID times was actually a much easier way for them to find more clients.
Meghan 05:07
On the other side of the coin though, we know that pet business owners choose not to be on rover because they feel many different things. They feel that rover has really undermined the pet industry as a whole, and has taken away clients from them. rover also takes 20% 15% if you were grandfathered in, but 20% of your profits and doesn't allow the flexibility that creating your own website and having your own insurance etc, would allow.
Collin 05:34
So this is a really important to discussion. This is a really important discussion to be having and one that has been simmering for years and years because there are hard feelings are very passionate emotions on both sides of the aisle. As we all know, the gig economy started around 2010 with Airbnb and then Uber. And then rover came along and eventually wack as well. Does anybody remember dog vaycay. Little did independent pet care providers Little did we know. But these two companies would really shake up the entire pet care industry.
Meghan 06:09
You could and can now find book and have a pet care provider at your house within 30 minutes. And this was devastating to a lot of pet care companies. When rover first got on in 2012. It took the bread and butter of the dog walking in the pet sitting and really overnight turned it into a low cost commodity so that established businesses were no longer at the top of the search pile. And some possibly lost walkers who went out to walk with rover they had to compete with a multimillion dollar tech company for clients, which is really not easy to do. All of the systems that we had in place the meet and greet the paperwork, the personal contact was really taken away and seen as time wasting. And there were too many hoops to jump through. Thus, the onset of the gig apps began to change client's behavior began to change the expectations for tracking for messaging, photos, user interface, and really the easy booking process.
Collin 07:13
So that was changing clients behavior, there were also changes to the pet care industry at large. Some of the pros that the gig apps brought on were that Firstly, it raised awareness of the pet care industry that it actually was a thing, it specifically making it more accessible and open to more people more potential clients. It also brought a ton of people into the industry as dog walkers as pet sitters to and it forced existing pet care providers to differentiate ourselves to niche down raise prices, get better certifications and trainings, basically to raise our standards.
Meghan 07:53
But with it bringing a ton of people on that was really the good and the bad. Because there are some cons to the gig apps there. There's no oversight on who was or is in the app. And it's really hit or miss with reliability of sitters.
Collin 08:07
To be fair, though, this really existed before rover came onto the scene, it was true for independent pet sitters dog walkers as well, what rover did was just change the scale and scope of the impact that those two things are having on the pet sing experience for the clients. So the gist of this entire article is that trust is at the foundation of a client's and pet owners experience and expectations for somebody taking care of the pet. If you boil it all down and strip away everything, all the frills, all the the tracking all of the meet and greet all the paperwork, all the branding, it gets down to trust. So the real takeaway of the article, if we take those three points, and he talked about is that is it. The fact is, is that pet owners trust rover more now, what you know. So we'll get into a little bit about why that may be here, both independent pet sitters, and those listed on rover, both of those people have to overcome the fact that the clients don't know that. They've never seen them before. They may have heard their name, maybe, but they don't know your face. They don't know who's going to be coming over to their house until you meet them. So getting over that initial hurdle from interest in pet setting, to asking you to come over for a meet and greet or asking you to come and take over their care. They have to trust something they have to put their trust in something to make that step to make that leap. In this case in this article that was written where he interviewed 100 rover clients. They basically said they trusted the company, rover and rover and wag say you can get a pet sitter, and you can always get in contact with them and they'll be over. You'll see their background checked and they may even have a badge for first aid CPR training on their rover profile.
Meghan 09:57
Okay, so we go Oh, great. That's what Everyone else does. But it's the ease of which gets you into it. It's that personal connection. So if we believe this article, the average American simply does not care or doesn't know, is not educated to know the difference between an international group, a large local company, or an independent solopreneur.
