125: Mindset Work
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Summary:
With 2021 on the horizon, it’s important to assess your mindset for the future. Today we discuss 3 aspects of mindset, how the pet care industry is like a funnel right now, and how to break free if you want to change your mindset.
Topics on this episode:
What is a mindset?
What it is important?
How does it impact my business?
Can I change it?
Ask a Pet Biz Coach with Natasha O’Banion
Main take away? Your mindset matters. Take what’s working and dig into that. Take what’s not working and make room for something better.
Links:
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, growth mindset, business, people, pet sitters, mindset, change, industry, pet, fixed mindset, interpret, world, worldview, operate, funnel, confessional, failure, check, policies, opportunities
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Collin 00:18
Hi, I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:19
And I'm Meghan.
00:20
And this is petsitter. confessional
Meghan 00:21
an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, and welcome back to another episode Episode 125, where today we're going to talk about mindset work, we wanted to give a quick shout out. And thank you so much to our patrons who are supporting us every month with the price of a cup of coffee. And to our sponsor, pet sitters associates. Thank you guys so much. This week, the US is celebrating Thanksgiving. And we all know that this year has been very tough on everyone, physically and emotionally as well, of course, as in our businesses, and we don't want anyone to celebrate alone. So please check out the show notes for a zoom link for a Thanksgiving hour that we're going to be hosting on November 26, at 1pm. Central Standard Time.
Collin 01:10
Yeah, we're really excited about this. So if you have food, you can bring it in eat along with us. Or maybe just bring your smile we'd love to get connected with you see how you're doing touch base.
Meghan 01:21
It's a come and go style. So whenever you can make it between one and 2pm Central Standard Time, we'd love to get connected with you.
Collin 01:28
So as you said, This week, we are talking all about mindset work. But first, we have to understand why this is so important for us to talk about this, this year has forced all of us to come face to face with our views of the world. And I think more importantly here is come face to face with the views of our people that that are around us. We've been forced to try and interpret actions and words by neighbors, politicians, even our own clients, we through the lens of COVID, the election, the Black Lives Matter movement, many of us have been personally challenged to think and act differently than than how we grew up.
Meghan 02:07
And of course, this has impacted our businesses so much. When we are adapting to the world around us, we have to have the ability to accurately understand what that world is, but we can change accordingly. And if you misunderstand what the new world is, you're likely to miss the boat in adapting to it as well. As one author writes, The mindsets change what people strive for, and what they see as success. They change the definition, significance and impact of failure. They change the deepest meaning of effort.
Collin 02:38
And that right there is so important the connection between your mindset and how you work. As the author said, it really gets to the amount of effort that you're willing to put in when times get tough. You know, if you believe you couldn't change, why on earth would you make any effort to change in the beginning?
Meghan 02:58
So what is mindset work? And I'm definitely going to have you explain this because I'm still kind of unsure Oh,
Collin 03:06
well, we've talked about why mindset work is important and why we're talking about it right now. To take one step back yet again, we have to answer and address what is a mind set. And I like to think of a mindset. your mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notions, this is the slight perceptions that we have of the world. It can be seen as how what comes from your worldview, or your philosophy of life. Now, this is all sounding really, really big picture pie in the sky stuff. But your mindset impacts how you interpret and then react to what's going on around you. It's how you operate and react to the world. And what it is, is it's a result of your lived experiences, and what you've learned throughout your life. And that term worldview. That is how you interpret what's happening. That is how you that's how you judge motives. That's how you judge and read the news. That's how you interpret and what you expect to happen in the future. That's what a worldview is. So when someone says hi to you on the street, you interpret that, whether you recognize it or not based off of the previous thousand times that somebody has said, Hi, based on where you grew up, based on who taught you based on all of those things that comes immediately into play into what you think that person is trying to say. And then how you respond to it.
