129: Patience and Perseverance with Jay Pattiz
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Summary:
Jay Pattiz has been taking care of pets professionally for the last 23 years. From reading Patti Moran's groundbreaking book to today, Jay's passion for taking care of pets has been the core of his business. Jay shares his 7 P's for success and why knowing your own finances is key to making solid business decisions. He talks about getting involved in the community in more than just pet sitting, and how important fostering local relationships and connections is to your business surviving.
Topics on this episode:
Knowing your numbers
Ps to success
Weathering storms
Switching to Cats
Eye on Retirement
Main take away? Knowing your business numbers unlocks so much decision making power and gives you a lot of control over where your business goes.
About our guest:
Grew up in the St.Louis area. US Air Force shortly after high school return to St. Louis after enlistment attended Community College, transferred the University of Central Missouri got Bachelors Degree. Worked in the Financial Service Industry for over 20 years including Accounting, Insurance, Tax Examiner, and Certified Financial & Credit Counselor. Started our Pet Sitting business on May 1, 1997. Married to Jill for 40 years, have a son Brian who is a staff member at the University of Denver. My interests outside pet sitting include Pickleball, Tennis, Bicycling, and fitness. A passionate fan of Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, and St Louis Blues. I love listening to music and Queen is my favorite band.
Links:
Jay’s website: https://www.warrensburgpetsitting.com
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
clients, pet, business, people, pet sitters, cat, years, area, hear, important, town, understand, conference, finance, knowing, pandemic, long, client base, expenses, day
SPEAKERS
Collin, Jay
Collin 00:18
Hi, I'm Collin.
00:19
And I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:20
And this is
00:21
petsitter. confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter
Collin 00:26
brought to you by time to pet. We tend to talk an awful lot about growing our businesses and starting our businesses. Not a lot of us think about or even discuss, persisting in the industry, we don't really tend to wrap our minds around what it would be like to be a pet sitter for over 20 years, and even how we would go about ensuring setting strong foundations in our business right now, to get us to that point. So today, we wanted to bring on Jay Pattiz owner of pampered pet sitting for over 20 years, Jay brings with him a vast amount of history and experience to the conversation, Jay talks about his seven P's to success in business and why understanding and knowing your numbers in your business is so critically important to the foundation and longevity of your business. This conversation with Jay was extremely encouraging and grounding to me to understand that there are simple things that we do every single day. They're not overly complicated. They're not big grand gestures. It's focusing on the fundamentals, focusing on the basics every single
Jay 01:44
day. So let's get started. My name is Jay patterns. Come with pampered pet sitting and cats at home pets. I live in warrensburg, Missouri with my wife, Jill. We've been married for years. And our five Cornish Fred's cats warrensburg, Missouri is about females se can see so it's about an hour away from the town panda city. And we're about 30 miles or so from the very east part and the Kansas City metro outskirts.
Collin 02:20
And I might add, the closest person we've ever done an interview with you're basically just down the road from where Ryan and I are. So it's a real pleasure to have you on and pick your brain about being in the pet care industry for as long as you have been. So thank you so much for coming on today.
Jay 02:37
Sure.
Collin 02:38
So what got you started in pet care?
Jay 02:40
Yeah, we go back away. So 24 years ago, in 96. Our house was getting to be a zoo. It's the same house we still live in here in warrensburg. My wife was breeding cockatiel birds. And we had several cages all over the place. And we also had cats, and she wanted dogs, and she wanted to be parents. She was not satisfied with just what we had. So I had to look for something that would satisfy her to my urge to for taking care of paths. But we couldn't have them all in our little home. And so I one day was in a bookstore and I saw books that said petsitting for profit by Patty Moran, who was the founder and president of pet sitters international at the time. Um, and so I got that book, and I read it and realize, Hey, this is probably the right road to go we can be pet sitters who really can be like grandparents, we can come in the home love up the past take care of them and leave oh nice get back the pet parents get back. We don't no longer have any other responsibilities with them and get paid. So this sounds like our secret so I ended up calling Patty got to become pretty good friends with her and taught her and got the ins and outs of pet setting. And then the following spring we pretty much got everything set up with our insurance on binding figured out we take one we got rid of our breeding pair of cockatiel sold off all our other pocket to burbs. Convince Jill that there was no need to look at bringing any other types of pets and we would just stay put with the type of cats we have no other dogs and then we would do this. And we got and we started on May 1 1997. And right away we got clients so There was already a pent up demand. So that's how we got gone. And we're still doing it 23 years later
Collin 05:06
to put that in a little bit of context, I was doing some research and I found that 1997 was the same year that pet sitters international actually got the definition of pet sitting included in a dictionary. And so it's been quite the change in quite the quite the time since then.
Jay 05:25
Well, Paddy was someone but almost be considered a pioneer as a passer she started at from Winston Salem, North Carolina. And, you know, she, she couldn't even get a surance company to give her insurance or do anything. So she ended up becoming part of naps, national, social and professional pets. There's an 89, I think. And then she broke off from them and started pet sitters international in 1994. And so we decided to go with them. And we've been members ever since. Wow.
Collin 06:00
Now, at the time, when you made that decision to go into pet sitting, you were coming out of the world of finances, after after several years, what role does the back does your background in finance is play in how you operate your business?