Collin 10:21
Yeah, that's one of those huge takeaways. It's just, it's easiest for them to get in contact and access to a walker through the rover system. And they don't know the difference, because rover and wag blasted onto the scene blew up the entire pet care industry. And that became the standard that became the way that pet sitters were seen to be expected to be operating. That was the expectation. That's the commodity now, with dog walking in somewhat with pet sitting,
Meghan 10:50
they really brought the immediacy onto the scene of can you get here today? Great. You know, as a pet owner, I don't, especially on wag, like I don't really care who is coming to my house. I just want somebody to walk my dog when I'm not going to be here. In midday. People view rover and wag as a controlling agency over people that they give pet sitters bounds and operations standards. People see them and go, Wow, rover is everywhere. wag is everywhere, compared to the independent dog walker local in a small town.
Collin 11:25
So they may look at the independent dog walker or independent pet sitters and go, Okay, well, who's regulating you? who oversees your operations? You? Ye What? What is psi? What's naps? What's ibpsa? What's NASA IDs? What are those even mean? Most owners as Megan you and I have talked about before, most dog owners don't know what any of those acronyms are, or why they are important. But
Meghan 11:51
rollover. There's an overarching entity that's International, that's got brand recognition that's got respect because of their size. So just us, quote, independent pet sitters. That's unfortunately not as valuable to the average dog owner.
Collin 12:08
When rover and dog vaycay came on the scene back in 2012. It forced us independent pet sitters to explain ourselves about why they were better, or how much more work they put into it. Because all of a sudden, there were thousands of pet sitters and walkers on those platforms. And you as a small pet sitting company really had to make a name for yourself really had to stretch yourself to stand out from people coming onto the scene.
Meghan 12:34
And so while the gig apps forced independent pet sitters to niche down to raise prices to really differentiate themselves from the neighborhood kid down the street, if we believe the findings of this article, it appears that it was all for not Unfortunately, the average American just doesn't care. And they may be just more focused on the easy nature of getting their needs met, I can book a sitter in 30 minutes and have them here, versus trying to find a local pet care provider that, you know, they may not even know exists,
Collin 13:10
or may have an extremely lengthy booking process that's put in place by that pet sitter to control people who access them, and to better weed out who may or may not be a good fit for them. Those are all good things to have. And we always talk about as pet sitters, as business owners here to be thinking of the needs of our clients and how to best meet them. And if this is if this survey is to see say anything, it's really that one of the biggest needs is immediately the expectation of instantly being able to obtain, and to satiate their their need for a pet sitter.
Meghan 13:45
Well, and also education to be great. The article said that pet owners believed of the 100 survey, the pet owners believe that rover sitters were trained. And that's kind of an affront to the independent pet sitter because a lot of rover sitters are not while
Collin 14:00
many independence take it upon themselves to continue education. Now, rover sitters also do the same thing. Some some of them do to continue to have good education opportunities for them. So is you know, is it educating the general public here. Maybe they're just not aware of these differences, as in you know, when someone googled rover, and that was the first thing to pop up. So they went with them. Remembering here that rovers advertising budget is huge. Millions and millions of dollars spent on advertising of single pet business can not compete with a rover commercial that spread nationwide or internationally as well.
Meghan 14:39
Yeah, they can't compete with the SEO with the optimization stuff. And rover has us licked every time in that area. You can even search for a quote, pet sitter near me on Google. And if rover is in your area, they are likely going to be the first to pop up
Collin 14:54
that you mentioned SEO and that's really key here because they have been internet based first Since they found it, right, so they have been reliant on leaning into optimizing for SEO since day one. And they've been doing it for going on nine years now, which really plays into the fact that they are so good at that. But since we're talking about SEO quick protip using the Google Chrome browser, download the Google lighthouse plugin from the Chrome Store, then go to your website and click on the plugin. And it will give you four metrics that Google takes into account for SEO, speed, accessibility, best practices, and SEO optimization, you want all of them to be in the green for a well optimized site. I will say that speed is usually the lowest for many, many reasons, but one of the first ones that you can do is look at the photos that you have on your website, and make sure that they are made smaller, and web optimized so that your site loads faster and more reliably every single time.