Meghan 04:36
Okay, so that makes sense. So there's this is different for everyone based on their past lived experiences, their culture, everything, everyone is unique, and everyone has a different way of how they have interpreted things,
Collin 04:48
right. So even though we're all coming from different backgrounds, and we have slightly different worldview, generally, we can categorize these into three big buckets and I think you've probably heard of many of these There's the fixed mindset, the growth mindset. And then one that I've just started to learn about recently, it's called the benefit mindset.
Meghan 05:09
We have heard of growth mindset, it means that you think things are changing that they are immutable. This year, you have, we have pivoted services, we have, you know, potentially offered products offered dog treats on a subscription service, whatever you have done to pivot your service, that has been a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe that these qualities are inborn, fixed, unchangeable, they really often seek perfection, and they avoid failure.
Collin 05:37
Yeah, they tend to focus on what they know. And a really good example of this is, I know I can get into the, to this mindset of focusing on just getting things booked, or just getting things checked off the list or making sure you're serving the same kind of clients year after year.
Meghan 05:57
But those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, believe that these abilities can be developed and strengthened by way of commitment or hard work or just growing and changing. And they really focus on how they do what they do. So streamlining the booking process, refining the list over time, and really expanding clientele, which is what we're going to talk about later.
Collin 06:19
Yeah. Now this last one here, the benefit mindset. These tend to be everyday leaders, these tend to be people who seek to do well to in do good to others. These kind of people really focus on the why, why do they do the work that they do? You tend to develop strengths and meaningfully contribute to a brighter future that that brings up greater possibility, not just for yourself, but for those around you. And I would say that most of you listening out there fall into the benefit mindset in the service industry, in the pet care industry, we are doing good to those around us, we are trying to make sure people are better than when we left them, we are trying to make sure the clients are taking really good care of. And that's my wish to find it so important to focus on your why not only does it help motivate us through these really tough times. But I think really importantly, here, it takes the focus off of ourselves. It turns down the pressure to perform and be perfect, which is something I know a lot of us struggle with. And it makes you connect with something much larger than yourself.
Meghan 07:28
Research has showed that these tend to get set or at least pushed down the track very early in life. And that makes a lot of sense. Fixed mindsets. Children who are taught that they should look smart, instead of loving learning tend to develop a fixed mindset, they become a lot more focused with how they are being judged, and fear that they might not live up to expectations. Again, it's that fear of failure. But a growth mindset is one that kids are often taught to explore, to embrace new experiences to enjoy challenges that are more likely to develop to develop a growth mindset. they're okay with failure, potential setbacks, they're willing to try new things and make errors all in the name of learning and achieving their most potential. The growth
Collin 08:16
mindset sets you up to better tackle challenges. You're more resilient. Dweck, a researcher and author writes, when you enter our mindset, you enter a new world. In one world, the world of fixed traits, success is about proving you're smart or talented, validating yourself. In the other world of changing qualities. It's about stretching yourself to learn something new, developing yourself. In one world failure is about having a setback, getting a bad grade losing a tournament getting fired, getting rejected, it means you're not smart or talented. And the other world failure is about not growing, not reaching for the things you value, it means you're not fulfilling your potential. In one world effort is a bad thing. It like failure means you're not smart or talented. If you were you wouldn't need effort in the other world effort is what makes you smart or talented.
Meghan 09:05
So hopefully by now you've identified yourself as one mindset over the other. And with that your mindset is also going to influence how you are going to view 2021 in our sitter confessionals group yesterday, I had posed the question, do you think 2021 is going to be better than 2020? And a majority of people said yes, like it has to be better. But also a lot of people said no. So mindset is how you interpret the world and interpret people's actions and the future. If you have a positive view, and a growth mindset next year holds many possibilities. You can still have a growth mindset and be a realist and understand that there are going to be limitations on next year. But you are going to continue to look for new opportunities and ways to pivot your business and try out different ways to operate. You can still be a realist and go, well. I can't make this work. It's time to close up shop. I've looked at the numbers, I've pulled everybody you know, if you give your clients a survey and they said, I don't want to come back, and you've given what you do and how you want to operate, and at the end, you go, I just can't do it. Or you may look at 2021, and go, I just don't know if it's going to work or not. So it's not always thinking things are rosy and always looking on the positive side of things, sometimes things just don't work. It just means that you're always trying to figure out something else and trying to do something else.