Jay 06:16
You know, I think it's the key role, I think it's a huge factor in our long term success. Um, I think it became our competitive edge. Because of my knowledge of finance and accounting. The first few years while we were growing, we weren't profitable at all. But both Joe and I still had full time jobs. But we were expanding money. So my knowledge of finance, and accounting led me to more effectively manage our expenses. And then it also allowed me to be able to use credit, to have the funds or opportunities to grow, and to get resources that we needed. And over the years, I've always kept lots of lines of extra credit in case I wouldn't need them. And they became handy at times over the years. Because of my knowledge and credit, we had really good credit scores. And because of my knowledge of accounting, we were able to be concerned about our profits and keeping our expenses in line. So I assume to my knowledge of finance was our competitive edge. Because we were not anybody else and actually meant doing them dogs and cats and other pets. But nobody else around had that background as well.
Collin 07:42
really having that firm foundation set allows you to do all those things that you were wanting to do and do it with surety and security. So you know, 23 years later, you have that foundation that you've built upon never since it's you know,
Jay 07:57
we also were pretty much had our finances together before we started and knowledge of them. So they gave us an advantage over people who would be doing this sort of thing and didn't have bath together.
Collin 08:15
Now I think finance is generally one of the things that a lot of business owners are weakest at, we get into petsitting because it's something we're really passionate about. It's something that we love doing. But the finance side, the business side can sometimes fall by fall by the wayside.
Jay 08:33
So that's for sure I understand. There's all time I went to 17 annual psi conferences and um, we're always talking about that.
Collin 08:44
Yeah. So so on that what what are some things that every pet care business owner could do to get better at understanding their finances?
Jay 08:54
You know, I think no matter how good your bookkeeper or accountant is, how they make life less stressful for you, by just handing them everything and having them do it. You need to understand accounting yourself. Because if you don't understand the counting, you won't know how to keep up with your expenses and your revenue and really understand where you're banned and where you're going. So I think that's a big deal. for 15 years back in 2004, I got involved with the petsitting software called pet fax that I really liked because they had an accounting software incorporated into it. And I was able to customize and I use it for 15 years, then all of a sudden this past November, they got corrupted, the report section got corrupted so I no longer can hit a few keys and pull up reports. So I've since gone to QuickBooks, I really like QuickBooks, it gives me a lot of more things than I had before. So I think there's so many accounting software's out there, that you can easily use that safe with, compared to the cell phones. And some of the testing software's like your sponsor, I think keeping hazard accounting as part of itself. It's, it makes all the difference in the world, and then understanding finance. So you know how to keep your credit, good, or make it better, and how you can use credit. Um, there were times when our cash flow wasn't really good. And I was able to figure out ways on how to charge things with one credit card. But no, it wasn't going to be due for almost 60 days later. And then I would have the money to pay it off, and now paying interest. And then I wouldn't be able to figure out the formula for how many days they gave me to do it and things like that. So knowing that type of stuff will really help your cash flow, and help you get better credit. When you get better credit. There's less cost for credit, there's less cost for a lot of things, cars, and houses and everything else. So it made a really big deal. I think it's really important that pet sitters know what their overhead expenses are, that they don't just think about their gas that they use to drive to do their petsitting that they really understand that and transportation costs, the government allows you to 57 and a half cents a mile because that's what it really costs. When you you're in maintenance of a car. You figure in depreciation of it, you figure and repair, replacing tires, batteries, and so on insurance and taxes and everything else, it really costs that. And I don't think enough of them think about it, they think about all the costs of the gas. So I think you need to keep track of that really close. But you also need to understand what your other expenses are like your phone, and your petsitting software, or maybe your accounting software, a and any of your advertising, marketing expenses, you know all your expenses, knowing your overhead expenses are, I think it's really a good idea to know what that percentage of your transportation costs is as what you charge for petsitting. So if you're you have a round could petsitting You know, that's 10 miles round trip and you know, it's costing you $5 and 75 cents, really in transportation costs, that you understand that. And then you understand what the insurance cost is built in and all your other overhead costs are built them with that. And I think it's just really important man, I really suggest that you know, your numbers to know how who your top clients are like for us. Um, we had last year, our top 10 clients that 50% of our business, and we have the other 86 clients, so did less than the other 50%. Wow. And I know of other places where a picture's worth 20% of clients do 80% of business need to know that I know who those clients are. And you need to know what the cost is of retaining those clients and recruiting that acquisition. So I know stats are in accounting, and all that might be a pain in the butt may not be exciting and might be boring thing that allow you to do the thing you love with packs and be your own boss at the same time.
Collin 14:12
Yeah, and if all you view finances, and the numbers is if your view of that is once a year or a couple times a year, you drop off some paperwork at an accountant and you leave, you don't get that fine tuned decision making that that you do when you really know and understand them when you're able to calculate some of those things, and see who that 20% of your clients are who are driving the 80% of your business or right what the actual costs are. If you're just dropping something off and walking away, those powerful decisions are being left with that person and you are not you know, you don't you don't know where to go.
Jay 14:49
And you'd be surprised how many people in our industry do that. And know why and then accountant doesn't do a good job for you or what if it takes him forever to do it or whatever. are not in business in next year, and you have no clue on what to do. And you're not managing your business, you don't know what's going on. If you don't understand this, and you can help your sound do better for you, too. If you do,
Collin 15:14
yeah, you're able to communicate to them exactly how your business operates, what you're thinking with the numbers and check in have, you know, a comparison to have of this is how I ran them. What did it look like when you did maybe with some of discrepancies are and be able to really dig deep and use them as a partner in that process? Instead of just somebody who does your books?
Jay 15:36
Oh, yeah, it makes all the difference in the world. And by doing this, you can forecast things down the road, where if you don't, you're not going to be able to forecast is good. And if you wanted to change things, if you wanted to do more cat care, or you want to do more dog walking man, and you want to make more money while doing that, if you don't know what your profit margins are, then then you're not going to be able to forecast that very well and achieve those goals.