Meghan 15:59
We also wanted to give a shout out to pet sitters associates here. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to take care of their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, they have provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance, if you work in the pet care industry. And you do because you're listening to this podcast Hello, and you want to take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. You can learn why pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@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 and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 16:46
I think for me, the really frustrating thing about this entire article is the fact that to the average dog owner, the way that we as independent pet care providers differentiate ourselves from rover and wag just doesn't matter to them. It gets really infuriating. When you when you read through it,
Meghan 17:06
yeah. Well, now obviously, we are not talking about existing clients. So your existing clients, they already know the value of your services, they chose you for a reason. We are talking about Joe Schmo down the street, or Jane schmo down the street,
Collin 17:21
happily married for five years.
Meghan 17:23
Who is the parent to fluffy or Fido? And they're just now learning about a pet sitter? Or do they're just now needing one for the first time,
Collin 17:30
right? People look at we talked about this whole articles about the basis of trust. People look at this larger institution, this larger organization as more trustworthy, because, you know, they may say what could go wrong, they're huge. They're everywhere compared to those small petsitting companies. Because many times a pet owner may wonder why a pet care provider isn't on there. And you have to go well, you know, there have been bad apples, they don't insurance isn't actually insurance, they take X percent, etc, etc. We've already lost them trying to explain why we are independent. Apparently, the average pet parent doesn't see the difference and may not care.
Meghan 18:09
Yeah, they just want Fido taken out for a walk right now. One of the points in the article was that people believe rover has actual insurance, which the sitter technically does not. And this is yet again an example of clients, just not understanding the difference between the quote rover guarantee and quote, fully insured and bonded with the client care if they actually knew the difference, maybe, maybe not. What this shows is that as long as someone is saying the right things in the right way, the client just wants their dog taken care of.
Collin 18:43
So we've been hammering home, our big takeaway from this article was that the pet parent really doesn't care that they're really focused on immediacy. And they're not too concerned about trying to figure out the differences between a rover sitter and an independent pet sitter. So what are we to do? What do independent pet sitters and dog walking companies do? In the face of this information about how pet parents view rover and gig apps?
Meghan 19:13
Well, you could look at what rover is not doing. So they are not going to hyperlocal community events. They are not partnering with local vets, local groomers. And aside from SEO, they are not being super local.
Collin 19:28
Now, I will say this article is frustrating because again, we don't know why the survey respondents chose rover over a local pet sitting company. I think that would be really interesting to know.
Meghan 19:38
And we hope to get the author of this article on the podcast in the coming months,
Collin 19:43
right? Yeah, was it just because they found them easier or were these other things tied into there? Because then you know, if, if they just found rover easier, investing in SEO optimization for your website would be extremely key to do as well. business owner?
Meghan 20:01
Well, I was actually going to say that this is why you need and continue to need to be local, going to those community events. And I know it's really hard right now with COVID. But you need to be passing out flyers, you need to be having pens, with your business name on them or mask, who's your business, you know, just just advertising as much as you can, within you where your service radius is, whatever you can do to get your name out there being visible within the eyes of your own community, so that they can differentiate you. And you can get the word of mouth out to them so they can get the word of mouth out to their friends. And yes, you should be doing your SEO and your online stuff too, because that is very important. And because rover and wag have Google so pegged and locked down, that you really need to be making friends in your own community,
Collin 20:50
right? If trust is at the center of this entire thing, being as visible as possible, becoming a household name is going to drive that trust more and more. So our current clients do trust us. But how do we get that back? How do we build trust of potential clients? Apparently, again, if we believe this article, people don't trust independent pet sitters as much as rover, we know.
Meghan 21:14
And how sad is that?
Collin 21:16
It's sad. But it's true, apparently, according to this yet again, again, this many caveats here, but the survey was 100 people and we don't know the demographics or locations of the participants. Why would it be important to know the demographics and locations of the people who responded to this? a breakdown of age or location would start telling us which markets or parts of the US would apply to more than others. It would also allow us to look at the demographics of our existing clients and communities to better strategize ways of marketing and communicating to them. How do we compete with big apps? Is all hope lost?