Collin 10:35
COVID really has been a process through which it's going to weed out a lot of businesses. And I don't really like that terminology. But I think you understand what I'm trying to say here in that some people who are in the industry are not going to be in the industry, when this is all said and done. I know many people were talking about this right when when COVID hit. And and this happens for many, many reasons. It could be that they don't operate like a business. It's just something that they do on the side. And it's not something they take really seriously. It could be that people are burned out. And they're tired of doing this, and they've been looking for a way to get out anyway, people like Nicole Ryan from Episode One, or three, or Isabel, even from last week back in Episode 124. They had different priorities, their priorities changed over time, and COVID. And got them through that
Meghan 11:29
if you view the pandemic as a funnel, a constraint has really been put on this industry, the goal is to be the last one to drop down out of the funnel, if you want to be in the industry, as most of us do, we want to continue to stay in this industry. So the industry is the funnel, and we are the sand, you want to be the grains at the top and to be the last one that falls out. What buys you that time it's having a growth mindset, it's running a tight business is knowing your numbers. It's having a huge client base that you can pivot to and offer different services to when times get really tough. What gets you out of that funnel faster. And this is not a condemnation of one is better than the other. This is just fact. And what COVID has done to the industry and many industries is that people were on the edge, and those people were just going to jump ship, and that's fine, they need to do that those who were already burned out, are just going to leave, they are done. And that's fine. This is a great opportunity to do that an easy way out. Those who are just starting out and didn't have enough clients to get them through are likely going to have to do something else for the time being. And none of these are necessarily bad. This is just describing what is happening to the pet care industry. If you are trying to stay in the industry and be the last one out of the funnel, because what has happened COVID has pulled the stopper. And now things are just flowing out. Because we aren't adding any more sand right now things are just dropping out, you have to try to be at the top of that funnel with the widest customer base, or the most targeted customer base, if that's really what you want. So the numbers, the business and growth mindset continuing to pivot your business if you want to stay in this industry,
Collin 13:11
you talk about having a lot of clients and a lot of customers there. And I think that's a an important part of this discussion to have. Because if you had a lot of repeat clients, I know we have a ton of repeat clients. If you look at our numbers, I think it's like 90% of our clients are our repeat, we do get those one offs. But this is where this gets really interesting here is if your clients don't need you anymore, if those repeat clients stop needing you and you've tried to get them to come back, but they won't or maybe can't for whatever reason again, that's fine. You we have to go out and get new clients. Instead of relying on those existing clients and trying to pull services from them, we've got to change and adapt and go after new ones, if you had 10 clients and nine always used you and now those nine don't, you can't sell to them anymore. And now you just have one to try and fill in the gaps. Basically, right now, if you looked at your numbers, you have to kind of almost be operating at your hypothetical 150% or 200% capacity, knowing full well that you're going to try and add on all of these clients right now. Even though if things get back to normal, you won't be able to service all of them, you'll have to grow into that maybe add employees to take over those services so that you can grow as your clients come back.