Collin 16:10
We'll talk about that for a little bit more of when you say forecasting, what what does that mean? And what how do business owners leverage that
Jay 16:18
I don't, I mean, I still do all that. Because of the pandemic, we're not nearly as busy as we had been previous shares, I divide it up our clients in the three groups for us, because our area has has a big has a State University has an Air Force Base nearby. And then we have our towns people, which includes agriculture as well. And then there's, there's about a half a dozen manufacturing factories in our town as well. So I divide up our clients by category, whether they're associated with the university base, or their towns people. In early on, I found out I was having a lot more University and a lot more bass people unless townspeople, but I wasn't getting good retention. Because the university people have moved, not just the students, but the faculty and staff. And eventually, they move all the Air Force people around to so I made the decision, I wanted the get more task people unless Air Force in university, and wasn't there many years ago I had about it was even about third, a third, a third. And now 62% of my client base is towns people, only 14% is University and 24% debates to pass much better, we don't have nearly we don't lose as many clients that way. So that's an example of forecasting. And using the stats and things as well analysis used to forecast by the number of pet sitter with half the book going into the mouth and insert montage, I know I wouldn't get at least 50% more. And some of the busier months, like May or June or July, I might double it or more than double it. So if I had 100 pets, it's pre bought, maybe June or July might end up with over 200 pets. So that's just some of the things and I would know when expenses occurred associated with that. So that's kind of some of the ways I use a forecasting.
Collin 18:32
Yeah. And and, you know, looking at the that turnover cost of clients, have you mentioned earlier of like the cost of acquisition, the cost of doing the meet and greets the cost of doing all of that and looking going okay, I need I need more stability, more predictability here. I don't want that high turnover, because that costs me money. So how can I How can I do that? And where is that stability?
Jay 18:56
Yeah, you can find out, you can kind of you can set your marketing, to where you're trying to appeal to more ideal clients. And you can do things like when you get a bunch of clients call you from the Air Force Base, last minute, less than a week's notice. And once you do, do them real short notice for their dogs over a weekend or a holiday or Tom, you might decline them, because you know they're going to be a one time deal. Are you not wanting as many Air Force people and conversely, that gives you the time to take on more town, new towns people and serve them better. So that's how you can do that. And you can figure you know what, they actually cost you the market that way.
Collin 19:53
Yeah, because as you mentioned, it's not just the gas to get there. It's the cost of getting them and again, really up understanding where your costs are, what you're spending money on, allows you to make those kind of really powerful trajectory changing kinds of decisions for your business.
Jay 20:11
Yeah. We even though our area is transient, we regularly our retention rate from one year to the next, when you subtract out the people that have already moved away, usually it's in the 70% level or higher. So they know when you know that you can also figure the lifetime value of those clients as well. It gets out there pretty quick,
Collin 20:38
and allows you to start planning and and thinking about the future and thinking about what you can be doing down the road.
Jay 20:45
Right. So that's what we've always that's what I've been doing for many, many years.
Collin 20:50
Really cool to hear. Because as you mentioned, you know, you just celebrated, you're celebrating your 23rd year of running, pampered pet sitting, and you alluded it to a little bit, no, we talked about finances a lot. But what would you say is your secret, or how you've stayed in business for that long?
Jay 21:08
Well, I'm going to share with you a little philosophy I had developed the kind of early on in penicillin. And what it basically was is I have my five piece for success. And I tried to dedicate ourselves to doing them. The first one, which you've already mentioned, is passion. If you want to succeed, you really have to have passion for what you're doing. And people can tell when they have passion for it, or whether it's just a job, or just a business to. The second thing is that we always tried that we always move down, we've always tried out greater professionalism. We attended a pet sitter conferences, we've attended cat conferences, dog shows staff, taking webinars, done all anything we can to try to improve our skills and knowledge in the area of pet care and managing a pet care business. The next tip for success was persistence. Now I just happen to have a personality that I don't quit. Competitive tennis all the time, I used to bribe my coaches crazy in high school and college, because I almost always lost the percent invested three sets. I always came back and won. And then three sets and my coaches would say, Why do you always lose that first set just better than I am man. But I refuse to lose sight. Well, having a plan A, B, C and D being persistent. Just because it doesn't work out a couple of times don't give up and then never too late you the persevere. You guaranteed being persistent to persevere and achieve the things you want achieve the goals, your objectives. And the last E is performance, you got to do a really good job of Petcare. And even just as important you got to do a really, really good job of communicating with the pet parents, because they don't want to hire you and fire you, I guess that I've never been tied in fire, I guess I have been in TELUS. So those are my five keys for success. And then later on, I added two more, which is personal finances, which we've already talked about. You need good personal finances, with good credit to you have the ability to sustain during tough times are until you grow and start thriving, and take advantage opportunities and then you have that patience. On the average it takes three to five years to start for pepsin enterprise to thrive, I guess unless you buy somebody else's marriage or partner with somebody who's already been in business a long time. So that's we've always practiced those. We've we've always practice the golden rule you are you familiar with the golden rule
Collin 24:28
Do unto others
Jay 24:30
as you want to do on the you. We not try to skim by on anything we regularly have gone over and beyond lots of times. And and it's appreciate that I think, you know, we have 50 clients, we have a active client base around 130 right now, years ago we peaked at about 235 and then on top Purpose started to try to Trank. We still have 52 clients that have been with us 10 years or longer. We are 30 clients have been with us 15 years and longer. And we have 10 clients who've been with us 20 years or longer. So I think doing something right? By practicing those p peas for success, and practicing a golden rule with clients, we respect all the other pet pros, where we have an active membership with PSR. We've attended conferences. And as I've mentioned before we we regularly take webinars or go to cat shows, talk shows to all kinds of things like that. And I think we've been active in the community member of the Chamber of Commerce for 15 years, and been active in it.