Meghan 21:51
Well, no, I don't think so.
Collin 21:53
Obviously, we don't think so. No.
Meghan 21:54
So how do you compete with them? First. And most importantly, don't, don't embrace your independence. Embrace the boutique nature of your services. Have a more personalized nature of what you do. And know that only you can provide the services and level of care that you do. Work on your business, work on your systems. What makes you different? Why oh, you, you always remember that you have a personality and a uniqueness that you can make part of your business. That's part of branding. That's what makes your personal business personal. If people are looking for more immediacy from you look into better automation of systems, whether that's processing an email, or what happens after someone submits a booking request through your website, or maybe even automating financial actions. I know that Zapier is a very powerful automation software that we can dig into in a later episode, and know they're not sponsored. But also systems like paws in are a great way to list your services for free and a way to connect pet businesses to clients. We did interview Dennis Nelson, the founder of pausing way back in Episode 66. If you want to go listen to that, it's free to list and free to use. And the more people who use it, the better the SEO.
Collin 23:20
And on that time to pet has actually just launched their local pet care Listing Service for time to pet users as another way of elevating independent businesses. Basically, find any listing service you can, whether that's time to pet paws in through your insurance are a professional organization and get on it. Be aware that some of these services may charge monthly fees or take a cut of profits. But there are many viable free options out there. As we mentioned earlier, make sure you're checking and double checking and triple checking your own SEO. And we do have some upcoming episodes about that topic. And Megan, you mentioned be very visible in your community, get face to face out there socially distance right now become a household name among the clients that you want.
Meghan 24:05
Ultimately, our main point from this article is that there is so much education still needed on what pet care should look like to the average client. Sure, they get their needs taken care of. But what is the best experience possible? That was one of the discussion points of our episode 87 on industry standards in the pet care industry, and the ones in the industry should be doing the educating and should be setting the bar high for ourselves and then letting clients know what those are and why they are needed.
Collin 24:39
Right education here is really, really key. We as pet sitters be can be raising ourselves and pushing ourselves to higher standards and holding ourselves to that across the board. So all hope is not lost. It is educating the clients educating the general public about what pet care is. should look like in the future, what kind of qualifications people should have, what kind of experiences should they have, what kind of insurance they should have, all of those things have been a long fought battle for the past 20 years, all the way back to Patty Moran. And we are still fighting that we are still pushing that forward, especially as gay economies come on board, I don't hear what we're not saying. We are not saying that all of this is bad. And all of this is terrible. And there's only one way to do it. What we are saying here is that we can all come together and make it a better place for all of us, to make us make sure that we are all operating at the best level that we can, and educating our clients on that so that they know that they are getting the best experience possible. So if you have feedback on this, and we hope that you do go, we'll have a link to the article. So you can go read it yourself if you haven't already. And let us know your thoughts on it. send that to feedback at pester confessional.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Meghan 26:00
It's been a few weeks, but Natasha banyon is back for answering another pet business coach question
Collin 26:05
someone has offered to sell me their business. Where on earth do I even start.