Meghan 14:29
But it's likely that that is not going to happen for a while that you're going to be at full capacity and needing to hire or maybe you are and that's great. But that's at least not happening for us right now. So that's where this growth mindset comes in of these things aren't working. So I need to do something different. Trying to expand the top of the client, funnel your market and say I need to be bringing in new people, people who maybe have never used a pet sitter before or people who need a different service than before. We love Repeat clients because we have a guaranteed income, a set number of dog walks or daycares each week. And that's great. We love those because they're predictable. But if 75%, or whatever number of your income came from repeats, and those repeats don't need you anymore, that's really a huge shot to your business. So unfortunately, you may need to do a lot of one offs,
Collin 15:25
which we know we want to convert into repeat clients down the line and one off, clients tend to suck up. A lot of our time as business owners, we have got to onboard them, we have to go through the meet and greets, we have to schedule them, we can automate a lot of that process. But the fact is, is that one off clients consume a lot more of our time than once we get them on a repeat schedule. And again, here we're trying to convert all these one offs into repeats, because we know we can do that down the line. Eventually, there'll be some percentage that we can convert over into a repeat kind of schedule. But what's really, really important for this thing is, is that once you get that repeat, once you get that one off into your system, you now have a name on an email list, you now have contact information that you can sell something to later, maybe not right now. But later you have that information where you can reach back out to them again, ever expanding the top of your marketing funnel your client base.
Meghan 16:23
Yeah, maybe you only walk them one time, and they may not ever need you to do a walk again. Right. So we've had this people come in from out of state, we live in Missouri, and we just had someone come in from South South Dakota, a couple weeks ago, just really far away. And they were a one off client. And we'll probably never see them again, they just needed to come in town for a quick visit. But we now have their name on an email list. If we ever decide want to sell t shirts or gift boxes or dog training videos, we now have one more person to give the opportunity to sell something to. So you are looking at the opportunity and the future and going maybe something will happen like that if you have a growth mindset.
Collin 17:06
We're gonna continue this conversation. But before we do that, we do want to tell you about pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters associates is here to help. For over 20 years, pet sitters associates has provided thousands of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, or you want to make your passion for pets into a profession, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections, and complete freedom in running your business. Learn my pet sitters associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pet sit llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership, pet sitter confessional and use that discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com.
Meghan 17:57
As I mentioned earlier, you may have pulled your existing clients. And they said that they will not need a dog walker or pet sitter for the next 18 months. Well, you are pretty out of luck. So if you still want to be in the pet care industry, what do you do? You go get new clients. If your repeat clients don't want you or need you right now you go get new clients, you change your services, you change your marketing, you change your branding, dog adventures, instead of dog walks a dog bed and breakfast instead of boarding, you'd be creative and come up with new ideas.
Collin 18:28
Yeah, you could go after essential workers I know many, many of us are trying to figure out ways to to market specifically to them. One thing to think about here is they work odd hours, many of them work, we really weird shifts. So if you're targeting someone who typically works nine to five, or using that kind of language in your marketing, that's not going to work with most of them. Someone who works at a hospital is going to maybe work overnight. And they may need their dog checked in on it midnight or one a him.
Meghan 18:57
So if that's something you want to do, then do it. But you will never get to these points and think about these things if you have a fixed mindset, because the fixed mindset says the types of clients or the clients I'm going to have, the number of clients or the number of clients I'm going to have the types of services are just the types of services that I offer. And I'm going to have and if the client doesn't like it, I guess then I'll just close up if I don't have any clients. But you won't think of these new things like partnering with pet friendly hotels or animal rescues or whatever is in your area shelter. You didn't need to do it before COVID because everyone needed a pet sitter. Everyone needed a midday dog walker. Everyone needed a midday dog walker, but you have to do these things now. You have to think of new opportunities and not be afraid of failure. You have to be more interested in how to do it, then perfecting it.
Collin 19:52
And that's what a growth mindset is. That's why we're talking about this today. With the growth mindset, you're always Looking for new opportunities and you aren't afraid of failure that's so important here, you are really willing to try new things, even though you may fail at it. Again, you're more interested in the how than the perfect than making it perfect.