Collin 25:54
So I think it shows Yeah, I mean, when you have that many clients around, or 15 years or more, that really does show that those those five and now seven piece to success are really being implemented. And I really appreciate the last one of patience, because that one's really hard. I know I struggle with
Jay 26:16
my hardest one, I think I would agree with that. I would agree because
Collin 26:26
I feel like I'm showing up I showed up today. And I did. I did all the other. I did all the other pieces. I got all those done. And now I've got to do that again. And again and again and wait for that to take hold and wait for that fruit to take.
Jay 26:43
Yeah, and one of the things testator. So always understand. All right, anybody for that matter. When you're marketing a service, just using marketing, for example, when you're marketing a service, It normally takes at least three months, and usually six months to a year to get the benefit from that marketing in our industry because people don't travel all the time. You know, you don't always have somebody mean dog walking all the time. So that's a hard thing to get. Right?
Collin 27:15
Have I paid for the ad now? Where are all the people that need my services? Right? Yeah,
Jay 27:20
no. Yeah. When you pay for that ad, are you are you boosted posts and Facebook, which I do a lot of by the way. And then a since February because of the pandemics, all you really want to do is get engagement and awareness of your business, you want people to be aware of them. They say, some marketing experts say takes 567 times as somebody seeing or hearing about you before they'll take action, though I you know, I mean, obviously somebody that somebody really admires is close to who refers them to you, it won't take that long. But it can, if they've never heard of you before,
Collin 28:06
right? Because people it takes that time for them to get to know you and understand what you're about. Or, as you mentioned, you know, people don't travel all the time. So it may take a year, before they need a pet sitter, they may need a doctor or somebody and so investing now and then you're the payoff will be a year from maybe a year from now or when the next when whenever the next time that person actually needs that service.
Jay 28:31
Exactly. So you just don't know if you can include their patients in there too. Me if you're doing the other six, really, really well. If you're low, be patient, and I'll pay off.
28:45
And that's the hardest one, of course. So,
28:47
of course.
Collin 28:50
Now Now, in your 23 years of business, I wanted to know if you've ever struggled and dealt with burnout or passion fatigue,
Jay 28:58
you know, very little rarely, ever, not the times when I've had the most problems have been during the times when we were preparing to go to the psi conference wherever it happens to be. And because what we usually did quite often we found out it was a neat way to get away to go to the conference and learn a lot and socialize with the other pet sitters and asi staff. It was also a good way to get away for a vacation. So we will combine the two and 2001 that was the first year we did that. Man was in San Diego. The conference and then we spent the show we a little bit south of San Diego for vacation. And we were we were actually required to be in certain cities. So we gave vacation nearby But because of being gone for so long, sometimes it'd be two to three weeks, I would get so stressed out and just about burned out. And now when you hear from anybody about anything, that's when I would come close to burnout. I remember a couple times ever call even my pet surgeon Sam going crazy. I'm gonna need you help. So but I've been able to recognize the signs and cut back and I know how to say no.
Collin 30:28
Was that something that you had to learn going into the business? Or did you feel like you're pretty well equipped with with saying,
Jay 30:35
No, I had to learn that going into the business because the first five years we both worked full time. And we didn't have a lot of time to do the passing my lifestyle other people do. And we weren't really sure the business was kind of made, you realize we were still wondering new people with debts. And we were the first professional testers in warrensburg. At the time, so we did, it was hard to say no, because you want to make sure the business made it. But then after a while, you learn by saying no, sometimes you actually get better yeses. It's hard to believe but the truth? I found out, it's not directly related. But if you raise your prices, the higher you raise your prices, the better clients you get. But that's why it's a way to say no. Well, yeah, it's
Collin 31:31
it's saying no, doesn't have to always be just a verbal, no, it can be no marketing a different way. So that just the way it's being marketed. You're saying no to other people, it could be in the prices, it could be in certain policies that you have in place, all that kind of stuff, too. So it is it is much more encompassing than just saying no to somebody over the phone.
Jay 31:53
Yeah, the big thing is recognizing your signs. And a lot of times somebody might be your wife, it might be another pets, there might be somebody else, you know, a friend may see your ability and can tell something's wrong. And they might mention it. You know, and you say, Oh, my God, I'm going to be getting burned out here shortly. Our Christmas time, Christmas time comes around, you end up getting over booked, not because you necessarily over one year, clients have been with you forever, somebody has an emergency. They have to pick up the labor and you can't say no, we can't take care of your home in your path. So you can go take care of your mergency. No, you go ahead and take care of their mirchi and then you come call subarna.
Collin 32:54
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32:59
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Collin 33:16
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33:22
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Collin 33:23
get 50% off your first three months, when you sign up at time to pet.com slash confessional. You were the first professional pet sitter in the warrensburg area. What's it like been servicing the same area for 23 years?
Jay 33:44
Well, it's fine. We enjoy it. You know we've lived in we've lived in warrensburg for 42 years. And so we knew the area real well before we even started. And then we will known in the era before we got started to. So it's been fine. It's you know, we learn right away in the Bay State University in the town where Barry transia and we knew that we had to get a bigger portion of our client base thing to be in town so we wouldn't be working as hard with so much turnover. But we also knew that was important to this been important to stay active in the community. I served on the park board the first two years of our petsitting Enterprise we've been active in pet rescues, cat rescues cat clubs, been active in the chamber and just stayed active in the community and all and we have built up relationships I heavily believe cutscenes and relationship business now with your dish your clients, but also was prospects The general public, but even more important with your fellow cat probes, the bad, the bad staff are more important than the vets, by the way. And the rumors, and even people operated pet shops, and we've always showed our appreciation to them, we've always gotten to know him on a personal basis. So for us has been good because we're used to the small town atmosphere,
Collin 35:27
getting to know people being known, accepting that you are part of the community. And then leaning into that, and knowing how to build those relationships, to get connected with them. And just just know them on that personal level really sounds like it really is a game changer.