Natasha 26:10
So if someone is looking to sell their business, as far as then you want to do is make sure you get a valuation on your company. What is it worth a lot of people are making six figures a month, but then their expenses is six figures as well. So they're saying I'm operating this six figure business. But when you look at operating expenses, your cash port, so you want to make sure that you go ahead and get yourself someone that can do an appraisal on your business. Most businesses are selling right now for 1.5. So it's going to be your growth and a half. That's like an average. But you obviously want to sit in cover relationship with the person you're looking to sell, I would say to what we are really personal with this business. So if you put a lot of your sweat, tears and equity into growing, you probably want to make sure the person you're going to sell to is going to have like that same integrity that you had that don't forget you are giving like your babies, your people, your community to somebody else. And so I would personally advise integrity wise, make sure they're going to be a good fit. So have a sit down meeting with them figure out their plan their intentions. And then also a lot of businesses have a lot of stipulations on what you can do next. So for instance, I'm going to sell a business to you, but you can't open up, you know, within 20 miles from me again. So you want to be really clear on what this person is requiring. Because when she wanted to open up another business again, they say no, you can't be in my territory, because then you're going to be my competition. You also want to look at if you have staff, if they're going to be going with the business as well. And you really want to know the full intent of your buyer, I would say the most important I would get yourself like a lawyer, someone who's done sales before someone who's bought and sold pet business, his pet business, excuse me in particular, just so they can go by the check by check step with you. So I know a lot of people, including myself, who have just given away their list, I was in a small suburb, I think I had a list of maybe like eight or nine people. And I kind of just wanted to make sure that my clients would be well taken care of. So I didn't charge anything for my list. I was like, Listen, they're yours, I get to get out of this summer, but I really want to be in anymore. You're awesome Peace out. Thank you for taking this off of my plate. So a lot of people get into that mode. But again, I only had like maybe eight or nine clients to do. So I've seen people do this with a 40 grand list, or 60 grand list. And they're just like, I'm moving to Hawaii, I'm done. I'm out. That is profit. For the owner, you put a lot of sweat and tears in that business that you should be selling your client base that is your baby. So if you want to give it away, hey, I'm no one to judge teach its own. Again, I've been there with eight or nine lists, but you can sell it. Look at what the value is one of my good friends just sold her business. And she actually mentioned a couple really interesting things that she said the company that she bought two companies. The first company she bought was a dog walker only business. So that was, you know, profit sales in that aspect. But the other business she bought was also a boarding facility. So and she didn't even offer boarding in her original business. So now she had a look at the value and the appraisal of the companies. How much money can you make from that list. You also want to remember that a lot of those clients do leave. So although we like to buy lists, they're not like a set in stone, new business. Those clients are not obligated to you and you're not under any contract agreement. So just because you bought a list or you bought a business does not mean you're going to get the same value. So I don't know, I would take a third away. If I bought a business no matter what the value is, I would consider a third of that is not real numbers. So just keep those kinds of things in mind when you are buying a list. But one thing you want to know is how much can you profit, whether it's their territory, and the location of the clients? If can you build more clients in that area, you want to make sure you have a game plan that says I can go further with the starter list. That's really all it is. It's not like this bread and butter goal you're getting. All it is, is a starter situation where you can profit off of, but don't, you know, a lot of people get themselves with it, because they think like, Oh, this it was like $30,000 a client. And but half of them left. Yeah, that happens a lot. A nice little trick is to get yourself in the business, if that other business will allow you to, and send an email out first, to the whole client, say, Hey, listen, we have this company that's going to be buying our business XYZ on this date, we're going to be doing a merger or we're going to be doing, they're going to acquire the business entirely and go from there. That would be a little tricky trick to get your foot in the door to see what's really under the sheet. You know what? The main question I would say is kind of like what can I do to prep my business for sale? You know, so one person is going to be the seller, but the other person is going to be the buyer. So the seller wants to make sure it's an automated business. It's turnkey. There's very little, like headache involved, because for instance, contracting businesses don't sell that. Well. People who have contractors, they typically don't sell well. People who have employees, they typically sell well, because they know that they're on the system, they got payroll, they have taxes, it's all kind of turnkey system. So the main question would be what should I do to prep my baby for sale, because the person is going to be inquiring, this is always going to have to do a little bit more to kind of fix it. Be honest.
Collin 32:02
If you'd like Natasha to be your personal pet business coach, head on over to start scale sale calm and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her services.
Meghan 32:12
We thank you so much for listening and taking your most valuable asset your time and listening to us today. It really means so much to us. And again, if you would like to support us and support the show continuing to move forward. You can go to pet sitter confessional.com slash support. And thank you once again to our sponsor, pet sitters associates. We hope to hear from you soon. Bye.