Meghan 20:12
And the interesting predicament here that the pet care industry and pet sitters are really in is we're basically being forced to be flexible. You know, we always say, you know, on the podcast, we always say enforce your policies, do what you want, in your business, have boundaries, etc. And these are all great things. But maybe now you need to not have as strict of a cancellation policy because of COVID. And ask yourself, is the current way you are operating working for you? Many people have had not to change a single thing. And they've been perfectly fine.
Collin 20:46
Yeah. And so you may ask yourself, what's their secret? Well, honestly, right now, it could just be where they live, or the type of clients that they have. It may be that simple seriously, unfortunately, given the patchwork approach, across of policies across the United States, and even across the world, it's really hard to get a single snapshot of the industry. Some people have never shut down, never change their policies, and are booming, and are actually turning people away right now. Contrast that with other parts of the country that have shut down multiple times who are currently shut down, they're starved for clients, and they're stretching and clawing at everything they can get.
Meghan 21:25
Having that growth mindset allows you to, in a very real way, assess your business and see if it's working. And if it is great, keep doing it, keep your policies keep chugging along. But if it's not working, then look at your business, look at what you want to be doing or what you can be doing or try something new growth mindset is flexible, because you are viewing the opportunities and the potential versus this is the way it is and this is what my policies are. And getting back to the funnel analogy. People are leaving the industry for many, many reasons. And many people may be leaving unnecessarily because they aren't really willing to change their business or their business structure or their policies or how they operate to get clients that they want or need. It's siphoning people out. But it's also bringing people into the industry at all levels. So there's really going to be an influx of sitters and an influx of clients who need you at some point.
Collin 22:20
So what kind of mindset would you say you have? Megan?
Meghan 22:24
I think I'm a pretty fixed mindset. I don't really want to be that way. But I'm pretty stuck in my ways. And I don't really like to change very much. So the past eight, nine months have kind of gotten me out of my shell and been a little bit more creative of how can we get new clients? How can we still market to pet parents who need dog walks, while also recognizing that a lot of them are home now.
Collin 22:52
I'd say I'm more more growth mindset than you are. But I definitely have a heavy dosage of fixed times, especially around things with with business, I can be pretty stodgy. I can rely on the things that we've done. And once the process is in place, that's the process we do. And trying to break that process or improve that process can be kind of taxing on me. And and so like you, Megan, this, this last eight months has really, really stretched me. And so what's it what's important for this is that you may be sitting here listening to everything we've talked about going, ooh, I have a fixed mindset, I'd really like to be more growth mindset. I know, Megan and I have gone through that and continued to think about that process you so you know, can you change your mindset?
Meghan 23:36
Yes, of course. You can change anything about you because you control you. So how do we change, we learn to pray or meditate, we make it a priority. We focus on three positive things a day, we focus on the long term, not just 2020, here and now. But 2021, looking into the future being positive and looking for new opportunities in the year to come.
Collin 24:02
Imagine the inevitable and this can be pretty scary as we start thinking about, okay, what's the logical conclusion to what I'm thinking or to this process? What will eventually happen to make it very real in our minds, something really important here is to seek trusted perspectives, surround yourself with people who are supportive, who are going to give you good advice. And that's family members, that's other people in the industry. That's people from across different diverse backgrounds, businesses and in all sorts of things you want to accept that the change will happen with or without you there. This is again, putting yourself taking the focus off of you and back onto something bigger, this is accepting that there will be change that happens whether you are along for the ride or not. And then the key there is to how how do you go with that right? How do you follow along with that change for you personally and for your business? And then another big thing here is that To avoid the sunk cost fallacy and know when it's time to move on,
Meghan 25:03
what is that
Collin 25:04
the sunk cost fallacy is when you think I've already invested so much time and so much money into this, I have to see it through, I must continue doing this. Because of all of the effort all the blood, sweat and tears that I've poured into this. The most, most easy example for this is a car, a car, where, well, they've already spent $1,000, repairing the transmission, I might as well spend another two grand repairing the engine. This is where you start to say, well, I've already dumped so much money into it, I might as well dump some more. So avoiding that fallacy in your business and your personal life and knowing Okay, it is not worth it anymore, to continue down this road. And this isn't saying worth it to stay in business. But it isn't worth it to operate the way I've been operating anymore, I need to try something new. What all of this is trying to do in summation is we're trying to identify the thoughts, the past experiences, these notions, this worldview that we're coming into, that are not helping us right now, anything that's not beneficial than anything that's not helping you, that's anything that's not working or will help you with the change is something we need to put to the side, we'd write it down and work on identifying those things. And then start thinking of those positive things you want in your life, start thinking about the change that you want to see in yourself in your business, and move towards those. Anytime we make a change, we have to be moving towards something not running away from something. So just as we're identifying the things we don't want, we have to identify the things that we do want. So we can be working towards a positive change.