Jay 35:45
It has, what was really interesting is is we've even had some of the veterinarians choose us. And obviously they could board their pets are that good? No, they're bad tech, come do it for us, just because there were so impressed. And so you got to be willing to do that.
Collin 36:05
You're talking about investments in your business. And this is one of those of getting connected with people, knowing them, and accepting those kind of requests when they come in. Because you know that that's, that's gonna keep that relationship moving forward.
Jay 36:18
Hey, one real quick star, it tails in with something else we'll talk about maybe later. Things were in old too, because of the tray power center struggling to slow down a little bit. The state government was having to cut back to university professors weren't traveling as much. So I started to see that. And this I was going into our normal badnera. And just kind of talking to him and ask him about certain other things all the time. And was laid there who was kind of know, if she said, I hear you're a pet sitter and you take care of dogs? I said yes. Because you take care of her. Yes, yes. So well, why should I trust you? And I sat there, I said, you don't have to trust me. I'm going to show you why you should trust me. So what I did was I told her, you know why you live here in town? Let me meet you at your house for lunch one day. And let me take your golden retrievers out when you stay at your house. I'll walk them, I'll bring them back. I'll play with them in the backyard. And then you come, I'll bring him back in the house. And I did that. And guess what? she referred hundreds of people to us after that, over the years. And she became a client, by the way. And she still is.
Collin 37:47
Yeah, that gets back to that. That last one that last P of patience of sometimes we expect people to trust us, right from the get go. Because we're professional, right? We've been in business for a while. And we know we're trustworthy. So why don't you trust us. But it takes a little bit of patience, a little piece of showing why they should trust us before they can trust us and understanding that that that is a process. And once you do that, that's going to benefit you for a long, long time.
Jay 38:16
You grow I totally agree. Because you know what people are letting you send to their home, when they're not there. Usually, there has to be a lot of trust and taking care of their prized possession their pets.
Collin 38:30
Now, I'm also in these 23 years, you've been working alongside your wife. So I wanted to know what that's been like, and how you make that work and how you work together,
Jay 38:40
my wife still works full time at the same job she had back then, though she's looking at retiring from the job hopefully, before the end of this year. That's our plan. And she initially with us both working full time, we were both trying to help out, you know, when we call in on weekends, and you know, holidays and things like that. And we got a lot of pretty good doing and then after a while, it kind of became my business. Because after five years, I became full time with this unless my employer, she recognizes my business and then ever since that point in time the last 15 years or so. She's mainly helped during holiday periods and on weekends. And we usually get along pretty well with it. I definitely can tell we do things differently. And we definitely communicate with our clients differently. She's fine with that. So we're still married
39:41
the proof
Jay 39:42
if we um I'm a little cheese a little bit worried I'm I'm a bit worried what happens after she retires she wants to participate a lot while we still get along.
Collin 39:56
Well after after all those years of of trust and working to Together, you know, I, I think the I think you'll get I think you'll work it out, right?
Jay 40:04
Well, I'm pretty sure we're working out. I'm not worried about it. But yeah,
Collin 40:09
that's that's nice being able to have somebody alongside you that you that you know, you you trust implicitly and what they do even though they may do it slightly differently than what you would the way you do it. But that just makes a really powerful team when you're able to work together like that.
Jay 40:27
Yeah, she always went with me to the psi conferences. And we registered because no two registration. So she went to all the different educational sessions and workshops and all the social events together. So we were known as a team mehrfach mother pet sitters and been at those conferences, no jail better name now me. Because she's more adaptive parting with them than I am.
40:59
Guess
41:02
just different strengths and weaknesses that you eat, you're able to shrink to it.
41:08
Track. There you go.
Collin 41:11
You mentioned earlier about after the towers fell, and you had a slowdown. In the time that you've been in business, you've you've weathered, many economic downturns and crisises. How have you navigated those?
Jay 41:26
No to all three, because it took a while for that to happen. Basically, it took a while before we notice anything, and we were still more most of the time working part time until all two in all two, in the middle of all two, there you see I was working for merge with a bunch of other agencies. And they offer me a really attractive day on the lead. And I grabbed it. And at that time, we probably need to go full time testing. But we got really worried. So what happened was, I ran into somebody who knew one of my clients who worked with FedEx, and he asked me if I wouldn't want to drive part time during the busy season, which was the spring and summer. I said, Yeah, I think I'll get a commercial license. And I had to pass a FedEx driving test, I drove that expand all over warrensburg, even down near you in that area, you know, agreements between all towns. And so and I intended to earn that much, but it made Jill feel better about it. And we knew we're had that money coming in. But what was really nice was I bought a GPS then because GPS was, was early on man, man wasn't prevalent, like now, he was fine with me telling people about my business, I would carry business cards around with me in areas of delivering to her pets. Sometimes I would talk about their pets, and they asked me for my business cards, and some of them did become clients down the road. So that worked out really well. And then by fall of 2003 hours, you really didn't need to drive there anymore. And I just went totally full time. But I did that in all 708 with no financial crisis here. It didn't really affect us until probably oh nine to 10. And then no 10 is no since going down dramatically. And at the 2011 conference, PSA conference, which was in New Orleans, but the heading or winner in February, the lady was talking about how important it was to do social media, how important was to have a smartphone, all the things I didn't have. So I determined you know on this promo code number two, believe it or not, I first ordered my first smartphone. When I got banned from the conference late in 2011. And gathered in early March. Then I went up to the university here at the time, was a state agency but there had their offices at Central Small Business Development Center. And they asked for help. And I can talk to anybody. So of course I've had clients at the university side there, I found a person he set me up with an MBA student. She was going to graduate soon. And she showed me literally how to use my cell phone. I use my smart phone and she she helped get me on Facebook or not and LinkedIn and some of the other things and she helped me Learn how to do post and be sauce to me. And then eventually she was of help to help me find a company to help get our first website, I went 14 years without a website. And then I ended up using furry friends. And she helped us with getting custom logos developed, she helped me pick out colors and all that kind of stuff. You know what I continued down for the next four years, they would give me a new student, usually almost every semester, sometimes only once a year. They were senior marketing students, or they, they were MBA students never sharp. And they were techies. And I wasn't, I learned a lot from them. And we learned how to do online newsletters, I'm under a lot of marketing things. And from there, I did really well, you know, it wasn't that long after things just started picking up dramatically. So and then part of this pandemic here. I you know, and then here, we just stayed in touch with our client. We've already we're close to retirement anyhow. So we already have our phones and everything in order, but I developed three scenarios, depending on how the pandemic goes, and that's how I we do some our expenses and everything. And I use the time to redo our website to bear both of those. I'm used to time to do a lot more social media a lot more newsletters and, and things and we've actually done pretty well we've had 52 clients use us this year. And so and 40 of them use a since a pandemic kit. So we haven't been that bad. We're not as good. But I lowered my expectations where I didn't know if I would hit half the revenue I had last year changed my budget, based on our profits being less than half of last year. And as long as the virus doesn't get worse, I think we'll do better than that. And we're fine with it that way. So that's how we've done I would tell you then, so students where I shoot Chow,
Collin 47:08
I mean, what I'm hearing in that is it's it's a you know, kind of at the end there have really, they allow it, the ability to know your numbers has allowed you to plan and adjust accordingly. And on top of that, you know, through through, oh 203 and then 209 of adapting and seeking out those help and those resources early and taking advantage of what you can to put you on a good track forward of what what you know, okay, I'm not doing this, how do I learn that? You know, okay, things are not working out? What what kind of, you know, what kind of things can I be doing on the side while I work on my business and work on marketing that and getting all those things brought into or bought into place there. So that word, you know, adapting and persist, you know, perseverance is one of your P's there of bringing that in, to push through those times and seek out the help when you need it exactly. In warrensburg. And the surrounding areas you'd mentioned earlier, it's, it's a little bit a mix of a college town and a lot of rural areas in the surrounding time. Many, many pet sitters may think that they can't be profitable or not have a successful business unless they're in a large metropolitan area. What advice would you give to pet sitters in more more rule or small town setting?
Jay 48:27
Well, number one thing is pet sitting in small towns even more important in metro areas, relationship building is number one, and always will be number one in small towns, I think you gotta get known they gotta get to know you, you got engaged, they need being engaged with you. Number really important thing to make this is flies is need to understand, because you normally have a bigger service area, you know, if you're going into little towns, like I know, you're where you're at, there's a bunch of little towns nearby to you all. And if you were gonna go service down, you got to figure that mileage into your costs, and you got to figure that into your prices. But not only that, and you got to figure in a longer amount of time you're going to spend driving to and from those places than you would in your normal in town radius to incorporate that into your prices and still be competitive enough to get the business. But what I found is people will be willing to pay if you offer a terrific service. So you not only have to figure your transportation costs and your time traveling. But you also have to figure in like we talked about all your overhead expenses as well, to make sure your prices are good choices. make it worth your while and also figure out where it's not worth your while. I mean, really, I mean, to give you an example, when we first started, you're probably familiar with this, there's a little town called knob noster, it's 10 miles from us. That may not sound like a big deal, but 20 mile difference in driving back and forth two times a day, or three times a day, that's 50, you know, 60 miles three times a day? Well, that's over 30 hours, in long term transportation costs, was kind of hard to charge enough to recoup that. You know, and all your other expenses. So we figured out, even though we started out doing non ask ourselves that it'd be really good to get somebody there in Nashville to help us out. Because now not so much the little town next to my man, Air Force Base, but a lot of military people and civilians there. And as I told you, before, they're one fourth of our client base, even now, we're bigger years ago. So we've been fortunate to get somebody to help us with that. So I think that's one of my suggestions is to do that, and make sure that they're there. You don't make your service area too big. Because I'll tell you this. If you say, Well, I'm the golden Master, which is 10 miles away, you'll get somebody 10 miles north and now masters Thanks, sir in non Master, if they want to go 20 miles. Happens all the time. So you have to say, my, my address is nine now, sir, it just happens to be Northwest 915 Road, which is 9.5 miles north of Mount, but still mountain. No. I'm not slagging. Yeah,
Collin 52:16
I yeah, it gets to you know, I love that of building those relationships. So if you're in a if you're in a smaller area, or have a more rural market, really leaning into and building those relationships, being visible, meeting people staying in touch with people, and then that second part of know your numbers of what is profitable for you, and what isn't, and make, make those hard lines make those hard decisions of sure that client that needs you is 20 miles away, and they're, they're paying you Yes, and you feel like you're making money, but at the end of the day, it's really hard, as you said, to recoup that over the long haul. And that's where that mindset, that kind of viewpoint needs to be of, no, okay, you're going to drive that 20 miles, you can do that once. Okay, are you gonna do that three times four times? What's the cutoff point? what's right, make it worth your time?