Meghan 26:40
We would love to know if you have a growth or fixed or benefit mindset or what you have learned through this episode or in your own research you can let us know on Instagram and Facebook at petsitter confessional or you can give us a call at 636-364-8260. Natasha opionion is back for another question this week.
Collin 27:02
If someone is sitting here saying I'm still waiting on business to pick up, what should they do,
Natasha 27:08
they should stop waiting. So businesses not going to pick up is just twiddling our fingers. Unfortunately, I wish that we could say, you know, poof, COVID is over, we're back in this thing would be great. That's just not gonna happen. You know, a lot of us went for they say, zero to 100. Real quick. Well, a lot of us went from 100 to zero real quick. So you have to start doing little intentional things every single day to grow your business. And really what I love about this whole experience is that we're starting over almost, but we're not starting over from scratch, we're starting over from experience. So now get back out there with your flyers, get back out there with your face, you know, do the things you did in the beginning to restart. So now you can kind of put a fresh twist on learning about ads and management and branding and all the other things that you can start to add into your business that makes you start over but again, not starting over from scratch or starting over from experience. Take it from scratch again. Take what you know what you have, and build from there. But get yourself back out there. Go talk to people go talk to your client, let them know you're still open. Let them know that you're still available. And get out there. Same thing as you did when you first started.
Collin 28:21
Yeah, really remember, take it back to basics. It went in depth. Remember those things? Remember those early days and go? What was that? Like? What was what was over my feelings? How was it? How excited was I? What was I doing? And go Okay, now Now let's go from there. If it were really stripping it back and going, this is this is where I'm at right now. It's kind of just like, you know, kind of starting all over again at this point and going, Hey, let's get back out this.
Natasha 28:45
And I like to learn from different industries, like, you know, I can't just learn from my own industry, but would even Kapolei they every now and then I checked my mail and they have a free burrito in the mail and I'm like, Whoa, burrito, I guess I'm going to troll for dinner. You know, like they do these little marketing things that bring you back in. So get your email list together outreach to your clients, you know, even clients, if you haven't serviced in yours, reach back out, let them know what you're doing. They will buzz you in a buzz someone else but don't don't let all those resources in those years you put in go to waste for sure.
Meghan 29:27
If you would like Natasha to be your personal pet business coach, you can go to start scale sale.com and use the code p sc 20. For 15% off any of her coaching,
Collin 29:37
we'd like to remind you again of our Thanksgiving hour on the 26th at 1pm Central Standard Time. Check out the show notes and our website for the zoom link and we'd love to see them
Meghan 29:48
and it's free. We did not mention that. Oh
Collin 29:50
yeah, obviously no costume. Sorry.
Meghan 29:55
And thank you so much for sticking around through this longer episode and if you've made it this far, we really appreciate you taking the time to listen every week and we hope that you are getting a lot of value out of this podcast. This is so much fun to make and produce. And we are just, we're having a lot of fun. Thank you guys so much for listening.
Collin 30:13
Thank you. And thank you to pet sitters associates and the Patreon for supporting us as well.
Meghan 30:17
We'll talk to you next time. Bye