Jay 53:10
No. And not only that, have a relationship with other Petros, Whom are you people who bought in the area? Know Who else could they use instead of you. So when I say notice, some I almost always get, try to give them a referral to someplace else they can serve that I'm not afraid of losing the business. Because we get that back.
Collin 53:34
That's what that relationship is. Okay, this doesn't work for me. And good customer service means I need to tell you where else to go or who can be of good service to you. And then when the whoever you refer to them, you know, down the line, they're going to have something that doesn't work for them. And they're going to refer back to you and there comes again, that patience of knowing that this is gonna This is going to come back and this is going to be rifle.
Jay 53:59
The other thing is if you do get some passers that cover that area, make sure you do a really good job of screen them because they represent you and only takes a few minutes and one bad client the rumor of good reputation you built over many years that one day in coverage now NASA forest now at one time we had to they overlapped and I knew the other lady was leaving was going to be leaving now husband had gotten ours. So I went got somebody else. And I know another lady here who helps me with the roll area and overflow here in warrensburg. And believe it or not. All I did was I went to my clients and says you know what, we're expanding too fast. We can't keep out. If you know anybody who might be good to do more we do let me know. There's some ways You know, one of my clients and one is Burke's daughter had just moved in now Nasr, she was nuts about pets. She was also a teacher. And she. And so I got to hold her and I tried her out. She was awesome. And she's still with us 14 years later. And the other lady, she started out as a client in 97, one of our first ones. And we had to go to our petsitting conference in oh two. And we couldn't get anybody else to the cover to take care of our cats and birds. So I asked her, she might want to, you know, cover some clients and take care of our our us. She did. And now she's still with us 18 years later, so I guess I've been kind of lucky.
Collin 55:46
Yeah, well, but that's leaning into those relationships and the community that you've built, and you have around you,
Jay 55:52
you can ask your own clients are business people who ever say, Hey, I'm looking for some help, and not have to go the normal hiring route? You know,
Collin 56:04
yeah, cuz you already have a relationship with them. They know how you operate, obviously, because they've hired you before. And if they have an interest, you know, that that can definitely be a route that you can take, because you you know them as well, you recently made the switch to providing almost exclusively cat care,
56:20
what what was that decision?
Collin 56:21
Like? And what was that decision process for you?
Jay 56:24
About five years. About five years ago, I saw that we were started, we are cat people ourselves. We have five cats in our own home, we've had six or seven and a couple times. And my wife is impressed. can see the area cat club, and she's been with them for I think 25 years ago, no. And we've always done cat shows. And so, you know, with cat rescues with cat people. So I started thinking about, you know, getting up there in age and was harder to take care of some of these dogs, I was getting aches and pains. And we can always refer him to other pets. And maybe we should think about trying to get more cat care and so on. That's what happened. And then buying your lady, we formulated that as our exit strategy, that semi retirement where we would cut back on our petsitting operation and have others do mostly the dogs and other pets. And we would just do the cats mostly. And we've been gradually working it that way for the last four years. And we even started on a separate brand. I don't know if you know about this or not, or seeing this website, we decided to start a separate brand called cats at home testing, got the domain name, started a separate website and the whole thing. What we did, we mainly did that, mainly because we were at a social gathering. Some of us Kansas City area cutters, they were doing more cats than they wanted to do more. And then we decided, hey, maybe we could get together all under kind of bro and do this together. And I can refer business after them in the Kansas City area. So that's what we started cast at home Pepcid and kind of almost the fall of 2016. But we didn't really get as many pets in clients until 2017 in the Kansas City area. And then we promote cats at home pets that are down here in the warrensburg area. Now master the role areas. And believe it or not the cast at home pet sitting has helped us get a lot more cat clients by about 175 or 130 client base, or strictly cats only fine. We've got to get Mehran one of the main reasons for doing that also can't see is a whole lot less demanding physically. So there is a whole lot easier to schedule. And if you've done it, you probably know that and we found it to be a whole lot less competitive, and a whole lot more profitable. So that's the reason we've gone to going towards mostly cats.
Collin 59:28
Yeah, and I think that may sound counterintuitive to many dog walkers or people who focus mostly on dogs because they may say, Oh, well I provide cat services but it says a sideline or it's not the primary focus. So to hear to hear that it's more profitable may strike some as as being, you know, counterintuitive to what they are normally thinking so
Jay 59:52
well. Think about it. For most cats, not all but for most casting you only have To go on once a day, sometimes you go back, people want more feeding on that medicine of shots and things. So therefore the cost doesn't add up as much. So you can try to bit more not worry about whether you've not been competitive and where you're losing business. So that's Halsall. Also, I'm just this less competitive. And this and you're able to you don't have to drive this far and see my processing rate, or a lot of our cats. And so our costs are lower as well.
Collin 1:00:38
Yeah. Again, getting back to that, knowing your numbers knowing that, okay, what are my costs, and you mentioned, like, go over once, maybe twice a day, versus the three drop ins or these large spread out areas being able to concentrate them, so your service areas smaller, you're not going over as much. So you just inherently have more profit per visit.
Jay 1:01:00
You're right. And you and the scheduling part makes it easier to you can have during the Christmas area, we want to stick to teen cat families. It was crazy. Early morning, the night when we could do them in almost any time we wanted to, you know, and set up routes, where we went from one to one to one to one and we didn't drive that far.
Collin 1:01:26
And on top of that, as you also mentioned that the competition just is not really there's
Jay 1:01:31
no it's not, not in our area. No in the big metro areas are people who are cash only businesses. But not in our area. And there's not one there. And there still isn't nationwide. You don't hear too many people with rover away for those type of places. Push cats in child No.
Collin 1:01:56
So it makes it a good good service to either if you if you don't have it yet to add it. And if you aren't focusing on it may be a good time to re re reassess that and see whether that's something actually would be really profitable for you.
Jay 1:02:10
Yeah, the one thing to remember though, is they have a tendency to be pretty eccentric to be prepared for that. Unit, because they're a saturate, they're more demanding that you really have expertise in the area. You can't be at a dog walker, somebody might sit there cat, and don't know cats, and succeed
Collin 1:02:34
real well meeting that customer demand and their expectations really is knowing that they're going to demand some certain things, they're going to know what they want. And they're going to be looking for that. So getting those skills and then being able to communicate to them that you have that is that is that next step.
Jay 1:02:51
And then what's really neat, one of the best marketing things I've done in the last two years, is I set up a cat lovers Group here in warrensburg. On Facebook, it's called cat lovers of boys, but now noster. And we have almost 200 members. And we put a little bit of information on there about pet care, but one mainly just about engaging with each other about our own cats or other people's cats. We're always sharing cat. And we're always new members all the time. And of that group. In the last few months, I've picked up three new clients. So and I'm the only admin for the group. So I control it to that's a one way there, the market to the cat people, because you're targeting a specific people love cats
Collin 1:03:46
leaning into that. And really, again, really understanding who that client is. And then speaking cat to them, basically. Right? You've mentioned that throughout our conversation here that, you know, and especially with this transition into cats, that you've got your eye on retirement and semi retirement, what does that look like for you as you transition out of this business?
Jay 1:04:11
Know what we're meeting with our financial person next week, he usually does a better job of explaining to her than I do. For me, my idea of semi retirement will be mostly doing mostly just cat sitting. And having been continuing the business, um, for most of our regular clients and taking on some new non cat sitting clients that are other pet sitters can do I hurt my shoulders really bad last year. And also, it took six months of physical therapy it over it. And next year unfortunately my knees are starting day as well as my back and I'm doing physical therapy on my own. By the CMA more after I deal with big dogs, or medium sized dogs, my semi retirements gonna probably include most of the county. And I'm also going to probably dabble in doing more direct involvement with our retirement funds. And also with our investments. I have been taking some classes and investing beyond my IRA. Now, I can do some of my own investing too afterwards. That's why I think it's going to include I ain't giving you a specific date. wasn't looking for that. I
Collin 1:05:39
was just just curious after after.
Jay 1:05:44
You can keep up with us. Are you still gonna be here? Now? Especially might've been 1520 years? Yeah, we'll be here. We'll be here. No, I won't be as long as we're healthy.
Collin 1:05:58
Well, yeah, in that to like, Yeah. How are you communicating that to your clients? You have ones that are reaching out to you, are you actively talking about the road forward, you know what the future looks like now?
Jay 1:06:08
Only the ones who knows really well. And some other clients that have been with us a long time. newest for many years before we even started, you know, they kind of want to know more than just the normal client belt. So they'll say, Well, how much longer does one of my clients who's in our actually our neighborhood says, Where are you finally gonna retire? I says, will you stop loving your patch? I said, I don't know. I'll be fair. I've been gradually. And we've been cutting back as as as 2015. We had over 200 clients, our client base was over 200, I had about two twice. Now we're down to one third. And so we're gradually cutting that back to them. That's what I see. Semi retirement looking like, probably next year is my guess, Julie's her business by the end of this year, I think it'll be next year.
Collin 1:07:09
Well, sounds like you still have lots of exciting things ahead. And lots of lots of experience to share. This has been really, really wonderful. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation here. And I know that we've spanned a lot of topics. And there's still so much to cover, Jay. So if people want to get in touch, pick your brain a little bit more. And just to hear more about your story. How best can they do that?
Jay 1:07:35
Well, a couple different ways. As long as they identify themselves as a pastor, I don't know about you, but both on our business line, our personal line, we get a lot of spam phone calls. So they can call our business landline, pampered pets, thing 667473554, voicemail picks up on the fifth frame, just have them identify their pets, or if they heard this podcast. However, they can also go to our website, one for pets, calm. There's on the header, there's email and phone number listed up top and I believe they're on the corner as well. I guess he even gone to cast at home petsitting COMM And the informations listed on there as well and the header footer. And there's a contact form, I think at the bottom of the homepage, or if they want I'm really active on Facebook, if you go to my personal page, or they can go to our business, one pampered pet soon, our guest cast at home on and message us but again, letting me know that you're a pet sitter. So we'll be happy to get back in touch with you.
Collin 1:08:53
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll include links to those in the show notes and on our blog posts to when the episode goes out. So people can just click, click right there and get in touch. Jay, again, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come and talk to us about your years and petsitting and what you've learned and those, those those, I just love those those seven keys to success. And I hope that we can all learn to follow those and just be a little bit more patient in business and in our personal lives. So it's been a real pleasure, Jay, thank you so much.
Jay 1:09:23
Thank you have a great evening.
Collin 1:09:25
When you think about your future in the industry, what do you see? How do you plan to be here year after year? Where do you see yourself in a couple decades? Those are all great questions to start asking ourselves right now so that we can start laying those really strong foundations, not just for our business, but for our personal lives to making sure that we're organized, that the business is organized, but we know those numbers, and we stick to those seven P's that Jay talked about. Would love to hear how you plan to persevere and to stay in the business. You can send an email to feedback at pet sitter confessional.com. Check us out on social media and just let us know how you plan to do that. We'd like to thank our sponsor time to pet for making this week's show possible. We'll be back again soon.
